ROLLUP: Bitcoin Hits NEW ATH | Stablecoin Bill Advances | ETH’s ZK Miracle | Solana’s New Chain? | T

This week, Ryan and David unpack Bitcoin’s explosive run to $111K and the macro chaos driving it—specifically, the U. S. Treasury’s failed bond auction and what it signals for the dollar. They break down the Senate’s landmark stablecoin bill (and Elizabeth Warren’s meltdown), Ethereum’s ZK miracle that could 100x Layer 1 throughput, and Texas launching its own state Bitcoin reserve. Plus, why Stanley Druckenmiller’s portfolio strategy might justify going all-in on crypto—and whether alt season is finally on the horizon. ------ 📣 RE | REAL-WORLD (RE)STAKING https://bankless.cc/Re ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐CELO | PROVE YOUR SELF https://bankless.cc/Self 🟠HEMI | BTC & ETH, ONE NETWORK https://bankless.cc/hemi ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 0:31 Stanley Druckenmiller https://x.com/mrexits/status/1925354907382816880 3:40 Markets https://x.com/glassnode/status/1925225568817099260 https://x.com/btc_archive/status/1925468871449866309 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1925401414659867102 https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1924676563582267643 https://x.com/CryptoRank_io/status/1923875599275143300 https://x.com/cburniske/status/1925482199727710648 https://www.reuters.com/business/tepid-demand-us-treasury-auction-shows-investor-jitters-about-tax-bill-deficit-2025-05-21/ 20:42 U. S. About to Pass a Landmark Stablecoin Bill? https://x.com/SenatorHagerty/status/1924933844001521787 https://x.com/eleanorterrett/status/1924504745689153812 https://x.com/WayneVaughan/status/1924660740847222832 https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/1925247754969797007 https://x.com/cburniske/status/1924705825723187343 https://x.com/CampbellJAustin/status/1925170860140249445 33:48 ETHEREUM IS SAVED. Bet it all on zk! Real-time proving is coming to Ethereum! https://x.com/drakefjustin/status/1924929057676001466 https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1925050155922862526 https://x.com/pumatheuma/status/1925231968117277066 https://x.com/SuccinctLabs/status/1924523978703740963 45:26 Solana’s next leap: the proposed “Alpenglow” consensus https://x.com/Austin_Federa/status/1924498049482559677 https://www.anza.xyz/ https://x.com/gttyson/status/1924519192101061035 47:57 FIGHT FOR RWAS https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1925577606163829203 https://blog.kraken.com/news/tokenized-equities-coming-soon 48:58 BIG Sui Dex hacked https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1925509145366503486 https://x.com/SuiNetwork/status/1925572334054002774 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/sui 52:13 SKY became the sole governance token of the Sky https://x.com/SkyEcosystem/status/1924515700564988354 https://upgrademkrtosky.com 53:54 Bitcoin community might rename sats to bitcoins https://x.com/jack/status/1924121538485178658 57:16 Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill officially passed - TEXAS loves crypto https://x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1925239389141049353 https://bitcoinlaws.io/tx 58:24 Galaxy was listed on Nasdaq - $7 billion https://x.com/galaxyhq/status/1923411961754108177 59:11 Hester Peirce’s “New Paradigm” speech (SEC Speaks, 19 May 2025) https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/peirce-remarks-sec-speaks-051925 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1924539029346828608 -https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/05/20/sec-charges-unicoin-top-executives-with-100m-massive-securities-fraud 1:01:39 DOJ is investigating Coinbase data breach & Circle Rumors? https://cointelegraph.com/news/justice-department-coinbase-data-breach https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/05/20/circle-has-explored-potential-5b-sale-to-coinbase-or-ripple-instead-of-ipo-report 1:04:00 Closing & Disclaimers 1:04:26 Moment of Zen https://x.com/mrexits/status/1925354907382816880 ------ 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.

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, it is all-time high week, Bitcoin all-time high week on the Bankless Weekly Roll-Up. Wow, feeling good going into this episode. David, how much of your liquid net worth is in Bitcoin? And I hope that answer is a lot.

• 0:18David Hoffman?

  I would say my liquid net worth in a top-two crypto assets is something like 95%. So, pretty concentrated bet.

• 0:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, wow. You know what? I would caution you, and I would say that's probably a bad idea. But instead, I'm going to play this clip from legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  My idea of risk control is a little non-conventional. I like putting all my eggs in one basket, and I'm watching the basket very carefully.

• 0:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go, David. Stanley says it's okay. Your strategy is fine. You don't have to be diversified. You just got to watch those baskets very carefully.

• 0:54David Hoffman?

  You know, I've never really been a fan of diversification. It's just not exciting.

• 1:01David Hoffman?

  I'm a content producer who needs excitement and thrill in his life. And let me tell you, that doesn't come from a diversified basket of multiple different asset class assets. No, okay, I was actually wrong. It's not 95% of my net worth, because I do have a pretty good amount of hood and coin. And so I have equities that...

• 1:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah, that's exposure, right?

• 1:22David Hoffman?

  I own equity companies that sell crypto. And then I own the crypto that they sell too, as well.

• 1:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Druckenmiller would approve. Actually, you know what? At the end of this episode, I'm going to play the rest of the clip, because it's just timeless advice if you're doing something like the crypto barbell.

• 1:37David Hoffman?

  The beat in the background really adds a lot of flavor to that.

• 1:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  I couldn't help that, so I put that in there. That wasn't me. David, we got a busy roll-up today. First, we got to talk about this landmark stablecoin bill. That's the genius act. There was a key vote in the Senate. It passed that vote, but does that mean it's passed? Passed? Is this now a law in the United States of America? The fight is not over. We'll talk a bit about that.

• 1:57David Hoffman?

  Also, the United States cannot find any buyers for its bonds. The Treasury auction happened last night, and no one was really taking the bid. So what does that mean? I didn't buy any bonds. Yeah, that's... Yeah, clearly, our demand was not... Express in that market. Bond yields are up. What does that mean for everything else? And is that why Bitcoin is at all time high?

• 2:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, in crypto land, there's a week of upgrades. So not quite for Ethereum yet, but there's some exciting ZK miracles on the horizon. We'll talk about that in the story of how to scale Ethereum mainnet, the layer one to 10,000 transactions per second. Also, Solana with a big announcement this week, talking about their own beam chain. This is like a major consensus engine upgrade to Solana. At least that's what's being proposed. We'll talk about that.

• 2:41David Hoffman?

  And then also Texas is the first state to create a Bitcoin reserve. That makes sense. Texas.

• 2:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 2:47David Hoffman?

  I feel like of all states. It would be Texas. Yeah. So how much, how much are they buying? And are they buying anything else? We're going to get to all of this and more. But first, a message from our friends and sponsors over at RE. RE is a real world restaking platform that leverages reinsurance contracts to generate yield on staked capital. So users deposit stablecoins, USCC, Tether, DAI, etc. into risk pools. And then users earn yield that is uncorrelated with typical market volatility. They have produced $143 million in supported premiums to date and backs 26 insurance programs in the United States. So you can earn real yield by backing insurance premiums. You should probably do your homework before you do this, but if you want to do your homework,

• 3:30David Hoffman?

  banklist.cc/re to get started.

• 3:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, stablecoin yields. Love that story.

• 3:36David Hoffman?

  Uncorrelated stablecoin yields.

• 3:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uncorrelated. Here's another story I like, which is the price of Bitcoin on the week. Just give it to us straight because we're at all time highs at the time of recording. So what's the price of Bitcoin right now?

• 3:48David Hoffman?

  Up 8% on the week to 111,300. What is that all time high number? That if you scroll down a little bit, Goongecko will tell you the actual all time high mark.

• 3:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really?

• 4:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's on here somewhere?

• 4:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there. 111512. 111.

• 4:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a new number.

• 4:06David Hoffman?

  512. It's a new number to beat, which we are within $200 of. So.

• 4:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  8% on the week, 8% on a $2 trillion asset.

• 4:16David Hoffman?

  On Bitcoin is pretty nuts.

• 4:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a lot.

• 4:19David Hoffman?

  That's pretty nuts.

• 4:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, not only this, David, I wanted to wish you a happy Bitcoin Pizza Day.

• 4:25David Hoffman?

  Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day. How many of our listeners do you think are not aware of what Bitcoin Pizza Day is?

• 4:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  A few, because I think our listeners are incredibly crypto savvy and they've been with us for a very long time on this journey, David. But why don't you tell us the story of Bitcoin Pizza for those who have forgotten or for those who maybe just don't celebrate this?

• 4:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Bitcoin Pizza Day is the first transaction involving Bitcoin for a real commerce. It was real commerce. And so, one individual, Lazlo Highensys, just posted on, I think, the Bitcoin Talk forums. Said, "Hey, I'm interested in purchasing pizza with Bitcoin." And there was no price for Bitcoin at the time. There was not trading. This was May 22nd, 2010.

• 5:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  15 years ago.

• 5:12David Hoffman?

  15 years ago, yeah. And so, some person said, "Oh, I will accept Bitcoin and I will call your local Domino's and I will send you pizza."

• 5:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was Papa John's, fun fact.

• 5:23David Hoffman?

  Papa John's, excuse me.

• 5:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Domino's, get that out of here.

• 5:27David Hoffman?

  These two individuals agreed to a price of two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin. And so, this one individual called up the Domino's by Lazlo's house, sent him two cheese pizzas, maybe pepperoni, I don't know. And then Lazlo sent this man 10,000 Bitcoins and that was the first real-world commerce transaction of Bitcoin.

• 5:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm looking at the pizzas here. I see one cheese, definitely.

• 5:48David Hoffman?

  One cheese and the one's like kind of in everything, got some olives and peppers. Yeah, peppers, yeah, for sure.

• 5:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the one side, the one side might also be cheese.

• 5:57David Hoffman?

  I'm gonna tell you, Ryan, these pizzas do not look very good.

• 6:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  They were expensive pizzas, let me tell you, because this was 10,000 Bitcoin. What's the price of that right now, these two pizzas?

• 6:07David Hoffman?

  These two pizzas, these two very mid-looking pizzas were purchased for what is now worth $1.2 billion today.

• 6:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. It's funny that the first use case of Bitcoin is money was actually not as a store of value. It was money as a medium of exchange, right? So get some pizza. Anyway, happy Bitcoin pizza day. Tell me about ETH price in the week.

• 6:28David Hoffman?

  I will tell you. Ryan, how many weeks have you been back on the weekly rollup? This is number four?

• 6:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Are you gonna tell me it's always been, it's been green since I've been back?

• 6:36David Hoffman?

  It has been green every single week since you have been back.

• 6:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Correlation or causation?

• 6:41David Hoffman?

  Four. And four is starting to be crossing the line of, okay, this is like four, like we are in that line of like, you know, three is just not a big deal. Four is like, okay, I'm seeing a pattern here.

• 6:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Something's happening.

• 6:54David Hoffman?

  If we start to get like six or seven, I'm gonna be like, what's going on here?

• 7:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's got the magic, David. I don't know. It's these rollups.

• 7:03David Hoffman?

  ETH is up 4.5% on the week. This is the first week that ETH was up less than Bitcoin on the week. So maybe Ryan's losing a little bit of his magic, but not.

• 7:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll be back.

• 7:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we'll be back.

• 7:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Also, it's worth noting that ETH supply on exchanges has dropped below 4.9%. So the total supply of ETH, less than 4.9% of that is on centralized exchanges. Now, there's like a bunch of noise in this chart. So if you go and you put your ETH inside of Coinbase and then you stake it, that leaves the exchange technically.

• 7:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, it does?

• 7:36David Hoffman?

  It does, yeah. I mean, it depends on how they count it, but yeah. So, I mean, it's not, there's not as much signal in here as there was, but nonetheless.

• 7:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Why, what does that mean? Why is that a good thing?

• 7:46David Hoffman?

  It means it's easier for ETH to move in price. And although like, there's just less ETH on exchanges to be sold. And so incoming dollars can move the price more when there is less supply on exchanges. There are like 10,000 other variables that also go into that. So I don't like rely on that, but it's worth noting.

• 8:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I choose to interpret this as bullish. David.

• 8:06David Hoffman?

  It could only be bullish. It could only be bullish.

• 8:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bitcoin is also super low too on exchanges too. So it's bullish both those assets. I think a big question, though, is with Bitcoin doing this well is, are we going to get that alt season? Okay, this is a chart of Bitcoin dominance right now. Okay, this is over the last couple of years. Look, we're at about 63% Bitcoin dominance. So Bitcoin dominance, of course, is a measure of Bitcoin as a ratio of all the other crypto assets combined. You've got like 7% of stable coins in here. Bitcoin dominance has been ebbing up all the way from, I guess, you know, 2023 up until now, and we're at 63%. So at this point in the cycle, you're looking at Bitcoin. It can't be stopped. It's like Bitcoin's world, we're just living in it.

• 8:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the question that crypto folks are asking is like, are we going to get an alt season? Like, because we get alt seasons in previous bull markets, right?

• 8:58David Hoffman?

  Got any more of those alt seasons?

• 8:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, like, so here's an example of an alt season, right? It's when the Bitcoin, Bitcoin goes down. This happened in a hurry. So this happened from December, January, you know, like 2021 to lasted until about, I don't know, six months, a good six months of a massive run up on everything else.

• 9:18David Hoffman?

  When Bankless went from niche to huge?

• 9:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember those heady days. So do we get an alt season? I know Arthur Hayes answered this because the episode, if you listen to this, came out Monday. He was like, yes, we will get an alt season. It just may not be your alts. That was his take.

• 9:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah, back then, there were a very few alts. There are quite a lot of alts now.

• 9:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sure, sure. And I don't really like calling Ether an alt, but I kind of think we have to. Like, when Ether is just like 15% of the market and Bitcoin is like 64%, it feels much more like an alt, right? Even though I think it's the most legitimate number two, it's still like, it's an alt, right?

• 10:02David Hoffman?

  Like, directionally, I think alt just means downstream from Bitcoin. And the further you're away from Bitcoin, the more alt-y that you are. And also, it's worth noting that, like, Ethereum leaned into alt via the creation of The ERC 20 token.

• 10:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sure.

• 10:17David Hoffman?

  And so it was, you know, Ethereum was the original pump fund. And so it spawned alts as a product. And so it is the leader of the alts in the sense that it was the first platform to create tokens on.

• 10:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I just, I resist alts. I still just like, I'm gonna switch back to not calling Ethereum alt.

• 10:33David Hoffman?

  It's like slightly derogative. It's like slightly, like you're punching down. I feel like Bitcoin calls all these alts and.

• 10:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:37David Hoffman?

  Like, I don't know what their names are. I don't even think about them. They're just the alts. I don't know what they're called.

• 10:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Once, once Ether is back to like, you know, above 20% in terms of market cap, I'll stop calling it, but fair game now. Anyway, this is Chris Meninsky saying, if ETH keeps making moves against Bitcoin, which it is, David, that ratio, actually, you mentioned it since I came back, huh? The ratio of the Bitcoin ETH ratio is doing quite well. And Chris says, may all your bags moon for a period. So he seems to think that ETH is going to be a leading indicator for alt season.

• 11:09David Hoffman?

  Yes. ETH BTC goes up during alt season. That's how it works.

• 11:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's how it's been. Do you think it will continue to be like this?

• 11:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause like, yeah, yeah, I do. I definitely do. When capital moves down, the market cap stack ETH BTC goes up.

• 11:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. You know, a market that's not finding any buyers these days is the good old bond market, David. Did you see this? This is.

• 11:30David Hoffman?

  Never bought a single treasury in my life, let me tell you.

• 11:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  You should, you should, you own like dollars, right? You just don't store like your, your wealth in dollars, I guess?

• 11:38David Hoffman?

  I own like some dollars, yeah.

• 11:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Well, any dollars you own, if it's like any substantial amount, you shouldn't actually own dollars unless you're gonna, you're gonna spend it in the next couple of months. You should own treasuries, right?

• 11:48David Hoffman?

  The dollars that I have, I'm gonna spend in the next couple of months.

• 11:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, all right. Again, back to the Druckenmiller like thing. That's how, that's how David rolls. But they were trying to sell some bonds in the market this week. And here's the headline from Reuters, tepid demand for US Treasury auction shows investor jitters about tax bill deficit. So what's going on? What's going on is bond prices spiked, David, particularly long duration bonds. Let me show you a chart of what happens when there's tepid demand, David. This is 30-year government bond yields for US 30-year treasuries. And this is rates, interest rates spiking up.

• 12:23David Hoffman?

  Right, yep.

• 12:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  You have to pay people. More, right?

• 12:26David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 12:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Investors are going to want more.

• 12:28David Hoffman?

  More of a return.

• 12:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? If they're going to lock in to a 30-year bond and this is like price over time, it's now above 5%.

• 12:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's, you're zooming all the way out to 2020. Can you go even further? Can you turn the candles to like month-long candles?

• 12:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  It has been worse. It has been worse.

• 12:45David Hoffman?

  Not since 2007.

• 12:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 12:49David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 12:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  What happened then, right?

• 12:50David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 12:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so what actually happened was on Wednesday, there was a long-duration bond, the 20-year actually, with about 16 billion of 20-year bonds hitting the market. And that's when bond prices started to spike because they couldn't find enough buyers. And so David, if you're thinking about something like a 5%, that's almost like, that's worse than my mortgage, my personal home mortgage, right?

• 13:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's bad.

• 13:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  30-year fixed rate.

• 13:19David Hoffman?

  It's a bad deal for the government.

• 13:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And, okay, so if we're paying high interest rates, what does that mean, do you think, for like the deficit in general?

• 13:28David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 13:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  US deficit?

• 13:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not great because you have to print more money to cover your debts. So if you have 20-year yields at 5%, if you have $1,000, what are you going to get back in 20 years?

• 13:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. That's what investors are asking.

• 13:44David Hoffman?

  Oh, I'm asking you, actually.

• 13:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  What am I going to get back in 20 years?

• 13:47David Hoffman?

  What does $1,000 get you at a 5% yield over 20 years?

• 13:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just like the 5% annual return for like 20 years, right?

• 13:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, whatever that matters. Yeah, $2,600.

• 13:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right, right.

• 13:59David Hoffman?

  So people are evaluating the dollar is going to like lose that much of its value. Two and a half times.

• 14:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a chart of US federal debt. You've seen this chart before, but look at it spike up. Like, would you lend to this guy? Where, look, look at this.

• 14:13David Hoffman?

  Let me tell you, I would love to ski down that slope. That looks sick.

• 14:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  All the way up to $36 trillion. And as a reminder, who owns this debt? Two thirds of it is public debt held by US investors and about a third is held by, you know, foreign investors. So Japan, China, they'd be at the top of the list. Why do you think this is happening, David? Why are investors like not confident in these bonds? Why are they demanding higher, higher rates in order to hold them?

• 14:41David Hoffman?

  I think this was always inevitable. That's always been the deal when you have like unsustainable debt. The spark that lit the fire is the Trump tariff shenanigans, which has removed international emphasis on the United States as the like low key of finance and reinvestment. And so we would print money, we would buy the people like foreign goods. Foreign goods would come into the country. Our dollars would go out of the country, but then the dollars would come back into the country when they would buy our bonds. Except that last leg has not been happening. Instead, people are buying gold and also Bitcoin, which is why gold's at all time high and why Bitcoin's at all time high. And so instead of the United States stock market being and like Wall Street being the

• 15:23David Hoffman?

  epicenter of all of finance, that is being, I kind of think gold all time high is kind of this like limbo period while people don't really know where to allocate their capital because they don't know what the next epicenter of finance is.

• 15:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  So they're just parking it somewhere.

• 15:35David Hoffman?

  They're just parking it somewhere.

• 15:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 15:37David Hoffman?

  And then they're looking for like, what's the next Wall Street? Where should I rein, where can I get the best yields?

• 15:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sure.

• 15:42David Hoffman?

  And like, I think that has been this whole theory, this whole thesis of this arc of nations and the capital centers of the world has been the thing that we've talked about on Bankless the entire time and why we're bullish on credibly neutral internet-based financial systems on the internet. That's where it's all going.

• 16:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, it's definitely, it's definitely tariffs. You're totally right. Some, some people also thought that Republicans would take control of the government. They'd fix deficits. But did you see, Trump calls this the big, beautiful bill? This is the, the Republicans bill that's in the House right now for their, their new tax bill. And this tax, the proposal here would actually add three to five trillion to the deficit.

• 16:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  More debt over the next 10 years.

• 16:27David Hoffman?

  He wants to cut taxes.

• 16:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  He wants to cut taxes.

• 16:30David Hoffman?

  He also cut like 60% of the IRS staff, which means they can't even collect their own money.

• 16:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. And so this leads to things like, I don't know if you saw this this week, Moody's downgraded US sovereign debt again, right? Moody's is a rating agency. Anyway, this stuff's getting priced in. So the reality is there's a lot of long dated bonds that Treasury Bessent is trying to sell. And this week they're having a little bit of trouble selling them. I mean, there's still buyers. I don't want to overstate this case, but you can kind of see investors demanding a pound.

• 16:59David Hoffman?

  There were less buyers today than there were yesterday.

• 17:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, I think that's going to continue. This is the Arthur Hayes thesis that's playing out. What do we have next?

• 17:05David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, the Genius Act stablecoin bill pass a key vote in the United States Senate. Not the vote, but nonetheless a key vote. It's a pretty big deal. What does the Genius Act do? What does it mean for issuers and holders? Who's left pushing back on the Genius Act? Who doesn't like stablecoins? We're going to talk about that. And then after that, Ethereum's ZK Miracle on the cusp of accelerating the Layer 1 by not 10x, but something like 100x throughput on the Layer 1, meaning we could also reduce block times to. What does all of this mean? And what was just announced? We're going to get to all of that and more. But first, a message from some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, like Uniswap. It's a browser wallet. It's a mobile wallet. It's also the best place to do DeFi. Let's go here from Uniswap right now.

• 17:47David Hoffman?

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• 18:31David Hoffman?

  Use Uniswap's web app and wallet for a more efficient way to use DeFi. Find yourself without handing over personal data. No hacked databases, no unnecessary personal exposure for airdrops, and no AI bots ruining community governance. Meet SELF, the on-chain identity verification protocol built for privacy and control. SELF Protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs to confirm your identity safely. Users prove key details like age or citizenship without revealing sensitive personal information. SELF never stores your data, it only generates cryptographic proofs. Here's how it works in three steps. First, register and verify. Use the SELF app to scan your biometric passport's RFID chip. SELF verifies authenticity with zero-knowledge proofs. Each passport creates one unique identity. Second, you can share proofs privately.

• 19:16David Hoffman?

  Third-party apps request identity proofs, like confirming you're over 18. You can also link proofs securely to public wallets for airdrops or governance participation. And then last, secure verification. Apps validate your proofs instantly on-chain, like on Cello, or off-chain. Audited by ZK Security, the SELF app is live on iOS and Play Store. Visit self.xyz and follow SELF Protocol on X. Have you ever imagined Bitcoin and Ethereum truly working as one, unlocking the full potential of Bitcoin, DeFi, and more? Meet Hemi, a groundbreaking modular network designed precisely for that vision. Co-founded by early Bitcoin core dev Jeff Garzik. Unlike other Layer 2s that treat Bitcoin and Ethereum as separate silos, Hemi connects these giants into a single, powerful super network.

• 19:59David Hoffman?

  With Hemi, users gain unprecedented asset portability and possibilities, combining Bitcoin's security and value with Ethereum's versatility. Hemi's unique innovation, the Hemi virtual machine, integrates a fully indexed Bitcoin node directly into an EVM, enabling dApps that seamlessly interact with both networks. And with Hemi's Proof of Proof, or POP consensus, users benefit from truly decentralized, censorship-resistant Bitcoin-level security. Since its recent mainnet launch, Hemi has rapidly ascended the ranks as one of the top Bitcoin chains. With a thriving global community and robust ecosystem support, Hemi isn't just building a network, it's shaping the future of Web 3, DeFi, and beyond. Visit hemi.xyz/banklist to learn more, discover ways to interact, participate in the leaderboard program, and be part of the community that's uniting Bitcoin and Ethereum.

• 20:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  There was a key vote this week in a landmark stablecoin bill in the US Senate. This is Senator Bill Hagerty, he's commenting on the bill.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Leader Thune, and I'd like to say to everyone, I look forward to making history, hopefully this week, as we continue to make progress on the Genius Act. What does it do? I think it's very important to understand this. We're modernizing the payment system here in America. We're going to put America at the forefront of innovation rather than having America behind as the caboose. This is a dramatic new technology. Innovation is happening here in America. I don't want to see it pushed offshore. I want to see it happening right here. The implications of this are incredible in terms of protecting consumers. Today, it's an unregulated market. What we'll do is make certain that everyone knows that stable coins are backed by US dollars and that those dollars are backed up by cash and short-term US treasuries, the

• 21:33Speaker 03

  highest-quality instruments, so that these instruments can be used for digital trade all over the world. This will ensure US dollar dominance. It will advance our position as the reserve currency in the world rather than see the retreat and decline that we might otherwise experience. The other thing that it will do is it will stimulate demand for United States treasuries. In fact, the projections are that by the end of this decade, stablecoin issuers here in the United States will be the number-one holders of US treasuries in the world. Think about that. I'd far prefer a benign stablecoin issuer to the CCP or other sovereign nations. So I think there's a lot to like about this bill. I appreciate the bipartisan support that we've received moving on to it, and I look forward again to making history with my colleagues later this week.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 22:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cool. I feel bad for talking smack about bonds just now. At least it looks like Senator Hagerty thinks there's going to be some buyers of bonds and they're going to be crypto users.

• 22:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but I mean, we just get bonds at cheaper rates, right? Other people aren't buying them, so our stablecoin companies get to buy them for cheap.

• 22:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Arthur Hayes made the point that what Scott Beston Treasury really needs to sell is the long-duration stuff, the 20-year, 30-year. Like, treasuries are just like the short, like, short-term. It's almost like cash in the bank and everybody wants that.

• 22:46David Hoffman?

  You buy a bunch of short terms and the long terms get better.

• 22:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  For sure. Okay, so the senator alluded to some of this, but what's in the bill?

• 22:52David Hoffman?

  It's basically like a standard's laws for how to become a stablecoin issuer inside of the United States. And so it just sets some rules for stablecoins from issuers. So, stablecoins must be fully backed to 1-1 by liquid assets.

• 23:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  No Terra Luna shenanigans here?

• 23:07David Hoffman?

  No Terra Luna shenanigans. You can't back your stablecoin by Bitcoin or like a crypto asset or like even equity. You have to back it by actual dollars or short-term cash-like instruments like short-term treasuries.

• 23:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 23:20David Hoffman?

  Issuers must regularly disclose reserves, also good. Ensures that coin holders will be prioritized in bankruptcy. So if you are a USDC or a stablecoin holder, you get paid first. So in the bankruptcy event, the holders of stablecoins get their, get the money paid out first. That makes sense. Mandates AML, that was always going to happen. And then it also tells, states who can be an issuer, according to the Genius Act. That's banks and credit unions, non-bank entities, not limited to financial firms, but you must still register with a FED regulator. So you're opening up who can be a stablecoin issuer, not just like a bank. But who cannot be an issuer? Large tech companies.

• 24:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh.

• 24:01David Hoffman?

  And I feel like they're just pointing their finger at Mark Zuckerberg on that one.

• 24:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 24:05David Hoffman?

  They don't want Amazon or Facebook or like Google to become stablecoin issuers.

• 24:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Or Elon Musk for that matter, and X.

• 24:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. So they are separating, they're separating tech from finance and making those things stay separate, which is interesting because that is actually the opposite of the China strategy. They're like, oh yeah, throw it all together, just centralize it all.

• 24:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is cool. And this is basically what makes a stablecoin a stablecoin. It's the stablecoin brand. This is not prohibiting things like DAI though, right? I mean, DAI can still exist. It just won't be a stablecoin as defined under the Genius Act.

• 24:39David Hoffman?

  I, that's a good question. I don't know.

• 24:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like I would have heard more outcry from DeFi lobbyists if it was doing anything bad to some of our existing.

• 24:49David Hoffman?

  I'm going to assume DAI is in the clear. And I bet you that was a part of the whole transition from MakerDAO to Sky in the first place. Cause like Sky has the censorable whitelist on the Sky stablecoin and DAI never did.

• 25:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  So if this thing passes and keep in mind, this is a bill in the Senate. Okay. And this vote, we'll get to the kind of the vote results. This was a preliminary, it was, it was a vote. And if it passed this vote, then they could vote on it.

• 25:15David Hoffman?

  This was a vote as to testing the waters as to whether they wanted to do the real votes. But this was a, this was a water testing vote. It's a preliminary vote.

• 25:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 25:25David Hoffman?

  It passed.

• 25:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  It passed and stablecoins are 250 billion. That's 7% of all crypto market cap. I mean, if this passes, this has a potential like everybody's going to adopt stablecoins. The fintechs been waiting, the visas, the master cards, the all of them stripes. They've got the infrastructure ready and they're going to grow this thing into the trillions. I'm fairly certain of that.

• 25:45David Hoffman?

  ETH is going to be very green that week, I will say.

• 25:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  I hope, I mean, it should be, I hope so.

• 25:49David Hoffman?

  It's not on wood. Yeah.

• 25:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  There is, there is some opposition though. Okay. So we'll get to the vote in a minute, but there is some opposition from the anti crypto army. This is Senator Hagerty again on this.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Well, the people that like centralized currencies, this is a decentralized concept. You know, where you register with, with, with the various.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  I know, but I'm so interested in terms of who's trying to, who was trying to get meetings with you for the last year to say, please, this is a terrible idea.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  No one in the industry is doing that.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  Of course not.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  It has to do with my colleagues and basically it's gotten to be a question and we'll find out tonight. We have broad policy agreement, Democrats and Republicans. The question is, can we get past the partisan politics and allow us to actually have a victory? I would enjoy having a bipartisan victory.

• 26:30Speaker 04

  So there's, there's nobody in the industry who's saying this is a bad idea?

• 26:33Speaker 03

  No.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  So the only people who are saying it's a bad idea to you thus far are, you're saying just other politicians? For what reason though?

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Politicians that want to see centralized control.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  And, you know, a centralized control, if you want that, buy the Digi one. I don't want to see that happen here in America. I think it would be devastating for the dollar's value as the reserve currency. This will actually perpetuate. The dollar's value is a reserve currency. It will extend that momentum. It's going to extend demand for US treasuries. There's a lot to like about this.

• 27:01David Hoffman?

  How cool is it that some of the same talking points that we were saying like three years ago about how it would extend the dollar, the brand of the dollar, it would be buyers of treasuries you're seeing now from senators on CNBC. It's pretty cool.

• 27:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's, that's interesting framing that like the people that don't want this are the people who don't like decentralized, like stable coins, right? And it's more like decentralized networks, right? It's like, obviously, these stable coins are still centralized. They're still kind of one-to-one treasuries. They're government issued. But I guess from Hagerty's perspective, these are much more kind of decentralized because they're using, you know, open blockchain networks than the previous, you know, closed ledger regimes. So he's talking about some opposition here.

• 27:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, who is he talking about? Which, who is the people that he is saying are the people that just want control?

• 27:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I don't know if you saw this image of Elizabeth Warren as the vote was going through, just arms crossed.

• 27:57David Hoffman?

  We, okay, we're looking at a picture of Elizabeth Warren on the floor as the vote was happening, as Ryan just said, and she looks unhappy.

• 28:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  She looks angry.

• 28:05David Hoffman?

  She looks angry.

• 28:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yes.

• 28:06David Hoffman?

  Her arms are crossed. Oh, she's staring someone down. She looks like an angry lady.

• 28:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so what were the voting results for this vote in order to hold the vote, which is like pretty significant?

• 28:18David Hoffman?

  The voting came in, and it still trickled in for a while, but the vote came in at 66, 32 in favor. And so 16 Democrats joined Republicans to move the bill forward. And then, of course, oh, Chuck Schumer remained opposed. Elizabeth Warren obviously remained opposed, and Chuck Schumer also remained opposed. I wonder why Chuck Schumer remained opposed because he was always kind of the pro crypto Democrat. What's up with that?

• 28:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's funny. I have no idea. And actually, actually, they got three more than the 66 that you mentioned. So you'll like this. 69.

• 28:47David Hoffman?

  69, let's go.

• 28:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  69, yes. Okay, so the significance of this is that's a lot of Democrats.

• 28:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a lot of wiggle room. So if we go to the real vote and we can still lose votes and the vote will go past.

• 29:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, and the real vote happens sometime next week, it seems like. So after Memorial Day, there'll be a real vote. But since it passed this preliminary vote, it's very likely going to pass the actual real deal vote. And then from there, so it's like approved in the Senate and that's the hard, like congressional hall to kind of like be approved by. And then it goes to the House, might be some changes there, expect it to pass there. Basically, David, this thing looks like it's gonna go. We're gonna get a landmark stablecoin bill in the US and it's gonna happen in the weeks to come.

• 29:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think as the order of events that happened, I think like yesterday was we got this vote in. And then Bitcoin started ripping, crypto started ripping, then the failed treasury sale, not the fail, but like the weak sale of treasuries came and nuked the market. Like, and so Bitcoin went from like just breaking all time high, it was at like 109,000, it went down to like 102,000. And then everyone was like, wait, weak treasury sales? That's bullish. And then Bitcoin went to 111,000.

• 30:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, I know. Okay, so let's say this thing passes, looks like it's going to. We even talked to Mike Novogratz, he was like, hey, this thing's gonna pass. You know, I'm talking to people in DC, so it passes. What's this gonna be good for? What assets? How about our bank? I can't invest in a stablecoin, David. I don't want to do that. I'm gonna invest in a crypto asset that gets some, you know, upsurge from this.

• 30:28David Hoffman?

  So there's like 190, almost 200 billion in stablecoins. Like, where do you think, what percentage, which chain has the largest percentage and what's that percentage?

• 30:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  I haven't looked at this in a while. It's gotta be Ethereum and it's gotta be hovering around, I'm gonna say 60%, 50, 60%. Cause I know there's a lot on Tron still, a whole bunch of tether on Tron.

• 30:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, last I checked, I thought it was like 66 to 70% on the Ethereum layer one. It's like 140, 150 billion dollars of the, of the stablecoin supply on the Ethereum layer one.

• 30:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  So does Ethereum benefit from this?

• 31:01David Hoffman?

  But also granted, we have seen that like despite the absolute gargantuan growth of stablecoins, that has not necessarily shown up in ETH price.

• 31:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  For sure. This is Chris Berninski saying of all the crypto assets, the genius act is probably most positive for ETH, given its stablecoin base, robust DeFi infrastructure, and long-running institutional rapport. He says Sol won't be too far behind, and Tron is the ignored dark horse for historical reasons. Let's see how it all plays out.

• 31:28David Hoffman?

  I don't see the Tron argument here. Tron is a third-world developing country like Stripe competitor. It's payments, not TVL. So more stablecoins coming online. Like, Tron, I don't know if that's gonna help Tron. That's my take.

• 31:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's interesting. And what do you think about the banks? So do the banks like this? Are they not fans of this?

• 31:48David Hoffman?

  No.

• 31:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  No. Okay.

• 31:50David Hoffman?

  Because like, okay, okay, so the Circle, Tether, contract address on Ethereum or any other blockchain is the new bank account. And you have an account balance with, if you hold USDC, you have an account balance with the USDC token contract on Ethereum. You don't need an account with your Wells Fargo bank account anymore.

• 32:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 32:13David Hoffman?

  And so why do you need a bank account when you can just go get an account balance without KYC, without AML? You can just go to Ethereum and you can get an account balance of USDC on chain.

• 32:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, are you saying we could go bankless?

• 32:25David Hoffman?

  I'm saying, like, that's, that's always been the plan.

• 32:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  At least commercial bankless. It's still a central bank instrument. But yeah, the bank lobby really doesn't like this. And it's kind of interesting because Elizabeth Warren-

• 32:36David Hoffman?

  I'm just shocked.

• 32:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, she chairs the Senate Banking Committee, right?

• 32:39David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 32:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's sort of, she does what the bankers want. I'm just like, I'm just gonna say it, at least when it comes to crypto.

• 32:45David Hoffman?

  She cudgelled the hell out of the banking industry post 2008. She became their chief regulator, and now they pay the compliance tax to Warren and the government. And now, and now they're in her pocket, and now she's trying to do the same thing with us, but it didn't really work as well.

• 33:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  I wish it wasn't the case, but it is. But one thing the banks blocked, okay, one thing the banks blocked could not go through is actual yield, okay? So they capitulated on, all right, stablecoins, we know we can't block that. US has got to sell some treasuries. This is lots of support, right? But they can block, and they have lobbied hard against any of the stablecoins actually giving you yield, David. So you know that nice treasury yield? That remains a security. We're not going to give you that 5%. Tether gets to keep its massive margins, right? And so does USDC and all the stablecoin issuers. Okay? So that's still the banks inserting themselves as middlemen here.

• 33:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's unfortunate. I guess that could, in theory, stay around for a while. Like, you could just pass another law or an amendment to the law and change that, but I can see that being around for a while. But I still get Yielden Ave, so fine. That's gonna be a fight. I think that's gonna be a fight. All right, David, tell me about Ethereum's ZK miracle. What is this? Okay, so this is big news this week that was going around the Ethereum crypto Twitter side of things. This got started by Justin Drake, but then also followed by Uma, talking about real-time proving. So what does that mean? It has always been the plan for Ethereum to turn into a ZK ecosystem as soon as zero knowledge cryptography was ready. And real-time proving means we can make proofs, ZK proofs, in real time. What is real time?

• 34:19David Hoffman?

  That is sub-second, or excuse me, sub-block time. And so Ethereum Layer 1 has 12-second blocks. If we can make a ZK proof in faster than 12 seconds, then you unlock a bunch of scaling benefits. What does a ZK proof do? Right now, all blockchain nodes have to re-execute all blocks to check their validity. And that's what slows everything down. Every single node needs to re-execute everything. It's the same computation done over and over and over again on every single node. With a ZK proof, they just have to check the validity of a ZK proof. So the way that this works is only one computer has to solve the Sudoku puzzle, and then they can show the Sudoku puzzle around to all the other nodes, and they just have to check that the Sudoku puzzle is correct.

• 35:03David Hoffman?

  Just one honest actor. Yes, just one honest actor does the work. Everyone else checks the correctness of a Sudoku puzzle. It's easy to check the correctness of a Sudoku puzzle. It's hard to actually do a Sudoku puzzle. The way that current blockchains work, Solana, Bitcoin, all of them, every node re-executes all, so every node does the Sudoku puzzle. With real-time proving, only one node has to do the Sudoku puzzle, and they can show their work. And if we can get the proving time, the creation of a proof, below 12 seconds, that's what unlocks this. Now, it has to be below 12 seconds for every single block. And so, right now, 99% of all Ethereum Layer 1 blocks are proved in less than 13 seconds.

• 35:46David Hoffman?

  So we're pretty damn close. And that's why Justin Drake tweeted out this tweet saying "real-time proving is here." What does this unlock? This unlocks two main things. This unlocks very strong cross-chain composability from Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem, if they can all be proved in real time, because then the state of one Layer 2 can be referenced by another Layer 2, so that's great. But I think the really exciting thing, Ryan, is that we get to turn the Layer 1 into an enshrined ZK rollup. So we will decouple the execution layer of the Ethereum Layer 1 from the consensus layer, and that the Layer 1 will be able to do a 100x on throughput because of real-time proving, ZK proving. And so, all of this speed of all these rollups that we've been talking about, like how base

• 36:31David Hoffman?

  is at, like trying to go for a giga gas and all this kind of stuff, the Ethereum Layer 1 turns into having the execution capacity of a ZK rollup. And it goes from where it is now with 12-second blocks. It'll still have 12-second blocks, but it'll have 100 times larger block sizes. And then as ZK proving times go even lower, we can start to reduce the block times as well, which I'm a big fan of.

• 36:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, this is all possible because the cost and the time required for ZK proofs is basically on an exponential curve. And it's kind of collapsing down. It's happening faster than anyone thought. So if this seems like it's kind of out of nowhere, it is in a way, but the Ethereum ecosystem has been working on ZK tech for a while. The exponentials are just catching it up to make this kind of viable.

• 37:22David Hoffman?

  Yes. Yeah, this is research and development that the Ethereum Foundation has been investing in for years. And so, when everyone was complaining about the EF, like selling their ETH, it's stuff like this that is what it was being applied for.

• 37:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the bottom line for me, to me, is that this does a couple of things. One, you know that whole mantra of "Scale the L1, scale the L1"? This provides a credible path to scale the Ethereum Layer 1 to 10,000 transactions per second.

• 37:50David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 37:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, that's 100x scalability. And we don't have to wait for one big bang for that to happen, right? Donkrad's a plan to increase gas limits, we've been talking about that. We could do a 3x every year, for instance, and get all the way to 10,000 transactions per second. Now, if you kind of split the difference, because everyone's like, "What's the timeline?" Justin Drake is super optimistic. He thinks this could happen in three years, okay? Donkrad thinks this could happen in six. Split the difference.

• 38:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Split the difference, you get 4.5, something like that.

• 38:22David Hoffman?

  4.5 years?

• 38:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but that's for all 10,000 transactions per second.

• 38:27David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 38:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  And then realize we're doing like, we could do like a 3X every year. And by the way.

• 38:31David Hoffman?

  Okay. A 3X every year is great, because that compounds pretty fast.

• 38:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And, okay, so it does that, you're scaling the L1. And it also, as you said, the L1 becomes basically a base native rollup. So we take all the L1 execution, it's a base native rollup. And that acts, David, as a gravity well for all of the other rollups that are just posting data availability on Ethereum to like, come closer, become base native rollups themselves, because they want the benefits of interoperability. You know that.

• 38:57David Hoffman?

  And if everything's a base native rollup, everything becomes Ethereum.

• 39:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Then it all works, and we get the United Chains of Ethereum.

• 39:03David Hoffman?

  It all works, it's the grand plan. Everything comes closer to the center.

• 39:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 39:07David Hoffman?

  Ethereum just integrates the layer twos.

• 39:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you see even, you know, Eric Wall is kind of like a Bitcoiner. He likes Ethereum, but he's kind of a skeptic, right? Like, I saw him tweet out, he's like, Ethereum is saved. Like Ethereum might, this actually might save Ethereum. This is kind of the ZK miracle that can really scale Ethereum L1s. And it's just like magic cryptography tech that I think Ethereum's been betting on for a while. But now it could actually like, make this whole United Chains of Ethereum thing work.

• 39:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's on, it's on the horizon. 3X every single year starts to like, compound pretty fast. And this is, this has always been Ethereum's like, long-term L1 scaling plan. And this is the, this is like Ethereum has been always focused on the end game. Perhaps to a fault, perhaps like Ethereum lost touch with the middle game, which Solana has taken advantage of just by optimizing for engineering. But this is the end game, and we're actually starting to arrive at the beginning of the end. And that is starting to like, show up in the, in around the Ethereum ecosystem.

• 40:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll include some links in the show notes to some references here. Vitalik had some things to say, he's like, okay, hold on, we're not quite ready yet. We need this to get formally verified. We still need the, the proving, like, amount of work and energy that goes into proving.

• 40:23David Hoffman?

  There can still be bugs, there can still be bugs.

• 40:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that still needs to go down, there's other things. Uma from Succinct, who's part of. The the ZK magic that makes this all possible had responses to that. Where actually formal verification, at least for succinct, is is happening like now. And that could be like mere months away. So anyway, I do think that this is a this is pretty optimistic.

• 40:42David Hoffman?

  It's pretty great.

• 40:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's pretty bullish.

• 40:44David Hoffman?

  It's pretty great.

• 40:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Speaking of succinct, so some of the ZK prover tech that makes this possible. They're launching a prover network this this week as well, or have they done that?

• 40:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so they're launching the succinct prover network and also their prove token because that's what all networks need. So they're basically decentralizing the system of succinct because we need a decentralized set of provers. Provers are the people who run the hardware to generate the Sudoku puzzles. We need a decentralized network of of those people who do the jobs of proving the Ethereum layer one and also the layer two. So really, anyone who makes a request for work.

• 41:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 41:19David Hoffman?

  And they make a request for work to the decentralized set of nodes with the prove token.

• 41:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 41:23David Hoffman?

  Which got announced this week. So I think succinct is like, yo, we're fucking ready, guys.

• 41:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 41:28David Hoffman?

  We're gonna, we're gonna, let's go. Yeah, they are chopping at the bit, yeah.

• 41:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's because so right now, the the work required to prove actually requires GPUs, which is interesting. You can't quite do it at home because it would be like the equivalent energy requirement of having 10 Teslas plugged in at the same time at your house. Now, the hope is to get that down to like just one Tesla so you can actually do it at home. But remember, you just need, it's a it's a one event, so you only need one honest actor. You still run the validators at home, you just need one prover out there. And the decentralized network is the prover network to still keep that full thing decentralized too. It's beautiful.

• 42:04David Hoffman?

  And part of it, part of what the Ethereum Foundation has been investing in is like building out like marketable and purchasable ZK prover like ASICs. Not, I don't know ASICs, but like pieces of hardware.

• 42:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:15David Hoffman?

  And so like, it's not gonna be like in your local fries or on Amazon, but you, if you want to, if you're a hobbyist staker and you also want to ZK prove the chain, like, yeah, that's something that you would want to do.

• 42:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 42:27David Hoffman?

  And you just buy one of those things, plug it into your wall. I don't know how loud it is, maybe, maybe not that loud.

• 42:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  You might have to like, talk to your your significant other about this, you know, before you start.

• 42:37David Hoffman?

  But like, that's the idea. That's the idea. That's also one of the things that Ethereum Foundation has been investing in. Coming up next, we're going to talk about Solana's proposal to swap out their consensus chain and improve their speed. So this is Solana juicing up his consensus side of things. So what we just talked about is Ethereum's execution layer. Solana's execution layer is FireDancer, but then they're also doing a brand new consensus layer too. So we're going to talk about that. Also, a massive hack in the SUI ecosystem. What happened there? And then Jack Dorsey wants to rebrand Bitcoin's satoshis, the smallest unit of account, to Bitcoins. I don't, I'm confused. Why? But there's other ideas out there. We're going to talk about it. Is it a good idea? We're going to hear the arguments. But before we do that, we're going to talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, like Frax and the Frax Stablecoin.

• 43:21David Hoffman?

  It's got some of the best yields in DeFi. It's like if Circle, Tether, Athena, Maker Dow had a baby and all made Frax Stablecoin, but also on the Fraxl layer 2. So let's go hear from Frax right now. In the Wild West of DeFi, stability and innovation are everything, which is why you should check out Frax Finance. The protocol revolutionizing stablecoins, DeFi, and Rolex. The core of Frax Finance is Frax USD, which is backed by BlackRock's Institutional Biddle Fund. Frax designed Frax USD for best-in-class yields across DeFi, T-bills, and carry trade returns all in one. Just head to frax.com, then stake it to earn some of the best yields in DeFi. Want even more? Bridge your Frax USD over to the Fraxl Layer 2 for the same yield plus Fraxl points and explore Fraxl's diverse Layer 2 ecosystem with protocols

• 44:03David Hoffman?

  like Curve, Convex, and more, all rewarding early adopters. Frax isn't just a protocol, it's a digital nation powered by the FXX token and governed by its global community. Acquire FXX through frax.com or your go-to Dex, stake it, and help shape Frax Nation's future. Ready to join the forefront of DeFi? Visit frax.com now to start earning with Frax USD and staked Frax USD. And for Bankless listeners, you can use frax.com/r/bankless when bridging to Fraxl for exclusive Fraxl perks and boosted rewards. Imagine if your checking account and DeFi wallet finally spoke the same language. That's Mantle Banking, an all-in-one fiat and crypto account. It lets you save, spend, and invest all from one dashboard. Swipe for coffee, stake ME for yield, or even use virtual cards for payments through Apple Pay.

• 44:46David Hoffman?

  So it feels web 2 simple, yet stays web 3 sovereign. For allocators, meet Mantle Index 4, the S&P 500 of crypto. A tokenized institutional-grade fund seeded with $400 million from the Mantle Treasury and balanced across Bitcoin, Ether, Sol, and yield-enhanced stables. One asset, broad exposure, pure DeFi composability. The momentum is real. ME faults, FBTC bridges, and a $2.4 billion community treasury are all powering the next phase of on-chain finance. Mantle brings real-world access, yield, and utility to digital assets. Ready for the next era of on-chain finance that actually belongs in 2025? Explore Mantle at mantle.xyz or follow mantelofficial. Mantle: bridging TradFi and DeFi so you don't have to. All right, Solana's next leap forward is the proposed Apple Glow Consensus Layer.

• 45:31David Hoffman?

  I don't know if you call it a layer in Solana, whatever. So Onza, which is a Solana client team, infrastructure spinout out of the Solana Foundation, I think, maybe. I do not know my Solana history very well. Wants to rebuild the Solana consensus. And so they are doing these two new components, two new modules, Voter and Roter. Voter finalizes blocks in about 100 to 150 milliseconds, often in just a single vote round. So Solana, every single Solana block has a bunch of votes. So all the validators are like, we're all voting about what the correct block is. That this is happening with Voter faster. And it can also happen if just less than, just 80% of the stake is online. So apparently this is a 100x speedup.

• 46:15David Hoffman?

  And then there's Roter, a lighter, faster, smarter gossip layer that relays blocks with fewer hops and fair bandwidth, replacing turbine. So the blocks get gossiped faster. So what does this do? This just moves Solana closer and closer down to just like web 2 latency territory, which has always been Solana's game. You know, consensus at the speed of light. So they can just power real-time trading, game and payments, blah, blah, blah. All that kind of stuff. There are trade-offs here. So people are still kind of discussing these trade-offs. There's this one individual who's like, okay, this is just going to consolidate Solana, like a stake weight or validator centralization down to an even lower number of validators. This conversation about like the impacts of Solana are just getting started here. Code is in simulation, docs and migration tools are coming, but no, there's no mainnet date.

• 47:00David Hoffman?

  And then also in parallel to that jumps FireDancer client, which, where is FireDancer? Like I, I thought FireDancer was supposed to be online by now. Anyways, that's happening in parallel. Apparently it's being targeted for the second half of 2025.

• 47:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, people are pretty excited about this. It's kind of the increased bandwidth, reduced latency sort of roadmap.

• 47:19David Hoffman?

  I B R L.

• 47:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  But there do seem to be some trade offs. I'd like to hear more about this, like the tweet that you're mentioning. This gentleman, Duran Tyson, says, as few as seven validators can now attack the network. I don't know if that's true.

• 47:33David Hoffman?

  If it goes through.

• 47:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  If this goes through or to what extent it's really true. It's like, I feel like technical minds have to kind of dig into this. But the net of it is, it feels like Solana just like doing more Solana things, right?

• 47:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  The same way that we were just talking about.

• 47:46David Hoffman?

  Solana is already so incredibly fast. How much faster do you think it needs to go?

• 47:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're at speed of light. That's what they're, I mean, we're getting close though, getting close to the speed of light.

• 47:54David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 47:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Getting pretty close. It's, yeah. Also, I think there's going to be a real world asset battle here between Ethereum and maybe the Solana ecosystem. Right? So you mentioned a whole bunch of stable coins on ETH. Definitely leading the charge. It's also leading of other like tokenized assets, like security type assets.

• 48:12David Hoffman?

  Non-stable coins, tokenized real world assets.

• 48:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, look at this chart. It's got 10 billion. No one else is even close, but this week.

• 48:18David Hoffman?

  The non-Ethereum people would want you to know, Ryan, that there are assets on Ethereum layer twos that are included in that Ethereum bar. And, and those shouldn't be there because they're a separate chain. But that's up for your interpretation as what's Ethereum, what's not Ethereum.

• 48:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ethereum, you know, chains of Ethereum. But a win for Solana this week coming soon. Kraken takes Wall Street on chain with tokenized equities. Kraken is teaming up with BACT to launch X stock offerings and they're doing that on Solana. Okay. Which is interesting because Kraken has a layer two. Yeah, Kraken has a layer two. They're doing it on Solana.

• 48:50David Hoffman?

  Why are they doing that?

• 48:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Don't know. Interesting though, and that's a, that's definitely a win for Solana. So the real world asset wars, I think, are going to continue this cycle.

• 48:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. Let's get into the biggest hack in a long time. So Cetus, C E T U S protocol, which is the largest DEX on SUI, was exploited, leading to a halt in trading and also drained liquidity pools. So anything that had liquidity in these liquidity pools on this exchange just nuked by like 90% because all the SUI got drained out of them. Even like USDC went down, like it turned into. Like 30 cents on the dollar because of the draining.

• 49:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  All the sui coins got.

• 49:26David Hoffman?

  All the sui coins just got absolutely wrecked.

• 49:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Negative 70%, negative 90%.

• 49:31David Hoffman?

  I don't know what these coins are, but ended up getting exploited for $200 million. So the wallet tied to this exploit currently holds about 13 million sui valued at $54 million. No one knows who did this, but they are moving that sui and buying ETH and sending it over to ETH somehow. So they're just getting the hell out of the sui ecosystem. And for some reason sui, the token price is just flat. Sound like 3%, it's like, I would call that flat for like a huge hack. What's interesting, Ryan, what is flagging in my brain is that sui validators are censoring transactions from the hacker at the layer one level.

• 50:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 50:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are we doing here?

• 50:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like I kind of get it, like sui is new. I kind of understand like that sui is not trying to go for like censorship resistant like layer one that Ethereum has. They're trying to like protect user funds, but it is like, it's just showing like the man behind the curtain. Like this thing is censorable.

• 50:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why have a blockchain, right? It's, it's kind of notable that the sui hackers, where'd they go, David?

• 50:40David Hoffman?

  To Ethereum.

• 50:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. They went to Ethereum and they bought ETH.

• 50:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 50:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Which so.

• 50:45David Hoffman?

  But also people, we have seen hacks on Ethereum where people leave Ethereum and go to Bitcoin.

• 50:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they go to Bitcoin.

• 50:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it's like ETH or Bitcoin.

• 50:53David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 50:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  What does that imply? So here's a fun question for you.

• 50:56David Hoffman?

  That strong property rights for hackers are preserved on Ethereum and Bitcoin.

• 50:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you know that whole question about, uh, do we DCF ETH the asset or not? Okay, okay. So 60 million buy from hackers. They bought Ether, okay?

• 51:08David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 51:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Where does that reflect in my DCF formula? Oh, wait.

• 51:12David Hoffman?

  Wow, you just brought that out of nowhere.

• 51:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe $2 for the transaction fee that gets in DCF, but 60 million in buy pressure for what? Ether the asset, okay? I'm not saying it's great that hackers are doing it, but, okay?

• 51:26David Hoffman?

  The protocol made no revenue, Ryan.

• 51:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Net demand, net demand for Ether as money, a censorship-resistant monetary system does not show up in DCF is part of the value proposition.

• 51:39David Hoffman?

  REV is, I think, what you're talking about. It doesn't show up in the DCF, but I think you're alluding to the REV debate that happened this week.

• 51:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, I am. And what I'm saying is there's a product called Ethereum Blockspace, and that shows up in discounted cash flow REV-type form, okay? And there's another product called Ether the Asset, which is a non-sovereign store of value, and that shows up in $60 million of demand pressure when you're trying to get out of the centralized ecosystem and store your wealth somewhere else. Mic drop, that's it. Done.

• 52:07David Hoffman?

  Brother, I have no more money to buy any more Ether. I don't know what you want from me.

• 52:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know, you're fine, you're fine. Tell me about Sky, David.

• 52:15David Hoffman?

  Sky, okay, so if you are an Maker Dow holder, you have a thing to do, which is you need to transfer your MKR into Sky in order to participate in governance, but also accrue the rewards from the Sky ecosystem. All the benefits of Sky is going to Sky.

• 52:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is Sky? What is Sky, though?

• 52:30David Hoffman?

  Sky is a berevrend of Maker Dow. They just rebuilt Maker Dow from the ground up with a new governance token, Sky, and then a new stablecoin called USDS. That stablecoin is now, like I alluded to earlier, censorable. It's got a whitelist that makes them compliant. And then, so the governance token, formerly MKR, is losing all of its governance powers and it's being transferred over to Sky. So if you are an MKR holder, you are going to start to become penalized for not transferring your Sky, starting in like September of this year. So that is a PSA. You're going to lose MKR for being a laggard. So go do that.

• 53:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think there's a lack of enthusiasm as you're talking about this, you know, that's coming through. And it's not because like... Probably you hate the rebrand. It's like for me too, or I hate the rebrand. It's because Maker was like an OG DeFi protocol that kind of like, I mean, I love that brand. It sort of convinced me of DeFi back in the day.

• 53:25David Hoffman?

  Same. It created, it invented DeFi.

• 53:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And so it's just sad to see Maker go.

• 53:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. Especially with the, like, it's one thing to be sad about the brand, but it's also another thing to be sad about losing the uncensorable properties of DAI. Maker DAO was where I cut my first teeth. Like, before I started writing content about Ethereum, I was writing content about Maker DAO.

• 53:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's how we met, dude. You were writing Maker articles about the, like, yeah. And then, yeah, it's first article led to, led to the Bankless Podcast. So, end of an era there. And speaking of rebrands, there's some rebrand talk going on in the Bitcoin space. This is Jack Dorsey, so of course.

• 54:03David Hoffman?

  We're not, we're not changing the Bitcoin name. Bitcoin is still Bitcoin.

• 54:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bitcoin is still Bitcoin, but what he wants to do.

• 54:08David Hoffman?

  What we're debating about is the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin, which has been historically called a SAT for Satoshi, a single Satoshi. But I think Bitcoiners are just aware that like, that name has not, that nomenclature is not catching on.

• 54:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so this is Jack Dorsey.

• 54:23David Hoffman?

  And so they're trying to reconsider that.

• 54:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  He, he wants to call it, so he says this, "Sats are so confusing to people just getting into Bitcoin. Bits of Bitcoin are better, and just Bitcoin is best." So I think he wants to call SATs bits, either bits or Bitcoins. Is that the conversation?

• 54:40David Hoffman?

  It can't be Bitcoins. That's the same name.

• 54:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, if it has an S on it.

• 54:44David Hoffman?

  No. No, what if you, what if you own multiple Bitcoins?

• 54:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Well, but no, Bitcoin could be Bitcoin, like, could be plural for Bitcoin too, do you know?

• 54:56David Hoffman?

  We are getting, we are in the process of getting confused. I like bits. I think it's Bitcoins. Yeah. Yes. Send me, send me some bits. Yeah.

• 55:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  What about stacking SATs?

• 55:09David Hoffman?

  Dude, that's a Bitcoin thing. That's Bitcoiners buy Bitcoiners for Bitcoiners.

• 55:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't understand why people can't understand that there's Bitcoins.

• 55:15David Hoffman?

  It's like, what's smaller, a bit or a byte? It's a bit, a byte is eight bits?

• 55:22David Hoffman?

  Or a bit is eight bytes?

• 55:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  A bit is smaller than a byte.

• 55:26David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah, so a bit, yeah, it's the smallest unit of like data on the internet and it's also a smallest unit of Bitcoin. Bits and Bitcoins, that makes so much sense.

• 55:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, how do you go about changing this? All right, it's like, what do you do?

• 55:36David Hoffman?

  You cudgel people on Twitter until they conform.

• 55:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a social thing, but there's actually a Bitcoin improvement proposal that was put forward. VIP177 proposes redefining Bitcoin's base unit by making one Satoshi equal one Bitcoin. Currently, one Bitcoin is 100,000, no, 100 million Satoshis.

• 55:55David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 55:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I guess people are debating this, talking about this, but ultimately, this is kind of a social change. This is about how exchanges wallets.

• 56:04David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin land.

• 56:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there's back and forth. Definitely prioritize this over the quantum issue.

• 56:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so there's some back and forth, right? Some people, the bits supporters, say the US dollar can be divided into cents. The Americans call these a penny. They don't seem to get confused about that, so basically, why not sats? And the other people are like, hey, you know, bits is less confusing, so.

• 56:25David Hoffman?

  Bits is way better.

• 56:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess I need to weigh in on this. I will take the opposite. I like sats, David. I'm a traditionalist.

• 56:36David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin bits. Bitcoin bits.

• 56:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's always been sats, it should always be sats.

• 56:42David Hoffman?

  If sats was gonna catch on, it was gonna catch on by now.

• 56:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It hasn't caught on because it's so tiny right now.

• 56:49David Hoffman?

  Well, I actually think one of the reasons why it has not caught on is because if we're gonna talk about sats and bits, we're talking about it as like a medium of exchange currency, like send me some bits. But no one's doing that, so no one, we don't really need to bother to go that many decibels down the line.

• 57:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you're right, you're right. I mean, for this to matter, Bitcoin would have to be worth, I don't know, millions, you know, tens of millions, right? For sats to actually be worth, you know, like dollars and cents and dollars and that kind of thing, then it would actually matter. You know who is stacking some bits? If that's your preference, David.

• 57:21David Hoffman?

  I think they are stacking Bitcoins, actually.

• 57:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the state of Texas, rolling out their own strategic Bitcoin reserve. This is a bill that officially passed. Let's play the clip.

• 57:30Speaker 05

  Great. Thank you, Mr. Speaker and members. Today is a pivotal moment in securing Texas's leadership in the digital age with the passage of our strategic Bitcoin reserve. Now we embrace a modern asset with traditional properties for future promise. This reserve not only strengthens our fiscal sovereignty, but positions Texas as a forward-thinking state prepared for the evolution of global finance. I move passage.

• 57:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. That's, uh, Texas is gonna have a, an official Bitcoin reserve. It's not just Bitcoin, fun fact. So this is a dedicated fund managed by the state comptroller to invest in any crypto asset with a market cap above 500 billion. So, uh, that could be Ether.

• 58:09David Hoffman?

  Ether at $320 billion.

• 58:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we get a 4K Ether. Wow, that's actually completely reasonable. I'm kind of shocked. Yeah, so it's not just Bitcoin. It's a general strategic reserve, but obviously Bitcoin's gonna lead that thing.

• 58:21David Hoffman?

  Right, right, right, right, yeah. Wow, interesting. It's worth highlighting this week that Galaxy Digital was listed on the NASDAQ. So they were previously listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange, but, sorry, Ryan, honestly, who cares about that? And so, congrats to Galaxy Digital for getting listed on the NASDAQ in the capital center of the United States, even though that is also getting smaller. Uh, I think that's worthwhile, like, you know, United States company now on the NASDAQ. United States crypto company now on the NASDAQ, so that's pretty cool. We did an episode with Mike Novogratz, uh, recorded yesterday. That'll be out for, on early access next week for premium subscribers, but that'll be out on the podcast feed the week after that.

• 58:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Novogratz just said it's about liquidity. Liquidity, liquidity, liquidity, that's why you wanna get on the NASDAQ.

• 58:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah. He also said, I asked him, like, are you ever going to tokenize your Galaxy Digital on Ethereum? And he was like, as soon as possible. And they are actively talking to the SEC to try and get that to happen.

• 59:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they say it's going really well, because that's, that's the next thing I wanna say, is the SEC is still being kinda awesome on the week. Remember, that was my thing last week?

• 59:19David Hoffman?

  Weird, weird words.

• 59:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's still my thing. So, again, another Hester Perth speech, uh, new paradigm speech, okay? And just some lines from this. Uh, she said, "Most currently existing crypto assets..." Wait for it. Are not securities.

• 59:35David Hoffman?

  Ayy.

• 59:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  She said it. She said it. In particular, this was a quote I pulled up. Crypto assets that do not represent economic rights or an interest in a business entity or other promisor and are solely for use or consumption should not be subject to the federal securities laws. David, this means NFTs are in the clear, collectibles are in the clear. She's saying they've always been in the clear effectively. She said, "Howie didn't cover this." And she's saying it out loud in a speech, posting the SEC website, complete 180 pivot. Basically, Hester Purse is now unleashed, right? Like, she's always had these thoughts.

• 1:00:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, she's head of the task force and now she just gets to say things and they become true, which is great.

• 1:00:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they're cooperating very much with everybody in crypto. So just like more awesomeness. And by the way, they're actually still prosecuting the bad guys this time, okay?

• 1:00:25David Hoffman?

  That's unreal that we're like, that this is the news.

• 1:00:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you remember, do you remember people used to say, "Oh, crypto just doesn't want to be regulated. They don't want the SEC to do anything." Yes, we do. Please pursue the criminals that are like conducting fraud. Here's SEC charge to Unicoin, top executives with $100 million massive securities fraud.

• 1:00:46David Hoffman?

  Not Uniswap.

• 1:00:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  No.

• 1:00:47David Hoffman?

  Not Uni Chain, not the Uni Token. There is this fake copy pasta doppelganger program called UniCoin.

• 1:00:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:00:56David Hoffman?

  I don't know where it came from, but it was always trying to like fleece investors thinking that it was UniSwap.

• 1:01:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, do you ever see these cars in New York City? I mean, because they're all over New York.

• 1:01:06David Hoffman?

  I never did. Yeah, wow. The fine, Ryan? $100 million.

• 1:01:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so this is like, this is basically a fraud. Hayden Adams would post this.

• 1:01:16David Hoffman?

  This is actual fraud.

• 1:01:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and he'd show pictures in New York City of like Unicoin being advertised on like taxis, billboards, this sort of thing. And he's saying, "SEC, you're doing nothing about Unicoin and you're coming after Uniswap?"

• 1:01:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. He kind of fucking, excuse my French, Wells notice. One of these guys.

• 1:01:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Anyway, like balances being restored, the universe is correcting, it's all good. The Department of Justice is also investigating Coinbase for that data breach. We were talking about last week, so I'm sure some more details will emerge there. It's looking ugly. It's looking like-

• 1:01:49David Hoffman?

  Are they, wait, wait, are they investigating Coinbase? Or are they investigating the Coinbase data breach? Because I think those words kind of matter.

• 1:01:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't, like, why do they matter, do you think? I mean, same kind of-

• 1:01:59David Hoffman?

  Are they, are they like working with Coinbase to investigate the data breach? Or are they investigating Coinbase for like malpractice with their data breach?

• 1:02:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Good question. It doesn't seem great. Like, it really doesn't. It seems like from, well, some details I was reading about where that the breach actually may have happened as early as December. Taylor Monahan was like reporting this out, so it's been like a long time. There's tons of reports in the bankless community, everybody getting text messages, emails from Coinbase reps trying to scam them. It's just an ugly thing that happened. There's that continuing debate, how much of this is Coinbase's fault? And there's definitely some Coinbase fault here. And how much of this is just a symptom of AML KYC? Where like all of these crypto companies are forced essentially to hold customer data. Right? So anyway, this is a DOJ investigation. I think this will, this will continue.

• 1:02:47David Hoffman?

  I think it is. They are working with Coinbase to investigate the data breach. That is, yeah, I was reading the article, that's, it seems to be leaned that way.

• 1:02:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ah, okay, so they're trying to get the bad guys?

• 1:03:00David Hoffman?

  Yes, they're just working with Coinbase to get the bad guys, yeah.

• 1:03:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, Circle is still for sale, David? So there's still conversation about either Coinbase buying them or Ripple? That's, that rumor persists? Circle could actually sell USDC to Ripple?

• 1:03:14David Hoffman?

  The, well, the rumor is that there's a bidding war between Coinbase and Ripple over Circle. Which, fun fact, there is a clause in the Coinbase-Circle deal that gives Coinbase veto rights over any other acquisition.

• 1:03:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really?

• 1:03:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, so then why is there, why is this even a discussion?

• 1:03:31David Hoffman?

  I don't know.

• 1:03:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, well, we don't have the documents in front of us, but there seems to be something-

• 1:03:36David Hoffman?

  I'm just out here yeeting rumors, you know?

• 1:03:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what? It feels like everything's going so well. And like, why are we, why is, why does Circle have to sell to Ripple? Why, why even consider that? I just, I mean, this is not forward progress for, for the crypto.

• 1:03:50David Hoffman?

  I think that they can get a better deal by being acquired than they can on the public market. That's why. I think, I think-

• 1:03:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Were you telling me it's all about the money?

• 1:03:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah. It is. It's literally got the money.

• 1:04:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, thanks for hanging with us in the weekly rollup. I promised the end of this Stanley Druckenmiller clip. We're gonna play the rest of it and you guys enjoy. Hopefully his advice is sound advice, but also, you know, consider some diversification as well. Right, David? Yeah, sure. Yeah, like a house eventually. Here you go. Risk and disclaimers. You know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier. Not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  My idea of risk control is a little non-conventional. I like putting all my eggs in one basket and then watching the basket very carefully. I think, I don't know what they teach at Marshall, but at most business schools, they teach, I think, a lot of nonsense called risk-adjusted return and diversification. As a money manager, if you look at a normal portfolio, most people will make 70, 80% of money that year on two or three ideas, even though they'll have 30 or 40 things in their portfolio. My concept was to put into those two or three ideas that I had the most conviction in.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  I was also lucky to travel across asset classes. So I traded commodities, currencies, bonds and equities. And it gave me the discipline, if I didn't have a good idea in equities, I was happy to have no equities. Or the same thing with bonds. So when you have a quiver with a bunch of arrows in it, you can usually find something to put a lot of money into. The only other thing I'd say is too many investors look at the present. The present is already in the price. You have to think out of the box and sort of visualize 18 to 24 months from now, what the world is going to be and what securities. My trade at, you know, what a company's been earning is ridic, it doesn't mean anything.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  What you have to look at is what people think, what a company's earning, what people think it's gonna earn, and if you can see something two years that's gonna be entirely different than the conventional wisdom, that's how you make money. My first boss used to say, "The obvious is obviously wrong. If you invest in conventional wisdom, you're gonna lose your butt."