ROLLUP: Bitcoin ETF Updates | Larry Fink Crypto Pilled | Ethereum Roadmap | Airdrops Incoming

Bankless Weekly Rollup 3rd Week of January, 2024 ----- 🏹 USE PODCAST24 FOR 10% OFF https://bankless.cc/Citizen2024 ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 https://%E2%81%A0https//k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku ------ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 03:40 Markets https://twitter.com/growthepie_eth/status/1746883438689341938 07:07 Celsius Cancer Over? https://x.com/0xBoboShanti/status/1747697507361071198?s=20 https://x.com/0xBoboShanti/status/1747697530362560741?s=20 10:34 2023 Developer Report https://www.developerreport.com/developer-report 14:21 First week of the BTC ETF! How’d it do?? https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1747591085189128329?s=20 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1747958701162397745?s=20 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1747981648686108887?s=20 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1747635270722183608?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1747385703971860617 https://twitter.com/jseyff/status/1746611833098616880?s=46 21:09 Franklin Templeton To The Moon https://twitter.com/FTI_US/status/1747703202664112232 23:03 Vanguards Refusal https://www.theblock.co/post/272049/vanguard-wont-offer-spot-bitcoin-etfs-says-high-volatility-is-bad-for-generating-long-term-returns https://twitter.com/ChainLinkGod/status/1745522402430259354 https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1745830835750654108?s=20 25:59 Jaime Dimon's Take https://youtu.be/eneB3s9bCdI?si=QkCYvCBgVTfOhSPL&t=144 https://youtu.be/eneB3s9bCdI?si=QkCYvCBgVTfOhSPL&t=144 https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/17/jamie-dimon-says-hes-done-talking-about-bitcoin-i-dont-care.html 28:11 Larry Fink Takes https://x.com/Cryptik1E/status/1745776244745289934?s=20 https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1745806545890234869 https://twitter.com/econoar/status/1746209199758180753?s=20 35:41 Davids Take https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1747024019021300092?s=20 40:13 Blobs Live On Goerli https://x.com/parithosh_j/status/1747564353467936817?s=20 42:27 Whats Next After Dencun? https://x.com/JimmyRagosa/status/1747628330604523568?s=20 https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/191kke6/comment/kh7ekx3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/191kke6/comment/kh7ekx3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 46:30 Socket Exploit $3.3M Stolen https://x.com/SocketDotTech/status/1747349422730813525?s=20 https://x.com/RevokeCash/status/1747352408022245790?s=20 49:25 SEC Grilled During Coinbase Hearing https://www.theblock.co/post/273221/judge-grills-the-sec-with-pointed-questions-as-coinbase-hearing-begins https://x.com/BanklessHQ/status/1747728558896676926?s=20 https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1747702461656174984?s=46&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2g https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1747702461656174984?s=46&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2g 53:10 Trumps Take on CBDCs https://twitter.com/watcherguru/status/1747845161638302087?s=46&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2g https://twitter.com/watcherguru/status/1747845161638302087?s=46&t=2ZINVXJQKx6xO_6Wiiu_2g 54:02 Solana's New Saga Phone! https://twitter.com/solanamobile/status/1747302707273089133?s=20 55:15 Meme Of The Week https://twitter.com/FTI_US/status/1747713266107724191?s=20 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ https://www.bankless.com/disclosures%E2%81%A0

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

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Have you seen the CNBC like people this week, like all the anchors? They are so bullish Bitcoin and like all of these other tracks like Jamie Dimon comes on, Gary Gensler comes on and they're like, uh, no, that's actually not how Bitcoin works. Like they correct them and it's like so great. CNBC has completely 180 pivoted on crypto and why? It's because they have an asset to sell.

• 0:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, it is the third week of January and it's time for your weekly roll up. David, we've got so much to cover. What are we starting with?

• 0:32David Hoffman?

  The Bitcoin ETF, one week later, was it a flop or was it a smashing success? We've got the numbers to report back to you on that one.

• 0:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, we have a good banker, bad banker episode. We've got Larry Fink getting crypto pilled? He wants tokenization? We'll talk about that. And on the bad banker side, we have Jamie Dimon and he reveals the secret risk to Bitcoin that only Jamie Dimon knows. Tantalizing. What could that be? What else we got, David?

• 0:58David Hoffman?

  After that, we got some updates about the Ethereum roadmap. The blobs are coming, the blobs are coming. And we also got some airdrops to discuss as well. We're going to laugh about the SEC for a little bit and we're also going to talk about the Solana phone, part deuce as well.

• 1:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know where I want to start? Yeah, I'm ready, man. And you know where I want to start us today is actually the airdrop piece. Okay. Cause it's kind of, it's kind of airdrop season. I don't know if you noticed and

• 1:21David Hoffman?

  It's definitely

• 1:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Jupiter, which is the biggest DEX on Solana, just announced the date of their JUP token launch that is upcoming. You know what that date is, David?

• 1:30David Hoffman?

  Tell me.

• 1:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Last day of January, January 31st.

• 1:34David Hoffman?

  What day is it? It is the 18th. That is in 10 days.

• 1:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So that's going to happen. I mean, this is just like airdrop season and a lot of this is happening in different layer two ecosystems and on Solana and other places. And I just wanted to shout out an opportunity for bankless citizens. That opportunity is to go quest for some airdrops and you do that with a bankless citizenship. So, once you get a bankless citizenship, you have access to a tool that we have developed. It's called the Airdrop Hunter. And what the Airdrop Hunter tries to do is predict these airdrops in advance and the things that you might need to do, the ways to explore these chains and Protocols and apps so that you might qualify for an airdrop. And guess what, David? You know what was on there? Jupiter exchange. It was on the airdrop hunter.

• 2:18David Hoffman?

  It's been on there for a long, long time. We have this cool little thing in there where you can see how many other citizens are hunting airdrops. 673 citizens have hunted the Jupiter airdrop. Up to the point that the date of the airdrop was announced, which is not typical of an airdrop. I could only assume that if they have announced the airdrop, the snapshot has been taken. So congrats to the 673 citizens that have hunted the Jupiter airdrop. I know like airdrop hunting, we try and make it precise. There's like farming and then there's what we do, which is hunting, which is the actual steps, the ways to increase your on-chain footprint, the diversity and variety of things that you can do, which is also simultaneously learning how to use crypto. So that's actually a nice synergy that we have with the airdrop hunter,

• 3:03David Hoffman?

  where you get to increase your on-chain footprint, you get to hopefully hunt some airdrops. But also, there are also just walkthroughs for, like, there are demos for apps.

• 3:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's fun. It's fun to do stuff on chain.

• 3:13David Hoffman?

  It's supposed to be fun.

• 3:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  And crypto pays you to learn about crypto, guys. It's that season again. Anyway, there's a 10% off code if you want to become a bankless citizen and go access the airdrop hunter. It's not just about Jupiter. It's about what next?

• 3:26David Hoffman?

  How many are there?

• 3:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's over like 60, 70 quests on here, or not quests, but different opportunities you can pursue and all of the quests that accompany it. So go check that out in the Bankless show notes or bankless.com/join. Again, the code is podcast24 if you want a 10% off discount. All right, David, let's talk about markets today. And thanks to Kraken for these glorious charts. We're looking at Bitcoin. What's Bitcoin showing us?

• 3:48David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin showing us down because it was a sell the news event, surprise. The Bitcoin ETF, yeah. So sell on the news, down 10%. Started the week at 46,380.

• 3:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Double-digit sell?

• 4:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, double digits, yeah, down to where we are.

• 4:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  In this market?

• 4:03David Hoffman?

  At $42,000, yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not like the Bitcoin ETF was a secret. I think, I think people knew about it. I mean, Bitcoin has, his price performance has been pretty crazy. So yeah, it was, it was a sell, sell the news event. And I think some people are like, bruh, what's going on? ETF was supposed to be bullish. A, that's not how markets work, but also the point about the ETF is bullish over time. Like, hold on, it ages like wine.

• 4:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  You don't get your bullishness like right now, okay? Sometimes you have to wait for your bullishness. And by the way,

• 4:36David Hoffman?

  It's not, it's not an event, it flows.

• 4:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  We got a lot of that bullishness since the summer of this year. Anyway, but like some people look at these charts and just assume that the Bitcoin ETF was not successful. We'll talk about that in detail later, but like it was kind of successful. Let's talk about ETH though, before we get there. ETH on the week, what are we looking at? Down?

• 4:55David Hoffman?

  Down 5%, sort of the week at 2,600, currently at 2480, down 5%, which means the ETH BTC ratio is up 6%. We are almost up to 0.06, which I would still consider low, but in recent terms, the ETH ratio has been recovering, especially this week.

• 5:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think we're getting some of that, again, pent up ETH.

• 5:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, now people are just gonna do the whole like, oh, now ETH ETF, and then they're gonna sell the news on the ETH ETF in like May.

• 5:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  We talked about that a little bit last week while you were out, you know, slaying Horcruxes, David, with Anthony Sisano. And yeah, he agrees too, like ETH ETF next. Crypto market cap, what are we at on the week?

• 5:35David Hoffman?

  Same, 1.73 billion. I want that too. I want a 2.

• 5:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, a 2 would be a race. When's the last time we hit 2, by the way? When was that?

• 5:44David Hoffman?

  Oh, God, like before Terra Luna, right?

• 5:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Last time we were at 2, we haven't been at 2 since February of 2022.

• 5:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Terra Luna. Yep.

• 5:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Around that time horizon. No, no, no. We hit it in March as well.

• 6:02David Hoffman?

  And then 2022, yeah, it's Terra Luna. I'm calling it, yeah.

• 6:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  The first time we hit 2 trillion, by the way, was April 2021. So that was, that was kind of the top of the, top-ish of the bull market, right?

• 6:14David Hoffman?

  Top of the Ethereum bull market. Yeah, that was like, yeah, the top of ultrasound money.

• 6:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  The early bull market.

• 6:20David Hoffman?

  Ultrasound money meme has been down only since like April 2021.

• 6:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's get to layer two metrics, the layer two update brought to you by Mantle, which is a new and upcoming layer two that we are enjoyers of. What's layer two be showing us on total locked value on layer two? So we get another all time high?

• 6:40David Hoffman?

  I saw it earlier this week at 22.22 billion. So that was an enjoyable number. It's at 21.8 right now, but yes, all time highs.

• 6:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ish. You know, the last couple of weeks has been all time high. Look at this from Grow the Pie. New all time high for TVL across layer twos. A gigantic 3 billion increase. I guess this was the all time high. This was from January 15th. Oh, so that that did happen. Okay. And by the way, 58% of this in Arbitrum.

• 7:06David Hoffman?

  Arbitrum is kind of just gargantuan. One of the things that's been really determining the ETH market lately is this whole Celsius shenanigans. Celsius cancer, I should say. Celsius was like dumping hundreds of thousands of ETH onto the market. At the same time, Sailor was buying a bunch of Bitcoin, which is like why the ETH BTC ratio has just been absolutely decimated. So I saw this interesting tweet thread from 0X Bobo Shanti. Thank you so much. Who put a tweet together saying, with over 40 hours of research gone on into investigating the Celsius balance sheet. I'll explain why I believe that it is wrong that the remaining 584,000 Ether that Celsius has is going to be sold.

• 7:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, wait, wait. So hold on. The facts are they have 500,000 ETH still and people are worried that they might continue to dump on us that additional 500,000 ETH?

• 7:55David Hoffman?

  584,000, 1.4 billion dollars are in their wallets.

• 7:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't want that.

• 8:00David Hoffman?

  And so, so far in 2024, they've transferred 92,000 ETH to Coinbase and Falcon X. Which if you read the tweet thread, they'll explain what that is. It is a good thorough tweet thread. We don't have enough time to cover it here, but we will skip to the conclusions. Where they think based on legal filings and on-chain analysis from Arkham. They say 536,000 Ether will be distributed in kind for unsecured claims.

• 8:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is like bankruptcy claims we're talking about, right?

• 8:27David Hoffman?

  Bankruptcy claims, yes. In kind means they're not selling it. They're just like, here's the ETH rather than here's the dollars, which they would have to sell for. 62,000 ETH will be distributed in kind for convenience claims and 26,000 ETH has been like we already sent to Coinbase and PayPal to process the custody claims distribution. TLDR is extremely unlikely that Celsius has much more, if any ETH, available to sell. If you want the analysis, the details, the investigation from this. Twitter account. There's a link in the show notes, so you can go unpack that. But yeah, 584,000 ETH going to be distributed around, but apparently not sold, which is good news.

• 9:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I can keep you updated too, David. I saw some Celsius, you know, ETH.

• 9:08David Hoffman?

  Oh yeah, let me know when you get that. Yeah.

• 9:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it doesn't feel even close. They just keep sending me emails about like, don't be fished. Like, you know, be careful and like legal things are proceeding and all of that. So I think a question here though, David, is if they are doing in kind, like they're sending ETH back to you, basically the claimants. Whether the claimants, like people like me, maybe will go sell this ETH or not, or whether they'll hold it. I mean, like, I know what I'm gonna do. I ain't gonna be selling no ETH, okay? If I get ETH from Celsius, you stake your ETH at times like this, you don't sell. At least that's my take, but I don't know if everyone feels that way.

• 9:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I don't know if it's really an important question because like, who are the Celsius creditors? And why are they meaningfully different from the average ETH holder? Like, maybe they have some taxes, like taxes or debts that they have to cover. And they've just had locked up capital. So yeah, some amount of capital lockup will result in some amount of selling, but I don't, I'm guessing it's gonna be overall marginal.

• 10:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  The only difference is, they are unlike average ETH holders in that, like, one, they're just the subset of like retail. And probably like, I don't wanna say, like, less sophisticated retail. I'm putting myself in that bucket, okay?

• 10:18David Hoffman?

  They're not, they're not on-chain. Yeah.

• 10:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're less on-chain than many ETH holders. And the second thing is, they've just, it's been frozen. It's been frozen for a very long time for them. Other ETH holders have not had frozen ETH, so we'll have to see. Maybe there's a little bit left. David, did you catch this? The 2023 Electric Capital Developer Report. They do this every year. So let me just give you the highlights, though. Developers overall are down, okay? But here's the sunny skies.

• 10:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  The most valuable segment of developers are those that have a two plus tenure. They contribute the most code. That is still growing, so that's good news. But bad news for the US, okay? The US is losing developer share in crypto. So now 72% of developers are now outside North America. So, sorry, Canada, Mexico, America. The US just lost 14% of developer share since 2018. And it's now only 26% of developers. And you can really see who's picking up the slack here. It's South Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Africa, Southern Europe. They grew developer share by 20%. I am like cheering that on, okay? US, if you're going to be stupid and mean to developers, guess what?

• 11:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're going to go outside of your borders and they're going to build the cool stuff there. Like, I mean, you're lost. That's what's going to happen. I mean, I hate this because it's a self inflicted wound to the US. But it is a good, it's, I'm glad that this is internationalizing, particularly in some of these emerging economies. I think that's bullish for crypto.

• 11:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And then Elizabeth Warren is like, good, I didn't want them anyways.

• 11:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, but here's the thing, man. Like these, these countries, people in other regions will think of use cases that the West doesn't, doesn't even think of. They don't have a problem with it because they're, you know, their Visa card works or something like this. So, anyway, bullish crypto because I think we'll get some more diversity in use cases. David, what do we have coming up next?

• 12:08David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, we're going to unpack the metrics of the spot Bitcoin ETF one week later. We're going to talk to Larry Fink and hear what he's excited about.

• 12:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's coming on? We're talking to Larry Fink?

• 12:18David Hoffman?

  Right now, yeah, right after this. And then Ethereum blobs have hit the test net and they're coming for us. So stay tuned, we're going to get to all this and more. But first, I'm going to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken, the place we get these charts at the beginning of the show, and the place that you should use to get on-chain this bull market summer. Yeah. Go ahead and click the link in the show notes to get started with Kraken. Full market summer. I love it. Kraken knows crypto. Kraken's been in the crypto game for over a decade and as one of the largest and most trusted exchanges in the industry, Kraken is on the journey with all of us to see what crypto can be. Human history is a story of progress. It's part of us, hardwired. We're designed to seek change everywhere, to improve, to strive. And

• 12:59David Hoffman?

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• 13:41David Hoffman?

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• 14:22David Hoffman?

  One week of Bitcoin ETF trading, how did it do? Did it flop or did it rocket? Eric Bakatunas says, latest, day three in the books of the total rolling net flows, net flows is both buying and selling, is 782 million, as the newborn nine that he calls it, the nine Bitcoin ETFs. Oh, I like that. Eric's a good neamer. He really is. They have more than offset the GBTC gouge, which is now up to $1.2 billion offset from the NAV to discount. Okay, so the nines, 2 billion in AUM and 4.5 billion in volume organic is fabulous for the first three days. And a solid percent premium too. So overall, what this means is that there has been a lot of

• 15:07David Hoffman?

  outflows from the grayscale Bitcoin trust over 108 billion dollars and net new inflows of $2 billion. A skeptic put out this tweet saying, is this me or is this really underwhelming? Only 800 million dollars of inflows into the BTC ETFs so far. And Eric Balchunas' response to this skeptic saying, I, this is a flop, right? And he goes, I think it's not a flop. These numbers are highly unusual for a new launch. Most ETFs get less than 1 to 2 million dollars in the first week. These are all 20 to 500 times that. And so Eric Balchunas, who again is more or less the expert on ETFs, is saying, this is a categorical win, not no ifs,

• 15:51David Hoffman?

  ands, or buts about it. There are four leaders of the nine. There are four leaders here. iShares, which is BlackRock, coming in at 710 million dollars. Fidelity coming in at 524 million dollars, followed by Bitwise, the crypto native ETF company that we know and love, 305 million dollars, followed by Kathy Woods' ARC 21 shares at 227 million dollars. So we always know that it was always going to represent some sort of distribution, you know, power law, nature has power law. But this is really close, Ryan, like BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise, 700, 525, 300, like really close neck and neck race, I'd say.

• 16:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we got a gold, silver, bronze, and they're all within striking distance of each other. It's pretty impressive. You know, like, so the question of are we happy about these inflows, total net inflows? The answer to that question has got to be yes. And that's what Balchunas is saying. But also, I think like grayscale needed, it's healthy for it to have that outflow. Remember, all of that was stuck inside of the grayscale container for like years to like disastrous effect in 2022. So we talked about so much. Now it's being unlocked. This is even, even the outflows are healthy. Like, I mean, that's how we kind of get a stable base and our feedback under us with, with these ETF markets.

• 17:06David Hoffman?

  Well, also, the Grayscale ETF charges 1.5% fee yearly. And the BlackRock, I think, charges 0.25%.

• 17:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, they still do? Does Grayscale still charge that much? Or have they been?

• 17:20David Hoffman?

  Yes, they lowered their price from 2% to 1.5%. Whereas all of the others are in the like 0.2 to 0.25, maybe 0.3 range.

• 17:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 17:30David Hoffman?

  I think Bitwise is the lowest at 0.2. Why is Grayscale keeping their fee at 1.5%? I think they are just betting that there's going to be just a lot of dormant GPTC holders who don't check their brokerages, don't know, don't care.

• 17:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's probably a good calculated bet, honestly.

• 17:48David Hoffman?

  They are charging like 5 to 10 times as much. And so they're not going to lose too much. So yeah, they're just raking in the fees on that one. Another tweet from Eric Balchunas was talking about the volumes. So what is volumes? Buying and selling of the underlying to make sure that the ETF actually trades that par. He goes, "Another way to put the Bitcoin ETF flows in ETF context, besides showing their numbers relative to past new launches, which is the more frequent thing that we've been doing recently, is showing how they stack up to all ETFs in the past one week of flows." So comparing the Bitcoin ETFs to other general ETFs like the QQQ, the NASDAQ ETF. So he says, "Even after four days, two of them are in the top five of all ETFs in volume."

• 18:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a big deal. That's a big thinking deal.

• 18:35David Hoffman?

  That's a big deal. And three of them are in the top 10, up there with the studs, VOO, QQQ, L at all. Volume, apparently, is like a health metric for ETFs.

• 18:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 18:46David Hoffman?

  And we have three Bitcoin ETFs in the top 10 of all ETFs. All ETFs. That's kind of, that's like hair on end crazy, I'd say.

• 18:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, no, that's, it's definitely a good sign. QQQ is NASDAQ, right? What, what, do you know what the VU is?

• 19:01David Hoffman?

  What, what did I say?

• 19:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, you said that. You, you nailed it. I just, I don't know my ETFs, David. I don't know what the VU is. I don't know what the IBV is. I assume these are very important ETFs and Balchunas is probably like shaking his fist at us.

• 19:14David Hoffman?

  Very trad and serious. Vanguard S and P 500 ETF dividend. That is a boomer name right there. You said earlier Eric Balchunas is a good memer. Here's a actual meme, a mid curve meme. Where Eric is, has the person in the middle saying, "Bruh, how come numbers go down? I thought these ETFs were supposed to pump. It's been, I've been inside the house and online for the past 72 hours straight. Win, moon." And then, and then, and then left and right, we have people saying, "Some people probably sold the news after 80% run up. No biggie." My tweet this week was, "Everyone have patience. The Bitcoin ETF will age like wine. It's not about the event, it's about the flows. It's about the flows."

• 19:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Aging like wine. You know, another theme of this event, and I think the rest of today's episode is, "Dave, the bankers are shilling our bags now. Can you believe it? Wall Street is like..."

• 20:02David Hoffman?

  Unholy Alliance.

• 20:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  "Choo choo is on board, okay?"

• 20:06David Hoffman?

  Fees, baby.

• 20:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the Fidelity homepage last week, okay? Well, this is the, the BlackRock homepage. You seen this? Access Bitcoin, iShares. Here's Fidelity. Their homepage. I'm talking about the homepage. They're basically like, for people who can't see this, "The Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, easier exposure to Bitcoin without buying Bitcoin directly." Wow, what a fantastic product.

• 20:30David Hoffman?

  Nice, nice and protected and safe Bitcoin.

• 20:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so legal. I like my Bitcoin queen.

• 20:36David Hoffman?

  It's super legal.

• 20:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not so sovereign and like, "Thanks."

• 20:40David Hoffman?

  Don't, don't, don't touch that bald man's exchange. Touch our exchange.

• 20:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  The best kind of Bitcoin. I don't know why that's my Fidelity voice, but you know, that's what it is, David. The Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund. So they're shilling it. They're, they're just very excited about a product to sell. And, um, you know, there's, someone once told me there's a little bit of capital still on Wall Street. I think they got some money over there, David.

• 21:01David Hoffman?

  They, they do have some money.

• 21:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you also see the Franklin?

• 21:05David Hoffman?

  Their money is becoming our money.

• 21:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, is it? Yeah, okay.

• 21:09David Hoffman?

  These are the rules. That's what ETFs do.

• 21:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you also see the Franklin Templeton account? Like, I don't know what happened on Twitter to Franklin Templeton. This is like a trad fi of trad fi. But like, they seem to be all in on crypto. What in the world are we looking at?

• 21:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Franklin Templeton, $1.4 trillion asset manager. I saw this tweet right after we got done with the podcast and I thought, oh God, like the Franklin Templeton Twitter account.

• 21:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  You thought it got hacked?

• 21:32David Hoffman?

  I thought it got hacked. And then I scroll up and I see that like, oh, announcing our digital assets team has taken over our Twitter account for the next two hours.

• 21:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nice.

• 21:41David Hoffman?

  And they are just firing, just like dank memes after dank memes. Like laser eyed Ben Franklin, Bank Franklin with a hat. Oh my God. The sophistication of these memes, like I bet you they listen to Bankless. They probably listen to Bankless. Whoever's on that digital asset team.

• 21:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:00David Hoffman?

  They are one of us.

• 22:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Shout out. Good job.

• 22:01David Hoffman?

  They make, I mean, we make some okay memes. They were making some.

• 22:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  How did they do this? Franklin Templeton? I didn't know you had this level of crypto meme talent. Like, who are you?

• 22:11David Hoffman?

  Do you know that everyone in the rest of the company who's dealing with like mortgages and like bonds are like,

• 22:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Serious things?

• 22:18David Hoffman?

  What the hell is going on with our Twitter account?

• 22:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know there's a meme of the week from Franklin Templeton, but here's the tweet. You are unsure how to feel about laser eyed Ben? They just activated the accounts laser eyes too. Just think instead of Ben with hat. With hat, that's like meme culture.

• 22:33David Hoffman?

  With hat, yeah. So there is, I think it's a Solana dog token, a dog with hat. And it's like a dog with a hat and it just pumped and now it is part of our culture now.

• 22:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  This kid owns some deep crypto bags, let me tell you, on his or her own. I think that's happened.

• 22:50David Hoffman?

  Imagine like this Zoomer intern who works at Franklin Templeton and he's got like a bag of shitcoin, Solana shitcoins. He's just like firing off tweets off the Franklin Templeton account.

• 23:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I can't imagine that. Wow. Not all the banks are on board though, David. I gotta, I gotta tell you. I call, I'll call all of these things loosely bank. I don't think Vanguard is like a bank. Like, that's not what they would call themselves, but they hold a lot of assets. So they have, they have their, yeah, anyway, we'll get into that. Vanguard won't offer spot Bitcoin ETFs. They say the high volatility is bad for generating long-term returns. So they've actually actively.

• 23:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's the opposite of supported like?

• 23:32David Hoffman?

  Boy boycotted?

• 23:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Boy not like boycott like banned, you know, not allowed Vanguard users unlike fidelity. Like Vanguard is very similar to fidelity in a lot of ways, which is very crypto forward. Vanguard has said basically it has no plans to offer Bitcoin ETFs or crypto products. It's high volatility runs counter to our goal of helping investors generate positive real returns over the long term. Which is kind of funny because like, go look at Bitcoin price over the long term in its entire history. It's only been down three years in all of the other years. Like it's been up only and like massively up. It's been a fantastic asset class. So it has generated positive real returns.

• 24:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is Chainlink God saying Vanguard offered investors the ability to purchase GBDC for years, even as it traded at extreme premiums discounts over navs. So that's, that's kind of ironic, right? They won't allow the Bitcoin ETF, but they allowed GBDC for years. He goes on, but as soon as GBDC converts into a spot ETF and properly tracks navs, suddenly high volatility is a blocker and it gets delisted smells fishy. I don't know why, like, I guess that's kind of weird. I guess it smells fishy. I can't think of what the incentive would be. It's just like, maybe someone's just kind of folding their arms and saying, I don't like Bitcoin at Vanguard. You know, I don't know what's going on.

• 24:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So, okay. Say there are two populations and we're talking about like from a business sense. People are going to read this like message Vanguard is no longer accepting purchase of cryptocurrency products, including Bitcoin futures ETFs. And then you have your customers and or, or non-customers. And do any non-customers read that and be like, oh, I'm going to convert to Vanguard. I'm going to put more money in Vanguard because they make, made this choice. How many of those are, are there of those types of people versus the other types of people who are like, oh, Vanguard's not letting me buy crypto. I will either, either not sign up with them or take my money elsewhere. Like who's, which one of these is more?

• 25:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  The second one, David, the second one is more. You know, people are just going to be like, why can't I get this product? All the other like fidelity has this black mark has it.

• 25:40David Hoffman?

  Constraining your product offering is never of like a rational business case.

• 25:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, we have like, I refuse, I'm like, I'm best by, I refuse to sell iPhones. I'm not going to sell like, why?

• 25:53David Hoffman?

  And all the Android people were like, yay. No, that didn't happen.

• 25:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  It didn't happen. All right, here's another banker who's kind of maybe upset about it a little bit. But this is, this is what we alluded to in the intro, David. Jamie Dimon has a fantastic take on Bitcoin.

• 26:10David Hoffman?

  Oh, yes. This is the, this is the risk that Jamie Dimon discovered about Bitcoin that, yeah, this is brand new for all of us.

• 26:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  You ready for this? Here's what he says.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Gold really didn't do anything either.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, but gold's limited in supply.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  So is Bitcoin.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  And it's been used, uh, so you think so, huh?

• 26:26Speaker 02

  I do.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  I think there's a good chance that when Bitcoin, when we get to that 20 million Bitcoins.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  They'll go to 42.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  No, that Satoshi's gonna come on there, laugh hysterically, go quiet, and all Bitcoins will be erased.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  I think, man.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  How the hell do you know it's gonna stop at 21? I've, I've never met one person who told me they know for a fact they take that as.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Mathematically, it's, it's not, it can't happen because by, the last one will be mined in 2150 and it, it gets harder and harder every time there's another halving. But, but Jamie, it, looking back.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  You guys do what you want, I'll do what I want.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  As for gold, you can, the six characters that make gold valuable for 4,000 years, they're all present in Bitcoin. That's all I'm saying. I love you and I don't want to disagree. And I also don't, I also don't want to be a.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  You may, Joe, you may be right.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Like, I don't know in gold either, so, okay.

• 27:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  So David, how, how do you know Satoshi, Santoshi?

• 27:14David Hoffman?

  Isn't just gonna, wait, how did he pronounce it? Satoshi?

• 27:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Satoshi. How do you know he's not just gonna reappear and?

• 27:22David Hoffman?

  Delete all the Bitcoins.

• 27:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Delete the Bitcoins.

• 27:25David Hoffman?

  He's just gonna delete all the Bitcoins. And you could hear the frustration in the, in the, like, the moderators.

• 27:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 27:31David Hoffman?

  Mathematically, you can't do that.

• 27:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, by the way.

• 27:34David Hoffman?

  You just don't.

• 27:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Have you seen the CNBC, like, people this week, like, all the anchors? They are so bullish Bitcoin and, like, all of these other tracks, like Jamie Dimon comes on, Gary Gensler comes on, and they're like, uh, no, that's actually not how Bitcoin works. Like, they correct them. And it's, like, so great. Like, CB, uh, CNBC has completely 180 pivoted on crypto. And why? It's because they have an asset to sell, because BlackRock's on board, Fidelity's on board. And so they're doing this kind of, like, hard interviews now.

• 28:04David Hoffman?

  Love it, love it. Uh, there are going to be costs with this unholy alliance. Well, I think we'll talk about that in a second, but let's, let's watch this next clip where Larry Fink. It's coming in hot here. And somebody asked him about the ETH ETF. And he kind of gave like an answer, but I think it's the conversation that he started talking about immediately after that, I think is a big reveal. Let's watch this clip.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is on the, I guess, crypto favorable banker's side. Here he goes. Do you now expect other cryptocurrency ETFs? Meaning, do you think that Gary, and we'll talk to him later, Gary will have to approve an Ethereum ETF? And is that a function of something the SEC has to do? Or do you think that all these things have to go to court first?

• 28:45Speaker 05

  I couldn't respond to that. I see value in having an Ethereum ETF. As I said, these are just stepping stones towards tokenization. And I really do believe this is where we're going to be going. We have the technology to tokenize today. If you want to talk about, think about this, if you had a tokenized security and you have a tokenized identity, you Andrew, the moment you buy or sell an instrument, it is known. It's on a general ledger that is all created together. You want to talk about issues around money laundering and all that? This eliminates all corruption by having a tokenized system.

• 29:25David Hoffman?

  Okay, so he immediately pivots the conversation to talking about tokenization. And this spread like wildfire throughout crypto Twitter. Then like the chain link army was like, that's us, baby. And he doubled down on it in another clip where he's just talking about tokenization the whole entire time. Let's watch the second clip.

• 29:44Speaker 05

  We believe the next step going forward will be the tokenization of financial assets. And that means every stock, every bond will have its own basically CUSIP. It'll be on one general ledger. Every investor, you and I, will have our own number, our own identification. We could rid ourselves of all issues around illicit activities about bonds and stocks and digital by having a tokenization. But the most important thing, we can customize strategies through tokenization that is fits every individual.

• 30:19David Hoffman?

  Larry Fink wants to tokenize bonds, stocks, and every financial asset that he can. And he's talking about tokenization. He sees the merits of tokenization. And that is the direction that he's taking these conversations. People are asking him about like the Bitcoin ETF, the ETH ETF. And Larry Fink is like, well, have you heard about like tokenization? Uh, I mean, he's a leader of BlackRock.

• 30:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 30:40David Hoffman?

  Uh, he's, that's where he's steering the ship. That's where it's going.

• 30:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  You, you know, I, I think Larry Fink is just telling us exactly what the, the roadmap is for BlackRock. It's first, it's the Bitcoin ETF, then it's the Ethereum ETF, then it's tokenization. Like he's literally telling us the plan. And you know what I think this means? Like David, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not saying it's going to happen this year. I'm not going to say it's going to happen next year. I would not be surprised to see a BlackRock dollar, a BlackRock stablecoin. Okay. BlackRock tokenized assets, of course they're going to do that, right? Jamie Dimon already is, by the way, at GP Morgan and is yelling not public blockchain. And I wouldn't be surprised at some point if we see a BlackRock chain, you know, like a layer two that.

• 31:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, a, a private, a private layer two, a private layer two that's the backend of the website.

• 31:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it'll start private and I think it goes public because it's so freaking cheap to go public. Like if you get secured, if you get privacy, uh, right, for kind of what they need, right? DA costs are basically nothing. Why not have it audited by the security of Ethereum? Like, I think that is an inevitability too. They probably got to get some regulation, right? But I mean.

• 31:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they, if they're going to have a public chain, there, there will be zero people on that chain that are not fully KYC'd. And he also talked about identity in that, that clip. He was like, oh yeah, you have tokenization and you actually also have digital identity, which is a pretty sophisticated take for a banker. Shout out Larry Fink. Talking about identity is, uh, you are pretty far down the crypto rabbit hole. If you're talking about both tokenization and identity like standards, like DIDs, VCs, we've talked about this on Bankless. Uh, but it also scares me, let it be known, I don't want Larry Fink to be talking about identity on my platforms. I want, I want none of that. Get that away from me.

• 32:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's going to, they're, they're going to. So, uh, David, did you catch my, um, my hot take, um, that I gave in the Bankless feed?

• 32:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I was listening to it while I was driving 80 kilometers an hour over a dirt road in the middle of the Patagonia.

• 32:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, dude, that is, that is badass. That's so cool that we did that. Popped a tire short, like while, because you're so excited to listen to it.

• 32:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's just like, oh, like Ryan's spitting fire right now. It's like, oh shit, my tire's flat.

• 32:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was. This is on the Bankless Premium feed, so we just put it on a different feed. Bankless citizens get that, by the way. But it was basically like a, like a seven minute take on how I think right now, like we have an unholy alliance with the bankers. Right. And that's great. I'm glad because they're a counterforce to the, uh, kind of the regulators of the world who just don't believe in private markets. Uh, I suppose, but I'm a bit worried about this alliance because where it leads is possibly AML KYC. Like, I don't think Larry Think is going to be passionate about DeFi. I don't think he's going to be like, yeah, you know, validators running at home. That's a great thing. Right. And so I'm a little bit worried about the next phase of this, David. Right. Like, um,

• 33:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  will they try to replicate TradFi? I, I don't mind if that's there as long as you don't get rid of, uh, free and open crypto. And these people, Larry Think, the bankers, all of them, they have tremendous power in DC. This is why the ETF got pushed through. Right. So they could do some real damage to a free and open crypto if they wanted to, and if it's in their incentive to. They don't seem to be doing that now, but like, let's just go eyes wide open into, uh, into this temporary alliance was the take.

• 34:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Uh, it, I, I, if they, they can do whatever they want and they're saying box private layer two. If they make it public, fine. I just, it, well, although their KYC identity shit should just stay there. And that is the power of Ethereum. Like do whatever you want on your own chain. Um, I am concerned that they put their weight behind imposing legal restrictions on United States citizens across public chains more broadly. That is, that is my fear.

• 34:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like it would come through in a bill, thou shalt not run validators because they're not.

• 34:30David Hoffman?

  Or, or like, yeah, if you're a United States citizen, you need to register your DID on Ethereum or something like that.

• 34:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Your DID, your identity?

• 34:38David Hoffman?

  Your DID, yeah, your identity.

• 34:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  You got another take.

• 34:40David Hoffman?

  DID is decentralized identity. I'll say one more thing about your, uh, seven minute episode. Uh, because it was, it was just you. You kind of had some like thoughts. You wrote it down. I'm assuming. I think, I know, I can tell when Ryan's reading, uh, from his notes.

• 34:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 34:52David Hoffman?

  And since like, we weren't discussing you, it was like, you were like speaking softer. It was like Ryan Sean Adams ASMR.

• 35:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, it was like really sexy.

• 35:04David Hoffman?

  You were like whispering into the microphone. You were like, yeah, speaking really like softly and breathily into the microphone.

• 35:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's weird. I guess I need practice at this. It was also, I still have this, like, I still have COVID, David. I'm like coughing and like my voice is all off, so I'll say that as well, but I don't know, maybe some people are into it. If so, I'll continue doing it.

• 35:24David Hoffman?

  There's a reason why the bankless premium RSS downloads are up only.

• 35:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Breathless Ryan takes, that's fantastic.

• 35:31David Hoffman?

  Breathy Ryan, yeah. Breathy Ryan takes.

• 35:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  We should just rebrand it. That's what the premium RSS speed is.

• 35:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we have, we have David takes and Ryan breathy, breathy takes.

• 35:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, wow. I can't believe there's a market for that. David, you have another take, though, on who else benefits from the tokenization from the banks. What does that take?

• 35:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so as soon as this clip about Larry Fink tokenizing all of BlackRock's bonds and equities and whatever, everyone was like, they're gonna do it on my chain. And there was like a little bit of a false dichotomy, I think, going on between like, the people were like, it's gonna, he's gonna tokenize them on Ethereum. That's where you, that's where you tokenize stuff. You tokenize stuff on Ethereum. It's just what you do. And then like the Chainlink army was like, no, that's not how it works. And Chainlink God put out this tweet, which I thought was pretty good, which my tweet models after, which is, they're actually gonna have their private chain, which they have complete sovereign control over. They can fork as well. It'll be just like a banker chain.

• 36:27David Hoffman?

  And then they'll, they'll use an interop, interop comm layer, messaging layer, like Chainlink, to send those assets outbound. And it won't be tokenized on Ethereum. They will just find themselves gravitating towards Ethereum because that's where liquidity is. That's where DeFi is. So that, that's my take. That's how I think this is gonna happen. So private, private BlackRock chain, interop middle layer. And then they can go anywhere. They could go to Solana if they wanted to, but my claim is they're gonna go to DeFi on Ethereum. Because as a, they'll go to DeFi on Ethereum as a function of what like market share of DeFi on Ethereum has in terms of like liquidity and users and like all that stuff.

• 37:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, no, you're wrong. They'll go to my chain, my bags, my chain. That's where they're gonna go, David.

• 37:11David Hoffman?

  Your bags are my bags, bro.

• 37:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, are they? Okay. Yeah, I know. I think that's another way it could happen, right? I do still think they'll have a side chain layer two, though, at some point, but we'll have to see. Anyway, it's good for crypto assets, at least right now. And I think we should end with this, another Franklin Templeton tweet to just round out this section. We have the bankers on our side.

• 37:29David Hoffman?

  This will be the second of like 30 memes that came out of the Franklin Templeton Twitter account.

• 37:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Go for it.

• 37:36David Hoffman?

  Franklin Templeton says, "We are excited about ETH and its ecosystem despite the midlife crisis it recently experienced. We see a bright future with many strong tailwinds to push the Ethereum ecosystem forward. EIP4844, altDA, community revitalization and restaking."

• 37:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  What? They know these things? Oh, my God. What else we got, David?

• 37:54David Hoffman?

  What else we got? Coming up next, what upgrades come after, in addition to EIP4844? We have Dencun around the corner, but we already have the next upgrade gearing up after that. Solana announces the Saga Phone Number Two. And of course, everyone's favorite pastime, the SEC getting grilled during Congress during Coinbase hearing. We're going to talk about all of this and more, but first, we're going to check out Mantle, a layer two with staking. You can stake your ETH with a layer two now. That's Mantle. Check them out. There's a link in the show notes. We're going to go hear from them right now. Mantle, formerly known as BitDow, is the first DAO-led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle Network. A brand-new, high-performance Ethereum layer two built using the OP stack, but uses Eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum layer one.

• 38:38David Hoffman?

  Not only does this reduce Mantle Network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle Treasury is one of the biggest DAO-owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub-communities from around Web3 onboarded, like Game7 for Web3 gaming and Bybit for TVL and liquidity and on-ramps. So if you want to build on the Mantle Network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first DAO-led layer-two ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle.xyz and follow them on Twitter at ZeroXMantle. Cello is the mobile-first, EVM-compatible, carbon-negative blockchain.

• 39:22David Hoffman?

  Built for the real world, and now, something big is happening. Introducing the Cello Layer 2. It's a game-changing proposal that's going to bring Cello's rapidly-growing ecosystem home to Ethereum. Vitalik has shared his excitement for the Cello Layer 2 on the Cello forum, so has Ben Jones from Optimism. But why? The Cello Layer 2 will bring huge advantages, like a decentralized sequencer, off-chain data availability, and one-block finality. What does all that mean? Rock-solid security, a trustless bridge to Ethereum, and more real-world use cases for Ethereum without compromise. And real-world adoption is happening. Active addresses on Cello have grown over 500% in the last six months. With the Cello Layer 2, gas fees will stay low, and you can even pay for gas using ERC20 tokens. But Cello is a community-governed protocol.

• 40:05David Hoffman?

  This means that Cello needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard. Join the conversation in the Cello forum. Follow @celloorg on Twitter and visit cello.org to shape the future of Ethereum.

• 40:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Blobs are on Gorley. Franklin Templeton, try to keep up.

• 40:20David Hoffman?

  What kind of sentence is that?

• 40:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Try to keep up with this crypto. So true, though. Can you make sense of what I just said for people who haven't been keeping up?

• 40:29David Hoffman?

  Yes. EIP4844, aka proto-Danksharding, which creates a blob space on Ethereum so that transaction fees from call data on Layer 2s can reduce by 95% and we can have cheaper transactions on Layer 2s. Did you follow all that?

• 40:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, and Gorley is the testnet, right? So it's just a testnet. So it's the thing you do before you go to mainnet. So this means blob space is coming and proto-Danksharding is coming, yes?

• 40:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, basically, we are on the final hours of Dencun. You run through, you do your testnet upgrades. You upgrade testnet number one, that was Gorley. Next one will be Holski, I think, Sepolia as well. And once you hit all the testnets and all the testnets successfully upgrade, successfully have their fork, then we're like, alright, well, there's nothing else to do other than mainnet. I guess we just do mainnet. And that's how an Ethereum merge happens, an Ethereum fork happens. So if one successful testnet is successful, then you move on to the next one. And then, once they're all successful, then we just full send the whole thing.

• 41:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but then the Layer 2 still need to turn it on. So what has to happen with Optimism, Tyco, Scroll, Arbitrum, all these things?

• 41:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so they need to, instead of using the call data of Ethereum block space, you just need to use blob space. So different Layer 2s just have to like upgrade for that. So the OP stack, according to Proto, who is Proto Lambda, who's the Proto in Proto Dank Charting, by the way, he's like, he took Dank Red's Dank Charting, it was like, but you can do this and we can ship it earlier. And that's 4844. There's some Ethereum lore for you. Saying, "Looking to be ready for optimism governance voting cycle 19, which completes in early March and then hopefully will roll out shortly on Layer 1." So they'll be ready. Tyco for mainnet, the current plan is to launch with 4844 live already, which means Tyco is going to launch as a, as a network. Scroll's already ready to go. Arbitrum 1 and Nova, these decisions will be controlled by

• 42:19David Hoffman?

  the on-chain contracts that are automatically already in the hands of the Arbitrum DAO. So the DAO needs to vote for it. They will, and it'll, it'll be approved 100%.

• 42:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're all ready to go, is the bottom line here. And the big question, I think, on some people's mind is always, what's next? So we have this hard fork, but what about the next hard fork? What about second hard fork? So after Dencun, there's another hard fork that is kind of, it's not scheduled yet, but it is kind of planned out. It's called Pectra.

• 42:46David Hoffman?

  Technically, Dencun isn't even scheduled yet.

• 42:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thank you. Thank you. You are technically right, David.

• 42:51David Hoffman?

  The Ethereum Foundation would like you to know. It's not scheduled. There's no date.

• 42:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, there's no date. We have no idea when it's coming. It'll be March, March or April. No idea when it's coming. The next hard fork, though, after that Pectra, what does it include? Verkle trees, David? What are these? The first step, you love Verkle trees? You're a big Verkle tree guy?

• 43:09David Hoffman?

  Big Verkle guy.

• 43:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, you should, because they're the first step to stateless clients. And that means lower hardware to run a node. That's fantastic, because it increases our ability to maintain decentralization on Ethereum. Also, we get rid of the necessity to grant unlimited approvals. If you are on-chain, you know what a pain this is, when you have to say, oh, yeah, you have approval to my token balance to do something on an app. There's an auth and auth call, part like EIP that helps to fix that. Also, there's a few other things, too. Node operators get the ability to spin up a validator. You're no longer capped with 32 ETH, so you can have more than 32 ETH in a single validator. There's inclusionless, which improves censorship persistence. A lot of

• 43:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  small things that amount to like, a pretty exciting upgrade, actually, for the next one.

• 43:57David Hoffman?

  It is a pretty good upgrade.

• 43:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 43:59David Hoffman?

  Verkle trees, I want to double click on that one.

• 44:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, do you?

• 44:02David Hoffman?

  Clients. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 44:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Verkle guy.

• 44:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah. You said in the notes, we have lower hardware requirements to run a node. Well, you can also just like, once you do that, you can just increase the demands on that hardware and be at equilibrium. Do you remember when we were doing EIP 1559? And then we were also doing the merge and everyone's like, it's going to lower gas fees, right? It's going to lower gas fees, right? And we were all like, no, it's actually not going to lower gas fees. It's going to burn them, but it's not going to lower them. And then the same thing with the merge. We're like, it's going to lower gas fees. And we're like, guys, no, it's not lowering gas fees.

• 44:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah. We'll just fill up the additional validate like space you're saying?

• 44:37David Hoffman?

  No, no, there was just no gas. It just wasn't about gas fees.

• 44:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:41David Hoffman?

  There was no, there was no increase in bandwidth at all. Verkle trees and the verge as a part of the Ethereum roadmap as a whole is actually reducing, can, excuse me, can actually reduce gas fees. It will create room for us to increase the gas limit, potentially allows for a higher gas limit. So we will actually be able to have reduced gas fees on the layer one. Once this goes in.

• 45:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 45:06David Hoffman?

  And this is, it's moving Ethereum, you know, the whole like Solana meme of

• 45:13David Hoffman?

  Moore's law, scaling with Moore's law. This is Ethereum's, this is Ethereum's version of that. The verge is scaling Ethereum layer one in parallel with Moore's law. And, and so like, I don't think people really are like, understand that really at all.

• 45:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Franklin Templeton, meme that, okay? You don't understand Verkle, Verkle trees yet, do you?

• 45:33David Hoffman?

  Your, your dog with hat was pretty good. Do Verkle trees.

• 45:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do Verkle. That's, that's hard move. Okay. So Vitalik was also championing last week, increasing the block size. You see this, David?

• 45:43David Hoffman?

  Yes, which is exactly what we're talking about. So yeah, on Reddit, Vitalik was asked, how much gas limit could we safely increase now? And also after Verkle and Vitalik responded, I think doing a modest gas limit even today is reasonable. The gas limit, the gas limit is basically block size. How much data can go in a block is basically throughput. The gas limit has not been increased for nearly three years, which is the longest time ever in protocols history. And so, you know, Moore's law continues. And Vitalik saying, yo, like, we've actually been lagging Moore's law. We could increase the gas fees if we wanted to. He didn't answer specifically about after the inclusion of Verkle trees, but this is a question that I will ask Mike Neuter and Dom when we do our episode on the Ethereum roadmap and we talk about this.

• 46:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  You are such, you are such a Verkle tree maxi, David. Anytime, any chance you get to talk about Verkle trees, man. You are just.

• 46:29David Hoffman?

  Verge me, baby.

• 46:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, there's just some, you know, a sad exploit this week. Socket and its exchange Bungie was exploited for 3.3 million. So Socket is kind of like an interoperability protocol, kind of like a bridging type of protocol.

• 46:44David Hoffman?

  It's a bridge aggregator.

• 46:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 46:46David Hoffman?

  I've used it a lot.

• 46:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's, well, so you've used it maybe directly. And also there are apps you may have used that may use Socket that you, where you didn't know you were actually using Socket under the, under the covers. So talk about the fallout of this and kind of what it caused.

• 47:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So there was a route that was incorporated into Socket, which is a very normal thing to do. They just incorporate routes. One of them had an exploit in it that was exploited. And so the exploiter was draining people's wallets. And Socket realized it extremely quickly and paused that particular route and just like hit, hit freeze on it. And only 3.3 million dollars was stolen, like 3.3 million dollars is 3.3 million dollars. But in the grand scheme of hacks, I would call that a single digit million dollar hack.

• 47:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  From people who allowed Socket

• 47:33David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 47:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  to have access to some amount of tokens on their account and didn't revoke that access. And it happened, I don't know, there's a period of time where they, they didn't realize and didn't pause the contract. And so people's wallets were drained without them knowing it.

• 47:49David Hoffman?

  Right. So when you make an approval, these days in Ethereum, I think MetaMask and both Rabi does this. Like you will send like 500 DAI across a transaction and then you will approve, you will give allowances for 500 DAI. If you ever set it to like max, then this exploit could have happened to you. But if you approved 500 and then you sent 500, the allowances are.

• 48:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, like say if you had a thousand DAI in your account and you only sent 500, well, the other 500 would still be approved, right?

• 48:16David Hoffman?

  Still be, yes, exactly.

• 48:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  So how do you check this, David? How do you figure this out if you've given that approval and?

• 48:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a website called revoke.cash, which is pretty useful. Definitely learn how to use that if you're navigating, if you're on-chain on Ethereum. But I do believe there is an upgrade. We'll have to check on this. An auth call in Dencun, or excuse me, in Pectra, the next upgrade after Dencun.

• 48:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we were just talking about it.

• 48:42David Hoffman?

  Might mitigate this.

• 48:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it could mitigate this. Also, I think wallet UX really needs to improve. It's like, this is another reminder that we're all alpha testing this. This is not ready for grandma or your parents yet, all right? So like, not when we have UX problems like this. It's just such a pain to have to allow revoke access. Like, I was going through a list of wallets I have yesterday and be like, oh crap, did I use Saka? I don't know. I was plugging wallets into this interface and it's really messy right now, David. It's hard. And I think we've got a lot of steps to improve it. One cool thing is, do you know, Rabby will tell you when there's an exploit, there's another crypto wallet?

• 49:17David Hoffman?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and they'll help you, like, they have the revoke.cash kind of functionality built into their wallet in the browser. It's stuff like that that's going to make a difference and we really have to improve on it. There's also an update this week from the Coinbase versus SEC case. You know how the SEC was like, hey Coinbase, everything you list, maybe aside from Bitcoin, is a security? And you should stop doing that and we're going to bring you to court? Well, that case is basically playing out right now. So from the court case, this is the judge asking the SEC lawyer whether the token issuers named in the complaint violated securities law, right? Because that's why the SEC was bringing them to court. Coinbase violated securities law, of course. And so she asked about this, did it violate securities law? And SEC lawyer said, well, not exactly, Your Honor.

• 50:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Those tokens named in the complaint are computer code. And the judge responded, I'm smiling, sir, because that's kind of what your friends at the back are saying. They're wondering why we're here, pointing to Coinbase at the back, wondering why we're actually here.

• 50:14David Hoffman?

  Your friends at the back table. I hope Paul was there, just like snickering.

• 50:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, so she said this, "It is a real fear that I have that your arguments speaking to the SEC is just sweeping too broadly, labeling collectibles as securities as well." There's another part where the SEC lawyers says that Coinbase says crypto is a $1 trillion asset class. You know, they say, "Ooh, we don't really know. How do we know this?" I mean, like, we talk about it in the beginning of every show, like, it is a trillion-dollar asset class. Anyway, "We disagree that crypto is an asset class." The lawyer says, "They're not even an asset class, David. It is a rounding error in the economy and requires no new laws. The US equity market is 100 trillion and the global market is 400 trillion. Crypto is a rounding error." That's what SEC lawyer said in this court case, okay?

• 51:01David Hoffman?

  Why is Gary Gensler so obsessed with it?

• 51:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Seriously, I mean, somebody needs to tell these people they don't get to decide. They don't get to decide what a new asset class is. That's like beyond their mandate. No one's asking for that. I don't know why they think they can actually weigh in here.

• 51:16David Hoffman?

  No one asked your opinion, SEC.

• 51:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, they do securities, okay? They don't get to weigh on what's a real asset class and what's not.

• 51:23David Hoffman?

  Jake Shervinsky put out a pretty good tweet thread where he says, "Today's Coinbase hearing revealed a key flaw in the SEC's legal theory. It turns nearly every asset on the planet into a security." This is something that I realized, Ryan, after we did our Josh Rosenthal episode, the crypto renaissance, where he talked about, like, oh, yeah, the money printer was one of these key technologies that birthed Renaissance. And then you and I started, like, unpacking and chewing on what that really meant. And like, over the next, like, few weeks, we were like, "Oh, we have crypto, we have a money printer for financial assets." And then we were like, "Oh, that's going to scare the shit out of the SEC." Because like, tokenized long sword of flame in your game, right? Like, tokenized dog with hat, tokenized Pokémon cards.

• 52:08David Hoffman?

  And we were going to just, like, DDoS the SEC with financial assets of all types and backgrounds and properties and upside or commodity-like properties, like, whatever.

• 52:19David Hoffman?

  And so the SEC is going for the broadest possible interpretation, whereas like everything is, we control everything.

• 52:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I mean, we said it.

• 52:27David Hoffman?

  We're just DDoSing them. There's too many of our assets for them to regulate.

• 52:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  But that's the case, that's the case that they're trying to make in the court, that everything is a security. And the judge is like, no, it's not. You can't do that.

• 52:38David Hoffman?

  But it's too cringe of a statement to make for it to like stand up in court. Like, no, you don't get to regulate on-chain Pokemon cards, Gary Gensler. That's not what you do.

• 52:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you remember when Richie Torres was grilling Gary Gensler and just feeling?

• 52:52David Hoffman?

  About Pokemon cards?

• 52:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can you tell me whether a Pokemon card is a security? And Gary Gensler couldn't? He was just like dodging the question.

• 52:59David Hoffman?

  He was like, facts and circumstances. And then the Pokemon card, that was our meme. That meme came from crypto. And so Richie Torres was like, oh, the crypto people are making fun of Gary Gensler because he's trying to tokenize Pokemon cards. I'm going to use that, which is the power of memes.

• 53:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Speaking of memes, I don't know how this relates, but Donald Trump, okay, he is, former Donald Trump says he will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. Let's hear him.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  Tonight, I'm also making another promise to protect Americans from government tyranny. As you're a president, I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. You know about that?

• 53:33David Hoffman?

  It's interesting to see like the Trump fans cheering for that. Of course, of course they would, but just like, I didn't know that they cared so deeply about that. But they probably just cheered.

• 53:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I wonder how many, whether Biden will have a response, whether the Democrats will have a response on like what their position is.

• 53:48David Hoffman?

  Biden is like, I'm gonna give you a CBDC. And all of the Warrens is like, yay!

• 53:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Warren, Elizabeth Warren very much wants that. That is her end state. Of course, there's this place in the middle where you have like USDC and like private industry kind of competing.

• 54:03David Hoffman?

  USDC is my CBDC.

• 54:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's where I fall. Anyway, tell me about the Solana phone, David.

• 54:07David Hoffman?

  Solana phone number two. Okay, so the first Solana phone, the Saga phone, which started going for like $5,000 a piece on eBay because of the bonk price appreciation and everyone just kind of started speculating.

• 54:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because you got an airdrop with your phone. You got bonked with your phone.

• 54:21David Hoffman?

  You got an airdrop with your phone, but like it didn't justify the cost of the phone, but people started buying these phones anyways, just because like there, it's a limited edition. It turned into an NFT, like only 20,000 Saga phones. And so if you have a Saga phone, you're like by definition an early Solana user amongst all the other like airdrops that are on them. And so they were never going to do another phone because it kind of flopped. They had like 5, 6,000 of these Saga phones sell out out of 20,000. And then the Bonk token goes up like 10,000% and then they instantly sell out. So they're rolling it back. The Saga phone Chapter 2 is coming out. And so there is going to be, you can buy one for a deposit of $450, designed to cover the full price of the device, expected to ship in the first half of 2025. And then there's just a bunch of like Solana apps embedded on there.

• 55:06David Hoffman?

  Backpack, Mad Lads, Tensor, Phantom, Soft, Magic Eden.

• 55:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  You think people are hoping for some more airdrops on this, like, you know, Bonk V2? I mean, my...

• 55:16David Hoffman?

  It's until further notice.

• 55:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, there you go. David, meme of the week, let's close this episode out. What are we looking at?

• 55:24David Hoffman?

  Of course, it's a Franklin Templeton meme because they just gave us so much collateral to work with. This is the meme of the car veering off the highway, taking a hard pivot. And it's the 60/40 portfolio. If you go straight, you get the nice 60/40 portfolio, 60% equities, 40% bonds. Or you could take the hard right and you can get 60/40 plus Bitcoin. This is Franklin Templeton taking that hard right.

• 55:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the classic 60/40, that's the safe way to invest. But now, now Wall Street wants you to own a little bit of Bitcoin too, okay? Stocks, bonds, and crypto, that's what the message is.

• 55:54David Hoffman?

  I think explaining memes, Ryan, is probably the most cringe thing that we do on the show.

• 55:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't think so. I think we do many other cringe things that I'm sure, I'm sure the commenters will tell us about. YouTube.

• 56:06David Hoffman?

  You tell, tell us how cringe we are.

• 56:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tell us how cringe we are again. Thank you.

• 56:11David Hoffman?

  We will totally read those comments.

• 56:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Going to end with risk in a minute, but disclosures, but David and I are investors in Scroll and Socket. I'm also an angel investor in Arbitrum. Both Dave and I hold some crypto. You can see all of those disclosures at bankless.com/disclosures. And of course, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. We're on the path west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.