ROLLUP: SBF Arrested | Trump NFTs | Binance Bank Run | Fed Inflation | Proof of Reserves | Bored Ape Lawsuit

Bankless Weekly Rollup 2nd Week of December 2022 ------ 📣 Kraken | The Crypto Exchange for Everyone www.bankless.cc/kraken ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/?utm_source=banklessshowsyt 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: https://availableon.com/bankless ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 👯 DESO | DECENTRALIZED SOCIAL BLOCKCHAIN https://bankless.cc/Deso 🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 📡 TRUEFI | CRYPTO FINANCIAL HUB https://bankless.cc/TrueFi 👾 SEQUENCE | ALL-IN-ONE PLATFORM https://bankless.cc/Sequence ⚡️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/fuel ------ 0:00 Intro 4:05 MARKETS 7:15 Inflation https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1602657168368484353 9:14 Has Inflation Peaked? https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/1602657570283573248 12:05 Stop Raising Rates https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1572659264560435201 14:00 Fed Keeps Hiking https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-14/fed-downshifts-to-half-point-hike-sees-5-1-rate-next-year 17:14 Living at Home https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1601401345948483586 17:55 Zombie Firms https://twitter.com/eliant_capital/status/1601629575686983680 19:25 Crypto Price Action https://twitter.com/pythianism/status/1600895603512180737 25:00 SBF ARRESTED https://www.reddit.com/r/StockMarket/comments/zlftnb/breaking_footage_of_sbf_arrest_in_the_bahamas/ Release: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fj0LbkRXoAIIzQY?format=jpg&name=large 28:00 No Bail https://blockworks.co/news/no-bail-for-bankman-fried-leaves-bahamas-court-in-handcuffs Charges - https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1602469313662812160 31:00 CFTC vs SBF https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1602670346573938689 34:24 Tom Emmer Take https://twitter.com/bittybitbit86/status/1602715577067372544 36:40 Tom Emmer vs Gary Gentler https://twitter.com/bittybitbit86/status/1602719629172166656 38:50 Worst Take of the Year https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1603067377972920322 41:30 Hopefully Next https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1602458316252549120 42:15 The Block and SBF https://www.axios.com/2022/12/09/bankman-fried-funded-crypto-news-site-block 47:30 Binance Bank Run Justice Department - https://www.theblock.co/post/193988/justice-department-weighs-charging-binance Nic Carter - https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1600939364145541120 Auditor - https://mishtalk.com/economics/binances-alleged-crypto-audit-failed-not-even-its-auditor-would-vouch-for-it ATH Outflow - https://twitter.com/dylanleclair_/status/1602704506172706816 Bank Run - https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1603088552598048768 53:30 ETHEREUM NEWS MetaMask x PayPal - https://twitter.com/MetaMask/status/1603087496182743040 EIP 4844 - https://twitter.com/liamihorne/status/1601261769682743298 Optimism - https://twitter.com/MSilb7/status/1602854762550026241 Layer 2 - https://twitter.com/mhonkasalo/status/1602737363012157442 Phi - https://twitter.com/phi_xyz/status/1603330614429507584 MakerDAO - https://decrypt.co/117070/defis-central-bank-makerdao-relaunches-1-fixed-yield-dai-holders OFAC - https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1601021184367161345 1:02:40 Trump NFTs https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109518512543023262 1:04:50 Celebrity Bored Ape Lawsuit https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/celebrity-promoters-sued-over-bored-ape-nft-endorsements-1235279115/ 1:10:28 Bankless Collectibles https://collectibles.bankless.com/ 1:12:00 3AC Vaporized 1 Trillion https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/three-arrows-capital-kyle-davies-su-zhu-crash.html Burn it - https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1603389490659147776 Copies - https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1602372083073392643 1:16:13 The Worst Bill Ever https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1603052999282147328 The Bill - https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/DAAML%20Act%20of%202022.pdf Chervinsky - https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1603065495636398081 1:19:30 Raises BlockNative - https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/12/15/web3-infrastructure-firm-blocknative-raises-15m-for-ethereum-block-building-market/ Aztec - https://medium.com/@aztecnetwork/dd5062ba949c 1:23:00 TAKES Proof of Reserves - https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1602430509379948544 DeFi Innovation - https://twitter.com/pythianism/status/1603080901503713281 UX - https://twitter.com/0xfoobar/status/1602890641926668291 New Dawn - https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1603409968480264192 1:27:15 What David’s Bullish On 1:29:35 What Ryan’s Bullish On 1:31:50 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/Cryptofung/status/1601341195778949120 https://twitter.com/CryptoUB/status/1603037274836434944 ------ 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?

  SBF got arrested. It's such a great day. Turns out his 4D chess was just him playing checkers. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

• 0:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, happy 3rd Friday of December. David, what time is it?

• 0:14David Hoffman?

  Ryan, it's the Bankless Friday Weekly Roll-Up, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere into the frontier, into the end of the year, nonetheless. How are you doing?

• 0:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm doing great, man. It's gonna be good to close this one out, this year that is. But we got a lot to talk about this roll-up. And David, I think you're, are you wearing your SpongeBob sweater? I haven't seen you in that for a while.

• 0:36David Hoffman?

  High Fashion Friday, High Fashion Friday.

• 0:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  That feels like a good, kind of like, holiday sweater. It looks comfy, looks pretty relaxing. How are you feeling, man? You feeling okay? You feeling relaxed?

• 0:44David Hoffman?

  Dude, I think I'm pretty, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling really good. I mean, we all know how bad this year was, but I think that we are on the precipice of good stuff because of what happened this week. SBF got arrested this week, Ryan. I started, I started December saying that December's the best month. SBF got arrested. The redemption arc of Three Hours Capital is coming to a close. People are having none of that. And so we're gonna cover all of this news and more. In addition to that, Binance is seeing all-time-high outflows. Is a run on the bank happening with Binance? Are we about to do this all over again? Or is this just happening in an abundance of caution, people going bankless? We'll talk about that. What else we got, Ryan?

• 1:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  We also have one of the best investigative journalists, or so we thought, called The Block. It turns out that was secretly owned by SBF.

• 1:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  What a mastercraft villain we're dealing with. So we talk about that. That hit me pretty hard on Friday. We'll talk about that a little bit. And also, David, I'm hearing some rumblings. I'm hearing some things about the world's greatest NFT drop in history. Who is, who is dropping an NFT?

• 1:54David Hoffman?

  Oh, we can't tease that. We can't tease that now. But let me just tell you, Ryan, it's a big, big deal. The world has never seen an NFT drop this fantastic. We're going to make NFTs great again, folks, let me tell you. NFTs are the future of digital ownership, based on the most advanced technology out there, blockchain. We're going to drop the biggest NFTs anyone has ever seen. More later in the show.

• 2:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, did you get any comments about your Trump impression from last rollup?

• 2:21David Hoffman?

  You know,

• 2:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Positive or negative?

• 2:23David Hoffman?

  The scammy YouTube comments, absolutely, like the bot farms that are also on YouTube kind of drowned out all the YouTube comments last week. I didn't, I didn't get any comments, but I'm coming for, I'm coming for round two.

• 2:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's fishing for it, all right? Because I bet if you could guess who that was, who David was in person, he'd probably have a clue on who's dropping an NFT as fresh as of today. David, before we get in, we got to talk about our friends and sponsors at Kraken. What are we doing with Kraken and what is Kraken up to?

• 2:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so we're actually rethinking, Bankless is rethinking our sponsor strategy going into 2023. We want to form more intentful, more surgical, long-term relationships. And so we're working with Kraken, who is the only exchange that pioneered and implemented proof of reserves before anyone ever asked them to. When we had our conversation with Jesse Powell from Kraken, the CEO, who's been head sound building since like 2014, I just felt like he is the Eric Voorhees type. He's the libertarian who's doing what he needs to do to help move this industry forward. And so when he came on, he was like, yo, use Kraken, but then get off Kraken.

• 3:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's also like, and also you should use other exchanges. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. That was super refreshing to hear.

• 3:37David Hoffman?

  It was in stark contrast to the scammers that have pioneered 2022. Jesse came into the industry way back when. He's been head sound building ever since. Very an egoless individual. And so we've chosen Kraken for our long-term sponsor. We're going to have more details about this into 2023. But right now, if you are unsure about your exchange, perhaps go to the link in the show notes, go to kraken.com and sign up for the exchange that implemented proof of reserves before anyone ever asked them to.

• 4:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  An exchange that didn't rug you last year as well. Doesn't that feel good to say?

• 4:08David Hoffman?

  Exactly.

• 4:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm going to be moving some more of my stuff there as well, guys. All right, well, let's get in, let's talk about markets today. Bitcoin, what are we looking at on the week? Give us the price data.

• 4:18David Hoffman?

  We got a flat week, Ryan. Bitcoin ended up up 0.7%. Started the week at 17260, ending the week at 17380. So 0.7% up.

• 4:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, neither higher nor lower very much, just kind of flat-ish ETH as well, same, same.

• 4:34David Hoffman?

  Down a little bit, down 1.1%, started the week at 1285, ending the week at 1270. Got up to 1330 on the positive CPI print, but then fell back down, down 1.8%.

• 4:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Part of the reason, David, I'm feeling, I guess rejuvenated coming into this episode versus some of the others in like November is we had that ETH bulls episode that we did. This is an episode that's coming at you on December 26th, all about Ether. It's an ETH bull panel that we do about every six months, and this one was especially good.

• 5:05David Hoffman?

  This one is so good.

• 5:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  But I remember something that the DC investor made the point, "Look, we are still below 2018 all-time highs for ETH, right?" What's interesting is like, he put out this tweet a few weeks ago, which said like, "I didn't buy at 80, but I bought at 120." This is during, you know, 2020, I guess, you know, bear market. And he's like, "There is no difference. There's literally no difference."

• 5:33David Hoffman?

  Don't remember the difference, right?

• 5:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's crazy. It's like, that's kind of what the numbers look like now, only it's 10x different. Like, our low for Ether was about 800 or so, it's high 800s really. And then now we're at like 12, 1200s, 1300s, right? The delta's the same. So, and we're below 2018, we're below the last all-time high. So, I'm not saying ETH is looking juicy at these prices, but the ETH bulls certainly are, and they will be on the 26th when that episode releases. And yeah, it just seems like a good time to keep dollar-cost averaging in.

• 6:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and the point of that tweet was that like, when Ether hit $80, like, it didn't stay there. It bounced right back up. And so, he was just reminding people, it's like, "Hey, you don't have to time the Pico bottom." Buying at $120 ETH just kind of blurred together with buying the $80 ETH.

• 6:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I made so many mistakes when I was a noob, just like watching the charts and trying to time the Pico bottom when I should have just been like dollar-cost averaging in during the bear market. All right, let's talk about the ratio. What's that looking like, David?

• 6:32David Hoffman?

  Ratio down 1.8%, down from 0.0745 to 0.073, down 1.8%.

• 6:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Holding up, though, holding up. And Bitcoin and ETH down from all-time highs, they're about neck and neck, aren't they?

• 6:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they're about the same.

• 6:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like 76, 77%, something like that. Crypto market cap total, are we above or below a trillion dollars, David?

• 6:53David Hoffman?

  Still below a trillion dollars, $885 billion, about flat on the weekend.

• 6:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Good question that we asked Vitalik, by the way, in our episode we recorded. That's coming at you Monday, was basically like, will crypto ever be a, you know, multi-trillion-dollar asset class again, or will forever be a niche? We had a really fascinating answer to that question. Premium subs already have that podcast. Ah, yeah, you do. Or at least I'll put it out in a few hours, yeah. Go check your premium RSS feed for that. It's a fantastic podcast. All right, should we talk about, uh, do our Fed watch? Fed watch. Gotta watch the Fed. Two things happened this week, David. Um, the first is, we got some CPI numbers. And that is inflation, of course, Consumer Price Index. They came in lower than was expected. So that is good news. Good news. We are excited about that. And you can kind of see this over

• 7:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  time. This is the chart from, uh, of CPI changes from 2015 all the way to 2021. You see the peak? That peak was around like June-ish or so, and we're down off the peak. So I think the official numbers are something like this, David. Um, June was 9.1%. That was the high for the year. Now, November, 7.1%. The numbers fall up. And previous month, October, was 7.7%. Core inflation, obviously, also down. Core inflation is like a subset of the main CPI number. That's another number to track independently. So that happened. And the question is, is inflation over? Maybe we'll talk about that in a minute. The other thing that happened, David, is the Fed

• 8:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  raised rates. So the federal fund rates, that's the interest rate, is now in a range of 4.25% to 4.5%. So the Fed Powell raised it by another half a percent. That was basically as expected. The market anticipated that. And so, um, this is lower than the previous increases. The last couple of raises have been by 0.75%, and this was half a percent instead. Uh, and if you look at kind of the, the predict, like the markets, the prediction markets, the, the target rate right now is people are thinking, the market's thinking, the rate's going to be about 5% in 2023. Uh, so we might get one or two more hikes that are expected in that range. And by 2024,

• 9:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  the market is saying the rates will drop down to 4.1%. So that is what the average person thinks. And so I think there's like two questions here. The first question is, has inflation peaked? Has inflation peaked? What's your take on that? Do you think we've inflation's peaked? Do you think CPI is kind of over? And you know, the intervention by the Fed and a combination of relaxation of the supply chain issues that we are facing over the past two years are kind of over. And so we've hit the peak and we're going to be fine from here. What do you think?

• 9:38David Hoffman?

  So if you want to go back to that chart that you were just showing that shows the inflation chart, the inflation peaked in June, 9.1%, September, 8.2%, October, 7.7%, November, this month, 7.1%. So clearly, we are in a downtrend. And while it's totally possible that it just reverses and keeps on going up in a way that we don't like, that is on the menu. But it is worth noting that the more that we progress forward in time, the more the interest rates that the Fed has increased in recent, in 2022, starts to take effect. When you raise interest rates as the Fed, that takes time to ripple out. It takes time for the effects of having to pay back money at a faster rate reaches the margins, as it reaches the all of the economy.

• 10:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like CPI is a lagging indicator, is what you're saying.

• 10:26David Hoffman?

  Exactly. And so the Fed has been raising rates all throughout the year. And so there are the last one, two, three times instances that the Fed has raised interest rates. That has not shown up in the CPI print yet. And so there are many instances of the Fed's raising rates that has not shown up, that will continue to have an increased effect on inflation. So I think it's one of those questions. Are we peaked? Have we peaked? The longer that it goes on, where we are not going up, obvious, I mean, this is a really, really simple way to put this.

• 10:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Insightful bankless analysis here.

• 11:00David Hoffman?

  Exactly. The more that it's not going up, the more likely it is that it is peaked. And we are in almost, I mean, June, we're in December now, so we have the November print. Like, we almost have six months in a row of decreasing inflation. So, I mean, it's looking better. It's looking pretty good. Yeah. And then also, just like, there's been a longer time, but when there's been any news about the Russian invasion. There's been, I haven't seen much about supply chains. So like, the global macro news cycle at least seems to be like quelling for like six-ish months in a row now. So like, we're trending in an acceptable direction.

• 11:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this professor at University of Michigan over at Econ, Justin Wolfers agrees with you. He says this in his tweet. Core CPI rose by only 0.2% in November, which is yet another positive disinflationary surprise. Headline CPI rose only 0.1% in the month, also below expectations. This is remarkably good news, he says, for the second month in a row. Inflation has clearly peaked. Inflation has clearly peaked. So much so, that brings us to kind of the next question in the analysis is, when can the Fed stop raising? It's a question, right? And we have politicians saying that they should stop now, that they've already gone too far. This is a tweet from Elizabeth Warren

• 12:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  saying, "The Federal Reserve's Chair Powell has just announced another extreme interest rate hike while forecasting higher unemployment. I've been warning that Chair Powell's Fed would throw millions of Americans out of work, and I fear he's already on the path to doing so." I'm not sure what Elizabeth Warren's response to inflation would be. Do we just let it run? But that aside, there's clearly some posturing, some pressure to not let these interest rate hikes trigger a recession. That would also be a bad thing, and politicians are increasing the pressure. So maybe that is a reason, this political pressure, for the Fed to reverse course and change course earlier.

• 12:57David Hoffman?

  I'm just kind of triggered that Elizabeth Warren is trying to tweet at the Federal Reserve to influence monetary policy. Like, Elizabeth Warren is a politician, not an economist. Our friend Kyla, if you scroll down, Ryan, I'm pretty sure has the most liked tweet in response to this, where she responds to Elizabeth Warren and says, "This is an incredibly irresponsible thing to tweet," which I agree with. Like, let's not politi- can we stop politicizing our monetary policy? That is bad.

• 13:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't think we can, David, is the answer to your question. I think, no. And it's interesting, you said, trying to influence the Fed. One observation I have, we might get into this a little bit later, with some other politicians' tweets is, you said the word "influence." I think all politicians are influencers now. I mean, this is like a, look, we know the game. We see it in crypto Twitter all the time. This is a clout-chasing type tweet. You're not necessarily wanting the Fed to actually stop. Not that you actually think it's a good idea. You're kind of trying to collect the clout.

• 13:55David Hoffman?

  You're just being a populist?

• 13:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's an element of that, certainly, and that is the game that they're playing. Now, Powell, the game that he's playing is he is still saying that there is a ways to go. He's not responding to this political pressure, so continues to plan to increase interest rates. This is a quote from him, "We still have some ways to go," he told a press conference. That was on Wednesday. "I wouldn't see us considering rate cuts until the committee is confident that inflation is moving down to 2% in a sustained way. Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time." Restrictive policy stance for some time, not going to stop till we hit 2%. Where are we, David? 7%? There's a delta there. Other people are saying, "Hey, 2%?

• 14:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Powell, what's so bad about 3%? We can live with that in a post-COVID era." And that is the slippery slope he kind of, I guess, finds himself in, in this type of, in this type of climate.

• 14:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think, I think that, I think that's right. And I think there was a big conversation around the S and P, the stock market, and we're also seeing this in the crypto markets as well, where we got the, the lower than expected inflation and markets rallied. That's when Ether got all the way up to the high, high price of 1330. And Bitcoin jumped as well. The stock market jumped and then everything came right back down to where it was. And so, and then that bummed people out. It was like, yo, I thought this was good news. Like, why didn't we sustain this rally? And the conversations I've heard around this are all about, well, it's hard to sustain rallies when interest rates are high. And so, like, okay, maybe we're not going to dump, but like, having, going up in price

• 15:38David Hoffman?

  sustainably requires flows of buy pressure into these assets, into these risk on assets. And like, okay, we got this good news, we got this dopamine hit, but sustaining a rally when interest rates are as high as they are at 4 and 1/2%? And like, that's a bigger ask. And so, some people have, I mean, it's, they're not turning bearish, but it's hard to be optimistic when we can't sustain a rally because of, you know, there's still...

• 16:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, there's still some work to, especially when it's still uncertain. Like, we don't really know. You know, okay, so here's an interesting stat. A year ago at this time, if you're trying to predict what the Fed's going to do next, the Fed themselves predicted in December 2021, when asked what the Fed Fed Funds Rate would be at the end of 2022. So a year ago, they were projecting the end of 2022. Do you know what their projection said, David?

• 16:27David Hoffman?

  Tell me.

• 16:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  0.9%. All right, we're at 4.5% and they thought we would be at 0.9%. That's the FOMC projections. Do you know what their their forecast for inflation was? The beginning of last year, the end of last year?

• 16:44David Hoffman?

  2%? Yeah. Exactly what their target was?

• 16:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  2.6%. Actually, it's been, it's 7.1% to date. So, look, I don't know, it's just also clear to me that you can't always believe what the Fed is projecting. They're just like, kind of doing the...

• 17:02David Hoffman?

  This is nappy math.

• 17:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, they're just extrapolating the existing data of what they want to happen, always. Anyway, that's, that's what's happening in macro right now. What's happening in the the housing market, though, David?

• 17:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, it's still a macro conversation. There's an article out of Zero Hedge here that caught my eye, which the headline was, "9 Million Millennials Moved Back Home In With Their Parents This Year." And I think during COVID, a lot of innovation, a lot of millennials, you know, got out of their parents' home and to go like do stuff. And then the Fed jacks up the interest rates and we're seeing 9 million millennials moving back home. I think that about, there was a poll inside of the article that was like, all right, why did you move it? And it was all because of the economy. It was like, job insecurity, wanting to save money, can't afford rent.

• 17:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean millennials, they finally got out of their parents' home from like the 2008 crash in LA. Hey, Mom, Dad, I'm coming back.

• 17:57David Hoffman?

  On the backs of that, there's also this chart I saw on Twitter this week about a rising share of companies with debt servicing costs that are higher than profits. And of course, when you increase interest rates, if you have debt, you have to pay that debt back higher because the interest rates are going up. Therefore, there's a lot of companies out there that have debts, and as the interest rates go up and up and up, a higher and higher share of them are making less profit than they have available to send to pay back their debts, to service their own debts. Right now, Ryan, we are at almost 20% of companies inside of the United States with debt servicing costs that are higher than profits.

• 18:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 18:33David Hoffman?

  That seems like a large number.

• 18:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can't sustain that forever.

• 18:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? I mean, high interest rates are the zombie killer. That is like the stake through the head.

• 18:41David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 18:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I guess that has to work its way through the system.

• 18:45David Hoffman?

  Wait, no, that's not the right metaphor. High interest rates are a create the zombies.

• 18:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  They create them, but then they also like kill the, I guess the zombies can't be killed is the thing, right?

• 18:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the zombie, yes. You go from being a human to a zombie because of interest rates.

• 18:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I see. I'm just seeing a world where all of these firms, like, they become, they're not even reanimated corpses. They're just dead. They're just gone.

• 19:07David Hoffman?

  Well, yeah, so that's when unemployment, they like people lay people off, unemployment goes up. That's when this goes from a rising interest rates and a bear market to rising interest rates and depression.

• 19:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep.

• 19:19David Hoffman?

  And deflation.

• 19:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  You said the D word. Careful, careful. I'm not ready for that.

• 19:22David Hoffman?

  Sorry, recession, recession.

• 19:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, we'll stick with that. Give us some crypto takes, though.

• 19:27David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 19:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  What does this mean?

• 19:28David Hoffman?

  Onto crypto takes. So this is now about the asset prices of Ether and BTC versus some of the darlings that were of the second half of the bull market, the second half of 2020, 2021. This is a take from Vance Spencer. Looking back through the fog of war, the data points that are revealed today uncover the pieces of the puzzle from last year. If FTX was selling client ETH and BTC to buy Solana FTT serum, this has large implications about what organic ETH and Bitcoin price action would have looked like. And so this is the conversation that's been going on is like, oh, billions of inflows, billions of Bitcoin and ETH. Their inflows into FTX into Sam Bankman-Fried's slush fund, where did they go?

• 20:12David Hoffman?

  They a significant amount of those inflows probably went into the Sam coins. Solana FTT serum. Remember when Sam tweeted out, "Sell me all your soul at $3 and then F off?" Well, probably why he was so confident in that is because he was taking customer deposits and buying all of his bags with them. And so there's a broader conversation that the industry is currently having is to how legitimate some of the price action was in these highly illiquid alt layer one Sam coins, Solana FTT serum. And that has second order effects. Like, why are things like Aptos and Sui have insane billion-dollar valuations? Well, they rode on the backs of the valuations that Solana got. And so because Solana's price action was absolutely insane,

• 20:56David Hoffman?

  it created the alt layer one investment, like VC coin investment mania to try and ride on the backs of that. So Van Spencer is saying this whole, the whole second half of the 2021 bull market was fraudulent because it was propped up by this like illicit, illegal fraudulent buying pressure of customer inflows of Bitcoin and Ether into FTX and then Sam Bankman-Fried just propping them up. And so his second tweet is saying that the absence of a fraudulent seller of Bitcoin and ETH on the order of tens of billions of dollars, the additional absent fraudulent buyer of Solana, again on the order books of tens of billions of dollars, implies very different things about these ecosystems going forward. And then he ties this thing off and says, "The alt layer one thesis of yesteryear was essentially an intellectual framework

• 21:40David Hoffman?

  built around the first mover Solana, whose initial price appreciation appears to be driven by Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud. In my opinion, this is extremely damaging to the narrative that any alt layer one price action was organic." Oof, what a damning autopsy of the second half of 2021.

• 21:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's, I, look, I think there's merit to this. I, the, the run-up of alt layer ones, all of them, against ETH and Bitcoin did not make sense to me at the time.

• 22:08David Hoffman?

  It was very confusing.

• 22:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  And retrospectively, if people like Sam, or Sam in particular, was actually using depositors' funds, ETH and Bitcoin, and using those funds to actually...

• 22:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sell those assets and exchange them for Solana and some other Sam coins.

• 22:27David Hoffman?

  Which he was using as collateral, by the way. So he had to do that. Like, where did he get such a massive line of collateral? Well, he had collateralized FTT and collateralized Sol to borrow a ton.

• 22:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, the price charts now, they make more sense to me because like you could see definitely some demand for these ecosystems, but it felt inorganic the entire time.

• 22:44David Hoffman?

  And so Vance, in our most recent podcast with Vance a few months ago, he called the 2021 bull market, the first half, the high conviction rally, and the second half, the low conviction rally. And so Vance already, his intuition was already like, there's a difference here. There's a difference in these moments.

• 23:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just also want to call attention to people who have been right for a long time. And Vance Spencer is one of those people to me, like he kind of is starting to fit in a Chris Berninski camp for me of like, oh, these are voices I actually will listen to you. Why? Because they're proven over time and they've been right enough times. And so this is a signal that I often use and I think you could be right here.

• 23:25David Hoffman?

  Coming up next in the show, SPF got arrested. It's such a great day. Turns out his 4D chess was just him playing checkers. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. And after we'll cover all of that, we're going to talk about the run on Binance. Or nah, we'll get to some of the details, how much Bitcoin and how much stablecoins are actually outflowing out of Binance. We got the numbers. And of course, Sam Bankman-Fried's last insult to the industry, secretly buying a cherished media organization, no, not Bankless, and just really kicking us on his way out. So all of that and more, right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors to help you go Bankless. Arbitrum One is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web three landscape.

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• 25:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ryan, SBF is in jail. How's that make you feel? Well, I was surprised, actually, because what doesn't make sense to me, David, is the whole, like, aw shucks, gee, I didn't know anything about this speaking tour that he's been on, Good Morning America. And I was like, what does this guy know that we don't? So you have some kind of a get out of jail free card? Does he have some sort of bulletproof armor? We don't know. And so I was surprised. I'm not sure that much more makes sense. I'm surprised, but also relieved, like, cool. You know, you actually can't escape. From accountability after stealing $10 billion of money, no matter who you pay off.

• 26:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it made me feel kind of good to actually see some accountability here. How about you? Is that why you're wearing your SpongeBob sweater celebratory?

• 26:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, man. I mean, like, it's like I've been saying, you've got to be happy and optimistic even though we're at the bottom because we're at the bottom. And so when somebody like SBF gets arrested, it's like, man, we are turning a new page. The seller that sold all of our tokens is in jail. The seller is in jail. So that makes me happy. That's something worth being happy about. Like, look at that guy just getting escorted into a car by a bunch of Bahamian policemen.

• 27:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's where he was arrested, right?

• 27:07David Hoffman?

  In the Bahamas, yeah.

• 27:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is footage.

• 27:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, crazy that like he didn't.

• 27:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look how many people they sent.

• 27:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they sent, they sent a lot of policemen.

• 27:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  What did they expect? I mean, this, this is like, almost a dozen.

• 27:21David Hoffman?

  At least in this one shot, yeah, from, from what we can tell. And so, okay, so, so here's what happened. The Bahamian regulators, the Bahamian authorities released a statement. On December 12th, the Office of the Attorney General of the Bahamas is announcing the arrest by the Royal Bahamas Police Force of SBF, of FTX. SBF's arrest followed the receipt of formal notification from the United States that has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition. So the United States has filed charges against Sam. And as a result of that, they have not yet requested his extradition, but you could only assume. And so because that he is being charged by the United States, the Bahaman police arrested him.

• 28:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so he's arrested, he's in jail in the Bahamas, yet to be extradited. Is there like bail? Does he have the ability to make bail? Has he tried that? I mean, I know he has only 100,000 in his account, allegedly, but what's that looking like?

• 28:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, no bail for Mr. SBF. If he wanted to flee to a country that didn't have an extradition treaty with the United States, that window has officially closed. And so he will officially be judged inside of the United States by a court. Unlike, by the way, Theros Capital, who is in a country with no, with no extradition treaty. So SBF has been charged with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering.

• 28:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a lot.

• 28:47David Hoffman?

  That's a lot of things. That's a lot of things. So if you are interested, if you are tallying up the years for if he is guilty for all of those things, becomes guilty for all of those things, that is life. That's life in prison.

• 29:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Max charge. It's like something like 120 years or something like this?

• 29:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So not life in prison, but 120 years. So the rest of his life. Yeah.

• 29:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  That of course is max charge, though, which is hardly ever happens.

• 29:12David Hoffman?

  He's not yet guilty for those.

• 29:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, there was some discussion around this and I don't know. One of the conspiracy theories when he was arrested, like the night he was arrested was that, well, he was supposed to appear in Congress the very next day. So maybe this was some kind of block from him appearing in Congress.

• 29:29David Hoffman?

  He was going to testify in a hearing, but that was voluntary.

• 29:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is there any substance to that? Do you think that there's still some shenanigans going on with like, oh, this is the way to get him out of testifying in front of Congress?

• 29:44David Hoffman?

  That doesn't make any sense.

• 29:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like a worse thing.

• 29:47David Hoffman?

  Now he has to swear under oath in a court of law about what happened rather than a willing, like, involuntary testimony, like, whatever.

• 29:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  That take didn't make sense to me. There's another take, which is like, oh, clearly Caroline ratted him out.

• 30:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  And has some sort of plea bargain. Now that makes more sense to me, but I have no evidence that that's true. Do you have any thoughts on that?

• 30:09David Hoffman?

  She was seen in New York, blocks away from the Attorney General's office, like two weeks ago.

• 30:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Starbucks or a bakery or something.

• 30:19David Hoffman?

  And so then crypto Twitter deduced that that particular Starbucks or some bakery or whatever was just like eight blocks away from the Attorney General's office. Like, yeah, picking up a croissant and ratting out her business partner. I mean, remember, like, at least one of these people is a complete psychopath. And so at least. And so, and so when it comes time to not go to jail, somebody is going to like burn that.

• 30:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Prisoner's dilemma. Come on. Like, we know what this is already. That makes perfect sense to me. And remind people, Caroline was the CEO of Alameda, right?

• 30:52David Hoffman?

  Exactly. CEO of Alameda, yeah, allegedly SBF's short-term girlfriend and also fellow Adderall consumer.

• 30:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not only is he being put in jail and under charged for the financial crimes he listed, but the CFTC has a bone to pick with him, too. It's all kind of co-releasing on the same day. Another set of charges from the Commodities Futures and Trading Commission. What is this?

• 31:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they are suing Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX Trading, FTX.com and Alameda Research against the CFTC for commodities fraud. Yeah, so SDNY is also suing Sam Bankman-Fried. They had their indictment that was just unsealed the morning after they arrested him, charging Sam with four counts of wire fraud, two accounts of commodities fraud, one account of money laundering and one count of campaign finance violation.

• 31:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 31:41David Hoffman?

  Probably more than that. So eight total counts. Yeah, that guy is going to jail. Did you know, Ryan, that in, apparently in the FTX inner circles on Signal, there was a group chat called, that they had titled "Wire Fraud", and they were using it to send secret information about operations in the lead up to the company's spectacular.

• 32:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, a group chat between Sam, Caroline, FTX insiders? It was called "Wire Fraud"? As a haha funny joke?

• 32:09David Hoffman?

  Exactly. Yes, they just titled it "Wire Fraud", which is probably where they did the wire fraud.

• 32:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, that's going to be obviously presented in court. It's like, this is a bunch of children.

• 32:20David Hoffman?

  Your Honor, I didn't know.

• 32:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, okay, so here's the take. It's just, it really was a whole bunch of children, David.

• 32:26David Hoffman?

  It was a bunch of children.

• 32:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a lot of, so there's some speculation that turned out not to be true. One, one piece of speculation so far anyways, was that this guy's gonna get away with it completely, because he paid off the politicians and he bought the media institutions and he bribed everyone, and so he'll never go to jail, right? That was one take. Well, my thought was just like, we should wait a little bit. We've waited a little bit, and now here he is in jail. So that doesn't seem to be playing out. The other take was that SBF with his media tour, he's playing some kind of 4D chess where he's trying to garner public support. He's trying to like, gain sympathy, and this is why he went on Good Morning America and did that, like Bloomberg, he showed up in a, you know, Wall Street Journal, CNBC interview like,

• 33:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  the week after. All of these things, it just wasn't making sense. So people were like, he's playing 4D chess. David, I think we can say at this point, this man was not playing 4D chess. He is a child. He is a kid. He got in way over his head. He had no idea what the F he was doing. And, and now he's in jail. And that is the, like, the conclusion of that, in my opinion. I can't believe it, though, that we let a child manage billions of, of, like...

• 33:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of crypto's capital. Like, we gave him all of these, like, I don't mean you and I, but like, the industry writ large. We gave this child access to our private keys. What a massive mistake that turned out to be.

• 33:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, whoops. Well, lesson learned. And at least my faith in society and justice is restored. At least we are not, as a society, totally, completely corrupt. Although, all of the, like, very sketchy, terrible investigative journalism that was done by mainstream media, I think we could go back and cast another eye on why the hell that happened. But at least, our justice system was not duped by this fraud, which is the important thing.

• 34:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is important as well. And so, there are some hearings going on on Capitol Hill as well. Should we turn into this one from Representative Tom Emmer, who's been on the Bankless Podcast before?

• 34:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, let's hear what Tom Emmer has to say.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  And, Mr. Ray, I appreciate you mentioning your concerns in the beginning of my questioning about the concentration of power in a small group of individuals with no oversight. That is the exact problem that open and permissionless technology like crypto and blockchain solve. It solves for the problems of centralization. You stated in your testimony that you've never seen such a, quote, "utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to a complete failure of any internal controls or governance whatsoever," close quote. FTX had disastrous, or even non-existent, systems for accounting, audit, cash management, cybersecurity, human resources, risk management,

• 35:20Speaker 02

  and other unacceptable management practices that currently make your job to uncover the facts quite difficult. Fortunately, the immutable characteristics of public blockchains, that some people would care not to understand in this committee, allowed the crypto community to reveal Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud, and the on-chain public record will assist law enforcement moving forward. I encourage my colleagues to understand Sam Bankman-Fried's con for what it is: a failure of centralization, a failure of business ethics, and a crime. It is not a failure of technology. I've worked across the aisle since I came to Congress,

• 36:02Speaker 02

  so the future of crypto reflects American values, the same way the internet does today. For the most engaged members of Congress on crypto policy, the FTX collapse remind us of why we care so deeply about this technology. Decentralization is the point. Thank you. I yield.

• 36:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  There we go. My God. That's. I am. Decentralization is the point. I'm pretty sure I remember a few of us tweeting that out during the middle of the bull market. Well, he's paying attention. I mean, guys, remember Tom Emmer has been on the podcast. We've had this conversation with him and this is this is him on Capitol Hill talking about it. That was the the former former CEO of FTX. Was that John John Ray? Yeah. That who was kind of the witness on the stand there. All right, David, this is Tom Emmer again, this time on the SEC. You ready for this clip? Yeah. Oh, my God, it's so good.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  We know that Chair Gensler had more meetings with FTX than anyone else in the crypto industry. We understand that what was being negotiated was a framework for digital asset exchange registration and token registration with the SEC that would benefit both parties. It would expand the SEC's jurisdiction in exchange for the SEC's preferential treatment of FTX over other industry participants. We understand there was a lot of activity to move this idea forward, including the circulation of draft, short form disclosures that would enable filers to get tokens listed on this newly formed bespoke exchange. Mr. Ray, I know you're handicapped with the information you currently have obtained,

• 37:35Speaker 02

  but Chair Gensler refuses to answer our questions or testify before this committee. Will you commit to sharing with this committee any internal documents you come across regarding communication between FTX and Mr. Gensler or others at the SEC?

• 37:51Speaker 03

  We'll fully cooperate, you know, with the committee and the regulatory authorities with respect to our investigation.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Again, specifically, I just want copies that this committee will want copies of those communications to the extent they exist.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  We can certainly work with your staff to get you a.

• 38:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Certainly work with your staff to get you what you need.

• 38:10David Hoffman?

  Oh, God, what a, what a hero. God damn. But man, is that so damning of Gary Gensler. A quid pro quo agreement with FTX to hand over the keys of crypto to the SEC in exchange for preferential treatment and the ability for Sam to make his Sam coins, all of his, like all of his like portfolio, basically. The thumbs up from Gary Gensler. Wow. That does, that's not a good look. That is, uh, what, uh, I think if I was a lawyer, Ryan, I would call that a bad fact.

• 38:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that, that sounds like a bad fact. We'll see as the evidence comes out. But, um, if the evidence comes out and that proves to be the case, that is very damning, I think, for the SEC and, and Gensler in this case. Um, this is a clip from Kevin O'Leary testifying at the Senate hearing. And, uh, I think you've called this, David, this clip might be actually the worst take of the year. One of the worst things I've heard this year. Should we play this?

• 39:07David Hoffman?

  It's a tall mountain to, sorry. Uh, that is a, if this is, Ryan, the worst take of the year, there's been a lot of bad takes this year. So let's let the listeners decide. Why do you believe FTX failed?

• 39:20Speaker 04

  I have an opinion. I don't have the records. Here it is. These two behemoths that owned the unregulated market together and grew these incredible businesses in terms of growth.

• 39:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's Binance and FTX.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  Were at war with each other. And one put the other out of business intentionally. Now, maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe there's nothing wrong with love and war. But Binance is a massive, unregulated, global monopoly now. They put FTX out of business.

• 39:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, they did not.

• 39:56David Hoffman?

  Bro.

• 39:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, they did not.

• 39:58David Hoffman?

  What?

• 40:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sam Bankman Fried put himself out of business. Uh, look, Binance, who knows what Binance was doing. But if SBF and FTX actually had the funds that they claimed to have, if they weren't playing around with depositors' money. A run on the bank wouldn't have been successful. How are you blaming that on Binance and CZ? I don't understand that take, David.

• 40:23David Hoffman?

  CZ was like, he wasn't the whistleblower, but you don't blame the guy who expresses public criticism that accidentally tipped over a massive house of cards. The crazy thing is, is Kevin O'Leary was paid $15 million to be a public spokesperson, AKA paid shill, for FTX. Mr. O'Leary, I am going to inform you that FTX is not an institution anymore, and SBF is in jail, and you do not have to continue to fulfill your contract as the paid spokesperson.

• 40:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you should probably...

• 40:56David Hoffman?

  You can stop!

• 40:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  That can be clawed back as well. Like, you have no incentive to do this.

• 41:01David Hoffman?

  Give it back!

• 41:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know why you're trying to ruin your reputation in front of all of America, in front of the US Senate, by saying these ludicrous things.

• 41:08David Hoffman?

  Absolutely insane.

• 41:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, but let's all just take some, like, let's all take some personal accountability. No one forced Sam Bankman-Fried to steal depositors' funds.

• 41:20David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 41:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  No one forced him to do that. That wasn't like some competitor playing dirty games. This was all Sam.

• 41:28David Hoffman?

  It's all Sam. And, and probably a few others, who definitely enabled him. To really wrap this up, I want to bring up this tweet from Anthony Cezano, who tweeted out, "SBF down. Suzy, Kyle Davies, and Doquan are hopefully next." I think this is the year of, hopefully, the reckoning, right? Like, scammers infiltrated our industry in the last bull market. Suzy and Kyle Davies definitely committed fraud. Doquan, I mean, algorithmic stablecoin, he didn't know. He definitely kind of knew. But like, man, like, let's get these people charged and in jail. Please. We live in a society.

• 42:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, crypto definitely has to take out the trash a little bit and we have to have a purge. We have to be introspective about how this happened. David, on his way out, his parting gift, and I hope this is the last thing he leaves us. It turned out, we found out last Friday, that SBF secretly funded the crypto news site, The Block, media institution. The way he did that was pretty shady. Do you want to explain?

• 42:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the news here is that the CEO of The Block, Michael McCaffrey, resigned after failing to disclose $43 million of loans from FTX to The Block. These loans were apparently kept secret from the employees as McCaffey was the only member on the board of The Block. One $16 million batch of funding from Alameda was used in part to finance the purchasing of an apartment in the Bahamas, one of those Bahamian real estates, for The Block CEO, Mike McCaffey. He has, again, since stepped down. Moran, the chief revenue officer, finance officer of The Block, has taken over McCaffey's role as CEO and will look to restructure The Block to buy out McCaffey's stake in the company. This was crazy to me, Ryan.

• 43:18David Hoffman?

  The company, The Block, isn't profitable and had previously raised over $4 million to support the company. Its revenue mostly from ads and subscriptions is expected to be about $20 million this year, a source told Axios, who we are reporting with right now. And so a couple quotes from people that worked at The Block. "Mike never asked me or anyone in research to cover FTX or SBF in any particular way, or anyone else for that matter. We had complete discretion in our job." So this is Larry Sermack out of The Block, who's very well-respected in the crypto spheres. Additionally, another editor-in-chief, Sarah Kopit, said, "I'm proud of the work our journalists have done, especially covering the fallout of the FTX implosion."

• 44:01David Hoffman?

  And then continues in saying, "In my time, Mike has never had any undue influence on the newsroom. We've always been completely independent." Frank Chaparro, who is head of news at The Block, I believe, also had some public statements. Basically, SBF secretly bought The Block and did a deal with the CEO, bought him a...

• 44:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bribed him with an apartment.

• 44:23David Hoffman?

  Basically. And then the employees of The Block said that they all, no one knew any of this. Yeah, that's the news.

• 44:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's the news. I do feel bad. I know there are people of integrity at the block. I feel bad for them. I'm sure they were caught by surprise by this and that has to be absolutely devastating. So I mean, that's terrible. It's bad for the industry. I mean, what was Sam planning to do with this crypto media institution that he kind of shadow owned through shell companies and through bribes through the block CEO? You know, it was for a purpose. You know, there had to be some return on that investment in the form of good press, because that's what he was up to in traditional media and to see that corruption take, take hold in crypto media. You know, it's, it was, when I heard about this, David, I was like, it, it almost brought me down to those November lows

• 45:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  when I was like, just really upset about this whole thing because like, for so long, we've been talking about, hey, traditional media is not covering crypto the way it needs to be covered. Let's go crypto media. Crypto media, that's an answer to this. And you know, that's, that's the flag that Bankless is carrying and like Defiance and Blockworks and some others. And then here we are, one of the crypto media publications just have, you know, corruption from, from the inside out. And yeah, it's, it's very unfortunate. I hope they get over this. I hope the good people at the block are able to kind of forge past this and, and rebuild. But yeah, it's, it's pretty unfortunate.

• 45:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, quite. I, I do know that like Larry, Stephen, Frank, they all, I've always thought that they were upstanding individuals on net, the, some of the conversations in the space were, are like, yes, they're, they're great investigative journalists, they're great at being impartial, but on net, like the block, the people at the block all did seem to, these are not my words, simp for Sam and the SBF coins and like Mike Dudis, former owner of the block, Big Solana Bowl. So there's like alignment with that now, like kind of axis, the Sam coins, FTX axis, that like, even though they appeared to be very like forthcoming and impartial, ethical, they also were like

• 46:37David Hoffman?

  in that axis of crypto that was aligned with Sam. And so there's like, we don't really know any of the details.

• 46:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's hard to know. It's true.

• 46:44David Hoffman?

  It's very hard to know. And who knew what? Like, it's kind of crazy. Like people, like. People know about like the financials of a company like how, where do they think the money came from? Like, why were any questions?

• 46:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. I'm just has, I just don't know. That's the thing. But like, I will say one thing that David, my, my kind of circle of trust has definitely contracted in crypto from what it used to be. Like, I, I mean, crypto has always had this thing. It's like, verify, don't trust, right? And I've always kind of lived by that. But like, as you get to know people, as you kind of meet these institutions, you start to trust more and more people. That, that circle of trust has like definitely decreased here lately for me personally. And yeah, so I don't know, we'll just have to let long-term reputation speak for themselves. And that'll be the true test. It's the Lindy effect. So the block CEO has resigned. All right. What else we got? We've got-

• 47:37David Hoffman?

  Binance, Binance, the Binance bank run. Okay. So the Justice Department, Ryan, has turned their eyes over to Binance and apparently are weighing the charges against Binance and its executives, whether or not they should charge them with stuff.

• 47:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  And has this precipitated a bank run? Because these charges are going in the press? And so people are like, oh, Binance is the next to fall. And so they're starting like massive withdrawals from Binance?

• 48:02David Hoffman?

  Perhaps, yeah. So US Department continuing to weigh up charges against crypto exchange giant Binance for possible money laundering and criminal sanctions violations, according to Reuters. And so as a result of this, and I mean, see, I don't know if you've been following CZ lately, doing a lot of the whole like main, main character thing. And so as a result of that, there have been all time high outflows of out of Binance. Here's Nick Carter, who also tweeted out, I'm not the arbiter of proof of reserves or anything, but I also find Binance's proof of reserves a bit questionable, writing an article soon. And so there was an article out about Binance's proof of reserves. And the headline of this article is Binance's alleged crypto audit failed, not even its auditor would vouch

• 48:46David Hoffman?

  for it. And the subtitle is Binance says an audit shows proof of reserves of customer funds, but its auditor will not vouch for the reserves nor the methodology demanded by Binance. So this has, you know, people there- Very recent memory about the insolvency of exchange. And so as a result of this, there is the largest outflows out of Binance. 40,000 Bitcoin has flowed out of Binance in the last 24 hours this week or so. And then, but also Ryan, important to note that the remaining balance on Binance is 580,000 Bitcoins. So 40,000 outflows, not that crazy. 200, 2.2 billion dollars of stable coins flew outflowed out of Binance. The remaining balance is 20 billion.

• 49:28David Hoffman?

  So while there are all time highs of stablecoin outflows, there are 20 billion dollars of stablecoins reportedly left in Binance. And so like it's a, people are doing the whole bankless thing, which is great. But I mean, the, if this is a run on the bank, it's a pretty weak one.

• 49:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, like if it, first of all, if it's a run on the bank and Binance has all of the deposits, nothing to worry about. There's no such thing as a run on the bank because it's fully reserved. You only have to worry about run on the banks when it's a fractional system and Binance says they're not fractional, but can you trust them? Can you trust any bank? What we say is if crypto bit not your keys, not your coin, using exchange, then get out. That's how you should be using these crypto exchanges. But then when you zoom out, and this is, um, this is Nic Carter's tweet again, this, this is a bank run at Binance that you're all hyperventilating about. Like, look at the numbers here. It's kind of like barely a blip.

• 50:14David Hoffman?

  It's a blip, yeah.

• 50:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's not really a Binance bank run. That's kind of the thing. It's like, kind of overplayed, like just Bitcoin reserves are down, but they're down to like May levels, David?

• 50:27David Hoffman?

  It's, it's, and Binance reserves are almost at all time.

• 50:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  ETH, uh, ETH reserves are down to July numbers, maybe? I don't know. I mean, this is not really a thing. I think it's much ado about nothing. But like, so far anyway. But look, I, that's the thing.

• 50:44David Hoffman?

  But do we know that those are the reserves? We don't actually know. Are those, is that on-chain data? I don't know if that's on-chain data or not.

• 50:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, yeah, I like, don't know for sure, but so can you trust Binance? I mean, go bankless. Can you trust any crypto exchange? Just, just go bankless. Use these exchanges for what they're good for.

• 51:01David Hoffman?

  Don't ask the question, just withdraw.

• 51:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, just, just, just go bankless. But also I do feel like there's some scrutiny here that is maybe just like, you know, the, the nation state I've saw on saying, oh, we missed FTX, better not miss these guys. And what? Oh, they're, they're a foreign company. They don't have public financials. They're non-US, US. They must be shady. Don't like them. And so maybe there's some of that reaction going on too. So it's, it's hard to know at this stage, but we'll see.

• 51:27David Hoffman?

  Hard to know. All right. Well, that was all of the SBF exchange drama, all that stuff. That's over. Coming up next, MetaMask lands a huge partnership. We'll talk about that. And there is a lawsuit, Ryan, I don't know if you caught this, this week, a lawsuit against basically every celebrity who owns a Bored Ape. It's not looking good. And then they, we cut the three arrows capital redemption arc, but it's coming to an end. I'm having none of it. And of course, Donald Trump launches an NFT collection. So I'm sure the listener is going to stay tuned for all of that, right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors to help us go bankless. Sequence is the all-in-one developer platform you need to build web three games and applications. For your users, Sequence is a smart wallet,

• 52:09David Hoffman?

  and it's the easiest, most intuitive onboarding your users will ever experience and comes with all the features users need to feel empowered in the web three world. Multi-chain support, NFT display, and users can buy SFTs, NFTs and crypto directly with a credit or debit card. For developers, Sequence is the plug and play platform for web three games and apps. Their APIs let you bring NFTs, SFTs and tokens into your game or application. And a Sequence relayer enables gasless transactions for your users. Sequence already powers some of the best web three games like Skyweaver, NFT projects like Cool Cats and marketplaces like Nifty Swap. And Sequence is compatible with all the EVM chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Optimism and Avalanche. So go to sequence.xyz slash bankless to start building

• 52:54David Hoffman?

  or speak with the Sequence team today. If you've been listening to Bankless, you know that we're fans of the modular blockchain thesis. The idea that blockchains will separate execution from data availability and consensus, allowing all three to become the best versions of themselves. And Fuel has built the fastest modular execution layer in the industry. By supporting parallel transaction execution, Fuel unlocks significantly faster throughput for the Web3 world. Fuel also goes beyond the limitations of the EVM with its own Fuel VM, which is more efficient and optimized, opening up the design space for developers. And lastly, Fuel brings a powerful developer experience with its own domain-specific language, Sway, and a supportive tool chain called Fork. With Fuel, you can have the benefits of smart contract languages like Solidity while adopting

• 53:37David Hoffman?

  the improvements made by the Rust tooling ecosystem, letting the Fuel development environment go beyond the limitations of the EVM. If you want to learn more, there's a link in the show notes to see how you can get involved with a Fuel network.

• 53:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Biggest news of the week here, David, in my opinion. It's optimistic news. This is MetaMask tweeting out, "Our US users will now be able to fund their wallet with ETH via..." Who? PayPal!

• 53:59David Hoffman?

  PayPal!

• 54:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Rolling out in the US in the next few weeks. PayPal plus MetaMask, a combination I didn't think would happen till like 2025 or beyond. It's now available, so you can get ETH in your MetaMask wallet. Is that what this means?

• 54:12David Hoffman?

  That's exactly what this means. And so I'm just loving how direct this flow of funds is. So PayPal, which hooks into your bank account, and then hooks into your MetaMask address. And it doesn't have to be your MetaMask address. It can be your ledger inside of MetaMask. So you can go from bank account to your ledger via the partnership between MetaMask and PayPal. The previous MetaMask onboarding, like on-ramps, have been crypto natives like Moonpay, like Wire. I mean, it's hard to beat PayPal. I've always been frustrated by how small that pipeline is from funds into through MetaMask. Credit card fees inside of MetaMask were like 2.5%.

• 54:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's expensive.

• 54:51David Hoffman?

  It was super expensive. That pipe was super constricted. Now with a PayPal partnership inside of MetaMask, that flow is just way bigger.

• 54:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and look, you can skip the FTX in the middle. You don't even have to. You just go from your bank directly to MetaMask. That's a great thing for FIA. On rampant to DeFi. David, this is cool, too.

• 55:09David Hoffman?

  This is huge.

• 55:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was officially decided, kind of the ETH governance world, that EIP 4844, which is proto Dank starting, which just to remind you, scales layer twos on Ethereum absolutely massively. What is this, like a 10x gain?

• 55:23David Hoffman?

  Yes, 10x gain is like the floor. It's really, it can be as high as 100x depending on how.

• 55:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  10 to 100x gain. And so it was decided that EIP 4844 will be included in Ethereum. That's official. Now, that's not the next Ethereum hard fork, right? I think the next hard fork is probably still just going to be withdrawals.

• 55:40David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 55:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Which is good. We need that. But this could be a hard fork coming this year that we get EIP 4844. I think more work needs to be done. So there's no official timeline yet, but that's the possibility.

• 55:51David Hoffman?

  Well, there's never any official timeline because that's how we live our lives in Ethereum. But it is Liam, who's privy to these conversations, Liam Horn at Optimism. He says, "It will be in a fast follow hard fork after Shanghai." So no specific dates, but the roadmap is a fast follow.

• 56:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. As Gandalf says, "A wizard is never late."

• 56:13David Hoffman?

  Exactly.

• 56:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  He arrives precisely on time. So does Ethereum updates. What's this, David?

• 56:17David Hoffman?

  So yeah, just more layer two stuff. Optimism has all time high in transactions yet again. Oh God, that is just great. The layer twos have been in a bull market, a transactional bull market ever since their existence.

• 56:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you know? Is anyone talking about it? Bankless is talking about it?

• 56:33David Hoffman?

  Yes. Arbitrum and Optimism, when you add their transactions together, you almost get an equivalent amount of transaction volume as the Ethereum main chain itself. And that is just those two layer twos. When you add in the rest of them, all the network of layer twos on top of Ethereum, you automatically, you definitely get beyond Ethereum layer one in transactional volume. Layer twos are just absolutely crushing it. There's always a bull market somewhere, like I like to say.

• 56:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, Vitalik said something similar too in our conversation with him about bullishness on Layer 2. It's coming out Monday. David, you were really excited about this FII application. What is FII?

• 57:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so FII underscore XYZ on Twitter, or FII land, is announcing that they mainnet is here. So what is FII? It is like an evolution on DGEN score. So what is DGEN score? You would load up your wallet, it would give you a number, which would like give you a resume. It's like, how DGEN are you? Like, what did you go, like, what food farms did you ape into? Like, it's like a resume. Like, how much did you do on Ethereum? I remember, I think, talking to Vance Spencer, actually. He was like, yeah, somebody, some applicant came into framework offices and applied for a job, and he showed us like a DGEN score of like 4. Lower is better, by the way. That means you're the fourth most DGEN person on Ethereum. And we hired him instantly. Anyways.

• 57:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  For on-chain resume, people.

• 57:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's an on-chain resume. Okay, so FII is a digital landscape. It's like an 8x8 grid, but I'm sure you can make it bigger. And because of what your Ethereum address has done, that you load up into FII, you can claim little units of land. And so because I've traded on Uniswap, I have a little Uniswap trophy. Because I've traded a lot on Uniswap, I have a big Chad Uniswap trophy.

• 58:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you really? Can I see yours?

• 58:17David Hoffman?

  Okay, so you can see the one that I have at davidhoffman.eth. I'm not showing the one that is on my secret wallet.

• 58:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is it awesome?

• 58:23David Hoffman?

  It's awesome. Yeah.

• 58:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know you really want to show that, though.

• 58:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I know. And so like, the gas truck on the bottom right, the 2x1 gas truck.

• 58:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is yours?

• 58:32David Hoffman?

  This is mine. This is mine.

• 58:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is my web3 traffic.

• 58:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so I've used Optimism, I've used Uniswap. Some of these are free, just to populate the land. That gas truck on the bottom right, I got by spending more than 1 ETH on gas. The OpenSea ship.

• 58:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's not something to be proud of, David. That's a waste. You're wasting your ETH. You're spending it. You should be saving it.

• 58:51David Hoffman?

  Sorry, brother. Gotta buy the NFTs. The OpenSea ship in the top left, I got that one for buying, like, I think, 5 NFTs on OpenSea.

• 59:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is awesome.

• 59:01David Hoffman?

  So it's a place of, a way to visually showcase your on-chain activity. It's like your on-chain footprint.

• 59:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is cool. And these look like chess pieces here. These are just

• 59:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, those are actual called chess pieces. Yeah.

• 59:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're called chess pieces. This is awesome. So how'd you get this like bank vault?

• 59:18David Hoffman?

  That one's a freebie. That one's just a free to populate your land. Yeah.

• 59:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the highest one. Is that like a dog on top of this building? This is really fun.

• 59:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's super cute. The designer, if you're, if people are familiar with the Nouns ecosystem, one of the same artists behind Nouns DAO. And so it was like one of the first times like I've had fun on Ethereum in a really long time. And this also plays into one of the things that we're talking about with Fatalik on the show is like identity. This is an identity application.

• 59:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is what identity looks like when you separate it from the social security number.

• 59:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this is my identity. So it's cool. No customer deposits, no yield, just like a playing on a fun little cute little landscape. I thought it was pretty fun.

• 59:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's pretty cool. We have a disclosure here too, don't we David?

• 1:00:00David Hoffman?

  Yes, we do have a disclosure. Both Ryan and I are investors in Fy. So yeah. Proud investor, you know, that's a great app. Nice job, Tim.

• 1:00:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's really cool. What about this? DeFi's central bank. That's what they call Maker DAO these days. Not quite a central bank, whatever. They relaunched their 1% fixed yield for DAI holders. People are like, just 1%? I'm like, 1%, but like, you know, what more do you want? All the 8% yield we had.

• 1:00:26David Hoffman?

  It's gone.

• 1:00:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gone into smoke. That's pretty darn expensive from a risk return perspective. This is back to old times, I guess. DAI used to have an interest rate. Now it does again.

• 1:00:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And it's also important that that 1% is not being paid for by somebody else that is being paid for by the protocol.

• 1:00:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, no Ponzi?

• 1:00:43David Hoffman?

  No Ponzi. No Ponzi. Yes, back to fundamentals. You gotta love it.

• 1:00:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that why it's only 1%?

• 1:00:48David Hoffman?

  Yes, because it's sustainable. Yeah. So long-term DeFi Ethereum veterans will remember the DAI savings rate, which got turned off as soon as interest rates in, inside of crypto went to zero.

• 1:01:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you remember how juicy that baby was back in 2018?

• 1:01:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it was, it was like seven or eight percent. Yeah, because yeah, DAI was trading below a peg for so long. It traded down to like 94 cents or something. Anyways, the DAI savings rate is back. You can get a, a risk-free 1%. And when I say risk- Risk free, I mean, no counterparty risk. There's other risks out there like smart contract.

• 1:01:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Protocol risk.

• 1:01:22David Hoffman?

  Protocol risk, but in the same way that ETH staking is risk free, Maker Dow's die savings rate is also risk free and that die savings rate is up to 1%. Anyways, moving on, tweet out of Sazil that I thought was really, really cool was talking about the, you know how interest rates are turning over, Ryan, like starting to peak? Daily OFAC compliant blocks are also turning over.

• 1:01:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, I was told that would go to 100% and never change.

• 1:01:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, so the non OFAC compliant blocks are on the up and Sazil puts out his little analysis as to why that's the case and it's because of so many, so many of the things that just made me not really worry about censorship in the first place. Flashbot's open sourcing their relay and builder infrastructure, more non censoring relayers coming online, relayers accepting submissions from external builders, and then also people using Flashbot's new innovation Minbid, like OFAC compliance has never been a real thing in Ethereum.

• 1:02:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know who's not worried about OFAC compliance at all in Ethereum?

• 1:02:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Justin Drake. How do I know that? Bankless Bulls episode with Justin Drake, Anthony Sisano and DC Investor that comes out the 26th. Let me tell you guys, it's bullish.

• 1:02:33David Hoffman?

  It's very bullish.

• 1:02:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you thought we were gonna quit recording, putting a podcast during the holidays, you thought wrong.

• 1:02:38David Hoffman?

  I'm only getting more bullish.

• 1:02:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless, don't stop. David, big news here, alright?

• 1:02:45David Hoffman?

  Big news, the biggest news.

• 1:02:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of course, on truthsocial.com, this is a Donald Trump official announcement that he is getting into the NFT market. Good time to get in, I think, when the market's down, David, but he is rolling up Trump digital trading card collection.

• 1:03:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Trump cards. Collect your Trump cards here for the low, low price of $99 per card.

• 1:03:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  God, this. Buy it via credit card.

• 1:03:12David Hoffman?

  This website is so perfectly built for Trump's base.

• 1:03:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  This looks very, very sweepstakes bonuses. Yeah, you got it all here.

• 1:03:24David Hoffman?

  If I saw this, if somebody sent me this like website, it's like, hey, should I buy this NFT? I'd be like, this is a scam, bro.

• 1:03:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a scam.

• 1:03:32David Hoffman?

  To each their own. He's pulling some of the leafs out of Gary V's book. So if you, there are certain NFTs that you could buy. Miami Dinner with Donald Trump. Spend a memorable evening in Miami for an exclusive dinner hosted by Trump. Or you could get the Mar-a-Lago Cocktail Hour, which is an NFT of Trump in a spacesuit. Experience a meet and greet with Trump in his luxurious private Palm Beach resort. Play golf with Trump and your friends. Join Donald on the green for an exclusive one hour of golf with your two closest friends. Wow.

• 1:04:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. I want the NFT that makes it so he doesn't run for president again.

• 1:04:11David Hoffman?

  I don't think that NFT exists. I just love how all of these NFTs, like most of them, just have Donald Trump in an extremely heroic outfit and pose.

• 1:04:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is influencer NFT world. Do you know, okay, so this is deployed, because I've read the FAQs, on, what is it? Which chain is it? What chain? Polygon. Polygon, I got the Trump NFTs. Yeah, I'm just surprised it took Trump so long.

• 1:04:34David Hoffman?

  Honestly, like, yeah, he kind of feel like late to the game, but you know, to each their own. Trump NFTs are here.

• 1:04:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can buy them, of course.

• 1:04:42David Hoffman?

  He did not get the digital collectible memo. He is still branding these things as NFTs. He did not get the rebrand. Yeah, he forgot to rebrand.

• 1:04:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Trump's still bullish NFTs.

• 1:04:51David Hoffman?

  Yes, still bullish on NFTs.

• 1:04:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bullish? Question mark? I don't know. All right, we got this. This is a story you want to dig into. Celebrity promoters sued over board ape NFT endorsements. What is going on here?

• 1:05:03David Hoffman?

  So we were always suspicious that these celebrities weren't intrinsically bullish on board apes. It was much more likely that they were given a board ape and then they were able to talk about it in pop culture. Turns out it gets even more shady than that, very much more shady. So this particular suit names Jimmy Fallon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Kevin Hart, Stephen Curry. Snoop Dogg, Serena Williams, Post Malone, The Weeknd, and Foun's production company Electric Hot Dog and Universal TV. Those are the defendants. This is what who is being named in the suit and claims that most of them were recruited by talent manager Guy Osiri,

• 1:05:44David Hoffman?

  who spearheaded a scheme with Yuga Labs to discreetly pay them for their endorsements through crypto firm Moonpay. So Guy Osiri, he's a talent manager in Hollywood, talent manager for like all many of the people I just listed, also Madonna and U2. And Osiri is allegedly linked to several of the celebrity promoters through their early investments in Moonpay. So by increasing the demand for Bored Apes Yacht Clubs NFTs and Yuga Labs Ape Coin Crypto Token, the suit alleges that they also increased demand for Moonpay. So there is just this incestuous network of Yuga Labs, Moonpay, and all of these celebrities like, hey, Moonpay, we're going to give celebrities Bored Apes, and then we're also going to do that through your payment services.

• 1:06:28David Hoffman?

  And so we're going to pay celebrities for that through Moonpay to induce demand for Moonpay. We'll talk about Moonpay. And so quote from this article, "Osiri, the Moonpay defendants and the promoted defendants each shared strong motive to use their influence to artificially create demand for the Yuga Securities, which in turn would increase use of Moonpay's crypto payment service."

• 1:06:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, the Yuga Securities?

• 1:06:48David Hoffman?

  They're calling them securities, yeah.

• 1:06:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why would it like the NFTs are securities?

• 1:06:51David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, Yuga Labs is being being I'm I'm on board with that one. Like, it's kind of hard to argue that they're not.

• 1:06:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  NFTs? You're on board with, wait, you're on board with Bored Apes being securities, David?

• 1:07:04David Hoffman?

  Because, well, it's kind of hard to defend that they're not when they have the whole entire Bored Ape ecosystem and the Bored Ape is like an ownership stake over the Bored Ape Metaverse. Yeah, it doesn't look good. I wouldn't want to be the lawyer having to defend that one.

• 1:07:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I understand the like the ownership property, but like, how can it like, why is why is a Bored Ape different than an Axie, for example, an Axie Infinity or a collectible like a sword? Like, you know, Gensler wants to make everything a security, right, David?

• 1:07:31David Hoffman?

  Yes, it's because like the Yuga Labs is making this Bored Ape ecosystem, this Bored Ape universe. And so it's very claimable that as Yuga Labs, a centralized party, the efforts of this centralized party is going to increase the value of a Bored Ape, but whether or not they can execute on making the Bored Ape Metaverse or not. That is kind of a security.

• 1:07:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  But Gary would make that claim about ETH too, and he would call that a security.

• 1:08:00David Hoffman?

  Well, then we get into the nature of client teams, like client teams are different than Yuga Labs. I don't know. I think this one is, I, again, all I'm saying is I would not want to be the lawyer who has to defend it. That's not true. Anyways, I want to go back to the story. And so, at the same time, Osiri could use Moonpay to obscure how he paid his, off his celebrity cohorts for their direct or off-label promotions of the Yuga financial products. In an episode of The Tonight Show on November 11th, 2021, Fallon promoted Moonpay and the Bored Ape NFT collection by announcing that he got his first NFT through the crypto firm, which bills itself as a white glove service designed to help celebrities buy digital assets. He did not disclose that he had a financial stake in Moonpay.

• 1:08:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  To me, that's the big piece, honestly, is the disclosure, is you have to disclose, right? Promotions are one thing, but like, you have to separate what's a promotion and what's not, and when you're paid and what's not. I think that's the first thing. Whether this thing's a security or not, that's a bridge too far for me.

• 1:08:56David Hoffman?

  That's not, that's not what the story is. That's not what the story is. But yeah. Also, like, look at the net effect of this. What were the brands of Bored Apes? Like, the Bored Ape community holders? Like, why do I have this, like, anti-Bored Ape resistance? It's because the Bored Apes are known to, like, lose their private keys and get fished all the time because they're normies. And so, if we, with the, sorry to all the proud Bored Ape holders, that's kind of the brand of a Bored Ape holder. And so, all of these celebrities are promoting Bored Apes to, like, their, like, you know, mainstream normie audience.

• 1:09:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Isn't that what we want? Like, mainstream adoption? That's what we want, though, David. I mean, I'll push back on that, too.

• 1:09:31David Hoffman?

  Not through secret paid chills.

• 1:09:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not through that. 100% guaranteed.

• 1:09:35David Hoffman?

  And so, like, it onboarded a cohort of people who weren't ready to go bankless, and then they paid a ton of money for their Bored Apes, and then they got fished because they, like, the connections between the novice nature of Bored Ape holders and the fact that there was a ton of celebrity endorsements, that connection is really strong for me.

• 1:09:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's interesting. I'll have to let this one sit, but I do, the thing that is very clear to me is there needs to be a complete transparency around what is provided as promotional and what's not. It very much seemed like when I watched the Fallon show, that Fallon was like, "I'm bullish NFTs and I've been Bored Ape-pilled and I bought this thing." And like, if there was some knowledge or disclosure that there was a payment for that, that it was actually a sponsorship, then-

• 1:10:24David Hoffman?

  Right. Sponsored by Bored Ape. "I'm bullish Bored Apes, sponsored by Bored Apes."

• 1:10:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. That's the thing that sticks out to me.

• 1:10:31David Hoffman?

  Speaking of promotions, Bankless NFTs are here. So we've been going through the Genesis Collection. We originally minted the SBF versus Eric Voorhees episode, and then we did the Crypto Renaissance, and then last week, we did the Ownership Economy with Legion. And so there's five Genesis Collections. Three of them have been released. They have all sold out inside of four blocks, and the fourth of fifth is going live today. This is Bankless promoting our own NFTs. So disclaimer!

• 1:11:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Disclaimer. These are, yeah. And actually, so I got my first one last time, David. I actually got managed to get into the Legion. And the next one has also been released. It is one of my favorite episodes of all time.

• 1:11:15David Hoffman?

  Of course.

• 1:11:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ultrasound Money-

• 1:11:18David Hoffman?

  With Justin Drake.

• 1:11:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  With Justin Drake. So that is happening. And 10% of the proceeds go to wherever Justin Drake wants. I forget, who did he select?

• 1:11:26David Hoffman?

  To ultrasound.eth. And so 10% of the revenue and royalties is going to help-

• 1:11:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ultrasound money, is that right?

• 1:11:33David Hoffman?

  The address is ultrasound.eth, and then that goes to the ultrasound.money website. So if you buy the Justin Drake Ultrasound Money Podcast Collectible, 10% of the royalties and mint revenue goes to pay for the development of ultrasound.money.

• 1:11:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  My friends, this website will sustain us all through the bear market. Do not worry, this website is eternally bullish.

• 1:11:55David Hoffman?

  That link is collectibles.bankless.com. I think, believe the mint goes live noon, eastern, west, no, noon, noon east, noon eastern, yep.

• 1:12:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  EST. All right, we got some more bad boys to tie off before this whole-

• 1:12:08David Hoffman?

  Bad boys, bad boys!

• 1:12:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  SBF thing is over, so where are Kyle Davies and Suzu hanging out these days? I think I need a membership to look at this article, but "Vaporized One Trillion" was the title in the New Yorker. I believe, New York Magazine, rather. Where are Kyle Davies and Suzu hanging out, David?

• 1:12:27David Hoffman?

  They're probably, I think, in Dubai. They're in Dubai. And so some of the parts of this article, I think, are entertaining, I will say. And so, and so I'll read off parts of this, parts of this, this article. "Her," as in "her the boat," "would-be captains showed off pictures of the $50 million vessels at parties bragging that it would be, quote, 'bigger than all of the richest billionaires got in Singapore,' and described plans to adorn the state rooms with projector screens, creating a waterborne gallery for their growing collection of digital art in the form of NFTs." Wow. "Is that not the most toppy top signal of all time? This super yacht was the largest by well-established boatbuilder San Lorenzo ever sold in Asia,

• 1:13:12David Hoffman?

  a triumph of Crypto Newvo's reach." I don't know, "Nuvo reach"?

• 1:13:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crypto's Nuvo reach. That's like the new rich.

• 1:13:20David Hoffman?

  Cool. "Sick. It represents the beginning of a fascinating journey. The name of the buyers had in mind was cleverly chosen, an inside joke nodding to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that would both thrill their social media acolytes and would be intelligible to all the pathetic poor no-coners out there. The name of the boat, of course, Much Wow." That's actually not a crypto meme. That's just the normal Doge meme, but, you know, whatever.

• 1:13:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  They co-opted it.

• 1:13:45David Hoffman?

  Yep. Okay, last paragraph. "Her buyers," again, "her the boat," Suzu and Kyle Davies, two Andover graduates who ran a Singapore-based hedge fund called Three Arrows Capital, "never got the chance to spray champagne across Much Wow's bow. Instead, in July, the same month the boat was set to launch, the duo filed for bankruptcy and disappeared before making their final payment, marooning the unclaimed trophy in her breath in La Cesbia on the Italian coast." And I want to just pull out two quotes from an article that Suzu and Kyle Davies said, because they, Ryan, were, if you have been watching them on Twitter, were trying to go through some sort of redemption arc with SBF. As soon as SBF was, was, you know, being dragged through the coals on crypto Twitter,

• 1:14:28David Hoffman?

  Suzu and Kyle Davies came out of hiding on Twitter and started also trying to drag SBF through the coals. And then crypto Twitter was absolutely having none of it. It's like, "Wait, no, you guys are criminals too."

• 1:14:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  We haven't forgotten.

• 1:14:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we know who you are.

• 1:14:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  A few months, guys.

• 1:14:43David Hoffman?

  And so two quotes that they have tweeted, both tweeted out or put into an article. Suzu, it's a long story, but we were scammed just like you guys. That is a quote from Suzu. And then also Kyle Davies, we understand that FTX hunted our positions, taking absolutely no responsibility whatsoever, saying it was Sam. We just got screwed just like you guys. We're just a bunch of normies, just like you guys who got axed by SBF. Absolutely insane. Absolutely insane. This is Nic Carter's take, calling Suzu and Kyle Davies carbon copies of FTX.

• 1:15:23David Hoffman?

  Because that's exactly, excuse me, of SBF. Because what were they doing? They are refusing to talk to liquidators, but also doing a press tour on crypto Twitter, trying to like

• 1:15:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Carbon copies of SBF, mini SBF. Well, SBF is in jail, so I don't know what the next destination is.

• 1:15:42David Hoffman?

  Put him in jail.

• 1:15:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Does seem like Do Kwon is in Serbia right now. So not in South Korea. Every time I've seen him tweet, I haven't looked in a while, but over the past few months, he says like, I'm fine. I'm right here. Like, you know, if the authorities want to come talk to me, I'm right here. I'm just in my house. Reports that he is in Serbia. That's the country that's harder to extradite from, I'm sure, if you're in South Korea.

• 1:16:07David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes. In Serbia, which, you know, kind of formerly a gulag, so it's not like a nice place to be. Also wanted by Interpol.

• 1:16:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. Well, there we go. This is the bad boys on the run. Something else that floated by my desk this week was a bill by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Marshall. This is a Republican Democrat combo. It's probably the most significant attack on digital freedom I've ever seen. One of the things this bill does, it's anti crypto bill. It turns validators into money services business. Opt the AML KY seed, register, and all the state registry, all of the different places you need to register financially. It completely outright, David, bans financial privacy. So you know that whole tornado cash thing? It's like if you on-chain privacy, mixers, all of it, it's explicitly named. No can do. By the way,

• 1:16:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  they get the level of detail right here. Like, look at this, in this money service, they're talking about MEV searchers. They use that term in the draft bill. Validators, other independent network participants, they know exactly what they're targeting. That's a 400 level term. Totally. I mean, they probably listened to Bankless in order to like craft a bill like this. And what this does is it turns America into a full-on surveillance state. So my comment here in the tweet was, this is how Western democracies die. I really feel strongly that if we institute this type of bill, like, we're goners. We're going the way of like other surveillance countries, authoritarian countries, like the way of China, that sort of thing. Now, what's interesting about this kind of bill is because like, I'm not in

• 1:17:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Capitol Hill, does this bill actually have a chance? And I think that's where the second order analysis really, really comes into this. And so, you know, we tweeted about it back and forth, including inviting Elizabeth Warren on the Bankless podcast. And by the way, anyone from Elizabeth's office, you guys are listening right now, we'd love to talk to Senator Warren about this bill and about crypto. We're not shadowy super coders, like this is David in a subway photo. This guy does not look like a criminal to me. Like, we're friendly, we're happy to have a debate, our conversation, anything else you'd like. But the question to Jake Travinsky is, is this bill like, really a thing? Or, like, what is this? And he says, no, it has no chance whatsoever on Capitol Hill. He says,

• 1:18:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  and I quote, "This is sort of her thing," talking to Elizabeth Warren, "exploiting unrelated news to make headlines with crypto crackdown bills, each one more extreme than the last one, to keep the outrage machine humming. For example, earlier this year, Russia invades Ukraine, let's ban crypto." So, that's the thing. I mean, like- Crypto, the thing that put body armor on Ukrainian citizens. Yeah. First. At some level, I felt like I needed to respond to this, right? We need to take a stand and just like, but at another level, it's kind of playing into her game, which is interesting. It's like, turning, our politicians have turned into influencer clout chasers, haven't they? Fortunately, this bill, according to Jake, does not have a chance whatsoever.

• 1:19:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's not a real threat, but this kind of posturing is, I think, a threat. Anyway, don't have to be worried about this bill specifically, but we have to be ever vigilant, I think, against these sorts of things. I have no idea why a senator would think this is a good idea, or is at all- Why it would have anything to do with American values, but yeah, that's the take.

• 1:19:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I wonder how many just wasted man hours went into producing this bill so Elizabeth Warren could just wave it around, but I don't really want to explore that question anymore.

• 1:19:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, let's explore some raises this week. BlockNative, they raised $15 million. BlockNative is one of those, I guess, not MEV searchers.

• 1:19:46David Hoffman?

  It provides the data to MEV searchers. BlockNative is like the pre-chain layer, the mempool infrastructure. If you're an MEV searcher or a block builder, you would probably tap into BlockNative.

• 1:19:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Still getting funded. And here's another thing, Senator Warren wants to ban, which is on-chain privacy. What's this, David?

• 1:20:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Aztec raises $100 million to build an encrypted Ethereum. So Aztec is like a private layer two, is a ZK rollup, that is two layers of ZK, to allow you to have scale and privacy. And so it's like a VPN. You put your money in Aztec and then Aztec goes and yield farm on the layer one on your behalf. So it's like a private VPN for Ethereum. Pretty cool.

• 1:20:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, a way to describe this is encrypted Ethereum is another way to describe this.

• 1:20:30David Hoffman?

  And disclaimer, both BlockNative and Aztec, Ryan and I are investors in.

• 1:20:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we're excited. Also, jobs, guys. It's our weekly time to remind you that there are still jobs in crypto. It's a great place to be during the build market. Alchemy is hiring a backend engineer. Uniswap is hiring a senior frontend engineer. A diagram ventures needs an associate for crypto venture creation. Rabbit Hole needs business ops and strategy lead. Diagram needs a senior principal again for crypto venture creation. Maker Dow is hiring legal counsel. You guys can find all of that at the banklist.pallet.com job site. David, what do we have coming up next?

• 1:21:08David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, we got some hot takes out of crypto Twitter, which are nice and hot this week. And then Ryan and I got what we are bullish on moving forward into 2020, 2023. And then two memes of the week, I think, two weeks?

• 1:21:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Double meme.

• 1:21:19David Hoffman?

  Double memes. Two memes of the week this week, right after we talk to some of these fantastic tools to help you go bankless from our sponsors. TrueFi is DeFi's largest credit protocol, connecting global lenders with institutional-grade lending opportunities. TrueFi has completed over $1.7 billion in originations and paid out nearly $35 million to lenders, proving that DeFi is ready to take its next big leap into the $8 trillion credit market. TrueFi gives lenders like you access to sustainable, high-yield opportunities backed by real-world investments, usually reserved for high-net-worth individuals. At the same time, fund managers use TrueFi's financial infrastructure to bring their portfolios on-chain, benefiting from the global liquidity, cost savings, and transparency of DeFi. TrueFi is a decentralized financial utility.

• 1:22:03David Hoffman?

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• 1:22:45David Hoffman?

  DESO's storage advantages make it finally possible to build infinite state applications that can efficiently store and index large amounts of content and data fully on-chain. DESO also offers multiple crypto-native monetization primitives for developers and creators, including social NFTs, social DAOs, social tokens, and social tipping. So in order to experience the social layer of Web3, go to deso.com and claim your username. That's D-E-S-O dot com.

• 1:23:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, take of the week. Here's one for me. You want to read it out, David?

• 1:23:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Ryantron Adams says, "DeFi has proof of reserves built in." Perhaps we should try that.

• 1:23:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  What a crazy thought.

• 1:23:25David Hoffman?

  What a crazy thought.

• 1:23:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, the, the way out, the way forward has been in front of us the whole time. It's like DeFi hasn't been tried and, and found failing. It's been like, not tried, fully. We have the answer. It's called DeFi. This is proof of reserves built in.

• 1:23:41David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:23:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, and so pretty bullish that we'll be able to rebuild on that kind of a foundation moving forward. Here's a take from Vance Spencer. David, read it out.

• 1:23:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Vance Spencer says, really feel like there's a lot of innovation happening in DeFi right now. Uh, and then he follows and says, people are asking for examples. So he gives them payment for order, order flow protocols. That's, uh, something like.

• 1:24:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  MEV stuff?

• 1:24:01David Hoffman?

  MEV stuff, yes. Manifold finance is what he might be referring to there. Liquid staking, hockey stick growth, NFT royalty experimentation, regionalized slash verticalized DeFi, layer two DeFi ecosystems, low latency use cases and better front ends and wallets. And so these are the things that Vance has identified as getting a bunch of development right now.

• 1:24:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm super excited about the better front ends and wallets coming. I think that's going to make onboarding a lot easier.

• 1:24:26David Hoffman?

  Account abstraction, smart contract wallets. Please, please, please, I want.

• 1:24:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  A hundred percent. What about this take from Fubar saying crypto UX is too complicated in sarcasm quotes, I think. And he's got a picture of what?

• 1:24:39David Hoffman?

  Uh, you know, where you place in your credit card. So name on card, credit card number, CCV code, expiration date, billing zip. But that's not all, Ryan. If you continue, there's also, uh, more. Creating a wallet is confusion, confusing. Well, here is the Treasury Direct to spin up an account with Treasury, I guess. It is like tax ID number, email address, bank account and routing number, password, password reminder, personalized image, caption, security questions. Uh, and then here is, I think a Bloomberg terminal with a quote, no one cares enough to learn, learn EtherScan. Look at this image and tell me that, that just image makes sense to you. Like, get the hell out of here. That's ridiculous.

• 1:25:18David Hoffman?

  And so I think, uh, the part message is that yes, crypto UX is confusing because you haven't used it before. As soon as you use it, it becomes super intuitive. Yeah.

• 1:25:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know what? I remember a couple of years ago when I was talking to like the 18 year olds, founders of Instap, you know, who grew up in India and they're basically like, do you know what we don't understand is like banks and traditional financial services? You know what's super easy?

• 1:25:45David Hoffman?

  Crypto?

• 1:25:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crypto, MetaMask, DeFi, and just growing up with these things. Yeah, I don't think banking UX is better.

• 1:25:53David Hoffman?

  No, it's awful.

• 1:25:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, crypto UX is terrible. Sign in with Ethereum, click a button, hit approve and pay. Done. This is going to get a lot better over the next few years as well. I'm bullish on that.

• 1:26:04David Hoffman?

  100%. This is a take from me. Ryan, you want to read it?

• 1:26:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. "The last cycle is drawing to a close," David says. "The dawn of the next cycle is upon us." Wow, that sounds very epic. I feel like I want to charge into battle with you after this. Where are we going? Where's the battle, David? What do you mean?

• 1:26:21David Hoffman?

  Oh, I mean, I think you can take this one at face value. SBF is in jail. Three O's Capital is on the run. Do Kwan is in Serbia. Like yields are at zero. I mean, like, there's not much left to do. Like, the contagion is gotta be.

• 1:26:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  You mean, we've taken out the trash?

• 1:26:38David Hoffman?

  Taken out the trash, yeah. And, and, and we are identifying bullish sectors. Again, optimism, arbitrage, all time high transaction volume, still got the ZK, EVMs, and Starkware and all of this stuff. Some things are up and to the right, while the other things that are down and to the right are coming to a conclusion. I think that I'm declaring January 2023 will be the time where we can look forward and consider us in a new cycle, the beginning of the new cycle.

• 1:27:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  New cycle. So it was a super cycle along, huh?

• 1:27:11David Hoffman?

  It was, it was not a super cycle.

• 1:27:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was always a super cycle for building though, wasn't it? Can we say that?

• 1:27:17David Hoffman?

  Always a builder's cycle, yeah.

• 1:27:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, man. So what are you bullish on?

• 1:27:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And so looking at our notes, I think you and I were both impacted by this Vitalik podcast that we recently recorded. And I'm bullish on adults.

• 1:27:32David Hoffman?

  Structure and agency. And so these were, these were some of the themes that I think came out of my head while, while we were talking to

• 1:27:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  David's bullish on responsibility.

• 1:27:41David Hoffman?

  Responsibility. Yeah.

• 1:27:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 1:27:44David Hoffman?

  One of the big themes of Vitalik has was like, yeah, like it's crypto is small enough where people can impart agency upon it. You, listener, can change the direction of crypto. And that is one of the reasons why I got into this space personally in the first place was that crypto was small enough and I had enough ideas that I could help shape and direct crypto. And we need more clearly out of 2022, more good adults who can build stable foundations and stable structures and believe in themselves to tilt this industry for good. One of the big quotes that's always impacted me out of Chris Bernisky was that the plasticity of crypto, the window of plasticity of crypto is not infinite. There will be a time where we can't

• 1:28:27David Hoffman?

  really change this industry in a direction that is good for us all. And so I'm bullish, Ryan, on people that are responsible, that are actually building something for the other parts of this industry to latch on to. And I mean, I think, I think we have done a bang up job building Bankless. And so, Ryan, I'm bullish on Bankless because we have so many goddamn plans in 2023 that you're starting to tease them out. Launched the acquisition of Earnify, Bankless Collectibles, a new website coming soon. There's other things that are on the horizon, cough cough, NFT. And so there's a bunch of cool stuff that we are trying to do because goddamn it, we want to build structures for other people to also leverage and use. And so Bankless Media is going great. I'm excited to do this more into the future.

• 1:29:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love, by the way, that the guy in the SpongeBob sweater is telling me how bullish he is on adults and responsibility. This is perfect. And I will say,

• 1:29:22David Hoffman?

  Well, I'm not in jail, so I get to say that.

• 1:29:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, that's fair, fair. And look, man, if you were in jail, we'd still be doing this podcast somehow. I'd find a way. I'd, I'd visit you and we, you know,

• 1:29:33David Hoffman?

  If I was in jail, I would hope that it wasn't for a reason to.

• 1:29:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  It would be because the, the, you know, the US has gotten pretty bad to, you know, like it would be something like this. Look, but man, you stole mine. Mine was agency too.

• 1:29:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm bullish on that. You know, instead of that, maybe I'll, maybe I'll say something else, kind of riffing off of what you said, which is what a way to impact the world. I don't know if I give off like a Like a politician vibe sometimes or something. Maybe it's the glasses, but I can't tell you the amount of people who've said, are you like, when? So when are you going to get into politics? Are you going to do something in politics? And I'm like, I'm in politics.

• 1:30:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, this is political. This crypto movement is political and it's a movement where it's small enough and it's early enough. And it's important enough that we can have a massive impact politically. And this is like a much purer manifestation of my values than at least in the US. You got to pick Republican or Democrat. I'm like, no, thanks. I'll pick like anti authoritarian. I'll pick that. Where's the party that like, I'll do that thing.

• 1:30:37David Hoffman?

  Personal agency?

• 1:30:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38David Hoffman?

  How you like, how you like demagittives?

• 1:30:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like those things, I'll do that, but that's not represented in a party. Guess what? These values are represented in crypto. And this is why I think I'm super bullish entering 2023, that the riffraff is gone. Right? Like not all of them. I mean, like Justin Sun's still hanging out here somewhere. I think Richard Hart's like, just, you know, in my tweets lurking. Like they're not all gone, but there's been a lessening of them. And that feels really good because it allows the adults, the people who care about these values, to keep building the system that we've been building this entire time. And for it not to, our work to get crowded out by the noisy ones. So look, agency is mine too.

• 1:31:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  And impact, I think, maybe that's the other word I would add to this fray.

• 1:31:26David Hoffman?

  And I think this is alpha because at the end of the 2018 bear market, the destruction that was 2018, you saw structures starting to get created. Uniswap V1 came out in like February of 2019. Maker Dow died, the original die savings rate came out in 2018. It's like, and so now there's still plenty of structure left over. DeFi is still holding up just great. And now there's more structure to latch on to. Come settle and build your structure in this space and keep on going from there and just settle in.

• 1:31:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Be a settler. All right, here we go. Memes of the week, and we got two. This is great, David. What are we looking at? Describe the template.

• 1:32:04David Hoffman?

  This is the Wojak meme where things just get worse and worse and worse. So you have like, kind of the bleary eyed, like scrappy beard Wojak.

• 1:32:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Starts bad.

• 1:32:13David Hoffman?

  He's asking, how much, how, how much worse can it get? And we've got Alex Mashinsky flexing his Banks are not your friends shirt. Like, totally right, great shirt. And it's like, oh, oh, God. And then the next one, it's like even more wiry hair, even more blurs eyes. And again, the question is, how much worse can it get? Then you got Suzu and Kyle Davies, and then it just continues. Like, an insane looking Wojak, how much worse can it get? You've got Sam Bankman-Fried, followed by DCG and Gary Silber. And then the block really just rises home. And at this point, you are just watching some like, ring version of Wojak. And it's how much worse can you get? And it's the block sitting on top of the pile of cash.

• 1:32:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  The block almost dragged me down again to the depths of sadness of November.

• 1:32:53David Hoffman?

  Dude, what crypto media firms are left?

• 1:32:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  But like, yeah, that was like, you know, that was rough, crazy. Yeah, that's a, that's a sad meme, but also tells a story. How about this meme? Actually, this is not a meme. This is a real, this is the front page of the New York Post. It's a picture of SBF. What's the caption here?

• 1:33:12David Hoffman?

  SBF with his, you know, his hair just all over the place. Big, big, bold letters, Harry Plotter. Harry Plotter, nice.

• 1:33:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  New York Post, alright, uh, let's, let's, let's fade us out. I'll do disclaimers, but we got a pretty fresh meme that we, uh, sorry.

• 1:33:26David Hoffman?

  Oh, my God, we have the best moment of Zen you have ever heard. It is a full-length song. It is great. I think that if you are hearing this now, listener, you have earned your stripes. You have earned your battle scars. You have completed your first cycle.

• 1:33:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this is your reward.

• 1:33:42David Hoffman?

  And this is your reward. This moment of Zen is for you.

• 1:33:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Enjoy, guys. Uh, gotta fade out with this. None of this has been financial advice, never is. Crypto is risky. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:34:18Speaker 05

  Oh, you're gonna feel late, no matter when you came So don't feel bad, we all felt the same You'll go through phases, the money, the tech You'll learn Moloch and probably lose respect for your government Hey, they're just people too, and incentive alignment's what we're here to do So you're in luck, you've joined something great We're gonna change the world with what we create So, welcome to all of you first cyclists Your life's about to change, and probably for the worst Cause it'll take hold and won't let you get away And your friends don't wanna talk about crypto all day

• 1:34:52Speaker 05

  Oh, we're glad you're here, and we hope you have fun Cause you'll never get out once you've begun Just do your research and don't ape in yet Or you might get blown up by Bitconnect Or algorithmic stablecoins Or eighty thousand percent APY Ponzi's Or shady crypto banks Or a bridge hack Or OFAC Or Gary fucking Gensler Or fake ICOs Or pump and dump YouTube personalities Or alt-layer-one rug pullers Or asshole mercenary crypto fund managers That sound a little like Smee Smaro Smapple SBF, etc.

• 1:35:37Speaker 05

  So, welcome to all of you first cyclists Your life's about to change, and probably for the worst Cause it'll take hold and won't let you get away And your friends don't wanna talk about crypto all day

• 1:35:53Speaker 05

  I know, it all sounds confusing, what people say Well, you're still new, so that's okay You know you're doing better when you understand Curve pools, hash rate, tornado cash band And why a cartoon with a dick for an ass Is worth two trips to Europe, flying first class US relayers can be coerced But attestation censorship is way fucking worse But we knew ASF, so it'd be alright And they'd have circle, but we'd have die Rise even better at LUSD We're decentralizing the world and we'll succeed So, welcome to all of you first cyclists Your life's about to change, and probably for the worst Cause it'll take hold and won't let you get away And you'll end up on crypto Twitter all day, every day