ROLLUP: Record ETF Flows, Up or Down? | Trump's New Crypto Policy | California Going Onchain?

At The Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Trump delivered a speech that resonated big time with the crypto community. What was it that he said to generate the loudest cheer? Meanwhile, ETF flows continue unabated, with ETH seeing its first day of net inflows coinciding with BTC’s first net outflows in some time – is this a coincidence or just noise? And finally, California is transitioning car title transfers to... Avalanche? ------ 🍵MATCHA | NEW PRICING ENGINE https://go.0x.org/matcha-v2-pod ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙 KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🛞 MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🦄 UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap 🌐 OBOL | STAKE ON DVs, SCALE ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/obol ⚡️ CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiGovernance 🗣️ TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/42?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ « TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:24 ETF Flows https://dune.com/hildobby/btc-etfs https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1818268093656822054 https://dune.com/hildobby/eth-etfs https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1818471523801317679 https://farside.co.uk/?p=997 00:14:41 ETH Flag Over Wall St https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1816620919353483273 https://x.com/MacroScope17/status/1816847251894911315 00:17:49 L2 Update https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary 00:22:39 Fed Keeps Rates Steady https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/31/fed-rate-decision-july-2024.html 00:30:17 Trump At Bitcoin Nashville https://x.com/saylor/status/1817916450880802892 https://x.com/VentureCoinist/status/1817306455441043734 00:37:19 Unpacking The Trump Speech https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1817301604627796119 00:40:22 RFK's Speech https://x.com/VentureCoinist/status/1817255603087249638 https://x.com/VentureCoinist/status/1817255605926772825 https://x.com/SenLummis/status/1817320519185932726 https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1817310483445407895 00:46:08 Democrats New Crypto Take https://x.com/bitcoinpierre/status/1817219938672591310?s=46&t=dmRhP54bJmHi0Ppb8BT30Q https://x.com/bitcoinpierre/status/1817219938672591310?s=46&t=dmRhP54bJmHi0Ppb8BT30Q 00:48:42 Largest Crypto Super PAC https://x.com/dunleavy89/status/1817896423293100087?s=46 00:49:40 Polymarket On Forbes https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1818770799601631588 00:54:21 Happy Birthday Ethereum! https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1818146456550961620 00:55:43 Eclipse Mainnet https://x.com/EclipseFND/status/1818285443491991678 01:00:12 USDC On Base https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1815782410250002556 https://x.com/liamihorne/status/1818393309150429626 01:03:14 Cali DMV Builds On Avalanche https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/05/04/governor-newsom-signs-blockchain-executive-order-to-spur-responsible-web3-innovation-grow-jobs-and-protect-consumers/ https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/5.4.22-Blockchain-EO-N-9-22-signed.pdf https://www.avax.network/blog/california-dmv-makes-history-digitizes-42-million-car-titles-on-avalanche-blockchain 01:09:32 EigenLayer AVS Awards https://x.com/eigenlayer/status/1816867158032548136 01:11:02 Song-A-Day Man Suing SEC https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/nft-artists-sue-us-regulator-to-head-off-enforcement-action?utm_medium=lawdesk&campaign=BF59CD6C-4EE0-11EF-BAB6-F29F0FC802AB&utm_source=twitter https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/nft-artists-sue-us-regulator-to-head-off-enforcement-action?utm_medium=lawdesk&campaign=BF59CD6C-4EE0-11EF-BAB6-F29F0FC802AB&utm_source=twitter https://x.com/banklesshq/status/1818003379487932702?s=46 01:13:36 Raises https://x.com/hyperbolic_labs/status/1818269892367495655 https://x.com/jokerace_io/status/1818660513905360910?s=46&t=dAxCjT2P_GIrJMvMgWIpfA https://x.com/jokerace_io/status/1818660513905360910?s=46&t=dAxCjT2P_GIrJMvMgWIpfA 01:15:37 The Daily GWEI! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvCp6vKY5jDr87htKH6hgDA 01:17:27 Meme Of The Week https://x.com/LyleHauser/status/1818828084541308994 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

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

• 0:03David Hoffman?

  Bankless Nation, happy Fridays, the first week of August. And here, we cover all the weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor. And to help me in that endeavor, we got Anthony Cisano stepping in for Ryan Sean Adams as he takes a well-deserved break. How's it going, Anthony?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for having me back once again. I've lost count of how many of these I've done with you at this point.

• 0:23David Hoffman?

  Honestly, you might as well be an enshrined host of the Bankless Podcast, at least on the Friday weekly rollups.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Now, oh, that's, thank you for that. That's, that makes me feel special.

• 0:33David Hoffman?

  Well, we appreciate you coming on and everyone enjoys it. All right. So let's go into the news. We'll recap the news real quick. Trump showed up at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville and said a lot of words about crypto that people enjoyed. What did he say that got the biggest cheer? Meanwhile, the entire industry is still waiting for Kamala to say crypto for the first time. The ETH ETF flows keep on coming. ETH had its first day of net inflows, the same day that Bitcoin had its first day in a while of net outflows. Coincidence or noise? Eclipse, Layer 2 on Ethereum that runs the Solana virtual machine, just hit mainnet and opened up the doors for devs. And also, California is moving its car titles on-chain. Usually, I wouldn't get excited about this, but I think it's

• 1:15David Hoffman?

  actually worth unpacking. So we're getting to get into all of this news. Before we get into all of that news and more, a message from our friends and sponsors over at ZeroX and their flagship product, Matcha, who has just built a new pricing engine. As Ethereum has grown pricing and finding the right order and finding the right way to make the most optimized order, has gone hairy. But their brand-new pricing engine has contained all the chaos of Ethereum's liquidity and put it all into one easy-to-use pricing engine, which you can access. There's a link in the show notes. To get serious about your trade, whether you're trading $1,000 or multi-millions of dollars, congrats to you if you are. There's a link in the show notes to make sure that you get the best price for your trade. We're going to talk about some prices, some prices. Thank you to the Kraken Charts for showing

• 1:54David Hoffman?

  us the Bitcoin price. Bitcoin hitting a little bit of a low in the last like 10 days, two weeks of time. $64,690 is where we are at right now. Up about half a percent on the week, which I would call And that is similarly true for Ethereum, starting the week at 3170, ending the week at 3190, up about half a percent on the week. So overall, flat times in the market. But of course, all the real news are the Bitcoin flows, the Bitcoin ETF flows and the Ether ETF flows. Just to compare Bitcoin to Ethereum, Bitcoin has taken in 16 billion since launch.

• 2:37David Hoffman?

  And it's actually lost 1.4 billion dollars in TVL, in AUM, as they call it in TradFi land, over the last week. And also, something that actually happened new in the world of the Bitcoin ETFs this week is that GBTC launched, which is the grayscale mini trust for Bitcoin. So it's actually been a long time coming. It's interesting that the Ethereum ETFs got their grayscale mini trust before the Bitcoin ETF trust. But this is why the grayscale GBTC ETF on the New York Stock Exchange is actually down 10% because 10% of that AUM went into the mini trust, where you get much lower fees than the grayscale, bigger Bitcoin ETF.

• 3:18David Hoffman?

  Anthony, I know you're excited about this. The ETH ETFs have been trading for six days now? Six days now? Yeah. And while we are losing AUM because of the outflows out of the grayscale ETH E trust, we did have our first day yesterday of 33.7 million dollar inflows. That's on the 30th of July. Now that the ETFs are finally here, Anthony, especially the ETFs, overall, just vibe check sentiment. What are you watching for as you are watching the Ether ETF flows?

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think I had been saying this for a little while on my own show. The two main things that I'd be watching for were pretty obvious. Basically, the inflows from the new ETFs and also the outflows from the existing ETH product, which was converted into an ETF recently, as you were just talking about, with regards to grayscale having their GBTC product, same thing happened with kind of ETH. And honestly, it's all playing out as expected. You know, everyone expected there to be, for there to be these big outflows out of ETH for whatever reason, right? Maybe people wanted to change which ETF they're with. Because ETH is a 2.5% fee, you can go get a 0.15% fee on the Grayscale Mini Trust. So you can actually just get out of ETH and go straight to the Grayscale Mini Trust. Uh, and you'll be able to, to take advantage of that. But then every other ETF is like 0.2, 0.25% fees.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  So you're actually like mad if you're paying 2.5% fees in ETH, just especially if you're paying attention. Obviously, Grayscale is banking on a lot of people not paying attention because there's still what 40, 40%? I, I, I think of the original AUM in GBTC. Whereas with ETH, there's still a, a large chunk as well. But yeah, if you look at this table that you've got in front of you, it basically shows that most, I mean, all the outflows came from ETH. It's been pretty big. It was front loaded, like in the, in the first week, there was a lot. But it's started to slow down and we've got some big inflows too. I think total inflows is like 1.3 billion dollars or something like that. So the inflows have offset a lot of it, but I think the last time I checked, the total flows is like negative 400, 300 million or something like that for the whole period.

• 5:15David Hoffman?

  483 million is our net outflows. So, so that's outflows out of Grayscale that we have not regained in the other Ethereum ETFs.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. And, and honestly, I, I think that this is all very short-term noise because we know that this is finite selling, finite outflows from ETH. And we know that with the ETFs, they're a passive flow, long-term vehicle. And we know that with, from the BTC ETFs, that they've just kept sucking in money over like the last six months. So we can expect a repeat in the ETH ETFs. So yeah, that doesn't concern me at all, but I think it's only been a week, you know, there's not enough data to look at, but it's playing out exactly as expected, I think.

• 5:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Bitwise still coming in, in second place behind BlackRock for AUM. Bitwise got 284 million dollars of AUM. BlackRock Hex has 623, uh, so not too many days away before BlackRock's going to punch through that $1 billion number. Uh, and Fidelity finally catching up, uh, to Bitwise with 279, but still in that third position spot. I do like, I do like looking at this chart, which is the, uh, comparing the Grayscale GBTC outflows. Uh, when the Bitcoin ETFs launched versus the Grayscale ETH E outflows. And you can see that ETH E is outflowing at a faster rate than the Grayscale ETFs. When when the Bitcoin ETFs launched.

• 6:32David Hoffman?

  And I feel like there's a number of different possible interpretations and maybe it's the truth is a little bit of of all of them. A, we've seen this story before, so like we know, hey, like what what happens when the ETFs launch? Like, well, if you're in grayscale, the answer is to get out of grayscale. Another answer is just like, well, maybe there's just actually just less interest in holding the ETH versus grayscale. Maybe there was more of a trade on ETH than there was on GBTC. How what would you account for the faster outflowing out of ETH in the Ethereum ETFs versus the Bitcoin ETFs?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that you're on the money with like people, you know, we already know this story, how it plays out. People are just getting out faster this time. But we're also in different market conditions where essentially when the BTC ETFs launched, it was a much more bullish period than it is for the ETFs. So that might be influencing things as well. But yeah, it has been interesting to see that the flows are coming out faster here. But it also might be that there are potentially bigger holders of ETH than there were of GBTC. Maybe the big holders of GBTC had already sold off everything and the ETH ones were still in there. And they were just waiting until it got converted in order to do this. But at the same time as well, the mini trust for the ETH, the ETH product was launched by grayscale from day one.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Not like with GBTC and BTC that they've launched now with their mini trust.

• 7:56David Hoffman?

  There was a place to outflow too.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, more so than the other ETF. So there is another place to outflow to. And as I said, it has got the cheapest fee right now, 0.15%, which is extremely tempting. Like if you if you're paying 2.5% in ETH and you've got that option, you're not going to stay in ETH. And some people will bring up that the fact that long term capital gains for these holders, where they're just waiting until they hit long term capital gains because maybe they bought when the discount was closing. Because, oh, sorry, when the discount was very steep, I think it was like 50% at some point or something like that. And then once it goes into long term capital gains, they'll rotate out of ETH into another product. I mean, I, as you said, like the story seems the same. It seems like ETH will have some AUM retained, maybe like 40% of the original AUM. But most of it should outflow over time into these other ETFs.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And the net flows is all that matters. As long as the net flows are positive, I don't think any of the other stuff matters.

• 8:48David Hoffman?

  And the ETH Mini Trust with the 0.15% grayscale fee, the Mini Trust for the Ethereum ETFs, has taken in $200 million of inflows, 200 million on the dot, whereas the grayscale...

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Plus, they had that automatic conversion of about $1 billion of ETH into the Mini Trust, like they just did with GBTC.

• 9:09David Hoffman?

  Oh, interesting. Oh, right.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  But that doesn't count in this, I mean, is that the top? But it doesn't, it's like the seed capital, but it doesn't count as the inflows because it was an automatic thing. But that also, yeah, I mean, counts, right? That's $1 billion that's not coming out of ETH. It's in the Mini Trust now.

• 9:24David Hoffman?

  Because that would have otherwise have totally come out. Okay, just some number for the listeners. At Genesis, when we launched the Ethereum ETFs, the grayscale ETH E Trust, which got converted into the ETF, had $9.2 billion worth of ETH in it. And then $1 billion, $1.02 billion, got automatically rolled into the ETH Mini Trust with a much lower fee. And so that would, as presumed to what would have been outflows, is now just going to stay as the lowest fee on the market, which is the grayscale Mini Trust with 0.15. And then in addition to that, the grayscale Mini Trust has also absorbed $200 million.

• 10:04David Hoffman?

  So we are now at $1.2 billion of ETH in the grayscale Mini Trust, which we could have only assumed would have been outflows. Nonetheless, grayscale the ETH has still lost basically $2 billion worth of outflows, which has mostly been absorbed by the rest of the market, except for a net loss of about $483 million of ETH since the launch.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  And I think that, just one thing on that, like the fact that maybe there are people that came out of ETH and they're expecting the price of ETH to drop because of this kind of continued outflow and they don't want to buy back in yet. Maybe they do plan to buy back in, but they're just waiting because maybe they can get a better entry. Like, there is definitely an element of that, especially if there was a bunch of people playing this as a way to trade ETH, as a way to kind of stack more ETH here. So I think that that's happening. There because there's so much, I don't know, I wouldn't call it FUD, but there's so much attention on this where people are like, look at all these outflows, you know, the ETH price is going to go back to the 2000s, then we can buy back in. Obviously, playing that game is risky, but I'm sure there is a chunk of that capital playing that game

• 11:13Speaker 01

  that will eventually come back in. And that's why I said that the net flows over time, as long as they're positive, that's all that really matters, I think.

• 11:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And I think we saw the same exact dynamic with the Bitcoin ETFs once they launched. Everyone was surprised by both the amount of inflows, but then also the amount of outflows from grayscale. And everyone realized like the Bitcoin price is not going up until the grayscale outflows cease. And that's more or less what happened. And I expect that's kind of like the same, the same dynamic that's outplay here. Like, why wouldn't it be? So like the fact that we're seeing faster ETH outflows, it's like, well, that's the thing preventing the ETH price from going up. But it's happening faster. So at least we're getting it out of the way. So it's kind of like a wash. I don't really have any like strong opinions as to whether it's bearish or bullish.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  It's noise and it's the same as the rest of what summer has been for the price. It's just that summer lull.

• 12:03David Hoffman?

  It's also summer, yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's noisy. Like, if you go back and look at the historical summers of crypto, most of them have just been flat because people are outside doing things, except COVID where we had lockdowns.

• 12:14David Hoffman?

  Right, except for COVID, where we had DeFi summer instead.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So that's just the classic thing in crypto. And I know people get anty because they're like, oh, look at the stock market going up. It's like, well, the stock market is a different beast. It's not, the stock market isn't viewed as this hyper risky asset class like crypto.

• 12:32David Hoffman?

  And people are paid to stay home and pay attention to the stock market.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:35David Hoffman?

  In crypto, our general vacation policies are a little bit more lenient than that.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, for now.

• 12:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Nate Geraci tweeted out, in one week of trading, the iShares Ethereum ETF, that's the BlackRock, already is in the top 15 inflows of all ETFs launched this year. Top 15 out of approximately 330 new ETFs. Top four inflows all spot Bitcoin ETFs, by the way. So in one week, Ethereum, the Ethereum ETF from BlackRock has taken in more total AUM than all the other ETFs launched this year. Or, excuse me, top 15 of the Ethereum, of the ETFs launched this year. So you can't really say that.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  In one week, right? Like, I can't wait to see.

• 13:16David Hoffman?

  One week versus seven months.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't wait to see what that's like in a few months. I think it's going to be much, much higher than that, which is pretty cool.

• 13:24David Hoffman?

  It is pretty interesting to note that on July 30th, so two days ago at the time of recording, Bitcoin had a day of outflows, which is rare for Bitcoin, lost $18 million in AUM. But that was also the one day that Ether, the Ethereum ETFs, had net inflows of $33 million. And so it could be noise, but also we do know that there is going to be some amount of rebalancing between people with a Bitcoin-only ETF portfolio, looking to have both of the major crypto assets in their balance sheet. I don't know if you have any comments or insights on that, Anthony?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  I mean, I fully expect that that's happening. You know, there's this kind of thing with portfolio theories where you weight things on market cap, right? It's a very standard thing. So if you're weighting like 70% BTC, 30% ETH, because that's the rough market cap ratio right now, then I would expect there to be a lot of people doing that. Because especially if maybe they were like more bullish on ETH than BTC, but they bought BTC because that was the only thing they could buy with the ETFs for six months. And now they're like, well, I don't want to hold the BTC ETF anymore. I actually wanted to hold ETH, and they're converting into ETH instead of being in BTC. So there is definitely conversion going on. I think that's pretty clear from the numbers. But I do think it'll settle at that like market cap weighted thing and then rebalance every so-and-so month, like what happens in the TradFi world.

• 14:41David Hoffman?

  I thought this was pretty cool. On the 25th of July, Bitwise and Bitwise's friends and family got to go to the stock market to ring the bell, ring the bell. And they raised the ETH W, the Bitwise ETH ETF flag in front of the stock market, which I think is just like, it's the juxtaposition there, I think, is pretty cool. Nate Gershey tweets out, "What a moment. The word Ethereum hanging from 120-year-old stock market building in New York. Picture might end up in the history books someday."

• 15:11David Hoffman?

  Advertising an internet service provider on a phone company or in like a white paper in a you know, like the white pages.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Advertising Wikipedia on a library.

• 15:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right. Something is funny about this, like we're having some sort of like technology inversion where like we have, we have the deeper stack, the deeper tech stack being advertised on just like some anarchic technology. I thought it was pretty cool.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I saw a tweet about it where someone said, you know, today Ethereum's on the stock market, but tomorrow the stock market will be on Ethereum. That was a pretty good way to put it.

• 15:43David Hoffman?

  Exactly. Yeah, the stock market gets to raise an Ethereum flag and then Ethereum gets to put the entire stock market on itself.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 15:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and that's why it's there. One thing of note, as we are watching the maturation of the ETFs, the state of Michigan, I'm pretty sure Anthony Cusano's favorite state.

• 16:03David Hoffman?

  Do you know where Michigan is, Anthony?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  I've got no idea where it is. If you, if you paid me money to point to it on the map, I would lose that, I would lose that money. Like, I wouldn't get that money at all. I'd point to like New York or something.

• 16:19David Hoffman?

  Anyways, the state of Michigan retirement system has reported owning $6.6 million of the ARC Bitcoin ETF. And so congratulations to all the soon to be retirees in the state of Michigan because you now have a Bitcoin in your pension portfolio. And this is where it starts, the first date out of the 50 to get Bitcoin in their pension. This is what happens when you have an ETF. The world of ETFs and retirement and diversification funds and all these things, their disposition is like, well, they actually have to have a reason not to invest. It's not like, hey, should we add Bitcoin to our balance sheet? Should we add ETH to our balance sheet? It's actually, why would we not do this? Why would we not diversify into this new asset that has been legitimized by BlackRock?

• 17:03David Hoffman?

  That's just the order of operations of how people try to preserve wealth think. I think in crypto, we are all trying to grow wealth, which generally means concentrated assets, concentrated bets. But in the world of wealth preservation, you diversify. And so your disposition is to include more things into your portfolio. And so this is Bitcoin just getting into the world of the state of Michigan, the great state of Michigan. And I'm sure this is just going to be a trend that Michigan is just like leading this like trend here.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah, I agree with you. Now that the ETF is alive, like, these things can happen before they couldn't, and that's simple as that.

• 17:41David Hoffman?

  Totally. Total crypto market cap 2.4 trillion on the week, still struggling to get out of the two range. We've been in here for a really long time. Getting into the world of layer twos, this layer two update brought to you by Mantle, a layer two, of which I enjoy very deeply. Forty one point seven billion dollars locked in layer twos, which is a number that's been like flat for quite a long time now, since March of this year. March of this year, we hit forty three billion for the first time, and we've been ranging around there ever since. But if you go to activity, that activity number is really, really good. We've been holding twenty two, twenty three X scaling factor, and the scaling factor is you take the number of transactions per second that you can do on the Ethereum layer one, how many transactions per second are doing, are all the layer twos doing

• 18:25David Hoffman?

  in aggregate? And the answer is twenty three Ethereum's. And we've been holding twenty three Ethereum's since for two months now, two months in a row. Anthony, what are your thoughts on just like the growth of the layer two ecosystem?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Not surprised at all, considering that we kind of injected a massive stimulus package into the layer two ecosystem when we put blobs live in March, and blobs are still free, or basically free at this point in time, because they haven't reached the saturation point yet. Well, they have it like some periods of time, but like not sustained. So yeah, it makes total sense here that we're seeing this. And also, I think that now that there's just all this extra space, builders are building new and novel things. I think gaming is definitely kind of taking off on these L3s, like I think Proof of Play and Zai, I think those two are gaming L3s. So yeah, there are, yeah, there's a lot happening that wasn't happening before because of the extra capacity. But it just shows that the Ethereum ecosystem is is growing, and the rollup centric

• 19:20Speaker 01

  roadmap is definitely playing out as we expected. But I do wonder what this looks like kind of long term, because as we know, blobs are a finite resource. Once they start reaching saturation, the costs go up. So will we need to, we will definitely need to like scale blobs again. We are already doing that. There's already a lot of work on that. But I'm curious to see when we reach that point where it becomes saturated, just like L1 blobs. Block space is saturated, when will blob space be saturated? And I think it's coming sooner than than people think. Because if this is like this during like a summer lull kind of crab period in the market, imagine what it's going to be like when the market heats up again. And all that activity follows with that. And we bring all these new people on with base pushing really hard, especially, you know, Coinbase pushing their users to base, pushing payments on there.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  So I fully expect this activity to just skyrocket. It's going to be very, very cool to see.

• 20:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and you're totally right. A lot of this new transaction demand, Zai and Proof of Play, these are both layer threes. I think Proof of Play is also-

• 20:17Speaker 01

  You can click rollups only on the on the thing there, and it'll filter out just the rollups, like just the things using blobs. And it's still, like, if you click that, yeah, it'll still be up at all time highs.

• 20:28David Hoffman?

  Okay, so take away layer threes, and you have just layer twos that are consuming layer one blob space. You have a scaling factor of 10. You add on the layer threes, though. Like, Zai, Proof of Play, Zai is a gaming-specific layer three. I think this is correct, where it's actually just one game. This is one game consuming a lot of this transactional demand. And we're getting 105 transactions per second over the past like 24 hours. And so like, this is like a frontier of rollups that we are just beginning to breach. You can only imagine, once like this world becomes saturated, and we have like hundreds of games, all individually having their own rollup space, settling down to layer twos. Like, the whole entire Ethereum rollup-centric roadmap, is it really just, we are just scratching the surface of what we can do.

• 21:12David Hoffman?

  And it makes sense to start with chains that are very proximate to what Ethereum is. This is Arbitrum, this is Optimism, generalized block space on layer two that just use generalized block space on layer one. But as we get more specific, we're also going to get more scale. And so I'm expecting this kind of scaling factor, which it already is, to just hockey-stick even further. Like, we jumped from, it was like, we were hanging around like 60 transactions per second, and then we had Denkoon, and then we got up to like 160, 180. And now we're at 280, this number of transactions per second, secured by Ethereum. Secured in the network of chains that Ethereum secures, and I just expect to just, you know, blow through thousands and thousands and thousands.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. And the L2s are doing their own scalability too. I mean, Base has been talking about this. I mean, well, not Base, Jesse Pollock from Base has been talking about this a lot on Twitter, where they're raising the gas limit. It's at like 10 mega gas per second right now. I think they want to get to like 1 gigas. That's the North Star. But that's up from, I think it started at like 2 or 2.5 or something. So they've done an extra like 4, 5x scalability increase just themselves, which will keep pushing their TPS up, keep pushing their activity up while fees remain low. But as I said before, once we saturate blob space and blobs start getting, you know, expensive, then we'll see, probably see fees start going up a little bit, but that's just by design. And then we give more blob space for the L2s and away we go. It's like that cat and mouse game that I've spoken about before, I think.

• 22:39David Hoffman?

  Hundred percent. Last thing in the market section, Fed. We had, there was a FOMC meeting that kind of went under the radar. People weren't really talking about it. People weren't really bullish or bearish on it. And that's because the Fed decided to hold rates steady while also noting progress on inflation. So slowly incrementally approaching that 2% target, but the Fed not really ready to make any decision about raising or lowering interest rates. I think everyone is kind of gearing up for the lowering, the rate cut cycle, and the lowering of interest rates. But we all kind of know it's like not, not here yet. It's on the horizon, but not here yet. I don't know if you have any comments in the macro world, Anthony?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I think people are just bored of it at this point. Remember when everyone was watching like every inflation day? And like the CPI numbers and it's like glued to their screen and the market would react violently to it. Now it's like, yeah, as you said, it's a nothing burger. Like no one really cares anymore because it's just been such a long time of this same story. And I think at this point, people are just bored of it. You know, that's just the way it goes, I think, with the news cycles. And yeah, I mean, I expect the Fed to cut rather than raise in the next kind of like few months. But I think the market already front ran that. Like I brought this up before, but ETH bottomed when inflation was at its peak in June 2022. Like, so the market doesn't wait around for J-Power to say, oh, it's, you know, tick, you can go gig along now on the market.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  No, no, no. It does that in anticipation of him saying that.

• 24:06David Hoffman?

  Powell did say that while there's no decision being made now, a cut could come as soon as September if the economic data showed inflation easing, which that is the trend. And so we just need that trend to continue. I don't really think we're going to have like the rate cut bull market, like the price appreciation of all these like risk on assets because of rate cutting until we get like our third rate cut. We're currently at five and a quarter to five and a half of short-term interest rates. Once we get into the low fours with the trend can like pointing down to the threes, then all of a sudden everyone's like, yo, like that money is coming out of those money markets because there's all-time highs in money, in money markets, dollars in T-bills in money markets earning that

• 24:48David Hoffman?

  like high four, low five percent interest rates. And that's because like the stock market, it's been told to offer you somewhere between a seven to eight percent yearly return on average. But that's on risk. So why would you, why would you take risk when you could just get an assured five percent in money market? As soon as that number, people starting to realize that number is going to hit three, all of a sudden people are going to go seek risk elsewhere, which is exactly what we saw during the 2021 market mania. And then people are going to pile on down the risk curve. That's kind of the thing that everyone's waiting in anticipation for. But since we know it's not happening right now, it's still on the horizon. So we haven't made that move yet. That's kind of my analysis.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, classic liquidity cycle things, as you mentioned, like there's just money right now just locked in in one place. And then once that place not doesn't become cozy little home anymore, and they want to go somewhere else, they'll leave. And yeah, that's when we get the craziness, I think, in especially in crypto, because crypto is so risk on. And it really requires those, I guess, like for the, for the long tail of assets, maybe not for ETH and BTC, but for like the long tail that really aren't really, are kind of worthless to begin with. But the reason they go up is because there's just so much money coming into the market at once. And everyone's like, oh, I've got so much money. I'm rich. I'm going to go gamble it on these things. And yeah, and they get rewarded for a while doing that. But I think, yeah, that that'll definitely happen at some point in the near future.

• 26:11David Hoffman?

  I do, I've said this before on Weekly Rollups and I'll say it again. The like $16 trillion that was printed in 2021 and in response to COVID of M2 money supply, we printed like 4 trillion and then as a result of that 16 trillion was created because that's how the banking system works. That money is still out there. Like just because we've had high interest rates, we've recalled maybe like 3% of that money in interest rates. But like $16 trillion is still out there, ready to buy risk on bags as soon as we can get that money out of that, out of the money market funds. Like it's not that that money's disappeared, like we still have COVID levels of money. It's just like locked up in T-bills. And so as soon as the rate cuts come, you're going to see like assets just soar.

• 26:56David Hoffman?

  That's, that's my, that's my hot take. It's not happening soon. Maybe it'll happen in 2025. Hopefully it happens in 2025. That would be enjoyable. All right, coming up next, what was everything that Donald Trump said at the Bitcoin conference, but also not just Trump, RFK Jr. made an appearance. Edward Snowden was there virtually. Cynthia Lummis proposed a bill. So we're going to get to all of that, everything that would happen at the Bitcoin conference and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken, our preferred place to dump your fiat and buy crypto. Do it before all the money comes out of the money market funds. There is a link in the show notes to get started with Kraken today. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Kraken, one of the longest-standing and most secure crypto platforms in the world.

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• 28:22David Hoffman?

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• 29:07David Hoffman?

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• 29:51David Hoffman?

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• 30:34David Hoffman?

  now has moved to Nashville, because I think the Bitcoin conference just keeps on growing bigger and bigger and bigger. And Donald Trump was there. Donald Trump was there for day three. He gave a 40-minute speech, so that's too long for us to play, but we'll play some of the clips. Actually, we're going to play a bunch of clips from various speakers of the Bitcoin conference. So let's go ahead and start with some of the words that Donald Trump said going into Bitcoin, or ending Bitcoin 2024.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Hello Bitcoiners. Thank you very much. Hello. It's good to be with you. It's good to be with you. But I'm thrilled to be here in Nashville to become the first American president ever to address a Bitcoin event anywhere in the world. But as well as all of the Bitcoin luminaries and legends here, you have a legends in this room. They really are. Congratulations. Would the legends please stand? Oh, everyone's standing anyway. That's nice, because we have to talk about crypto. We have to talk about Bitcoin. We have to talk about all these great companies.

• 31:41David Hoffman?

  So that was his introduction, just calling everyone geniuses. I thought the funniest part of this speech was when he addressed the entire Bitcoin conference. His high IQ. This is when he was calling Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, two male models with a brain.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Hey, that's accurate.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  That's a good description. Oh, man.

• 32:05David Hoffman?

  Did you listen to the entire speech?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Not the entire speech, but I saw the clips on Twitter. And I thought it was, I mean, the funniest clip was when he basically said that he would fire Gary Gensler, because like, it was like telling the wolves that he was about to feed them. It was just amazing. And I was like, oh, you know what? Like, that'd be nice if if someone, and it doesn't have to be Trump, it could be anyone, just fired Gary Gensler because he is public enemy number one for for crypto. But I think, yeah, a lot. I mean, a lot of the comments, he was making a lot of grand promises, of course, as politicians do. And I don't know, like, I don't want to get political about it. But I feel like a lot of it, there's a lot of pandering as well. It's like, oh, I'm gonna tell them what they want to hear, you know, because these guys have been treated so badly by by the Democrat Party, being so hostile

• 32:50Speaker 01

  towards crypto, which is fair enough. Like, I don't think anyone in crypto can be criticized for being very, I guess, like hostile to back at Democrats, since they've been so hostile towards crypto people. But yeah, it was just funny listening to some of the comments being like, this guy would fit in right right in on crypto Twitter, right? Like, if Trump was on crypto Twitter, he'd fit right in.

• 33:10David Hoffman?

  And the firing Gary Gensler, we're gonna play that clip. That was definitely the loudest part of the speech. We got a few more clips to play. So let's play the section right here.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  My promise to each and every one of you is this. I will be the pro innovation and pro Bitcoin president that America needs and our citizens deserve. This will be one industry, but this will be a thriving industry, a great industry, and I'm going to be doing the same thing for every other industry also. Our nation has never thrived by trying to censor new ideas and shut down the dreams of our people. America always plants our flag on the next frontier and pushes boldly ahead. We have to do that. We haven't been doing that for a long time.

• 33:52David Hoffman?

  That was towards the end of his speech. And then in the middle, there was, like I said, a 40 40 minute speech. But here is the section where he talks about how he will fire Gary Gensler.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman.

• 34:14David Hoffman?

  Crowd stands, everyone stands up, starts cheering.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  I didn't know he was that unpopular.

• 34:20David Hoffman?

  And that's what I thought was interesting, because he actually didn't know that Gary Gensler was that unpopular with us.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but I think, like, I mean, he was gonna fire him anyway, like, that's typically what happens, right? You're not gonna, he's not gonna let a Democrat appointee be in charge of the SEC if he's president, like, but what I also found a little bit funny was that a lot of Bitcoiners have actually been praising the SEC for their, for them targeting, like, the things that they consider to be scams. So it was, it was, it was kind of funny seeing that that got such a positive reaction. It was like, guys, like, Gary Gensler's left you alone. He hasn't gone after Bitcoin, like, so like, why do you hate him so much?

• 34:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, okay, so the bit is, is that, like, there's a lot of the Bitcoin maxis, the hardcore Bitcoiners, the cyber hornets, are like, yeah, Ethereum is a security and you should go after all securities. Totally, like, backwards to, like, crypto, just, like, trying to shut the door behind them. But I would definitely say that that is a minority of Bitcoiners. These are the loud Bitcoiners on crypto Twitter who just want, like, they just want to shut the door behind them. I don't think that's the majority of Bitcoiners. I think, like, the people at Bitcoin 2024 are crypto people, even though crypto is kind of like a bad word in these, like, hyper Bitcoin circles. Nonetheless-

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Didn't someone get booed for saying crypto? Didn't Trump say crypto when he got booed or something as well?

• 35:39David Hoffman?

  I wouldn't be surprised.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  That's what I was judging it-

• 35:41David Hoffman?

  I wouldn't be surprised.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  That's what I was kind of judging it on. Like, I don't know what the makeup of the conference, obviously, is, but I'm sure you're right. There's, there's varying different people there. But I did see some comments from, like, the Bitcoin maxis on Twitter being like, "Why are we cheering for this? We like Gary Gensler. He protects Bitcoin and goes after the shitcoiners, right?"

• 35:56David Hoffman?

  Wow, wow. Okay, let me, let me play the second half of this clip where Trump realizes that he has stumbled into something that is very popular with this crowd of people.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  I didn't know he was that unpopular.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Let me say it again. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler.

• 36:17David Hoffman?

  So he's surprised. That this crowd of people is just so into the fact that he's gonna fire Gary Gensler on day one.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  What's funny about that is that you can actually translate that beyond Trump. I actually think a lot of politicians don't realize just how like hostile Gensler has been towards crypto, on both sides of the aisle, right? Yeah, they're not, they're just not paying attention to it because it's, it's just not something that's in their remit and it's not something they really care to pay attention to. Like, so I feel like if they knew just how, I guess, like, popular it was to say that you were gonna do these things, like fire Gary Gensler, you know, be pro crypto, they would probably do it. And as you said, we're still waiting for the Democrats, well, specifically under Kamala now, we're still waiting for them to say positive things about crypto and actually make an action towards it as well, not just say things. But I, I do think a lot of it's due to that. Like, if, I mean, Trump has been close to crypto for a while now.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  And if he didn't know just how unpopular Gensler was, like, what do you, but what do we think the other politicians are, are in the know about, right?

• 37:19David Hoffman?

  To me, this whole, like, Trump at Bitcoin 2024 is just like free notes for the Democratic Party. Just like, they, they get to have some of all the same data that, that Trump got while he gave his speech. Okay, so it was a 45, 40 minute speech, and if you've ever listened to a Trump speech, it's kind of just like a long, when he just, he just goes around in circles, he kind of rambles. This is like normal, this is how a Trump speech works. But like, once you summarize everything, Nick Carter put it up and summarized it pretty well. Here's all the things that Trump said in, in his very long speech. Fire Gary Gensler and Operation Choke Point 2.0, which it was pretty cool for Donald Trump to actually name Operation Choke Point 2.0, which is coined by Nick Carter.

• 38:03David Hoffman?

  And the progressives' war on crypto, have a strategic Bitcoin reserves, clarify crypto rules within 100 days, and then embrace stable coins for dollar dominance. Now, are these all original ideas that Trump thinks are good? Or is this somebody, an advisor, either David Bailey or J D Vance, his vice president, who's a Bitcoiner? Are these people just like telling him what to say? Like, it's definitely the latter. But that's also how politics works. Like, this isn't like normal, or this isn't irregular. Like, I don't necessarily believe that any meaningful politician is going to deeply care about our industry. I think they are just going to get elected and say what needs to get elected, and that's kind of how it works.

• 38:45David Hoffman?

  And so, these are like, kind of, what Nick Carter says, "Everything we could have possibly asked for and more." And so, if this is where the Overton window has moved for at least one of the two political parties, you can't really be disappointed about crypto's legitimacy within the United States.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. What gives me pause is the fact that, like, it's all still just words, right? And obviously, Trump can't do anything right now because he's not president. Like, I understand that. But at the same time, like, yeah, until it's actually kind of put into action, I mean, I'm not a U.S. citizen, I can't vote anyways, it doesn't matter. But until it's actually put into action here, I just, I try to take a step back and be like, okay, you know, politicians make promises all the time, they break promises all the time, let's just be real about this. But I also wish the crypto was just a bipartisan thing. I don't want it to be a partisan thing. It doesn't actually help anyone for it to be this much of a kind of divide between the two parties. So I do hope that over time, the two parties can come together. And I know that might be an unpopular take, where people say, "The Democrats and the progressives,

• 39:48Speaker 01

  they've hated crypto for so long, why are you trying to get them on side?" It's like, because everyone benefits if both of the parties are on side.

• 39:55David Hoffman?

  Hundred percent.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  I don't understand why we should just like, give up and be like, "Okay, well, they're gonna hate us forever, let's give up on them." What if they win? What if Kamala becomes president? What then, guys? Like, so let's try and work to bring everyone towards the pro-crypto side, instead of alienating one side and focusing on the other. Because, yes, okay, they've alienated us, they've hated us for a while now, but, yeah, I mean, it just gets worse if we give them even more reasons not to like us.

• 40:21David Hoffman?

  Hundred percent. Donald Trump not the only person to speak at Bitcoin 2024. RFK Jr. also came on stage and said some very big words, so here they are.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  I will sign another executive order directing the US Treasury to purchase 550 Bitcoin daily until the US has built a reserve of at least 4 million Bitcoins.

• 40:51David Hoffman?

  So we're gonna buy, according to RFK Jr., if he's elected president, which he's probably not gonna be elected president. We're just going to DCA into Bitcoin, 550 Bitcoin a day, until we own 4 million Bitcoin. Out of the 21 million Bitcoins. I mean, it's a great sentiment. These are empty promises because he's definitely not going to become president. But also, it's a terrible strategy of just like, if you want to own 4 million Bitcoin, you don't broadcast that you're gonna buy 550 Bitcoin a day.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  If we're speaking of pandering, this is like the most pandering like I've ever... Yeah, this is peak pandering. Like, one, the US government earning 4 million BTC would be one of the most bearish things to ever happen to Bitcoin if they earned that much of the supply. Because, I mean, that's like, what, a quarter of the circulating supply? Like, you said 21 million, but there's like a lot of it that's actually not circulating because it was mined in the early days and lost and things like that. But that's just so much supply concentration. So essentially, you've just got like, it's just the US coin now. It's like Bitcoin just becomes like the US coin. Like, it wouldn't be good. But also, like, the fact that he's saying this, like, it's never gonna happen. Like, this is just ridiculous. And when I saw this, I was just like, is he just trying to steal Trump's thunder?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Because Trump said something similar where he's like, I'm gonna create a Bitcoin reserve. And Jeff, I think this speech is before Trump's. And he's like, yeah, we're gonna like buy so much Bitcoin.

• 42:13David Hoffman?

  Make a bigger Bitcoin reserve.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  He may as well have just told everyone, I want to make you all rich. I'm literally trying to buy your votes.

• 42:21David Hoffman?

  Here's another quote from his... "The cascading impact of these actions will move Bitcoin to a valuation of hundreds of trillions of dollars." He's literally saying, "Elect me, I will pump your bags." Like, in too many words, just like saying he's gonna pump your bags.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. He's almost there. Like, he's just one kind of sentence removed from literally saying that.

• 42:42David Hoffman?

  Edward Snowden was there and Edward Snowden has appeared at previous Bitcoin conferences. And he just talked actually about just the progress of the Bitcoin industry. Uh, as he has watched it from afar in Russia is where he is. I believe so, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, he says, but we haven't won yet. We have to make sure that we don't get cocky. Uh, I watched actually Edward Snowden live in, in person. He wasn't in person, but I was at the Bitcoin conference. Uh, in 2020 or 2019, right before COVID. Uh, and he was like deeply aware of like some of the issues of Bitcoin, like name dropped Eric Voorhees, who was there at the conference. Uh, it was pretty cool. Uh, BlackRock's head of digital assets team Robbie, uh, says, uh, the, as a result, uh,

• 43:25David Hoffman?

  because of the ETFs, they get to look at like who's buying and who, who's, uh, selling. Uh, and he has, he says that the ETF buyers of the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF have almost entirely been buy and hold investors, otherwise known as hodlers. Uh, the BlackRock spot ETF has had one day of negative flows in six months, he said. So kind of just like speaking to the long time horizons nature of Bitcoin holders, which Bitcoiners truly like. Uh, Senator Cynthia Lummis actually did introduce legislation to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Uh, so at least when all the other politicians are like saying words about, uh, saying how they're going to buy Bitcoin and put it on the balance sheet. Cynthia Lummis, who's a politician, a senator, comes in and says, so she's going to establish legislation,

• 44:10David Hoffman?

  introduce legislation. So slightly more real, slightly more real. Uh, and then overall, Nick Carter sums it up, uh, the Bitcoin conference, probably the most bullish single political event in Bitcoin history. Uh, even if you think a lot of these promises are vapid, of which I, I do. And I think that's the kind of the default case. You can't really deny the fact that like words also do matter. Uh, and we get Scott, some of the most bullish words from the most biggest people, uh, inside of, in Bitcoin, uh, in the Bitcoin conference. Like the fact that Donald Trump is at a Bitcoin conference is kind of huge. Whether he was paid to be there or not, it, it kind of, it kind of doesn't really matter in my opinion. Uh, it's the Overton window has shifted so far away from the extremely negative sentiment

• 44:52David Hoffman?

  that the crypto industry had in 2022, uh, to be probably some of the most positive that we've ever had ever, like that whiplash is kind of insane.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's an overall positive. I'm not gonna, not gonna say it's a negative, definitely not. Regardless of, of your politics, you definitely have to recognize that it's a huge deal for a presidential candidate to be at a Bitcoin conference. Like, that is just, I mean, just saying that and just seeing it actually happen, even a few years ago, if you told someone that a presidential candidate was gonna actually be at a Bitcoin conference and be actually saying the things that Bitcoiners believe and Bitcoiners, you know, have a strong kind of liking of, that, yeah, people would have called you crazy, people would have said, no, that's, that's ridiculous. Because actually, Trump, in particular, was bearish on crypto at one point. I think, I don't remember when it was, he tweeted out saying he didn't believe Bitcoin was valuable.

• 45:42David Hoffman?

  It was during his presidency, yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so I think it was maybe 2019 or 2020 when he said that. So yeah, I mean, that's a massive shift that's happened as well. And this goes back to what I was saying earlier about how the fact that, well, if Trump can come around to crypto, why can't the Democrats as well? Like, I know, right now, it seems bleak because they've been so hostile, but if we keep working to bring them to the table and bring them around, which you're about to show here on, on Twitter, I think that's a net positive for everyone as well.

• 46:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and speaking of, not to be ignored, some Democrats are starting to be frustrated, fed up with the lack of positive stance to crypto of their own party. And so this is a letter that Democrat politicians have written to the DNC, the Democratic National Convention, asking the party to pivot away from the anti-Bitcoin policies of Elizabeth Warren. The analysis here is it's likely in response to polling data, the Republicans' pro-Bitcoin policies, and President Trump speaking at the Bitcoin conference. So the, the timing of this letter was interesting, July 26th, the same time as the conference. The conference has just started. This is actually the day before the Trump, the Trump speech. I'll just read one segment out

• 46:53David Hoffman?

  of this letter. It's not a terribly long letter, so there's a link in the show notes if you want to read the whole thing. "Representing the emerging stance of the Democratic Party in the United States, leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a majority of House Democratic leadership have recently supported pro-digital asset legislation." However, there is a public perception that the party holds a negative viewpoint on digital assets largely due to the current SEC's approach to these transformative technologies. We believe this is previous hostility does not reflect our party's progressive, forward-looking and inclusive values. A refreshed leader of the ticket represents an opportunity to change that perception. And then it goes on and on about why this ought to be the

• 47:36David Hoffman?

  case. And then they said, we respectfully call on you, you being the DNC, which is basically the whole entire Democratic Party, to do four things: include pro-digital asset language in the party's platform, select a vice president candidate sophisticated in digital asset policy, select a pro-innovation SEC chair, and engage with industry experts. Basically asking for a full pivot of the DNC, of the Democratic Party's stance. And then signing this letter are a number of congressmen and women and a number of other Democratic politicians, about like 20 to 25 of them. So like, not an insignificant number. So the timing of this is obviously very strategic. I think the pressure is on

• 48:20David Hoffman?

  to get the Kamala campaign to say something about crypto. The word on the street is, if you're talking to people who are in DC who are familiar with the matter, the crypto issue is on the radar of Kamala Harris and her campaign. And it has been on the radar since the moment of her endorsement by President Biden. There's a crypto super PAC in the United States that has now the number one amount of capital raised, $200 million, $202 million. It's the Fair Shake Political Action Committee. And it is, this is a bipartisan committee. It now surpasses both the biggest Republican and Democrat super PACs, the Make America Great Again PAC on the Republican side and the Senate Majority on the Democratic

• 49:03David Hoffman?

  side. So like, we got the numbers. If these aren't just like words about politicians, we got the numbers and the capital and the money to show for it, which is really important. We have the voters. We know we have the voters. We have the swing state voters. Like 20% of voters in the swing state, in the swing states of America know that crypto is a hot election issue and are ready to align with crypto voters. But then also, we have $222 million of a single super PAC that is all about promoting crypto. So you know politicians are like, they will line up with both votes and money. And we got both of them, so that's pretty cool. And the last thing in this political section, adjacent but super relevant. Shane Copeland, the CEO and founder of Polymarket,

• 49:46David Hoffman?

  featured in a big Forbes article titled "The 26-Year-Old Building A Billion-Dollar Prediction Marketplace." And so, not only is mainstream media citing Polymarket, but they're now interviewing the founder. And so, this is just another way where crypto, we're getting legitimized by our politicians, but we're also getting legitimized by our apps, too. At least as one of them. Any thoughts or reflections as we close out this political section, Anthony?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I think it's cool to see Polymarket breaking out of crypto and into a different audience. I mean, they brought on, I think his name's Nate Silva, who's been in the prediction space for politics, like outside of crypto.

• 50:22David Hoffman?

  He's the guy that predicts the future about elections.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they brought him on, I don't know what position, like some executive position, I think, or something. So that was a pretty big get and a pretty big tide change, I think, where you're essentially bringing in these people that traditionally don't really pay attention to crypto, and they're now working within the industry. And Polymarket is definitely an app that is very different to other apps that we've been used to in crypto before, like DeFi and stuff like that. I mean, technically, you could say it's some form of DeFi, because it's a betting market essentially, or a prediction market, I guess, technically. But it is distinctly different, I think. And it's bringing in a different crowd, because a lot of the political bets are happening on there. And I'm sure that it's not just crypto natives on there. It's new people coming into crypto, being like, "Oh, wow, I want to bet on this stuff on here." And I've got to set up a wallet, right? So there are new users coming in.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  And Polymarket makes it really easy to do this, by the way. They've got a nice interface going as well.

• 51:15David Hoffman?

  Totally, yeah. And I'm jealous of you, Anthony, that you're actually able to use Polymarket, because we're not allowed to use it in the United States.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Hey, there's other things that I can't use. Yeah, there's actually an Australian-founded company called, I think they're called Shuffle or something. They do, they're building like a gambling site or crypto casino site, and I can't use it. Australians can't use it, so don't worry.

• 51:35David Hoffman?

  I forgot you also live in a financial prison. It's just like a different prison, that's different than ours.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a literal prison once upon a time.

• 51:45David Hoffman?

  All right, that's all for the politics. We're moving on to the rest of the news. Ethereum had a birthday. Eclipse is on mainnet. USDC is growing on base. And California car titles are on Avalanche. We're gonna get to all this and more, but first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming on to the Mantle Layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in DeFi and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion Mantle Treasury in the Mantle Rewards Station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving

• 52:30David Hoffman?

  you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto, or you're a user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's DeFi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle. Have you ever felt that the tools for developing decentralized applications are too restrictive and fail to leverage advancements from traditional software programming? There's a wide range of expressive building blocks beyond conventional smart contracts and solidity development. Don't waste your time building the basics from scratch and don't limit the potential of your vision. Cartesi provides powerful and scalable solutions for developers that supercharge app development. With a Cartesi virtual machine, you can run a full Linux OS and access decades of rich

• 53:13David Hoffman?

  code libraries and open source tooling for building in Web3. And with Cartesi's unique rollup framework, you'll get real-world scaling and computation. No more competing for block space. So if you're a developer looking to push the boundaries of what's possible in Web3, Cartesi is now offering up to $50,000 in grants. Head over to Cartesi's grant application page to apply today. And if you're not a developer, those with staked CTSI can take part in the governance process and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded. Make sure you're vote-ready by staking your CTSI before the votes open. Launching a token? Don't let complex legal and tax issues slow you down. Toku provides specialized support to optimize your launch and ensure that you as a founder, and your team, and your investors get the most Most tax efficient outcomes.

• 53:55David Hoffman?

  The toku team understands the crypto space inside and out and will ensure your token launch is fully compliant while maximizing tax efficiency. Toku can connect you with the best attorneys if you need them to make sure that you have the best advice. And toku can help optimize your taxes so you pay the least possible amount of taxes while still maintaining legal compliance. With toku's guidance, you can concentrate on building your company while toku handles the logistics. Token launches don't have to be complicated. Talk to toku today to get a free initial token valuation. And we're back. Happy ninth birthday to Ethereum. Uh, which is this, which birthday is this? Is this the mainnet birthday or the white paper birthday?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the mainnet birthday.

• 54:29David Hoffman?

  The mainnet birthday. Alright, so we got a picture, uh, nine years ago, I believe, of when the first block of Ethereum, uh, was mined there.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  That was the genesis block.

• 54:37David Hoffman?

  Genesis block, yeah. I can name some people in this photo. That's Vlad Zamfier kneeling on the left. That's Gavin Wood right there. Uh, that's-

• 54:45Speaker 01

  I can't see the photo too well, but I can name like half of them from memory, I think, because there's a lot there that-

• 54:49David Hoffman?

  Oh yeah, that's pretty good. Is that Left Harris?

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't really see the image.

• 54:56David Hoffman?

  And then there's Vitalik Buterin in the very far back, yeah.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  I love how he's like half cut off. It's just like, he's just some guy that hung around there that day, right?

• 55:05David Hoffman?

  Uh huh. Well, hey, like nine years ago, the cameras on phones were just like not that great, you know?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:13David Hoffman?

  Also, a new, new Vitalik photo just dropped. Do you know the context of this?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Uh, it's, he's in EdCon, which is a conference, Ethereum conference.

• 55:20David Hoffman?

  Uh, okay.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  I don't know the exact context. There was context given somewhere, but I just came across the picture and I was like, I'm gonna tweet this out with this silly caption that people like to use.

• 55:29David Hoffman?

  I'm not even gonna bother to try and explain, uh, what's going on in this photo. It's Vitalik wearing some like Asian garb. Uh, and it's, yeah, it's pretty funny. Anyways, if you want to watch it and see it in real life, I'm not gonna explain it any further than that. Uh, alright, getting into tactical releases. The Eclipse mainnet is now open for builders. Uh, so if you are unfamiliar with Eclipse, we did an episode with Eclipse a while ago. Uh, Eclipse is the Solana virtual machine coming in to be a roll up on Ethereum. So you're taking the, the SVM from Solana, plopping it into a layer two, having it, having it settle down to the Ethereum layer one. I believe it also uses Celestia for data availability. People have been anticipating the Solana virtual machine coming to Ethereum for a while now. Eclipse is the first one to do it. Uh, Anthony, any comments or thoughts here?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  I'm just curious to see what kind of gets popular on this, right? Like if you go over to Solana, you can see which apps are like leading the ecosystem there. So I'm very curious to see if we see like those apps get ported over to this and they become the popular ones. Or if there's new apps that actually don't exist on Solana, but do exist on Eclipse. Like that's, that's what I'm excited to see because it's going to be interesting, an interesting dynamic. Because then, you know, the Solana connection's there because of the SVM. But do the ecosystems actually form differently? Like does Solana have its own kind of social layer? And then the SVM Eclipse thing has its own social layer that's different to Solana? So I think that's going to be something we see over the next year or so, maybe. But I'm curious, I'm sure there's going to be the Solana apps coming over as well.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  But will there be entrepreneurs being like, well, I'm not going to go compete on Solana because they've already got these big apps. I'm going to do something on Eclipse and try and be the number one app on here.

• 57:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think there, I was talking to the Eclipse team. I think there's just a lot of questions about how this thing grows. Because like traditionally, when a rollup deploys on Ethereum, they just get all the same apps. You deploy Uniswap, you deploy AVE, you deploy Chainlink.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an EVM kind of.

• 57:23David Hoffman?

  It's an EVM, you just borrow all the other EVM stuff. With Solana, it's like, well, we're not borrowing all the EVM stuff because that's just not how it works. You can't do that. You can borrow SVM stuff, but what kind of SVM stuff? Also, it's not like your like Uniswap wallet or MetaMask wallet are going, is going to work with Eclipse. Like you will need to use a Solana wallet, you're going to need to use Backpacker Phantom. And so like, does that mean that the demographics using this, this rollup is going to be predominantly like a Solana user base? It's going to be Solana apps, so it would make sense if it's Solana users. But then also, there are, the execution environment of Eclipse gets to jettison a bunch of the tech stack of Solana because it's a layer two. Like you don't need the consensus of Solana, you just need the execution environment.

• 58:07David Hoffman?

  And so like Eclipse gets to go faster than Solana like by a long shot. And so like Eclipse is, is kind of taking the SVM, which was, was a virtual machine, like just juiced up and gets to juice it up even more. And so like, there's a lot of questions, I think, like who's going to use this thing? How are they going to use this thing? What can you do if you take a virtual machine and put it on a layer two? What does that unlock? And so this is a mainnet for builders, mainnets for users comes, I think sometime in September. But don't quote me on that because I'm not on the team. But congrats to the Eclipse team for getting this out the door.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and I think on that note as well, like, it's gonna be interesting to see if the Eclipse SPM dive, it kind of goes down its own path. Because typically what you see is that, well, traditionally, the Layer 2 EVMs have followed like mainnet EVM. To, yeah, and but now they're starting to do their own thing, mostly, but now they're starting to do their own thing and innovate their own ways. Especially with these kind of other projects like Mega ETH and Rise, like these juiced up, like Monet as well as a Layer 1, these juiced up EVMs. So I think that we're gonna see the same thing happen here where Eclipse is gonna build on the SPM, but they're gonna go down their own path. And Solana will have its own path as well, so it's gonna be interesting.

• 59:18David Hoffman?

  There's also less, there's fewer competing SPM implementations. Like, one of the reasons why a lot of the Ethereum Layer 2 rollups all kind of share the majority of the EVM codebase is because all the other ones are doing it. But when there's only two, if Eclipse is like the second major SPM implementation, they do kind of have their more tolerance, more leeway to fork the SPM and take it down their own path and make kind of a new version of the SPM that's optimized for being a Layer 2. Because there's, there's less of a, of a crowd using the SPM, it's just the Solana mainnet.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's why I think we'll see, oh, sorry, yeah, that's why I think we'll see different, different apps than on Solana, because there'll be different ways to, to build apps on there.

• 1:00:02David Hoffman?

  Right, yep. Getting back into the world of EVM-based rollups, Brian Armstrong is retweeting a tweet from Jesse, who is Jesse Pollock, the creator of Base. Jesse's saying, "Weekly USDC transfers on Base have grown to $20 billion a week." $20 billion a week in USDC transfers, that's nuts. Brian Armstrong, following up on the comment here, saying, "The building blocks for crypto payments are here. Base is offering 1 second, 1 cent global transactions, USDC is the stablecoin."

• 1:00:34David Hoffman?

  Smart wallets are the simplified onboarding mechanism. No more 12-word passphrases and then also tap to pay for NFC payments. And then, I mean, I can't, I would love to tap to pay with USDC. That's, that's gotta be like a pretty competitive feature. I would like to have that in my wallet. And so you can kind of see, if you squint and see, you can kind of see like the future of the global financial system. To follow up this tweet, Liam dot ETH, he says, "The best business in crypto is what he calls the holy trinity, trinity of a stablecoin issuer, a block space reseller, and a fiat on-ramp." So stablecoin issuer, that's Circle and USDC, the block space reseller, that's Base, and then the fiat on-ramp, that's Coinbase.

• 1:01:17David Hoffman?

  Really powerful trifecta of business models, kind of all coming together here. So it's no surprise that USDC on Base has grown massively. Trading volumes, exchange volumes, transfer volumes of USDC on Base is at 20 billion a week, which is nuts. Anthony, any comments or reflections?

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  I mean, Liam put it perfectly. I think that Coinbase is so extremely well positioned right now. They had the foresight to build out their own L2. They had the foresight to get really heavily involved with Circle. So for those who don't know, Coinbase owns 25% of Circle, I believe. So they are very heavily integrated with that, which, you know, that means they're integrated with USDC. And they have that full stack offering now because they've got the most popular fiat on-ramp in the US by far. And they're also, you know, available globally, not in every country, but in a lot of countries. So they really have this beautiful ecosystem now that they can take advantage of. And yeah, I feel like Base is gonna be like, I don't know if it's gonna be the number one L2, like in the,

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  like it's number two right now, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be like top three or like for, for the very foreseeable future, given they've got such a strong pipeline, like such a strong stack.

• 1:02:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think one of the reasons why Base hasn't taken that number one spot away from Arbitrum, Arbitrum's the number one, is mainly because like we actually as an industry haven't really taken on new people, new, new inflows of users in the last like two years. And so we've had new capital come in because of the ETFs. And then we've had like a rebalancing of capital towards the Solana ecosystem. But like no users are coming in. And so I really, as soon as we are ready for mainstream, we have things for them to do. Payments is a thing to do, and that's why we're seeing payments show up on Base. I do kind of think Base is going to take that number one spot because like Coinbase is just the biggest funnel into crypto that that exists, I think. Anthony, I've got a story for you. I'm gonna walk you down a little, a little investigation I

• 1:03:09David Hoffman?

  was doing to try and understand this like whole car title thing. So in 2022, this was actually news to me. In 2022, Gavin Newsom, who's the governor of California, signed his own like state executive order to spur responsible Web 3 innovation, grow jobs, and protect consumers. And so there was this executive order out of California called Executive Order N922, which like a pretty robust list of like requests of the state of California to like kind of investigate and invest in specifically blockchain technology. So there's this five-page executive order, which just talks about like why California should invest in blockchain. It goes, whereas applications of blockchain technology to

• 1:03:52David Hoffman?

  financial services, including crypto assets, present some of the most salient use cases posing both unique opportunities and risks. The impact of blockchain technology is both uncertain and profound, with the potential to reconfigure the logic and structure of the worldwide web. Just like a bunch of us kind of like blockchain, blockchain is a big deal. Perhaps we should investigate it while also making sure that we like mitigate risks. So that was in 2022. I actually didn't really realize this. I think this is following the Biden executive order of the same vibe of just like, hey, blockchain's a thing. Let's like figure out what to do with it. And then this last week, California, the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which I don't know if international listeners are familiar with the meme of the DMV,

• 1:04:35David Hoffman?

  but the meme of the DMV is a very sterile, boring building that you have to go to to like renew your driver's license, get like the title to your car. It's just like the caricature of slow government bureaucracy. No one wants to go to the DMV because it's just so goddamn boring. They make you take a number, you sit for like two hours to do a thing that lasts like three minutes, and then you get to, you waste an entire day. You have to take time off work. Anyways, the California DMV has digitized 42 million car titles, which I'm guessing is all of the car titles in California. And then they put them on the Avalanche blockchain. And so this is a press release out of Avalanche

• 1:05:15David Hoffman?

  talking about this announcement. So basically, there is an app, a DMV, a California DMV app, which if you have a car title in California, apparently, the title of that car is going to be digitized and sent to your app. And it's going to be like hosted on the Avalanche blockchain. And so the idea here is you can actually send your car title to a different owner. It's escrowed by the DMV, by the state of California. So you're, it's not like a true bearer asset in the same way like a token is. It's interesting that they specify digitized, not tokenized, because I don't think these are tokens. But the idea here is that you'll be able to much more freely transfer a car title with the approval of

• 1:05:57David Hoffman?

  the DMV, who's like kind of the custodian of it. But you can, you can transfer a car title. This is what they are claiming is going to be able to be true. You can just transfer your car title to someone peer to peer, almost peer to peer, because that car title is digitized on Avalanche. I think that's kind of cool. I would, I will like wait so this actually get like released and people actually have ownership of their car titles in their DMV app. It's kind of like pseudo-adjacent to the meme of putting healthcare records on the blockchain, which would be terrible and we shouldn't do that without appropriate like privacy technology as well. But this is, that has been like an early meme. The idea of like digitizing car titles and making them more freely transferable,

• 1:06:38David Hoffman?

  I guess, is like a part of the crypto revolution. It's not what I expected. Any, any thoughts or reflections on this?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  I mean, these are things, use cases, I guess, that have been talked about since forever, actually. And as you mentioned, there are things that stop these things from happening, like privacy concerns, especially when it comes to health records. And typically, the question has always come up, it's like, why are we doing this? Why didn't we just use a traditional database? Because I doubt these DMV records are going to be plugged into any of the other parts of the crypto ecosystem. It's just going to be in a very closed ecosystem. So those are my kind of open questions then. And as you said, like this, once it goes live and once this actually starts being used, we'll be able to kind of pick it apart more and see what's going on under the hood. But yeah, for now, I mean, if it can improve the experience of, I guess, like car ownership, then that's a big plus because as you mentioned, I know the meme of the DMV being like the worst place in the US to go,

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  like the most boring place in the US. It's not that much different here, to be honest. We have our own version of the DMV, of course. It's not as brutal, but it's still pretty shitty. Like, you don't really want to be there. But yeah, if it can, if it can make it more efficient, make it better, then I'm all for it. But I do have that open question about everything these days, to be honest. It's like, does this actually need to be on a blockchain? It doesn't matter what chain it is, I just always have that, that open question around that.

• 1:07:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I guess like the bullish version of this is like you will, you will be able to have your car title on your DMV app, which is weird, and then you can just transfer it to someone. I would like to see that happen live and to see like how that works and what that process actually is. And so like, as soon as this goes live, if any Bankless Nation listener is in California and is interested in selling their car and is going through this process, please let me know.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  You'll buy it for the experiment.

• 1:08:23David Hoffman?

  I'll buy, I will buy your car, transfer me your car title, we will talk, we will discuss. It'll be a business expense.

• 1:08:30David Hoffman?

  But okay, so that's kind of like the foot in the door. But then also just like the, the later version of this is like, well, no, turn them into a token, make it a token, because then it's a financial asset. And then maybe with like, this is going to have to be like with the approval of the DMV, but maybe you can put your car up as like collateral somewhere. And if the state of California is actually attesting to the legitimacy of these tokens, then all of a sudden, DeFi apps do have some assurances, like, yeah, that's a real token with a real car somewhere. Like, you can't, you can't really third party this thing because it's, it's basically like state run. But that's, that's kind of the idea. I don't know how we get there, but this is a valid first step to getting there.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I'm gonna see we have this plays out and hopefully we'll get some more insights into it over time.

• 1:09:17David Hoffman?

  Somebody sell your car for science and then let me know how it goes. Out of the Eigenlayer system, the Eigenlayer ecosystem, they say coming soon, AVS rewards and Eigen programmatic incentives. And so the Eigenlayer system, of course, has been this massive system of many moving parts. They are kind of all hooking together and starting up. AVS rewards is the newest part, newest component of the Eigenlayer engine that is being hooked up. And so AVSs will actually like be charging fees and spitting out rewards to operators. And then if you are, the way that this might be relevant to you is if you are a depositor into an LRT, of which I am. That LRT is allocating capital

• 1:10:00David Hoffman?

  to operators. Operators are then executing their duties to AVSs. And then AVSs are spitting off fees to operators, which goes to you, the LRT holder. And so this part of the system is up and running, along with Eigen programmatic incentives. So this is also related to season two of the Eigenlayer airdrop. Just a reminder, I think, what was it, 12% of the total Eigen supply has been earmarked for distribution. 5% came in season one, they said 5%, another 5% is coming in season two. And so this is related to this season two Eigenlayer airdrop. You can find out more in the show notes below. Any comments, Anthony?

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  No, no, I mean, this is pretty standard stuff, I think. And it's great to see more news come out around this. I'm just most excited to see these AVSs kind of go live, people start using them, see what they look like in terms of both, I guess, like the token incentives and then the natural kind of fear of new that they generate.

• 1:10:54David Hoffman?

  And then last bit of news, fellow Ethereum member, community member Jonathan Mann and previous Bankless podcast guest Brian Fry are suing the SEC. Did you see this, Anthony?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  I saw a mention of it, but I didn't get a chance to dive into it though.

• 1:11:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so basically as a result of Stoner Cats, which was the Mila Kunis Aston Kutcher animated, like television series, online TV series, which had to settle with the SEC for a million dollars. The precedent was created that artistic creations are securities because of the NFTs. And this threatens the livelihood of any NFT artist who is making a living creating NFTs because the precedent is that those are securities. So Jonathan Mann, who writes and tokenizes a song every single day and has for like 5,000 days, he's written a song for 5,000 days, he's tokenized on as long as a thing.

• 1:11:48David Hoffman?

  He and Brian Fry, who's also a lawyer, are suing the SEC, saying, "No, NFTs are not securities. Buzz off." And so they're actually taking the offensive to the SEC. This actually made news in Bloomberg Law. And so this is making mainstream news, which is pretty cool. And I think it's just like one of many things added to the list of grievances from around the world that are being applied to the SEC. I think it's very cool. I wish them the best. I think, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but the case is solid to me. Like, you can't just expansively define art to be securities just because it has a token associated with it.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, I totally agree. The more losses that we can get the SEC to rack up, the better for us. So yeah, I'm all for this.

• 1:12:37David Hoffman?

  And then we did an episode with Jonathan Mann and Brian Fry on Bankless, if you guys want to learn more about it. And then he also made, he made the song of the day that he made was about him suing the SEC. And there was also a hilarious music video to go with it. And I actually, now I don't have this link pulled up, but maybe I can find it. Is that there is a bidding war going on between, for the NFT. So that like, and you know, who's at the number one position for the bid is Jake Schervinsky, coming in at a 2.2 ETH bid, a crypto lawyer, trying to buy the "I'm suing the SEC" bid. I just think like crypto lawyers are kind of based. I don't know where this auction has ended up. But the auction ends in six days.

• 1:13:21David Hoffman?

  So if you all are interested in buying the "I'm suing the SEC" song, it's currently being bid for at 2.2 ETH. Last little bit of news for the week, some raises out of the Bankless Ventures universe. This is Hyperbolic Labs announcing a $7 million raise to become the leading open access AI cloud. Hyperbolic is basically trying, the way I would describe this is trying to put AI infrastructure, protocolize AI infrastructure. And so like, right now, you can like rent GPUs from Amazon, you can go to OpenAI and get some inference done. That's what's happening when you are typing into ChatGPT, it's doing inference for you. And these are all like web two apps.

• 1:14:02David Hoffman?

  Hyperbolic is trying to make AI-related infrastructure, that's access to GPUs, that's access to AI infra. They're trying to inference, they're trying to make that like a kind of a deeper level of the internet stack, like making it democratized so you can contribute your GPUs. They're trying to make it like permissionless and open access and censorship resistant. So that like, they're just trying to make AI resources a deeper part of the internet. Eric Vortes is, his AI application that he is now like pioneering, this is built on Hyperbolic. And so it's basically AI infrastructure, very deep, very deep in the internet. They raised $7 million, Bankless Ventures was a part of this raise.

• 1:14:45David Hoffman?

  And then a second raise out of Bankless Ventures is Joke Race. Joke Race is the on-chain contest platform. And so you can, you can just make contests, you can customize them in any different ways. You can charge for entries and there's a, the ways to use this is pretty endless. The way that we have used this at Bankless Ventures is to crowdsource podcast episodes from our listeners. That episode is currently being scheduled. So it's a way to engage your community, it's a way to crowdsource ideas, or you could just do a, you know, it's a contest, American Idol, you could do American Idol. And so this is from founder David Phelps and a number of others. So congratulations to both Hyperbolic and Joke Race for their raises.

• 1:15:28David Hoffman?

  Anthony, my man, it has been a pleasure having you here. It's nice that both Ryan and I can go on vacations at times and that's only made possible because we have you to step in and step in for the weekly roll up, which we have never missed. Bankless has never missed a weekly roll up and a large part of that is because Anthony is so generous with his time and comes in and substitute teaches for us. Anthony, I sure enjoyed your presence, which is why I listen to you on the Daily Guey every single day of the week that you put one out. Where can people find the, what is the Daily Guey and where can people find it?

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So the Daily Gray is just an Ethereum educational resource podcast every other day, going over the latest news in the Ethereum ecosystem. Pretty deep stuff. It's not really high level. So if you just want to get deeper with Ethereum, then you can listen to my ramblings on there. But you can just find it on my Twitter page. I've got all the links relevant there for people.

• 1:16:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's a YouTube. I listen to it on my podcast feed. It's great. It's just a great and whenever I get it, it's in the morning. And so it's just the way to catch up. Anthony is in Australia time. So whenever it happens, something happens while I'm asleep. Anthony's got me covered. So I appreciate you putting in 800 episodes. Congratulations on 800 episodes, my dude. That's a lot of episodes.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. It's been a journey since I think early 20, late 2020, actually, I started doing the episodes. So yeah, it's been it's been a journey. But I mean, Ethereum is just so interesting. So many things happening all the time. So it's not hard for me to get content. That's for sure.

• 1:16:50David Hoffman?

  Bankless Nation, I'm about to read to you the risks and disclaimers. But then after that, there is going to be one of the most hilarious Trump Bitcoin impressions of all time. We're going to add that to the end of the roll up. So stay tuned for that. It's from this tech comedian comedian guy who lives in San Francisco. He does a great job.

• 1:17:09David Hoffman?

  You know, the deal crypto is risky. Bitcoin is risky. ETFs are risky. You can lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:17:19Speaker 04

  I love the Bitcoin. A lot of people are saying that it's not real money. Quite frankly, I know some people, they're saying it's fake money, but we know it's very real. We know it's tremendous and it's doing very well for a lot of people. It's a coin on the computer, a computer coin. And by the way, we love the Bitcoin. We love it. We love the we love the D gens. They call themselves D gen apes. They call themselves apes. And we're quite frankly, when I'm president, we will be freeing the apes from the zoos, and we will be buying them Bitcoin. And we will have more Bitcoin in the United States than anywhere. We will be digging it out of the ground. We will be mining it, minting it, printing it, and stealing

• 1:18:04Speaker 04

  it, whatever it takes. We're going to have more Bitcoin than most people. We also love Ethereum, Ethereum. And we don't forget, don't forget, Doji, Doji.