ROLLUP: ETH Beats SEC! | Trump Coin? | LayerZero Token | ETH ETF Trading Soon

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup 3rd Week of June 2024 The SEC drops all charges against Ethereum 2.0—could it now be recognized as a commodity? Plus, hints surface about the launch date of the ETH ETF! Airdrop season is still alive and well! LayerZero and zkSync tokens launched recently. Find out if you’re eligible and the market’s reaction. And, did Baron Trump really launch a DJT memecoin on Solana? We unpack the latest buzz and drama. Tune in for all the details and so much more! ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/18 ------ 📣STAKEWISE | LIQUID SOLO STAKING https://bankless.cc/Pod_StakeWise ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle ⚡️ CARTESI | LINUX-POWERED ROLLUPS https://bankless.cc/CartesiGovernance ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🌐 TRANSPORTER | CROSS CHAINS WITH CONFIDENCE https://transporter.io/ 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 2:55 MARKET https://x.com/WhalePanda/status/1802958996392870368 https://www.theblock.co/data/crypto-markets/bitcoin-etf/spot-bitcoin-etf-flows https://x.com/CryptoDonAlt/status/1802743515941609572 https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=AMEX%3ASPY https://x.com/saylor/status/1803763490928119950 9:35 ETH Price & ETH ETF Going Live https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1801725292404261308 13:03 Total Crypto Market Cap 13:46 L2Beat https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs https://dune.com/sealaunch/dex-metrics-on-base? Select+Date+Granularity_ed0f38=week&Select+Timeframe_ed47bb=365 https://dune.com/sealaunch/dex-metrics-on-base? Select+Date+Granularity_ed0f38=week&Select+Timeframe_ed47bb=365 https://imgur.com/YuXZfAv https://x.com/WazzCrypto/status/1803858912166449480 https://twitter.com/wbnns/status/1803217959479025857 18:40 Combo ETH + BTC ETF https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1803080047303036971 https://x.com/Matt_Hougan/status/1803767324605886515 https://x.com/matthew_sigel/status/1801342560977190937 https://youtu.be/T2Ur8Dhc3uQ?si=Obqn5eY89sEUEdwi https://youtu.be/KUMGYEKIiGw?si=fS4pae1N_rr1f0C0 21:35 AIRDROP Season in full swing Bankless Claimables and AIrdrop Hunter https://www.bankless.com/claimables/reveal https://x.com/LayerZero_Fndn/status/1803744985029788042 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/layerzero https://x.com/LayerZero_Fndn/status/1803742303204323494 https://layerzero.foundation/claim https://www.theblock.co/post/300389/zksync-live-mcap-airdrop https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/zksync https://x.com/TheZKNation/status/1802626483770265991 https://x.com/TheZKNation/status/1801378349442269345 https://docs.zknation.io/zk-token/zk-token-faq https://x.com/nansen_ai/status/1803003153820082270 https://x.com/cobie/status/1803071393484939602 31:58 MOTHER + DADDY Update https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/mother-iggy https://x.com/IGGYAZALEA https://x.com/jimcramer/status/1800893795346637193 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/daddy-tate 37:21 What’s going on with $DJT? https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/trumpcoin-2 https://x.com/PirateWires/status/1802825492405669930 https://www.newsweek.com/crypto-djt-barron-trump-martin-shkreli-1915147 https://x.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1803161788164288875 https://x.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1803471430727901455 https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1803240784436797871 https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1803371615524364503 https://x.com/jmgramke/status/1803792368388264399 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1803759609808564306 https://x.com/MartinShkreli/status/1803821631279612367 50:38 U. S. SEC closes investigation in Ethereum! https://x.com/Consensys/status/1803230653120659641 https://x.com/laurabrooksie1/status/1803237492130234633 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1803412140289560849 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1803783619997052977 54:30 BitWise launches a new Ethereum ad for their incoming ETH ETF https://x.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1803789737620078875 https://zora.co/collect/base:0x9ada0269656e7855c95f54a34d4ef94f78892038/1 1:00:12 Kraken exploit for 3m and some drama - vs Certik https://x.com/c7five/status/1803403565865771370 https://x.com/P3b7_/status/1803479749005549647 https://x.com/tayvano_/status/1803478049280893040 https://x.com/sethforprivacy/status/1803520795735683528 1:06:34 Donald Trump wants all remaining Bitcoin to be 'Made in USA' https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/1801771689249787936 1:08:06 Optimism & Tether Releases https://x.com/Optimism/status/1800974991313469445 https://chain.box https://x.com/Alloy_tether/status/1802676443781923289 1:10:45 Bankless ETHCC Meetup https://lu.ma/k0amrrnz 1:12:10 Who won the ETH ETF Pitch competition? https://www.jokerace.io/contest/base/0x0f2211f6727e85dbfae20e7dbfe57875a1f2b706 1:13:45 Another voting for Bankless Nation! https://www.jokerace.io/contest/base/0x0bac0ec9b6aeafa6c2212f67a67950940eda63a7 1:15:38 MEME of the Week https://x.com/PleasrDAO/status/1803572250278514999 1:16:17 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  Dollar sign DJT aka Donald J Trump token that was allegedly started by Baron Trump with endorsement from the Donald himself or not. Is this real or is this a fabrication from one of the internet's most hated persons, Martin Shkreli? Zach XBT makes an appearance in this story.

• 0:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Station is the third week of June and it is time for your Bankless Weekly Rollup. We got a few things to cover today.

• 0:28David Hoffman?

  We got a lot of things to cover. It is a big week.

• 0:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, first on the list, the SEC dropped all charges against Ethereum. Remember they had these charges against Ethereum? They were actually going after the core devs in this consensus lawsuit? Well, that is no longer. They have written to consensus that they are dropping their charges against Ethereum. The question is, is Ethereum officially recognized as a commodity? I thought the ETH ETF would make it so, but maybe this is further evidence of this.

• 0:55David Hoffman?

  Just one more nail in the coffin. And speaking of ETH, we are getting even more hints about when the ETH ETF will be trading. Hint, it is very soon, so hold your breath. But before then, we also have airdrops. So airdrop season is fully on. Layer Zero dropped their token this week. ZK Sync token is now trading. There's some other airdrops coming as well. And so we're going to talk to you all about the tokenomics, what's going on, the sentiment reaction, and how these things are being priced in the markets and where they come to with some other projects out on the market today. And then of course, Ryan, I'm sure you're gonna love this one. Do you know what's going on with the whole Donald Trump token?

• 1:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  No. And should I care? That's the question. This is my most hated agenda item. Like, so, David, you've done all the research. Thank you for going into the gutter.

• 1:41David Hoffman?

  Fucking morning.

• 1:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  And discovering what's up with the Donald J Trump token and how is the farmer bro Martin Shkreli related to all of this? Burning questions in my mind.

• 1:52David Hoffman?

  Everything that Ryan wants to know. Before we get there, a moment to talk about our friends and sponsors. Over at Stakewise Protocol, offering universal access to liquid staking, including for all of you solo stakers out there. So for all of you solo stakers who have been atlas-ing Ethereum, putting Ethereum on your back and not being able to achieve liquidity. Well, you can continue to solo stake. You can continue to tend to your validator while also getting OS ETH, that is the Stakewise Liquid Staking Token, to enjoy liquidity, playing around on DeFi and Eigenlayer and doing whatever you want to do with your liquid ETH, while also being a solo stake staker. There is also other things as well. There are vaults out there for people who want to just deposit their ETH

• 2:35David Hoffman?

  and have MEV strategies, flexible free structures, auto-compounding, some other cool gadgets. Really just making just the world of staking in Ethereum pretty enjoyable. If you do, if you're curious about any of this stuff, there is a link in the show notes to get started with Stakewise.

• 2:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, very bullish on Stakewise and their efforts to further decentralize our stake. Well, let's talk markets today. And we got to start with King Bitcoin on the Kraken charts. Am I seeing up or down?

• 3:03David Hoffman?

  You are seeing down. You are seeing down. Down 3% on the week. 66,800 is where we started. $65,000 is where we ended. Some negative flows in the Bitcoin ETFs this week. We've definitely had some good weeks in like two weeks ago. We've had some marginally bad outflows this week. So once again, price, Bitcoin price being correlated with outflows as well. Bitcoin, however, like down 3%. If most people's portfolio was only down 3% this week, they're probably like pretty happy because the rest of the market got absolutely obliterated. ETH did pretty good, actually. ETH is one of the outperformers in the market this week. But like if you were in altcoins, like RIP to you.

• 3:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really?

• 3:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 3:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Even the meme coins, David?

• 3:50David Hoffman?

  Meme coins especially, not the meme coins. Meme coins especially got obliterated this week. Some takes as to why Bitcoin is just rising in correlation with the SPY. SPY is just absolutely giga ascending right now. Up just a whopping 1.5% this week. And remember, that's 1.5% of the world's largest capital market. So it actually does mean a lot of money. But just like new all-time highs in the equities market.

• 4:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at this chart, man.

• 4:18David Hoffman?

  It's pretty insane.

• 4:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the S and P 500 ETF, okay? The most boring ETF that exists. It's gotta be, right? Well, this is probably some bond ETFs, but this is the most boring equities ETF you can own. And this looks like a meme coin itself here.

• 4:34David Hoffman?

  It looks like, it looks like an up only meme coin.

• 4:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now, I'm scrolling out all the way to like 1993, but that is a beautiful ascent all the way to all time highs for the S and P. Yeah. It's, are you getting jealous?

• 4:49David Hoffman?

  It makes, it makes a crypto person jealous, but also at the same time, I mean, we all know that the S and P is a index of money issuance, which crypto also is. When you zoom out to like 1990s, basically every chart looks good, except for gold. Gold looks flat.

• 5:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Gold looks flat, sadly.

• 5:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, how does MicroStrategy factor into this? Cause you were talking about Bitcoin outflows and that's on the Bitcoin ETF.

• 5:14David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 5:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  But Michael Saylor never, never outflows.

• 5:17David Hoffman?

  No.

• 5:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's always inflowing.

• 5:18David Hoffman?

  Only inflows, yep.

• 5:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a tweet that says MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 12,000 Bitcoin.

• 5:24David Hoffman?

  Casual.

• 5:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  A casual $786 million using proceeds from convertible notes, those sweet bonds and excess cash. So taking that fiat on, on some bond leverage real cheap and going and buying Bitcoin. And Michael Saylor's continuing to dollar cost average in. Does that help at all?

• 5:43David Hoffman?

  That definitely helps, yeah. Seven and $786 million of buying pressure definitely helps bolster up Bitcoin. Anyone's meme coin bags do not have that same level of support that Bitcoin has. How does MicroStrategy still have like the tolerance to be able to do this? Like, why is there so much slack in the MSTR equity price that Michael Saylor can continue to print MSTR? Sell that for Bitcoin and have that pump the value of MSTR to the point where he can do it again? That was only supposed to work and up until the point that Bitcoin ETFs were approved. Because why would anyone buy MSTR when there are Bitcoin ETFs? The fact that he can still be doing this is insane.

• 6:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a levered play, yeah. You get the kind of the leverage, you get like potentially a little extra juice. Actually, there's a clip where Michael Saylor explained why MSTR is actually like in some small ways better. I can't, I can't, I can't recall all the details here because it's just like, I don't, I don't care that much. But it does have some advantages.

• 6:46David Hoffman?

  The market capitalization of MicroStrategy is at $25 billion.

• 6:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crazy, right?

• 6:52David Hoffman?

  So yeah, I guess that does make sense because he has so much debt, because he has so much like Bitcoin. So he's taking debt.

• 6:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't want to, I don't want to mess up that like somebody is probably listening to this and like, I know precisely what you're missing here. But like, yeah, there are some advantages with MicroStrategy for some types of investors in buying that versus Bitcoin ETF. The big question is, when is, when is MicroStrategy, the stock going to actually be present in this S and P? So I don't think it is yet. It's not part of the S and P 500, but it's getting real close in terms of size.

• 7:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Bitcoin doesn't have to go up that much more for like MicroStrategy to gain like a meeting.

• 7:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like it's, they have to accept it, right? There's a formal gatekeeping process, I believe, to get in the S and P 500. I don't know who decides these things. Actually, I'm not tradFi enough to understand that, but we could probably look that up too.

• 7:36David Hoffman?

  MicroStrategy has $13 billion of Bitcoin on their balance sheet with a market cap of $26 billion. So half of their market cap comes from Bitcoin and they also have a ton of debt. So if like Bitcoin doubled, which I expected to, like not in the not distant future. Like, yeah, that would make sense. That would, that would, that would turn into the current market cap of the actual stock price.

• 7:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's what Saylor's betting on. It's like one thing I just want to zoom out on because I've been thinking about personal finance. All the things that they don't teach you in school because you're like my daughter, my oldest daughter, she's taking her first personal finance class in like high school, right? And so I'm just like, I don't know what they're going to teach there. And like, I was thinking about advice I'd give to her. You know what my first bit of advice is? Something I didn't figure out until my twenties, early twenties, fortunately for me. But like something that the system didn't teach me is if you don't own assets, you will be poor.

• 8:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like seriously, look at this chart. Look at this chart. They don't teach you this in school. You look at like, okay, what's my job going to be? Like, oh, engineers make X amount of money in terms of salary. Like, salary doesn't matter at all. Income doesn't matter. I mean, it matters a little bit.

• 8:47David Hoffman?

  Income is linear.

• 8:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Only to the extent that you could take your excess income from things you don't spend it on, and like, take that delta in profit and buy assets. If you don't buy assets, you are not in the game. I'm talking about any asset. It just doesn't even have to be crypto, okay? Like, very bullish on crypto, but like, property, equities, stock, like, not bonds, but like, assets are the things you need to have. And income is a scam.

• 9:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 9:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and like, it's kind of like, um, I don't know, when people hear this, they're like, but it's not fair. Okay, it's not fair, but like, it's the game. These are the rules.

• 9:24David Hoffman?

  It's how you make it more fair. The more assets, you have more assets you own, the more fair it is for you.

• 9:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I just, I don't even think it's, I don't think it's fair either, right? It's like, it's not great, but that's the system we live in. Anyway, tell me about ETH price, David.

• 9:35David Hoffman?

  First off, I love how you have your own tweet bookmarked. ETH price, starting the week at $3,480. It's for your daughter. It's for your family. Starting the week at $3,480, up 2% on the week. ETH is up 2% on the week. We're at $3,530.

• 9:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why?

• 9:53David Hoffman?

  ETH was in just like, the doghouse. It got down to $3,360. Didn't, doesn't want to say there. ETH continues to get pummeled, and then bounces back, like, ready to go. It's like, oh, I'm getting slammed by the rest of the market, but I got an ETF soon, and it comes right back.

• 10:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not what it should be, though. Look at this. Look at this chart. It's stupid. What was the ETF announced?

• 10:15David Hoffman?

  We've already retraced like, 60% of the candle, the ETF announcement candle.

• 10:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm zooming out 30 days. Here's that God candle, and I guess we're about there.

• 10:24David Hoffman?

  We're like, approaching like, back to, we're like halfway back.

• 10:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now we have dates, don't we? We have some estimated dates.

• 10:30David Hoffman?

  We have some very clear, specific estimated dates, which is July 2nd is the new date that Eric Balchunas and James Saber have moved their over/under date to. So 50% chances under, 50% chances over.

• 10:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  July 2nd.

• 10:47David Hoffman?

  July 2nd.

• 10:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  For what?

• 10:48David Hoffman?

  The ETH going live.

• 10:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Products.

• 10:51David Hoffman?

  The S1 being approved.

• 10:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Get some sweet inflows, like Bitcoin has all those sweet inflows. And then we can look at the inflows and the outflows on a weekly basis.

• 11:00David Hoffman?

  And then we get to start talking about how it's bearish, because Grayscale has to actually still unload their ETH trust.

• 11:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:07David Hoffman?

  That's why they'll pivot too.

• 11:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Whatever. I'm not bearish, you know, ETH's got some catch-up to do. I think it's gonna make it. But here's the ratio. I guess we're, are we up on the week a little bit?

• 11:17David Hoffman?

  We're up on the week, 4.5% on the week.

• 11:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here, look at, I wanted to show you this. Ultrasound money update. Have you seen this chart?

• 11:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like ultrasound.money?

• 11:25David Hoffman?

  I can't believe Justin put this in here. This is so dumb.

• 11:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the flipping chart. It's not dumb.

• 11:31David Hoffman?

  I love talking about the flipping as much as the next guy, but this is the worst TA.

• 11:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not TA. It's not TA.

• 11:37David Hoffman?

  It's definitely TA, dude.

• 11:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, it's just an extrapolated line. That's all it is. It self-adjusts. The horizon, it could happen that the horizon always, like the trend line always is kind of like distant. I'm pretty sure it self-adjusts. Anyway, if you can't see this, if you're not watching on YouTube or it's Spotify video here, what we're looking at is a flipping chart for Bitcoin, or for Ether flipping Bitcoin, how close we are.

• 12:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  And based on the trend line over the last nine years and 294 days, the estimated date for that, if we just hit the trend line, is November 16th, 2026. That's when we flipping Bitcoin. Now, that's the trend line.

• 12:18David Hoffman?

  Unfortunately, so much of this trend line is defined by 2015 through 2017. Like, if we actually just cut off those three years, the trend line is just like meaningfully different.

• 12:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I posted this on Twitter. I posted this on Twitter and somebody's like, "Yeah, it's been down only since 2017."

• 12:35David Hoffman?

  But 2017 was a weird time.

• 12:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's a glass half-empty take, I think, David, because, you know, Ethereum's doing things. It's, you still believe in the flipping?

• 12:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, 100%. But like, I've stopped holding my breath for it.

• 12:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  How, when it happens, it'll happen, you know?

• 12:54David Hoffman?

  That's right.

• 12:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  We just can't force these things.

• 12:55David Hoffman?

  It'll happen in our lifetimes. And if it doesn't, then you can't really come and scream it to me. All right, total crypto market cap, 2.495 trillion, under 2.5 trillion. Definitely down very bigly on the week because the long tail in the market this week got like, kind of wrecked.

• 13:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  All coins?

• 13:16David Hoffman?

  All coins got wrecked, anything down-

• 13:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  When you say all coin, what are you talking about? Everything besides Bitcoin and Ether?

• 13:20David Hoffman?

  Anything below Ether, yeah. So like Solana down 10% on the week, Dogecoin down 12%, Han down 5%, Cardano down 10%, Avalanche down 13%, Chib down 15%, Chainlink down 6%, Polkadot down 12%, Uniswap flat on the week, Near Protocol down 13%. Should I keep going, or how are you feeling?

• 13:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nah, that's good. We got a flavor. I got the flavor.

• 13:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's get a flavor of layer twos these days, and this is a layer two update brought to you by Mantle. We are not just off all-time highs in terms of total value locked. But one thing to highlight this week, I think, is blob space, David. So blobs are catching a bid, and they were essentially, I mean, you correct me, I don't monitor these markets all the time.

• 14:07David Hoffman?

  They've been basically free, other than very like acute instances.

• 14:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was gonna say that. That's basically what I thought, but now they have branched into not free territory?

• 14:15David Hoffman?

  They're like firmly in not free territory for like the last like four, three days. The, there is a trend line on here somewhere, yeah, right there, average blob count per block. And that goes back to June 15th, so four days. That green line, above that green line, we increase the price of blobs, below that green line, we decrease the price of blobs. Being close to that green line is like, that's where things naturally converge to. We've been below that green line for a long time, but we are now poking ahead of-

• 14:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  It only costs money on Ethereum when there's contention, right? When you're above the green line, basically?

• 14:48David Hoffman?

  Correct, correct.

• 14:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 14:49David Hoffman?

  Yes, there can still be contention when the blob count is below the green line, if it was recently above the green line. It's like a control theory mechanism, much like EIP 1559. But we are starting to oscillate around the green line, which means that there is a market price.

• 15:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we got more blob space in March. Right before that, there was kind of contention for Ethereum DA. And then we got more blob space in March. And now it's June, the end of June. And we're already out of blob space? Is that what you're telling me? What's the cause here?

• 15:18David Hoffman?

  We're filling blob space, yeah. So like, all the Layer 2s are just slowly growing in more activity, like incrementally growing in activity. So they are buying more blobs. In addition to that, more Layer 2s are coming online. And so, you know, multiply volume times capacity and like you just get more space or get more demand. And then especially this week is both ZK Sync has been consuming a lot of blob space to claim the ZK token. And then also ZRO, you can claim the... And interestingly, because Layer 0 is an OmniChain protocol, you can actually claim the ZRO token on any chain, which is kind of what their deal is, what they do. And so as a result of that, most people have been claiming on Arbitrum, I think. And so they've been like maxing out the TPS on Arbitrum.

• 16:03David Hoffman?

  Actually, can you go to Layer 2B and look at the Arbitrum activity? I'd like to actually see that. But like, because you can be claiming like your Layer 0 tokens right now, like tons of people are consuming blob space. So like, we're probably hitting like new all-time highs in Layer 2 activity, specifically because of the Layer 0 activity.

• 16:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  You want me to look at activity here?

• 16:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, activity on the left side. It did move, if you were like, what the fuck's going on? Yeah, look at that, 20x scaling factor. Woo, all right, baby, let's go. That's also because of the new Layer 2 that's on the scene called Zai, which I've never heard of. But in addition to that, like base activity is at all-time highs. And I think if you scroll down, Arbitrum will be there too as well.

• 16:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's pretty cool. Liking that. Can we talk about DEX? Talk about DEX? Okay, so I saw this headline, "Base surpasses Binance Chain in terms of active DEX users." Binance Chain was kind of a juggernaut for trading last cycle.

• 17:02David Hoffman?

  It's been for a long time, yeah.

• 17:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Has been for a while, right? I mean, it makes sense, like, coming from their exchange routes, and Base surpassed it. The broader context here, though, we're looking at some charts. So we've got users, which Base just surpassed Binance and is now number two in terms of total DEX users, number two to actually Solana. So Solana's number one, and then Base number two now, and then Binance number three. Doesn't come close in terms of volume, though, which is kind of a difference. Anyway, what do you make of these charts? We're looking at DEX volume by different Layer 2s and Solana and Ethereum, and then also DEX users. What jumps out at you as we look at these charts?

• 17:41David Hoffman?

  That there is a discrepancy between volume and users. Users, actually, it's kind of dominated in growth by Solana, actually. That's like the biggest chunk of, like, unique users over the last year. And definitely seen like an unprecedented amount of growth. But then on volume, Ethereum Layer 1 is like still by and far the leader, followed by Solana. You can kind of see like Solana meme coins when they really started, like, going around in March of 2024. But Ethereum still has like by far the actual, like, majority of volume. And that is also, by the way, the most Sybil resistant because Ethereum Layer 1 is,

• 18:21David Hoffman?

  like, you gotta pay fees. So there's not much, like, a lower percentage of volume per bot, or bot volume there, simply because you have to pay a lot.

• 18:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  92% of Solana's DEX volume is meme coins right now, which has just been a huge meme coin cycle. One other thing I want to talk to you about, David, because this is sort of cool. Flipping back to the ETF world, there are now 19B4 filings, these are SEC filings, for not just a Bitcoin ETF, oh, well, that's already been approved, but not just an Ethereum ETF, but now a common ETF where you get a little bit of Bitcoin, a little bit of ETH in the same ETF wrapper. I think it's a 75%, oh no, 70% Bitcoin, 29% ETH.

• 19:05David Hoffman?

  This is probably market cap weighted, yeah.

• 19:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so market cap rated, it's adjusted that way. And I listened to your episode with Matt from VanEgg. That was out last week.

• 19:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  But both he and Matt Hogan, they make a really compelling kind of like TradFi argument for why it makes sense not just to hold Bitcoin, but why it makes sense to hold Bitcoin and Ether?

• 19:28David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 19:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you are looking to maximize your sharp ratio and return.

• 19:33David Hoffman?

  Which is a boomer term.

• 19:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, sharp ratio, I don't consider sharp ratio very much when I think about like investing. But like sharp ratio is sort of a measure of volatility. How much could the price move either up or down in a given year?

• 19:46David Hoffman?

  And it's presented to TradFi people as risk.

• 19:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, risk.

• 19:51David Hoffman?

  Which is dumb and wrong, but.

• 19:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it's dumb and wrong. I've never seen the world like that, but that's fine for some people. Like if they, you know, they get scared when something drops nearly 20%. To me, that's like, that's called a Thursday, you know? Like, so, but, but anyway, the point of this is if you even go with a 75% Bitcoin, 25% ETH combo inside of your portfolio, not only do you improve your sharp ratio, that actually gets better, but you also improve your returns. So from a portfolio diversification perspective, which appeals to a lot of like fund managers, active managers in TradFi, this is a way to like get more, squeeze the juice. This is like the value of diversification. You know how when people talk about diversification, this is what they're talking about.

• 20:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  There is actual mathematical value.

• 20:40David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 20:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you, if you care about sharp ratio and sort of.

• 20:44David Hoffman?

  If you care about.

• 20:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Volatility adjusted returns, right?

• 20:48David Hoffman?

  So when I see this data, I'm like, okay, so if, according to their mathematical models, if you add Ether to a crypto portfolio, in addition to Bitcoin, your returns likely, according to the models, go up. But you're, and also so does your sharp ratio. My head is like, if your returns go up because you add Ether, wouldn't your returns go up if you only had Ether? And it turns out the answer to that is yes. But your sharp ratio goes down, which is why they don't do it. Because they're like, ooh, too much concentration.

• 21:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's as an active manager myself, I'm just like, well, then I'd rather have Ether. You know, like, just give me 100% Ether.

• 21:24David Hoffman?

  Exactly.

• 21:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  But that's not how...

• 21:25David Hoffman?

  Concentrated bets, baby.

• 21:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, that's not how sophisticated investors see these things. But cool stuff. Yeah, from a diversification, diversified portfolio perspective. Last thing to talk about in markets, airdrop season, it's in full swing. ZK Sync is claimable and tradable this week, so David, I want to hear about that. Also, Layer Zero, ZRO token, just debuted at a unicorn valuation. Got some other things going on in the Blast ecosystem, but those two at least. ZK Sync and ZRO, the Layer Zero token, what do we need to know?

• 21:54David Hoffman?

  Okay, introducing ZRO, that is the ticker symbol for Layer Zero. 1.28 million wallets are eligible, which is absolutely massive. That might, that might be the number one in terms of like total wallets. Okay, so total supply of ZRO is 1 billion. The 24% went to the community and builders. Eight of that, eight and a half percent is being distributed on day one. The rest will be coming up for in the future. And so in addition to that, in order if you are eligible to claim Layer Zero, you also have to, this was like the weird quirk thing, you have to donate to Protocol Guild. So to claim your ZRO token, you must donate 10 cents in USDC, Tether, or Native ETH per Layer Zero that you want to claim, which goes directly to the Protocol Guild, which is a guild...

• 22:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  10 cents or higher, right?

• 22:40David Hoffman?

  10 cents or higher, per token, per token, yeah. And so how much is a, is a Layer Zero token in this present moment?

• 22:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  $3.67.

• 22:50David Hoffman?

  Okay, so you have to, you gotta donate 10, 10 cents to the, to Protocol Guild. Protocol Guild, fantastic organization, they fund open source development. I'm not sure everyone enjoys being forced to pay money to claim their token.

• 23:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not, so this is what the founder said. It's not like being forced necessarily. It's like, are you being forced to claim? No, you just don't claim. If you don't donate, you don't claim. You like, that's a little...

• 23:12David Hoffman?

  I don't know if the community's gonna accept that one.

• 23:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll get to that take at the end. I feel like the community is getting more and more entitled these days, but yeah, proceed.

• 23:22David Hoffman?

  Okay, let's see. I talked about this earlier. You can claim this anywhere. You can claim this on Ethereum mainnet, on optimism, on Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, BNB chain, Avalanche, any EVM chain. Kind of cool. And why can't you do this? Well, that's literally what Layer Zero does. It is a messaging protocol across chains. You have, until September 20th, 2024, layerzero.foundation/claim. Please stay on the lookout for phishing. Don't click any links that you're not very sure about. This is also in bankless claimables if you just want us to do it for you, which is why we do it. That is Layer Zero. Congrats to Brian Pellegrino, who's just worked through the absolute gamut of just like processing Sybil information. I'm pretty much looking forward to like the postmortem on just like the Layer Zero, perhaps the most Sybil airdrop of all time.

• 24:07David Hoffman?

  And then also had the most like complex and like rich anti-Sybil strategy as well.

• 24:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Innovation there, some innovation, I think.

• 24:16David Hoffman?

  Big time, big time. So if you're in the bankless citizens discord, there is a forum, just to like, I just spun up this morning to go chat about this. Would love to get your feedback. Want to know what you think if you're eligible. The cool thing about that discord is that it's gated to paying bankless citizens that we know are humans. So we kind of know that there's no Sybils in there, kind of useful. And that brings us to ZK Sync, the ZK token. Like I said, we were processing this as an industry all last week, all this information. ZK is now trading out on the market, claiming is now live. So market cap $740 million, a $4.2 billion fully diluted valuation.

• 24:55David Hoffman?

  So with a total supply of 21 billion tokens, it's got a 17.6% float, which is like definitely way healthier than other like tokens that other like typically get introduced, 17.6%. Like 17.6% is still like a long way off from like, you know, the majority, but typically we've been seeing tokens with like-

• 25:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Higher is better.

• 25:13David Hoffman?

  Higher is better, higher is better. And so like, and that's a nice, healthy float to have at the start. Almost 50% of the airdrop was claimed in the first two addresses, claimed by 225,000 addresses in the first two hours. Overloading some of the RPC services, but otherwise, other than that, everything is fine. ZK Sync, they released a comment about the community's reaction. This was out last week, but since we didn't talk about it, Ryan. They said, "Our airdrop is unconventional and has its imperfections, but we are proud of the path we have chosen and believe that we have made reasonable trade-offs. We recognize that many people are upset, having received less than they expected. We spent several days and nights double-checking the data, but didn't identify any major issues. We recognize that communications weren't clear enough."

• 25:57David Hoffman?

  And they set out a list of frequently asked questions. This was definitely one of the bigger conversations in the Bankless Discord. A lot of individuals just came in and dropped in their comments because I asked them to, like, "Hey, what do you think about the ZK Sync token?" People were like, "I feel pretty good about it." Some people said, "I was using ZK Sync Lite and Argent, and I wasn't eligible. I noticed a common theme about that." And then, anyone who was satisfied kind of moved on from the conversation, because, you know, why would they hang around? And then, other people who had problems and grievances, they definitely continued that conversation. There was, overall, I think, like last week, there was a big conversation about, like, what do about the ZK Sync airdrop? And I think, like, you know, it's very hard, especially in our position where we are bombarded by messages,

• 26:40David Hoffman?

  to really discover truth. And so, like, still kind of looking through the porsomum on that. But nonetheless, ZK Sync is like, we understand it wasn't perfect, but like, we got pretty close to what we want, and we're pretty satisfied with it, so we're moving on. And that's that.

• 26:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  My big question was, like, what's going to happen in the aftermath? And this was super interesting. So, 24 hours after the ZK airdrop became claimable and tradable, 28% of people didn't sell any of their ZK, David, but 30% moved or sold some of their ZK from their wallet. And 40, that's just a portion. And 41% moved or sold all of it. Are you seeing these numbers? So, 70% sold some portion, 40% sold all of it.

• 27:24David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 27:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  The entire allotment. What do you make of that? What's your takeaway?

• 27:27David Hoffman?

  I'd like to compare this with other airdrops. I mean, ZK Sync, they gave away 17.5% of their total supply, which is a lot. And so, you would expect that market cap to fully diluted ratio setting in. You're seeing a lot of tokens with a lot of unlocks and just getting hammered in price because people are bearish unlocks right now. And ZK Sync just had, like, the biggest day-one unlock of all time. And so, you would expect, like, a lot of selling pressure to come into the market. I'm happy to see a large amount of day-one selling pressure, because that means, like... It's a more investable asset, the more that's unlocked.

• 28:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess it's liquid, it's price discovery, that sort of thing. But like another interpretation of this 40% moving is like, how many of those are mercenaries? Sort of like airdrop hunters or civil attackers that are just taking their money and selling.

• 28:14David Hoffman?

  I think by definition, if you sold it inside of the first week, you are by definition a mercenary. Which is fine. Which is fine. It's totally fine.

• 28:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess it's fine. One other question I had is, benchmark this, alright? So what'd you say, 4.1 billion dollar FTV for ZK Sync? Something like that, over 4 billion? So how does this stack up compared to other Layer 2s? I was actually looking on CoinGecko, okay? Top 100 on CoinGecko, and I sorted by market cap. So this is not FTV, but market cap. David, ZK Sync didn't show up in the first 100. It's like, it was like 106 or something.

• 28:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, 110, yeah, that's what I saw, yeah.

• 28:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, like 4 billion? 4 billion doesn't seem like a lot for ZK Sync.

• 28:58David Hoffman?

  4.2 billion is fully diluted. And it's not showing up on the top 100 of the market cap, because it only has 17.5% of that on the market.

• 29:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  So benchmark that with other Layer 2s. And let's just do fully diluted valuation.

• 29:11David Hoffman?

  Okay, so in order of highest till lowest, fully diluted valuation, we got Arbitrum coming in at number 1, 8.1 billion dollars. You have Optimism coming in at number 2, which is at 8.05 billion dollars. Kind of crazy that they're basically the same. Followed by Polygon at 5.8 billion dollars. Followed by ZK Sync at 4.1 billion dollars. And just because it went live this week, even though Layer 0 is not a Layer 2, it's a Layer 0, 3.7 billion dollars. And so, like, all within like a decent range of each other.

• 29:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Those are in decent range. I'm gonna give you some other comps. BNB, 91 billion dollars. Solana, 77 billion dollars.

• 29:52David Hoffman?

  Buying and burning BNB tokens.

• 29:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Toncoin, the Telegram.

• 29:57David Hoffman?

  Ton, yeah.

• 29:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ton, $36 billion. Cardano, $17 billion.

• 30:03David Hoffman?

  Oh my god, Cardano.

• 30:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  12 billion dollars. Tron, freaking Tron, $10 billion.

• 30:10David Hoffman?

  Also has a buyback and burn model.

• 30:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Polkadot, $8 billion.

• 30:14David Hoffman?

  Okay, that one's dumb. Bitcoin Cash, $8.2 billion. Bitcoin Cash is worth more than optimism, what the F?

• 30:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Layer 2s are not catching a bid right now.

• 30:23David Hoffman?

  Hey, Uniswap, $10 billion.

• 30:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's not a Layer 2.

• 30:27David Hoffman?

  It's a good token. It's a cash flowing token.

• 30:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a token that has, you know, like, bankless fundamentals style.

• 30:36David Hoffman?

  Which are apparently extremely bearish.

• 30:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very bearish right now. And like, that's a larger question about this. So, we've gone through some major airdrops. And the last few, including, you know, the ZK Sync one, has been met with some upset from the community.

• 30:50David Hoffman?

  Social mess.

• 30:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  I saw somebody in Bankless Discord, this is a real human, just being like, you know what? I'm just exhausted from airdrops, like in general, right? And I think that's true of like, people who are doing things on chain and getting airdrops. I think it's true of founders too.

• 31:06David Hoffman?

  Oh my god.

• 31:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? So this is a Kobe tweet. If you're a founder, in my opinion, you're probably thinking about not doing an airdrop at all these days. The downsides are much greater than the upsides now. I do think that with Layer 0, ZK Sync, Eigenlayer, it's marking a different era of airdrops.

• 31:22David Hoffman?

  We jumped the shark.

• 31:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's still going to be airdrops, so I think they will morph into a different form. And we'll have to see what that new form, the new meta, ends up being. Because people are kind of tired at this point, both projects and like, users.

• 31:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, the Civs are just crowding out the users. And then the users are like, I feel like not heard.

• 31:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Unheard, because they're drowned out, yeah.

• 31:43David Hoffman?

  Because they're drowned out. And so like, when you real users get pushed out, like, the meta's gonna shift. This was the theme of that episode that we did like, a couple of months ago, where we called the cycle is cooked. That's the same thing, just like, we gotta move on from this distribution method.

• 31:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Do we have to talk about mother?

• 31:59David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 32:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  And daddy?

• 32:01David Hoffman?

  No, you don't. I'm just gonna burn through these things because it's the thing that everyone wants to hear about, the mother plus daddy update. If you don't know what daddy is, good for you, but I'm about to inform you, sorry. Mother, of course, is the Iggy Azalea token who issued a meme coin on Solana and just started to grow a community around it. And honestly, like, didn't really do anything egregiously bad so far, so that's kind of nice. Currently, $80 million market cap off of its $150 million market cap peak. She's still active, mostly just sharing memes, kind of the deal. She appeared last week with Jim Cramer at the New York Stock Exchange.

• 32:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah. Win mother ETF.

• 32:37David Hoffman?

  Win mother ETF. Like, $80 million. She hasn't, like, actually scammed, hasn't done anything egregiously wrong. So, like, not gonna call it a complete grift. Daddy, which is our favorite, who's this guy again? Andrew Tate. Daddy Tate. Andrew Tate, the best human, the best leader, the best example of a human on earth. $64 million market cap off of its $90 million peak, newer coin. So that is the current state of celebrity meme coins.

• 33:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  This token is not affiliated with the Andrew Tate. Did you know that? It says there's a warning on CoinGecko.

• 33:15David Hoffman?

  I thought it was.

• 33:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't even know, dude.

• 33:18David Hoffman?

  I thought that was the whole deal, like, well, don't, everyone knows to not come to bankruptcy.

• 33:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this a different, is this a different daddy?

• 33:25David Hoffman?

  Do we have the wrong token? No. I think this is the one. Jesus.

• 33:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, there's only one Daddy Tate.

• 33:30David Hoffman?

  Well, if you had any, if you had any better indication as to like where you should get your meme coin information, it's not from us. But nonetheless, we're gonna talk to you about dollar sign DJT, aka Donald J. Trump token, that was allegedly started by Baron Trump with endorsement from the Donald himself or not. Is this real? Or is this a fabrication from one of the internet's most hated persons, Martin Scrilly? Zach XBT makes an appearance in this story. So we're gonna, Ryan's gonna go grab his popcorn while doing this commercial break, and then we'll be back. We're also gonna talk about how Ethereum is now free. Forever free of the SEC's investigation. But first, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible.

• 34:13David Hoffman?

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• 34:58David Hoffman?

  and a seamless app to bring it all together, it's really the perfect place to get your complete crypto experience. So check out the simple, secure, and powerful way for everyone to trade crypto, whether you're a complete beginner or a seasoned pro. Go to kraken.com/banklist to see what crypto can be. Not investment advice, crypto trading involves risk of loss. Arbitrum is the leading Ethereum scaling solution that is home to hundreds of decentralized applications. Arbitrum's technology allows you to interact with Ethereum at scale with low fees and faster transactions. Arbitrum has the leading DeFi ecosystem, strong infrastructure options, flourishing NFTs, and is quickly becoming the Web3 gaming hub. Explore the ecosystem at portal.arbitrum.io. Are you looking to permissionlessly launch your own Arbitrum Orbit chain? Arbitrum Orbit allows anyone to utilize Arbitrum's secure scaling technology

• 35:43David Hoffman?

  to build your own Orbit chain, giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you're a developer, an enterprise, or a user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum. Experience Web3 development the way it was always meant to be: secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. Visit arbitrum.io and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. Are you worried about the security of your cross-chain transactions? Cross-chains with confidence using Transporter, the revolutionary token bridging app designed to give you peace of mind. Powered by Chainlink CCIP, Transporter is your trusted gateway for securely moving assets like ETH, native USDC, and Lync, and so many more, across some of your favorite blockchains.

• 36:28David Hoffman?

  Over $2.8 billion has been hacked from token bridges to date. Transporter puts a stop to this by ensuring your transfers are protected by the most robust security features available. Chainlink CCIP provides level 5 security, backed by multiple decentralized oracle networks and an independent risk management network. Transporter also provides real-time tracking throughout your transaction with its newly engineered user experience, so you'll never have to second guess the safety or location of your assets ever again. And the best part, Transporter makes it simple. Whether you're a blockchain beginner or a seasoned trader, Transporter's intuitive interface lets you execute cross-chain transactions with just a few clicks. No additional fees, just a low cost for using CCIP, which can be paid in Lync or your blockchain's native gas token.

• 37:11David Hoffman?

  But don't just take my word for it, see for yourself why Transporter offers a stress-free bridging experience. Experience the future of token bridging at transporter.io and just send it. All right, Ryan, you got your popcorn?

• 37:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I got my popcorn, like, literally.

• 37:24David Hoffman?

  Yep, all right, Ryan's gonna just sit down and chill.

• 37:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is it story time?

• 37:27David Hoffman?

  It is story time.

• 37:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  My god, this is the first time I'm paying attention to this, so what is going, what do we need to know about Donald J. Trumpcoin?

• 37:34David Hoffman?

  Okay, Donald J. Trumpcoin was issued a while ago, actually. It's currently got $166 million market cap, which is like, something's priced in, something's priced in there. This all got started from a PirateWire tweet, started, "Per conversations, Trump is launching an official token, $DJT on Solana, Baron spearheading." That was the whole entire tweet.

• 37:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's Mike Solana from PirateWire, you know?

• 38:01David Hoffman?

  Oh, that's Mike Solana's thing?

• 38:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're having Mike on next week, actually.

• 38:04David Hoffman?

  Cool, that's perfect timing.

• 38:08David Hoffman?

  Okay, so that's how it all started. Then, just to recap all of this, I'm gonna actually just go through this whole entire thing. This made some headlines, not big mainstream headlines, but this is making some headlines in like B-tier media, trad media, like Newsweek. Like the headline here, "Is Baron Trump Behind a Mysterious New DJT Coin? What We Know."

• 38:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, we made it to Newsweek, cool.

• 38:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah, okay. The, uh, part of this, the first line of this Newsweek article says, "Convicted Pharma Bro Martin Skreli Has Claimed A Cryptocurrency Partnership With Baron Trump, The Youngest Child Of Former US President Donald Trump." Okay, so, here's how all of this went down. Martin Skreli has been on, is on crypto Twitter, has been on crypto Twitter. He's part of the crypto world, unfortunately.

• 38:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do people remember who he is? He's the guy that jacked up insulin prices, right? Went to jail-

• 39:00David Hoffman?

  He's the guy that jacked up the insulin prices of Deraprin, like by 5,000%, uh, which became like, became like the most hated man on the internet, like hated by Reddit. Went, uh, got charged for securities fraud, unrelated to the whole Pharma thing. So got charged for securities fraud, uh, went to jail for like 21 months or something. Had like $7.5 million of his assets seized, which included the one-of-one Wu-Tang Clan album, which was then auctioned off by the government by Pleaser Dow, which is a separate story, which is also happening right now. Uh, that, we actually talked about that last week. But that is aside from what's going on.

• 39:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's in my Twitter timeline, like, like, uh, he's trying to get into like crypto Twitter circles.

• 39:43David Hoffman?

  Be relevant, yeah.

• 39:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, okay, maybe that's part of the story here, anyway.

• 39:47David Hoffman?

  It's definitely a part of the story, yeah. So Martin Skreli is like, causing a storm on Twitter, saying, "Yes, this is real, I have proof." And everyone is like WTF, like, what, why are you relevant here?

• 39:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Proof that Baron Trump, uh, issued a Donald J. Trump meme coin.

• 40:03David Hoffman?

  This is a Baron Trump issued meme coin.

• 40:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like Trump endorsed, by proxy, or maybe explicitly Trump endorsed.

• 40:09David Hoffman?

  Yes, yeah. Uh, and so like, people were spending like hours on Twitter Spaces, listening to Martin Skreli, like, try to like prove that he could like- Like link this to Baron Trump and Baron Trump is like nowhere to be found. So like, what's up with that? He's never like, he's never been in the public eye, right?

• 40:28David Hoffman?

  If podcast listeners are like, Ryan is legitimately eating popcorn. That's why what you hear right now. He hasn't been, yeah, I mean, maybe, I don't know. I haven't, not in my public eye. But yeah, he's on Twitter spaces claiming that he worked with like up to 50 people, including to like work on this token, including 18 year old Baron Trump. He's 18 years old. People, and so as a result of this, like DJT is pumping and like it rises up past a hundred million dollars. It's like pumping. People are like talking about it, trading it. It's like generating hype. And then there is an Arkham Intelligence Twitter account saying, fuck it, we ball. $150,000 to the first person who can definitively prove the identity of the creator

• 41:09David Hoffman?

  of DJT. Cause like, we're not taking Martin's colleagues word for it. Somebody do some on-chain forensic evidence to prove who was the creator. Not just a few hours later, Zach XBT tweeted out that he submitted evidence. And then Arkham Intelligence, yeah, Arkham Intelligence then later tweets out that the bounty has been solved by Zach XBT, who says that it is indeed Martin Scurely, who is the person that minted, that created the DJT Trump token, the Trump token. Martin Scurely did it.

• 41:43David Hoffman?

  Martin's been saying he did it the whole time though, right? Is this, or is he not saying? Saying that he did it in collaboration and with the endorsement of Baron Trump, who did it with the endorsement of his daddy, Donald Trump. Okay. Well, I heard, by the way, I heard Martin had DMs or something like evidence. Yes. Okay. So this is where this goes. This is where this goes.

• 42:07David Hoffman?

  The link that Zach XBT found was that one of the earliest sellers of DJT, which sold like sold $800,000 of this token, sent it to an address that held was a large holder of Martin's other project, Shagoff, which is another AI project. So like a pretty direct link there. But then this is where Martin, Martin bites back. There's a Phase two, we're not, we're not done yet. You would think that this would be over because this is approved. But no, like Martin, some people think Martin has actually like vindicated here. So there is a user Cameron Rocks, a Discord user, whose alleged real name is Cameron Roxborough. That Martin Shkreli apparently hired as his intern, a summer intern kind of position, to do something in like Martin Shkreli's office or something.

• 42:52David Hoffman?

  And this person apparently went to school with Baron Trump and talks about going to school with Baron Trump. Apparently, he's a longtime friend of Baron Trump, and I think this actual part actually checks off. So Martin Shkreli paid this old school friend of Baron to be a part of his like campaign to get close to Baron Trump. So this is where like the conspiracies come in. And Martin Shkreli was like apparently just kind of like social engineering his way to get to Baron Trump to like launch a Trump meme coin because this is just like perfectly on brand for Martin Shkreli. This is like what he does. The guy, guy like was. This kid's a 16 year old, a 16 year old Beau Loudon to shill the token. That, that's what you're talking about?

• 43:32David Hoffman?

  I don't know who Beau Loudon is, but there's like a friend of Baron Trump who like was the conduit between Martin Shkreli and Baron himself. Alright. Yeah. So this is, so I think this is how this all ties together. Cause Martin Shkreli, we haven't gotten to the point where there's actually communications between Baron Trump and Martin Shkreli. We're about to get there. TBD on if they're real or not. They could be fake, but they could be real too. So here's how, here's how we think this all went down. Just to really like summarize this. Baron Trump receives a message from Martin Shkreli because of this conduit that he has like the friend, the friend that bridged the connection. And he was like, hey dude, this is gonna be super sick if you like launch a meme coin. You should, you should ask your dad. So Baron asks Daddy Donald, hey dad, I'm thinking of launching a crypto coin. Is that okay? And like his Donald Trump is like, sure, whatever. Well, like not being sufficiently informed about like.

• 44:17David Hoffman?

  Wait, this is your speculation? This is my speculation. I also, I have like, you know, friends and sources who are in the trenches who aren't more informed than me. So I'm like, kind of like regurgitating what other people have said. Alright, alright. I've had this, I've had this take corroborated by two people. Alright, but, but it is a little conspiracy. We'll never know the truth. Conspiracy. We'll never completely know the truth. But continue. So like, yeah, Baron Trump goes to Donald Trump. Ask, "Hey Daddy, can I, uh, I'm sure he says Daddy, uh, can I launch, can I launch a crypto coin?" And Donald's like, "Yeah, whatever. Sure. Uh, I like crypto. I'm the crypto president." Uh, so, so Barron says like, "Okay, I've, it goes back to Martin Shkreli. He's like, 'Okay, I've got the green light for my dad.'" "I can launch, I can launch a crypto coin." And he names it DJT, Donald J. Trump.

• 44:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 44:58David Hoffman?

  And then, then it starts to blow up. And the Trump campaign and his lawyers, like, is totally caught off guard about like what this actually means. Cause it's massive legal spotlight, like not what Donald Trump wants. Donald Trump has other legal issues going on. And they just totally shut this down. Like Barron, you can't do this. Basically you're grounded. Like, go to your room.

• 45:20David Hoffman?

  Uh, and then this is where we get this watcher guru tweet who says, "Donald Trump's former advisor says that the president and his son have not launched a meme coin." So like official statement out of the Trump administration saying like,

• 45:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just this morning, the Thursday morning that we're recording. That's when this was issued.

• 45:36David Hoffman?

  This morning, 8 a.m. Eastern time this morning. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and so, uh, and so basically the Donald Trump like formally severed all association. But then this gets even crazier when GCR and Martin Shkreli, GCR like makes a bet saying like, "Hundred million dollars that this is not endorsed."

• 45:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who is GCR for people who don't know?

• 45:56David Hoffman?

  Like a crypto Twitter influencer trader type.

• 45:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Influencer trader, like whale type?

• 46:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. He puts out a hundred million dollar bet saying like, "I bet a hundred million dollars that this is completely fake." And Martin Shkreli is like, "I'll make that bet." And I think Martin Shkreli is taking that bet like on a technicality. Because he did have a conversation with Baron Trump. He had like a Zoom call with him, uh, and like Baron Trump was there. And so like, he's saying like, "It's not completely fake. If you define it as completely fake, that's wrong. And so I'll take that bet." And so people start like tapping in. Kobe is like, "Kobe, do the escrow."

• 46:32David Hoffman?

  And so this is, this is where Martin Shkreli, this is where Martin Shkreli shares a screenshot with allegedly Baron Trump. I think this is on Instagram. These are Instagram, uh, like DMs.

• 46:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, this is Instagram?

• 46:43David Hoffman?

  Yes, this is Instagram, yeah. And so, uh, this is Martin Shkreli kinda like goading on Baron Trump saying, "You are the guy, not your dad. You're going to be bigger than him." And then he says like, Martin, hop on with us. Can you send a Google Meets link? Also, no, I don't want to. I don't want that. I don't want to be bigger than my dad. But this is like Martin's proof that he was like talking to Baron Trump.

• 47:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  But this is, this is, doesn't show Baron's name. Like I.

• 47:11David Hoffman?

  BT is in the left corner, which like maybe it's him. Yeah, maybe it's him. It could not be him.

• 47:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  But conducted. I mean, like, there's all sorts of things.

• 47:19David Hoffman?

  It could be doctored. Yeah. Apparently there are people who were like in this call with him who have corroborated this story. Uh, and so like, it's actually generally accepted that, that of, from the rumors, from the rumor mill in the trenches, that like this was Baron Trump, who did launch a meme coin.

• 47:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  May like launch, maybe.

• 47:38David Hoffman?

  Unproved with some social engineering with Martin Scarelli. And Martin, I think as soon as Martin Scarelli got Baron Trump to legitimately launch the token, he was like, let's fucking go. I did it. And then he like just throws Baron Trump by the wayside. And he goes onto crypto Twitter and it's like, it's a Donald Trump meme coin. Like it's totally legit. Like it was technically like launched by somebody in Donald Trump's circle. The Trump administration is like, this isn't us. We have no, we're not endorsing this whatsoever. Have nothing to do with this.

• 48:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Was like Scarelli making money on this or something?

• 48:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, because he has, because like Zach XPT says that it was Martin Scarelli's address that launched a token. It means he has all the supply. And, and then you also have this screenshot, uh, and there's a different screenshot that we're not showing where Baron Trump is asking Martin like, yo, did we add like a trading fee? So like you could like make a 25% or 25 bips, like fee for anyone who's trading. He asked like Martin Scarelli, the details on that. Uh, and, and so like, I think Martin Scarelli launched it. I think he took like a Zoom caller or a couple with Baron Trump to go to him on. Uh, he like socially engineered Baron maybe or something like this. Uh, and so technically if like, there is a bet out there saying that they're a hundred million dollars, that this was completely fake.

• 48:49David Hoffman?

  In the definition of completely fake, it actually doesn't, it's not completely fake. Like Baron Trump was actually here.

• 48:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  How weird. But it's just Baron. It's not like official Donald.

• 48:58David Hoffman?

  It's not official. It's not official. And like all the entire Trump campaign is like, we are not endorsing this. This is not us. So if you're buying the DJT like token, thinking that Trump is going to endorse this, you're wrong. You're basically just buying it because like it's in social zeitgeist. I actually think we kinda got lucky here and maybe we actually don't get lucky cuz this is like not a good look by the crypto industry because A, fuck Martin Shkreli, but like representing the industry, he's going to like, he's a closest, one of the closest people to the Trump campaign and like maybe got his son to like commit some sort of financial crime, like doing something nefarious by launching and promoting a meme coin. Imagine you're the presidential candidate's dad just found out that you launched a meme coin with his initials, like not great.

• 49:41David Hoffman?

  And like we have this pro crypto president who might have just gotten burned by fucking Martin Shkreli. Like it's not what we want.

• 49:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you're saying it didn't go far enough for that to be like a big issue, but it could have, it could have gotten worse here.

• 49:53David Hoffman?

  If it does get any bigger, it's getting bigger like today and tomorrow.

• 49:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the other thing about like, I wonder with Shkreli, I mean, he's already had what? Securities violations, he's already served time in jail for like financial crimes, like no, there's gotta be some injunctions here, like there's gotta be some prohibitions from him doing this sort of thing, I would think.

• 50:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think Martin Shkreli just saw an opportunity to like sow chaos.

• 50:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 50:16David Hoffman?

  Grift a bunch of people and like take clout for it, even though that clout is negative. Like he'll take, he'll take all the negative clout any day.

• 50:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I'm done with my popcorn for now, David. So thanks for the story time. I would not have looked that up on my own because I just like, um, like didn't care enough, but um, you know, it was entertaining, so thanks.

• 50:35David Hoffman?

  I'm glad you're entertained.

• 50:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thanks for that. You know what's something cool this week though?

• 50:40David Hoffman?

  You're gonna keep your sunglasses on the whole rest of the podcast?

• 50:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, just until the break, how about that? Just until, until we get through this section, cuz this is a big deal.

• 50:49David Hoffman?

  Sunglass worthy.

• 50:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ethereum surviving the SEC, that is the headline from consensus. Today, we're happy to announce a major win for Ethereum developers, tech providers, industry participants. The enforcement division of the SEC has notified us that is closing its investigation into Ethereum 2.0. So Bankless listeners, you might remember it was like a month ago. Uh, we had Joe Lubin on the podcast and consensus had just announced that um, they had received a Wells notice from the SEC that described some of the allegations, one of which like Metamask Wallet. All of these other things, but one of which was basically an investigation into Ethereum. And whether like, there was the allegation that possibly core devs were centrally controlling this, maybe consensus employees.

• 51:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  They were looking at GitHub, they were looking at commits, they were looking at all of this detail. And Joe Lubin and the consensus lawyer was pretty convinced that the SEC was coming after Ethereum. And it very much looked like it. Now that was pre Gensler, pre SEC pivot, which it seemed like if we're again, doing some conspiracy theory type stuff, it seemed like there was a call made by the White House and the Biden reelection campaign that told Gary to chill the F out and to like, to approve the Ethereum ETF and do a 180. And Ethereum ETF got approved, of course, like you guys were here, you remember that story?

• 52:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Seems like part of that fallout was a withdrawal by the SEC on this allegation against consensus and Ethereum as a security. So do we have some comments from the consensus lawyers here? This is Laura Brookover, who we didn't talk to, but what is she saying here?

• 52:30David Hoffman?

  She says, "The SEC sent a closing letter in the Ethereum 2.0 investigation today. Things have changed remarkably fast since we filed our lawsuit against the SEC in late April, accumulating in today's development. After more than a year, the Ethereum investigation is finally over with no charges against anyone." Full statement here and then a link to the blog post. And I just really want to like, lay down in like very simple terms, what this means. There has always been this like looming, overhanging cloud over Ethereum, but like, is it a security? And a lot of that cloud got dissipated with the Ethereum ETF. And any remaining wisps of moisture in the air that might have potentially turned into a cloud is gone. They are, there could not be any clearer skies.

• 53:12David Hoffman?

  Like it is an official thing by the SEC that they are no longer investigating Ethereum, the Ethereum project, the Ethereum network, the Ethereum core devs, consensus, the whole idea that Ethereum might be labeled as security is in the gray. It is over, which has been a thing that has been like, Frustratingly relevant for my entire time in crypto. People are like, oh, but Ethereum could be a security. I'm like, yeah, but less, you know, like M&M's could be a security, whatever. Beanie babies. But like, finally, like, if anyone tells you that Ethereum is a security, you can tell them that they are dumb and wrong officially.

• 53:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and like, here's another takeaway. I think that hopefully crypto and everyone listening takes from this is Gary Gensler and the SEC tried their hardest to make Ethereum the security in the US.

• 53:56David Hoffman?

  For sure.

• 53:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the reason they failed was because the crypto community organized politically, and we pushed back.

• 54:03David Hoffman?

  Got loud.

• 54:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And we got loud, and this is major progress because we weren't doing this sort of thing in 2022. It was all SBF was doing the political donations and playing the DC game. So it's bullish on another level that we have the power. I mean, it's 20% of Americans own crypto, American adults own crypto. We have the power to actually push back and make change. And here's an example of that. So, uh, cool lesson from that perspective, too. David.

• 54:29David Hoffman?

  In stark contrast, I love that this is happening at once. So we get, we get the freedom of the SEC from the perjury of the SEC. But also what's going live, I think, pretty damn soon here because the ETFs is coming, is this awesome ad from Bitwise. So just like, can't stop winning against the SEC. And we're getting these very sick, like, normie targeting ads for the Ethereum ETF. Let's go ahead and watch this ad.

• 54:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I actually haven't watched this, David.

• 54:56David Hoffman?

  Oh, wow, you're gonna love it.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Ethereum. Oh, big finance. You OK? You look really tired. Just calling it a day. But it's 4:00 PM. Yeah, and I've been working nonstop since 9:30 this morning, so. 9:30? You don't say. Yep. You want a little shut eye, too, if you've been moving billions around the world. Well, actually, I do. You know, stablecoins, NFTs, loans. People can access me 24/7. What? But look, everyone's different. You should get your rest. You've had a long day. Well, I have, haven't I? Definitely. You'll get after it tomorrow. Tomorrow's Saturday. Monday. You'll get after it again on Monday.

• 55:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is awesome.

• 55:38David Hoffman?

  So good, so good. Bitwise had a very successful Bitcoin ETF, just like shoulder to shoulder with some of the big boys, Fidelity, BlackRock. I mean, BlackRock's dominant, Fidelity's large, but like Bitwise punching above its weight class with a Bitcoin ETF. I think they're making a very big push to take an even larger market share because Bitwise and Ethereum just go, they just go hand in hand. Like the business model for Bitwise, which is just like asset indices, crypto funds, and what Ethereum is, is just like, I think they're making a very big push because they see Ethereum as like a much larger foot in the door that they have into the traditional world.

• 56:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a way to tell the story. And like, because I mean, they've been bullish on DeFi assets as well, right? And this is the gateway to all of the other tokens and assets too. So well done on that, that commercial to Bitwise. And by the way, folks can mint that. So it looks like

• 56:28David Hoffman?

  I've minted this.

• 56:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  800 people have minted it. I should still do that.

• 56:31David Hoffman?

  On base or on Zora? On Zora, on Zora chain, using my Coinbase wallet, which hopefully gets me an airdrop of something, either the Zora something. That's how I'm doing this.

• 56:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're hoping for, may Zora airdrop. I could see that happening.

• 56:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but I also use the Coinbase wallet to mint on base all the time, too.

• 56:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. All right, we got more coming up, including a vulnerability in Kraken.

• 56:53David Hoffman?

  Oh, this was proof that the crypto industry is like dumber than ever. Not any fault of Kraken whatsoever. This like super lame security auditor, Certik. Sorry, we'll talk about the story.

• 57:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I could tell you're fired up about it. It's like, I have a question as whether these wore white hats or black hats or what was going on here.

• 57:11David Hoffman?

  It could have been white hats, but they chose not to be.

• 57:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, there's more Donald Trump in this episode. Can you believe that?

• 57:16David Hoffman?

  Real news, real news.

• 57:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  This time's real news in a clip.

• 57:18David Hoffman?

  This time it's real.

• 57:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, before we get to that, I'm going to take off these glasses here, David, and we're going to thank our sponsors, including Mantle, who is a layer two that you absolutely should check out. And

• 57:28David Hoffman?

  Get some yield on it.

• 57:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, get some yield.

• 57:30David Hoffman?

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• 58:14David Hoffman?

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• 58:57David Hoffman?

  Head over to Cartesi's grant application page to apply today. And if you're not a developer, those with staked CTSI can take part in the governance process and vote on whether or not a proposal should be funded. Make sure you're vote-ready by staking your CTSI before the votes open. Cello is the mobile-first and EVM-compatible blockchain that's built for the real world and designed for fast, low-cost payments worldwide, driving real-world use cases like Opera MiniPay, one of the fastest-growing Web3 wallets with over 2 million users across Africa. Cello is seeing a meteoric rise with over 375 million transactions and a million monthly active users. Not to mention Tether and Circle just deployed native USDT and USDC on Cello, supported by leading exchanges like Binance. And now, Cello is looking to come home to Ethereum as a Layer 2.

• 59:41David Hoffman?

  With a game-changing proposal, Core contributors at C Labs aims to leverage Optimism's OP stack, pioneering a transition as the biggest L1 to become a Layer 2, with Testnet arriving as early as summer 2024. With this Cello Layer 2, gas fees will stay low and users can even pay for gas using ERC 2024. Including native USDC and USDT, sending crypto to phone numbers across wallets using social connect. But Cello is a community governed protocol. Make your VORs hurt in the Cello forum to shape the future of Ethereum. Follow at Cello on Twitter and explore the ecosystem built for the real world on cello.org/quest. And we're back, a Kraken exploit for $3 million and some drama. Okay, so ChatGPT summary of this. Kraken experiences security breach when Certik, a cybersecurity firm, exploited a vulnerability,

• 1:00:25David Hoffman?

  allowing them to withdraw $3 million from the exchange. This incident led to a dispute with a Kraken accusing Certik of extortion and Certik claiming that they were conducting white hat security research. The funds have since been returned, but the incident has now raised questions about the ethics and legality of security research in the cryptocurrency space. I don't actually contest that line from ChatGPT, or actually, maybe that was Grok. Because I actually don't think, the only question that has been raised is like, why the F is Certik doing what they're doing?

• 1:00:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I actually have a couple of questions. So the first question is like, how did this happen? How like, what's the mechanism by which an exchange actually gets hacked for $3 million?

• 1:01:01David Hoffman?

  Right. So I'm sure there's a bunch of different ways where an exploit can happen. There's not just like one hole to breach, there's many that are all patched by all the exchanges. This particular exploit in Kraken, I think, had something, some mechanism where like, people could trick Kraken to thinking that they deposited when they actually didn't. I don't know the details of how it works, but I think like, it's fair to say, at least for illustrative purposes, imagine like you have the trick of like, you attach a string, like a fishing wire, you glue it to a coin and you drop that coin in a vending machine and then you pull it back out. And then just keep on dropping, something like this. And so Kraken is crediting people on the other side without actually receiving the deposits. And so you can mint, you can mint Kraken BTC, for example.

• 1:01:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  I got it.

• 1:01:47David Hoffman?

  Without actually depositing real BTC.

• 1:01:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not like, they figured out Kraken's private keys or something. There was an internal, so it wasn't a huge deal, it was $3 million, but it was kind of that like coin trick that you maybe described, something like that. And, but the way that Certik handled this was absolutely hamfisted and bizarre, right? Because it seemed like they almost stole the money?

• 1:02:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  What happened here?

• 1:02:09David Hoffman?

  Okay, so first, they exploited the exploit that I just subscribed for $4.

• 1:02:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  $4.

• 1:02:16David Hoffman?

  All right. To prove that the exploit exists. And this activity would have been classified as a white hacked activity, because this is what they needed to do to prove the exploit, right? And this is like white hat ethics, like, don't, don't actually steal money. Just prove into the minimum viable necessary that you need to do that you can steal it.

• 1:02:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  And then disclose it secretly and responsibly.

• 1:02:38David Hoffman?

  And then disclose it to Kraken, earn the bug bounty, which was going to be six to seven figures, like 200,000, up to a million dollars, something, a very large sum of money. And then they would just get off with the white hat money, which is like totally fair and square. We appreciate white hats. Anyone who should totally pay out white hat bug bounties. Very celebrated thing in all of security, really. But instead, what Certik instead did after they stole, stole $4, which I wouldn't count as stealing, just doing bug bounty stuff. They then did that same exploit and then, you know, removed $3 million from Kraken, which is far beyond what anyone needs to do to prove that they are white hat, like hacking. And so now this is different.

• 1:03:23David Hoffman?

  And then they went to Kraken and was like, pay us a larger bounty. And so like-

• 1:03:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like a $3 million bounty?

• 1:03:32David Hoffman?

  Like, pay us a $3 million bounty perhaps? Which is like verifiably insane thing to do. And then Kraken then starts to interpret this as no longer white hat activity. Instead, they choose to interpret it as theft and therefore criminal, and threatens to sue Certik.

• 1:03:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  This kind of feels like a ransom.

• 1:03:50David Hoffman?

  It's kind of- It kind of feels like a ransom.

• 1:03:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the, one of the CTOs of Ledger, I believe, is saying, exploiting a vulnerability and then returning some funds or negotiating a reward is not white hat behavior. Let's not pretend otherwise. So a lot of people in the industry came down strongly against this, including Taylor Monahan. What did she say?

• 1:04:09David Hoffman?

  Oh, I would not want to be on the other side of Taylor Monahan. Taylor Monahan, now of MetaMask, formerly MyCrypto, definitely like a security expert in the space.

• 1:04:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not afraid to speak her mind.

• 1:04:19David Hoffman?

  Afraid to speak her mind, right?

• 1:04:22David Hoffman?

  Basically, like, I'm just gonna skip to the last line. "You should hide in shame and be thanking Kraken for not pursuing you criminally and civilly, not bragging about your bullshit on Twitter." Part of the story is that, like, Certik just went onto Twitter and said, like, "We've discovered a bug bounty in Kraken. Look, we, like, took $3 million from them." And everyone's like, "Did you just admit that, like, on Twitter? Why did you do that?"

• 1:04:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you have lawyers?

• 1:04:44David Hoffman?

  Which brings us to the meme that summarizes this whole entire event, which is the classic Gru meme, which is, "Step one: hack Kraken. Step two: three, steal $3 million in prank sanctions." Oh, but part of the way, Ryan, that I didn't tell you the story, is that they put it through tornado cash on Polygon, which, like, everyone's like, "Oh, like, you can't touch Polygon." But you know what I learned this week? That the Polygon tornado cash is not on the US sanctions list. They did not add that.

• 1:05:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why? Is it a different...

• 1:05:18David Hoffman?

  They forgot.

• 1:05:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so it's still legal to use tornado cash on Polygon?

• 1:05:23David Hoffman?

  No, no, no, no, no. It is not illegal to use tornado cash.

• 1:05:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so it's not illegal.

• 1:05:28David Hoffman?

  It is still legal to use, because it's a different contract address.

• 1:05:33David Hoffman?

  So if you put it through Polygon to, like, obfuscate your traces, and then you're, and then, and then, okay, so like, that's, that's the second Gru panel. The third Gru panel is publicly take credit. And then Gru is, like, looking back at, like, "Oh, wait, we publicly take credit?" Like, ro- row. This is the same auditing firm that everyone has made a farce of, because, like, all of their, like, audits keep getting exploited by North Korea.

• 1:05:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, jeez, really?

• 1:05:58David Hoffman?

  Like, not a great track record from Certik.

• 1:06:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this is, um, like, someone got carried away, I would say, in their, in their hacking.

• 1:06:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  A little bit of ego at play, though. But, uh, hopefully they've been properly chastened by the social layer of crypto.

• 1:06:12David Hoffman?

  So they gave the money back to Kraken, and they waved the white flag.

• 1:06:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yay!

• 1:06:16David Hoffman?

  Yay.

• 1:06:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  They could've just gotten the money, though.

• 1:06:18David Hoffman?

  They could've just gotten, like, a six-to-seven-figure bug bounty.

• 1:06:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and, and, and heroes.

• 1:06:24David Hoffman?

  But instead, they are, like, gonna lose business, and now, like, I mean, I don't know how they have any business left. Maybe that's why they have to do this.

• 1:06:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, there you go. Let's, uh, talk about Donald J. Trump a second time.

• 1:06:34David Hoffman?

  Back to Donald J. Trump.

• 1:06:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not, not his token this time.

• 1:06:37David Hoffman?

  This is, okay, this is actually real. Trump has stated this last week that he explicitly wants all remaining Bitcoins to be mined in the United States.

• 1:06:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's just play it in his own words, because, man, this is... Here he goes.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  To further secure America's future and create opportunity for young people, I will end Joe Biden's war on crypto, and we will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in America. We're gonna keep it right here, and a lot of it's gonna be done right here in Florida, right?

• 1:07:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so weird to hear cheers from that.

• 1:07:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Isn't it?

• 1:07:15David Hoffman?

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:07:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bitcoin made in America. Bitcoin made in America, just stamp it.

• 1:07:22David Hoffman?

  American mined Bitcoin. Let's fucking go.

• 1:07:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  But Joe Biden's war on crypto, did you hear that? That's quite the soundbite.

• 1:07:29David Hoffman?

  That is quite the soundbite.

• 1:07:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I wonder if, I wonder if Democrats are hearing that. I wonder if the Joe Biden campaign is hearing that loud and clear.

• 1:07:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Later posted on Truth Social, which is like Donald Trump's version of Twitter, he wants Bitcoin, this is where he said, "I want Bitcoin to be made in the USA. It will help us be energy dominant," which is like big Bitcoiner talking points. So, you know, he's like winning every single, like, single-issue Bitcoin voter, if not crypto voter.

• 1:07:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. Well, crypto is definitely an election. I mean, people said it would happen. I kind of thought it would happen, but I didn't think it would happen in such a, like, big way. And it's happening now.

• 1:08:05David Hoffman?

  Super big way. Two new, different types of real-world assets being tokenized on-chain. I want to talk about 3D DNS, which is tokenizing web 2 ICANN domain names on Optimism. So, pretty cool, like, kind of self-explanatory. With 3D DNS, they just register web 2 domains as NFTs on Optimism.

• 1:08:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's like dot-coms. If you're not familiar with ICANN, it's just like dot-coms, dot-netts, dot-orgs, dot-EDs, all of that stuff.

• 1:08:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so they're starting with dot box and a few other ICANN domains. And then they're just going to expand from there, but they have this like pretty cool partnership with just the ICANN Registry to like compliantly legally like in a partnership, tokenize the these these ICANN domains into an NFT. So like trading an NFT is legitimate trading of ownership. So like that's a real that's even though that's a digital asset, it's a real world. It is. Digital asset that is coming and being tokenized on optimism. We could we could we could tokenize bankless.com and sell it, David. Want to do that? I don't want to sell it, but I do want to tokenize it. Okay. Well, because like Maker Down might actually give us a loan on that, which is like, yeah. Kind of cool. Take our loan out and we get, yeah, we get liquidated on that loan and there

• 1:09:16David Hoffman?

  goes the website. Sorry, guys. That's how it works. No. Okay. On second thoughts, we will do something else, but in theory we could. This is the future. And that's for the first of two real world assets being tokenized. Tether also has announced tethered assets, starting with this platform called Alloy. And they want to tokenize gold. We've actually seen tokenized gold before. It's not the first time, but it's definitely different when Tether does it. But you can also kind of just like understand that like Tether is not ending at gold. Maybe they tokenize further commodities. Maybe they just put a lot of commodities on chain, extremely goldish. Tokenized oil. Like, I don't know, copper, uranium. Uranium on chain would be like kind of sick. Wheat. You would buy some uranium on chain, would you?

• 1:10:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Well, because like uranium is going to catch a bid because of like AI power demands. I used to own I used to own some gold on chain. You remember Digix? Digix. That was the one. That was the one. Yeah. Yeah. And then I was like, you know what? I'd rather not. I'd rather own more ether than gold. This is this is how I ended up capitulating on like owning Bitcoin because anytime I owned Bitcoin, I'd be like, but I could own more ether. And so I stopped buying Bitcoin because I would keep on losing it. Yeah. You keep losing? You lost your Bitcoin? To E because I kept on stealing it. Oh, selling. Oh, yeah. I thought you were missing private keys and stuff. I can't hold on to my Bitcoin. It turns into ether all the time. I thought you were confessing the loss of some private keys, in which case, David, I got to get you off some multi sigs there because.

• 1:10:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's wearing me. David, there is an event happening that you're going to that I won't be at, but that Bankless citizens are invited to at ETHCC next conference. What's happening here?

• 1:10:54David Hoffman?

  ETHCC is coming up, starting Monday, July 8th, for the second week of July for all of the people that are being in Brussels. It's typically in Paris every single year, but this year it's in Brussels because the Olympics is in Paris. And so when the Ethereum ETHCC Community Conference goes head to head with the Olympics, we lose. We don't win that one. One year, sadly, but not this year. So we're in Brussels. So Monday, July 8th, from 4pm to 7pm Brussels time, C E E S T time. If you are a Bankless citizen and you're going to ETHCC, you're invited to come get drinks with me, Rachel, Alex, Christie, Nick, all the other, the Bankless team, other podcast listeners,

• 1:11:37David Hoffman?

  podcast guests, team members, sponsors, just gonna drink a few cocktails. Martin Scraley will not be there. If he does be, I will not let him in.

• 1:11:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  You don't know that.

• 1:11:50David Hoffman?

  If he's a citizen, do I have to let him in?

• 1:11:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52David Hoffman?

  No, I'll just cancel as a citizen. I'll just do that.

• 1:11:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, revocable.

• 1:11:56David Hoffman?

  So yeah, so definitely come. There is a link inside of the Bankless Discord. There's a link in the show notes, but you can only sign up if your email is a paid citizen, because that is how we do things. Can't invite everyone.

• 1:12:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, we got some unfinished business. So while I was out last week, I was informed that the results of the ETH pitch.

• 1:12:16David Hoffman?

  Our beta use of Joke Race.

• 1:12:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ETH pitch, let's say, we both gave our best ETH pitches. Yours was absolutely fantastic, I gotta say. And then I did mine, and then the Bankless community decided, and the stakes here were quite high, because there's some rumor, I haven't seen it yet, because the mentor of this NFT has been a little slow to mint it.

• 1:12:42David Hoffman?

  Been busy.

• 1:12:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Super busy with all sorts of other things. But that is going to be a trophy, a bragging rights trophy NFT, right?

• 1:12:50David Hoffman?

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:12:52David Hoffman?

  Commemorate the successful beta run of Bankless using Joke Race.

• 1:12:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  What I'm trying to say is, the results are in, and I got this one, David. I got this one.

• 1:13:03David Hoffman?

  Just by a little bit. You barely got across the line.

• 1:13:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, yeah, I won't share the results then. People can go click the joke race link and see what

• 1:13:12David Hoffman?

  Results are 72 to 13.

• 1:13:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, you know what?

• 1:13:17David Hoffman?

  Okay, so just for context, like Ryan said, we engaged in a competition. Who could give the best pitch for the ETF? Then we had bankless citizens vote on who gave the best pitch. So if you have an Ethereum address that has a PoA, bankless PoA from 2022 or onwards, you are enabled to vote. We got 85 votes. Ryan won by a little bit. Good for him. It's cute. But this was, this is just like, actually just like us learning how to use joke race and work with our community, because we're doing this again. This time it's different. So we're doing another vote for bankless citizens. But this time, the thing being voted on is a podcast. This is first ever bankless listener, bankless citizen nominated podcast. So this one's a little bit different than the other two votes that we've done.

• 1:14:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the winner, he will do the podcast? Whatever wins?

• 1:14:03David Hoffman?

  We do the podcast. Yeah. So there's two phases here. So it's one step more complex, but I think we can handle it. There is a entry phase. So by the time this episode goes out, this will be live. Bankless citizens can propose a podcast, a podcast episode. You can either propose a topic and Ryan and I will talk about it. You can propose a guest and Ryan and I will invite them. And then that goes for one week. So submissions are going for one week. And then after that, there is a one week voting period, which also citizens vote on. So if citizens get to submit an idea, citizens also get to vote on other citizens' idea. By the end of the one week voting period, which will be in two weeks from now, we will go do that podcast episode.

• 1:14:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  No matter what, no matter the guest.

• 1:14:47David Hoffman?

  This is a bankless governance vote.

• 1:14:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Commitment to do the guest or do the topic.

• 1:14:53David Hoffman?

  Don't mess with us, please.

• 1:14:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, these are bankless citizens, right?

• 1:14:58David Hoffman?

  I do not want to do an episode with Martin Shkreli.

• 1:15:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was just thinking that. I was just thinking that.

• 1:15:03David Hoffman?

  If they vote for it, then I guess that's the rules.

• 1:15:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess Martin's coming on if he wants to.

• 1:15:07David Hoffman?

  I guess Martin's coming on if he wants to. The guest also has to want to. We can't compel them.

• 1:15:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's true. That's true. But we'll do our best, no matter who it is.

• 1:15:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we'll do our best.

• 1:15:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  This could get interesting. This could be a great power and great responsibility for the bankless community here.

• 1:15:20David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 1:15:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Well, we'll see how that goes, David. And I look forward to receiving my NFT, my friend.

• 1:15:26David Hoffman?

  I'm sure.

• 1:15:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I gotta say, it feels weird to compete against you because we're so collaborative on this. And I just feel kinda...

• 1:15:32David Hoffman?

  I need to think of another competition.

• 1:15:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, you gotta win it back.

• 1:15:36David Hoffman?

  I need to win it back.

• 1:15:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, let's end with some Martin content, shall we, David? This is the meme of the week, the ballad of Donald J. Trump. What are we looking at here?

• 1:15:44David Hoffman?

  We're looking at the Scooby Doo format. Who is that character? I don't know who that character is. The main frat boy-looking Scooby Doo guy with the handkerchief necktie is he has got the victim, he's got the perpetrator, and he's pulling off the Donald Trump mask, and it's a very pale, ghosty-looking Martin Shkreli.

• 1:16:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  There he is.

• 1:16:07David Hoffman?

  Internet's most hated man.

• 1:16:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hopefully, this is the last week we'll have to talk about DGT coin, but who knows?

• 1:16:13David Hoffman?

  That's our choice.

• 1:16:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's our choice, I guess. All right.

• 1:16:16David Hoffman?

  That's our choice.

• 1:16:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Got to end with this, of course. You know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It is not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.