ROLLUP: ETH DENVER | SEC Fines BlockFi | Canada Freezes Protester Funds | Geopolitical Chess

3rd Week of February 2022 ------ 📣 NOTIONAL FINANCE | DeFi's Leading Fixed Rate Yield https://bankless.cc/Notional ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 POLYGON | LAYER 2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask 💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger 🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 6:15 MARKETS 6:45 BTC Price 7:00 ETH Price 8:10 ETH/BTC Ratio 8:20 $BED 8:46 Putin Pulls Back Troops? https://blockworks.co/market-wrap-crypto-pumps-after-putin-pledges-to-partially-pull-back-troops/ 10:07 Putin Meme https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/suis1r/putin_and_his_tricks/ 10:30 Ukraine Legalizes Crypto https://t.co/baFQtulqUi ETH NUMBERS 11:50 New Analytics Board for L2 Fees https://l2fees.info/l1-fees 14:28 Ryan Take https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1492172541531668485?s=20&t=OzJCliV3DLHYHH1-6HNl7g https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1492172541531668485?s=20&t=OzJCliV3DLHYHH1-6HNl7g 14:52 ETH Addresses ATH https://decrypt.co/92969/number-of-ethereum-addresses-holding-0-1-eth-hits-all-time-high 15:40 Market Cap of ETH https://mirror.xyz/brunny.eth/-0Jn0dD5868h_WshCirxJPyjBD6hQvqPL18blZrEbsU 19:49 iPhone Denominated in ETH https://twitter.com/aavechan/status/1492437146929672195?s=21 24:19 RELEASES 24:23 GreenPill podcast! https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1494004613455958021 28:10 Urbit Layer 2 Rollup https://twitter.com/urbit/status/1493283731913601027?s=20&t=3rrO21ygoMoQYeKKLTieQA https://twitter.com/urbit/status/1493283731913601027?s=20&t=3rrO21ygoMoQYeKKLTieQA 29:55 Andrew Yang Lobby3 Launch https://www.lobby3.io/ 33:18 RAC - RacOS v0.1 https://twitter.com/RAC/status/1491820073916383232 34:34 Bankless Academy launched https://app.banklessacademy.com 36:30 RAISES 36:33 RabbitHole $18M https://twitter.com/flynnjamm/status/1493616468809986055?s=21 37:25 Rainbow Wallet Series A https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/15/web3-mobile-wallet-startup-rainbow-raises-18m-series-a-from-alexis-ohanians-fund/ 37:59 OpenSea Venture Fund https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/133929/opensea-launches-venture-arm-nft-ecosystem-grant-program 38:56 Circle @ $9B https://www.reuters.com/technology/fintech-firm-circle-doubles-valuation-9-bln-new-spac-deal-2022-02-17/ 39:22 JOBS https://pallet.xyz/list/bankless/jobs 41:29 NEWS 41:32 Top Superbowl Ads https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/134101/crypto-apps-soar-in-popularity-after-super-bowl-splurge?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/134101/crypto-apps-soar-in-popularity-after-super-bowl-splurge?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss 41:49 Best Crypto Bowl Commercials https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/best-crypto-bowl-commercials-?r=l64s 46:27 Crypto Skepticism https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1493230988394217479?s=20&t=SEFnYIgOkfVWf6P8pvXJNg https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1493230988394217479?s=20&t=SEFnYIgOkfVWf6P8pvXJNg 49:50 REGULATION 49:55 End of Centralized Lending in U. S.? https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1493257462824189954?s=20&t=RSxNnZpeHP7LK4Pniy8o-w https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1493257462824189954?s=20&t=RSxNnZpeHP7LK4Pniy8o-w 50:00 SEC Fining BlockFi 50:05 Landmark Resolution Says BlockFi https://blockfi.com/resolution-announcement 51:44 SEC's Take https://thedefiant.io/blockfi-sec-100m/ 55:05 Canada Freezes Protester Funds https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385 55:38 Ryan Take https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1493433716605079554?s=20&t=8uqyyLuGI4giB9_Tl_Q6QQ https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1493433716605079554?s=20&t=8uqyyLuGI4giB9_Tl_Q6QQ 57:10 Financial Authorities Blacklisting Wallets https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/134475/canadian-federal-police-seek-blockade-of-crypto-wallets-tied-to-freedom-convoy 59:20 Stablecoin Issuers Must be Banks https://blockworks.co/treasury-official-says-stablecoin-issuers-must-be-banks-to-ensure-security 1:00:20 FSB Don’t Like DeFi https://thedefiant.io/fsb-defi-threat-stability-regulation/ 1:02:15 ETH 1:02:18 Twitter adds ETH Tipping Support https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/02/16/twitter-adds-ethereum-wallet-support-to-tipping-feature/ 1:03:18 NFTs 1:03:22 OnlyFans NFT PFPs https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/133856/onlyfans-launches-verified-nft-profile-pictures 1:04:23 Largest CryptoPunk Sale Ever https://twitter.com/cryptopunksbot/status/1492597270809821193?s=21 1:05:05 Double the Last Highest Sale https://decrypt.co/92819/cryptopunks-ethereum-nft-sells-for-nearly-24m-doubling-previous-record 1:05:30 Size of NFT Market https://nftgo.io/overview 1:06:25 BITCOIN 1:06:30 Fidelity Launches Bitcoin ETP https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1493581516131213312?s=20&t=qoMlyVjfHGwFQt5ijtCsXg https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1493581516131213312?s=20&t=qoMlyVjfHGwFQt5ijtCsXg 1:07:10 GENERAL CRYPTO 1:07:13 Terra $40M MLB Deal https://decrypt.co/92525/terra-washington-nationals-sponsorship 1:08:05 Coinbase White Hat Savior https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/srr32t/white_hat_hacker_saves_coinbase_from_possible/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/srr32t/white_hat_hacker_saves_coinbase_from_possible/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf 1:10:16 Binance & BNB Chain https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/134257/binance-renames-bsc-bnb-blockchain-token 1:11:00 MISC. 1:11:04 Banks Investing in Crypto https://twitter.com/Blockworks_/status/1493263950896640005?s=20&t=b0mFH75DAQ60ikXrRaseNA https://twitter.com/Blockworks_/status/1493263950896640005?s=20&t=b0mFH75DAQ60ikXrRaseNA 1:12:32 Netflix Bitcoin Heist https://twitter.com/blockdropspod/status/1492960841670537223?s=21 1:16:10 TAKES 1:16:15 Mad at NFTs? https://twitter.com/0xjim/status/1468032612275048450?s=21 1:19:20 Bitcoin Narrative https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1493693680451915777?s=20&t=nIETFmqB0sPw5HwYSIlSXA https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1493693680451915777?s=20&t=nIETFmqB0sPw5HwYSIlSXA 1:20:20 What David’s Excited About 1:21:29 What Ryan’s Excited About 1:24:15 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/kielbasagarage/status/1491458653299572737?s=21 1:24:40 Disclaimers 1:24:55 Moment of Zen https://twitter.com/mrscottmeyer/status/1494349965627326468?s=21 ​ ----- Not financial or tax advice. Do your own research. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  Bankless never ever misses a rollup, but then I'm going off to ETH Denver.

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome, man. Yeah, so guys, David is live. He's our ETH Denver correspondent right now.

• 0:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, Bankless Nation. Happy 3rd week of February. It's rollup time. David Hoffman, how you doing?

• 0:19David Hoffman?

  Oh my god, Ryan. It's the best week ever. Not only is it the 3rd week of February, but it is ETH Denver week, which is what you can see going on behind me just a little bit. Vitalik just finished up his talk, and there's so many more talks later today that I'm really, really excited for. ETH Denver, as I've said before, holds a special place in my heart, so I'm excited to blast through this rollup, because Bankless never ever misses a rollup, but then I'm going off to ETH Denver.

• 0:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome, man. Yeah, so guys, David is live. He's our ETH Denver correspondent right now. Before we get into kind of the headlines, what we're gonna run down in the rollup, give us a high level of like what's happening at ETH Denver over the next couple of days, and why it's important.

• 0:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so today is Shelling Point, which is Kevin Owoke and a few others' day before ETH Denver event. The actual ETH Denver opening ceremony happens tonight at 5pm, which I am the opening emcee for, along with Jonathan Mann, who's got some songs to sing, the Song of Day Man.

• 1:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh man, he's awesome.

• 1:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, apparently he just had, I missed it, but he had a song about Vitalik, which was very catchy, so I'm gonna have to watch that on YouTube later. But all of today is a bunch of really powerful talks, all in the theme of regenerative crypto economics, which is what Kevin Owoke's favorite subject is. And that's all of today. I have my talk later today. And then ETH Denver kicks off tomorrow. People have been here for the last 10 days or so. Hackers have been hacking away. And just for a little bit of context, the first ETH Denver I went to was 2018. I think there was an ETH Denver 2017 before that. ETH Denver 2018 had something like 3000 to 4000 people, and that's when ETH price was like 600, coming out of the ICO mania.

• 1:59David Hoffman?

  And then ETH Denver 2019, ETH price was like $100, except the energy and vibrancy of ETH Denver 2019 was like 50% bigger and stronger. Longer than it was during the ICO mania at ETH Denver. And there was like, I think another 8,000 people there. And then ETH Denver 2020 was like even like right before the COVID crash, right before like the liquidation.

• 2:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  A bunch of people got COVID, right? In ETH Denver 2020?

• 2:27David Hoffman?

  Not too many, not too many. That was ETH CC, but like it was definitely there. And the energy at that ETH Denver was even higher, even even like more vibrant. And then boom ETH Denver 2022, because we didn't have 2021 because of COVID. ETH Denver 2022, 15,000 people have tickets.

• 2:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  That blows my mind.

• 2:46David Hoffman?

  15,000 people. And so I'm assuming the vibrancy is about to be off the charts. I just got here and into the podcast room to record this roll up, but I'm about to go experience it for myself. I'm expecting, there's a, there's a lot of newcomers. And so like while all the previous ETH Denvers were a lot of like, you know, the, the bear market ETH Denvers, this is a bull market ETH Denver. And so it's about to, it's going to be a little bit different. There's a lot of newcomers here. I'm excited to meet all the people, all the newcomers and kind of see people where I was back in ETH Denver 2018. And hopefully so many new awesome projects get spun out of the inspiration that comes out of this.

• 3:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, guys, if you see David at ETH Denver, make sure you print out your Medium article and hand him a copy of your article because that's what you did. Your first ETH Denver, you were like passing out pamphlets of your writing.

• 3:34David Hoffman?

  Stapled pieces of paper. Also, I have, I also have my own Po app. There's people that have their own Po apps. You met me Po apps. And so if you meet me, I'll have a Po app for you that I met David. Yeah.

• 3:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't, I don't hold that Po app right now.

• 3:49David Hoffman?

  You will, you do not hold that Po app.

• 3:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tons of people will hold that Po app without me. So hopefully I'll get issued that Po app at some point this year, David. And Bankless listeners, we're going to probably follow up with some other content, other episodes on ETH Denver. So you feel like you are getting in on the conference, even if you couldn't attend in purpose, in person. We'll, we'll do that sometime next week. But let's get to the roll up.

• 4:12David Hoffman?

  Saturday, Saturday night, live podcast onstage with me, Eric Voorhees and Kevin Owoke. The subject is. Is transcending individualism with collectivism. So that's gonna be a fun show.

• 4:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that's just one piece. I mean, we'll have some other content coming out of ETH Denver for you. Try to offer the highlights. But anyway, let's get to the rollups this week. Because we have to, we can't not, we're gonna talk about a few things. Number one, we gotta do a ranking of the top Super Bowl ads, David. A little game happened last Sunday, Crypto was all over, maybe it's a crypto bowl, and advertisers came out and forced, we're gonna rank those ads for you as well. The SEC is also finding BlockFi $100 million. Is that bearish? Sounds like it. Or is it bullish? Maybe it is. Maybe there's a bright spot around this. Also, crypto prices are going up, maybe tensions are easing in the Ukraine.

• 5:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  With the Russia situation, we're gonna talk a bit about that. Canada is freezing protester funds. Without a court order, what does that mean? What does that mean for crypto? And then Twitter just rolled out ETH tips, David.

• 5:16David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 5:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Jack is gone, Twitter's doing that. We're gonna talk about that too. So those are some of the highlights that we'll get into in the rollup. David, before we get into the rollup, we should talk about Notional Finance. All right, because what they are doing is super cool. It's a new DeFi primitive that wasn't available a couple of years ago, and now is in full force. Fixed rate lending, okay? That means you can earn interest on your USDC, earn interest on your DAI, earn interest on your ETH and your Bitcoin using this protocol. And it's not volatile, so you actually get to lock in a rate for up to a year point in time. David, what else do you want to say about Notional?

• 5:54David Hoffman?

  I mean, this is just putting banks to shame, isn't it? Like, effectively zero interest rates versus over 8% APY that you can get locked in for a year? Like, this is just, it's so easy these days to talk about how silly and unnecessary banks are. So, this is the highest stable APY rate that I've ever seen before, 8.4%. Borrowing, or you can also borrow and you can also lend, you can also lend stable, in a stable fashion. So, notional.finance, there's a link in the show notes if you want to get started.

• 6:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Go check that out too, especially with the news of like BlockFi getting fined and freezing interest rate accounts. You can still do these things in DeFi today. So this is a way to do that. You can check that out at notional.finance. We'll also have a link in the show notes so you can see that. All right, David, let's get to the markets, man. What is Bitcoin doing for us this week?

• 6:48David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin started the week at $44,000. It is currently at the lower price of $41,900. Hit a high of almost $45,000. Some chop this week, but overall down 4%.

• 7:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Down 4% on the week and did Ether follow suit? What's that looking like on the week?

• 7:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, followed even more so. Started the week at $3,100, hit a low of $2,950. Its high was $3,200 and we are currently clocking in at $2,970. Has dipped since I've woke up this morning. It's been a down, down morning so far. Overall down 7%, no, 3.5% on the week. 3.5% on the week.

• 7:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Playing with that 3K number as well. It's like whenever it's above 3K, I'm feeling okay. When it's below 3K, I'm not feeling so great about the bull market and it's just hovering around that. Like, you know, 3K is maybe the new 300. A couple of years ago.

• 7:45David Hoffman?

  I was gonna make the same joke.

• 7:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's funny though. You see the same trends in these markets. It's just like 10x higher. The next go around, right?

• 7:54David Hoffman?

  Well, Ether, the Ether at 300 meme only actually lasted for three months, but I guess we've actually only been around 3K for a similar amount of time. The reference is that in 2017, Ether was at like $300 for a really long time while the market has moved around it. Anyways, we're seeing it again.

• 8:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fractals, fractals. That's what we always see in crypto. How about the ETH Bitcoin chart? What's that hanging out at on the ratio, the ETH Bitcoin ratio?

• 8:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, not too much of a story here. Currently clocking in at 0.071. So relatively flat on the week. Hasn't really done too much.

• 8:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Grabbing out, just grabbing out. How about the bed product? So that is 1/3 Bitcoin, 1/3 ETH and 1/3 DeFi. Looks like that's down on the week as you would expect.

• 8:36David Hoffman?

  No, it's flat on the week, flat on the week. Started at 115, ended at 115.

• 8:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh wow, so exactly flat huh?

• 8:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's funny, okay. Let's talk about why the market is doing what it was doing. So I believe it was maybe last Friday, there was some breaking news about increased tension between Russia and Ukraine. We don't have to, we don't have time to get into all of the geopolitics of that. But earlier this week, crypto saw a price rise, and that was on the back of Putin pledging to partially pull back troops from the borders of Ukraine. So a lot of geopolitical macro tension that's happening that is affecting markets and of course crypto prices as a result. Seems like maybe some of that tension is easing. What do you think about this?

• 9:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this, there was a statement that Putin made about how like genocide is currently happening in Ukraine and it's like everyone was making fun of him and it's like, everyone knew you were gonna say that, like you, when, we already knew what the script was and now like we're at that part in the show. And so like, this is just seems like a bunch of, except for the fact that there's actual like armies and tanks, like it's almost just a bad joke. And so like his statements are like rocking in the markets, but also rocking the world while people's like, people's lives do hang in the balance while like Putin just flexes trying to get what he wants. And so it's really kind of like Putin's show at the moment, like what's Putin gonna do?

• 10:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like it totally is and for me, David, this meme summed it up, okay? So this is, I think this is like from Family Guy and for people can't see, it's like, like Putin pulling out some sort of weapon, like a gun or something that looks very, very harmful and then being like, psych, nope, it's just, you know, it's just a hanger.

• 10:24David Hoffman?

  Something else, yeah, right, yeah.

• 10:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's something else. That about sums it up for me. But you know what was interesting on the back of this? And I wonder if this is related. So this just is breaking like as of 10 minutes ago as we're recording, Ukraine is legalizing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Very interesting, unprecedented, so they are, you know, on the, on the borders of potentially being invaded by a foreign aggressor. And what's an action that they take not to outlaw Bitcoin and crypto, but to legalize it, something that most Western countries and most countries around the world haven't been ready to do. I wonder if that is somehow related, right? It's like if Russia is going to invade their banking system,

• 11:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  may as well have a credible, you know, neutral, public money system to be sort of a backstop to all of that. What do you think?

• 11:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, if you're about to be invaded by an oppressor, you might want to lean into the financial system that sets you free. Like the contrast there is, it's pretty obvious in my mind.

• 11:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 11:27David Hoffman?

  Or, I mean, maybe this is a coincidence, but like, I don't know, they're kind of, Ukraine's kind of busy at the moment. And then they decide to pass a legalizing cryptocurrency law. So I feel like it kind of tells you their priorities.

• 11:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's, I guess it's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. And of course, as we've said before, right, when you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. So this is Ukraine adopting a value of freedom for, for their country. Excited to see. David, let's talk about some ETH numbers because we can't not. And this is another fantastic analytics screen that David Mihal came up with. This is layer two.

• 12:01David Hoffman?

  Currently my roommate.

• 12:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's your roommate at Denver? Well, can you get him to throw in some other metrics that Bankless has wanted for a while?

• 12:09David Hoffman?

  I'll drop in a request. Yeah.

• 12:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So this is really cool. Another cool dashboard. It's layer two fees. How much are rollups paying for Ethereum security? Have you ever wondered about that? One day, security cost Arbitrum is paying 100K to get the security of Ethereum. What's so interesting about this, of course, these numbers will, will go up over time, we expect. We expect, you know, chains like rollups to be the big users, the big consumers of Ethereum block space overall. But look at what they're getting for 100K in one day fees. A massive amount of security. They're getting Ethereum level sovereign nation state protection for their chain. And they don't have to issue tokens in order to do that.

• 12:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  So if you contrast that with what many of the alt layer ones who are going their own way are trying to do, they are issuing a lot of tokens in order. To get security, right? Billions of dollars of tokens per year. High inflation, high token issuance. Most people don't look at those numbers. But of course, David Mihal has another chart for that where you can see it. So that's what's fascinating to me about this L2 fees tracker. And I'm glad we can see that data very clearly now. Any other takes from you, David?

• 13:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, something I've learned recently is it's hard to scale caring about decentralization. There's a core part of the crypto world that really cares about decentralization. But if we want crypto to scale to the world, more people are going to care about low fees. We've learned this in 2021. More people care about low fees. So do you care about low fees? Well, then you can go use Arbitrum, Optimism, DYDX, et cetera. But you know what those chains that give you low fees care about? Those chains care about decentralization. So they give you low fees and then they care about decentralization on your behalf, in the background where it's supposed to be.

• 13:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  But do you know what's also cool? Is those chains actually care about low fees. All right. And rather than issuing their tokens and paying billions of dollars in token issuance to validators, they just have to pay 100,000 a day for Arbitrum to get Ethereum level security. So I totally agree. It's like not the decentralization argument that will win over the masses. It's actually the economic argument, which says it's cheaper to run a layer two backed by the security of a main chain like Ethereum than to go your own way and create a new alternative layer one. At least that's the bull case for L2s, which we are bullish on. This is my take that was related. People say users don't care about decentralization. I think it's such a myopic take, okay?

• 14:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because the future blockchain users, they aren't people, they're chains. To win in the smart contract wars, you have to sell a lot of block space to a lot of chains. Chains are the new users and these users care about decentralization, similar to what you just said, David. This is another interesting stat. Number of Ethereum addresses holding .1 ETH just hit an all time high. I think this is a good marker for distribution. It's something that Bitcoin has promoted about. Like the distribution of Bitcoins is a very good metric to see go up. Any thoughts on this?

• 15:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I was wondering if this is including people that are holding .1 ETH on Layer 2s as well as the Ethereum mainchain, because .1 ETH on the Ethereum mainchain is going to cost a lot to move to the L2s. So I hope those people are accumulating more because disproportionately that the transfer to an L2 costs like I think like .03 or .04. But like we do like the distribution.

• 15:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  The dust gets expensive.

• 15:35David Hoffman?

  The dust gets expensive, yeah. But we do like the distribution. Distribution's very good.

• 15:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about this last metric. So somebody actually did the market cap of the Ethereum ecosystem, and I've never seen these numbers before. It just takes a little finangling to get to them. We've seen, we of course know the market cap of ETH, right? Which is all ETH outstanding. I don't know what that is now, David. Something like, are we in the 250?

• 15:59David Hoffman?

  No, it's like 300 billion, I think.

• 16:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's 300 billion, something like this, okay? And then, but that's not the total market, 350 billion. So that's not the total of the Ethereum economy, because you also have to add all of the ERC20s, all of the synthetics on top of it. This chart doesn't even add the NFTs, which would be another layer on top of it. But when you add both Ethereum, the market cap of Ethereum, and then all of the tokens built on top, you get to something close to $600 billion. So $585 billion at the time these numbers were computed. And that is the total value of all of the assets within the Ethereum economy,

• 16:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  which is, which is quite stunning. I mean, this gets to like nation-state levels. And I think this is going way higher, right? So I think there's going to be a time where Ethereum absorbs so much, we're in the, you know, double-digit trillions. In the next 10 years, I can easily see how we get to $100 trillion with, when you combine ETH and then all of the tokens, all of the digital assets built on top of it. Any takes on this?

• 17:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, two comments here. It's actually a very, I think it's going to be a very interesting scientific question, process, analytics process to actually figure out the correct way to calculate this. The value of all assets and tokens on Ethereum that aren't ETH. It's not an easy calculation. It's not just going up to CoinGecko and summing the totals. Because not all valuations of all tokens are the same, right? Some tokens have significant outstanding supplies with low liquidity. And so their market cap is super inflated. So adding up all the tokens is not a trivial process. And that is going to be an ongoing scientific endeavor. I think for the rest of Ethereum.

• 17:49David Hoffman?

  And then the other comment I have is this really shows the importance of the security of Ether, the asset. We have Ether, the asset, market cap roughly matching the value of all tokens outstanding on it. Now, I think that means we have plenty of room for more value of tokens. I think something like 20% versus 80%. 20% market cap of Ether versus 80% market cap of the value of the tokens on top of Ethereum is about the right ratio. But you can't have something like 99 to 1, because that 1% of the value of Ether is securing the rest of the 99% of the value of the token. So there needs to be a balance there.

• 18:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you know, my take on that last one is it also depends on what sort of ERC 20 token it is. So some ERC 20 tokens are super crypto native and they settle completely on top of Ethereum. There's no outside corollary. Whereas other ERC 20 tokens, right? They are actually just representatives of dollars in a bank account somewhere, say. Or, you know, stock certificates somewhere else.

• 18:51David Hoffman?

  Not secured by Ethereum.

• 18:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not secured by Ethereum. So it's a different settlement, right? Like USDC is not completely settled on Ethereum. It's actually settled in a bank account somewhere. And Ethereum is just kind of the tokenized representation of that. So there's even more complexity there. But to your other point too, imagine doing all of this, but then also trying to add up all of the tokens on various layer twos, which this doesn't even get into, right? It's going to be quite the task to put all of this data together and to size the economy. But proportionally, you can see, if you just take ETH right now and all of the ERC 20s, it's about the market cap of Bitcoin. Like the economy size is the market cap of Bitcoin, right? Anyway, super interesting. This is why we think these things are more than just money systems.

• 19:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're economic systems. They're like, they have GDP, they have taxes. They're like, like digital nation states, decentralized digital nation states. And it's really cool to see the data coming out about that.

• 19:50David Hoffman?

  Economies in the cloud.

• 19:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Economies in the cloud. This is cool, David. I just think, I know we routinely go over kind of like why buying and holding is the best and low time preference, paying your future self. But like, holding is such a skill in crypto that people really need to develop. And why don't you read out this tweet? Because I think it proves that point.

• 20:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this is rug polling the dollar as a frame of reference, and instead using iPhones and Ether to measure value. And so this is iPhone launch date costs in ETH. So we go like iPhone 6, iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and then how much Ether it costs to buy those things at the day of the iPhone launch. So the iPhone 6, it costs you 690 Ether to buy an iPhone 6 when it got released. iPhone 7, it only costs you 52 Ether. iPhone 8, it only costs you 2.5. An iPhone 10, 3.3. And an iPhone 11, 3.7. To where we are today at iPhone 13, which is 0.24 Ether. So like, it kind of shows Ether deflating. This is a deflationary asset. Granted, it only started actually deflating with EIP 1559 recently,

• 20:56David Hoffman?

  but the demand for Ether and also the generalized promise of deflation in the future has made Ether a highly deflationary asset. This is that instantiated in a tweet.

• 21:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's also kind of sad, because now I'm regretting my iPhone 6 purchase. I should have just bought ETH. Like, what the hell, man? Look at this.

• 21:14David Hoffman?

  It's a really expensive iPhone, Ryan.

• 21:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  But this is really the way to look at it. It's all opportunity cost when you denominate in something like ETH. And I think it's another lesson for us. Like, you don't have to be a brilliant trader in crypto in order to do well. All right? The verbs you need to know, the two verbs, the only two verbs you need to know, buy and hold. Two verbs you need to know, okay?

• 21:37David Hoffman?

  Never sell.

• 21:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Leave the trading for later.

• 21:39David Hoffman?

  Never sell.

• 21:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe the third might be stake, okay? So once you buy, once you hold, learn how to stake. And if you get real fancy, you could do stuff with like Notional, and you could start to lend and earn interest that way. But like, trade? That's the advanced stuff. Like, you don't even need to do that.

• 21:56David Hoffman?

  That's a hobby. Trading is a hobby that you don't have to partake in.

• 22:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Stop buying iPhones. Buy more ETH. That's what I learned from this. Pretty soon, it'll be denominated in just Gue. You know, if you Gue, you'll be able to buy the iPhone 20. All right, David, we've got some more stuff to cover on the releases side of things. Of course, we're going to get to the hot news items, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 22:18David Hoffman?

  If you're going Bankless, you need MetaMask. This is your tool to unlock the world of DeFi without giving up custody over your private keys. MetaMask is both a secure in-browser wallet and also a secure bridge for your hardware wallet. You can now trade tokens on any Decks or aggregator. MetaMask Swap gathers real-time pricing information across all the DeFi exchanges, allowing you to select your best price while getting all the MetaMask benefits of self-custody, lower gas costs, and increased transaction success rates. MetaMask also has a fantastic mobile wallet that I use when I'm out and about, which I use to collect PoApps, NFTs, and do all my DeFi things while I'm away from home. If you haven't downloaded MetaMask, you gotta try it out. Web3 wouldn't be the same without it. Download MetaMask for desktop and mobile at metamask.io and load up your Trezor, Ledger,

• 23:03David Hoffman?

  Lattice, or Keystone hardware wallets so that they too can get into the world of Web3. The Layer 2 era is upon us. Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem is growing every day, and we need L2 bridges to be fast and efficient in order to live a Layer 2 life. A cross is the fastest and cheapest and most secure cross-chain bridge. With A cross, you don't have to worry about the long wait times or high fees to get your assets back to the Layer 1. Assets are bridged and available for use almost instantaneously. A cross's bridges are powered by UMA's Optimistic Oracle to securely transfer tokens from Layer 2 back to Ethereum. A cross is critical ecosystem infrastructure, and ownership is being handed over to the community. You can be a part of this story of A cross by joining the Discord and becoming a co-founder and helping to design the fair, fair launch of A cross.

• 23:48David Hoffman?

  If you want to bridge your assets quickly and securely, go to across.to to bridge your assets between ETH, Optimism, Arbitrum, or Bova Networks. Bankless is proud to be sponsored by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum that lets you trade any token at the current market price. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum.

• 24:19David Hoffman?

  Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. The Uniswap Grants Program is accepting applications for grants. Do you have something of value that you think you want to contribute to the Uniswap ecosystem? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a unique grant at uniswapgrant.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Bankless.

• 24:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back with the heart releases of the week. David, we have to start here because Bankless just released a new podcast on the Bankless Podcast Network.

• 24:50David Hoffman?

  It's my favorite thing. Bankless released another podcast.

• 24:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is this one, David?

• 24:55David Hoffman?

  This is Green Pill. This Green Pill coming out of Kevin Owaki. And so Green Pill is all about regenerative crypto economics. Regenerative crypto economics comes out of degenerative crypto economics. And so Kevin Owaki is obsessed with public goods and how we can make people's externalities in the world regenerative rather than, you know, their externalities be positive rather than negative. Negative externalities are like when factories spew like carbon into the air or dump sewage in the water. That's a negative externality. How can we make social structures and social systems that have positive externalities? As in, when we use them, the world actually gets better. It's like an upward spiral of economics. And so Kevin Owaki is exploring this subject with his brand new podcast, Green Pill, which

• 25:40David Hoffman?

  we are helping him produce out of the Bankless ecosystem.

• 25:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, who's this guy right here?

• 25:45David Hoffman?

  Vitalik Buterin, who just, this is his image of the talk that he just gave here at Shelling Point.

• 25:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nice, level 99 Warlock.

• 25:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. So that's the first podcast, first podcast with Vitalik Buterin, the Warlock himself. And he's also got like eight other podcasts already lined up. There's Carl Flora, she's also got Glenn Weil. And so I'm really excited for this podcast. It's really just true to the core of what it means to be crypto. And Kevin is also just a fantastic speaker, and I think he's going to become a fantastic podcast co-podcast host. And I'm excited to listen to it.

• 26:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this is a good podcast to send to like your more collectivist minded friends, right? Maybe people more on the kind of the traditional left, anti-authoritarian left.

• 26:32David Hoffman?

  People who think crypto is hyper-capitalist and don't want anything to do with it.

• 26:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, and this is very, you know, it gets out of the fixed pie mindset that some people fall into in crypto, where it's just like, let's just grab as much crypto as we can in the high nerve bunkers and let the world screw itself over, right? This is no, how do we enter the world and how do we improve it? So I think it's a good message for people who need to hear that. And Kevin gets really practical. I mean, there are projects right now that are helping reduce climate change and there are mechanisms that we can employ to make the world a better place. So Kevin's going to be covering all of that. What's the action item, David? Should people subscribe? How do they subscribe? Is that like RSS?

• 27:14David Hoffman?

  There is, yeah, it's an RSS feed. You can type it into, you can type GreenPill into Spotify or Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan, I just sent you a link in Zoom. You can actually pull up a QR code. So people watching on YouTube.

• 27:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 27:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, in Zoom. So you can actually just scan this QR code and it'll take you right to the podcast, wherever you want to subscribe to that. Fancy magic right there.

• 27:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, man, this is, remind me of a Super Bowl ad, David.

• 27:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So yeah, subscribe to GreenPill. Also, if you want to do us a favor and give us a, give it a five star rating and review so we can get this thing bootstrapped, that'd be fantastic.

• 27:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's green pill the world, guys. It's awesome. That's what crypto can do. All right. I almost disclosed my me of the week. Ignore that, ignore that. All right, so let's get back to the next item on the list, which is Urbit, a layer two rollup. Let me find the link here, David. What is Urbit, though, while I'm looking for that?

• 28:12David Hoffman?

  Urbit is a self-sovereign server. It's something like you can take a hard drive and pop it out of your computer and then you can pop it into a different computer and your same computer is like ready to go right out of the box. And there's much more to it than that. It's actually a very complicated subject, but it's a self-sovereign corner of the internet. It's a self-sovereign operating system that you can make for yourself. And so kind of like a MySpace page for the self-sovereign cryptographic age, where your MySpace page is actually like a hard drive and it's also Computer at the same time is a crazy subject, actually.

• 28:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a crazy subject. It's super complicated as well, but like the net of it is it's trying to reduce reliance on AWS and all of the centralized servers and like redesign the internet. It's almost a new operating system for decentralized internet, if you will. And what I remember from this project is Bitcoiners have historically been super excited about it. As they should be, and I think any decentralization maximalist has been pretty excited about it. I haven't seen much, you know, practical use of it yet, but maybe that's because the technology is still super early, but none of that's the news. The news here is that they are launching on a layer two rollup on top of Ethereum. So Urbit on a layer two rollup, David. What's, uh, what's the tweets say?

• 29:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it says, uh, it's a technical triumphant. It cuts, cuts gas costs by almost 200x, making planets more affordable and transaction fees nearly trivial. Planets is a Urbit technical term. They use the like solar system terminology to describe, um, to describe like the ecosystem, like your, I think your server is a planet, for example. And so they are now integrating their, their ecosystem with a layer two roller.

• 29:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's really cool to see. Also launching this week is lobby three. So we had Andrew Yang on the podcast who was really advocating for crypto in Washington. And he said he was going to do something in the space. He said, you know, basically that classic line, if, um, if you're not at the table, then you're on the menu, right? And referring to the crypto industry, how they needed to participate in Washington lobby groups or not crypto would die, but like innovation in the U.S. would have a much harder time. And so he has launched a lobby group to actually bring the voice of web three to Washington is what it says. And you can join as a member of this group. What's super cool here is David, they've got membership levels.

• 30:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And of course the proceeds go to the lobby three lobby effort, which is pro crypto, pro, pro web three, making some actionable differences. And the membership levels, they're all denominated in ETH.

• 30:50David Hoffman?

  Love it.

• 30:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you could, you become a level one member at 0.07. And ETH right now, and that gets you access to all sorts of various things. Discord access, status updates, AMAs with Andrew Yang, events and merch, voting. And all of the proceeds go to a lobby group. It's really cool to see actually politicians and lobbyists raising using crypto native tools right now, using ETH's money.

• 31:17David Hoffman?

  When Andrew Yang came on our podcast and he said that he wanted to be the politician that represented the crypto industry and represented the Web3 industry, a lot of people said, yeah, he's just saying that for votes. Are you sure about that now? Yeah. Are you sure? Because like, look at this. Andrew Yang's also coming to ETH Denver. He's going to be here on Friday. So I'm going to take Andrew Yang to a party. It's going to be great.

• 31:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but even people complain about, he's just saying that for votes. Okay.

• 31:43David Hoffman?

  What do politicians do? Are you upset?

• 31:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're going to give crypto friendly politicians more votes.

• 31:50David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 31:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, that's what's going to happen. So be a skeptic about what his true motivations are. You have to evaluate what he's doing and what organizations like this are doing on their merits. Are they pushing a pro crypto, pro Web3 agenda forward or not? And if they are, again, they adopt crypto protocols, they adopt crypto values. But you're going to party with Andrew Yang tonight? Is that what's happening?

• 32:13David Hoffman?

  No, on Friday. Tonight is Thursday night, so Friday, yeah. Yeah, he's coming to ETH Denver and he's going to be just walking around with the rest of the Web3 people. I was talking to Carly Riley, host of Overpriced JPGs. And Andrew Yang gets a lot of resistance from other people in the political spheres.

• 32:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tribes.

• 32:31David Hoffman?

  Tribes, like, oh, he's not Democrat enough, or, oh, he's not this enough. But apparently Andrew Yang just really vibes with the crypto folk and the crypto folk really vibe with Andrew Yang. Something about being like some sort of futurist with shared values about like, we all know the future's coming. Crypto people know that and Andrew Yang knows that. And so I'm just very happy to have Andrew Yang on Team Web3.

• 32:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, man, I mean, what politician without speaking at an event actually comes as a kind of a hobbyist to an esoteric like conference like this, you know, ETH Denver, that's pretty cool to see.

• 33:07David Hoffman?

  I don't even think most of the people here know he's coming. I just know that because Carly told me.

• 33:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  He just signed up. Hey, guys. Wait, is that Andrew Yang? What the hell?

• 33:17David Hoffman?

  That's awesome.

• 33:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, what's RAC doing?

• 33:20David Hoffman?

  This is really cool. Okay, RAC. Andre, we read out his tweet thread about why NFT skeptics need to reconsider last week. He's been in crypto for a very long time. He's released the RAC social token over a year ago, and now he is introducing RAC OS as an operating system, version 0.1, at website RAC.fm, a Web3-enabled portal for all RAC token holders. And so this is RAC, I think, really giving a huge upgrade to his social token and the concept of social tokens at large. This is a portal. If you have his social token, you can go here and do things if you have the social token. And so he's giving utility to his social token. And I think it's really, he's pioneering the way into what it means

• 34:05David Hoffman?

  to issue a social token. That's really, really cool. Really, really cool.

• 34:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Super smart guy, Grammy Award-winning artist. He probably listened to a bunch of his music. He's like a collaborator on, you know, tons of fantastic things over the years. And yeah, this is, look, this is the birth of social tokens. It comes from creators creating new experiences like this and experiments like this. It's super cool to see. Another one-

• 34:25David Hoffman?

  If you want to learn more, we did a Meet the Nation with RAC a little bit, like almost a year ago, it feels like. So that is on the Bankless YouTube.

• 34:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, it feels like we should have him back on to explain some of this, too. Another experiment that's going on in the Bankless DAO world, I saw this launched last week, is the Bankless Academy. All right, so this is the ability to start your bankless journey. Bankless Academy is on a mission to introduce 1 billion people to the exciting possibilities of cryptocurrency. So basically, it's a way to connect your wallet, go through various tutorials, like Wallet Basics, for example, Intro to DeFi, all of these various lessons, and earn things at the end of them. So whether you're earning a badge at first, or maybe in the future, like tokens or specialized NFTs, again, this is an example of crypto pays you to learn about crypto. And this literally is what is happening at the Bankless

• 35:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Academy. It's still in beta, just launched, but a great concept to see coming out of a Bankless DAO.

• 35:19David Hoffman?

  This website is sick. It looks super sick. This is the very kernels of how we disrupt universities. Universities, in my opinion, have devolved into just fake credentialism and, you know, if you want to get really on the end of things, extortion out of students. The new universities of the Web3 digital age are online courses that establish legitimacy with employers and, you know, employers. And then you can go and show it's like, yo, I've done every single lesson in the Bankless Academy. Look at the tokens that I have on-chain to prove that credential that I have. And so this is a new type. This is literally decentralizing the concept of a university. Bankless Academy is like pioneering this path. They're not going to be the only ones to do this.

• 36:02David Hoffman?

  Any sort of like domain of knowledge can have some sort of on-chain Web3 credentialism based on some sort of course. And if that course is good, the builders of that course is good, their tokens will be more desirable to have in your wallets to prove that you know what the course offers. So really cool stuff.

• 36:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's funny. I mean, what else is a university diploma, right?

• 36:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like pre-tokenized. It's a credential. It's something you're given in real life. And those are traditional credentials. Maybe the diploma of the future is a collection of badges in something like this. Yeah, really cool to see how that develops. David, let's get on to the raises section. This is another group that is doing something similar. Rabbit Hole, they are paving the path to Web3 contributors as well. They've got sort of an academy where you can earn things by taking lessons. And they just raised $18 million from a set of VCs. Really cool to see that get funded, the Series A. Rabbit Hole is another. We've done a lot of articles on Rabbit Hole in the past at Bankless. And I encourage folks that are trying to learn, trying to level up in the space to go check out what they are up to.

• 37:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Any other thoughts on that, David?

• 37:08David Hoffman?

  Exactly what I was just saying. Like, this is a new thing. Well, not a new thing. This is a new path of Web3 getting explored by both Bankless DAO and Rabbit Hole. And, look, $18 million raise. People are taking this seriously. Congrats to Rabbit Hole.

• 37:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Another big raise is the Rainbow Wallet, which we've talked about in the past, NFT-focused wallet. It raised, let's see, what are the numbers here? Big numbers, I think. Some are in the article.

• 37:38David Hoffman?

  Eighteen million?

• 37:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Eighteen million dollars.

• 37:40David Hoffman?

  Another eighteen million dollars, yeah.

• 37:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  And led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and his venture firm 776. We are actually having Alexis on the podcast sometime in March. We're going to record with him, going to talk about this and the other things he's up to in the space while it's getting funded as well. And what's this, David? OpenSea with a venture arm? That's what's next? What's this about?

• 38:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, OpenSea Ventures. So like, apparently, when you raise hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, you actually can't figure out what to do with it other than reinvest it into the ecosystem. So an NFT grant ecosystem, grants program coming out of OpenSea. So it's actually just genius. Like, they built, they built OpenSea in order to inspire a bull market in NFTs because of OpenSea, basically. And now they have all this money because of all their success, and now they are just sending that money back into the ecosystem. And or because they need to bootstrap more products, so that it's so circular. It's such a great move.

• 38:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nice flywheel. Nice flywheel. And it does seem like OpenSea, I mean Coinbase has had venture set up for a long time, many years. It does seem like OpenSea is trying to be sort of the Coinbase of NFTs and expanding into the space to take that market share. This is Circle, the creators of USDC and other things. They just had a valuation in a SPAC deal of nine billion dollars. Pretty impressive valuation. So many unicorns in crypto. I don't know, we have dozens, at least by now. Any other thoughts on this?

• 39:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I don't know too much about SPACs, so I probably shouldn't comment. But nine billion dollars is a lot, so congrats to Circle.

• 39:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, big valuation. Guys, as soon as we conclude the raise section.

• 39:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  We have to ask the question, what are these companies going to do with all of their money? The question you just asked, David.

• 39:32David Hoffman?

  I think I know what comes next.

• 39:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah? What comes next?

• 39:35David Hoffman?

  Get a job. Get a job in crypto. It's time to get a job. Look at all that money.

• 39:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Get a job in crypto. All that money, it has to go somewhere. And it's looking for talent, right? Crypto is building itself out. This is the early internet. The skills you develop in crypto now will be used by these companies and they will pay you for those skills, both salary rolls, jobs in DAOs, all sorts of things. A great way to get plugged in is at the Bankless Job Board. That's at bankless.pallet.com/jobs. I'm gonna read out a few, David. Don't have time to read them all out, but Senior Product Engineer, Moment Ranks, Community Manager, DYDX, a Governance Growth Lead at DYDX, Business Operations and Finance Associate, DYDX, Marketing Associate, DYDX, an Accountant, Smart DeFi, a Web3 Engineer, Goldfinch,

• 40:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  a Senior GoRust Engineer, Syndica, Smart Contract Lead, StarX. There's even more. If you want to just passively explore these opportunities, you can submit your profile to the Bankless Talent Collective and talent seekers will go find you.

• 40:37David Hoffman?

  Ryan, I actually want you to go back to the Jobs Board and go down to the Maker Jobs because...

• 40:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  You want to keep dancing?

• 40:44David Hoffman?

  I want to keep... Well, no, I want to read these out, actually. There's actually only two of them. Operations Manager at MakerDAO and Lead Financialist/Analyst at MakerDAO. MakerDAO was just at a MakerDAO party last night. MakerDAO is making some moves in this space. There's gonna be a bunch more jobs coming, I believe, onto this Job Board. So those who are interested in Maker and want to lead Maker into this version of the sub-DOWs and working for the sub-DOWs, stay tuned for all those jobs coming out of MakerDAO coming soon.

• 41:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Meanwhile, people behind you are like, who's this crazy guy and why is he dancing?

• 41:14David Hoffman?

  Why is he dancing?

• 41:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  On webcam?

• 41:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, what the hell?

• 41:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we do have an OnlyFans update, but this is not that. It's not that. Maybe that joke gets cut.

• 41:24David Hoffman?

  No, no, no, it doesn't.

• 41:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's move to news, guys. Top Super Bowl ads. David, let's give our rundown of the top Super Bowl ads, because crypto had a bunch of ads. People are calling this the crypto bowl. That's what we predicted. I think we predicted like seven-ish or so, and that's around the number that had crypto in it, mentioned crypto. But I want to get your ranking on the top crypto ads. I know you saw some of these live, others you didn't, but you watched afterwards. Give us the ranking, man. What were the best ads?

• 41:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so in my opinion, coming in at number one is FTX with their "Don't Miss Out" featuring Larry David. And it's basically just a speedrun through history of all the technologies that have changed humanity. The wheel, the lightbulb, indoor plumbing, even more stuff than that I can remember. And every single time, it's Larry David in like different outfits. I'm like, eh, that's not gonna work. And it's a very entertaining ad. It was easy to watch. The production was fantastic. And you know, there were so many probably like groups of people, families, friends, where like there was a mix of maybe the kids were pro crypto and the adults were anti crypto. And like, all the family was watching this ad. And like, all the anti crypto people had to watch this ad and be

• 42:35David Hoffman?

  like, oh, I'm Larry David. I'm the one that thinks that it's not gonna work. And so this was not only a very entertaining advertisement, but it was just putting to shame all the naysayers about crypto, saying like, you're the person that's holding us back about this brand new technology. The positive PR that we got out of this advertisement, I think, was super, super good.

• 42:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. Somebody's going in there and saying, oh, dad, that's you. That's you.

• 43:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's you.

• 43:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're Larry David in this commercial. Number two, what's your pick for number two, David?

• 43:09David Hoffman?

  Number two is the Coinbase QR code, which is like, I've had this idea of this advertisement for a while. It's just like, what happens if you just post a link or a QR code on screen?

• 43:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, they stole your idea, David?

• 43:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I had this idea first. And so, you know, the rainbow DVD like screensaver where the DVD moves around the screen?

• 43:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Classic.

• 43:28David Hoffman?

  That's what they did, but with a QR code. And it was so- So successful that it crashed the app within minutes and they got so many signups.

• 43:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Pretty ballsy.

• 43:38David Hoffman?

  Pretty ballsy, but like also it's just like, think of like, they paid 14 million for this advertisement, but they had to pay zero to actually produce it. Whereas FTX probably had to pay something like 10s to 20s of millions of dollars to produce the actual, yeah, right? And so like Coinbase, this is like a $10 advertisement. All they had to do is pay for the time. And if I think it might be coming up next, Ryan, but if you wait, the QR code actually does go up to the corner. It's gonna, yeah, it's gonna happen, yeah.

• 44:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Please, please, please, please, please.

• 44:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Of course they do it at the very end, yeah. So that's, that's why Coinbase came in at number two. And those were, in my opinion, like the number one and number two advertisements were like very far in the lead and the three and four were kind of meh.

• 44:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I didn't know, so I saw this live and I was like, QR code, should I, should I do it? Should I do it? And I did it and I was like, oh Coinbase. And what it does, it prompts you to set up a Coinbase account and it gave you like $15 worth of Bitcoin or something. So it's just like an immediate account signup for them. Some people weren't fans, right? Some of the like non crypto people were like, felt it was a little weird or scammy. But you'll get to maybe those takes later. The third was what, David? What's coming, clocking in number three?

• 44:51David Hoffman?

  eToro, which is emphasizing its social trading. And so it was a bunch of people all floating off into the sky, grabbing other people to go with them because we're all going to the moon together. I kind of liked it because it had, we all gonna make it vibes. Also, there was a tip of the hat to Abort Ape. There was a tip of the hat to Doge. Frank Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon was playing in the background. It wasn't specifically about crypto, but it just had like good crypto references with big wag me culture built into it. So, you know, coming in at number three.

• 45:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nice vibes, good metaverse vibes as well. Number four was this from Crypto, oop, I spoil it. Who's this from?

• 45:24David Hoffman?

  Number four, Crypto.com featuring LeBron James. And basically I didn't really get this one. Like it was basically LeBron James and somebody else. I actually don't know, talking about how like, should I do it? Should I not do it? And LeBron James is like, you gotta do it because fortune favors the bold. And then boom, Crypto.com. And so like, yeah, crypto, like fortune favors the bold, you gotta take risks. But like, the advertisement had nothing to do with crypto. It was just about LeBron James. I think maybe he might be talking to a kid version of himself. I don't really know, whatever.

• 45:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, but you know, the cool part is LeBron James. And so anything that he endorses, he's got a fan base that's going to go check it out. So you get some brand association. Crypto.com is doing Matt Damon earlier as well. So they're pulling in the celebs here. A ton of honorable mentions as well, like Bud Light's had nouns in them. Meta, what was this?

• 46:11David Hoffman?

  Meta, Facebook. Yeah, it wasn't a crypto ad. It was just advertising the Oculus Quest. But you all know, we all know that at the end of Meta is a bunch of crypto stuff. Once they finally get there.

• 46:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's really cool to see. What were some of the reactions you heard? Because here's one I heard from like non crypto people. Crypto people are of course very excited about this. But I read a tweet like the morning after saying, oh my God, crypto is thirsty at the Super Bowl. Like these takes like if crypto was so great and there's so much money to be made in crypto, why does the industry need to run Super Bowl ads? Why does it need to even advertise itself? And what's funny to me is I feel like Larry David answered that same question in the FTX advertisement, which is like an answer to all of the skeptics. Some people are seriously going to be skeptical of crypto all the way to $100 trillion, David.

• 47:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like they're just going to not believe it. And it's going to cost them like money. Like we have more traction and crypto is so much more de-risked than it was like three years ago and five years ago. And there's a certain segment of the population, they're just, I don't know, born to be late adopters. I don't know, can't get past some of their objections to actually dig into the space and ask the question of why, you know, 60, 70 million Americans now hold crypto? What it's doing in the space? It's always going to be skeptics, I suppose. Any other thoughts on that?

• 47:43David Hoffman?

  I mean, the big takeaway I have is crypto is about money. Like, it's an industry about money. So of course, we have the money to pay for Super Bowl ads. And also, when all of these big gargantuan companies run Super Bowl ads, it does a favor to the entire industry. And eventually, it gets more people to buy more crypto assets, which makes the crypto assets go up in price, which funds our ability to make more Super Bowl ads.

• 48:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, that's the criticism, though. That's the criticism, though, David. That it's just they're trying to get you into their pyramid scheme. You know, the Ponzi game. And that's why they're advertising so hard.

• 48:13David Hoffman?

  If you squint hard enough, everything's a Ponzi scheme at the end of the day. Or Ponzi game, anyways.

• 48:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thank you. Most people don't squint is the problem. Let's look. Here's another big thing after the Super Bowl ads. I think this is the other big thing of the week. So the SEC just fined BlockFi for $100 million. And this is a combination. Some goes to the Fed, like 50 million, some goes to the States. Just some context. So BlockFi is a centralized crypto lending provider. So you can lend money to BlockFi. You can lend your crypto to BlockFi. And you can also earn interest on BlockFi. And if you do it through USDC, the rates are something like 8% to 9%. Like, very high. You can't get these types of interest returns in a traditional bank account, of course.

• 49:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now, last summer, the SEC famously blocked Coinbase from issuing their Coinbase Lend product, which was a similar product. And Coinbase said, hey, hold on. BlockFi is doing it. Everyone else is doing it. Why are you telling us we can't do it? And they eventually decided to, you know, to withdraw that product entirely. So now the SEC is coming after BlockFi in a heavy-handed way. A $50 million fine to them and $100 million total to the States. And so when I first saw this, like, the question in my mind is, oh, my God, what does this settlement mean? Is this the end of centralized crypto lending? It's not, and we're going to get into that.

• 49:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  But anything else we should include in this story at the high level before we get into some of the details?

• 49:51David Hoffman?

  No, I think you've covered it pretty well. I have anything else to say?

• 49:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, so here's, I guess, the take that I was questioning is, is this BlockFi settlement on Friday, the end of centralized crypto lending in the US? Interested in your thoughts? A bunch of people reached out to me, crypto lawyers and such, and BlockFi gave their take, and they actually spun this as a big win, a big win for BlockFi. They called this a landmark resolution with federal and state regulators. So $100 million seems like a massive fine for this sort of thing. But the flip side, says BlockFi, is we are getting clarity on a pathway for crypto interest securities. So what BlockFi has done, I believe, is anyone who had a crypto interest account still gets to keep their crypto

• 50:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  interest account. Right now, they are not allowing new signups on the crypto interest accounts. So they've disbanded all new signups in the US, but they will transition those crypto interest accounts to a SEC-approved version of the same interest account. And I don't think this is quite an ETF. It's something, something different. But on the other side of this, what it will allow them to do is offer an SEC-approved interest-earning product to all Americans. And what the SEC gets out of this, what they wanted out of it, was more investor transparency, which I actually think is a great thing, particularly for centralized lending providers. Like, what is BlockFi actually doing with the funds

• 51:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  in order to generate that return? It's not DeFi, so we can't see it on chain, so it should be transparent. So there's actually more than a silver lining. I actually do think that this is good news for crypto.

• 51:31David Hoffman?

  I 100% agree. The net outcome of this will be positive. My big qualms with this is that there's always, with crypto, there's always like the first-through-the-door phenomenon, where if you're the first one through the door, you are the one that gets shot. And so BlockFi got fined with $100 million. $100 million. We, as an industry, thanks to BlockFi, so thank you BlockFi, we just finally just paid off the SEC $100 million to get clarity. That's how much clarity costs, $100 million. And so this is why people, the more radical takes of Think that the SEC is just this extortionary agency out of the government who's like, oh, you want clarity before if we don't send you to jail? Pay us $100 million and then we'll give you clarity.

• 52:17David Hoffman?

  I mean, BlockFi ate the fine and now we have clarity and so we get to progress forward and take the W. But it costs for that W, it costs us $100 million.

• 52:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. I think that is a good take. So net, net, net, this is good news for crypto. I think it's good news for US investors, but, but there is some, some downside with it, right? So one is what you said, like if you're trying to compete against a BlockFi, look, the SEC just made the startup costs even higher, right? So it's kind of creating this incumbent industry.

• 52:48David Hoffman?

  The other lesson I think- What regulation does, that's what the SEC does. They just create incumbents.

• 52:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, on the flip side of this, like investors in these products and purchasers of these products could use some additional transparency. So that, I guess is the good side, maybe the, the counterbalance. But one lesson it teaches crypto is like, never ask for permission.

• 53:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can't.

• 53:09David Hoffman?

  We learned that from Uber. Uber taught us that lesson.

• 53:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Don't ask for permission. You have to go do it and then you have to blitz scale. So you're large enough to pay these exorbitant fees or you're never going to make it. The other question to me is, and this is maybe the more concerning bit, so we'll see. What does the SEC do with DeFi now? All right, because we got, we got DeFi lending, right? Which is trustless, we would say. It's on-chain, it's verifiable, so you could see the assets, you could see the risk profile. But is the SEC coming for DeFi next? And what's their action going to be in, in the territory of DeFi? The, the other concern I have is of course, the US now has completely different rules. So BlockFi can operate in all of these other countries, like as they had been before.

• 53:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  But now the US has this very specific carve out regulatory apparatus. And of course, it wasn't Congress that passed the law. It was like the SEC kind of passing a law. So, I mean, we had our conversation with- The congressman, yeah, Tom Emmer earlier this week. And it's just a little bit like, Congress, come get your boy. You know, like, like, they shouldn't be the ones creating these essentially, you know, pseudo laws. They shouldn't be creating the laws.

• 54:27David Hoffman?

  They enforce rules. They don't create rules.

• 54:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. So like legislative branch, get it together.

• 54:32David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 54:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. Regulators should not be legislating this and taking bribes, right? In order to like, move these things forward. That's not the way this industry should work. And it's up to Congress to take some action, to rein some of these regulators in. And that's what Tom Emmer was saying in our conversation with him earlier this week.

• 54:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, no, these are all the right takes. And I think this is going to be something that's unpacked for the next few weeks. So anyways, once again, thank you to BlockFi for taking the bullet through the door.

• 55:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And let's, let's, let's move on to some other nation state actions while we're on it. So Trudeau in Canada, they're having some problems with protesters these days. There is a, you know, convoy, convoy COVID protests going on in Ottawa, going on in Canada. What caught my attention is not necessarily that protest. But on the back of this, there is now a mandate from Trudeau and those in power in Canada to freeze protesters' bank accounts.

• 55:31David Hoffman?

  Absolutely ridiculous. This is, this is qualm-ing freedom of speech. Whatever you want to speech about, whatever you want to talk about, you have that freedom of speech because we value freedom of speech. They are freezing bank accounts to people that are expressing speech. That's crazy.

• 55:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It has a lot of downstream effects. So regardless of your opinion on the protest and, you know, Bankless isn't here to take one side or the other on the protest. I think like, here's, here's the quote, "With no need for a court order", this is from the BBC reporting, "Banks will be able to freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protest." Anyone linked with the protest, freeze your personal bank account. Okay? And the take is, this time it's their protest. Maybe you're not protesting, maybe you don't care about this. Next time it's yours. What if it was a crypto protest, David? They started freezing bank accounts. What if it was a free speech protest?

• 56:22David Hoffman?

  Well, actually, those people would be okay.

• 56:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? But like, I mean, what if it was something that, that, that you care deeply about? What if next time it's about like runaway inflation? And like the labor market and like energy costs soaring? And you know, something else the population wants?

• 56:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Governments shouldn't be able to freeze people's bank accounts without a court order, without due process.

• 56:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Governments and politics should not be intervening in finance and money. Those are separate concepts and the government is using the banking system to silence political dissent. That should not be happening ever.

• 57:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It should not be happening ever. And, you know, people will say, well, the protesters did this and they did that. Like, let's just talk about the precedent that this sets.

• 57:07David Hoffman?

  Zoom out.

• 57:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Zoom out, let's talk about the precedent this sets. And you know what? What's interesting to me, David, is crypto is not impervious here. So the finance ministers and the financial regulators in Canada are actually, it's being reported, blockading certain crypto wallets. So they are coming up with, there was a fundraise going on in Bitcoin. 34 different crypto addresses that contributed to this fundraise are now being blacklisted by FinTRAC, which is Canada's Fines Financial Authorities. And so what that basically means, David, is like, if you're a crypto bank, your exchange or something, operated in Canada, and you receive a notice from FinTRAC, hey, don't receive deposits

• 57:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  from any of these accounts. Don't let any of these accounts withdraw anything. They're being blacklisted. You have to abide by that, or it's illegal.

• 58:01David Hoffman?

  Right. They're treating you as if you exploited some contract for billions of dollars. Like, that's the same treatment.

• 58:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, okay, that's a big problem. And of course, is the reason, I think, David, for the bankless movement. This is the reason for DeFi. This is also the reason that Bitcoin can't solve all of our problems. If it's just Bitcoin and the only thing you can do on Bitcoin is just move money from one place to another and you can't trade, you can't actually convert to other assets, you can't lend, you can't borrow, and the entire banking system is like built on top of centralized custodian banking, we got a real problem. And that's why we need DeFi. That's why we need Uniswap, it's unstoppable protocol for trading. That's why we need lending and borrowing protocols. That's why we need Layer 2, so we can transact with low gas fees. Like, that's why we need DeFi.

• 58:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I've always felt like, and I think this is, you know, continued proof, that just having a non-sovereign store of value without scalability at the base layer and without decentralized finance...

• 59:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Doesn't actually produce a new financial system. It's like just more of the same because there's all of these choke points. And the existing bankers and the existing government structures will squeeze the necks of these choke points until it starts to resemble the exact same system we came away with. That's my takeaway.

• 59:22David Hoffman?

  That's exactly right.

• 59:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this next story highlights what some of the government regulator response is going to be to this sort of thing. Treasury officials say stablecoin issuers must be banks to ensure security, to ensure financial stability. Some representatives, however, said the move would crowd crypto-native stablecoin issuers out of the market. Yes, it would, but that is Treasury's answer. Just everyone become a bank. Let's go back to the old system. Same story here.

• 59:51David Hoffman?

  This is what we're seeing with regulation. Regulation is pulling as much of crypto as they can into their fold, but also at the same time, what makes me optimistic is that at the same time crypto is getting better at more stuff. We have so many more products and that's allowing us to be more crypto-native while also appeasing regulators at the same time. They're never going to get like the Wonderland stuff of the world under their fold, the Anon developers of the world. That's strictly going to be crypto-native. But they're going to put like Circle and Tether and they're going to bring those under the fold. And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's enough.

• 1:00:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I do think that the big story here is that world governments have moved beyond ignore crypto. That was the first decade in crypto. It was just like ignore, it's not going to happen, too volatile, stupid, it'll never work. Now they're in the camp of getting educated and actually starting to do things in crypto. And that'll be a double-edged sword. Sometimes it will be good, sometimes it will be bad. An influential policy body just warned, this is the FSB, they are compiled, I believe, of the IMF. It's sort of a nation-state regulator body. They just warned that DeFi may shake the stability of the global financial system. They put together a report. I read some of it. Their section on DeFi is kind of interesting. You can see them getting super-educated on

• 1:01:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  DeFi. They talk about the privacy, which could be sort of a threat. And concern from a state surveillance perspective. They talk about the permissionless nature of DeFi protocols. They very much don't want DeFi to exist. Like, they would rather it not exist, but now that it's here, they all have to grapple with what they're going to do about it. And they're still in the phase of infancy where they're just, they're moving from ignore and now they're getting educated on it. And we'll see what comes next. I feel like much of this, though, David, is incumbent protection. That's maybe what the FSB and IMF are primarily concerned with. It's not world financial stability. It's financial, like, it's stability of the incumbents,

• 1:01:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  the existing control system that they most care about.

• 1:01:55David Hoffman?

  And this is just a meeting in the middle. Like, crypto is making nation-states move closer to crypto stuff by making them compromise. We saw that with the SEC. And then also, the nation-state is using their powers to make crypto compromise to nation-state regulations. So there's a meeting in the middle. But also, we still get our crypto native stuff.

• 1:02:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's right. And meanwhile, we're getting some big adoption as well. So Twitter just added Ethereum wallet support to its tipping feature.

• 1:02:23David Hoffman?

  I never thought I'd see the day.

• 1:02:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, Jack leaving Twitter, do you think that's related at all?

• 1:02:28David Hoffman?

  Of course, absolutely, yeah.

• 1:02:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so as soon as Jack, the CEO of Twitter, left, all of a sudden Twitter started rolling out all of these NFT features. Now there's a feature for Ethereum tipping. Some people are like, well, it's stupid because ETH gas prices are too high. But of course, you could implement this with any ETH address across any EVM-compatible chain, whether that's a side-chain with lower gas fees or a Layer 2, which is obviously the future. And it's cool to see Twitter adding this now, not just being kind of ETH maximalist blinders about this entire space.

• 1:03:01David Hoffman?

  I'm still kind of skeptical as to the whole tipping use case. Like... Tipping in Twitter, like, does that really go hand in hand? It could be a building block. It could be a building block for something better.

• 1:03:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's something, but like, people don't even tip in US dollars on Twitter. Like, why would they do so in crypto? It's probably just, you know, bad product market fit. It's kind of like, you know, buying Starbucks with your cryptos. Like, that's the last thing that'll come.

• 1:03:29David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:03:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, let's get to some NFT stuff. Why don't we lead with this? What's this?

• 1:03:34David Hoffman?

  Oh, gosh. OnlyFans launches verified NFT profile pictures. My take on this is that this is coming off of the heels of Irene DAO. The DAO that the Irene made.

• 1:03:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Kicked off the simp fi season?

• 1:03:47David Hoffman?

  Kicked off simp fi season. And then also, OnlyFans was like, oh, Twitter verified NFTs, Irene DAO? There's something here for us. And so now they're like, OnlyFans, which is generating like bajillions in revenue, is using NFTs, probably to help their customers, their clients, get more money from their viewers, from their users. Like, OnlyFans is about taking money from customers who want to see stuff. And then NFTs just make that even more expressive, I guess? Like, we'll see where this goes.

• 1:04:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, OnlyFans are creators after fashion. So this is the creator economy, once again. David, what's happening in the CryptoPunk world?

• 1:04:27David Hoffman?

  CryptoPunk, the biggest CryptoPunk sale ever for 8,000 Ether. $23.7 million. An alien CryptoPunk. The owner of this CryptoPunk owned this, but I think bought this CryptoPunk in something like 2018 for like a couple Ether so. So like, we can verify that on-chain. I don't know if those numbers are right. But I think bought it in like 2018 for like 2 or 3 or 4 Ether or something. So, you know, a very casual like 4,000 X in ETH terms, while Ether went from $100 to $4,000 or $3,000, where it is now. So GG to the seller. GG.

• 1:05:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Most impressive trade I've seen this year. I can safely say that.

• 1:05:06David Hoffman?

  Exactly what Ryan said. The best thing you can do in crypto is hold.

• 1:05:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, it's also another thing, which is like, are NFTs a good way to generate ETH-denominated returns? If you buy the right NFTs, that could be a strategy.

• 1:05:18David Hoffman?

  M-Fers, huh?

• 1:05:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21David Hoffman?

  How about them M-Fers?

• 1:05:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. What's the next CryptoPunk, David? Tell me.

• 1:05:25David Hoffman?

  Oh, God. Well, don't make me say that, but I mean, I've got my money where my mouth is.

• 1:05:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  The size of the NFT market, though, okay, is only 1% of crypto's $2 trillion industry. This is a really cool board with, it's called NFT Go, which shows you the NFT market cap, which I've never seen before, is about $16 billion. I'm not sure all this includes, but still a tiny fraction of crypto's market cap size. And a lot of room for growth here in collectibles.

• 1:05:56David Hoffman?

  And it just goes to show how loud NFTs are. NFTs have completely changed the entire conversation about what crypto is, and it's generated so much love and so much hate, and it's just $17 billion. DeFi, like the ERC20 market cap that we were looking at earlier is like $400 billion, and no one talks about DeFi. Just the loudness of NFTs off $16 billion of market cap is insane.

• 1:06:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, punching way above their weight class from a cultural presence perspective, way above their market cap and weight class. But also, like, so much room to grow here, if it's only 1%. Let's move to some Bitcoin stuff. Fidelity is launching a Bitcoin ETP. I believe this is in Europe, and this is kind of like an ETF equivalent for those in the US. That's what an ETP essentially is. And it's going to be the cheapest crypto ETP in the world at fees of 75 bips, so less than 1%, which compares quite nicely to GBTC, which is, in the US over here, 2% management fees if you're getting into that product. Any thoughts?

• 1:06:59David Hoffman?

  No thoughts. No thoughts.

• 1:07:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  We still need our... Bitcoin native ETF and then our Ether ETF. And it would be nice if the SEC weighed in on that sometime soon. But I feel like I've been waiting for that forever. David, in altcoin stuff or alt layer two things, Terra just signed a $40 million deal with the MLB for the Washington Nationals. This is a sponsorship deal, getting crypto into the sports scene yet again. Any thoughts?

• 1:07:31David Hoffman?

  I mean, this is, we've seen this before. We've seen it again. Like, there's only so many sports teams and MLB leagues and sports leagues that crypto can buy, and so far, we're doing all of them.

• 1:07:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of funny to me, though. There's, there's an element of like, is it weird for like, layer ones to advertise? Is it weird for protocols to advertise a little bit? Like, TCP IP never had to advertise.

• 1:07:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah. If you're a decentralization maxi, then yes, it is weird that layer ones are buying sports teams and advertising deals.

• 1:07:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do think it's normal for layer twos. I do think it's normal for execution layers. So I expect the arbitrums of the world and the starkwars of the world to follow suit at some point in the future. There was also a big vulnerability this week in Coinbase and a near, near miss, near disaster, near catastrophe. Update us on that, David.

• 1:08:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this tweet went out from Tree of Alpha, who said, "Anyone, can anyone here get me a direct line with someone at Coinbase, preferably management team or possibly Brian Armstrong himself? I'm submitting a HackerOne report, but I'm afraid this can't wait. Can't say anymore either. This is potentially market nuking." Like, asking for Brian Armstrong's attention on Twitter is like, everyone wants Brian Armstrong's attention on Twitter, but, and no one really knew why. But this tweet circled around, it's like, and everyone, Discord and Telegram.

• 1:08:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  You gotta take it seriously.

• 1:08:45David Hoffman?

  You gotta take it seriously. And so, this is a little bit outside of my technical capacity. But what I think happened was that, after this tweet happened, Coinbase paused advanced trading. So they had the advanced trading features, and so they paused all trading on that, and they said, "Technical problems." And then moments later, it had been resolved. So it didn't take that long. What I think happened was that a technical glitch in the Coinbase system, servers, I don't know. Was allowing people to enter trades that shouldn't have been or or just make trades that with with fake prices and maybe Coinbase had this exploit where these these trades would go through.

• 1:09:26David Hoffman?

  And so what that means is the the market nuking aspect of this is a lot of oracles and DeFi use Coinbase as their price feed. And when you can submit fake trades with fake prices into the system. Like it's not, you're not, they're not being able to buy like Ether or Bitcoin for not at the right prices. You might have just Coinbase might be reporting bad prices to the rest of DeFi. And that's what have could have caused cascading liquidations. This this hacker, not hacker, like white hat hacker, I guess. Caught found it and raised the alarm and Coinbase answered the call and fixed it in a moment of minutes. And apparently saved us all from a black swan event. So thank you, I guess. Wow.

• 1:10:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Collective sigh of relief. Important to note that this wasn't like a hack of Coinbase's custody solutions, right? So it's cold storage or even it's hot storage.

• 1:10:13David Hoffman?

  It's their order book. It's their order book.

• 1:10:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, which which could have been bad too. Binance, in another crypto bank news, Binance is removing its name from the blockchain ecosystem formerly called Binance Chain. It's now being called BNB Chain, which is a little branding exercise, I think, to sort of separate Binance, the exchange, from the, I guess, like the control or the the perception of control that they are the ones behind. Yeah, even though it probably doesn't change anything fundamentally. I mean, Binance still runs BNB Chain, don't they?

• 1:10:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the the last like three things we've talked about Binance on the last three rollups have all been like PR and branding things. So that's that's interesting.

• 1:10:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, we are maybe some point having CZ on the podcast be a good question for him. Like what's real? What's decentralization theater?

• 1:11:03David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:11:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's probably not a learning question for him to bring him on, but that's a question that I have in my head. David, another thing is interesting is all of the banks that are now investing in crypto blockchain companies. That's why at some level, I feel like it's too late for the IMF. It's too late for regulators, like even their banks are capitulating. It's like, guys. You're supposed to be our friends, you're supposed to be the insiders, and you guys are offering crypto products and buying up equity in crypto companies too. This is a list, look at this massive list of all of these banks that are now in crypto, in blockchain, they now have investment offerings. ING, UBS, BBVA, MUFG, whatever that is, Citibank, Barclays, JP Morgan, BlackRock, all of them. The banks are here.

• 1:11:48David Hoffman?

  Right. My take here is this is a reverse Moloch, or Moloch for good, where like because one of these banks is getting into crypto and generating revenue and making money from all the crypto offerings, all of the banks have to offer crypto. And when all of the banks have to offer crypto, then everyone is easily onboarded to crypto. And then when everyone's easily onboarded to crypto, we no longer need banks anymore. So like Moloch is forcing all the banks to like accepting to offer crypto products, just legitimizing this bankless industry. If you don't understand Moloch, or don't know what it is, listen to Slaying Moloch episode. It's a very foundational concept, it's about coordination. But this is Moloch for good.

• 1:12:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is game theory at play, right? That's basically what you're saying too. Game theory forces them all into crypto. Something we predicted last week, David, just happened. What just happened?

• 1:12:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the insane lunatics who hacked the 2016 Bitfinex hack and then tried to become like internet rappers, Netflix has already greenlit a series on this. And so the article says-

• 1:12:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're getting a movie. Oh, it's a Tiger King type movie.

• 1:12:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Netflix is giving the Bitcoin heist a couple of the Tiger King treatment, which is I guess some sort of like crazy people doing crazy stuff, but we're gonna make a movie about it. So Bitfinex hackers, get in a movie.

• 1:13:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't know if it's a movie or maybe it's a show, a series. It's gonna be like a Tiger King style series. I can't wait. Like now we get like our-

• 1:13:16David Hoffman?

  It's gonna be so cringe, I can't wait to watch all of it.

• 1:13:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I can't wait to not be in it at all. I want to distance myself very far from whatever this series outputs. Guys, we will be back with the takes of the week and what we're excited about. Of course, the meme and moment of Zen. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 1:13:35David Hoffman?

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• 1:14:17David Hoffman?

  making the Ledger Live app your one-stop shop for all of your financial needs. Go to ledger.com, grab a ledger, and download Ledger Live to get all of your DeFi applications all in one place. Polygon is Ethereum's largest and most vibrant scaling solution to date. With millions of monthly users and all of the biggest DeFi apps, the Polygon ecosystem has turned into a blossoming metropolis of DeFi activity. Transactions on Polygon are quick and cheap, allowing users the freedom to achieve their DeFi goals, all while being economically anchored to Ethereum. But Polygon isn't just the proof-of-stake sidechain. The Polygon team is building a suite of scaling solutions, including Polygon Hermes, Midan, Nightfall, and Zero, all with different design choices in order to be optimized for all possible crypto use cases. If you're a developer who wants to build on the Polygon ecosystem,

• 1:15:02David Hoffman?

  go to the link in the show notes to check out their fantastic documentation. And if you're a user who just wants to experience fast and cheap DeFi, you can bridge over your ETH or other tokens and start playing around with any of the thousands of applications that are available on Polygon. So, you've got some money and you want to spend.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  You, me, shopping, now, bro!

• 1:15:23David Hoffman?

  When you should be saving.

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• 1:16:04David Hoffman?

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• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  Are you winning some?

• 1:16:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, we are back with the freshest of fresh takes for the week. Going to keep it short because David's got to go somewhere for ETH Denver. But why don't we start with this one? What's the take, David?

• 1:16:26David Hoffman?

  People aren't mad that NFTs are scams. They're mad that they did everything society told them to, and yet they're still unemployed and drowning in debt. While college dropouts make 10x their annual income by flipping memes, NFTs are a violation of people's perception of fairness. This is why we tell people to get a job in crypto. This is where the shenanigans happen. And I get it, like people, it's exactly right. There's this cognitive dissonance. There's like, god damn it, I've been grinding for so, so hard for so long. And these monkey pictures are going for millions. What the actual F is going on in the world right now? And at some point, like I understand the cognitive dissonance. Maybe this is an exercise in meditation and accepting and mindfulness. Lean into it. I know it's crazy, but like you can stop grinding and just get into crypto.

• 1:17:11David Hoffman?

  Not a guarantee, like you also have to grind in crypto. You don't just magically win in crypto, but like good things happen the more you get into crypto. So this is great.

• 1:17:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this take is 100% right off, right on and worth reading again. They're mad that they did everything society told them to, yet they're still unemployed and drowning in debt.

• 1:17:31David Hoffman?

  Get a mortgage, go to college, get student debt.

• 1:17:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Get your degree. Yep. Try the path, like even become a teacher, teacher salaries, all of these things. Like the traditional system has really failed a lot of people. And so they're mad and they're taking it out on people who are flashing their NFTs and their crypto wealth around. And I get that, like, I totally understand that. It's like, it's, it's kind of part of the populist movement that undergirds crypto, quite honestly. But yeah, at the same time, I think this is a lesson for a lot of people that.

• 1:18:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just think they can do everything that society tells them to and like not question.

• 1:18:08David Hoffman?

  That worked in the 50s. In the 50s and 60s, that worked.

• 1:18:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it no longer, it no longer works. You have to continuously reinvent yourself. You have to continuously level up and learn and educate yourself on what's next, what's happening. You can't just take what they tell you as the way the system works and the way the world works. You have to constantly and continuously learn and level up. And that's very much what like the Bankless program is about, what the journey is about, right? It's like a bunch of people collectively going on a journey to try to figure out this industry together and become self-taught. All of the people in crypto are two things. Number one, curious. Number two, self-taught. They, they learn it themselves because they go, they seek out this information. And I understand a lot of people are, you know, don't

• 1:18:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  have the time to do this. They're just so stuck in the grind that they can't even surface their, their head above water to actually like start to understand this space. And my empathy, right? I've, I have a lot of empathy for people in that position. And yet, if you are listening,

• 1:19:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  this is, this is the way to do it, right? You gotta get out of the prescribed recipes for success and actually figure out how this stuff works. It's an important lesson for us. All right, David, take us into this take. What is it?

• 1:19:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this was from Chris Bernisky. Bitcoin is like a mirror. It's hottest narrative reflecting what society needs the most. And this is coming off the heels of Canada freezing the bank accounts of people doing, offering political dissent. And so he's retweeting a tweet that says Bitcoin in 2020 to 2021, inflation hedge narrative while we had rampant inflation. Bitcoin in 2022, censorship resistant narrative while we have governments freezing bank accounts. So pick your narrative because we, we got them all. Like, and crypto is coming to take over the world and it's because it's got an answer to everything. And so in 2020 to 2021, our problem was inflation. Boom, we have a 21 million supply. 2022, we have freezing bank accounts. Boom, we have censorship

• 1:20:07David Hoffman?

  resistant money. Bitcoin is what you need it to be.

• 1:20:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I think that's definitely true of all of crypto. Look, man, light on the takes this week, that's because you're busy, we're busy.

• 1:20:19David Hoffman?

  I'm literally about to go run to my talk.

• 1:20:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, okay, that leads into what are you excited about this week, David?

• 1:20:26David Hoffman?

  Oh, Ryan, I'm about to go talk at East Denver, I'm about to be onstage. It's a dream come true to actually being able to talk at East Denver. Been working on this talk for a month now, gonna finish off my slides in the next like five minutes. So that's what I'm excited about, Ryan.

• 1:20:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is the talk about? You can't leave this hanging.

• 1:20:42David Hoffman?

  Oh, crypto is here to set you free. And it's all about how cryptography puts power in the hands of the individual. Web 2 and TradFi concentrate wealth towards the center, but Web 3 and DeFi pushes wealth out towards the periphery. What happens when we have social structures that enable us rather than extract from us? So that talk will be available on, probably on the Bankless YouTube, definitely on the East Denver YouTube. And we'll figure out how to put that on the podcast feed somewhere or another.

• 1:21:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome, man. Are there any other talks that you're really excited about over the next couple of days at East Denver?

• 1:21:16David Hoffman?

  Well, I sadly missed Vitalik's talk, but I'm definitely gonna go and re-watch that one. But the whole rest of today's Shelling Point talks are really, really stacked. I'm just excited for all of them, Ryan.

• 1:21:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome, man.

• 1:21:28David Hoffman?

  What are you excited about?

• 1:21:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, it's gonna be weird, but I'm actually excited about this BlockFi thing that happened with the SEC. And I think some people see this as a compromise. It's like not a good thing to crypto, some people see it as a loss. And I get that perspective, but I also feel like the broader perspective is this is a concession from governments. So the big picture here is crypto is playing this multi-decade game of chess with nation-states. A multi-decade game of chess. And some people will look at the chess moves in the board and be like, yeah, that was a bad move that puts your piece at a disadvantage. Or, you know, so people see it different ways. But when we zoom out, this was more of a win for crypto than the SEC.

• 1:22:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because if you go back in time, five years ago, for instance, the SEC and nation-state regulators, nation-state As a whole, did not want this type of product to even exist. If you ask them, hey, can we go make this thing? It's gonna, you know, help consumers get, you know, lower interest rates. They would say, no, our traditional financial system does that perfectly fine. Thank you very much. Please leave us alone. They didn't even want to do this sort of thing. And crypto forced their hand. How did it force their hand? By onboarding a whole bunch of users who actually wanted the product.

• 1:22:48David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:22:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  By building something useful.

• 1:22:49David Hoffman?

  Winning hearts and minds.

• 1:22:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Winning hearts and minds, delivering some utility. And now the SEC is like, oh shit, well, ugh, I guess we gotta try to salvage this thing and get some control out of it. And so maybe from the SEC's vantage point, they, they won a battle here, but I don't think they're winning the war. Like if you ask them if they want this product to exist, they probably would have said no. And now they're forced into providing a way to onboard more people to crypto. So in the game of chess, this is yet another move that puts the nation state in the defensive posture and pushes crypto forward. And like, this is gonna play out. It's just not a year thing. It's not like we're gonna be done with it this year and this is the final answer. It's gonna play out in all sorts of ways.

• 1:23:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  With central banks, all sorts of regulators, all sorts of nation states in a multi-decade game of chess. That's what's happening here.

• 1:23:40David Hoffman?

  You know, I'm a sucker for chess metaphors. This is BlockFi retreating a piece, retreating a horse, a knight, into, into a more defensive position so it can attack later. So we're, we're giving up on one angle of attack. We're going into defense mode and we're gonna be able to attack from a stronger position later.

• 1:23:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I totally agree, totally agree. All right, David, let's get to the meme of the week.

• 1:24:02David Hoffman?

  Meme of the week.

• 1:24:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll talk this week. Meme it out.

• 1:24:05David Hoffman?

  All right.

• 1:24:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just killed it.

• 1:24:07David Hoffman?

  Oh, no, no.

• 1:24:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hold on.

• 1:24:08David Hoffman?

  Shift, Command, T.

• 1:24:14David Hoffman?

  Alright. Okay. This is the meme of the week, and this is the guy telling the girl who doesn't want to hear it, "No, it's called a blockchain, and it means the monkey is actually mine." And that's the meme of the week.

• 1:24:28David Hoffman?

  That's awesome. That girl's like, "What the... what's going on here?" Guys, this has been our rollup ETH Denver special edition. Thanks for logging on. David, we're gonna get you the moment of zen in just a minute, so stay tuned for that. But before I do, I gotta tell you about this disclaimer. Of course, Bitcoin is risky, ETH is risky. None of this was financial advice. You can lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:24:56Speaker 04

  ... And that's not even the coolest thing that the talent could have been. That's it. That's a little song.

• 1:25:10David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a Bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders,

• 1:25:51David Hoffman?

  Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless nation.