2022's Biggest Crypto Moments

Tap in for a special Bankless Episode -- the biggest moments in 2022 for Crypto. We're all ready for this year to be over, but not before we recap the best and the worst of what the industry had to offer. It's a time for reflection. Let's absorb the lessons, so we can get off on the right foot in 2023. ------ OPOLIS | Sign Up to Get 1000 $WORK and 1000 $BANK https://bankless.cc/Opolis ------ SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/?utm_source=banklessshowsyt ️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger ️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod ----- Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 5:00 Top 5 Worst Moments Tornado Cash Ban https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0916 Terra Collapse https://www.coindesk.com/learn/the-fall-of-terra-a-timeline-of-the-meteoric-rise-and-crash-of-ust-and-luna/ 3AC Contagion https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1536876343815983104?lang=en Ronin & Wormhole Hacks https://cointelegraph.com/news/wormhole-token-bridge-loses-321m-in-largest-hack-so-far-in-2022 FTX https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/ftx-bankruptcy.html 21:00 Top 5 Best Moments Supporting Ukraine https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1497594592438497282 Layer 2 Transactions https://l2beat.com/scaling/activity Social Media NFTs https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/12/05/minting-of-reddit-avatar-tokens-climbed-to-record-high-over-weekend/ The Merge https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1570306185391378434 29:00 Top 5 Villains Richard Heart https://twitter.com/richardheartwin/status/1533892570996166662 Alex Mashinsky https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/06/celsius-executives-withdrew-millions-before-freeze-on-customer-funds.html Su Zhu & Kyle Davies https://twitter.com/KyleLDavies/status/1522813352665403392 https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1462216210116853762 Do Kwon https://twitter.com/stablekwon/status/1523733542492016640 SBF https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1591989554881658880 44:00 Top 5 Heroes Michael Saylor https://fortune.com/2022/07/02/microstrategys-bitcoin-holdings-take-a-record-3-4-billion-hit-the-company-says-its-playing-the-long-game/ Anthony Sassano https://www.youtube.com/@UCvCp6vKY5jDr87htKH6hgDA Cobie https://cobie.substack.com/ ZachXBT https://twitter.com/zachxbt?lang=en ETH Developers https://twitter.com/icebearhww/status/1431970802040127498 Parithosh Jayanthi https://twitter.com/parithosh_j Marius Van Der Wijden https://twitter.com/vdwijden Ben Edgington https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz Tim Beiko https://twitter.com/TimBeiko 54:10 Honorable Mentions Gary Gensler https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/technology/gary-gensler-crypto-sec.html Budweiser https://twitter.com/budweiserusa/status/1507507766759411712 Pixelmon https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/pixelmon-nft-project-kevin-meme/ The Fed https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2022/12/05/jerome-powell-most-influential-2022/ https://imgur.com/rcvd3Ex 1:00:50 The TOP Moment https://twitter.com/0x_Lucas/status/1526237799699169281 ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, I hope you're ready for a special Bankless episode. David and I are about to go through the biggest moments of 2022 in crypto. David, I am very much looking forward to this episode because, look, this is a chance to like review the year that was, this year of craziness, this year of corruption, this year of scams, this year of the highest highs and incredibly low lows. And it felt like an entire, like a blur to me, I didn't even know what month of the year what happened. And so this is a good way to calibrate. It's also for me personally, David, I just want to be done with 2022. Like, can we move on? Can we wipe the slate clean? Can we start again? Yeah, closure would be nice.

• 0:54David Hoffman?

  That's exactly what happens. As soon as we get to January, this all goes away and we all can start all over again. We're done there.

• 1:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so we're gonna go through the biggest moments of 2022. And David, you were kind enough to put together this program, this kind of, I guess, ceremony for us and got us through. I think we have 25 or so different moments that we're gonna talk about. There's the top five worst moments of 2022. I can't wait to see what he's put there. The top five best moments, the five biggest villains, that had to be fun. Lot of selections there. The top five heroes, we still have those in crypto. And you've got some honorable mentions here too. Anything else you want to say before we start getting into this?

• 1:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is a, you know, December is a month for reflection. Let's, let's go through the biggest events of 2022 for better or for worse, the heroes and the villains. And just like, let's make sure that we absorb the lessons so we don't repeat them again. It is worth noting, Ryan, that the top five villains and top five worst events of 2022 was, that was a lot, both of those sections were a lot easier than their inverse, let me tell you.

• 2:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, wait, wait. It's harder to find heroes than villains?

• 2:16David Hoffman?

  It was in 2022, because like I wanted it to make it as 2022 specific as possible, right? So I didn't want to pull back from history. So

• 2:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you can't just be like Satoshi.

• 2:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Satoshi Nakamoto, the hero of 2022. Like, no, he like not relevant. And so it was the villains and the worst moments of 2022 was pretty damn easy. I was also going to do a section of the top most infamous tweets of 2022. But that actually also happened to correlate very, very strongly with the top five villains of 2022.

• 2:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, wow. The villains were tweeting the evil tweets.

• 2:48David Hoffman?

  They were the worst tweets. So that section has been collapsed. So if you are also interested in seeing the top five worst tweets of 2022, that's going to be the villain section. It's all

• 2:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Stay tuned.

• 2:57David Hoffman?

  It's 2022, all inside of one episode. Ready?

• 3:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, yeah, but before we get there, David, I want to shout out some heroes that I know in Bankless, the Bankless community. That is the folks over at Opelis. Because they are doing something. They are heroes of healthcare and heroes of payroll benefits. And they are providing those to Web3 workers. These are contractors in the Web3 space. David, tell them a bit more about Opelis, what they do and how folks can get started with that in December as they move into 2023.

• 3:31David Hoffman?

  As we say at the end of every single Bankless podcast, working on the frontier is risky, especially without healthcare, because there are all of these nation state burdens and these nation state requirements that we all must partake in in order to live our life in this physical world. But if you're working in the metaverse, you kind of need some help to couple your Web3 world and the nation state world. So what do you need? You need healthcare as an independent worker. You also need compliance with taxes, payroll stuff, just all this stuff that you would get if you worked at a very large company. But since you are a worker on the Web3 frontier, you're an NFT artist, you work in a DAO, you work independently, whatever you, whatever you do. You can use Opus to get all of your perks of working for a big, big company,

• 4:15David Hoffman?

  yet still be working in the frontier. So what is Opus? Opus is a co-op that can help negotiate on your behalf for privileged rates with healthcare and help you with just all of your infrastructure that you need to be a worker. And so to help you do what you do best, which is creating value and running your business, use Opus to negotiate for your healthcare and do all these other things that make working in crypto easier. If you sign up for Opus by December 31st of this year, which is coming up, you can get a 1,000 work and 1,000 bank token bonus. So there's a link in the show notes to go ahead and get started with Opus.

• 4:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Definitely go do that. All right, David, you know what? We should get right in. We can cut for breaks later. This is too important. Okay? Gotta get to you. I think we start here with the top five worst moments.

• 5:07David Hoffman?

  Gotta get out of the way.

• 5:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  2022. All right, let's do the vegetables before we get to the dessert. Okay? Top five worst moments. And how are we doing this? Are we going from number five and counting upwards?

• 5:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. So starting with the fifth worst moment and then leading into the worst moment. So starting with number five. Number five, coming in hot. Tornado cash, a smart contract, was deemed illegal by the most powerful nation on the world. Tornado cash was sanctioned. For the first time ever, a smart contract was deemed illegal by the same entity that has the biggest army. That's bad.

• 5:47David Hoffman?

  So that was the fifth worst. Why is it the fifth rather than fourth or third or anything more severe than that? Because I think it could be worse. Because this gives the crypto industry surface area to fight back. So while it was bad, while this action by the United States removed the ability to access privacy by United States citizens, it also gave us an opportunity. And so coming in at number five, the tornado cash ban.

• 6:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let me talk about that opportunity. Actually, it's an opportunity that my co-host, David Hoffman, is taking, which is to sue the Department of Treasury. David, you spelled Treasury wrong in this.

• 6:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I did. I did spell the Treasury wrong.

• 6:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Out of just anger and disrespect, all right? You don't even get the A in Treasury, Treasury Department. So that's kind of cool. And like you said, this is an opportunity to push back and reestablish our civic rights. Americans, if you believe that American citizens or people around the world, whatever nation-state jurisdiction you're in, should have the right to interact with smart contract protocols without their nation-state, creating a blacklist that effectively makes it illegal for them to do so, particularly on-chain privacy, then you might be supportive of some of the actions that the industry is taking to push back. So you're right, David. It's been a great rallying cry. We still have somebody, by

• 7:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  the way, in jail, in the Netherlands, Alexei Pertsev, who is in jail as a result of this, one of the developers behind Tornado Cash. But it gives us an opportunity to kind of stand up for these rights and reestablish them and fight it in the court system, which is exactly where the industry is taking it. So that's number five. All right, what's next?

• 7:25David Hoffman?

  Number four. Sadly, there is very little silver lining on this one. There's no coming back from the Terra Luna collapse, one of the largest capital destruction events in human history. $50 billion to $60 billion went to zero over the course of a week. And so we all know, we all know the Terra Luna collapse started in February until it really crescendoed in May, where everything went to zero in May. After Do Kwon, Icarus probably did the biggest Icarusing of all of the 2022 Icarusing, although, I mean, that's debatable. But Terra Luna collapse, again, the biggest, most destructive capital destruction event in, I think, I'm pretty sure, in human history.

• 8:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm betting we're gonna see DoKwan again on this list in some form or fashion.

• 8:12David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah, no. This is not DoKwan, this is Terra Luna.

• 8:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what blew me away though is how fast this happened. Do you remember? And this was like textbook collapse. We had just four weeks previous. So this happened in what, in like May? It's like first part of May, maybe the end of April, something like this. Wait, this is an August 19th article. Oh, this is a whole

• 8:31David Hoffman?

  This is a recap, yeah.

• 8:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, anyway, I remember it well, it happened. And not like three weeks prior, maybe four weeks prior. We had this debate on Bankless. And there was the bull case and the bear case. And Jordi Alexander was the bear. Somebody from Delphi Digital was a Luna. Terra Bull was the pro. And I remember doing that episode and getting completely slammed.

• 8:55David Hoffman?

  By the Terra

• 8:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  For what I thought was a Yeah, by the lunatic community. Like, there was this frenzy of like, hey, ETH maxies, you shouldn't like, you don't know what you're talking about. Jordi Alexander's completely out to lunch, all of these things. And then textbook, this all happened in a week, in 24 hours. It was obvious this thing was collapsing towards zero. And then it happened. Pretty crazy event. All right, what do we got? Number three.

• 9:18David Hoffman?

  Number three, Three Arrows Capital triggers all of the contagion that put us into this goddamn mess. And so, just to tie off number four, Terra Collapse. Reflecting, going, looking backwards, what did we learn? Algorithmic stablecoins don't work. That was the big lesson that we walked away with. Going into number three, Three Arrows Capital, what did we learn? Don't put traders on pedestals. No one is a god in this space. No one's special. Hubris is the downfall of everyone that crashed in 2022. And this also happened as a result of the Terra Luna collapse. Now, why is this bigger and worse than the Terra Luna collapse?

• 9:58David Hoffman?

  Because of, while DoKwan's toxicity and hubris definitely caused the destruction of the Terra Luna ecosystem, it was Three Arrows Capital and other hedge funds like Alameda that took that destruction and spread it out to the industry. Because rather than taking the L themselves, Ryan, what did they do? If they had just like taken the L and not had, and just like, you know, Closed up shop, that would have been one thing. But what did they do? They borrowed from BlockFi. They borrowed from Genesis. They borrowed from anyone who get Voyager, not even a lending service, a centralized exchange. They borrowed from anyone who would ever give them money because they refused to take the L. And so they socialized their losses to the rest of the industry

• 10:41David Hoffman?

  by taking every single credit facility down with them, which ultimately flowed into retail and customer deposits. So Three Airs Capital coming in at number three for spreading all of the contagion and not being willing to take the L.

• 10:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a big list to be on. Number three, coming in at number three. And there are a lot of worst moments in 2022. All right, but tell us about number two, because I'm curious. There's two slots left here. Okay? So I know what one of them is going to be undoubtedly, but I'm a little curious what the other one's going to be. Why don't we open up number two?

• 11:17David Hoffman?

  Number two, the Ronin and Wormhole cross-chain bridges hacks. Wormhole got hacked in February of 2022 to the tune of $321 million for the largest hack so far in that bull market. Wormhole was actually replenished by Jump Capital, which actually ended up being one of the reasons why some of the contagion was so bad because Jump didn't have fresh powder to save the industry because they already saved it with Wormhole. Wouldn't have been so bad, Ryan, if Ronin also hadn't also been hacked later in that year to the tune of $615 million of crypto.

• 11:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Over half a billion dollars. This is like those two combined. That's like a billion dollars.

• 11:58David Hoffman?

  A billion dollars. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the reasons why the Ronin chain, the Ronin chain exploit was so bad was because of the way that private keys were held. Five out of the seven nodes to multi-sig nodes that was operating the multi-sig cross-layer-one bridge were all held in the same server. And so when North Korea, if you remember, hacked the Ronin sidechain, it was because they put all the private keys online on one server, allowing North Korea to seize $615 million, which, Ryan, one of the reasons why this event was so bad was because it led to the sanctioning of tornado cash because the money out of the Ronin sidechain went into tornado cash.

• 12:40David Hoffman?

  So because of the incompetence of the Ronin sidechain and these insecurity of layer-one bridges, I have to go sue Janet Yellen. God damn it.

• 12:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's all linked together. Yeah, it just gave Treasury sort of an excuse and a reason to take these actions. And what a massive hack. You know, I was gonna, I was gonna doubt you for putting them at number two and not like Luna and Terra and three hours capital higher. But I think the justification that you just gave, like sloppy code, just sloppiness in general, taking shortcuts is kind of the common theme that that led to this. And to absolutely massive security shortcuts, even though they were mistakes, they led to some pretty disastrous outcomes for crypto.

• 13:26David Hoffman?

  So what did we learn? What did we learn with that one? With Ronan and Wormhole? Cross-chain bridges are insecure. If we're gonna live in a poly-chain, multi-chain world, it's not going to be through a mesh network of insecure one-off bridges.

• 13:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love that you're teaching along the way. So these aren't just like worst moments. These are teachable moments for us, huh?

• 13:45David Hoffman?

  Ryan, I do not want to do 2022 again.

• 13:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's not do this in 2023. All right, well, number one, probably then, let's say, not only the number one worst moment of 2022, which is saying something, but also the number one most teachable moment, because David, you're gonna give us a lesson at the end of whatever is at number one. But I'm pretty sure I know what it is. You ready for it?

• 14:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 14:10David Hoffman?

  One more. This is SBF saying, "A competitor is trying to go after us under false rumors. FTX is fine. Assets are fine." This was tweeted by SBF on November 7th of 2022, just a few days before Chapter 11 bankruptcy was filed. As it turns out, assets are not fine. November 11th, four days later, FTX, FTX US, and Alameda Research, and over 100 more affiliates filed for bankruptcy in Delaware, not after Ryan sending over $70 million into political donations, $135 million to buy the FTX arena naming rights, $256 million in 30 different,

• 14:51David Hoffman?

  35 different Bahamian real estate properties, and also $300 million into the pocket of FBSBF, all coming with...

• 15:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Personally cashed out.

• 15:03David Hoffman?

  Personally cashed out, yeah. And so why is this coming in at number one?

• 15:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think I know why.

• 15:09David Hoffman?

  It kind of teaches itself, but just like Three Arrows Capital, what did they do when both Alameda and FTX were going under? They borrowed and they spread the contagion and they took as many people down with them as possible. And so the hubris of FTX took that, their mistakes and they spread it out into the industry. And is why the word contagion has been said so many times. The other reason why this is the worst event in 2022 was actually, it started in 2021. FTX was a fraud to begin with. It was, it's becoming pretty damn clear that FTX, the entirety of its lifespan has always been Sam Bakman Street's personal slush fund, starting in 2021.

• 15:52David Hoffman?

  It wasn't until 2022 that we actually learned that the entire FTX system was a fraud. He defrauded absolutely anyone that would give him money. Investors into the company, customer deposits, anyone that would borrow and lend against his money. Once he was tapped out all out of those lines of credit, he printed funny money in FTT, whatever he could do to get his hands on cash. Ryan, what did we learn? What did we learn as a result? What did you learn as a result of FTX?

• 16:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I learned something that I've said on the podcast a few times now, but was something I actually learned from some of the Bitcoin OGs in the space. Andreas Antonopoulos, most specifically. And that is this, not your keys, not your coins. Andreas said, when I first entered the space, one of the first things that was impressed upon my mind is you have to use an exchange like a public bathroom. You go in, you do your business and you get out. You don't leave. Stuff in the public bathroom. You don't hang out and have a party in the public bathroom.

• 17:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  You don't set up lending and borrowing inside of a public bathroom. Okay? You're in, it's kind of gross, and then you get out and you're done. That I think is what was reinforced on me and across the entire crypto industry. It's a good time to do it because we were getting a little complacent and a new generation hadn't learned that that lesson yet. And these types of lessons are certainly hard. It was a hard lesson to learn. We touched the stove and it was very hot, but I think that's what we learned. What else, though? I'm sure you've got some other things for us.

• 17:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and you can tie this into all the ones above. Three Hours Capital and all the contagion. Yield, Ryan, was a black hole that it was happened slowly, but it slowly sucked up and produced a gravitational center into one single point of failure. So BlockFi got yield from Genesis. A bunch of assets went into BlockFi. BlockFi went under. FTX bought them. So that shifted the black hole from BlockFi to FTX. Alameda plugged up Voyager, shifted the black hole of yield into Alameda. All this yield and all this risk started to collect and converge into one central point. And FTX, as the biggest fraud in this space, ended up being the operator of that black hole.

• 18:24David Hoffman?

  Because all of the yield, it was all just like, hey, you want, you want 2%, you want 3%, you want 4%? Come give us your money. Come give us your money. And as that yield, which again was the theme of the 2020 to 2022 crypto years, was that yield, it's a yield, yield, yield, yield, yield. And eventually that black hole grew and grew and grew, and that hot potato ended up in the hands of FTX. And eventually, as interest rates rose, that black hole was no longer able to be hidden because what that hole was, was a hole in the balance sheet. And so that was really what I learned. It's just the nature of yield and financial contagion and how ultimately it's always going to be caught in one central party. And it only is invisible if it's a centralized exchange, which you can't audit.

• 19:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  But guess what, Bankless Nation? We are still here. Crypto is still here. So the black hole of FTX and all of the other worst moments has not swallowed us up. We will be right back with five of the best moments and some more in the Bankless 2022 top moments of the year. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 19:28David Hoffman?

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• 20:12David Hoffman?

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• 20:55David Hoffman?

  But also much more than that, because Brave is shipping new features every single month with a mission to make Web3 easier to navigate for its over 55 million users. Wallet extensions are a thing of the past, so get started with Brave's Web3-ready browser today and experience a decentralized web seamlessly without all the clutter. You can download the browser at brave.com/bankless and click the wallet icon to get started. If you've been listening to Bankless, you know that we're fans of the modular blockchain thesis. The idea that blockchains will separate execution from data availability and consensus, allowing all three to become the best versions of themselves. And Fuel has built the fastest modular execution layer in the industry. By supporting parallel transaction execution, Fuel unlocks significantly faster throughput for the web3 world.

• 21:37David Hoffman?

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• 22:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, going through the 22 most memorable moments, here we are with the top five best moments. Count us off. At number five, what are we looking at, David? What's number five best moment?

• 22:21David Hoffman?

  Number five, the crypto industry shows up when it comes time to fight against totalitarianism. Tens, $54 million of crypto donated to the entire country of Ukraine when Russia invaded Ukraine. And crypto industry, while all the banks and all the traditional payment rails were too slow to do anything effective, tens of millions of dollars poured in USDT, Bitcoin, Ether, stablecoins. A CryptoPunk was all donated to Ukraine to fund their military, to help move people away from the front lines, and to overall help support a minority country against a much bigger bully. And it actually ended up hugely moving the needle.

• 23:06David Hoffman?

  I believe it was one of the first arrivals of extra aid on the scene was metal, like bulletproof jackets, bulletproof armor, was paid for from crypto to, I think, a neighboring country, Poland. And the reason why that was able to get done so quickly and to get bulletproof jackets to the front line so quickly was because how crypto... Is permissionless and instantaneous payment rail. So coming in at the best moments of 2022, number five, crypto helps fight against totalitarianism. Also, while NFTs were all kind of down bad and kind of tainted, the most expensive NFT ever sold in 2022 and 2021

• 23:46David Hoffman?

  was this very simple NFT of the Ukraine flag auctioned off for $6.5 million in Ether to help support Ukraine Dow.

• 23:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I actually didn't know that was the biggest one, huh?

• 23:57David Hoffman?

  Yep, exactly. The most expensive NFT.

• 24:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really cool is after this too, Ukraine passed some legislation that was very pro crypto, like loosening crypto, any crypto restrictions. And so, I mean, the entire country took this very favorably. All right, well, let's talk about number four. What are we looking at, David?

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  Coming in at number four, L2s, the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem finally passes the Layer 1 in transaction activity. There's not really any one moment, Ryan, when we can like slap the gavel on the table and say that Layer 2s are here. They all kind of came independently, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, ZK Sync. When did they all kind of arrive? Well, their alpha led to their beta, one came before the other. When did the L2 moment finally come? I'm declaring that it came when the total transactional volume of Layer 2s surpassed the transactional volume of Layer 1. And that happened just earlier this year, I believe in November or October of this year.

• 24:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's when it happened in a sustained way. You see some spikes earlier than that, but yeah, in a sustained way in October, actually.

• 25:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and so, L2s finally passing the L1 in transaction activity. This is in stark contrast, Ryan, to one of the worst moments of 2022, the Ronin and Wormhole sidechain bridge hacks. And so, we are already still solving the problem that centralized Layer 1s and Layer 1 bridges created for us. And so, coming in at number four, Layer 2s pass the Ethereum Layer 1 in transaction activity, officially saying that Layer 2s are now here.

• 25:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, what's number three?

• 25:28David Hoffman?

  Number three, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, all adopted NFTs. As it turned out, Ryan, when you and I were predicting what was going to cause the bull market, the next bull market, we were like, DeFi, DeFi, DeFi. We weren't wrong, but we kind of didn't really see NFTs coming and to how integratable they were into Web 2. So, one by one, the biggest platforms of the internet, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, all integrated NFTs. So, they, NFTs really are the Trojan horse for all of crypto to get into these social media giants.

• 26:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Huge deal for all of that to happen in 2022. Some huge, hugely bullish news there, but okay, bring us to number two, David. I know what one of these is going to be. Let's see if, let's see if I'm right.

• 26:17David Hoffman?

  Number two, the merge. The merge finalized, probably the greatest, most significant upgrade to any public blockchain ever, went off without a hitch. So, seven years in the making, proof of stake finally came to Ethereum. Proof of stake system unlike any other blockchain out there. The most, making Ethereum the most secure blockchain in existence with the fastest time and most highest amount of settlement assurances. Bankless listeners will know, the whole name of the game in the crypto industry is settlement assurances, settlement assurances, settlement assurances. With proof of stake Ethereum, Ethereum has the strongest settlement assurances in all of crypto, which means the strongest property rights.

• 26:57David Hoffman?

  It costs billions of dollars to go backwards six minutes on the Ethereum blockchain. Also, of course, as we know, with the merge, the Ether issuance went down to its absolute theoretical minimum. Hazu's tweet here says ETH is now the commodity money with the lowest rate of supply inflation. That is the definition of ultrasound money. And that happened, Ryan, in 2022.

• 27:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so that is number, number two.

• 27:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is huge, man. Do you remember that? That was like September and that this was Vitalik's tweet, September 15th, and that was at 3 a.m. Eastern, 2:59 a.m. East time. And I know you were on the Ethereum Foundation livestream. I was plugged in watching. I woke up in the middle of the night to kind of watch this and witness history. I don't think I'll ever forget it. There's like 30,000 or 40,000 people on the stream watching this happen. And it was kind of cool. Like, it was, it was really at this stage, it was all of the settlers. The tourists had kind of left because this is in the wake of some major crypto collapses. And I think I'll forever remember 22 for that reason. September 2022, when the merge happened.

• 28:06David Hoffman?

  It's also the moment when, what was that electricity stat? Something like 0.2% of all electric, electrical energy consumed.

• 28:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 28:15David Hoffman?

  Just went away because Ethereum stopped, stopped consuming so much of it. Also, underappreciated is how regular the Ethereum blocks are. I don't know, I don't know if you noticed, Ryan, but how easy and consistent it is to get a transaction in on Ethereum these days. And that is a combination of EIP1559 and proof of stake, the merge.

• 28:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  A commenter in chat, Token Show, said, "Had a nerd garage party in LA." That sounds awesome.

• 28:39David Hoffman?

  Very, very checks out. You ready for number one, Ryan?

• 28:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. Give us number one. What's number one, David?

• 28:44David Hoffman?

  You gotta save number one for the end, man.

• 28:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you serious?

• 28:47David Hoffman?

  So this is the biggest rug pull of the Bankless episode series. Number one is gonna be saved. The biggest and best moment in 2022. You gotta save that one for the end. That one's coming at the end.

• 28:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's coming. David's not gonna perma-rug us, all right? It's just a delay. It's not a rug. All right, well, the next category, I think, is villains. Am I right about that?

• 29:08David Hoffman?

  Top five villains of 2022.

• 29:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, yes. All right, give it to us. Number five. And I know probably who all the names are. I just don't know in what order you're going to put them. Maybe there's some question about some of the names, actually. So give us number five.

• 29:23David Hoffman?

  Coming in hot at number five, you gotta go with Richard Hart, twerking his ass in your face in a Gucci tracksuit. This guy just exudes what's exuberance and just cockiness.

• 29:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exuberance?

• 29:38David Hoffman?

  And in-your-face just asshole-ness. And for some reason, he's been able to convince a whole community of hexicans that he is a Chad and he was right about everything. So not only is he creating systems that take money from your pocket to his pocket, he's also convincing an army of hexicans that he's somehow good at the same time.

• 30:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's also convinced them that he managed to make you cry on a bankless episode, David.

• 30:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah.

• 30:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's part of it.

• 30:08David Hoffman?

  So like, top five villains, as in like, top five worst people, but also, to some degree, you gotta give him credit. Richard Hart is a really good villain. He's very successful.

• 30:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, he's still around. He's still here. Somehow, he's just like out doing his, continuing the hex scam, like Ponzi, whatever it is. And I can't wait for him to tweet this, by the way. This is turning into a clip, too.

• 30:31David Hoffman?

  Oh, 100%, yeah.

• 30:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Number five villain, Richard Hart. You are number five.

• 30:35David Hoffman?

  Well done. Congrats. Congrats, Richard. You deserve this one.

• 30:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  You got something. All right. And with an esteemed group of colleagues. So who's number four, David?

• 30:43David Hoffman?

  Number four. This one's my favorite. Alex Mashinsky, wearing specifically a "Banks are not your friends" t-shirt.

• 30:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, he wasn't wrong.

• 30:55David Hoffman?

  He was not wrong. That is us. Again, well done, Alex. You called it. You saw it for what it is. Banks are definitely...

• 31:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  You just forgot to tell us that you are also a bank.

• 31:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So Alex Mashinsky, of course, the CEO, founder of Celsius, who is just being a huge populist, saying "Banks are not your friends." Well, he created a bank. And reminder, Ryan... That the Celsius executives, including Alex Mashinsky, all withdrew millions of dollars just days before Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and froze customer withdrawals out of Celsius. So, well done. Huge, successful year for Alex Mashinsky. He's not in jail, walking free.

• 31:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Number four villain. And I would have called this the worst bank, maybe, I've ever seen in my lifetime, the worst crypto bank. But then something else happened later in the year.

• 31:44David Hoffman?

  The worst crypto bank from May of 2022 to November of 2022.

• 31:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you got a good five-month reign on that, Alex. Banks are not your friends. I'm gonna get that shirt, by the way. Just wear it unironically. Unbelievable. All right. Give us number three, then.

• 32:01David Hoffman?

  Number three. Okay, Ryan, this is also when we simultaneously do the top tweets, the most infamous tweets of 2022. So not only are we-

• 32:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we get to see the villain in action.

• 32:11David Hoffman?

  Number three, number two, and number one all had the top five worst tweets of 2022. So are you ready for this? Coming in at number two, the pair, the duo themselves, Suzu and Kyle Davies. Here's Kyle Davies, again, tweeting exact truth in May 7 of 2022. Couple more liquidations, then up only.

• 32:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love how they're telling us in advance, banks are not your friends, a couple more liquidations in May 7.

• 32:39David Hoffman?

  They're just giving it to us, man.

• 32:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. They've told us the whole time. Wow, Kyle Davies. And Suzu, they're one unit to you, huh?

• 32:48David Hoffman?

  That's exactly right. Yeah, Kyle Davies and Suzu. Here's Suzu's most famous tweet. "Yes, I have abandoned Ethereum in the past despite supporting it. Yes, Ethereum has abandoned its users despite supporting them in the past. The idea of surfing around jerking off while watching the burn and cocking purity tests while newcomers can't afford the chain is gross."

• 33:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I feel personally attacked by that last sentence. But also, you know what's gross is completely screwing over your investors and dragging the entire industry with you on the way down. And that's what Suzu and Kyle Davies did. They're kind of in the midst of what feels like a little bit of a comeback tour or something.

• 33:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I think people are rejecting that comeback tour. People thought it was cute, and then people are like, oh, like 3O's capital, Suzu, they're back. Wait, what are my values?

• 33:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's just hold on to that for a little bit longer, okay, guys? Just hold it. Give us another year. Give us all of 2023 before this industry goes crazy again. All right, what's number two, David?

• 33:49David Hoffman?

  Oh, God, I couldn't really pick out the worst tweet out of this guy because he has so many. So this guy's got five tweets. Who do you think it is?

• 33:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  This guy has five tweets.

• 33:57David Hoffman?

  Number two's got five tweets.

• 33:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know who it is now. You gave it away.

• 34:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Coming in hot at number two, Doquan, the man who tweeted out, "Buy my hand, die will die." The guy who destroyed tens of billions of dollars of a stablecoin because, of course, algorithmic stablecoins don't work and the MakerDAO community knew it. And he tweeted out just about six weeks before the collapse of Terra Luna, "Buy my hand, die will die."

• 34:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Die will die.

• 34:24David Hoffman?

  If you just scroll down just a little bit, Ryan, you'll see a response saying, "My money is on die."

• 34:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  David Hoffman. But what were the responses to your response? I bet you got a lot of like...

• 34:36David Hoffman?

  No, we got that. You don't got to scroll down. We got that. We got that linked up in the...

• 34:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, okay. It's all here because he led a whole army. That's part of Doquan's villainous behavior. Okay, what other tweets we have?

• 34:45David Hoffman?

  Of course, deploying more capital, steady lads, May 9th, the last few hours of the whole entire Terra Luna ecosystem. Deploying more capital, steady lads. Ryan, do you know where he got that capital? The capital that he's deploying?

• 35:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, wait, wait, wait. I'm just sorting out my villains and my scammers from last year. Where did he get this? This capital? No, Visa. Wait, no! He probably got it from one of our other friends, Kyle Daviesuzu, FTX, Alameda.

• 35:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so he got it from selling UST to Alameda and Avalanche and for all those AVAX tokens. But where did he get the money to buy all of that money? He printed it out of thin air. U S T. While there was an algorithmic sable coin with backing of Luna and U S T, he printed and minted U S T out of thin air, sold that U S T into the market to buy Bitcoins, to buy locked avalanche avalanche tokens. Oh, no, they weren't locked. Just kidding. And that was the treasury for the Luna Guard Foundation. So he paid for $48,000 Bitcoin. And it went, when it came time to deploy that capital to defend the peg, the peg that he disrupted by minting U S T in the first place, that same Bitcoin that he bought was worth about

• 36:02David Hoffman?

  half as much as when he bought it from. So not only did he print funny money, which actually was the trigger of the collapse of his own ecosystem, the thing that he bought lost half of its value when it came time to be defensive.

• 36:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  The worst possible central banker in history.

• 36:16David Hoffman?

  Absolutely.

• 36:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Name me a worst central banker. You couldn't find worse in the Weimer Republic. This is like banker scammer, like just terrible.

• 36:24David Hoffman?

  Don't worry, that's only, that's only the second of five tweets. So here's, I think, one of my most favorite memes out of 2022, which is Do Kwan tweeting out, "By my hand, Dai will Dai on top of a grave." And then Dai is the guy giving the peace sign over the grave.

• 36:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, all right. And we have one more tweet.

• 36:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So this is Mike Novogratz getting the Terra Luna tattoo and my co-host Ryan Sean Adams, just, you know, instincts so sharp, saying, "This tweet makes me question everything I thought I knew about crypto."

• 36:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  It legitimately did. This was an honest tweet, 100% honest.

• 36:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And then Do Kwan coming in, "Don't worry, Ryan, it wasn't much. You didn't know much about crypto." How'd that make you feel, Ryan, in that moment?

• 37:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what? And look at kind of, look, I got ratioed on Twitter.

• 37:11David Hoffman?

  Big time.

• 37:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, that, that happens. I got, you know, six to, six to, sorry, three to one ratioed on Twitter, basically, in this. And, you know, I had to, like, you got me. But then, um, a few months later, it turned out to be...

• 37:24David Hoffman?

  He got got.

• 37:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I would not have wanted to support this tattoo into 2023. Uh, that, that tattoo is, um, kind of a relic of, of 2022. And, uh, you know, DoKwon apparently did not know very much about the Algo stablecoin he was running, or about crypto, or about crypto values.

• 37:42David Hoffman?

  You would think he did, because if you remember, this was not the first Algo stablecoin that he spun up and ran. He also saw Basis Cash algorithmic stablecoin go to zero.

• 37:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, just people were so dumb at that time. Can I just say that? Like, this industry was so dumb. Like, we are much smarter right now, and it, I don't know, like, it's, this is why I'm not sad about 2020. Like, 2022 needed to happen. This was January. This kind of crap was going on. We needed this.

• 38:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, don't get a tattoo of a crypto career. Don't do that. Uh, okay, but last tweet out of DoKwon, because there were too many good ones.

• 38:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, really?

• 38:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, uh-huh. So this was, this was, uh, his response to me saying, uh, "My money is on die." Uh, and he just goes, "Oh, no effing way." And then he gave me the bicycle helmet, uh, whatever that me, uh, no, like, the, the, excuse the word, the redacted brain smush brain, uh, saying that, "Oh, that's exactly what an ETH maxi would think." Uh, "Only an ETH maxi would bet on something he has already lost." Uh, "My die that I have, uh, is still $1, Ryan."

• 38:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really? Hasn't gone to zero?

• 38:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, hasn't gone to zero, yeah.

• 38:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so that's number two, that's number two, the second worst villain. And obviously, we know who the first worst is, so why don't you just tell us? Why don't you just share it?

• 38:55David Hoffman?

  Coming in at number one, the worst villain of 2022. The guy that tweets out, "I'll buy as much soul as you have right now at $3. Sell me all you want, then go fuck off." You know why he said that, Ryan? You know why he was able to say that? Because he was taking in customers' Bitcoin and Ether.

• 39:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Depositors' money.

• 39:15David Hoffman?

  And buying Solana with it to pump that thing to the absolute moon. Of course he tweeted this out.

• 39:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Stupid, was this?

• 39:21David Hoffman?

  He controlled the price.

• 39:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, January 10th. Tell me, like, less, like, a year ago. This needed to happen. Go on, go on, though.

• 39:30David Hoffman?

  Uh, well, this was January 20th, uh, 10th of 2021, but, uh, I couldn't, I couldn't ignore this tweet. The reason why this tweet's in there is because of the CoinMamba tweet right below it, uh, which says, "I'll buy everything you have at $3. Sell me all you want." Because that is... The value of Sam Bankman-Fried's current net worth, uh, $3. Uh, followed up by probably one of the most infamous tweets, perhaps infamous tweet, number one.

• 39:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why did he do this?

• 39:55David Hoffman?

  Number one, parentheses, what? That's the tweet.

• 39:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why did he do this?

• 39:59David Hoffman?

  That's the tweet.

• 40:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  This whole thing, the what happened, uh, it's just wasted so much of my time, David, for this. What was the payout?

• 40:07David Hoffman?

  Absolute, absolute.

• 40:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  40 chess, we have some stuff to talk about on the roll up, by the way. I don't think this man was playing 40 chess.

• 40:15David Hoffman?

  No.

• 40:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this man was playing like Jenga for toddlers.

• 40:19David Hoffman?

  So he was so.

• 40:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't think he had a master plan.

• 40:21David Hoffman?

  As somebody who's played many, many thousands of games of chess, Ryan.

• 40:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 40:24David Hoffman?

  It's actually really hard to play chess against beginners because you just don't know what the hell they're doing.

• 40:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what he feels like.

• 40:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 40:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  He just didn't know what the hell he was doing. Anyway, by evidence of the fact that he tweeted, um, I don't, do I have this out? Um, uh, Bankman Fried, this is a tweet from Ryan Selkis. Hours before he was literally arrested, said this, and I quote, "I don't think I will be arrested."

• 40:50David Hoffman?

  Sam Bankman-Fried.

• 40:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's now in jail.

• 40:51David Hoffman?

  He's now in jail.

• 40:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now arrested as of yesterday, and that's how we finish the year. Incredible.

• 40:55David Hoffman?

  Fine, that's a great way to finish the year.

• 40:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, Richard Hart, Alex Mashinsky, Suzu, Kyle Davies, Do Kwon, SBF, those were your villains.

• 41:03David Hoffman?

  Those were the villains.

• 41:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crypto, uh, we met them, we got to know them, we're leaving most of them behind in 2022 and we can move on. Let's talk about the heroes.

• 41:12David Hoffman?

  Ryan, I think, uh, well, we got the heroes left, uh, we're gonna go through all five of them. Also, five honorable mentions, best supporting actor in a comedy, normie brand of the year, uh, the biggest oof of 2022, the most influential and the best memes of 2022, and also we got to revisit the top moment of the year. But first, Ryan, we have to talk to some of these sponsors to help you go bankless because we all need it these days. Sequence is the all-in-one developer platform you need to build web three games and applications. For your users, Sequence is a smart wallet and it's the easiest, most intuitive onboarding your users will ever experience and comes with all the features users need to feel empowered in the web three world. Multi-chain support, NFT display, and users can buy.

• 41:54David Hoffman?

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• 42:39David Hoffman?

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• 43:24David Hoffman?

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• 44:08David Hoffman?

  with institutional-grade lending opportunities and portfolio tooling. Explore the diverse financial opportunities available on TrueFi or launch your own portfolio at truefi.io.

• 44:18David Hoffman?

  All right, on to the good news of the year. Who are the heroes? The heroes of 2022. Brian, I put Michael Saylor as number five, which I think might be a decent surprise to most people. But I think Michael Saylor is one of the heroes of 2022. The man took a $3.5 billion loss to the face and kept on buying. If that is not-

• 44:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Does this sound like a reverse compliment? Like a backhanded compliment now? Thank you for taking a $3.4 billion hit for crypto, Michael Saylor?

• 44:54David Hoffman?

  Hey, man-

• 44:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that what you're saying, David?

• 44:55David Hoffman?

  Hey, he, every, every person comes into the crypto industry. They buy the top and they, and they lose it because a crypto goes down. But you know Michael Saylor's here for the long term because he's still buying, man. I'm not saying he's my-

• 45:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's a believer.

• 45:09David Hoffman?

  He's a believer. He's a believer. He got, he got Elon Musk to buy Twitter. He's the number one-

• 45:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  To buy Twitter or Bitcoin?

• 45:17David Hoffman?

  Oh, excuse me, to buy Bitcoin.

• 45:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 45:18David Hoffman?

  He is the number one holder of Bitcoin in existence by a long shot, holding a current value of $2.3 billion of crypto with a cost of Bitcoin, with a cost basis of $4 billion, and he is still buying.

• 45:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's just like us.

• 45:36David Hoffman?

  He's just like us.

• 45:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's down like greater than 50%. Wow, even after dollar cost averaging in.

• 45:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. So like, you gotta give it to him. Like, he's unequivocally one of the most bullish people in crypto.

• 45:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't get it. I'll be honest. Like, I don't get a lot of the things that he does, but I can't say I disagree that he's on your list. And look, when we talk about bankless, it's, it's heroes for everybody. This might not be the Ethereum community's number one hero.

• 46:02David Hoffman?

  He's not, he's not my hero.

• 46:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's not David's hero.

• 46:04David Hoffman?

  He's kind of a Chad. You gotta give it to him.

• 46:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. Look at Saylor on this list, huh? MicroStrategy, number one.

• 46:12David Hoffman?

  Not even close, dude.

• 46:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  There is no second best. All right, who we got? Number four?

• 46:19David Hoffman?

  Number four. We got to go with, okay, this one is one of my heroes, Anthony Cizano. And you know why I think Anthony Cizano is a hero? And I'll take this line from out of Kobe's book. Because Anthony Cizano makes a YouTube video about Ethereum, 30 minutes long, every single day, and writes a newsletter, dressed himself, every single day, day in, day out. He scans crypto Twitter and updates you as to the state of Ethereum, the progress of Ethereum, the progress of crypto, every damn day. The consistency behind this man is absolutely insane.

• 46:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at this guy.

• 46:53David Hoffman?

  Look at that guy. That just exudes a hero.

• 46:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, do you want to know a fun fact about Anthony, actually?

• 46:59David Hoffman?

  Tell me.

• 46:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I was doing some fun time with Mid Journey yesterday. You know, the AIs like to hang out, right, David? So fun time with Mid Journey and myself, and I typed in David Hoffmann, Ryan Sean Adams Bankless Podcast. Because I wanted to get like what Mid Journey would paint us as. It got you pretty perfectly. But it kept putting Anthony's beard on me.

• 47:21David Hoffman?

  Oh, really?

• 47:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I think that's because like it confused me and Anthony in some way. Or like maybe because Anthony's been on Bankless stream so many times.

• 47:30David Hoffman?

  Wait, I want to go check this out.

• 47:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Pushing our faces together. You got to check our Discord channel.

• 47:35David Hoffman?

  Oh, I'm looking right now.

• 47:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  You see it?

• 47:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  It kept putting a beard on me, even when I was like, Mid Journey, no beard, no beard.

• 47:43David Hoffman?

  Wow, yeah, that, yeah, I don't know, man.

• 47:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cizano's everywhere.

• 47:48David Hoffman?

  I'm going to have to talk to Anthony about that. Anyways, tip of the hat to Anthony Cizano. He's supremely useful for staying up on the frontier of Ethereum. So he's coming in at number four heroes of 20.

• 48:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, number three, who do we got? Another influencer?

• 48:04David Hoffman?

  Well, we're all influencers if you've got like a Twitter account over $10,000. Coming in number three, got to give this one to Kobe. I think Kobe, I mean, everyone knows who Kobe is. To say that he doesn't give, get credit is, I mean, he definitely gets a lot of credit. But I just want to remind people, Kobe, for a while, went on this stint where he would go and livestream. Have thousands of people watch his stream and he would stream the streams of of normies. Musicians who had anywhere between like 10 and 100 views. And he would tell his stream army to go watch their stream. Try and like do a little Easter egg hunt where they would like pester them saying, hey, download Metamask, download Metamask.

• 48:46David Hoffman?

  And the musician would be like super confused like, why, why, first off, are there thousands of people in my stream? That like I only have 10 to 100 people for? Why are they all trying to get me to download Metamask? And the ones that do it, they would send them hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so Kobe would go out and just like send his, his stream armies into just like normal. People who want to be creative musicians and just donate. One musician received $200,000 after his Twitch raid. We got a tweet pulled up that's of Kobe linking out to this one musician's Ethereum address or ETH address that they had just downloaded.

• 49:29David Hoffman?

  There was just another one where somebody who held it up a sign saying, thank you crypto Twitter. For the donations to pay for healthcare for like one of the dads or something. Also Kobe funded the lawsuit against BitBoy. So BitBoy, remember when BitBoy sued that YouTuber who tried to expose him, Atozi? He's Atozi on August 23rd of this year says, I wish I didn't have to make this thread. But I'm being sued by YouTube BitBoy Crypto for a video I made roughly nine months ago about how he promoted a project called PAMP. And then somebody tags Kobe, so Kobe will notice it and Kobe goes, I'll send $100,000 or something later when I'm at my PC. A few hours later, he follows up with a tweet that says, sent Kobe funded this guy with $100,000.

• 50:12David Hoffman?

  BitBoy, as a result of this, dropped his lawsuit and Kobe let the guy keep the money to pay for a vacation or something. So gotta give it to Kobe. Actually, most of this happened, the BitBoy happened in 2022. Some of the, the music streaming happened in 2021. He's also got a fantastic Substack, writing some of the most clear and sober in thought analysis of crypto. If you want to level up in crypto, Kobe's Substack is fantastic. So you gotta give it to him. Covenant number three, heroes of 2022, Kobe.

• 50:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go, Kobe. All right, we've got some other people on the list, too, maybe specifically, because we have two more slots. Who is number two, David?

• 50:51David Hoffman?

  Coming in at number two, Zach XBT, the guy that you do not want sleuthing around your Ethereum address. He has a Notion site where he has all of his victims, I'll call them victims, and it's, again, a Notion that you do not want to be on, all of his on-chain analysis. So if you don't know who Zach XBT is, he is a guy that makes sure that influencers, pump and dumpers, VCs, people aren't dumping on retail in ways that are illicit or bad. This is a guy that, this is crypto self-regulating. While we're kind of waiting for regulators to catch up, Zach XBT is making sure that people like BitBoy are not dumping on people when they totally are.

• 51:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's a vigilante, and he cares about this industry. He, she, they, them, we don't actually know, because he's in a completely anonymous account, which is fantastic, too. Yeah, and he's caught a lot, hasn't he?

• 51:48David Hoffman?

  He has probably, it's kind of hard to say if he saved money. He's definitely created the very strong incentive to not be a shiller, pump and dumper.

• 51:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's saving money. That's just holding the industry accountable.

• 52:01David Hoffman?

  Exactly. It's very hard to do it in this space, and there's a reason why that guy has to be alt. Oh, he's also the guy that discovered that the ex-Quadringa founder, the scam artist, can't remember his name, was Zero Xifu out of Wonderland. He was that guy.

• 52:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm so glad we know that. I mean, yeah, invaluable. All right, so our number one, biggest hero for 2022, who's filling this slot, David?

• 52:27David Hoffman?

  I can't give it to one person, Ryan. So we gave it to the cohort of the Ethereum developers who helped ship so much in 2022, mainly the Merge. Give it a hand to all Ethereum developers that's out there. Such, so huge. Crypto grows absolutely insane in 2022, but the Ethereum developers kept their heads down and shipped the Merge. This is, I'm just gonna brush you some of these names.

• 52:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, just don't even say all the names. You don't have to, David, but we'll show them on the screen.

• 52:54David Hoffman?

  Xiaoweng, I think, is how you pronounce it. She, first off, created the Merge pandas meme. She works on consensus layer specs and made the Merge meme. Paritosh, I'm so sorry, led the testing of the beacon chain, helped coordinate all of the Shadow Forks. Marius, of course, coming up next, also led the connection between the consensus layer clients and Geth. You got Ben Edgington, leading the Tequ client. You have Tim Baker helping coordinate the merge. You got Danny Ryan helping coordinate the merge. There are so many people who worked on the merge that are just simply not enough.

• 53:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  This guy right here.

• 53:30David Hoffman?

  Danny Ryan. I give a big hand to Danny and Tim, of course. So many people helped ship the merge. Again, some of them look at what we do on the application layer and they're like, "God damn it, these crypto degenerates. Yet they help us ship the merge anyway." So, anyone who's ever helped with the merge, and that includes all the listeners, running full nodes, validating nodes, staking nodes, anyone who tested the merge, if you helped in the merge, absolutely thank you. Tip of the hat. It was one of the most foundational innovations out of the crypto space. So, thank you so much.

• 54:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, give us, so that was our biggest heroes. We went through the villains, and now we got the heroes. Give us some honorable mentions, some things that didn't quite make the regular list but are in a category of their own. What do you got here?

• 54:16David Hoffman?

  Coming in at best supporting actor in a comedy, Gary Gensler.

• 54:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 54:24David Hoffman?

  Oh, no, we can't get his picture up. Gary Gensler.

• 54:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm all by the lot.

• 54:28David Hoffman?

  Best supporting actor in a comedy. I just want to give a hand to Michael Wong, who came up with that name. Supporting actor, as in like, he's not a crypto person, he's outside of the space. Supporting, as in very much an influence onto all of the things that made 2022, 2022. Did not allow the GBDC to become an ETF, has provided absolutely zero clarity as to what is a security token, yet is charging exchanges with listing security tokens, yet not listing what they are, telling people to come knock on his door and come into his office so we can work together. And so then he can sue you. Making an absolute farce out of this industry. And so, best supporting actor in a comedy, Gary Gensler.

• 55:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright Gary, you made the list. And seriously, come on Bank List sometime in 2023.

• 55:18David Hoffman?

  Look at that photo, man. That is a creepiest. He looks like the Penguin out of Batman.

• 55:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's perfect. Alright, what else we got?

• 55:25David Hoffman?

  Normie Brand of the Year. You gotta give this one to Budweiser, who paid 30 ETH for beer dot ETH. They bought a nouns before nouns were cool, Ryan. They put that in the nouns classes in the Super Bowl. They bought some very esoteric, very niche, high culture memes. So, Normie Brand of the Year, who absolutely killed it on the NFT front.

• 55:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  They actually got the beer pint head on their noun?

• 55:54David Hoffman?

  Yes. They killed it. Whoever was leading NFT strategy at Budweiser, absolutely well done. I don't know what you could have done better.

• 56:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're not getting a raise after this year. Hold out for 2024, okay?

• 56:05David Hoffman?

  Congratulations, sir. You get to keep your job. No pay raise for you, but you are not getting fired.

• 56:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, that's awesome. Okay, what's another honorable mention here?

• 56:17David Hoffman?

  Biggest oof. Ready for the biggest oof of 2022?

• 56:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like we did a lot of oofs.

• 56:22David Hoffman?

  No, this one, this one's appropriate. Like, other stuff is like facepalm, my god, self-existential crisis. Yes. This is just like a big oof.

• 56:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 56:31David Hoffman?

  This is the worst NFT project ever. Pixelmon and Kevin.

• 56:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's Kevin the Pixelmon. Did this come out in February?

• 56:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is February of this year, yeah.

• 56:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. And, okay, what was the joke with Pixelmons and with Kevin is like, the art had yet to be released or something like this, and everyone had spent a whole bunch of money on this like Pixelmon?

• 56:57David Hoffman?

  It was a 3 ETH floor. It was a 3 ETH mint, which was extremely expensive. This was in February of 2022. So this was near all-time highs. So 3 ETH was something like 8,000 plus dollars. And it was gonna be like Pokemon plus Minecraft. The art was extremely hyped. It turned out to be just a bunch of libraries of code pulled off the shelves and some very bare-bones work. And Kevin, who is a Pixelmon, was deemed to be so bad.

• 57:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Named him. I don't know that was, is this Pixelmon actually called Kevin? It doesn't even matter anymore. This is Kevin to us.

• 57:33David Hoffman?

  So Kevin was deemed to be so incredibly atrocious that it went full circle and is good.

• 57:41David Hoffman?

  Zach, this whole Pixelman thing was a subject of, look at that price chart at the very end. That thing goes absolutely just straight down to zero.

• 57:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  That reminds me of 2022, that chart right there. It's a familiar pattern.

• 57:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Pixelman was actually a subject of a Zach XBT investigation to see where all those funds flowed, being deemed a pretty damn obvious cash grab. Did you know, Ryan, you can still buy a Kevin?

• 58:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  A Kevin? There's more than one?

• 58:08David Hoffman?

  No, I think there might be just one Kevin.

• 58:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's actually pretty cheap for this kind of, this level of culture, 1.6 ETH.

• 58:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I hope that's the right link. But yeah, well, best offer at 1.6 ETH, it was last sold for 6 ETH.

• 58:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, we'll keep that on your Christmas list, ladies and gentlemen. All right, what else do we have? Any other things that just missed the cut? Honorable mentions?

• 58:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we got most influential, the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, and interest rates. You got to say that interest rates were the most influential thing. Yes, this man, this man successfully killed crypto as soon as interest rates caught.

• 58:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can't kill crypto.

• 58:51David Hoffman?

  Well, okay, the damage.

• 58:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  He killed Do Kwon.

• 58:53David Hoffman?

  He killed Do Kwon, he killed 3O's Capital.

• 58:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  You got it all wrong. This guy cleansed us of all of the 2022 villains.

• 59:00David Hoffman?

  That's a good take. That's a good take. This guy, this guy pulled out the tide. Turns out Do Kwon had no trunks. Turns out 3O's Capital had no trunks. BlockFi, no trunks. FTX, no trunks. And this guy revealed them all. So yes, I take that back, Ryan. This guy killed all of the unsustainable short-termism inside of crypto. So while we're all down bad because of it, it was the washing, the cleansing that we need.

• 59:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is such a creepy photo, too. What's with the creepy photos? This looks like Powell at a wax museum or something.

• 59:33David Hoffman?

  Powell from Midjourney, for sure.

• 59:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, what do we got? I think you've got best meme on the list, too.

• 59:39David Hoffman?

  Best meme.

• 59:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a hard one. What do we got? GM.

• 59:43David Hoffman?

  GM. So this particular is a meme of a guy pushing a cart full of boxes. And he's looking over at a friend who's just got one tiny little box. And he goes, is that all you need? And the man with the tiny little box, the tiny little box is named GM, by the way, is just saying, yes. Yes, it is all I need.

• 1:00:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I still, I still feel like I can say GM at the end of 2022. Some of the other memes created in 2022 did not last. Like, I think it'll be a very long time before I, like, say we're all gonna make it.

• 1:00:13David Hoffman?

  Yes, we're all gonna make it. Definitely worst meme of 2021.

• 1:00:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we're not all gonna make it.

• 1:00:18David Hoffman?

  One of the reasons why GM is the best meme, Ryan, is that there actually is no canonical GM meme. It is a, as all good memes are, decentralized. There's where, where did GM come from? Where is its epicenter?

• 1:00:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Somebody started saying it.

• 1:00:35David Hoffman?

  We all, no, we all started saying good morning and somebody shortened it to GM. And then GM just proliferated, just bam bam bam. So GM, the most decentralized meme that we've ever come up with.

• 1:00:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, GM to you, David.

• 1:00:47David Hoffman?

  GM to you.

• 1:00:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, look, that, that was it, right? We went through all of everything, but we still have something on the list, which is you never, when we went through the list of top moments, you stopped right before we got to number one.

• 1:00:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I think we're ready for the top moment of 2022. Can you give it to us? What's coming in at number one?

• 1:01:08David Hoffman?

  Coming in at number one, I never thought it would actually happen. But in, when was it, May of this year? Yes, May 16th of this year, absolute history was made in all of crypto, where Ryan Sean Adams was confirmed a real human being. And I met this man in, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

• 1:01:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:01:29David Hoffman?

  Is where Ryan and I met for the first time. But up, but uh.

• 1:01:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's it, that's it. Well, look, it had to be self-serving because, you know, it's bankless at the end of this. So this is, by the way, I'll note that David put this ahead of the merge. So, um, sorry, Vitalik, all the developers know you guys worked hard. But look, David and I met this year for the first time and that was a pretty big deal.

• 1:01:49David Hoffman?

  It was a pretty big deal.

• 1:01:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's it, man. What a year. We can wrap this one, though. It's over. That was our

• 1:01:54David Hoffman?

  That is a wrap.

• 1:01:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was, that's a wrap. That was our week in rap. Like, we've got some more stuff coming up content-wise, actually shows the end of the year. So we've got, I think, a Voorhees show coming up. We got Vitalik coming to the podcast. I think a major theme for us, guys, in next year is gonna be how we rebuild in the aftermath of all of this, right? How do we build crypto back on strong foundations? And so we're gonna get into all of that. Of course, we also have Ryan Selkis giving us his crypto theses next week, which I always enjoy. This is kind of an annual tradition for us, too. But so is the bankless moments. We did one from last year, too, and it's just a fun way to recap the year. So thanks for putting this together, David.

• 1:02:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm sorry the year was so bad, but hey, it's over now.

• 1:02:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Was it bad? Needed to happen. Look, do you remember that tattoo in January? Needed to happen.

• 1:02:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, thank you for hanging with us.

• 1:02:49David Hoffman?

  The chat, Ryan, is not convinced that you are a real person.

• 1:02:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, okay, AI technology is not this advanced. Come on, how can you simulate this? Looks pretty real to me. Felt real, David. Let me just say that. All right, guys, let's end it here. Risks and disclaimers. This is our time to let you know none of this has been financial advice. Never is on bankless. Eth is risky. Crypto is risky. DeFi is risky. If you need more evidence of that, go listen to the podcast again, all right? We've got villains here as well as heroes. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.