ROLLUP: Microsoft Buys Activision | OlympusDAO Has Fallen | LooksRare NFT | IreneDAO

3rd Week of January, 2022 ------ 📣 ALTO IRA | THE CRYPTO RETIREMENT ACCOUNT https://bankless.cc/AltoIRA ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 POLYGON | LAYER 2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask 💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger 🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:00 MARKETS 4:37 BTC Price 5:40 ETH Price 7:37 Ratios, DeFi, BED 8:35 Year in ETH https://stark.mirror.xyz/q3OnsK7mvfGtTQ72nfoxLyEV5lfYOqUfJIoKBx7BG1I 12:30 USDC vs Tether 13:53 Uniswap vs Curve https://twitter.com/RyanWatkins_/status/1483640421502885888 15:28 Olympus Has Fallen https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/130597/olympusdaos-slide-continues-ohm-down-90-from-all-time-high 24:00 LooksRare https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/looks-rare 27:25 OpenSea Volume https://twitter.com/mattmedved/status/1482873703243390981?s=21 30:30 OpenSea & Dharma https://twitter.com/Dharma_HQ/status/1483484717294964741?s=20 34:30 RELEASES 36:00 Polygon EIP-1559 https://twitter.com/0xPolygon/status/1483108516122570753?s=20 38:48 Polymarket Airdrop Futures https://twitter.com/PolymarketHQ/status/1481710612317184007?s=20 41:11 Fendi x Ledger https://twitter.com/fendi/status/1482426260676567041?s=21 43:00 CryptoStats https://medium.com/crypto-stats/announcing-cryptostats-community-owned-data-metrics-ee47fee3c94d 44:05 Coinbase Permissionless https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1484165697756356612?s=20 45:12 Raises a16z: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/130954/andreessen-horowitz-plans-to-raise-4-5-billion-for-new-crypto-funds FTX: https://blockworks.co/ftx-launches-2b-venture-fund Mechanism Gaming: https://blockworks.co/mechanism-capital-launches-100m-fund-focused-on-p2e-gaming/ POAP: https://medium.com/poap/poap-inc-raises-10m-to-accelerate-human-development-a2e36783258d 49:20 Jobs https://pallet.xyz/list/bankless/jobs 50:00 NEWS 50:20 Fees.wtf… WTF? https://thedefiant.io/airdrop-eth-fee/ 52:44 Tether Blacklisting https://twitter.com/CoinDesk/status/1481717424118448132 54:44 ETH 2 Client Diversity https://twitter.com/sproulM_/status/1481109509544513539?s=20 59:20 Layer 2 Arbitrum: https://twitter.com/dmihal/status/1483767477452648455 Optimism: https://twitter.com/optimismpbc/status/1483510492077477889?s=21 Hop: https://twitter.com/HopProtocol/status/1483107395043840001?s=20 1:02:35 Instagram & Facebook NFTs https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/20/facebook-and-instagram-may-help-you-create-and-sell-nfts 1:04:05 IreneDAO https://opensea.io/collection/irenedao 1:06:00 China NFTs https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1481604778077548544 1:07:34 GAP NFTs https://blockworks.co/gap-releases-first-line-of-nfts-on-tezos-blockchain/ 1:07:49 Walmart Metaverse https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/16/walmart-is-quietly-preparing-to-enter-the-metaverse.html 1:08:16 Microsoft Buys Activision https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-18/microsoft-to-buy-activision-blizzard-in-69-billion-gaming-deal Take: https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1483978042611437569?s=20 1:09:52 Coinbase x Mastercard https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/130596/coinbase-mastercard-partnership-nft-cards 1:10:38 Bud Light x Nouns https://mobile.twitter.com/punk4156/status/1483913013900062721 1:12:42 Serena Williams SoRare https://twitter.com/Sorare/status/1484165886223298565 1:13:38 Solana NFT Volume https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/130874/solana-nft-total-sales-volume-crosses-1-billion 1:14:01 Block Mining & Lightning https://twitter.com/blockworks_/status/1481748064557846537?s=21 https://twitter.com/Kr00ney/status/1483449320984694785?s=20 1:15:02 Crypto.com http://Crypto.com Breach https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/130576/crypto-com-allegedly-suffers-15-million-breach-in-latest-exchange-heist?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/130576/crypto-com-allegedly-suffers-15-million-breach-in-latest-exchange-heist?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss 1:18:00 TAKES 1:19:30 Property vs Utility https://twitter.com/jackbutcher/status/1482190266643750912?s=20 1:21:19 NFT Froth https://twitter.com/stevefink/status/1483494468368187404?s=20 1:22:58 State of DeFi https://twitter.com/The3D_/status/1484079429391425538?s=20 1:26:32 SEC vs Ethereum https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1482358486126186499?s=20 1:28:55 What David’s Excited About https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1484189933749211139?s=20 1:31:44 What Ryan’s Excited About https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1484180531281641473?s=20 1:34:05 MEME(s) OF THE WEEK https://twitter.com/HopMemes_/status/1483499433274720258?s=20 ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh simp-fi is becoming a thing? I know you're gonna educate me and tell me what a simp actually is. And if I am one, because I don't know David.

• 0:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, Bankless Nation, happy 3rd week of January. David, what time is it?

• 0:14David Hoffman?

  Oh, it's the Friday Bankless Weekly Roll-Up, Ryan. Where we roll up the entire week in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor. Yet nonetheless, we persist onwards through the gamut, the dark force that is crypto. Unpacking it and distilling it and summarizing a full entire week in crypto every single Friday morning. So grab your coffee, because we're gonna get after it, starting right now.

• 0:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  On the journey west, on the road to Mount Doom, throwing the Ring of Fire away.

• 0:39David Hoffman?

  Oh, God.

• 0:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are we doing? Guys, topics this week: Facebook and Instagram adding NFTs. We thought they'd do it. Every social media platform joining the NFT army. Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. I don't know if that's a meme number, David, or... Okay. Olympus has fallen. The story of Olympus Dow and OHM price crash. We're gonna dig into that. Also, USDC finally flippin' tether? We've been predicting that for like 2 or 3 years. It's finally happening, so it's good to see. Uh, simp-fi is becoming a thing? Okay?

• 1:11David Hoffman?

  Simp-fi.

• 1:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  We gotta talk about the story of Irene Dow. That happened last weekend. I was barely paying attention, but I know you're gonna educate me and tell me what a simp actually is. And if I am one, because I don't know David.

• 1:21David Hoffman?

  You don't know what a simp is?

• 1:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I kinda do. I know what a simp is, okay? But I still wanna hear you tell me what it is.

• 1:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, uh, this is gonna be a lot of fun. Hope you're hanging with us. Before we get into the markets, we should talk about IRAs, okay? Specifically, Alto IRA. Uh, my big question is, do you have a crypto IRA?

• 1:44David Hoffman?

  Do ya.

• 1:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, this is like, this is a crypto dad question. Do you, David? You should. Uh, I've, I've had one of these ever since I got into crypto. I know, you need to get one right now. This is like...

• 1:54David Hoffman?

  I do need to get one.

• 1:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, this is my message, this is my pitch for David. It's not for anyone else listening to Bankless.

• 1:58David Hoffman?

  We're doing it live.

• 2:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  First of all, it's super easy, okay? But here's why I love IRAs, 401Ks. It's because it's the only way to do crypto with none of the taxes, okay? So every time you make a trade, you have to, there's a capital gains tax. Or let's say you start staking, all right? Like the income you received, you pay taxes as income on that. Inside of a crypto IRA, you don't have to pay taxes. All right, David? Now, the flip side is you can't touch the money without a penalty until you're older. But like, you could just set aside $6,000 in something called a Roth IRA this year. It's all in crypto. You can set it up in like a few minutes. This Alto IRA solution is kind of an easy button for that. So it's already integrated with Coinbase.

• 2:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  You have a Coinbase account, it's as easy as that. And you never have to pay taxes on the thing.

• 2:50David Hoffman?

  Wait, you have to pay taxes on crypto?

• 2:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sir, yes. Okay? Now I'm getting worried about you. In your regular accounts, you do. Also, this is kind of the advanced button here. But if you have a 401K from a previous employer, you know, that's been collecting, you've had it in stocks for a while, you can convert that, roll that over into an IRA 401K type format with Alto as well. So if you want to go all in crypto with your retirement's accounts, you know, you're skewing younger, you're gonna use this money for a while, you want to buy and hold, this is the way to do it. And Alto IRA has the easy button. They're integrated with Coinbase, 125 different assets. So the things that are trading on Coinbase are the things you can invest in with this.

• 3:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Only 10, wait, is it minimums of $10 with Alto IRA as well. So you can get started small. Did I convince you?

• 3:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, well, I've been convinced by your presence a while ago. But for, when I got into crypto, I started with mining. I did not know that you had to pay taxes in crypto. That is a true thing in 2017 and 2018. I just did not know that. And so for those of you who are not paying attention to our taxes, let me tell you, you want to get started on that basically as soon as possible. Just think of yourself as an employee of your future self and do your future self, your future boss's self a favor and get your taxes in order now. Because if you don't, it just gets, it just gets worse. It just gets worse.

• 4:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does, yeah. Well, David may be speaking from experience there, but you're all taken care of now, right? You figure it out. In this account, though, you don't have to worry about any of that. And that's a reason to open it up while you're thinking about your taxes. So go to altoira.com/banklist. You can find out more about that. Okay, David, let's talk about the charts. Market time, Bitcoin. What are we at in the week?

• 4:41David Hoffman?

  Happy day today. Flat week on the week. We started the week at $44,000, hit a low of $41,500. And we have, since starting this recording today on Thursday, we have climbed up to, back above $43,000, but still just down 1% on the week. So a very marginally down week after a big oof week last week.

• 5:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's look at the one month. Okay, we're still down, obviously, in the one month.

• 5:07David Hoffman?

  It's a bad one month. Three months isn't going to look good either, Ryan.

• 5:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't want to click.

• 5:10David Hoffman?

  Keep on zooming out.

• 5:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  How about year to date? Also bad for Bitcoin.

• 5:16David Hoffman?

  Year to date, bad. Wow. Well, wait, yeah, that's because year to date is January. I forgot about that.

• 5:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I can't believe this. So on the one year, time horizon, Bitcoin kind of looks like a crab, doesn't it?

• 5:28David Hoffman?

  It was a big crab year. Slightly up, slightly up, though. Started the one-year timeframe, started at $35,000, and we are currently at $43,000.

• 5:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Kind of disappointing Bitcoin, though. That's interesting. Let's talk about ETH now. What's ETH on the week first?

• 5:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Ether, down on the week, down 3% on the week, a little bit more down than Bitcoin. Started the week at $3,400, excuse me, hit a low of like roughly $3,050, and it has since resurged back up to $3,220, down 3%.

• 6:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's do the same thing. One month, oof, down, three months, also down. Year to date, we'll skip that, but the one year.

• 6:10David Hoffman?

  Ooh, looking good, really, really good, yeah. So roughly $1,200 one year ago, and currently at $3,200. Just, yeah, just since November, just bad, bad feels, bad feels.

• 6:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, what's interesting about this cycle is it's not playing out like previous cycles, is it? It's a little bit different. This is its own thing. I think in crypto, we've been trained to expect like a complete... Yeah, four-year cycles and sort of let's, we're doing the same thing in 2017, 2018, but this is playing out much differently. How do you think it plays out overall? Where do you think it's going?

• 6:44David Hoffman?

  The one that can, the way that everyone is confused and we keep on talking about it every single week. The maximum confusion is how it plays out.

• 6:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just unpredictable.

• 6:53David Hoffman?

  Unpredictable.

• 6:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what you're saying.

• 6:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but no more four-year cycles. I never really was convinced that these four-year cycles were dependent on the Bitcoin halving. The Bitcoiners will definitely tell you that the four-year crypto cycles had to do with the Bitcoin halving. I kind of think that was, I think there's plenty of rationale to say that that was a coincidence. I think I talked about this last week.

• 7:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  But isn't that, isn't that, isn't that just because like, you know, Bitcoin percentage of total market cap in crypto used to be so much higher? I mean, there was a time where it was 90, 95%, right? Now it's down into the 30s.

• 7:22David Hoffman?

  I even, I would even claim that Bitcoin going up in price had less to do with the timing of the halvings. But I'm not, I'm not deep in the weeds on Bitcoin on that one.

• 7:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, we don't know the cycles, just buy and hold for the long run. You don't have to worry about the cycles. Let's look at the ETH Bitcoin chart here.

• 7:39David Hoffman?

  Slightly down on the week. We started last week at .076. We are down to .075. I would really like that .08 number, but I'm not really going to complain too much about .075 either.

• 7:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll see what happens. Like, the big catalyst for Ether this year is the merge, right? Bitcoin doesn't really have any catalysts this year, so I would expect this to change.

• 8:00David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin has zero catalysts, never.

• 8:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  It doesn't. I mean, next halving is, next halving is two years away still? 2024?

• 8:08David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes.

• 8:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think. I guess that's the next big event that happens from a supply perspective. All right, the bet index, Bitcoin, ETH, and DeFi. What are we looking at on the week?

• 8:19David Hoffman?

  Down, I think, half a percent on the week. Started the week at $128. We are currently down to $123, so down half a percent-ish, give or take.

• 8:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Down half a percent, doing the crab thing, down on the, on the year for sure. David, let's talk about this. Josh Stark wrote a blog post with Evan Van Ness, and they write this every year. I've read it every year since as far back as I can remember in Ethereum and it's entitled the year in Ethereum 2021. So this is sort of a summation of some big things that happened on the Ethereum network. And I want to draw a few of these out. The first is this, look at this, David. Total transaction fees 2021. You want to read this out? What are we looking at?

• 9:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, in billions of dollars, 9.9 billion dollars in transaction fees in 2021 out of the Ethereum network. Clocking in at second is Bitcoin at just over $1 billion. So Ethereum doing 10x the transactional volume, implying that there is 10x the demand to buy Ethereum block space throughout 2021. Followed by after Bitcoin, Bitcoin's $1 billion fees in revenue in 2021, followed by Binance Smart Chain clocking in at .9 billion dollars. And then after that, we have Avalanche at .04 billion and Solana at .026 billion and Cardano at .008 billion dollars.

• 9:48David Hoffman?

  So that's where the demand is.

• 9:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's transaction fees. You can look at another view of it by 2021 where you bring in all the DeFi apps. And it's interesting that Ethereum is number one in transaction fees. Uniswap is actually number two. It even beats out Bitcoin. So an app on Ethereum is larger. But this was really cool to me. When you start to compare this with traditional finance and you look at how many fees, the revenues of Visa last year, which were $24 billion. That's the revenue of Visa. And Ethereum was 9.9 billion. Okay. And it finishes out ahead of Stripe, which was 7.4 billion. So Ethereum now doing more transaction fees and revenue than Stripe.

• 10:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's creeping up on Visa as well. Another way to view this is total transaction volume. Okay. So this is the amount of value settled on the Ethereum network. Ethereum actually surpassed Visa in 2021. So it settled $11.6 trillion. This is of course, all of the ETH that gets transferred from address to address. This is also all the stablecoins, all the ERC 20s. If you add up all of that value, all the tokens, everything, if you add that up and compare that to Visa. The Ethereum network is now settling more value than Visa. And that's quite astounding to me.

• 11:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, can you believe that we're actually surpassing Visa on that on that on that metric?

• 11:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's it's a really it's a great benchmark. And it's one of those benchmarks where like, OK, that should have that's just like normal. And like, because Ethereum should be like 10x because Visa is just one company, right? There's just one payments network. Ethereum is a payment network of payment networks, right? And so like, this is now where the game finally starts, in my opinion. Like, it wasn't to get to this point. Like, this is where we go from here is really the starting pistol here.

• 11:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's the market cap of Visa? I think like last time I checked is like 400 million, 400 billion or 500 billion or something like that. So comparable to Ethereum in terms of market cap. 450 billion, what's ETH hanging out around that range too, right?

• 12:02David Hoffman?

  About the same, yeah.

• 12:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  About the same. And so and then Ethereum surpassing Visa and also just growing so much faster with so much more potential.

• 12:11David Hoffman?

  And that's just transactional volume, which is to say nothing about Ether as a bond or Ether as collateral, like that's just payment volume.

• 12:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's funny, we talk about the flipping and we often mean like, obviously Ether flipping Bitcoin. But like, at some level, I'm more excited about stuff like this. We just flipping Visa last year.

• 12:29David Hoffman?

  Can we flip the world, please?

• 12:32David Hoffman?

  Speaking of flipping things.

• 12:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Flipping flipping things. What's this flipping?

• 12:35David Hoffman?

  USDC versus Tether Supply. Tether, the king stablecoin that has been around forever, the first real stablecoin that got real adoption, finally gets flipped by USDC. I feel like there was a number of predictions by this throughout 2019, throughout 2020, throughout 2021.

• 12:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tether was gonna die, do you remember this?

• 12:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, finally took 2022 for something to dethrone Tether as the leading supply of stablecoin. Which is to say nothing about how massive Tether is. Tether is also going up in supply. It's just gotten outpaced by USDC. There is now over 40 billion USDC in existence and there is only just under 40 billion Tether. And so congratulations to Sir. Congratulations to USDC for having that stablecoin supply. We love to see it. And this is just what happens when like stablecoins, like asset dollar-backed stablecoins have to play nice with nation-states. Tether did not play nice with nation-states. USDC did play nice with nation-states. So like no surprise to see all the tailwinds being captured by USDC.

• 13:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Tether's always been sort of a mystery box. Like, we're not really sure what it's backed by. And USDC is more traditionally regulated. And you kind of need to be when you're backed by dollars in a bank account somewhere, or hopefully you are. What's this metric? This is from Ryan Watkins. It's comparing Uniswap versus Curve. What are we looking at here, David?

• 13:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we're looking at like market share of stablecoin volumes between Uniswap versus Curve. And what we are seeing is Uniswap V3 really starting to eat into Curve's market share. So more and more volume of stablecoin going into Uniswap. I was actually hanging out with someone last night who actually kind of had a critique on this chart, saying that there was a significant amount of volume being missed out of this chart. So this might actually not be accurate.

• 14:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like Curve volume missed?

• 14:27David Hoffman?

  A lot of Curve volume that just wasn't included. I don't know what's true, but I'm going to find out, Ryan, on next week's show that we're doing called The Curve Wars, where we're bringing a Curve expert on to talk all about Curve. And I will verify this data with him as to whether it is accurate or not. But if it is accurate, then Uniswap V3 really eating... Either way, Uniswap V3 stablecoin volumes going up through the roof. It's just a matter of like, maybe Curve's also doing that too?

• 14:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's also a story, I think, about the fee market here. So part of the volume rise on Uniswap for stablecoins is, of course, the release of Uniswap V3. But also, two months ago, it just introduced a one-basis-point fee tier that previously been a lot higher. So who benefits from the Curve and Uniswap wars? The consumer. Lower transaction fees. That's a beautiful thing. Let's talk about this, David. So this is Olympus has fallen.

• 15:23David Hoffman?

  Olympus has fallen, yeah.

• 15:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Slide continues. So this is a headline in The Block. OHM market cap is down nearly 80% from its all-time high. 80% down.

• 15:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  That feels like a pretty steep decline.

• 15:37David Hoffman?

  A big oof decline. That's a big oof is what we call that.

• 15:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, well, what's going on? Why?

• 15:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so, well, just for just for context, for reference, the market cap of Olympus Dow peaked on November 23rd at $4.3 billion. It is currently at $1 billion. So we've lost 75 to 80% of the total volume. And what happened? Well, I mean, at the end of the day, what happened is people sold. Like, people sold and number went down. And I think there, and one of the reasons why it went down so much was because, I think a very rational theory, and this is got pulled apart by Cyrus Unesi in his great tweet thread. One of the reasons why it went down so much was because it went up so much.

• 16:23David Hoffman?

  And one of the reasons why it went up so much is because of this meme out of Olympus Dow, the 3-3 meme, which is a reference to a game theory, "Out Comes Matracy." And so you have possible actions that two people can take. And this is like a prisoner's dilemma. Basically, all theories and game theories, extrapolation of the prisoner's dilemma. So you can stake your om, you can bond your om, or you can sell your om. And if you sell your om, that's like a negative number. If you stake your om, that's a positive number. So they've given like arbitrary outputs. And the goal is to convince everyone to stake their om instead of selling it. Because if everyone stakes their om, then number goes up. And so there was this culture instilled out of Olympus Dow to put the 3 comma 3 thing in your Twitter profile,

• 17:08David Hoffman?

  talk about how like, we're all going to stake, like, no one's going to sell, we're all going to stake together. And that's what made the token price go up. And, I mean, sure, yeah, when you convince you and all your friends to stake and also instill a staking culture, like, well, then there's no one selling. And so, and so number goes up. The problem with that is that people, and so a lot of like omies, omies are what they're called, got really, really wealthy because the price went absolutely bonkers. Just a year ago, the price of om was, or the market cap of om was $50 million in June of 2021, before it goes to $4 billion in November. And that's because of this meme worked. Everyone's like, yo, if we all stake OM, we're all gonna get rich. The problem is, you can only be rich on paper like that.

• 17:51David Hoffman?

  You can't actually be real rich because there isn't actually a long-term buying power, buying pressure, because it's mostly just a meme. And so what happened is like, at some point, this is what a Ponzi game is. It's not a Ponzi scheme, it's a Ponzi game. But there's this culture of buying and not selling. And at some point, that runs out. At some point, people want to take paper gains into real gains. And then the culture of staking turns into a culture of selling. And then we go from where it was to where it is. The reason, and so there was a bunch of like, marketing around OM about how it's like this grand, new central bank design. And Cyrus Yunessi put a tweet thread together that really explained it in different terms, where it's mostly just, the Olympus Dow model is mostly just a hedge fund.

• 18:35David Hoffman?

  You put assets into the fund, they get yield on it. The value of the assets in the treasury goes up. But the value of the market cap of the OM token far, far exceeded the market cap of the value of the assets in the treasury. So it was like a kind of a fractional reserve bank. Because like, it was like, I don't know what the ratio was. It was like 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 of value of the OM, which is a share of the treasury versus the actual value of the treasury. And so at some point, like, the culture of staking just ran its course, and people turned from stakers to sellers. And now the value of the OM token is falling more closely in line with the actual reserves in the OM treasury. More closely moving to a 1 to 1 ratio,

• 19:19David Hoffman?

  kind of which is where you would expect an efficient market to land anyways. So that's my summary of what's happened.

• 19:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so like, I guess I don't understand why people are so surprised at this, is what I would say. It's because, basically, the way I break down what you just said, and the way I break down OM is like, there is some reserve asset that's backing this. So it's a mix of dollars and ETH, right? And call that the threshold value, kind of the utility value.

• 19:46David Hoffman?

  Also LP tokens that are getting yield.

• 19:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And then Ome is trading far above the reserve asset value or the book value, you might call it. And all of the rest of that value that's above the book value or the reserve value, that's all like, maybe you call that monetary premium, or maybe in the early stages of things, you just call that meme premium, right? Meme premium. And let's be fair, that has a real effect. Totally. Okay, because like Bitcoin, the value of Bitcoin is 100% meme premium? Okay, a decent chunk of Ether's value is also meme premium. And there is the potential that you can bootstrap that meme premium, actually turn it into monetary premium, if you convince enough people that the thing you have is

• 20:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  money. And this was the path that Ome has been down, just saying, hey, this is a new approach to money, just like Ether, just like Bitcoin, we've got an approach, it's called Ome, and this can be a global reserve money, this can be a central bank, has been the comparison, okay? Well, from time to time, that theory gets tested. Just like Bitcoin's been off 80%, it's been off 90%, right? It's been through the fires of people saying Bitcoin's dead, like the monetary premium evaporates on Bitcoin, many of these bear cycles, that has been the case. Now, now it's happening to Ome. And so, long term, is Ome a money or not? Well, you have to come to your own conclusion. If it is a money, it deserves

• 21:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  some monetary premium. If it isn't, then it doesn't. And the market is in the process of figuring this out. What I don't understand is why people are so surprised, right? Because like, I thought you knew the game we're playing, guys, right? This is, as you said, like Bitcoin and like Ether to some level, this is a Ponzi game. It's not a scheme. Not a scheme. Because no one can rug pull you, it's fully transparent, you can actually see everything that's backing Ome. No one has rug pulled anyone else. But that Delta that you're playing with, like that, you know, that pyramid game, if like, if we all hold together, then we're good, but if we all sell together, we're going down, that prisoner's dilemma, that can, that can quite easily happen. And this is just a case of that happening. I don't think it's the end of Ome.

• 21:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  At all. I don't think it's the end of the mechanic of Om, the way it works, right? And this whole protocol owned liquidity trend, I think that's totally here to stay. But it'll have to rebuild and it might rebuild with a new set of narratives. I'm not sure. Or, or maybe they'll try another round at becoming a, you know, a money. Maybe that's not dead either. Yeah.

• 22:21David Hoffman?

  And exactly, there's a reason why Om, the Olympus Dow model got forked like a thousand times. There's like a thousand forks out there because the model works. It's just like, it just got out over at ski tips with the whole like staking culture, the 3.3 culture. And now we're back down to reality. There's a big fat reality check. A lot of people lost a lot of money. Sad. Sorry about that. Me too, by the way. I was in Om.

• 22:45David Hoffman?

  But I'm not complaining because like that's what you get when you play.

• 22:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're playing the game.

• 22:48David Hoffman?

  Playing the game, playing the game.

• 22:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  And just know the game you're playing.

• 22:51David Hoffman?

  This is one of those things where like this was Om's first big like, like, you know, run up in price. And then like kind of collapsed back down to reality after it got forked a bajillion times. And like, to me, that kind of feels like the first time where, you know, Bitcoin had its proof of work, fair launch fork phenomenon, where Bitcoin got forked a thousand times. Then it pumped and had its first crash. And then it went back down to reality and then it had a bear market for four years and then it came back. So like the next story for Om is, does it come back? And no one knows the answer to that question. But if you think it comes back, like it's at a much lower price now. This is where the like, does Olympus Dow have a community of people that are convicted on it?

• 23:33David Hoffman?

  Not just trying to do the whole 3.3 thing.

• 23:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's all, it's all about the community. It's all about the community of holders. And also the question is, will it keep falling? Cause it could continue to fall. I don't think it's quite at its reserve price right now. I've looked into this, but I think it still could go a ways. Eating and roading into that monetary premium. So do you want to play the game now, David? Right? That's a question. It's a question for everyone.

• 23:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's the game we're playing here. Let's talk about Looks, playing a different game, playing the NFT marketplace game Vampire Attack OpenSea. We just talked about that last week. It's just a baby, man. It's like a week old and it's doing things. So let's look at the price.

• 24:13David Hoffman?

  Crushing it in price.

• 24:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's starting to accelerate to a point where I'm a little bit nervous about its acceleration.

• 24:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why? Why do you think it's accelerating? What's happening here?

• 24:23David Hoffman?

  Well, there is a decent amount of volume going through Looks. And so there's a lot of NFT trading happening on the Looks platform because of this token and this token that's going up in price. They are, they are paying for trades, basically. So if you trade your NFTs, you get Look, Looks token rewards. And as that token goes up in price, like you have more and more incentive to trade NFTs on Looks. They're paying you to trade. So there's a lot of wash trading that's happening. So kind of like in the same way that like yield farming was just like the same people like leveraging up their yields. And like, it wasn't really true TVL because of the incentivized bootstrapping, but that's what happens with a token. And so we have two graphs here. Let's go back up to the first one that you already showed. Like Looks Rare is killing, crushing OpenSea in terms of volume.

• 25:07David Hoffman?

  And that's again, that's because of the token incentives. But then if you go down to the second chart, the actually number of users versus OpenSea is like just nothing. Like it's, I think OpenSea's got maybe 20x the number of users. But the token is pumping in price because of all this wash trading that's happening because people want to get the tokens. Looks, the thing I really, really, really like about the Looks platform is that it sends ether towards the token owners. And so I've been staking my airdrop that I got and I've gotten like half an ether off of my airdrop just by staking it.

• 25:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that ether is coming from transaction fees. So in OpenSea's case, it takes what is it?

• 25:43David Hoffman?

  2.5%.

• 25:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  2.5%. In Looks case, it takes 2%. But the Looks platform is sharing that 2% with those who stake Looks token. Whereas OpenSea is keeping it as part of its revenue, part of its traditional business model.

• 25:57David Hoffman?

  Exactly. Giving it back towards the token holders. And I've, I've always like, when I've, I've had my thesis is that I want as much eth as possible, but I will also sell my eth for tokens. That pay me in ETH.

• 26:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  That give you more ETH?

• 26:09David Hoffman?

  That give me more ETH. And that has always been my game plan for ERC 20 token investment. And this is the first token that is actually spewing out ETH. And so like, it's kind of hard not to talk about.

• 26:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's real ETH.

• 26:21David Hoffman?

  It's real ETH.

• 26:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like, it's real cash flows. Now, you could, you could say that that is going to evaporate.

• 26:26David Hoffman?

  Totally.

• 26:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Once the token incentives, but, but it's still real ETH. Like, this is a real business model, tokenized business model. The, the interesting question, I think, or the question that's in for the space is, OpenSea, of course, didn't go this route. And we've talked to Devon Finster on the podcast about why they didn't go this route. Part of the, probably the unspoken reason is the SEC. Okay, that's why we don't get token airdrops in the US. That's why many of these companies are not tokenizing earlier in the process. And so they're, they're keeping it private. There's probably other reasons for that. But the big question is, does this push OpenSea or force their hand into doing something for its users? Releasing a token? Maybe doing something else? I don't know.

• 27:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what happened with Uniswap, but Uniswap was, of course, was in a much different state.

• 27:15David Hoffman?

  Right. Uniswap is straight up DeFi, where OpenSea's, it's a little hybrid.

• 27:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. So what do you think? What odds do you give that of when Uniswap token?

• 27:23David Hoffman?

  I actually have a lot of thoughts about this, and I actually think we should take the time to unpack that. OpenSea is not going to do a token. It's not going to happen.

• 27:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're, are you certain about that? What kind of?

• 27:33David Hoffman?

  I don't have insider information. I have body language and cues that I have picked up on. So nothing, nothing concrete, but here's my rationale. There are zero OpenSea investors that are disappointed currently in its current state. There are zero OpenSea founders and employees that are disappointed with OpenSea in its current state. Everyone is, OpenSea is a perfect success for everyone involved. And they also have the eye of Sauron on them. The SEC is looking at them. All the regulators are looking at them. The world is looking at OpenSea because OpenSea represents NFTs. And so they cannot do a token because that's going to be legally and compliantly due

• 28:17David Hoffman?

  dubious and they represent us and so they have to be sparkly clean and they need to bend the knee to the nation state and say yes we are a public company we're going to be regulated by you guys we're going to play nice and that is they are doing that to protect the whole entire industry by not doing something like SEC securities dubiousness and create some sort of like imagine how bad that would be if OpenSea the thing that basically represents all of NFTs has to go to court with the SEC we don't want that for the industry

• 28:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  so they have to play the role of Coinbase right which which opens the opportunity for a Binance who's a bit more fast and loose which is maybe what looks is they're the Binance to you know OpenSea's Coinbase

• 29:03David Hoffman?

  yeah that's that's exactly right and so I tip the tip of the hat to OpenSea they've gotten a ton of flack from users lately about being out of touch with what the users want and they're not they know exactly they're very in tune with what the users want they are just hamstrung by compliance by regulation as we have seen a thousand times before Coinbase is the same thing they're just a they grew really really big really really quickly as did the industry and now their number one goal is to not F anything up and I thank them for that strategy I think it's the right and responsible strategy and also that leaves room for things like looks tokens

• 29:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  it's all good

• 29:42David Hoffman?

  it's all good it's great it's just like yeah we have like rough spots but like yo like we're they're leaving the door open for a truly decentralized truly protocolized version of an NFT marketplace and I think that's going to be fantastic

• 29:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  yeah as do I and you know I'm glad we get to let both of these experiments play out in you know in in parallel let's move on OpenSea is still crushing it in terms of their sales volume so January 2022 is the highest sales volume month ever

• 30:11David Hoffman?

  ever

• 30:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  it's just this happened with sushi and Uniswap too remember when sushi came on the scene Uniswap's volume spiked so it was like you know the sushi actually helped Uniswap achieve more value rather than sucking it away

• 30:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's keep moving. One other thing with OpenSea actually this week-

• 30:33David Hoffman?

  Lots of OpenSea stuff.

• 30:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  That maybe we'll talk a little bit about is Dharma was just acquired by OpenSuite. So Dharma is a DeFi smart contract wallet. It's a great way to get on boarded. They were just acquired by OpenSea. What do you think the reason for this acquisition is? Now, by the way, we predict, obviously, like, OpenSea has raised so much money. Their last raise, a month ago, two months ago, David, was just 300 and something million dollars. Okay, the numbers are getting so large, I can't remember. They can't hire enough. They don't need 330 million dollars worth of employees. So of course, what are they going to do? They're going to start acquiring. This was their first acquisition. Why do you think they acquired Dharma?

• 31:14David Hoffman?

  Fiat on ramps. That's why.

• 31:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fiat on ramps.

• 31:18David Hoffman?

  They want to use Dharma to allow users to just buy directly through the Dharma, through Dharma, whatever they've got, without having to like, you know, have- Maybe a custodial wallet or non-custodial wallet, just an easier on-ramp to buying NFTs. That's why they're doing it.

• 31:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  I have a kind of mixed feeling. I think that's probably right. And of course, they have to compete against Coinbase, who's launching their NFT marketplace fairly soon. Coinbase already has Fiat on ramps totally locked down. I'm personally a little bit disappointed from a Dharma perspective because I really like their smart contract wallet. And they're basically kind of shutting it down, right? So if you were a Dharma user, they're giving you like 30 days to move your funds out. Now, I think they're helping with the migration process. I think their support team is handling this as best they can. But it is, at the same time, it's pretty disappointing that we lose a stellar DeFi wallet in this space.

• 32:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  But maybe it gets rebirthed in OpenSea in some way that's actually better for users. So I'm also, I guess, preserving the benefit of the doubt and seeing what happens with that integration. Anyway, OpenSea making big moves. This wallet acquisition is yet another one. This industry is getting really interesting.

• 32:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and also, congratulations to the Dharma team because they have been grinding since as long as I can remember.

• 32:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Totally.

• 32:39David Hoffman?

  Don't know, Dharma has gone through a number of pivots. Dharma used-

• 32:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you remember when they were a peer-to-peer loan platform?

• 32:45David Hoffman?

  A peer-to-peer lending platform, like Compound, but instead of user-to-contract, like how Compound is, is user-to-user. And so you would be individually matched and set your individual rates with your assets. And you would generate like individual agreements with individual people about like loans, which was just like, you know, way too much, like way too laborious. It was like a little bit skeuomorphic. They totally got just like, Compound was the actual successful model. And so then they pivoted into being a layer, a yield application, getting yield on top of Compound. And then they pivoted into fiat on-ramps, straight into L2s, which is great, connecting to your bank account, which is fantastic.

• 33:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  DeFi wallet, smart contract wallet.

• 33:27David Hoffman?

  And then boom, they get acquired by OpenSea. So Nadav has, the CEO of Dharma has been-

• 33:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's become the CTO, right?

• 33:35David Hoffman?

  He's now going to be the CTO of OpenSea. So maybe this is also an aqua hire type thing. But like, congratulations Nadav and Brendan from Dharma and all the Dharma team, because you guys have been grinding all the way through thick and thin, through the bear market. And glad you guys have landed in good hands. So congrats to you.

• 33:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. I guess that's a lesson too. I mean, you just keep heads down building, something good will come of it eventually. Guys, we will be right back with some other releases of the week. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 34:05David Hoffman?

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• 34:11David Hoffman?

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• 34:15David Hoffman?

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• 34:43David Hoffman?

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• 35:04David Hoffman?

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• 35:46David Hoffman?

  and load up your Trezor, Ledger, Lattice, or Keystone hardware wallets so that they too can get into the world of Web3. Living a bankless life requires taking control of your own private keys. Not your keys, not your crypto. That's why so many in the bankless nation already have their Ledger hardware wallet. But the Ledger ecosystem is much more than just a secure hardware wallet. Ledger is the combination of the Ledger hardware wallet, the Ledger Live app, and soon, the CL CryptoLife card powered by Ledger. The CL card powered by Ledger is a crypto debit card with powerful features, like an instant exchange to fiat, where crypto assets are only sold at the moment that you swipe your card. And also credit from crypto collateral, where you can collateralize your crypto assets in order to get a higher credit limit. You'll be able to manage your CL card powered by Ledger

• 36:29David Hoffman?

  inside the Ledger Live app, right next to all the DeFi apps and services that you're already used to using. Making the Ledger Live app your one-stop shop for all of your financial needs. Go to ledger.com, grab a Ledger, and download Ledger Live to get all of your DeFi applications all in one place.

• 36:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey guys, we are back talking about the releases of the week. Let's start with this one. Polygon just released their own version of EIP 15.5.9, this fee-burning mechanism that's been so popular on Ethereum. What's happening here, David?

• 36:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the Polygon network is congested. It's filled. That's what happens when there's demand for stuff. And so they are implementing EIP1559 to take advantage of in-demand block space. And so now the Matic token is getting burned as a function of the demand for block space on Polygon. And we know EIP1559 has worked fantastically on Ethereum for many, many reasons. And why not just implement it on Polygon? So that's what's happening.

• 37:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  A much clearer link between the asset and the, I guess, the utility of block space, where previously that wasn't as clear. So you're kind of enshrining the asset and giving it a sacred place in the ecosystem. And that means as block space demand increases, then scarcity of Matic decreases, right? Which is a good thing, assumedly, for price. And that's the effect that it's having on Ethereum. I think all chains really will take a similar path. Like this mechanism is just too good not to implement.

• 37:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, no, it's universally an accepted mechanism. And interestingly, it was EIP1559 was actually implemented on other chains before Ethereum was able to get to it. Because Ethereum has moved a lot more cautiously and slowly. It's also an interesting note to just know that L2s are going to get congested too. Like everything, when you have supply, people are going to eat it up. L1s are going to get congested. We're already seeing Avalanche and Solana gets congested. We're already seeing Polygon has been congested for a really long time. And so there's always going to be some sort of tension behind block space supply and block space demand. And while L2s are going to get congested, they'll still be cheaper. And the way that we solve for L2 congestion is just by like making more of them,

• 38:44David Hoffman?

  which is great, because we can have as many L2s as we want.

• 38:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about some airdrops, David. This is really cool from Polymarket. So they just released, this is a prediction market. Of course, their Polymarket is based on Polygon. They're deployed there. But they just opened up prediction markets for OpenSea, MetaMask, Bored Apes, Zora, Phantom, a whole bunch more. And basically, the question Question is, when are these platforms, when are these apps going to airdrop? All right. And so there could be a prediction market on this. If you look at MetaMask, there is now a 70% probability that, no, sorry, a 30% probability that MetaMask will drop a MetaMask token by March 31st.

• 39:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  OpenSea, a 26% chance, okay? And this is according to prediction markets. So people are, you know, the market is betting in one direction or another. And again, this is a specific time interval from, you know, now until March 31st, 2022. So this is what the market is pricing the probability of these various airdrops at. And I think this is a, you know, a great prediction market to have, especially for crypto, because everyone's curious, like, what's the probability of an OpenSea drop? I just asked you and you said like, you know, probably closer to zero, right? Well, the market is sort of agreeing with you. It's, it's only saying there's a 26% chance that there will be an OpenSea airdrop in the next few months.

• 40:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's really, really interesting. Are any of these standing out to you as like really good deals? I have, I have my eyes on one.

• 40:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, look at Dharma. That dropped all the way down. I'm sure this is a lot differently.

• 40:27David Hoffman?

  By the end of March.

• 40:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do I think is mispriced?

• 40:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah. What do you think is mispriced? Yeah.

• 40:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think by the end of March.

• 40:36David Hoffman?

  MetaMask is, I'm going to say that there's an 80% chance that MetaMask does a token, but by the end of March, really actually kind of throws me off.

• 40:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like 80 to 90% this year, right? That MetaMask is going to do a token, but I, I don't know if this will happen in this quarter. I think things just take more time. But look at this, Board Ape Yacht Club. Right. Definitely doing a token.

• 41:00David Hoffman?

  I feel like there's, they know that. It's announced.

• 41:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. It's pretty much coming, right? These markets are efficient in that way. Okay. Anyway, it's cool to have that as a resource that's on a polymarket for you guys. Include a link to the show notes.

• 41:11David Hoffman?

  Oh God, here we go.

• 41:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fendi, okay, Fendi is a brand, a purse brand, you know, a luxury brand of some sort.

• 41:19David Hoffman?

  Not one that I know.

• 41:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  They just released a tweet that says powering the Web3 revolution, revolution with the ledger. And they created like this. This odd-looking keychain that you could strap to a purse.

• 41:31David Hoffman?

  It's a ledger-carrying case.

• 41:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  To hold your ledger.

• 41:34David Hoffman?

  It's a flashy way to hold your ledger and you can like hook it onto your bag or your coat.

• 41:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are these people trying to get wrench attacks? Like, what is the advantage of flashing a ledger around in public?

• 41:46David Hoffman?

  Well, I mean, it's just, we're just accessorizing our crypto stuff. Like, it's kind of crypto culture taking over. I mean, no one who's smart would actually take a real ledger and clip it to their... Like, maybe they have just a burner ledger. Like, I have ledgers that I don't use, so I have like 50 of them. So like, maybe they're just trying to flashy, be flashy about their ledger. But like, you know, actually, before, in 2015, 2016, in the very, very early days, before Ether, when Ether was trading around $5 to $6, I think at DevCon 1 or DevCon 0, like, people were there, like, wearing their ledgers around their neck as like necklaces.

• 42:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, really?

• 42:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. Just because like, there wasn't, no one was rich. No one was rich yet, like, and it wasn't an issue.

• 42:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're gonna steal my $500?

• 42:33David Hoffman?

  Right, it's like, people needed like, to just use assets just to like, play with Ethereum, right? It wasn't about like, investment, it was just about playing. And then Ether Moon didn't like, that culture went away really, really, really fast. But, this is just ridiculous.

• 42:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't know what I think about that.

• 42:49David Hoffman?

  Why are we talking about this? Let's move on.

• 42:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. You know what you're getting for your birthday, though, next year.

• 42:57David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 42:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  I got it now, I know it.

• 42:59David Hoffman?

  Here's what comes next. David Mihal, we use a number of his websites on the weekly roll-up. The Crypto Stats, Crypto Fees, you know, L2 Fees, we use his stuff all the time. He is starting up Crypto Stats, which is, I think, just perhaps like the culmination of all of his different segregated websites, his fee websites. And so, he is trying to produce, him and the community that he's bootstrapping, is trying to produce a highly curated, highly accurate, normalize is the word that he's using, Crypto Stats, so that people like us can present on stats in a more like, formalized manner. Like, we can actually start to like, have a standard for these things. And so, he's curating people in the Discord.

• 43:43David Hoffman?

  If you want to go join the Discord and help the Crypto Stats community, we'll get a link in the show notes, so put that Discord there. But, basically, he wants to build out the, like, the Wikipedia for crypto data, is what he says.

• 43:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the stuff here. You guys have seen this on rollups before.

• 43:57David Hoffman?

  We use this stuff all the time.

• 43:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tracking ETH burn, crypto fees, you know, how much, yeah, transaction fees are, all of these things. This is cool too, David. So this is a new press release. It got covered by Bloomberg. What is this?

• 44:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Walter Bloomberg in his famous, all caps tweet says Coinbase partners with Blockworks and Bankless, ooh, that's us, for DeFi and Metaverse event called Permissionless. And so, of course, you guys have heard about this before. Permissionless, happening May 17th to 19th in Palm Beach, Florida. This is where Ryan and I are going to be meeting for the first time. So that's gonna be pretty cool, because he decided to not go to ETH Denver.

• 44:37David Hoffman?

  So yeah, you gotta get your tickets, because tickets are up only. They're roughly in the 450-ish dollar range. They're gonna go up in a couple of weeks. They're gonna go up a couple of weeks after that, and they're gonna go up to like 2 plus thousand dollars by the time the event rolls around. So get your tickets now. Ryan and I are planning a Bankless and Beers Satellite Event, where we will have beer and talk about stuff. Yeah, don't miss that.

• 44:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  That'll be awesome. Get the Bankless together, all in one beer hall. It'll be a lot of fun. Also, the news here is partnering with Coinbase.

• 45:06David Hoffman?

  Yes. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. At the actual announcement.

• 45:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's why we got Bloomberg. It wasn't because of Bankless, David.

• 45:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, let's talk about this.

• 45:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  A16Z on the raises front, they just raised another 4.5 billion dollars. Okay, A16, Chris Dixon and company, of course, we've had him on the podcast a number of times. I'm sure they'll put that to good use in the Web3 world. This is another one. FTX, they just launched a $2 billion fund. This is with our friend Amy Wu, who's been on the podcast. This is dedicated, I believe, to kind of the Metaverse, crypto gaming area. So 4.5 billion from A16Z, another 2 billion for FTX. There's another 100 million dollars from Mechanism Games. They just launched a fund focused on play-to-earn gaming. I guess all this to say, massive amount of money in VC

• 46:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Money, private funding coming into the space, showing no signs of stopping. All of kind of the angel deals, VC deals, all of these things are red hot at the moment. And the money is flowing towards builders. Guess it good time to be building in the space? Yeah, I don't know. What are your other takeaways from all of this?

• 46:22David Hoffman?

  There's just an infinite bid for games, crypto games. And I really, truly hope that we aren't just cloning Axie Infinity and spinning out 50 different clones. Like how those stupid arcade games that we see just get repurposed over and over and over again in the web two world. I like, I'm very, very happy that billions of dollars are being funneled into building cool new games. Like bullish on just fun.

• 46:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like that's just a lot.

• 46:48David Hoffman?

  It's just a lot of money, right? Like, how much true innovation can there really be? You don't, you don't get to bootstrap meme innovation into existence with a bunch of money. But there are going to be a bunch of games coming. We're going to be able to play a bunch of games.

• 46:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the good side. That's the good side. It's great to see this money flowing in the space. I am kind of a sucker for the bear market builders, though. You know, like, I feel like that's when the real work gets done. After all of the noise and the hype dies away, the people who remain and they're continuing to build. I mean, that's how Axie was built. It was a bear market story, bear market game. And they just soldered through and a bunch of their peers died. They kept going. They built something great. So I'm still a sucker for the bear market, but it's also good to see all of this infrastructure being built out. That'll lead to good things, too. Speaking of raises as well, last raise of the week, Poap just raised $10 million to accelerate their efforts.

• 47:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Poap badges, they are a thing. They are a cool thing. I know both of us collect many, have many of them.

• 47:48David Hoffman?

  Many, many, many.

• 47:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So what do you think they'll be doing with this capital?

• 47:53David Hoffman?

  Oh, gosh, that's a really interesting question. Maybe we should get Patricio on to actually talk about it. They have a very long blog post about kind of their plans. But there was this one take that we had on the weekly roll up a while ago about how Poaps are just digital tokens of memories. And so I'd like to see Poap kind of lean into that. Like, how do we more instantiate our real memories?

• 48:14David Hoffman?

  Better. And so perhaps that's what they're going after, as well as just like allowing people to increase their digital footprint for airdrops. Po apps are a great way to farm airdrops if people ever use them for whatever reason, because you can just like know who's exactly in your community. But you know, community identifying is really huge. Who's actually, you know, of course, who's been where, don't doing what. I got my first Po app in East Denver 2019. I hold it very dear to my heart. I'm excited to get the 2021 one coming up soon. Congratulations to Patricio because he's been grinding on Po apps ever since, always believed in it. And I'm also very, very honored. Ryan and I both are angel investors in this seed round. So we were part of this too.

• 48:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is cool. This is a tweet we read out on Po app not too long ago. I am my collection and my collection is me. We're just, the podcast coming out on Monday is really all about meaning in the metaverse. And I do think collecting things from various places you've been in the metaverse could be a key way to essentially find meaning, part of your digital identity in this new world of crypto. And Po apps are certainly part of that story. Speaking of digital identity.

• 49:22David Hoffman?

  Here we go.

• 49:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Finding your way in crypto. Do you have a job yet?

• 49:25David Hoffman?

  Do you have a job?

• 49:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you have a crypto job? That's what we mean.

• 49:29David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  You probably have a regular job.

• 49:30David Hoffman?

  A job related to ether and tokens and crypto and stuff like that.

• 49:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  You should have one. This could be the year. Guys, go to the Bankless job board, check out some of the jobs. We'll just read a few out. Senior full stack engineer at Syndica, a data engineer at Paperchain, a senior technical writer on the Ethereum Foundation team. That's writing in Geth for the Geth client. Lead blockchain engineer at ThorSwap. There's a ton of others. We won't read them all, but go tune into bankless.pallet.xyz/jobs. Sign up, get these jobs delivered right to you and get a job in crypto.

• 50:03David Hoffman?

  Have you noticed how the list that Ryan has been reading out has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter? That's because we've gotten people jobs. So if you want to list your job, go to the jobs board and list your job because we are good at placing people.

• 50:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, it works. Guys, let's talk about news now. David, you want to start with Ethereum stuff? And we talked about this last week, which was sort of airdrop season between Looks and this other token that was about to airdrop before we recorded, fees.wtf. And I gotta say, they've really lived up to their name with WTF, because like-

• 50:37David Hoffman?

  Spicy.

• 50:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gone, kind of, it's been a strange airdrop, to say the least. What's happened with this one?

• 50:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and just pat ourselves on the back, because last week, Ryan, we talked about two airdrops. One was Looks, and the other one was wtf fees. And between you and I, our consensus was that like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna hold the Looks airdrop, because that's interesting. But we're gonna sell the wtf fees airdrop. And in hindsight, the Looks token has 2X, and the fees.wtf airdrop was a complete mess. So we got that one right. There's a, they charged, they charged for the airdrop. They charged .01 ETH in order to register your address to get the airdrop. And again, once again, what the hell is the token even for in the first place?

• 51:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  WTF, WTF, guys.

• 51:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like, what the hell's going on? Anthony Sodano had a quote in here that is just very emblematic of who he is. Such a blatant cash grab.

• 51:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, if you have to pay anything other than gas fees for an airdrop, it's not an airdrop.

• 51:39David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah.

• 51:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, there's a problem with it.

• 51:41David Hoffman?

  You're just selling tokens. That's not an airdrop. You're just selling-

• 51:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Selling your ETH? You just, yeah, you're essentially buying tokens with ETH. That's what you're doing.

• 51:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  A lot of other things went wrong with this. I have a confession to make, though, David. I actually didn't even take the time to claim this one.

• 51:56David Hoffman?

  I have not claimed mine either. I don't even know how much it's worth. Yeah, I don't even know how much it's worth.

• 52:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 52:00David Hoffman?

  And now, now I'm just like, well, I got, I'm gonna go check how much I can get. Like, if I can get something, maybe, maybe I will. But like, maybe I just don't do it out of protest. Like, this is dumb.

• 52:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  The other thing is, like, like, the, the claim button. I mean, you are giving some signing authority to whatever, you know, website is, is, you know, you use to claim your tokens. And, and so, I'm a little bit sketched out by that, unless I know the reputation, the pedigree. Like, do I even want to bother? That, that's another reason I didn't claim it. Other than that, I'm just lazy.

• 52:32David Hoffman?

  Meanwhile, as of literally right now, the Looks token just broke through $7. I might be a little bit overexposed here.

• 52:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  David's bullish looks. Let's talk about blacklisting for a minute. This is a PSA from a few weeks ago, but I think the numbers were much smaller. This time, Tether just blacklisted $160 million worth of USDT. Okay, this is another reminder, USDT, Tether, USDC as well. This is not censorship resistant money. These are tokenized representations of dollars in a bank account somewhere. USDC is basically like a bank, a US bank, abiding by all of the US banking regulations on crypto rails. This is not what we mean when we say free, uncensorable money.

• 53:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're useful, they're a means to an end, but another reminder here with Tether blacklisting $160 million. And I gotta ask, what do they do with this money?

• 53:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like who gets that money?

• 53:34David Hoffman?

  Where does that go?

• 53:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  They should implement a burn mechanism. EIP 1559 for Tether and just like, you know, give it back to Tether holders.

• 53:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess Tether just gets a pocket this money.

• 53:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  That can't be how it works, right?

• 53:49David Hoffman?

  Well, how else does it work? Like, who gets the money?

• 53:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. So they're freezing the representation of the tokens, right? The money, of course, is still hopefully.

• 53:58David Hoffman?

  Right, so.

• 53:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  In the vault, and it's not actual dollars, just some portion that are dollars. It's treasuries and bonds and other things that are backing this thing, but I don't know. It would be to Tether's benefit, I suppose, to freeze your funds.

• 54:10David Hoffman?

  160 million dollars worth of value that Tether no longer has an outstanding liability for, which makes it an asset. So like, who gets the asset?

• 54:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  This just leaves me with more questions, David.

• 54:24David Hoffman?

  I know a bunch of public goods that would love that money if anyone from Tether is listening.

• 54:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I mean, they took it from somebody.

• 54:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 54:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  So who's the person they took it from and why?

• 54:32David Hoffman?

  Probably a scammer or like somebody like doing like violating HoFec regulations or something like that.

• 54:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Trust Tether.

• 54:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 54:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  You have to trust Tether.

• 54:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they can freeze anyone's account for any reason. Anyway, let's talk about this Ethereum client diversity stats not doing so well.

• 54:47David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 54:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is an area of improvement. First, let me say amazing that Ethereum actually has more than one client.

• 54:54David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 54:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  No other chain has more than one client. So you're already batting ahead, but like the expectations for Ethereum are so much higher. It has like five, six different clients for ETH2, and this is the proportion. 68% of the ETH2 clients staking ETH in the beacon chain right now are doing so via Prism. Lighthouse, number two with 22%, Taku, 9.5%, Nimbus, 0.3%. Ideally, you'd love to see, I think Danny Ryan's like, I'd love to see, I don't know, probably perfect world. 25%, 25%, 25%, 25%, something like this, or at least a third, a third, a third. No client having more than 33% of the network. That's not the case today.

• 55:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and just to emphasize why this is important. For example, if there was this quick history lesson, here we go. The Shanghai DDoS attacks that happened in 2016, the reason there was one client, I think it was Geth, that got DDoS'd and all Geth nodes stopped working. Ethereum stayed online because the parity nodes, the other client, took the weight of Ethereum.

• 56:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Saved its ass. It saved Ethereum.

• 56:03David Hoffman?

  The multi-client design saved Ethereum. And this is, there's been inflation bugs in Bitcoin and because Bitcoin only has one client, that turns into a catastrophic bug where you have to roll back the chain. Fun fact, Bitcoin has had the chain rollback, which is crazy because they yell at Ethereum for doing it.

• 56:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Way back, way back in the day.

• 56:20David Hoffman?

  Way back in the day.

• 56:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Way back in the day, but yes.

• 56:23David Hoffman?

  And so, a multi-client system is a decentralized, anti-fragile system. But Prism is such a good client that everyone is using Prism to stake. And so Prism has this outsized share, just because they made a really good piece of software, they have an outsized share of Ethereum to clients. And so, there's this conversation happening in the Ethereum space about how do we get more people to stake not using Prism?

• 56:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a victim of its own success.

• 56:49David Hoffman?

  It's a victim of its own success.

• 56:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Prism is just really good.

• 56:51David Hoffman?

  But the thing is, we have incentives baked into the Ethereum protocol, which I think is what you're about to pull up next.

• 56:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, the problem is, these incentives are almost disincentives. So it's a bit more stick than carrot. But like, yeah, what are these disincentives? What is the stick?

• 57:07David Hoffman?

  Right, okay, so in the event of a client failure, if there's ever a bunch of nodes that all go down at the same time, slashing happens. And if everyone who's on Prism all goes down at the same time, everyone is getting slashed if there's a client failure. And because Prism is disproportionately a high portion of the clients, they get slashed disproportionately because we want to incentivize.

• 57:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like amplified.

• 57:31David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 57:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like an amplification effect.

• 57:33David Hoffman?

  There's like a crowd penalty, like, oh, are you staking with everyone else? And everyone else, when their nodes went down? Well, you should have been staking with like fewer people. Maybe you should have been staking on Loadstar or Nimbus, where there isn't the amplification penalty. And so staking on Loadstar, you don't have any loss if there is like a client-wide slashing event. And with Nimbus, which is the next most used client, like it's only a little bit by comparison. And so these are these natural incentives to balance the resources of the Ethereum ecosystem to make sure that it stays decentralized over the long term. And this is just what good incentive mechanism design looks like. So if you are running a node on Prism, know that this risk to you exists because you are staking

• 58:18David Hoffman?

  in the same exact way that everyone else is. And perhaps you should, you know, get out of the crowded room and go to the more empty room.

• 58:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I do think that this is sort of a PSA, right? And particularly for exchanges, would love to see more client diversity with the Coinbase's and Kraken's of the world doing this. So, you know, hopefully they are factoring these risks into the equation because the risk amplification, if they're all using some of the top clients, like a Prism or Taku, is just drastic. It's going to cost a lot more money in the event of slashing. Of course, I feel like some of this conversation is a little premature too because we haven't yet gotten to the merge, okay? Everyone's ETH is still sort of locked in the beacon chain. So that's another catalyst that could shake things up and change it all around. I'm hopeful for that.

• 59:01David Hoffman?

  But there's a conversation about how if this disproportionate weighting towards Prism actually might delay the merge because it's unsafe to merge when there is a super majority of stake. So that is up in the air.

• 59:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's interesting. I don't personally, I don't think it'll delay anything. But yeah, that is a conversation that I've seen. Let's talk about Layer 2, David.

• 59:22David Hoffman?

  Oh, I love it.

• 59:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Our favorite subject.

• 59:24David Hoffman?

  Oh, here we go.

• 59:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because it's 2022. Yep, yep. Layer 2 time, alright? Get you going. Binance users are now now able to deposit and withdraw ETH to and from Arbitrum. That's our fiat on-ramp.

• 59:36David Hoffman?

  Love it.

• 59:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Binance, starting to support Arbitrum. And another victim of its own success.

• 59:41David Hoffman?

  They had to stop it.

• 59:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  They had to stop it.

• 59:44David Hoffman?

  Do you know why they had to had to stop, Ryan?

• 59:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, this happened very quickly. Like, in a few days, they just had it on and they turned it off.

• 59:50David Hoffman?

  Why they turned it off? The answer why they turned it off? Because they ran out of ETH. Because everyone withdrew to Arbitrum. And so they had, they need to like get their their their ferry of ETH from the main name back to Arbitrum. So users of Binance can go from from Binance to Arbitrum. It was so successful that Binance ran out of ETH on Arbitrum. So Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, I know you're listening. Take note, like, there's user demand to exit from exchanges onto Layer 2s. Please do it. Please do it.

• 1:00:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Layer 2, Layer 2 2022.

• 1:00:21David Hoffman?

  Brian, I have your number. Don't make me text you.

• 1:00:25David Hoffman?

  I will.

• 1:00:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Optimism. Optimism as well, they're getting an AVE implementation. So it looks like AVE is getting set to deploy on Optimism. Again, Layer 2 is happening. Also on Arbitrum.

• 1:00:37David Hoffman?

  Yep, love it.

• 1:00:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  AVE on AVE.

• 1:00:40David Hoffman?

  AVE everywhere.

• 1:00:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  AVE on Optimism and Arbitrum right now. AVE coming to ZK Sync. That's what's happening in the Argent Wallet. That just went live this week. Also, Optimism continuing to drive improvements. There's so much optimization. I'm optimistic, Optimism optimizations, alright? They just shaved 30% off their average transaction fee this week. And there might be more coming.

• 1:01:03David Hoffman?

  This is not the 30% shaved off of transaction fees that we reported on last week. That was a different time. This is another 30% off of transaction fees off of Optimism. So an ERC 20 token transfer, or excuse me, an ETH transfer on our Optimism, almost below a dollar. Almost below a dollar. And there is still plenty of room for even further fee reductions on Layer 2.

• 1:01:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're all competing with each other. I love it. It's just they're all competing each other to drive down prices.

• 1:01:31David Hoffman?

  22222222.

• 1:01:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hot Protocol. 1 billion in volume transferred. This is just 6 months after launching. People using bridges. How long will it take them to reach 100 billion is the question?

• 1:01:45David Hoffman?

  Next, this year, this year, 100%.

• 1:01:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Definitely this year.

• 1:01:47David Hoffman?

  Also, definitely, if you haven't used the HOP bridge before, go do it. Just farm the airdrop, like, they don't have a token, they're going to release a token. How are they going to release a token is from people using the bridge. Go use the HOP bridge. Go from Ethereum to Optimism, go from Optimism to Arbitrum, go do other things. And then, I don't know, just end up back on Ethereum. Just start farming these airdrops. Why aren't you doing this? Is HOP on there?

• 1:02:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm looking at the probability, yeah, it's, it's

• 1:02:15David Hoffman?

  34%.

• 1:02:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  According to Polymarket, the probability this quarter is 34% that HOP will release an airdrop.

• 1:02:22David Hoffman?

  I think they should really extend this out for the whole entire year. I don't know, I guess they need the markets to settle, but they should really extend the markets to a one year timeframe.

• 1:02:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm sure they will, but you know, that's your probability this quarter according to the prediction market. Let's go to NFT land, David. This is huge news, absolutely monumental news. Facebook and Instagram adding NFT functionality. They want to help you create, that's minting, and sell NFTs in addition to, of course, displaying your favorite NFTs. This is super big news from my perspective. What do you think of this?

• 1:02:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'd like to know the details. I did not actually read this article, apologies, but

• 1:03:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's not much in the article, it's just more of a stub.

• 1:03:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because it links to a Financial Times article, it's kind of vague, but Meta is doing something. They're probably going to use their NOV wallet.

• 1:03:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. So, and it's not certain that this is like going to happen on open blockchain systems. Like maybe it'll be part of the, you know, the Facebook blockchain or something like this. But from my perspective, this is still massive adoption.

• 1:03:26David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:03:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Massive surface area for NFTs.

• 1:03:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this kind of feels like a, hey, we're doing stuff too, an announcement. In this article, you can, you can see Instagram leader Adam Mosseri said in December that his social network was actively exploring NFTs. The technology is on the company's mind at least. It sounds like they haven't completely settled with what they want to do. They just are telling the market that like, yo, we're totally doing NFT stuff as soon as we figure out what that is.

• 1:03:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think they're also doing that thing where they're testing the waters? Like they let stuff leak?

• 1:03:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, see if they're gonna get canceled or not.

• 1:03:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  How the market responds? Yeah, something like this and then?

• 1:03:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I keep on forgetting that people like to cancel people over NFTs. I forgot about that.

• 1:04:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's happening, yeah, that's a thing. Irene Dow.

• 1:04:06David Hoffman?

  Irene Dow.

• 1:04:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's been a thing over the weekend as well. What is this? What is going on? I've called, I've heard people refer to this as simp-fi.

• 1:04:12David Hoffman?

  Simp-fi, yeah, so Irene is an individual, I don't know who she was before this, but she has made a bunch of NFTs of her in like, you know, attractive attire and, you know, very, very pretty and has made a bunch of NFTs and she has made Irene Dow, so there's a Discord. And so like, basically, she's just targeting all the simps of the world to get her to buy her NFTs. The floor price is 1.4 ETH. Mike Novogratz bought one, a few other people have bought one. So like, people are starting to buy these just because like, it's kind of like a-

• 1:04:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you have one?

• 1:04:47David Hoffman?

  I do not have, Ryan, please, please, sir.

• 1:04:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not an Irene simp?

• 1:04:52David Hoffman?

  Not an Irene simp, no. I mean, I'm down to be a simp for someone, but I don't, I don't know who Irene is. I want to, I want to choose who I'm gonna be a simp for.

• 1:05:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Our show notes say, "Would be fun for David to explain what a simp is to Ryan." Okay, so I didn't put this in there.

• 1:05:06David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:05:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Must be Luke, our editor, puts this in there.

• 1:05:09David Hoffman?

  Luke, okay, Ryan.

• 1:05:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, I know what a simp is, all right? I understand, Luke, what a simp is.

• 1:05:13David Hoffman?

  Actually, what is simp short for? Maybe I need to have a, what is simp? What is, what is simp? I'm gonna Google this right, what is simp short for?

• 1:05:26David Hoffman?

  Oh, I won't be reading that out loud.

• 1:05:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, well, that's what's going on.

• 1:05:31David Hoffman?

  A simp is somebody who, it's basically like, somebody that just like, does anything and or everything for like, a girl, right? Like, oh, like, they're super interested in like, oh-

• 1:05:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  It doesn't have to be a girl, does it?

• 1:05:43David Hoffman?

  I think so.

• 1:05:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, are we Ethereum simps?

• 1:05:45David Hoffman?

  Oh, we are huge, huge Ethereum simps. That's exactly right. Yeah, but like, it's supposed to be for like, the opposite gender, like, oh, I'll go get your coffee, I'll go, like, I'll hold the door open for you, I'll cook, I'll cook you dinner, like, I think like, stuff like that, yeah.

• 1:05:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, moving on. China is getting into the NFT scene, okay? Bitcoin bad, NFTs good, as long as it's deployed on the national China-

• 1:06:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Blockchain network, that's what's going on, in which case, is it an NFT?

• 1:06:14David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:06:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Per discussion last week, we were talking about the flow chain. It's just a JPEG. If you don't have

• 1:06:20David Hoffman?

  Property rights.

• 1:06:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Property rights, it's just a JPEG. If your property rights are dependent on a nation state that can censor you, those are weak property rights. I don't know. I think some people get worried when they see this about nation states co-opting NFTs and co-opting Web3. I don't personally, because of the Protocol Sync thesis, right? I think all of this ultimately has to settle, ultimately has to collapse to the most credibly neutral decentralized layer at the very bottom. So this is just onboarding for open permissionless chains, I think, I hope. But do you think that's a real threat? Do you think this gets co-opted by nation states?

• 1:07:05David Hoffman?

  At the end of the day, like, I don't really care too much about JPEGs getting co-opted by nation states, because you can still do stuff by, like, trading them. And like, if all things get co-opted, like JPEGs aren't really the worst, but yeah.

• 1:07:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  But keep in mind, NFTs, like, they're starting as JPEGs, but like, we believe they're gonna be like

• 1:07:22David Hoffman?

  They turn into identity.

• 1:07:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fundamental property in the metaverse, identity, all sorts of things.

• 1:07:26David Hoffman?

  I mean, it's not any more like centralized than it already was, so, there's that.

• 1:07:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's that. Gap coming in the NFT world, releasing their first line of NFTs on the Tezos blockchain. So retailers joining the fray. What's this about?

• 1:07:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think that's it.

• 1:07:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  NFT mania?

• 1:07:45David Hoffman?

  Gap, NFT on Tezos, end story.

• 1:07:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  You wanna hear something weird, dystopian?

• 1:07:50David Hoffman?

  Here we go.

• 1:07:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Walmart is quietly preparing to enter the metaverse. The Walmart metaverse.

• 1:07:56David Hoffman?

  The Walmart.

• 1:07:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  How does that sound?

• 1:07:57David Hoffman?

  The metaverse we have at home.

• 1:08:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. This just sounds awful to me, the Walmart metaverse, but I guess they're filing trademarks. I'm not sure they're doing anything more.

• 1:08:07David Hoffman?

  That's the news. It's the most boomer way to get into the metaverse. They filed trademarks. That's the end of the story.

• 1:08:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Someone tell them they don't actually have to file trademarks to build on the metaverse, please.

• 1:08:17David Hoffman?

  Okay, this is the big story.

• 1:08:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't know why we buried this. This is the big one. What is this, David?

• 1:08:22David Hoffman?

  Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard, World of Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, that game studio, also Call of Duty. That is getting bought by Microsoft at something like 40% above the share price at the time when this was released.

• 1:08:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  69 billion.

• 1:08:38David Hoffman?

  69 billion dollars, nice. And so Microsoft getting into the metaverse via just an acquisition of a gaming company. I mean, Activision Blizzard hadn't even gotten into the metaverse yet. Whatever, again, whatever that even means, I don't even know. But Microsoft wants to be into digital worlds and digital realms. And so maybe this is injecting metaverse type stuff into Activision Blizzard.

• 1:09:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this valuation, this is more than a game purchase, it feels like, right? It's more strategic than that. This feels like more than a, just a game acquisition for kind of their Xbox platform, Microsoft, you know, game studios. This feels to me at this kind of premium is, this is a play for the metaverse. This is a...

• 1:09:23David Hoffman?

  They are fomoing into the metaverse.

• 1:09:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, they're trying to chase after whatever Zuckerberg and crew are doing on the meta side of things, on the Facebook side of things. But you think it means, you think this is going to be a trend this year?

• 1:09:35David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah. This is my tweet. I said, you know, blank, "Public company enters the metaverse will be the headline of 2022." And then I followed that up with my ETH maxi take. Might as well read, "Public company buys ETH," because it's the same thing.

• 1:09:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, definitely. To the extent it's going to be built on Ethereum. Coinbase partnering with Mastercard to let users buy NFT via cards. That sounds cool. What's happening?

• 1:09:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Coinbase has their NFT platform, their to be released NFT platform. And fortunately, Mastercard has categorized NFTs as digital goods. So because of that, you can buy them with Mastercard. So making it compliant to buy crypto things. You can't buy like things like Bitcoin or Ether or cryptocurrencies with a credit card. That would be bad, also irresponsible. But you can buy NFTs because Mastercard has called them, classified them as digital goods. So, cool. We can now buy NFTs with our Mastercard. And as soon as Coinbase opens up their NFT platform, we'll be able to do it there.

• 1:10:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome. Breaking into mainstream. Here's another story of that. So Budweiser just purchased, I believe, a nouns.

• 1:10:44David Hoffman?

  Nouns, NFTs out of Noun Dow, yeah.

• 1:10:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  From Nouns Dow. This is sort of the, I don't know, this is, this has some of the pedigree and some of the valuations that rival CryptoPunks, right? I know it's not as mainstream. There are far fewer Noun Dows. I believe one is released every day.

• 1:11:00David Hoffman?

  One noun per day. There's a bid on it. I think the bids are like 50 to 60 ETH per noun, just because I don't know how they got that, that valuation so quickly, but they did. So, great.

• 1:11:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. So Budweiser doing it, obviously for some social cachet, for some street cred, for some brand awareness, for some coolness. And I believe are planning to incorporate nouns in a Super Bowl ad.

• 1:11:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? Like Budweiser dominating Super Bowl ads. This is IP for one of their ads? Super cool.

• 1:11:26David Hoffman?

  Whoever is in Budweiser, like advertising or leading Budweiser or Bud Light, it's actually Bud Light, which I think are the same thing. Whoever's doing that, like killer job, because it's not, they didn't do the very basic thing of just buying a board ape. They went for a Nouns Dow. That is some like deep NFT knowledge. So like, dude, like whoever's leading Bud Light, give that person a raise, first off, and they're probably, you know, they're probably a reader of Metaverse, I would say. I bet you they really want to read William Peiser stuff. I bet you they got to.

• 1:11:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, William Peiser's a big noun fan, so, yeah. Maybe it's that. This is pretty, this is pretty obscure. This is pretty deep. This is pretty niche.

• 1:12:04David Hoffman?

  This is a good move. This is a good move. This is a very strong indication, like, yo, we are actually cool. We are not just like the hey fellow kids.

• 1:12:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. They're not just buying another board ape, right? This is, this is deep crypto stuff.

• 1:12:14David Hoffman?

  This is real crypto stuff.

• 1:12:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, okay, so how many, how many crypto commercials you think we'll see at the Super Bowl? What's your guess?

• 1:12:22David Hoffman?

  At least two.

• 1:12:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, I'm gonna go with five.

• 1:12:25David Hoffman?

  Oh, fuck. Wow.

• 1:12:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it's gonna be five. And, and so I'm including something like this that's Budweiser that adds Nouns Dow when I, when I total five, but yeah, I think it's at least five.

• 1:12:36David Hoffman?

  Cool.

• 1:12:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that's a low estimate.

• 1:12:38David Hoffman?

  Paulie Market, let's get this up and running.

• 1:12:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, this is cool too. SoRare, they just added Serena Williams to their board of advisors. SoRare, of course, is an NFT trading card platform. It's really for soccer, really for football.

• 1:12:56David Hoffman?

  Fantasy football, right?

• 1:12:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fantasy football.

• 1:12:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so, and it's built on top of Layer 2 technology, super cool, huge.

• 1:13:04David Hoffman?

  ZK rollup on Ethereum?

• 1:13:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  ZK rollup on Ethereum. Now Serena Williams jumping on the board. This is kind of a question. I think we'll see more athletes do this, more influencers do this, get into the NFT scene. I think she's really blazing a trail here, so that's cool. Or maybe we're just simping for Serena Williams, we wanted a podcast, that's why we mentioned this.

• 1:13:23David Hoffman?

  Well, I accidentally talk shit because Serena Williams recently put a board A past her profile picture.

• 1:13:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, there goes that. Some post-show editing here. Last thing on the NFT category, what's this, David?

• 1:13:38David Hoffman?

  Solana NFT's total sale volume crosses $1 billion. Congrats to the Solana NFT ecosystem. I don't know, actually, what is like the OpenSea version of Solana? Like, where do you go to trade?

• 1:13:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a whole, it's a whole different set of apps. It's a whole different world over there. Although, I think OpenSea's gonna, I mean, they support cross-chain, multi-chain, L2. Yeah, so we'll see how long all of that lasts. Bitcoin world, just two quick things. The first is Jack just announced that Block, formerly known as Square, is officially building an open Bitcoin mining system. I feel like he already announced that, but maybe we're announcing it again. And also, the Cash App is integrating Lightning Network, letting US users send Bitcoin globally for free. Cash App of Block, formerly Square, going all in on Bitcoin. Still seems kind of weird that it's just Bitcoin.

• 1:14:32David Hoffman?

  I'm glad, I'm glad you said it.

• 1:14:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  But like, also do all of the other things.

• 1:14:38David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:14:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like maximalism holds people back a little bit.

• 1:14:42David Hoffman?

  Totally, dude.

• 1:14:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Any form of maximalism, okay? ETH maximalism, Bitcoin maximalism, maximalism will hold you back in this space.

• 1:14:51David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin, innovating on Bitcoin miners is just not where it's at in 2022. Like, come on, Jack.

• 1:14:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  But also come on the podcast.

• 1:15:00David Hoffman?

  But also come on the podcast.

• 1:15:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Last thing for you on the regulatory side of things. I guess this is more crypto banking side of things. There was a breach at crypto.com. First there are reports $15 million was stolen in this heist. Looks like it's closer to $33 million. The CEO of crypto.com confirmed this. Do you know what's going on here?

• 1:15:23David Hoffman?

  No, and neither do they. This is a quote from the article. "It is not yet known how the hacker was able to steal the funds from crypto.com, but the exchange first announced that some users were reporting suspicious activities on their accounts on January 17th." At the time, the exchange stated that it was going to pause withdrawals while it was investigating the matter. And so, yeah, kind of big, big loss here. Over $30 million in collective BTC and ETH. The Ether on Ethereum got washed through tornado cash. And so, poof, it's gone. Amazing. Sorry to crypto.com and anyone affected by this. My conspiracy is inside job. Inside job.

• 1:16:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Interesting. Many of them are. Not your keys, not your crypto. If you have funds parked in crypto.com. I think for this size of a hack, of course, everyone will be fine. Crypto.com is like printing money these days through all sorts of means. So it's going to be fine for this type of a hack. But you know, it's been a long time since we talked about a major exchange getting hacked. Can you imagine if like Coinbase was hacked, David? What a dark day that would be for crypto. We haven't talked about things like that.

• 1:16:29David Hoffman?

  Coinbase has actually gotten hacked very, very, very in their early days. And I think that's actually a good thing because they started to take security very, very seriously, very, very early, and they have not been hacked since. So I actually kind of think like, I consider Coinbase as like basically never have gotten hacked before because like it almost doesn't count when they started in like 2011 or 2012 or something, 2013. It's like they were just like the three-person startup on like a laptop. And then, and then boom, as soon as they got any sort of traction, like they have been fantastically secure ever since. Also Gemini has not been hacked either. So.

• 1:17:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's also good that we had Mt. Gox happen so early in crypto's history. That just kind of shook many generations. But we're kind of far removed from that. Anyway, I'm not wishing anything bad. It's happening. It's just, no, if you have your funds in an exchange, that could be susceptible to something like this. Guys, we will be right back with the takes of the week and of course, the meme of the week. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 1:17:27David Hoffman?

  Polygon is Ethereum's largest and most vibrant scaling solution to date. With millions of monthly users and all of the biggest DeFi apps, the Polygon ecosystem has turned into a blossoming metropolis of DeFi activity. Transactions on Polygon are quick and cheap, allowing users the freedom to achieve their DeFi goals, all while being economically anchored to Ethereum. But Polygon isn't just the proof-of-stake sidechain. The Polygon team is building a suite of scaling solutions, including Polygon Hermes, Midan, Nightfall, and Zero, all with different design choices in order to be optimized for all possible crypto use cases. If you're a developer who wants to build on the Polygon ecosystem, go to the link in the show notes to check out their fantastic documentation. And if you're a user who just wants to experience fast and cheap DeFi, you can bridge over your ETH or other tokens

• 1:18:12David Hoffman?

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

• 1:18:57David Hoffman?

  If you want to bridge your assets quickly and securely, go to across.to to bridge your assets between ETH, Optimism, Arbitrum, or Boba Networks. Bankless is proud to be sponsored by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system, where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum that lets you trade any token at the current market price. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. The Uniswap Grants Program is accepting applications for grants. Do you have something of value that you think you want to contribute? To the Uniswap ecosystem, no matter how big or small your idea is,

• 1:19:41David Hoffman?

  you can apply it for a uni-grant at uniswapgrant.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Bankless.

• 1:19:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back with the takes of the week. The first is this, a property versus utility. This is an image you're going to have to describe for podcast listeners. What are we looking at?

• 1:19:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so we have BTC and ETH side by side. BTC is a square, representing a plot of land. And then next to it is Ether, also a square, representing a plot of land. But on Ether's square is a cube, indicating that you can build something on it. And I actually really just enjoyed this visual metaphor.

• 1:20:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's very simple.

• 1:20:17David Hoffman?

  Remember when the "few understand" meme was proliferating around crypto Twitter? You remember? Do you remember how that came about, Ryan?

• 1:20:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I was actually going to ask, did that come from DeFi circles or Bitcoin circles?

• 1:20:29David Hoffman?

  That came from Bitcoin circles. That came from Pierre Richard, who said that Bitcoin is real estate on the internet, internet real estate, implying like, yo, there's like, it's the native currency of the internet. There's only 21 million units, therefore it's like digital real estate on the internet. And then he said "few understand," and that's what started the "few understand" meme. And then a bunch of people started making fun of that because it's just a ridiculous metaphor, because you can't actually build anything on that real estate. And no, it's not real estate, it's just tokens. It's just a token, it's not real estate. Anyways, you can actually build stuff on Ethereum. And so it is the same surface area like Bitcoin. Ethereum has the same surface area. But if we're using this real estate metaphor, like you can actually build stuff on your land on Ethereum.

• 1:21:13David Hoffman?

  So I just enjoyed this metaphor.

• 1:21:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's cool. You're literally building things on the blocks, on the blocks themselves.

• 1:21:19David Hoffman?

  Exactly right.

• 1:21:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's this?

• 1:21:20David Hoffman?

  This was great. Okay, so this is a brand-new PFP project that got spun up. And somebody kind of did an oopsies. If you want to click on that first image, the first one, yeah. We have this brand-new Women's Doodle Society, coming off of the success of Doodles NFT. And Women's Doodle Society tweeted out, "Something very special is coming soon. Please follow us and don't miss out," you know, implying they're going to start off their PFP. NFT profile picture and then somebody with an actual doodle says yo, there's still a Fiverr watermark on your PFP. So like this women doodle society just went to Fiverr and just like yo, like can you make us some NFT images?

• 1:22:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  And literally didn't even pay for it because it's still watermarked, right?

• 1:22:05David Hoffman?

  Exactly, still watermarks. Also, the other thing about this is that this picture that we're looking at right here, somebody took a photograph of their screen and you can tell because of like the striations right around the mouth. Like that is a picture of a screen. So I mean, that's not a screenshot. That is somebody with their phone taking a picture of their screen. So that person is a boomer. That is what a boomer looks like.

• 1:22:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is terrible. This is absolutely like, you know, this, you know, late-stage capitalism is kind of that meme. This is like late-stage meme market. This is what happens. I mean, does this feel a little toppy to you?

• 1:22:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, super. But like I've been feeling, I've been feeling top signals for roughly a year now. So I've stopped, I've started ignoring them.

• 1:22:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, but I think we've come to a place where there can be top signals in various markets, right? But like not others. And so maybe this is a top signal in like cloned PFP NFT segment of the market, right? But it doesn't mean that all NFTs have top signaled as a result of this.

• 1:22:58David Hoffman?

  That's exactly right.

• 1:22:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about this. A take from someone on Twitter. Yes. Another, this is late, if that was late-stage NFT, this is late-stage DeFi. And what happens in late-stage DeFi, I think this tweet is maybe summing up the current, Zeke, guys, do you want to read this out?

• 1:23:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is from Emilio who says, "The current state of the new wave of DeFi," talking about the newer, newer DeFi apps that have come out, come out about. "One, individuals worshipped like gods. Two, burner addresses with keys controlled by the founders. Three, multimillion rugs shaken off like it was nothing. Four, DAO members doing whatever they want with the protocol treasuries." And then Emilio finishes up saying, "Needless to say, this is not what I signed up for." And I mean, Ryan and I are definitely DeFi boomers. We kind of stick to like the DeFi 1.0 apps, I'd say, like Maker, Compound, Ave, the thing, Uniswap, the things that came about while we were paying attention to Ethereum during the bear market. And there's just been like a newer wave of these DeFi apps, which are just like kind of not our vibe, I'd say. Just a little bit more like.

• 1:23:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  I would say, so for me personally, I would say some of them are, some of them aren't. Right. But like, but what this was, what this tweet, tweet summed up is individuals worshiped like gods, multimillion dollar rug, shaking, like people taking all of these excessive risks.

• 1:24:12David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:24:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  There is an element of some aspects of DeFi 2.0 that I totally don't vibe with, right?

• 1:24:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  What I love in DeFi 2.0 is seeing builders building new things. What I don't love is this whole vibe of like, you know, F everything, like we're just gonna build until it breaks and do what we want with treasuries and like, that's, that's, that's a vibe that I definitely don't resonate with. And that's the part that feels late stage. I actually thought this, um, this reply from Mark kind of summed it up. "We have the bull market and we have the bear market," he says. "In between them, we have cringe markets. When stuff like this is normal, bear will clean it up."

• 1:24:51David Hoffman?

  Cringe markets. Wow. We have got to use that. I'm going to be using that moving forward.

• 1:24:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  In the cringe market?

• 1:24:55David Hoffman?

  That's totally where we, I feel like we are right now. We are right in the middle of cringe market.

• 1:24:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you wishing for a bear market then to clean some of this up, as Mark says?

• 1:25:03David Hoffman?

  Like, I, wishing for a bear market wishes for people's money to go down in a way and I would never wish, which I would never wish. But like, I also at the same time, like, if, if anyone who's listened to this feels like they're latent to crypto, like, and you're like, looking at your portfolio saying like, oh, please moon, please moon, please moon. You actually want a bear market. A bear market is where like, if you have conviction, you stick around. You also buy assets at much lower prices. You learn who your friends are. Real products get built with real innovations. You also have time to understand these things before the market moves on. Like, bear markets are blessings.

• 1:25:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a blessing.

• 1:25:39David Hoffman?

  It's a blessing. Yeah. Like, yeah. But then, but then you're poor. So that sucks.

• 1:25:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  I too am bullish on bear markets because.

• 1:25:46David Hoffman?

  I'm bullish on bear markets. Yeah.

• 1:25:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're, you're poor temporarily. But, but the one thing, you know, I saw, I saw this thread in crypto Reddit. I think it was something like, um, Are crypto markets going to come back? And the truth is, some of them will, and some of them won't.

• 1:26:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  So like, you also have to be very cautious of what you're buying, what you're investing in. This is why we continuously harp on evaluation of like fundamentals, right? The stuff doesn't tend to matter, fundamentals don't tend to matter during bull runs. But in the bear market, they certainly do. I guess the safest move overall is just to escape to Fiat for some period of time. But yeah, you know, that's what we're dealing with.

• 1:26:28David Hoffman?

  Fiat and hard money and yield.

• 1:26:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about this, the SEC, the good old SEC. This is my take. Do you want to read it out?

• 1:26:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this guy, Ryan Sean Adams, says, if the SEC deemed ETH a security in 2022, it would probably be the end of the SEC, not Ethereum, which is just like so Chad, awesome.

• 1:26:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a little cheeky. It's a little cheeky, right?

• 1:26:52David Hoffman?

  I loved it.

• 1:26:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  So here's the thing, I feel like institutions have the most to lose from a credibility perspective, right? And there was talk over the weekend that I saw of maybe Gary Gensler, maybe the SEC, coming out and saying something about Ethereum being a security, right? Like, very heavy-handed move on the entire industry. And the reason I don't think they'll do this is because I legitimately believe that would be the beginning of the end for the SEC, right? That is such an erosion of the credibility of their institution. And let's remember, all of these government regulatory bodies, they are institutions. They are social institutions governed by the people, right?

• 1:27:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  And if they start to lose their credibility in major ways, you know, like, that's an existential threat for them. And to make this kind of a move, to call ETH a security, which is why I'm not worried about it. I don't think they'll do this. They don't want to ruin their legitimacy and credibility. But like, it's just not going to happen. And if it did happen, Ethereum would come out of it more unscathed than the SEC on the other side of this thing. Like Ethereum's not going away because a government body says it's a security.

• 1:28:05David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah. And like, I dare them to try, first off, also.

• 1:28:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't. They should just play nice. Just be nice, SEC. Like, we could all help America, like, just. You don't have to do this. I don't know if they're doing it, but...

• 1:28:19David Hoffman?

  No, they're definitely not. This is just like a conversation that...

• 1:28:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's just a conversation on crypto Twitter.

• 1:28:24David Hoffman?

  It's just one of those things where like, it would, it would, the emperor would be revealed to have no clothes. As in like, "Oh, you deemed Ethereum a security and like, no one cares and we're still doing all of our Ethereum stuff." Like, like, do you think, I would like to see if Coinbase would actually delist Ether from the exchange if they did that, or if they would leave it up as a protest. Like, I think it would show how little power it has.

• 1:28:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, then everything is, right?

• 1:28:51David Hoffman?

  Well, Bitcoin has a case where it would be.

• 1:28:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, this is your take, David.

• 1:28:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's not really a take. It's me just kind of front-running what I'm excited about. But I tweeted out, "East Denver is one month away. I can already feel my heart getting warm. I'm just so happy to have East Denver around the corner. It's a great conference, great vibes. I'm just stoked to see everyone there."

• 1:29:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this goes into what you're excited about. So let me ask you, what are you excited about East Denver in particular? What's the pitch for someone to come to East Denver?

• 1:29:18David Hoffman?

  East Denver is just pure signal. If you are just fatigued from just the noise of a bull market, or what we are now calling cringe market, like, East Denver is the opposite of that. Like, everyone who's at East Denver, like, has, like, wants to be there for the right reasons. It's very deep crypto culture, very true to the ethos. It's just an absolute blast. It feels something like, it's a hackathon, first off. There's a bunch of developers on their laptops, like, hacking away. And as like a non-dev, it's kind of nice just to like, watch them be like, "Oh, yeah, keep going, guys. Like, keep building, keep building this stuff."

• 1:29:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thank you.

• 1:29:52David Hoffman?

  "Thank you for your service." And it's just like, it's a festival. It's a cultural festival of just like crypto culture, which is, which is lovely. There's after-parties, there's a bunch of, you're gonna meet friends. If you want crypto friends and you don't, and you're talking the ear off of your family and your friends and they're tired of you, go to East Denver's, because you can find some other crypto people that can talk about crypto more than you can. And that's actually just one of the things I'm excited about, right? The other thing I'm excited about is, I did it at Layer Zero with Santiago Siri, Santi Siri on Twitter. People might know him. Big Argentine community. Community member, doesn't live in Argentina currently, but when Vitalik was going around Argentina recently and telling that story about how

• 1:30:32David Hoffman?

  Argentines are using Binance to transfer money, like that kind of story got, went around the Twitter sphere recently. It was Santi that was like with Vitalik, like, you know, guiding him around the country. Like, hey, we're gonna go talk to these people, like, we're gonna go, like, who do you want to go talk to, what part of the communities? So, and he's watched Argentina go from like a very wealthy, highly, just like, great, great country, like with lots of agriculture. And then the money broke, the inflation happened, the corruption in the government happened, he watched the downfall of Argentina. And he is now watching the rise of crypto society in Argentina.

• 1:31:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 1:31:10David Hoffman?

  Where it's not, it's not like, you know, normal society, that we consider normal inside the US, where you have like, normal society and crypto people. Crypto people are society in Argentina. Like, it is completely just rampant as like a movement in Argentina. And I've always had, held Argentina close to my heart, just, I think for reasons like that.

• 1:31:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  A lot of great people from Argentina too, that I've met in crypto over the years.

• 1:31:34David Hoffman?

  Shout out Mariano Conti. Yeah, so that, I want everyone to go listen to The Layer Zero that comes out on Tuesday with Santiago Siri.

• 1:31:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome, man. I can't wait to listen to it.

• 1:31:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Ryan, what are you excited about?

• 1:31:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, it's this thing, Instagram doing NFTs. I think that's a massive deal, like, we called it over the summer. You know, in August, we wrote this post where we said Twitter is just the first, this is when Twitter announced that they were doing something with NFTs. They're just the first. You know what happens next? Competition among social media platforms will ramp up. YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, the metaverse will consume them all. This is the Web3 space race. And we're really seeing it happen. And what I'm blown away by is how fast this happened. Like, this is happening at warp speed, especially when you compare it to DeFi, right? So, the incumbents, the groups that should feel threatened by this, they're jumping aboard.

• 1:32:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's taken much longer for the incumbents in the finance world, like the banks of the world, to embrace DeFi. But in Web3, Web2 is just Embracing it, they're just helping us roll out Web 3 and that's amazing. And when I tweeted this out, some people were saying, well, but you know, Facebook's the enemy, right? Meta, Instagram, this is the enemy. But we always go back to that thing of if they adopt crypto protocols, they adopt crypto values.

• 1:32:53David Hoffman?

  Oh, that line gives me shivers.

• 1:32:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? That's how like, that's how, that's how we win. So this is an example of crypto winning. Other people said, okay, but what if Facebook is not actually using an open permissionless chain? What if they're using their own layer one? Or I just say like, let them, okay? I mean, that's fine. You can be AOL. You can mail CDs to everyone's house and onboard them to the fake internet so that they eventually onboard to the real internet, right? That, that's what's going to happen because they can't persist in a closed ecosystem. I'm very bullish on the protocol sync thesis that ultimately all of this value, all of the people that Web 2 onboards will come into the real Web 3 economy in the world.

• 1:33:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they won't stop at property rights owned by Facebook. You know, they won't settle for that. They want real property rights that they own on a public permissionless, open system like Ethereum. So I'm excited about that. Like this is Trojan horse stuff. Crypto's winning and this is exactly how we win. Super bullish.

• 1:33:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I feel like crypto's already won. It's just a, we're waiting for the rest of the world to realize it.

• 1:34:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think so. Speaking of which, meme of the week, you ready?

• 1:34:06David Hoffman?

  Here we go. We got two this week. We got two memes of the week. They're both fantastic.

• 1:34:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's the first one? Explain this.

• 1:34:12David Hoffman?

  All right. So for the, for the viewers, we have the Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, duck season, rabbit season meme, except it's alt season or L2 season. Like, what's it gonna be? Is it all L1 season or is it layer two season? I know where I've placed my bets. I think listeners wouldn't need me to say that, but alt layer one or layer twos?

• 1:34:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this also a comment about, is this also a comment about narrative rotation though too? Because we see well-known trader in this meme, right? And so like, you can kind of rotate from L1 season to L2 season. And I think this is implying that L2 season is next from a narrative perspective.

• 1:34:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:49David Hoffman?

  Not to be mean, but I'd like to know if Three Arrows Capital invested in either Arbitrum or Optimism. I don't think they did, and so therefore, they are on the alt-layer-one season camp.

• 1:34:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think they've got some Starkware, though.

• 1:34:59David Hoffman?

  They do have Starkware. They do have Starkware.

• 1:35:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  So there's that. What's the second meme?

• 1:35:02David Hoffman?

  All right. Here's where I think my bets are. So this is, we talked about this meme actually forever ago, but I just saw this meme, and was like, wow, this is so great. This is a Pepe Frog character, being childish, hopping from couch A to couch B because the floor is lava. But couch A is Optimism, and couch B is Arbitrum, and the floor is Ethereum, the Ethereum mainnet. He's hopping from Optimism to Arbitrum. Don't touch mainnet because the mainnet's lava. And then there's somebody saying, "Billy, have you been wormholing again?" implying, you know, they're taking a bridge. They're using Connect or using Hop to go from layer one to layer two, or, excuse me, from layer two to layer two. And so I thought this was a cute meme.

• 1:35:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, I think that's the theme for 2021, and L22 is the floor is lava, mainchain is lava.

• 1:35:48David Hoffman?

  Mainchain's lava.

• 1:35:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Get on L2, migrate while you have a chance, when you have the chance. I think that's it. Meme of the week, we covered everything on the roll-up, guys. As always, Bitcoin is risky, so is ETH, so is DeFi. You could 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.

• 1:36:10David Hoffman?

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

• 1:36:53David Hoffman?

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