ROLLUP: Stocks vs. Crypto | EthCC Recap | Trump BTC Conf Speaker | ETH Documentary Release

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup Second Week of July ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/30?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ 🐡 PUFFER | CHECK OUT PUFFER UNIFI https://bankless.cc/PufferUnifi ------ 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 ⚡️ CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiGovernance ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 00:00 Start 03:18 ETH CC Vibes https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1811041008966160595 05:47 Vitalik Updates https://x.com/ranjan3118/status/1810707552256327783 https://x.com/0xMichz/status/1810771333846028629?t=4WJ_G8nmaQfz2fbiB7ggeQ&s=19 https://x.com/0xMichz/status/1810771333846028629?t=4WJ_G8nmaQfz2fbiB7ggeQ&s=19 https://www.theblock.co/post/304479/vitalik-buterin-pushes-for-ethereum-to-respond-to-51-attacks-in-a-more-automated-way 08:53 Getting Robbed? https://x.com/evanincrypto/status/1810377921628123333 10:09 Speaking of Crime... https://x.com/_b33ts/status/1811171877416792528 10:45 Bankless ETHCC Meetup https://x.com/BanklessHQ/status/1810629985298006148 11:21 Markets https://x.com/caprioleio/status/1809146232104988817 https://x.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1810611088838279436 https://x.com/JoanaCotar/status/1808888782738911614 https://www.theblock.co/post/303911/bitstamp-mt-gox-bitcoin-asap-once-arrives 15:09 Bullish Factors https://x.com/jseyff/status/1809432981573865565?s=46 https://www.theblock.co/data/crypto-markets/bitcoin-etf https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1810731660247453976 18:18 ETH ETF Incoming https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1810331280006861268 https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-etf-launch-close-to-finish-line-bitwise-cco 19:01 Grayscale ETHE https://x.com/SGJohnsson/status/1810420032541020174 https://ycharts.com/companies/ETHE/discount_or_premium_to_nav 25:53 Good Inflation Numbers https://www.barrons.com/news/us-stocks-pause-near-records-after-good-inflation-data-5bb78439 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1811377447461339368 26:34 Stocks Up, Crypto Uhh? https://www.theblock.co/data/crypto-markets/prices/btc-pearson-correlation-30d https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NASDAQ%3AQQQ https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1808155233274458605 30:38 BUIDL $500M Market Cap https://etherscan.io/token/0x7712c34205737192402172409a8f7ccef8aa2aec 32:48 Tokenized Assets https://app.rwa.xyz/treasuries https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/07/10/goldman-sachs-launch-tokenization-bitcoin-etfs-crypto-mcdermott/ https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/from-ripples-to-waves-the-transformational-power-of-tokenizing-assets 35:13 ETH Gas Fees Are LOW https://etherscan.io/chart/gasprice https://www.growthepie.xyz/fundamentals/rent-paid https://x.com/lookonchain/status/1808411819700277746 https://thedefireport.io/research/sol-discount-eth 42:08 Crypto Enters GOP Platform https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1810378813089718518?s=46 45:31 Donal Trump Joins Bitcoin Conference https://x.com/TheBitcoinConf/status/1811181245906506031 47:24 The Role of Crypto In Elections https://www.grayscale.com/elections https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1811033027834708226 50:31 Celsius Sues Thousand Of Users https://x.com/CelsiusLOC/status/1808137312242479441 53:47 Ethereum Story Documentary https://paragraph.xyz/@ethereumfilm/not-just-a-film https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fblo1x040x8d81.png 55:41 Raises https://x.com/romeprotocol/status/1810657493875294558?s=46&t=dAxCjT2P_GIrJMvMgWIpfA https://x.com/romeprotocol/status/1810657493875294558?s=46&t=dAxCjT2P_GIrJMvMgWIpfA 57:04 Meme of The Week 58:09 Moment of Zen https://x.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1810303321099366453 ------ 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.

• 0:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, happy 2nd week of July. It is time for the Bankless Weekly Rollup. David, this is the last weekly rollup without the ETHTF, right?

• 0:12David Hoffman?

  That's what I heard. It's this one. This is the one. This is the most likely weekly rollup.

• 0:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  For real this time.

• 0:18David Hoffman?

  For real this time, yeah.

• 0:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we're going to keep saying that until it actually is the last weekly rollup without an ETHTF.

• 0:23David Hoffman?

  How many times until it's annoying?

• 0:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we definitely have an update for you there. And David, you are in Brussels. You're recording from Brussels today, so you're at a conference, right?

• 0:31David Hoffman?

  Yep, that's right. ECC usually happens in Paris, but when Ethereum goes up against the Olympics in an in-person conference, we lose. So we're in Brussels. We got booted off to Brussels, which there are already some stories about Brussels. We'll talk about them in a little bit.

• 0:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  I've seen some tweets. I want to hear about those stories. But what else we got on tap?

• 0:53David Hoffman?

  Bullish week for tokenization. We're going to talk about the BlackRock Builder Fund passing a threshold, as well as other people coming into the tokenization play. Bitcoin had its first 25% drawdown after 427 days without one. So is it over? Can we go up now? When can we go up? Can we go up, please? What else we got, Ryan?

• 1:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, please go up. Republicans are adding crypto to their official party platform. This is actually a pretty cool statement, including the right to go bankless, David, and also Trump might be crypto conference. Was he at ECC, David? I don't know. Maybe you could fill me in there.

• 1:30David Hoffman?

  Trump was not at ECC in Brussels.

• 1:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  He should have been. He missed the best crypto conference. And finally, Ethereum got another based rollup. We're very excited about the based rollup space. And actually, why don't we just start there with our friends and sponsors over at Puffer?

• 1:45David Hoffman?

  Puffer Unify. Puffer started off as an LST platform, which adapted into an LRT platform. And their whole unique thing is they're leveraging TEE's Trusted Execution Environment just to add just a really strong layer of security around Ethereum staking, around restaking, and then also for the security around their incoming based rollup. So the Puffer Unify chain leverages Puffer's restaked validator.

• 2:10David Hoffman?

  Of course, to sequence the Puffer chain, transactions on Unify can interact directly with other base rollups, including non-Puffer base rollups like Tyco, No Bridges, Unified Liquidity and Applayer. This is one of the paths of Ethereum to solve its fragmentation. This is this whole thing. Base rollups and pre-commitments have been just a major topic here at ETHCC. One of the big themes. They get fast 100 millisecond preconfirmations on the Puffer Unify chain, also with the native yield. This chain actually has not launched yet. So if you are a developer, they want you to fill out the form that is linked in the show notes. That's banklist.cc/pufferbuilders. There's also a light paper for you to read for all you researchers out there who just want to keep up

• 2:52David Hoffman?

  in the world of TE, space sequencing, layer twos. This has definitely been one of the themes of like LRT projects also expanding into a layer two. At face value, like why isn't LRT doing a layer two? It's probably a question that many people have. But like, once you dig into it, there's like a lot of synergies there. And Puffer is definitely leading the way here.

• 3:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, very cool. I think base rollups have a very exciting future in the Ethereum landscape. So exciting to see Puffer expand into that. And speaking of that, you were talking about ECC and some of the topics. So what are the vibes at ECC, David? Give me the download. I've been watching a little bit on Twitter, but I gotta confess, I haven't. I saw Vitalik tweets, some Vitalik videos, that sort of thing. But I don't think I have a sense of like what it's like to be on the ground.

• 3:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and I would say other ETHCCs, it has been easier to identify a pretty like core theme, just a phase, a check in of Ethereum. ECC always kind of feels like going one year around the sun because it's so consistent. It's middle of July in Paris, as I'm in Brussels. The content sphere is a little bit more spread out than usual. Pre-commitments, preconfirmations is a big theme. Base rollups, very adjacent to that, is a very big theme. How to approach MEV on various layers? Applications, layer ones, layer twos, app chains? How this all ties together? And then also ZK proving is showing up a little bit more. But these are, so like the whole base rollups conversation

• 4:17David Hoffman?

  is also happening on the back of like the Paradigm people, Georgios and Charlie.

• 4:24David Hoffman?

  Providing alternative paths to scaling Ethereum. That is maybe

• 4:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Throwing some shade at base rollups.

• 4:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, throwing shade at base rollups, saying like, we don't, that is an unsolved problem, and that's really complicated. And so, people are talking about just this kind of like, pretty really deep level infrastructure as it relates to Ethereum fragmentation, kind of like kicking the tires all around it. So I would say maybe if I was gonna draw out one theme of the content of ETHCC, it has been just the refragmentation, the defragmentation of Ethereum with a specific bent on base rollups and pre-commits. Then Vitalik also kind of set his own meta of content because he is doing like 10, over 10 talks. I asked him this morning

• 5:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's doing 10 talks?

• 5:09David Hoffman?

  The Thursday, as of the Thursday morning, he has done six talks and four panels, and he says he's not done yet, and these are just his words. I just, I asked him, because people were talking about like, how many talks did Vitalik do? And I watched one of these talks, and I just assumed, like, oh, he's probably like doing the smart thing, which is like presenting, like putting together one talk and giving it in 10 different spaces. And I asked him that, it's like, are all of these talks different? And yes, apparently, all of these talks are indeed different. He said he spent most of Tuesday writing the slides for every single one of his talks. So he's just like running around ETHCC, firing off presentations, like no notes, just his slides, and like throwing banger talks, they're pretty great.

• 5:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do we have a clip of Vitalik running in the rain to get to a talk here, to a conference?

• 5:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so these are the two tweets that has like, a pretty good theme to them, which is that, one of them says, "When Vitalik Buterin makes an entry like this into a Web3 event in a stormy Brussels rain, it like stormed the first day I was here. There's no stop, you know there's no stopping Ethereum." And this is Vitalik, like, running over a puddle, like, double-landing on both feet, like, ready to go. And then there's like another one of Vitalik coming in a little bit late to his talk, but just like running right in into it, and then starting his talk, banging out his talk, and then running away from it to go to his next talk. Just like Vitalik doing talks, a ton of talks this time.

• 6:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here's, here's a follow-up from Mike.ETH. "This man changed the history of innovation in blockchain, and he's a billionaire without a bodyguard."

• 6:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  He just kind of lights up a room when he enters it, doesn't he? He's just such an Ethereum vibe there. Actually, speaking of Vitalik, like, one of the quotes, I don't know if you saw this talk, David, but I saw this story published in The Block. I haven't seen anything recorded of what he's said. Be really interested in looking at some of the talks. But Vitalik Buterin pushes for Ethereum to respond to 51% attacks in a more automated way. Apparently, this is one, at least The Block picked up on, is the ability, rather than to solve a 51% attack at kind of the social coordination level, you know how messy that gets, right? With all of the various stakeholders and parties trying to decide, is having a strategy to automate that a bit more. So it's kind of like executed in code or like ready to go.

• 7:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know if that was part of the substance of his talks or if that was just like a side note. Anyway, do you have any highlights of what Vitalik's talking about here?

• 7:24David Hoffman?

  This one, well, this is where we can invoke the word intersubjective. So this is an intersubjective fault of Ethereum. He says like we can like fix in an automated way, in the same way Eigenlayer is doing the same thing with restaking. And I was not at this particular talk. All of his talks, generally the theme of his talks are like, okay, here are some like, so here are the next frontier problems for Ethereum, and also like, we also know what the solutions are, so let's move forward on them. Kind of just suggestions for layer two design, all that kind of stuff. There's also a panel that I walked in on with Justin Drake on a restaking panel with David Say from Babylon. And so, okay, great, like, I know, I know a pretty good about Ethereum staking in Eigenlayer.

• 8:08David Hoffman?

  Let's learn about restaking in Babylon. Let's learn what the difference is. And I get into the panel, and it's Justin Drake just arguing with David Say, the founder of Babylon, about the Bitcoin security budget. He's just doing the Justin Drake thing of like, Bitcoin's not secure. They didn't get into restaking for like 20 minutes into the conversation. It was interesting. I mean, I'm always compelled by Justin Drake's arguments, and so Justin Drake was like, like, doing like jujitsu with this guy, and it kind of felt like he had one arm behind his back, in a good way. But that's just me.

• 8:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Babylon, if people remember, that's basically an Eigenlayer for Bitcoin. They're behind. I think they've got more research to do. They're not deployed. They're not yet. But that's the idea, is bringing restaking to Bitcoin. So I imagine that was interesting. There's reports of people being robbed in Brussels as well. Like, what's up with that? What is going on?

• 8:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm hearing like two to three stories, unique stories a day of like something bad happening. Either like one, a bankless employee, by the way, like was like taken like not far away. She like taken a couple of blocks away by her taxi driver. And he's like, oh, the card machine doesn't broke. Pay me cash. Also, we happen to be at an ATM. And like a different bankless employee had to like go over there and like strong, just like be a presence to like allow her to get out of the taxi. So like, and I've heard of multiple stories of like shady taxi drivers. Another friend got her purse stolen. This is a tweet that went viral of a guy who is now limping around Brussels because he was mugged at 7:00 PM, which is broad daylight in Brussels.

• 9:43David Hoffman?

  Luca Netti got his passport stolen from his hotel room. All of the conferences I have ever been to, there's always been conversations of just like, oh, we're in Bogota. Be safe. And Bogota was completely fine. Like, I have never gone to an Ethereum conference where there was like crime and like robberies and anything. Except it's for some reason happening all over Brussels, in the middle of Europe, with the EU center of Europe. So that's been a theme of Brussels this year. Speaking of crime, Suzy is here for some reason. I didn't know that Suzy could go to Brussels. Suzy was at Rave, apparently, just like raving at Rave.

• 10:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do we have a picture of this?

• 10:23David Hoffman?

  No, I do not have a picture of it. One of my friends said he, she also interviewed him for her like podcast that she's doing. Cause she's doing a bunch of podcasts. So I like, I, I kind of figured that, I think we have an extradition treaty with Belgium. Apparently he's not ready to be extradited or anything. Apparently he says can go to Europe. So that was interesting. We also had the bankless party as well. So on Monday of ECC, we just had the bankless party for. Bankless citizens, a bunch of podcast guests and some friends of Bankless. Sadly, I missed it because I missed my connection in Chicago. So while everyone else was partying at the Bankless party, I was in Chicago doing nothing. Waiting for my flight. So that was a bummer.

• 11:08David Hoffman?

  But overall, it's been a great time. Been a great ECC.

• 11:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I know you're a bit jet lagged. You know, we had to coordinate to find a good hour to record this. So thanks for being here. Another week for the Bankless Nation. We never miss.

• 11:19David Hoffman?

  We have never missed a weekly rollup.

• 11:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk markets for a second. So Bitcoin, what's the price in the week?

• 11:25David Hoffman?

  Started the week 57,300, ending the week 57,800, up about a little more than half a percent. So upy flat.

• 11:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Upy flat. So the bearish factors, I guess. I mean, people in general, I don't know what the vibes were at ECC. I know it's more research focused, dev focused type of conference where we talk about like serious things like you know, base rollups, fixing fragmentation, all of these things. But I'll tell you, the crypto narrative has felt very bearish lately. Like, we're not enjoying this, this flat summer, flat down summer.

• 11:59David Hoffman?

  Flat is down now.

• 12:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it is. So Bitcoin had its first 25% drawdown. This is after a streak of 427 days. Okay, so we're 25% down, at least we were at some point during the week on Bitcoin. And this, but I guess the flip side is, this was an incredible run, 427 days of a streak. And it beat the 2012 record by 63 days. So I guess another way to look at this is like, we had an incredible run and we were due for a correction. I mean, 423 days is essentially up before and now down 25%. It's not the end of the world, but people are blaming the German government.

• 12:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Apparently, they keep selling their Bitcoin. Recall, we talked to a couple of rollups ago that, you know, Germany had a few billion. I think in Bitcoin seizures, right? So they just sold another 362 million on the week and they still have more. They still have 1.3 billion that they might sell. These are very large numbers. This is a tweet in German, so I can't... My German's a little rusty.

• 13:08David Hoffman?

  Hit translate post.

• 13:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's do it. Translate post. Okay, so this is a German MP, I believe, who is saying that instead of holding Bitcoin as a strategic reserve currency, we are selling it. We shouldn't be doing that in Germany. We should be a bit more like the US, which apparently, like, the US is debating whether they should sell some of their seized Bitcoin or keep it.

• 13:32David Hoffman?

  Or hold it.

• 13:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm not sure. That's news to me as well, but maybe the point of the Americans who are thinking about this. But like, it's a good point. Why are we selling all of this Bitcoin? We have this Bitcoin.

• 13:42David Hoffman?

  That's what I said when we were dumping our Bitcoin. Just take it from one department and put it in the Treasury. Just give it to the Treasury.

• 13:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. The MP added, "Instead of selling, I recommend developing a comprehensive Bitcoin strategy." So like, why sell when you can hold and maybe support the Euro at some point in time? So, anyway, Germany's dumping on us. This was known, but apparently the markets don't like this dumpage. There's also Mt. Gox, of course. That news is out there. The distributions are finally happening, and that's still in the news. They are happening in two more months. So according to the agreement with Mt. Gox trustees, Bitstamp has 60 days to distribute the token. Kraken has 90 days to Bitcoin, 20 days. So there's a lot of Bitcoin that still could be sold as a result of Mt. Gox.

• 14:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  So this type of sell pressure and the prospect of sell pressure is contributing to the flat down market right now.

• 14:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a lot of just overhang. I think everyone has oversold the Mt. Gox sell pressure. I think I gave this take last week. I think the Mt. Gox sell pressure is not as much as people are at least fudding about. Like, maybe the market has digested it, but like, in terms of perception, that's much less sell pressure. Like, Germany's dumping $1.3 billion of Bitcoin on us after they've dumped like $600 million of Bitcoin. That's sell pressure. Gox cell pressure, I don't really think is all that real. Anyways, we got some bullish factors too. So the Bitcoin ETFs are absorbing a lot of this cell pressure. So while Bitcoin is being sold by all of these entities on like July 8th,

• 15:22David Hoffman?

  IBIT, the BlackRock ETF took in $187 million, so $187 million of buy pressure. The next day, total buy pressure of the ETFs came in and at a quarter billion dollars. So we're, we're painting in some numbers of inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs. Finally waking up again, not no longer dormant. We'll see how long this, this holds, but we're, we're pulling in a lot of this cell pressure Bitcoin into the ETFs.

• 15:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's actually super impressive. This is James Safer, like summing up Bitcoin ETFs doing the exact opposite of dumping during this, this dumpage. And the first 20% drawdown since the launch, they're buying, they're doubling down. So last week, 650 million in net inflows on the week. I gotta say, I'm impressed with TradFi here, David. Like it seems like the crypto natives and traders are the paper hands here. And TradFi is just diamond handing it. They see the dip and they're, and they're buying. So like, well done. I mean, this is a more robust set of purchasers than I think crypto anticipated. And it's great to have that, that support from a price perspective.

• 16:27David Hoffman?

  Hopefully, yeah. On July 4th, when I think what it was the peak dumpage, I just looked at the ETH price. I think it got down to like 2,800s and I was like, this is stupid. And also it's the day of freedom, so I'm going to buy the freedom currency. I just bought in, in solidarity with the ETH price. Feels good to buy $2,800 ETH.

• 16:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  The freedom currency?

• 16:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Ether, it's a freedom, it's a sovereign, everyone's be your own bank. It's a freedom currency, freedom day, freedom currency.

• 16:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  I thought you were trying to make a dollar as the freedom currency kind of joke, but you know, it's like, get off the show, David.

• 16:59David Hoffman?

  Ignore that.

• 17:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what's funny? When I was looking at the spot Bitcoin ETF charts, I noticed these gaps in the charts. So I was like, wait, what happened those days? Oh, it's because the market's closed.

• 17:08David Hoffman?

  The weekends, yeah, it's closed.

• 17:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Weekends, those happen. Well, let's check in on our friend ETH. So where are we on the week?

• 17:14David Hoffman?

  Also upy flat, starting the week at $3,100, ending the week at $3,155,000. Almost, almost got above $3,200 right there. But yeah, there's that dip down to 2,850, which ya boy bought, ya boy bought right there. Right at, right at that needle.

• 17:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right at the bottom, I could see you on the screen.

• 17:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so they got, yeah, got down pretty low and now we're back above 3,000. Yeah, it's hard to like feel good about these like relatively low ETH prices. I would like it to be higher. But nonetheless, I mean, this is the buying up and we know we're about to get the ETF. When we got the ETF announcement, it went from these prices up to almost $4,000. And now we are back down to these prices. So you get to buy pre-ETF announced ETH price after the ETF is announced. Which I think is a blessing.

• 18:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep, you get another roll up to purchase and is a great opportunity to do that. Thanks to Kraken for the price charts, of course, and that is the place. If you're gonna go buy some crypto, buy some ETH, go do it at Kraken. Create an account if you haven't already. Let's talk about the ETH ETF for a second. So it's not here. We said that in the intro, so what's going on? What's going on is more paperwork is being filed. So here's Eric Balchunas and he's going through a whole thread of all of the various S1s. It's the final paperwork from all of the issuers. You know, you've got VanEck, you've got BlackRock, you've got Bitwise, on and on, etc. The quote from one of the issuers is, "It's close to the finish line." I think that about sums it up. We're like very close to the finish line, so it could happen anytime.

• 18:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  It could happen before the next roll up. I'm sure it will, David. This has got to be the last roll up where we don't have an ETH ETF. There's also a little bit of news from one of the issuers, an issuer that is, I think, top of mind because they've had the trust, which is Grayscale. So they have billions of dollars of Ether right now and a big, I guess, source of sell pressure might be, could that Ether drain out of Grayscale? And I don't know, go on the open market. But they're taking steps to prevent that, to patch that hole. What is Grayscale doing with the ETH mini-trust strategy?

• 19:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the mini-trust is basically a sub, another version of their ETF, but this one with extremely low fees. And so we saw the GBTC outflows out of the Grayscale Bitcoin ETFs. And this was just the reason why we could not go up in price right after the Bitcoin ETF was approved because of the Grayscale. The ETFs were just getting, they were just selling because the fees were like 2.5% when everyone else had fees of 0.2%. And so they eventually rolled out the grayscale GBTC mini trust with a very low fees. And you could roll your grayscale ETF into the mini trust without taking a taxable event.

• 20:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  You say it eventually, it took them like months, right?

• 20:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like multiple months. Now we are getting the grayscale ETH mini trust, allegedly, apparently right out of the gate. And so they are trying to plug their own wound before it even opens. And so this is a difference between the Bitcoin ETF and the ETH ETF. When the ETH ETF launches, we will have this mini trust. And so anyone selling as a result of the very high grayscale prices will in theory just not sell anymore because they have the option to roll into the mini trust without paying capital gains tax and also enjoying low prices. So it allows holders to be holders. And so this, we'll see how much this plugs up sell pressure out of the grayscale fund when the ETF gets approved and starts trading.

• 20:48David Hoffman?

  It's only bullish, it's like, in this most bearish format, it is equivalent to the Bitcoin story. It can only, this is only a bullish addition, addition to the ETH ETF story.

• 20:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a chart I was just looking at prior to recording here. This is the ETH discount or premium to NAV, which we've talked about in the months before. Remember, it was not April, we were 25%.

• 21:11David Hoffman?

  Whoever was buying ETH in April, well done, congrats on your gains.

• 21:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, remember, we shouted this out, this is a nice arbitrage opportunity. But I gotta say, not even we were anticipating that we'd get an ETH ETF so soon. Anyway, now that arbitrage opportunity has basically completely closed. We're about like within the actual spot price. So ETH was trading at a discount to spot price of Ethereum, and now it is no longer. Dude, run us by the total crypto market cap, where are we at on the week?

• 21:42David Hoffman?

  2.27 trillion. Wow, that's low. I haven't seen 2.2 in a while. Bearish. Wow. Okay. Sick. Also, on Layer 2 beat, we are hitting a 20.6x scaling factor. 20 Ethereum's are happening on Ethereum Layer 2s. Brought in by some of these new Layer 3s on the scene. Zai consistently is posting like 100 transaction per second days consistently. I don't even know what Zai is. I guess I need to go investigate this. I don't even know where it settles. Arbitrum, Arbitrum Train with Arbitrum Anytrust. Cool. I'll have to investigate that. But yeah, that's been on like

• 22:21David Hoffman?

  the Layer 2 beat for like a number of weeks now. Anyways, just blasted through a scaling factor to new all-time highs in Ethereum scaling on Layer 2s.

• 22:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we've got more market stuff to talk about, including the reason why maybe stocks are up, but crypto is flat. We got to talk about that. There's a conversation to be had here. Could we be wrong? Is the question I have for you, David. Also, tokenization seems to be really taking off in a big way. BlackRock hit a major milestone. Goldman Sachs is now throwing a hat into the ring, so we'll talk about that. And then ETH gas fees, they are down. So this is bad for fee revenue, but is it good for Ethereum or bad for Ethereum overall? So lots more to talk about. But before we get there, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our recommended exchange for 2024. That is Kraken. Go create an account.

• 23:09David Hoffman?

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• 25:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're going to talk about stocks in just a second because they're all time highs, basically. And we got some good inflation numbers on the week here. Which partially contributed to that, the anticipation of that. So we're at 3% inflation. That was a bit better than analysts expected. So of course, this leads to, of course, this leads to more speculation that perhaps Powell is going to dip into that easy monetary policy and begin bringing rates down. But let's talk about stocks for a minute. Have you seen this chart, David? This is the QQQ chart. It looks kind of like a crypto chart, actually, during the good days.

• 26:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah, during the good crypto days.

• 26:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nasdaq has been on an absolute tear. And I don't know if you've seen this, but this is a correlation chart between Bitcoin, Nasdaq and the S and P. And we are at lows that we haven't seen in terms of the correlation between stocks and Bitcoin that we haven't seen since November, 2023. So about a year ago. So stocks and crypto assets over the last two months have become increasingly discorrelated. Maybe some of the reason for that is stocks don't have Germany dumping on them. Stocks don't have a Mount Gox unlock. That's part of the reason. But I think we also have to be open to a broader reason. And my question I have for you is like,

• 27:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  do you think we are overly, like, do you think we could be wrong about this bull cycle? It seems like AI is getting a lot of attention. Do you know the narrative from VCs 18 months ago was like pivot to AI? Well, it seems like stocks have really pivoted to AI and they're getting a ton of the attention, a ton of the inflows here. If we look at the biggest stock gainers, the S and P 500, the top 10 biggest stocks, number of these are kind of like the tech stocks, contributed 77% of the index's total returns. So it's these big tech companies, these big like AI plays, basically that are driving the stock market up to this point in time. And they've outperformed crypto in a lot of ways, at least recently. You think we have something to worry about here?

• 28:02David Hoffman?

  Usually when we are meaningfully decoupled from the S and P and the stock market, it actually is like in the negative way, as in they're going up and we're going down. Never seen us like be meaningfully decoupled to the upside, maybe except for a few acute circumstances. I don't know why that is. AI is like the, at least winning the attention game, I think, as you said, just because like it's easy to understand AI. It's still hard to understand crypto. That is maybe another theme of ETH CC that I've noticed is like all the contents are getting like more technical, not less. We are talking about even deeper infra and even like more niche parts of like scaling strategies and stuff like this.

• 28:42David Hoffman?

  We are not talking about consumer apps and, and like it's definitely in, it's getting more insular in our world, in the crypto world. Like people aren't coming in, like you can see that in crypto media, like YouTube numbers. Meanwhile, like this AI content sphere is exploding. It might just be an attention game. Also, at the same time, I think this industry is kind of splitting between, between the four year cycles. I think part of this industry is trying to stay on the like crack cocaine addiction of the four year cycles. And then another part of the cycle, another part of the industry is like, okay, like we're professional now. We have tokenization. We have ETFs. We're going to smooth ourselves out and like get off of this rodeo and just like be incrementally better every single month.

• 29:25David Hoffman?

  And that between, I don't know, that's just like, kind of like, I think contributing to some of the bad vibes. Also, definitely the bad vibes are like, we don't have the bull market and there is a bull market somewhere else and it's in the tech stocks.

• 29:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Getting a little jealous here, maybe?

• 29:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, we're getting jealous.

• 29:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, my, my base case is still be patient, slow summer, and then we're going to pick back up in, in fall. And ETH ETF is monumental and crypto hasn't had its full bull cycle and I'm with Raul Paul.

• 29:53David Hoffman?

  I don't think we have a bull market. I think we have the ETF inflows.

• 29:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, sure, sure, but I actually think we'll get a banana zone, as Raul Paul likes to say. I still think that's coming. That's still my base case, but it's not inevitable. There is some sort of risk in my mind, like something to watch out for is like, well, what if we miss this cycle? Right? It's like, I want to be open to that potentiality as well, that kind of like AI sucks all of the auction out of the, out of the room and this cycle. We just haven't hit the consumer use cases here. Like, we are too insular. We're too focused on our infrastructure and we're not really developing, like, new use cases. That said, let's get to tokenization, because this is a major narrative and major use case that is just heating up. That TradFi is... Yeah, they're falling over themselves excited about.

• 30:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you remember the Bittl Fund, which is the tokenized treasuries brought to you by BlackRock on Ethereum? So it's BlackRock opening a bank branch, let's say, on Ethereum mainnet. That just hit $500 million, which is a major milestone and is going up only. Look at, look at this. This is the tokenized treasury market. Now it's getting close to massive growth. A year ago, we were less than 100 million. And so we are, well, a little bit over a year ago. It was like massive growth in tokenized treasuries and you can see it's really accelerated recently. David, I went over recently and I signed up for one of these tokenized treasury platforms. And I deposited a little bit into, into Bittl. So I got the full UX experience.

• 31:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  I gotta tell you, there's a lot of paperwork still involved. This is not like going through like...

• 31:32David Hoffman?

  You have to do KYC, right?

• 31:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, KYC and accreditation and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's like paperwork and at the end of that, you get like, yeah, your wallet can do some tokenization things.

• 31:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you're added to the whitelist. Right.

• 31:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's this weird hybrid.

• 31:47David Hoffman?

  Received a token contract, yeah.

• 31:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's this weird hybrid. But, but it's easier than going through kind of like the buying T-bills in, in a, like a brokerage. At least like for me, for someone who's crypto native. So I think there's a lot of potential here and BlackRock certainly thinks so. I know when we were going through our ETH narratives, we were like, what's the big one that's going to sell for TradFi? And tokenization in both of our pitches came to the forefront. I think that's here. I think that is going to do big things. And once the Ethereum ETF comes out, I think all of these major Wall Street TradFi shops will start talking a lot more about tokenization.

• 32:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think that's right. 500 million is a pretty good milestone. I would like to see it hit a billion. And I think it's just heading straight there. The growth on it is not slowing down at all. And once BlackRock gets in, people FOMO. BlackRock putting in a billion dollars on-chain is going to cause people to follow on and do the same thing that they're doing. It is worth shouting out that Franklin Templeton did get there first. Franklin Templeton has done the tokenization play, the real-world asset tokenization play on Ethereum. But when BlackRock does it, it's different. Coincidentally, Goldman Sachs announced this year that they plan to launch three tokenized funds this year. We didn't get too much details about where the funds will be, but my default is Ethereum Layer 1. That just makes sense.

• 33:05David Hoffman?

  They say the primary focus of these funds is the US fund sector, the European debt markets as well. And then they also want to create marketplaces for tokenized assets, which is a pretty strong investment into the world of tokenized assets coming out of Goldman Sachs. A pretty interesting report from McKinsey says that they are forecasting $2 trillion to $4 trillion market cap of just real-world asset tokenization by 2030. So a little excerpt from their report here, which was definitely worth reading. There's a link in the show notes saying, "We estimate that the tokenized market cap across asset classes could reach about $2 trillion by 2030, excluding stablecoins." So not cryptocurrencies, not stablecoins. So $2 trillion of stuff tokenized that aren't dollars.

• 33:50David Hoffman?

  And then they say the pessimistic and optimistic scenarios range from $1 trillion to about $4 trillion. And then they list off an order of operations of what could be tokenized. Cash and deposits, which they excluded from the total, total comes to number one. We already have that. That's stablecoins. Mutual funds and ETFs coming in number two. Loans and securitization, bonds and exchange traded notes. That's kind of like Wave 1. Alternative funds, alternative assets, unlisted equities, precious metals, which we actually have, we did get some gold tokenization earlier last month. Publicly listed equities, these are stocks, intangible assets and derivatives, would be the last of the things to come. But they start to predict some of these things will all happen by 2030.

• 34:34David Hoffman?

  So TradFi getting really bullish, tokenization.

• 34:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is just TradFi swapping out their infrastructure, right? Replacing kind of like the fax machine and mainframes with something new and more open, more permissionless with more innovation. David, one thing that has also happened, we talked about the scaling factor of layer twos being like 20x and that's a great thing. A byproduct of that is ETH gas is low, very low. I don't know if you've gone on mainnet recently, but it's pretty cheap to do things. And of course, there's a bull case for this and a bear case for this, as always, right? So the bull case for this is, hey, ETH fees are cheap again. That's fantastic. And they have just

• 35:17David Hoffman?

  We fixed the fee markets.

• 35:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  We fixed the fee market. Ethereum has expanded into blob space. You know, traffic has kind of migrated to layer twos. Layer twos are incredibly cheap. This is, look at, this is the rent paid from layer twos to layer ones. Do you see it in March, just like falling off a cliff?

• 35:34David Hoffman?

  It goes to zero. It looks like the chart breaks, actually.

• 35:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the reason is, of course, Ethereum upgrade, with the most recent Ethereum upgrade, we had blob space, really cheap transaction fees. We've called it the HOV lane for layer twos, essentially. And the fees layer twos are paying to Ethereum just dropped off a cliff ever since, which is great for consumers because transaction fees are super cheap on layer twos. Now, that's the bull case. The bear case is, where'd all of our revenue go? ETH the asset is no longer deflationary, at least right now. And so like, where's kind of the revenue for this? So I don't know if you've seen some of these comparisons, but there've been some reports recently, you know, we've talked about Ether, the triple point asset.

• 36:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  And one of the, like, one of the points on that is a cash flowing asset, right? A productive asset, something that distributes cash flows. Well, Ether's cash flows haven't been as high as they have been previously. In fact, Tron is catching up in terms of the cash flows that it is producing. And for the month of June, it was actually like verging on higher than Ethereum. Here's a report from, Michael from the DeFi Report, who I'm actually going to have on Next week, David, while you're out and you'll chat to him about this, but he compares Sol and the fee revenue that Sol is generating through MEV and transaction fees to Ether. And I asked the question, should Sol, that's Solana, be trading at an 83% discount to Ether?

• 37:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  When their fees aren't like an 83% discount? I don't know if you have any takes on this, and this is kind of an unresolved question that I'm going to be, and I think we will collectively be digging into more of. But ETH fees, as it's outsourcing its execution layer to layer twos, ETH fees are going down, at least in the short run. Do you have any takes here?

• 37:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, just to put one more metric on it, we have printed about 140, 150,000 Ether since the middle of April, because we have not just been able to sustain high Layer 1 gas fees. I think this was kind of like a big conversation as to what would happen once we spin up the Layer 2s and we also introduced 4844, we introduced blobs. My kind of default scenario was that Layer 1 gas fees would hold steady and stop increasing, and then demand for Layer 2s would also go up. So induced demand, but we would still transact on the Layer 1. It does actually seem that like people are just migrating away from the Ethereum Layer 1. And I actually like finding that in myself, like whenever I'm using Ethereum, it's actually generally like a Layer 2 most of the time.

• 38:09David Hoffman?

  And so I've seen some of my own behavior shift on to

• 38:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was always the plan, though.

• 38:12David Hoffman?

  Away from the Ethereum Layer 1.

• 38:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was always the plan.

• 38:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that was always the plan. We would say like, yeah, you like the Layer 1 is not for users, it's for chains. And I guess we just don't have enough chains to displace the loss of users. But in terms of priorities of like what we want, like I prioritize Layer 2 free transactions over prioritizing the fee bird. Like that, we want, I want to grow GDP, not grow revenue. And when I see like Layer 2 activity at all time highs at 20x scaling factor, which like it blew through 10, went straight to 20, to me, that's, that's, I'll take the gambit. Of a lesser value accrual to ETH asset if I can get more activity on more block.

• 38:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I agree with you there. I think that is Ethereum's long-term game and certainly what it's playing to make Layer 2 fees as cheap as possible and accrue to all of the GDP and prop up ETH as a monetary asset. But we'll see how that plays out. The market's trying to figure out the pricing of all these various assets in comparison. We have more coming up and this is big. So crypto has been formally adopted as part of the Republican platform. So what does that mean? It actually includes the right to go bankless. So we'll talk about that. Also, a long-awaited Ethereum documentary is about to get released. I think you've got the inside scoop on that, David. I want to hear. And Celsius wants its customers to return money to them? This is going in the wrong direction here.

• 39:33David Hoffman?

  And before we get to all that hot juicy news, we're going to go hear from our friends and sponsors over at Mantle, the ecosystem with the multi-billion dollar treasury that goes and farms airdrops. So CME holders don't have to. I bet you didn't know that, right? But they do that for you. Let's go hear from them right now. 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 reward station.

• 40:12David Hoffman?

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• 40:56David Hoffman?

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• 41:41David Hoffman?

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• 42:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, did you know 2024 is an election year in the US anyway?

• 42:13David Hoffman?

  I am, there's one thing that I'm aware of.

• 42:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  I wish I wasn't aware of it some weeks. But this is a good outcome, at least for crypto. So the GOP platform, that is the Republicans in the United States of America, they have rolled out a paragraph. They put together their platform documentation. This is what the party stands for. This is our party platform. They had a section in there called championing innovation. And at the very top of that section, there's a paragraph about crypto. So it said this, Republicans will end Democrats unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a central bank digital currency. We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin and ensure every American has the right to self custody

• 42:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  of their digital assets and transact free from government surveillance and control. That paragraph is actually exactly. Exactly what we want. The right to self custody means the right to go bankless. Of course, we should have that. It's great that a major political party is enshrining that. And to transact free from government surveillance and control. Well, that's very interesting. That has implications for privacy technology. And some of the court cases we're hearing about tornado cash. The right to mine Bitcoin is great, too. And then ending the Democrats unlawful crypto crackdown. So it's acknowledging that regulators have overstepped, that Operation Choke Point has been a thing. I don't know. Great paragraph. You couldn't ask for better.

• 43:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is Nick Carter saying they're going to end the crypto crackdown. No CBDC, the right to mine, right to self custody, right to transact freely. Couldn't really ask for anything more.

• 43:50David Hoffman?

  I was talking to some of my more liberal friends about this. And because I remember having a conversation with them way back when, when Donald Trump was first saying some positive words about crypto. And their reaction was like, well, he can just say anything he wants. He basically has a blank check. He doesn't have to actually fulfill anything. Where are the party? Where's the party platform? I would like a party platform. And this is that.

• 44:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  OK.

• 44:13David Hoffman?

  We actually got in writing a party platform. And so this is like a very meaningful step forward. You said we can ask for more. I can ask for a little bit more. Like, it's kind of a short sentence. I would like a crypto, like, section. Like, more bullets. It was a lot, like, kind of packed into that sentence.

• 44:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. They said the right things, but there's not a lot of detail behind this.

• 44:37David Hoffman?

  It's a very strong foot in the door. You can't hate it.

• 44:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I get it. I do have some advice for the Democrats, though, if they want to, like, check this and, you know, counteract this from the Republicans.

• 44:48David Hoffman?

  Make a better one.

• 44:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just say the same thing. Just copy and paste the statement and do that. And then you neutralize it.

• 44:56David Hoffman?

  And if you don't, it's kind of telling.

• 44:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of stupid and also kind of telling, but like, why are you letting the Republicans have an advantage for you? Just like these, just say the same thing. Like, what's wrong with this? Like, what?

• 45:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, especially that last line, the right to self custody their digital assets and then transact from government surveillance and control.

• 45:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 45:15David Hoffman?

  Oh, God, I feel like there's a tornado cash element in there. Like, transact free from government surveillance and control. That feels freeing of tornado cash to me.

• 45:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, I mean, but to your friend's points, now it's a matter of holding them to it, of course, and holding all of our political leadership to this. This is interesting, David. Donald Trump is going to be speaking at the Bitcoin conference, Bitcoin 2024. Which Bitcoin conference is this? This is July 25th.

• 45:43David Hoffman?

  At the end of this month. When is that? That is in like two weeks.

• 45:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crazy.

• 45:48David Hoffman?

  Two weeks.

• 45:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this is absolutely massive news, right? This gives you a scope for how much on the radar, like in kind of 2024 election, you know, crypto actually is. So it didn't show up in the Biden v. Trump debate. Maybe it will in future debates. Biden barely showed up to that debate, though, I gotta say. Like, I mean, it was, they didn't talk about a lot of substance.

• 46:11David Hoffman?

  Talked about golf.

• 46:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this is one of the top 10 things, would you say? 10, 15 things, though, in the election?

• 46:19David Hoffman?

  Events to happen in crypto history?

• 46:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Or just issue, no, no, issues in the election, in the 2024 election. I think crypto is in the top dozen things to be like kind of wedge issues. This is where I'm different types of things to talk about. Like, it's high up there. It's on the list, anyway.

• 46:35David Hoffman?

  I think when Republicans and Democrats are going head to head, they are not going to talk about crypto, but that actually underserves how big of a crypto, of a thing crypto is. Like, I think like basically every single Bitcoin, not every single, I think a lot of Bitcoiners are like politically like reserved, like think about Eric Voorhees types.

• 46:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, they're libertarian class.

• 46:59David Hoffman?

  Highly libertarian. They like resent the concept of voting because they hate the two-party system. They don't believe in it. But then like, but then Donald Trump comes and like they, Donald Trump is going to pull so many non-voting Bitcoiners out of like the corners of the, of America. And it is like going to be this party that like runs under the radar of like general polling because they've always been like an anti-voter.

• 47:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  I agree. I agree. Donald Trump, orange president, orange coin, you know? It's like, it works. I, so here's, here's a fascinating poll done by Grayscale. It's actually a Harris Poll, conducted on behalf of Grayscale.

• 47:40David Hoffman?

  Funded by Grayscale, operated by the Harris Poll.

• 47:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so 2024 US election, some of the key takeaways. Forty-seven percent of voters, of all voters they surveyed, expect some of their investment portfolio to include crypto.

• 47:55David Hoffman?

  That is a lot.

• 47:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a lot, right? And this partially, I think, is from the ETF, the Bitcoin ETF. A lot of people who are like, I don't know, it could be illegal. I don't know how to buy this thing. It's like, oh, it's in my Schwab accounts in Fidelity, okay.

• 48:09David Hoffman?

  Great.

• 48:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, like, I want that, all that upside. I don't want just the people who use crypto exchanges, the crypto growers to get all that.

• 48:16David Hoffman?

  It's up from forty percent last year, so forty percent this year.

• 48:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Seven percent.

• 48:20David Hoffman?

  Forty percent last, so we gained seven percent of all voters now own more crypto.

• 48:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and voters, people don't like to vote against their bags. Like, we know this, right?

• 48:28David Hoffman?

  No, absolutely not. That is a direct financial relationship to you have to your ballot.

• 48:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is also, I think, telling. Crypto is a bipartisan topic. So there's similar ownership rates among Republicans, eighteen percent, and Democrats, nineteen percent. Democrats even have more crypto than Republicans. Eighteen percent of voters are more interested in investing in Bitcoin and other crypto assets, thanks to the Bitcoin ETF.

• 48:50David Hoffman?

  Nice.

• 48:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is hugely legitimizing. And twenty percent were compelled by the having? Oh, cool.

• 48:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's great.

• 48:58David Hoffman?

  Well, they got some education to do.

• 49:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Some other stuff going on in Congress, by the way. I don't know if you know, but as we're recording this, as we record this on Thursday, it comes out tomorrow. So you guys might have more information about this. You know, the SAB 121 bill, that the repeal of that that got passed, made through the House, made through Senate, and then Biden ban-hammered, vetoed it? Well, there's a way to un-veto a veto, right? You have to get.

• 49:23David Hoffman?

  You can Trump a veto.

• 49:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Two thirds majority in the Senate can trump a veto, right? So that'd be a lot of Democrats.

• 49:29David Hoffman?

  We did not get that in the first vote. So some people will have to change their votes.

• 49:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 49:34David Hoffman?

  As a result of like a new information that they've had in the past like month or so.

• 49:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  And as far as these things go, it wasn't even close, right? Like a whole bunch of Democrat senators would have to totally throw Biden under the bus and be like, "We don't respect your veto."

• 49:47David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 49:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  So very unlikely to happen. But what if, I'm just saying, what if that vote is happening actually today? And if that happened, like call it a 0.1% chance, that would be absolutely crazy, David. I don't even want to think about it. So it's, but, but like it's, it's in front of the Senate. And the nice thing about this, it gives all of the senators another kind of, you know, are you, are you pro crypto or are you anti crypto?

• 50:15David Hoffman?

  That's what I'm interested about this.

• 50:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Put you on the record.

• 50:17David Hoffman?

  How many people, like the vote is maybe will change? And what, in what direction is it going to change and by how many people? Even if we don't get there, it would be cool to see like three more senators, four more senators come over to the, to the crypto side.

• 50:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep, exactly. Okay, Celsius, you remember old Alex Mashinsky and Celsius who scammed a whole bunch of people?

• 50:38David Hoffman?

  My favorite man, the guy that's the T-shirt that says to not trust banks.

• 50:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  He was right. He didn't tell us that Celsius is actually a bank.

• 50:45David Hoffman?

  He was the bank that he should not trust.

• 50:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was in the disclaimer on the back of the T-shirt. But anyway, Celsius is suing their users. You might ask for why, like, why is Celsius trying to get some, some clawback? So apparently, within 90 days prior to, he said of savvy users, you know, who knows if they read the tea leaves, they saw something in advance, but.

• 51:08David Hoffman?

  Savvy or lucky or something.

• 51:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Lucky or something, or maybe they knew something, who knows? But they withdrew some of their funds from Celsius, as, as one does, right? I'm a little bit nervous about this, you know, I'm going to withdraw my crypto, keep it, or withdraw and sell it or something like this. Celsius is looking to claw back the funds from those who withdrew, withdrew, I think, within the past 90 days, I believe.

• 51:29David Hoffman?

  90 days before it froze withdrawals. Not only are they looking to claw back funds, they are looking to claw back funds in kind, but you pay them back in dollars. So if you withdrew Bitcoin at like the 20, $25,000 Bitcoin price that it was at, you now owe them.

• 51:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  $65,000 Bitcoin. And that's the bill that you now have from Celsius.

• 51:52David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 51:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. And so like, so how, how long ago was that? That was over a year ago. So now people are receiving bills at somewhere between two to four times the value of what they withdrew.

• 52:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  In dollar amount, like 18 months later.

• 52:08David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 52:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like that's, that, maybe they gambled it away on, on DJ coins. Like that is just too long.

• 52:14David Hoffman?

  Or just sold it.

• 52:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's too long.

• 52:15David Hoffman?

  Did something else.

• 52:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, 100%. You can't expect people to hold.

• 52:18David Hoffman?

  If you wanted to do this, you needed to have done this immediately after, not a year and a half.

• 52:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And so imagine you, like your Celsius experience and like, you know, like I got out or I got some portion of my funds out and then you get this nasty letter to your house or email. They probably sent it in multiple ways, just saying, yeah, you owe us X thousands of dollars, right? For the funds that you withdrew 90 days to us, us going bankrupt. Wow. And if you want to fight that, you have to go hire a lawyer. It's just like

• 52:50David Hoffman?

  Which are also expensive.

• 52:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  screwing over retail yet again. So anyway, that's going on. Apparently this is pretty common in bankruptcy cases, by the way, right? So like, there is this window, if you go to other bankruptcy cases that have been like this, not in crypto, but like, there's this window of time where you can claw back some of the funds. So this is not without precedent. It's not coming out of completely left field. But the, the one thing that is incredibly weird is to ask for, you know, the, the crypto assets themselves that have appreciated by, you know, in massive amounts, you know, two to 10x since the time that the bankruptcy occurred.

• 53:28David Hoffman?

  That's going to be fought in court. Cause there, there's like, there's probably a lot of retail people who are very upset about this, but there's also a few like whales who can definitely fund a legal campaign against this.

• 53:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm sure they'll class action it. I'm sure they'll figure it out. Anyways, it's kind of annoying.

• 53:42David Hoffman?

  It wasn't a year and a half ago. It was a year ago, by the way.

• 53:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 53:45David Hoffman?

  I forgot how, time does not fly, I guess, in this industry.

• 53:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Uh, well, here's something that's been in progress for a while, which is the ETH documentary. At least, um, this is one of several documentaries, I think, being created about Ethereum. But this is one I was particularly excited about. So a trailer is coming out pretty soon. Anyway, give us a scoop.

• 54:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this used to be called Ethereum, the Infinite Garden. This is Kerry Warpin's documentary, which many Ethereum community members are in it. We, I don't know if we are in it, but we were filmed in it. Cameras came to my house and then they recorded a weekly roll up with you and I.

• 54:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, that's right. I don't even remember doing that. That was like, that was when you were in San Diego, right?

• 54:22David Hoffman?

  San Diego, bro. Yeah. They also have some footage of like an interview I did of Vitalik in 2021 at ETH CC, so three years ago. So they've been just like at every single Ethereum conference, like just collecting footage. They did this fundraiser via mirror where they raised $3 million in ETH. Mariano Conti and a few other people are like producers of this because they minted the NFT by donating to, by donating to just a fundraising effort. It's finally coming out. It's finally coming out. So July 23rd on Zora is the official trailer where anyone can mint it to support the distribution. And then the, there's also rewards for being a top 20 minter. So if you're a top 20 minter, you get a ticket to the in-person pre-premiere.

• 55:05David Hoffman?

  There's a bunch of other rewards as well. I'm very excited about this. I, I would love to, I've been waiting for this. Like this has like changed form over the years. Like I said, it started off as like the Infinite Garden. Now it's like Ethereum Stories. The website is ethereumfilm.xyz. The official premiere, September 18th, available on traditional streaming platforms in the winter of this year, which is pretty cool.

• 55:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you think we're gonna get streaming platforms? Do you think we'll get Netflix? Hulu?

• 55:36David Hoffman?

  I hope Netflix.

• 55:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  I hope we get one of the big ones. Yeah. I hope we get some wide distribution behind this. That'd be great.

• 55:41David Hoffman?

  Moving on to raises, a bank with ventures raised happened this week. This is Rome Protocol who raised $9 million. This is a Solana Ethereum hybrid protocol. Pretty interesting. This Rome uses Solana as a decentralized shared sequencer for Ethereum rollups. So Ethereum rollups can use the level of decentralization that Solana has for their sequencer to sequence transactions.

• 56:06David Hoffman?

  Process transactions and then create a proof to submit it to Ethereum. So Ethereum layer two, Solana the layer one as the sequencer. And then back down to the Ethereum layer one. So confirm transactions faster, you can enhance privacy and scalability, reduce blockchain costs. Leverage composability for across change transactions, that's what a shared sequencer does. So multiple rollups can use Rome and they can share a sequence between each other. Pretty cool. It's like kind of taking the components of both ecosystems and smashing them together. Pretty excited about it.

• 56:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Will this bring peace and harmony across all the tribes and unify them?

• 56:40David Hoffman?

  No.

• 56:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because it's, you know, Solana, Ethereum, you know, we're all getting along here. We're all collaborating on this solution.

• 56:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we'll still fight on Twitter, but we're also like, I do think in the fullness of time, crypto projects just do meld together.

• 56:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 56:55David Hoffman?

  The modular world will also be a highly composable one. And that's what's happening here.

• 56:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  The components all kind of fit together. When's this coming out, David?

• 57:04David Hoffman?

  When it's made in that? I am unsure. I'm unsure.

• 57:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's because Rome wasn't built in a day.

• 57:09David Hoffman?

  Did you just ask that question just to say that?

• 57:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, man.

• 57:14David Hoffman?

  Oh, you did.

• 57:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's get to the meme of the week. You know I did, you walked right into it.

• 57:19David Hoffman?

  I walked right into that.

• 57:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  We were looking at the shout out to the event that you were talking about earlier. But I guess you were on a flight. You were on some death flight, right? From Chicago.

• 57:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so on Monday, the first day of ECC Monday, we bankless threw a party at a cute little cocktail party on a rooftop. I was out there. I got so many pictures of friends at my party. While I was in Chicago. And they're like, hey, where are you? And I'm like, I am in Chicago. I am sorry.

• 57:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Neither you nor I went, unfortunately, couldn't make it. But a lot of bankless citizens there and members of the bankless team as well.

• 57:51David Hoffman?

  I heard it was a great time. I heard it was a great time.

• 57:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, glad to everyone who made it out. Thank you, bankless citizens, for supporting us and for being there. It's a great opportunity. I always say there's a great opportunity to meet in person, yet I'm almost never there. I will be at Permissionless, though, in October. Very excited about that, so that's happening. David, let's end with a moment of zen, and since this will be the last weekly rollup without Ethereum ETF.

• 58:15David Hoffman?

  Absolutely, 100% guaranteed.

• 58:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  100%, we got a guarantee, okay. So, we've got the David Hoffman guarantee. We should go celebrate by watching a Bitwise ETF commercial, which, a new one popped out this week. So, enjoy that. I will end with some disclaimers. Of course, you know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everybody, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Ethereum. And I'm Big Tech. Oh, losing a user? We are really gonna miss you, but that stays too. We like to make sure that they don't take anything with them. So, her posts, her photos, her followers? Yeah, they all stay here for, uh, safe k-keeping. And with me, users can keep all their things when they leave an app. Yeah, but then we'd have nothing to remember them by.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Miss you already. You play guitar? No. Why would I do that?