ROLLUP: ETH’s Pectra Upgrade | $2T Stablecoin Push | Apple’s Crypto Breakthrough | Coinbase Buys Deribit!

This week, Ryan and David unpack Ethereum’s game-changing "Pectra" upgrade, doubling Layer 2 blob space and sparking fresh debates on L1 scaling. Meanwhile, Washington sets its sights on a $2 trillion stablecoin market, Apple’s App Store monopoly cracks open to crypto, and Coinbase makes a historic acquisition of Deribit. Plus, Bitcoin breaks $100K and ETH $2k, are we officially back in bull territory? Find out on this week’s Weekly Rollup. ------ 💫 LIMITLESS | SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW https://www.youtube.com/@Limitless-FT https://x.com/LimitlessFT ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐SELF | PROVE YOUR SELF https://bankless.cc/Self 🟠HEMI | BTC & ETH, ONE NETWORK https://bankless.cc/hemi ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 0:32 Markets https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/07/fed-meeting-live-updates-traders-await-insight-from-powell-on-next-rate-cut-tariff-impact.html https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=EFFR%2CDFEDTARU%2CDFEDTARL%2C&utm_source=chatgpt.com https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=EFFR%2CDFEDTARU%2CDFEDTARL%2C&utm_source=chatgpt.com https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114471750357100883 https://x.com/ForexLive/status/1919864600339558405 13:44 Big win for Crypto against Apple App Store Monopoly! https://x.com/hlopez_/status/1918113804938056100 https://x.com/0xCygaar/status/1918335966538068300 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1920486709831033039 21:36 Ethereum upgrade live on mainnet! https://x.com/TimBeiko/status/1920145795430727686 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1919746313760969136 https://www.bankless.com/read/eip-7702-ethereum-onchain-culture https://x.com/adietrichs/status/1920083962472300928 https://x.com/drakefjustin/status/1920343548047569165 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1920488999296078131 https://x.com/tkstanczak/status/1920157389568737478 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1920498941583348014 40:04 Coinbase Acquires Options Platform Deribit https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/coinbase-strikes-2-9-billion-deal-for-major-crypto-options-platform-a87ca4b3?utm_source=chatgpt.com 41:55 Treasury Secretary is ALL in on Stablecoins https://x.com/SecScottBessent/status/1920140049254854778 https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/02/crypto-tether-eyes-us-expansion-with-new-stablecoin-as-ceo-courts-washington.html https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/1918802270310777128 https://x.com/SenatorHagerty/status/1918827160954909111 https://x.com/BrendanPedersen/status/1920193925081338114 47:26 Dems introduced legislation that would ban sitting presidents from issuing tokens https://www.merkley.senate.gov/merkley-and-schumer-lead-the-charge-to-end-crypto-corruption-by-trump-other-elected-officials/ https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1919405803112472797 https://x.com/StevenTDennis/status/1920088287747711380 https://x.com/DegenerateNews/status/1919109508120371209 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1919120401604477095 https://cointelegraph.com/news/eu-crypto-ban-anonymous-privacy-tokens-2027 54:04 Coinbase announced a new open source payments protocol - x402. https://x.com/CoinbaseDev/status/1919784224170889696 https://chatgpt.com/share/681ba731-5244-8008-b801-37e128e240b8 https://stripe.com/en-cz/newsroom/news/sessions-2025 57:44 Bitcoin community is splitting over limit removal plan https://x.com/ColeTU/thread/1919769012998647880 https://x.com/MartyBent/status/1919226199529677042 1:01:55 Unichain becomes the first L2 building blocks with TEE! https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1918450159274319876 1:04:26 Charles Schwab wants to launch spot Bitcoin trading by April 2026 https://cointelegraph.com/news/charles-schwab-eyes-spot-bitcoin-trading-2026 1:05:15 Bankless’s New Podcast! Limitless - go subscribe & follow https://www.youtube.com/@Limitless-FT https://x.com/LimitlessFT 1:06:55 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bitcoin is over 100,000. We are so back, baby. David, even ETH is catching a bit.

• 0:09David Hoffman?

  What? No way.

• 0:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 0:11David Hoffman?

  Right after Ethereum ships its biggest upgrade ever. What's inside of it? Also, what comes next? And also, what was it missing?

• 0:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  We also have Apple's Wald Garden just opened the door for crypto. It's wide open for us now. Coinbase makes its biggest acquisition of all time. And Washington DC suddenly wants $2 trillion in stable coins.

• 0:30David Hoffman?

  We're going to talk about all of that. But first, we got to get to the markets because, Ryan, the markets are looking good. They are feeling good. I don't know what was in the water or air this morning, but I woke up and saw green across the charts. Bitcoin is up 3.8%. Broke through $100,000 to where we are right now at the time of recording. $101,000 Bitcoin. It's moved pretty big on the last like two weeks. It's grinding up slowly until suddenly we're up like $7,000 on the week. Ether price, Ryan, it was up 1% more than Bitcoin last week. I think Bitcoin was up 3% last week. Ether was up 4% last week. Bitcoin is up 4% this week. ETH is up almost 11% this week.

• 1:11David Hoffman?

  So we are two for two weeks of Ryan Sean Adams returning back to bankless. And ETH is green. If it continues to be like this, he can never leave again. The ratio is up 7%. We are above a 0.02 number, still very low. But it is climbing.

• 1:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  We got a double-digit day in the last 24 hours.

• 1:31David Hoffman?

  Double-digit day, yeah.

• 1:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  ETH is up 14%. It never does that.

• 1:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It doesn't do that. Okay, what's the explanation for this? I actually asked crypto Twitter.

• 1:41David Hoffman?

  I do not, I cannot figure out why. I don't know what the news is.

• 1:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's one of those more buyers than sellers kind of things?

• 1:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, traditional equities markets is up pretty big too. Like my Robin Hood portfolio, which entirely consists of Coinbase stock and Robin Hood stock is also up too.

• 1:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  A nice balanced portfolio across all the stocks that represent America.

• 2:02David Hoffman?

  That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, well, like, the big question is, are we still in a bear? Or did we ever go into a bear market, right? That's what people... People were saying, I think, when, you know, like I was away, it does not feel like a bear market when Bitcoin is over 100K. In fact, this feels very bullish. And we got total crypto market cap. What's the price here? Am I seeing 3.25 trillion?

• 2:23David Hoffman?

  3.25 trillion. I think it might be even a little bit higher right now. We are threatening to cross 3.3 trillion. As a reminder, the all time high of the crypto market cap, total crypto market cap is 3.9 trillion. We are at 3.3. Bitcoin dominance is also higher than it has ever been in a long, long time.

• 2:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 2:40David Hoffman?

  Of course Bitcoin dominance started at 100%, but it like bottomed down at like 33 or 40% just a number of years ago, like in the 2021 era. It is at like 67%. So Bitcoin dominance continues to make all time high. Down today, though. Down very bigly today.

• 2:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Do you know, do you know, do you see Raoul Paul called the, the top of Bitcoin dominance?

• 3:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I've seen more and more people call the top of Bitcoin dominance.

• 3:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I'm wondering if you want to make a call, David.

• 3:07David Hoffman?

  God, I hate it when you do this.

• 3:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so are we, is this the bull market? Is this back? Are you, are you going to say it's back and then curse us? And you were going to crash down, you know, another 30% or something?

• 3:17David Hoffman?

  Man, I don't know. I don't know, man. I don't know how to make these calls. I don't know. Sure, it's, we're all, we were never, we never left, you know?

• 3:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  We never left, yeah. We always saw this. You know what? I feel like on the week to week, it's impossible to call, call markets. You're just like in the noise and the weekly when we look at this. But like, yeah, secular bull trend, I guess, resumes. You want to talk about the Fed, though? They had a, they had their meeting. They have those every once in a while and everyone was waiting for what would Jerome Powell do? So would he raise rates? What did he do, David?

• 3:49David Hoffman?

  I was hoping you would tell me, actually.

• 3:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  He did absolutely nothing, is what he did. He's keeping everything the exact same.

• 3:56David Hoffman?

  No rate changes. That's good. That means that's our win.

• 3:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you want me to give you the summary?

• 4:00David Hoffman?

  Please do.

• 4:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of what Powell said?

• 4:01David Hoffman?

  Please do.

• 4:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait and see. That's what he said. Yeah. Okay. He's keeping the Fed interest rates at the target range, 4.25% to 4.5%. He noted, this is why, this is why he's waiting and seeing. "The risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen," he said. And he kind of blamed tariffs for that. He said, "We're facing uncertainty around tariffs. The economy shows some signs of resilience as well as weakness." So he's like, "I don't want to touch anything while this is going on." And just some history for you, if you don't recall, the recent Fed rates. So the Fed hasn't touched the federal funds rates since December 2024. And at that time, it decreased it by 25 bips. I knew you liked some bip decreases, so that's what they did back in December.

• 4:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  And from then on, it's been a wait and see. I thought you'd enjoy this chart, David. So this is the federal funds rate over the last, like, I don't know, 70 years? Or something like this? This is a weird chart. It's a very weird chart. Like, it spikes up in the 1980s, right? This is vocal. Distant memory, yeah. Neither of us were alive. Wasn't alive, but bad time to get a mortgage, let me tell you. It's like up to 19%. And then, you know, it's just such a weird chart, these central banker charts, I think. But the interesting thing to me is like, he was talking about inflation. We haven't seen inflation yet. This is trueflation. Right now, inflation's hanging out at about 1.6%. Inflation is under control. So far, and of course, this is, this is a trailing indicator.

• 5:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess what Powell is just saying is like, well, yeah, it's fine now, but we don't know the impact of the tariffs. And he's expecting that that's going to be inflationary. You can almost read between the lines. He's anticipating some sort of like recession or maybe some sort of, you know, like inflation spike post tariffs. And that's why he's not doing anything. Of course, Trump had a comment on that. Did you see his comment this morning? No, tell me. Okay. He said Jerome Powell is a fool who doesn't have a clue. Other than that, I like him very much.

• 6:02David Hoffman?

  Mixed signals by Donald Trump, very mixed signals. Because like Trump wants him to lower rates because it's always good for the sitting president, right? Is that what the deal is?

• 6:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of course, right? A sitting president always wants like easier monetary policy, right? It helps him get elected. I guess, he says this, Trump continues, "Oil and energy are way down, almost all costs, groceries and eggs are down, virtually no inflation, tariff money pouring into the US, the exact opposite of too late. Enjoy," he says. It's like, I guess he has a point with oil and energy down and cost of groceries down. If you look at the trailing indicator of inflation, this is not a forecast of what the next 12 months will hold. I don't know, what's your take? Do you think Powell should be adjusting rates down at this point in time or hold it steady?

• 6:45David Hoffman?

  I mean, I do not have an opinion here. What I do enjoy is that rates are being held steady and markets are still finding plenty of reasons to be bullish and go up. I think it's worth highlighting that we, the S and P 500 is up almost 20% from the bottom of the tariff scare. And the bottom of the tariff scare got pretty low, right? And so that's 31 days, over 31 days, the S and P 500 is up almost 20%. Over 17 days, we are up 10% and we are like only, from all time highs, only like 7% away from all time highs in the S and P 500s, despite the tariffs, despite persistently high interest rates. And if we can go up as a stock market, while interest rates are like at 4.75, 4.25%,

• 7:31David Hoffman?

  that means that that's real, like, there's no, there's no zerp excuse for why those markets are going up. Markets are going up based off of fundamentals and that, that feels good. And, and that feels like a very strong economy and that's also true for the crypto space as well. If the crypto space can go up, because crypto up until 2021 only existed in a zero interest rate policy environment. And now in 2024 and 2025, crypto is going up under a sustained high interest rate environment, which means we earned it, we deserved that, that was our success and that is showing up in our crypto prices.

• 8:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a bullish interpretation. I will say like, trailing off of last week, we still haven't seen what impact tariffs might have. Perhaps this is kind of a blip up before, you know, we get some tariff shock that happens this summer and recession. We talked about that. The R word is still out there. Also, there was this capital flight trade that's like outside of the US that seems to have rebounded at least right now. So I guess in the week, it's too soon to tell. But if indeed markets fully recover, right? That was a buy the dip opportunity that a lot of people miss. This is why you got a dollar cost average in and like, just like not worry about it. Something else that's hitting all time highs, though, David, is gold on the week.

• 8:43David Hoffman?

  Still worrying me. Still worrying me. I have mixed opinions on this because when I see gold going for all time highs, I think Bitcoin is not far behind that in an even more aggressive and explosive fashion. And I think maybe that's what we're seeing recently. But also when gold goes to all time highs, that just means global instability and uncertainty, and also the decline of the United States economy as the epicenter of global finance, right? Like, we had a really good thing going. We would export dollars. We would buy goods. They would come to the United States. The rest of the world would get the dollars and they would reinvest in the American financial system and our loci of control by being the world's financial system would increase. And that unraveling, there's no way that

• 9:25David Hoffman?

  that unravels without pain. And people pushing gold to all time highs, I worry is like a hedge that people are betting on around the unraveling of the financial epicenter of the world being, Wall Street being the United States.

• 9:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, gold is kind of a bet on global instability. And I guess it's a kind of an anti bet on the US dollar. I mean, part of the reason gold is up is because the dollar, the DXY is down. And so that's going on. So I think you're right about this ongoing trade uncertainty is really spiking the price of gold. And that's the story on markets this week, David. What else we got?

• 9:58David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, a big win, I think, for like the entire world as it relates to the Apple iOS Store and especially crypto, because the gates for more free commerce are being blown open inside of the Apple iOS Store. So we're going to talk about the significance of that for the crypto industry. What does it mean for crypto to be more intimately related into apps in the iOS Store? And also, the Ethereum upgrade, Pectra, went live last night, or last morning. What new features did we get? Why is it a bigger deal for Ethereum than what I think people think? And also, what it's missing and what we still need and what people are now beating the drum about moving forward, because the pace of change in Ethereum is slow and steady. And now, we are on to the next upgrade. We're going to talk about all of these things and more. But first, a message to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors who make this show

• 10:41David Hoffman?

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• 11:24David Hoffman?

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• 12:08David Hoffman?

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• 12:53David Hoffman?

  that bridge traditional finance with decentralized technology. First is their Enhanced Index Fund, aiming for $1 billion in AUM by Q1. It provides optimized exposure to Bitcoin, ETH, Solana, and USC, complete with built-in yield opportunities. Next, Mantle Banking promises to revolutionize global value transfer through seamless blockchain-powered banking services, bridging crypto into your daily life. Finally, Mantle X blends AI with DeFi to deliver an intelligent, user-friendly experience for everyone. And the best part is that this is all in addition to their already-launched products like Mantle Network, ME, and FBTC. Ready to step into the future of finance? Follow Mantle on X at mantelofficial and join the on-chain revolution today.

• 13:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a big win for crypto against the Apple App Store monopoly. A US District Court found that Apple willfully violated a court injunction and basically forced them to change all of their guidelines. This came in late last week, David. Why was it a big deal?

• 13:46David Hoffman?

  I think it's a big deal just because Apple has just had such a strong chokehold on the commerce inside of its own iOS ecosystem. And so they do that in a number of different ways. In-app purchases pay the 30% Apple iOS tax. That is still, that still remains. And then previously in 2021, a court ordered Apple to like, allow them, it's told Apple, you need to allow users to be able to go outside of the App Store, like using regular links and buttons inside of apps in the App Store, allowing users to press those buttons, go off-platform, and Purchase goods from your company, from your product by getting around the 30% fee. And so Apple allowed that to happen, but with a 27% fee.

• 14:29David Hoffman?

  And after a series of very hostile pop-ups saying, we can't protect you here. There might be scams here, highly discouraging pop-ups. And so they tried to do this with some like veil of compliance with the 2021 court injunction. And now they were taken back to court saying like, no, this 27% fee and all these hostile pop-ups are them doing compliance theater that's still in compliant. And now a court is saying, yo, Apple, cut your bullshit.

• 14:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 14:56David Hoffman?

  And also potential criminal contempt. So this does not end. So as a result of these changes, applications in the Apple iOS store can have clean speak buttons saying, go purchase our goods offsite. They are allowed to say, if you purchase these goods offsite, they are 30% cheaper. And there can be no discouraging pop-ups from Apple to prevent users from doing that. And so, you know, previously, OpenSea's like NFT platform app was all like a browse only.

• 15:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a browse only.

• 15:25David Hoffman?

  Which is like. What is OpenSea? It is an NFT marketplace.

• 15:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 15:30David Hoffman?

  But on the App Store, it is a browse only. You can just view the marketplace.

• 15:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  The whole point is buying and selling.

• 15:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And so now there are reduced restrictions on being able to be, I think, pointed even outbound to your wallet. Saying like, go buy this NFT. And then like the Coinbase wallet pops up or whatever wallet you want to use.

• 15:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 15:48David Hoffman?

  And then all of a sudden you can buy that without paying that in-app 30% fee.

• 15:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And the reason OpenSea had to do this is because if they, if they allowed buying and selling, they'd be delisted. Okay. That's the entire, like the whole court case you went through. I was like getting the history of this, right? It all started with, back five years ago. So this was Epic versus Apple.

• 16:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 16:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. This is Epic versus Apple back in August 2020. And Epic just slipped a direct pay button into Fortnite, you know? So you could directly buy Fortnite skins, items without paying the 30% tax. You know what Apple immediately did back then? They yanked Fortnite.

• 16:24David Hoffman?

  But Fortnite actually baited them to do that because they took them to court the next day. So Apple banning them was actually bait.

• 16:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And then you went through the history of this whole nationwide injunction, but this was like five more years of Apple kind of dragging its heels. And it's like, yeah, we'll comply. And then they secretly, they added this 27% tax. Anyway, now the courts are calling BS on it and it's resulting in a massive change. So here's Cigar with what this means for cryptos. Apps in the App Store can accept crypto payments rather than routing through the Apple App Store now. So this is huge for integration with mobile wallets where users can spend their crypto directly. USDC, ETH, Solana, all that stuff without having to pay extra fees. Mobile apps for NFT marketplaces will allow buying and selling of NFTs, as you just mentioned with, with OpenSea, for example.

• 17:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  And apps that were previously not allowed to gate any functionality via NFTs can now do that. So do you remember that whole add utility to your NFT where an NFT can be sort of a, a gate on some sort of functionality or feature set within your app? Apple disallowed that. That wasn't even allowed. Well, now the court is forcing them to allow that kind of functionality as well. So this really opens up the playing field.

• 17:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah. There's a, this common idea that like, you know, everything in crypto is just completely useless, except for like scams and frauds and all that kind of stuff. It's because so much of the incumbency of the world prevents us from being, having utility in our assets.

• 17:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's because of Gary Gensler and Tim Cook.

• 17:50David Hoffman?

  It's because of Gary Gensler and Apple makes our assets useless. It's their fault, not ours.

• 17:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we, we didn't want these things to be memes, right? Like, we wanted these to be like, by the way, did you listen to the, there was a, like a four hour Lex Friedman podcast with Tim?

• 18:04David Hoffman?

  I listened to every single hour of all hours of Lex Friedman podcast. No, I need you to tell me about what happened.

• 18:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So it was good. I mean, it took me back down memory lane to like my early gaming his, like I was a big Unreal Tournament player and you know, such like back in the day. I mean, like not big. I mean, like wasn't ranked or anything, but I enjoyed some LAN parties, you know, back in the day. Anyway, there was a whole section where-

• 18:24David Hoffman?

  With Tim Swinney. Tim Swinney was a guest.

• 18:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tim Swinney is the CEO of Apple, or sorry, CEO of Epic, of course, the creators of Fortnite. And do you remember that whole theme of like 2022, Fortnite is coming to NFTs? Like Fortnite assets will be listed-

• 18:38David Hoffman?

  Gaming and NFTs, yeah.

• 18:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was kind of a- Believer back in the day.

• 18:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  And my, like, my question going into that episode is like, what are they gonna say about it? And Tim Sweeney had some really interesting comments. So first, he totally agrees that items from Fortnite should be completely transferable to the rest of the gaming ecosystem, Roblox, like all of the other games, right? They should be completely interoperable. Here's a quote from him that I pulled out. "If we had a standards body standardize what our portable outfit fits in games, game outfits you could buy in one game that work in another, then you could have an item economy where every game agrees to respect each other's item purchases of that sort, and revenue is shared between the ecosystems as well." Huh.

• 19:23David Hoffman?

  We were right?

• 19:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Huh.

• 19:25David Hoffman?

  I thought we were wrong about that.

• 19:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  That sounds a little bit like NFTs, okay? And so like, I listened on, but he says basically, no, it doesn't need, you don't need NFTs to do that. What we need are interoperability standards, essentially. And so this kind of caused me to like, go down a quest and like, dig into this some more.

• 19:44David Hoffman?

  Interoperability standard sounds like a asset transfer protocol, like a, maybe a global internet-based ledger?

• 19:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. And so where this is all, there's apparently, there's a whole standards body now called the metaverse standards form, where Epic, Meta, Microsoft, all these game companies have kind of joined, and they're busy like, plotting out standards of how you can transfer like, a collectible or an item, or a skin from one app to another, all of the file formats and 3D renderings. But you know what it's all stuck on, David? None of them can really agree on how to like, share the revenue.

• 20:15David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 20:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay?

• 20:16David Hoffman?

  Interesting.

• 20:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so like, what, there's a $400 million creator economy for items and skins inside of Fortnite today. But do you know how much creators make on that?

• 20:26David Hoffman?

  I'm assuming a very low number?

• 20:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like 13%, 13 to 20% is kind of their take home. None of these things that they create are like, transferable to anywhere else. And none of the game companies can really like, agree on how to share the proceeds. And I think it's because what they're missing is, like, they want portability, but what you need is portable property. And for a property, you need a property rights system that's credibly neutral. It can't be the Epic database, it can't be Microsoft. So my prediction, David, is sometime, some point in the future, maybe five years in the future, okay, the metaverse, NFT, like, games are coming to you, crypto.

• 21:02David Hoffman?

  The metaverse was just ahead of its time. It was just ahead of its time.

• 21:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  We weren't wrong, we were just early.

• 21:08David Hoffman?

  That's right. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's exactly right. I agree with that. We're never wrong. We're just early. All right, ready to get into Pectra news?

• 21:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, tell me about Ethereum upgrades.

• 21:18David Hoffman?

  Okay, so Ethereum's 19th hard fork happened last night. Pectra, live on mainnet, went off without a hitch, extremely smooth. Pectra was Ethereum's largest hard fork by sheer number of EIPs. So a lot, a lot of like tech debt fixing, a lot of some marginal EIPs. But there are three EIPs that I want to highlight that are a very big deal. EIP 7691.

• 21:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Each EIP is like a feature, right?

• 21:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's like a line item upgrade to, yeah, a feature. And like some are marginal, some are more like security around edge cases, but then some are kind of like the flagship features. And so there are kind of like three flagship EIPs of Pectra. 7691, 7251, and 7702. So I'll go through these one by one. 7691, EIP 7691, increasing the blob target from three to six. And so what does that mean? Every 12 seconds, there's an Ethereum block. Inside of every Ethereum block, there is space for blobs. Up to six blobs can be in any one particular block, but the target is three. And so if there's more than three blobs, then blob space becomes more expensive.

• 22:25David Hoffman?

  If there's less than three blobs, it becomes less expensive. And so the target, the target capacity doubled from three blobs per block to six blobs per block with a max of nine.

• 22:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  And blobs are the fast lane for layer twos, right? So this is like a subsidy for layer twos. And I guess from three to six, we're saying there's double the amount of fast lane for layer twos.

• 22:44David Hoffman?

  Yes, exactly. So layer twos can consume even more Ethereum layer one blob space. They can, layer twos can go faster now. And there also can be more of them. And so there's just a higher equilibrium for the aggregate amount of transactions across the Ethereum layer two economy. So that's bullish, also very Simple, we're just doubling the blob space. So Ethereum blob space got doubly big. Then there's the max effective balance, that is EIP 7251. Previously, ETH stakers could only stake explicitly just 32 ETH. Now Ethereum stakers can stake anywhere between 32 and 2048. And so, right now, if you have 320 ETH, you run 10 validators, very likely all on the same machine. So 10 independent instances of Ethereum validators on one machine,

• 23:28David Hoffman?

  consuming 10 times more bandwidth than you really need to. And so, if you're running 10 validators, you can consolidate that down to one validator on one machine. If you're Coinbase and you're running a bajillion validators, you can also consolidate that down to a much lower number of instances. And so, the validator count of Ethereum is going to go down from like a large number to a smaller number. It's not impacting decentralization at all, because it's still the same number of entities at the end of the day. What this does, Ryan, is this seriously reduces the messaging bandwidth overhead that's required for the Ethereum validator network to gossip around information to each other. And so, that is becoming... So say there's like 10,000 validators and we go to like 3,000 validators. We're reducing the bandwidth needed by Ethereum by a significant margin.

• 24:14David Hoffman?

  And that's going to happen over time, because not everyone is going to consolidate all at the same time. This is up to the market, this is up to individuals, but bandwidth goes down. And so, that is actually what we are able to... Why we are able to increase blob space is because as we increase blob space, we need more bandwidth. We can't have infinite blobs, because that consumes too much bandwidth. But now with 7251, we have more bandwidth to spare, and so we are giving that to the blobs.

• 24:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this is gonna happen... Yeah, this is gonna happen over time, right? Because it's like, to your point, you have to, in order to run on fewer validities, you have to kind of exit the queue, I believe.

• 24:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a churn process.

• 24:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you gotta set it up and go back in. Okay, okay.

• 24:51David Hoffman?

  But we will have increasing... And like, I think the 3 to 6 target of blobs was conservative, because they knew they were going to be able to unlock some bandwidth, but not how much. And so, they chose a conservative blob target number. And then, we are going to watch how much bandwidth opens up over in the future.

• 25:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so rollups are super happy, right? Their blob space just got cheaper again, allowing them to onboard more users, more transactions. How about the third one? The third, I think, is my favorite, actually.

• 25:14David Hoffman?

  I think the third is the biggest one. So 7702, it's kind of like account abstraction light. So, most users, you, me, Ryan, are all using EOAs, externally owned addresses, other than like any sort of Gnosis Safe. Gnosis Safe is a smart contract wallet. What 7702 does is it lets normal EOA addresses run this like one-off contract code, do its thing, execute its contract code, and then reverts back to an EOA by the end of the transaction. So in the moment that it is processing a transaction, it is bestowed account abstraction properties.

• 25:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Superpowers.

• 25:46David Hoffman?

  And then by the end of the transaction, it reverts back to an EOA. Happens behind the scenes. And so, so what does this enable? The big thing that this enables, I think, is batch transactions. And so we can, you know, you can line up a queue of like two to, you know, 20, 50, 100 transactions all at once and have them execute atomically.

• 26:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 26:04David Hoffman?

  And what that does is that removes the goddamn approve popup. So when you hit the swap button on Uniswap, the thing that happens is it swaps tokens. Rather than you having to try and assign a approved transaction, you just swap. The swap button just swaps tokens. That's what it does now. So it's like a small thing, but it's a very big UX. This also reduces the surface area for failed transactions because all of this is atomic. So overall, this is just a transactional user upgrade. There's some other things as well. So applications can now sponsor transactions for their users. And so if, and you go into like www.myfavoritedifyapp.com, that application can give you a wallet and you can like deposit 100 USDC

• 26:47David Hoffman?

  and then you can charge you USDC for gas. So you don't need to pay ETH for gas. It swaps the ETH in the backend. You don't need to be exposed to that. And tokens can now pay for gas and applications can now pay for their users' gas. And so there's a lot of just abstraction features coming.

• 27:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just such a convenience thing, such a quality of life increase for any kind of like user of Ethereum. You ever been in it like a new wallet? And you're like, you're getting ready to do something like, damn, I have no, there's no ETH for gas.

• 27:12David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 27:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  And like you have to go like through a process of going and sending some ETH and like doing all of that. I, basically what it allows is all of the existing addresses that everybody's using to, for all intents and purposes, become, they're not really converting smart contract wallets, but become a smart contract wallet.

• 27:29David Hoffman?

  Effectively. By the end user, the benefits of smart contract wallets are being bestowed upon them.

• 27:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And we've talked about how cool smart contract wallets. You listed out a few other things. I'll just add, you also get native social Recovery, possibly. That's what smart contracts wallets can do. You also have support for session keys. This is William Peaster writing this. So you can grant apps limited time bound access to your wallet. Social recovery, of course, is kind of cool because that allows, you know, somebody else, maybe a third party, maybe like your spouse or someone like that to recover your keys. So all of these features are being added and essentially upgrading to a smart contract functionality. William Peaster also noted that this might be the beginning of the end for wallet sprawl. You know that problem where you get all of these different wallets and you gotta manage across?

• 28:14David Hoffman?

  Boy, do I.

• 28:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, right? Like, I mean, Ethereum users probably by this point in time have like dozens of wallets.

• 28:19David Hoffman?

  I've probably had 50 wallets over the years.

• 28:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, and like, yeah, and more. So if an EOA can temporarily act like a smart contract account, then I think users will increasingly just not have to split their identities across all these wallets. That's all great. What about the layer one, though? Did we get any layer one throughput increases this go around?

• 28:41David Hoffman?

  Okay, so the new, like, memified simplified roadmap for Ethereum in 2025 and beyond is scale to layer one, scale blobs, improve UX. Pectra brought two of the three things. We are drastically improving UX. We are doubling the blob size. There was no explicit EIP upgrade for the layer one in Pectra. And I also will say that this is a problem because the next upgrade to Ethereum Fusaka, targeted by the end of this year, introduces PureDAS, which is like a 10x increase of blob space.

• 29:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's more blob space, more fast lane.

• 29:14David Hoffman?

  More blob space. And so with the bandwidth that we are saving from the max effective balance upgrade, we gave it to blobs in Pectra and then we are giving it to blobs again in Fusaka. And so like, we're saving these resources and according to Ethereum priorities, we're giving them to blobs. That is, in my opinion, and many others' opinion, not the best use of those resources. Where does the prioritization of the layer one come into play here? So we need to rethink about reconsider prioritizing the resources back to the layer one. So Ansgar tweeted, "So far in execution..." So far in 2025, execution throughput is up 20%, while DA throughput is up 100%. This is a good start. We're ramping up our scaling efforts.

• 29:56David Hoffman?

  Both execution and DA have a path to 1,000% increase over the next 12 to 18 months, then up only for there. But you'll notice, we are prioritizing blob space far more than layer one block space. And I think that's good. We need to maximize both of these things. In my opinion, we are under indexing on the importance of the layer one we have for a long time. We should stop doing that. We should start to reprioritize the layer one. So I would like to see the resources that we are saving and leveraging be applied to layer one scaling. So this is Justin Drake tweeting out, "I just configured my node for 60 million gas limit." So this gas limit is like the size of layer one blocks. We are currently at 36 million.

• 30:36David Hoffman?

  It was 30 million not too long ago, so that's why Onscar said we have increased the size of the layer one by 20%. Justin Drake is saying, "I configured my validator to a 60 million gas limit." That's a 66% bump from the 30 million limit, and this is safe post Pectra. And then he is calling for validators should set the limit and they can vote with their validators.

• 30:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is something that people don't, I think, don't understand. Because I think, like, you're saying, "Hey, now it's time to, like, let's continue to scale the layer one," right? But you just said it's not in the next Ethereum hard fork. Fusaka, and Fusaka, we're doing 10x more for blob space, right? That's a blob space, yeah. But what you're saying here is configuring your validator for 60 million gas. That's a way to scale the layer one outside of hard forks.

• 31:19David Hoffman?

  Outside, yeah. So this has always been a power, this has always been a power of Ethereum.

• 31:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  We could always do this?

• 31:23David Hoffman?

  We have, and we have done this, we have done this.

• 31:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 31:26David Hoffman?

  But we could always do this. The Ethereum layer one gas size, the gas limit, is voted on by validators. So validators can dictate, the consensus among the validators dictates the gas size limit. And so it is up to validators to increase the size of layer one blocks. And so Justin is signaling, "I have set my gas target to be 60 million," which is a 66% bump. I think all validators, I think we should do this.

• 31:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but like, how many do you need in order to do this? Do you have to have like some sort of majority or some sort of number?

• 31:57David Hoffman?

  There needs to be some sort of like, that's a good question, actually. I'm fuzzy on the details on that, but there does need to be some like consensus, a majority consensus among validators, because it's like, kind of like emergently decided. But yes, validators do vote. And you're right, Ryan, this is out of, and this is not in the EIP. This is just every single individual validator says, hey, I'm targeting 60 million gas and we should totally do this. What I would also like to see, and what I think is more important than layer one block size, is layer one block speeds. And that does need an EIP. And the reason why block speeds is more important than block size is because these are global asset ledgers. We issue assets, we trade assets, we exchange assets. Lower latency on trading on block times means faster trading speeds.

• 32:42David Hoffman?

  Smaller amounts of MEV, Tim Ruffgarden has proved this empirically. Faster block times reduces the total amount of MEV. It allows market makers to quote tighter spreads. Overall, like DeFi is more efficient with faster block times. And so there's two ways to scale. We can make our block size bigger, which we should. We should also lower the block times. It is a qualitatively better product for what we are trying to do right now. Right now TradFi is looking at all the blockchains and being like, where should we put our assets? And Wall Street is hypersensitive to getting fleeced by middlemen. And so what has Ethereum, the Ethereum ecosystem been investing in over the last five years? It is MEV mitigation, it is fair order execution.

• 33:26David Hoffman?

  We have flashbots, we have this very sophisticated, built out pipeline of MEV mitigation. And we can leverage that fact by reducing block times and having the best execution in all of crypto because of all the infrastructure that we have built out. So I think in addition to scaling out the size of layer one blobs, which Justin is calling for, Onsgar is calling for, I think we should also focus on reducing the block times from 12 seconds down to eight seconds as just a signal to the market that we understand where we, what we need to do and where we need to go. And so that is also my message for the Ethereum community, too.

• 34:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, size matters and also speed matters, huh?

• 34:05David Hoffman?

  Speed matters, yes. Yeah, size and speed.

• 34:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I get it. No, I get it. Believe me, I get it. All right. So it was like, but what is likely to happen? So the thing with Fusaka is that's the next Ethereum hard fork. Pirdas is already like there.

• 34:19David Hoffman?

  It's already there, yeah.

• 34:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I saw some comments from Damash talking about this. And his take was like, now, again, he's executive director, sort of an operational lead overall of this. He's like, okay, in the next six months, since Pirdas is already here, we'll go, we'll do that. And then the hard fork after will be the one where we focus on layer ones. And maybe you get your block time decrease there, too.

• 34:38David Hoffman?

  2026.

• 34:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  You want this to be faster. So do I.

• 34:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. Like, so the Pirdas in Fusaka has already been established like a long time ago. It's been that way for a while. And so like the prior, the turning of the ship, the Ethereum pivot is being put at the end of the queue, which means that's for Clamsterdam, maybe, which already has like a pretty solid.

• 34:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's Clamsterdam for people? That's the next one.

• 35:02David Hoffman?

  Clamsterdam is the hard fork after Fusaka.

• 35:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 35:04David Hoffman?

  Fusaka is like, all of the Ethereum hard fork names are portmanteaus of a big star.

• 35:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 35:10David Hoffman?

  And a city out there, DevCon cities. And so Pectra is Prague and Electra. Fusaka, I don't know. There's a star and a city out there. You slap them together, you get Fusaka. Clamsterdam is something in Amsterdam. And so, yeah, it would be very good if Ethereum shipped eight second block speeds as soon as possible.

• 35:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  I agree.

• 35:33David Hoffman?

  It would be amazing in 2025.

• 35:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  I also think that if you got Fusaka in 2025, that would be a huge operational victory.

• 35:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 35:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Even if just Pirdas is in it.

• 35:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? So, yeah, we got, we got some good things on the horizon for Ethereum, I think. It's really like, yeah, doing well.

• 35:50David Hoffman?

  And not to say that like blob space isn't important. We have to simply emphasize blob space quite a lot. Also, there are people, there is now like a product effort at the EF around layer twos. And so it's, we are not just naively expanding blob space. We are also working on layer two interoperability standards. And so with increased scale, we can actually turn that into increased layer two cross-chain composability, too. So it's not just naive blob space scaling.

• 36:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because it's a blockchain. It's not a blob chain. That's not all we do is make blobs. We also gotta make our blocks better.

• 36:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 36:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, a lot more to talk about. What have we got?

• 36:25David Hoffman?

  Coinbase makes a massive acquisition, the biggest acquisition in crypto to allow it to go toe-to-toe with some big giants in TradFi. Also, like you said, the White House wants a roadmap to $2 trillion in stablecoins. What are we doing to get there? And the Bitcoin community goes through a heated debate about a potential upcoming upgrade in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And I'm gonna tell you, Ryan, I think it mirrors quite a lot of the blob space conversation that we just had right now.

• 36:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just an extro hard core.

• 36:56David Hoffman?

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• 37:41David Hoffman?

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• 38:24David Hoffman?

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• 39:05David Hoffman?

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• 39:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Biggest acquisition in crypto history, I think. Coinbase to acquire Deribit, becoming the most comprehensive global crypto derivatives platform. What's the story here? What's Coinbase doing?

• 39:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Deribit is an options platform not allowed to US citizens. So offshore options platform for Bitcoin and Ether. Definitely the largest amount of options volume in the space. And Coinbase bought it. $2.9 billion in a cash and stock deal. So $700 million in cash and $11 million in coin shares. I guess this has to, this will close by the end of the year, pending like regulatory sign-off. So we need some regulators to say that this is okay. But yes, the, I'm pretty sure, the largest acquisition in crypto's history. One of the largest M and A deals ever. And yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty. So what does this allow Coinbase to do? This is Coinbase is like going toe-to-toe with things like the CME

• 40:16David Hoffman?

  or like other like derivatives or options platforms inside the United States with Bitcoin and Ether. And make it available to US citizens?

• 40:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this is like, yeah, this is like kind of, you know, Binance, right? Like Binance has some of this market, but Deribit handles 90% of Bitcoin Ether options open interest right now. And as you said, all of that, like, All of that's international. So Deribit is like located in Panama and it doesn't actually allow for US customers. I wonder if Coinbase just saw the opening with kind of the existing softened regulatory regime and was like, hey, we're going for it. This is our, a big like tuck-in acquisition. Now we're a lead in the crypto options market internationally. I think it's like a good one for Coinbase and it's certainly like, yeah, it just cements their lead as an exchange. I wonder what Binance is going to do in reaction.

• 41:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. Congrats to Deribit. They've just been grinding on that platform for a long time.

• 41:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Think this also positions Coinbase for the big stablecoin win. So I think the US, David, is now, we could say it, on a path to $2 trillion in stablecoins. And it's not just me saying it. This is the Secretary of Treasury, Scott Besant, saying it. This is him in front of Congress.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  We believe that the United States should be the premier destination for digital assets. And as members of this committee and the Senate are attempting to do, create good market structure around that, so that US best practices are used around the world.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  And that's really the point, right? Is having American US best practices to sort of set the pace for others to follow rather than us trying to fill in the holes that others, that may be created by, as others set that pace.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. And also that digital assets are an important source of innovation that will drive the, that can drive usage of the US dollar around the world as with stablecoin legislation. There is speculation that there may be up to $2 trillion of demand over the next few years for US government securities from digital assets.

• 42:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hear that? $2 trillion in demand. Okay. And this is, what a 180. This is the Secretary of Treasury. What a 180 from Janet Yellen. It was basically like kind of on the cusp of banning all things crypto, certainly never talking about stablecoins at this level.

• 42:43David Hoffman?

  I'm very grateful that this is Scott Besant who is saying these words because Besant's stock is up with Donald Trump, whereas other like Commerce Secretary Lutnik, yeah. His stock is down.

• 42:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really?

• 42:57David Hoffman?

  And he's the Cantor Fitzgerald Tether guy. And so you could have easily imagined a universe in which the Cantor Fitzgerald Tether guy is trying to like do the stablecoin things, but his stock with Trump is down. And Besant, thankfully, is actually the guy pushing the stablecoins in addition to like doing things in Trump's favor. And so good stars are aligning, happy case.

• 43:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, in the background, I don't know if you saw this, Tether is actually planning to launch a US version of USCT. Did you see this?

• 43:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I did see this. And Rob Haddock from Dragonfly had him on the show to talk about stablecoins. And he predicted that Tether would do this. He said like, yeah, rumors are going to be that Tether does a US centric stablecoin to comply with US centric regulations. Because they are not going to pivot the current Tether strategy to make that work.

• 43:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, why would they? It's working so well. It's printing so much money.

• 43:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And he was bearish on the United States Tether stablecoin.

• 43:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Interesting. That's an interesting take. Well, you know, Paulo says a domestic, this is the CEO of Tether, a domestic stablecoin would be different from the international stablecoin. And he says it's all going to be depend on the timeline of the final legislation. So are we still doing like, is Paulo coming on the show pretty time soon?

• 44:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. So we scheduled, we scheduled an episode with him with a special co-host who I think is extra informed and extra equipped to ask Paulo questions that I think are beyond. I think, I think you would be great. And I think, I think actually the interview is with you and our special co-host. But like this, this special co-host, I think is going to ask the best questions.

• 44:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll have to ask him that. Okay. So, and then he mentioned legislation here. So what is the status of legislation? You informed me last week, because I forgot the names. There's the Genius Act, that's in the Senate.

• 44:34David Hoffman?

  Don't say that one first. You have to say the other one first.

• 44:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Stable Act, which is in the House, and then the Genius Act, which is in the Senate.

• 44:41David Hoffman?

  Stable Genius Acts.

• 44:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was doing some research on this and it seems like the Genius Act is the one to keep an eye on because like, first of all, the Senate is more important than the House. And secondly, as a Greater chance of actually happening. You know, the Senate has to co-sign anything else. And so, you know, if genius, if genius can get 60 votes in the Senate, then it's on, baby. The US has its, an actual stablecoin legislation. This week, Democrats were saying, nine Democrats in particular, who had been presumed to be on board with the Genius Act, were saying, they're getting cold feet. We're not sure we want to do it. And they cited a few things.

• 45:18David Hoffman?

  Seems unexpected. Oh, excuse me. It seemed expected.

• 45:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really? You expected this?

• 45:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, some amount of like pushback from the Democrats. I, I think it would be unexpected if Democrats are just like, you know, please waltz right in and let's get this bill signed. I think there has to be some amount of pushback.

• 45:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  They were kind of warming to like crypto, it seemed like, right? I mean, they, they, I think they realized that crypto is just not the hill to die on, like post-election, post like losing the election. Yeah. So this was somewhat unexpected, I guess, from folks working on this bill in Congress. And they said, we want more anti-money laundering. We want more national security. We want more.

• 45:50David Hoffman?

  More anti-terrorism, anti-child trafficking stuff.

• 45:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  All the same things.

• 45:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 45:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Democratic Senator said, Bill Hagerty, he's actually one of the co-authors here. He's like, we have a choice to make. We either move forward or we let the Republicans own the whole digital asset issue. So he's trying to shake the Democrats into like, you guys want to be like, you want to be pro crypto, all right? We just learned anti-crypto is like not going to win you any votes. It's not going to win you any elections. So like, why are we just ceding this to the Republicans? So there is some further rumor that like, okay, the Democrats are kind of like getting behind this. They're getting some changes for it. And I don't know, I don't know what the chances of this getting approved are, but I think it's greater than 50%. So at least my take. But I somewhat wonder if the Trump coin is slowing it down a little bit, David.

• 46:37David Hoffman?

  Okay, so this is the RSA conspiracy that I'm not totally sure I'm on board with. So tell me about this like belief that you have.

• 46:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so this week too, right? The Democrats introduced legislation that would ban sitting presidents from issuing tokens.

• 46:50David Hoffman?

  I wonder why they did that? Why did they decide to do this?

• 46:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so who's on this bill? I'm sure Elizabeth Warren is on there. Oh, yep, there she is. There's Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. See, I told you crypto, like anti-crypto army. Like raising its head. But okay, so currently, people who wish to cultivate influence with the president can rich him personally by buying cryptocurrency he owns or controls, said one of the senators, Senator Merkley, who's behind this bill. This is a profoundly corrupt scheme, endangers our national security and roads, public trust in the government. Let's end this corruption immediately. Okay, I would have preferred Trump to be like super pro crypto, best in to do, you know, the two trillion in stablecoin thing. And Trump just not to have launched a meme coin. Yeah, like that would be my preference because then you wouldn't have stuff like this.

• 47:37David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah.

• 47:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  You wouldn't have that pushback.

• 47:39David Hoffman?

  I don't see anything wrong with this. I think it is good.

• 47:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  This bill you're saying.

• 47:44David Hoffman?

  This bill. I think it is good policy to say that presidents and sitting congressmen and women, senators, ought not to be able to create financial assets, crypto or otherwise, SPACs included during their term. I think all the creation of financial assets downstream of like a sitting, you know, congressman, men or a president, that should not happen.

• 48:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's surface area for corruption, right?

• 48:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, how to like, and, and we sort of talked about this with the Pelosi Act last week. That Democrats were going to come up with some anti like anti meme coin type thing. Here it is, anti meme coin thing.

• 48:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with this.

• 48:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is this, look at this. Do you see this poster here? The Trump gala dinner, Trump, of course.

• 48:27David Hoffman?

  Gala dinner. Is it a different dinner than the first dinner?

• 48:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, this is, this is.

• 48:32David Hoffman?

  Oh, it's just now also a gala.

• 48:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Actually, no, this is May 22nd. This is if you have the first, if you're one of the 250 people with the largest holders of Trump meme coin.

• 48:41David Hoffman?

  The Trump meme coin dinner. Yes.

• 48:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the dinner is still on is what I'm saying. And Trump's like, yeah.

• 48:46David Hoffman?

  Now it's a gala. That's an upgrade. That's an upgrade.

• 48:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And this is a Bloomberg analysis report. Most of the top holders of Trump's meme coin who are vying for this intimate dinner with President of the United States are likely foreign. You see some of the names on this.

• 48:59David Hoffman?

  Do you just automatically get a visa to come like just Justin Sun, just get free, please come to the United States and come to the gala? You know, Justin Sun is the largest holder of Trump meme coin, right?

• 49:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's got 16 million.

• 49:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Literally, that, what is that? That's buying influence, is this not? I mean, he's gonna be one of the people who could be at this dinner. And of course, he's gonna be at this dinner. Why would he not be at this dinner?

• 49:20David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah. Yeah, well, he's also the biggest investor in World Liberty Financial.

• 49:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so, uh, do you want to hear? There's actually an interview this week where a reporter brought up the meme coin, the Trump coin with Trump.

• 49:31David Hoffman?

  No way.

• 49:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here's what he said, yeah.

• 49:32David Hoffman?

  No way.

• 49:33Speaker 04

  Let's talk about something I don't think you've been asked much about, which is you've branded your own cryptocurrency. The coin's value actually surged recently after you announced that top holders would be invited to have dinner.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  I don't even know, what did it surge to?

• 49:51Speaker 04

  What did it surge to?

• 49:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, what's it worth? You might as well tell me, because I have no idea.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  Well, it surged, it surged, I will find it, hold on one second.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  5.2 or 58%. So 58%.

• 50:07Speaker 05

  To what number?

• 50:08Speaker 04

  That's not bad, 14.32.

• 50:11Speaker 05

  What?

• 50:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  14.32 what?

• 50:13Speaker 04

  No, dollars per cryptocurrency.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Billion dollars?

• 50:17Speaker 04

  No.

• 50:18Speaker 05

  What's the number? I mean, what is the amount?

• 50:20Speaker 04

  The meme coin's value hit a peak of 75.35 on January 19th.

• 50:25Speaker 05

  That doesn't mean anything.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  And that's before your inauguration, and then it surged.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Look, I'm in favor of crypto.

• 50:29David Hoffman?

  He's just trying to bait her into talking about the multi-billion dollar market cap.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  That when they hear that, they worry you're profiting from the presidency.

• 50:37Speaker 05

  I'm not profiting from anything. I'm just, all I'm doing is, you know, this, I started this wrong before the election. I want crypto, I think crypto is important, because if we don't do it, China's gonna do it.

• 50:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, there is a reporter struggling with the concept of like, market cap, right?

• 50:51David Hoffman?

  Of market cap, yeah.

• 50:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is the, the Trump market cap right now?

• 50:53David Hoffman?

  That is a good question, but yeah, he was, he totally knows what it is.

• 50:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, he definitely knows.

• 50:58David Hoffman?

  It is fully diluted 12.5 billion dollar valuation. So he was trying to get her to say-

• 51:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, wait, wait, 12.5 billion?

• 51:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, FTV, yeah, 2.5 billion market cap, 12.5 billion FTV.

• 51:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's nuts. And that's because 80% is basically owned by-

• 51:14David Hoffman?

  Exactly, by Trump.

• 51:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Trump and Co.

• 51:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Trump and Company, yeah.

• 51:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's incredible.

• 51:18David Hoffman?

  He was trying to bait her, it's like, say it's worth- 12 billion dollars. Say that Trump coin is worth 12 billion dollars.

• 51:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  But she didn't know though.

• 51:26David Hoffman?

  I don't know if she was like, I'm not going to do that, or I don't even know what that means.

• 51:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think she doesn't know what it means, David. I think she doesn't know what it means, right?

• 51:33David Hoffman?

  I think she doesn't know what it means.

• 51:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Trump saying like, I don't even know the price. It's not important to me. I've been doing this the whole time. When did he launch it? He launched it sometime in January, right?

• 51:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, early January. Like, it was like right before inauguration day or something.

• 51:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  He goes on, basically, in that interview to talk about fantastic things about crypto, how it's the future, all of the things that like crypto, you know, wants to hear. I guess my point is, it's just shrouded by this whole meme coin thing. And that's just fodder for opponents of crypto to just say, hey, it's always been a scam, you know? Yeah, like, we told you so. It's a vector for corruption, all of these things. So I guess it's just not ideal from my perspective, right?

• 52:07David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah, I think that's an understatement, bro.

• 52:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but like, what I mean is, you got some on the left who, basically, their solution to crypto would just be like, ban it. No problem. Europe this week. Do you see this? Europe this week. Europe, EU to ban anonymous crypto accounts and privacy coins by 2027.

• 52:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's bad.

• 52:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's literally what the Biden administration future held for us, right?

• 52:28David Hoffman?

  Europe is just all Democrats.

• 52:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so we went, like, to the other side, and now we gotta deal with a little bit of the grift tax.

• 52:34David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 52:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I guess that's better.

• 52:36David Hoffman?

  Quite a lot of the grift tax?

• 52:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not ideal. Not ideal.

• 52:39David Hoffman?

  It's not ideal. Well, that's why I'm afraid of like, hey, let's throw the Democrats a bone. I don't even think it's any amount of concession to say sitting presidents can't issue crypto assets.

• 52:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, but then you lose Trump's support.

• 52:51David Hoffman?

  He kind of, he kind of wants the Trump coin.

• 52:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not that bad. It's not that bad.

• 52:56David Hoffman?

  You're still a billionaire, buddy.

• 52:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  We become more bipartisan if we get that bill signed. Yeah, that's my ideal. More stablecoin stuff. This is, this one's for the nerds, though, David. This is for the devs, okay?

• 53:07David Hoffman?

  Well, I'll tune out for this one, then. Because I'm not a nerd.

• 53:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, you've heard of 404 errors, right? You know, like, go to a website, server request failed.

• 53:14David Hoffman?

  Website not found or whatever?

• 53:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, website not found. That's been in the original kind of, you know, HTTP internet specifications from the very beginning. Do you know what a 402 is?

• 53:25David Hoffman?

  No clue.

• 53:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, 402 was the air that never completed. That was the web standard that was never fully finished. It was a payment web standard, okay? And it's literally sat on the shelf from 1992, the Tim Berners-Lee drafts. Okay, so basically, it was a standard where you could call a service on the web through HTTP web type protocols. And the service would return some sort of like, you would pay it, and the service would return some resource or some feature in exchange for your microtransaction payment.

• 53:59David Hoffman?

  Commerce gated content on the internet? Like pay gated content on the internet?

• 54:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And you know Marc Andreessen's like, oh, he has this line of the original sin of the internet was we didn't add payments to the internet? This is the original sin. It was like, we never finished the 402 specification.

• 54:14David Hoffman?

  Wow, okay.

• 54:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's literally sat dormant.

• 54:16David Hoffman?

  This is fascinating.

• 54:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  For the last like 30 years, it's sat dormant, okay? Until, until today, until now. So Coinbase is bringing back 402, a new open source payments protocol built on HTTP rails. Okay, so they're filling out the specification. And what's kind of cool here, here's the example. This is actually Claude. So this is AI chatbot. And users asking, what's the weather? It's calling an external weather source, paying that external transaction using 402, like cents in stable coins? And the weather service is returning the answer. Microtransactions for AI bots, you on, settled on base, which settles to Ethereum, using stable coins. All right?

• 55:02David Hoffman?

  What?

• 55:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Kind of cool, right?

• 55:04David Hoffman?

  Wow, yeah. I remember, this brings me back to like the 2017 microtransaction IOT like narrative of crypto.

• 55:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, see? We weren't wrong, just early.

• 55:15David Hoffman?

  We're never wrong, we're always early.

• 55:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anyway, I think this is super cool.

• 55:20David Hoffman?

  That is really cool.

• 55:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Under the radar, but like you can, like, this is probably the, the, the protocol that, um, like bots can use, will use. And Coinbase is, a stablecoin behemoth is, is kind of getting behind this. It's open source, by the way. Anyone can use this protocol, right?

• 55:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so I bet you could just like, there's some sort of standards here of like Ethereum address, token contract address for payments.

• 55:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly.

• 55:41David Hoffman?

  It's dominantly gonna be like, you know, USDC on, on, on the Ethereum base network. But the base network could be popped out for any network, the token con, payment contract address could be popped out for any token.

• 55:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 55:52David Hoffman?

  And there's just a standards there.

• 55:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, super important, as all the AI bots are like, you know, taking all of our data from us without paying any of the content creators for it, right? I mean, like, having some paywalls in front of it for microservices, so that AI, AI bots can pay their fair share.

• 56:07David Hoffman?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 56:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  No 3% credit card transaction fee, no minimum, you know?

• 56:11David Hoffman?

  We get to, we get to put the last puzzle piece of the internet in. This is, this is like when the puzzle's almost done, but you're missing one piece and you get to put it in.

• 56:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  See, this is how we get to 2 trillion in stablecoins. Scott Besen is right. And like Stripe's doing this too. There's some big releases this week of, using its, its bridge protocol. I guess they just launched new money management capabilities, stablecoin powered financial accounts in 101 countries, so like.

• 56:33David Hoffman?

  Stablecoin accounts for Stripe accounts. So all Stripe accounts have a stablecoin account now too. Yeah.

• 56:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah. All right, that's stablecoins. Tell me about the Bitcoin debate.

• 56:41David Hoffman?

  Okay, all right. So this is gonna start to mirror a lot of the same words that we're using in like the block, block versus blob size debates. And so this is a Bitcoin split over this op return debate, the op return outputs. Op return is kind of like call data, call data for Ethereum. It allows, uh, in Ethereum, it allows for arbitrary.

• 56:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like blob space-ish.

• 57:00David Hoffman?

  It's blob space, yeah. Call data is, be like, give me the data that you want to be called by other contracts. I think, I think that's right.

• 57:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, sure.

• 57:08David Hoffman?

  And then we just formalize that into blobs. Like, okay, let's create blobs, this arbitrary space for data. Op return is the same kind of function in Bitcoin where you can just put arbitrary data in. It's not the only place that you can.

• 57:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that where Ordinals is getting stuffed right now?

• 57:20David Hoffman?

  Exactly. Yes, yes. It is not the only place that you can put arbitrary data in, and this is a big conversation and a big talking point is, you can. Kind of, blockchains are just data ledgers. And we format these datas to become like transactions and ledgers. But it's really just a data database at the end of the day. So data goes into blockchains. So there's no removing, putting arbitrary data into blockchains.

• 57:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Bitcoin transactions are just data, right? UTXOs are just data.

• 57:48David Hoffman?

  Opera turn is kind of this like in almost pseudo enshrined. You can just put your data here. And right now, there is a cap like this 80 byte cap size limit on Opera turn. And some parts of the Bitcoin community wants to remove that cap limit, which is like if Ethereum increases blob space. So the proponents argue that supporters believe that arbitrary data storage on Bitcoin is inevitable. Trying to suppress it only leads to more harmful workarounds, like securing data in other ways or doing private deals with miners. The proponents argue that Opera turn is the least damaging method. It's a small, provably unspendable place to put data. And it also avoids polluting the UTXO set. So other solutions to put data into Bitcoin requires sending Bitcoin transactions,

• 58:31David Hoffman?

  just making UTXOs with data in them, whereas Opera turn does not.

• 58:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're basically like, people are going to hack it anyways, so you might as well formalize it.

• 58:39David Hoffman?

  Exactly, yeah. The critics argue that removing the limits on Opera turn invites more spam and non-monetary data into Bitcoin blockchain graffiti, crowding out financial transactions and burdening nodes. And so there's this notion of like legitimate and illegitimate Bitcoin transactions. And legitimate Bitcoin transactions are ones that are made for commerce, that use Bitcoin as money. And illegitimate Bitcoin transactions are ones that have arbitrary data in them. But then also it's like, well, who's to say illegitimate Bitcoin transaction is a little bit legitimate Bitcoin transaction? You know who's to say that? The Bitcoin core code. And the only way to make a Bitcoin legitimate Bitcoin transaction is if you pay the fee. And so that, according to the software, is the non-subjective way of interpreting what's a legitimate or illegitimate transaction.

• 59:22David Hoffman?

  If you pay the fee, then it's a legitimate Bitcoin transaction. There is truly a lack of consensus here. This is a split, but this is currently the debate in Bitcoin land. I would say, we'll say that reducing the, eliminating the cap on Opera turn and having unconstrained arbitrary data in Bitcoin would be very good for Bitcoin layer twos, which are a real thing.

• 59:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very good for Bitcoin layer twos. But it's like, sometimes I get the sense when I see these kind of debates in the Bitcoin community that like, they just rather not have a network at all, do you know? They'd

• 59:51David Hoffman?

  That is true.

• 59:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  They want the asset.

• 59:53David Hoffman?

  The network is a burden.

• 59:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  The network is a burden because the only purpose of the network is the asset Bitcoin itself, right?

• 59:59David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:00:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  And everything else is kind of like graffiti.

• 1:00:02David Hoffman?

  It's a means to an end.

• 1:00:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a means to an end, right? And if they could eliminate it, there's a large cohort of the Bitcoin community that kind of would.

• 1:00:09David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:00:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  But that limits your ability to scale via layer twos.

• 1:00:13David Hoffman?

  The industrial use cases and the jewelry use cases of gold are a burden on gold as a financial asset. And now with Bitcoin, we finally have the most pristine version of a hard money asset. And anything that's not using that is just a burden and a distraction and slows the progress of the hyper Bitcoinization down.

• 1:00:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31David Hoffman?

  Do I sound like a Bitcoiner?

• 1:00:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's, you know, that was a good, that was a good imitation, you know? And it's funny how hardcore these debates are, right? We think debates in Ethereum are hard, like.

• 1:00:39David Hoffman?

  No, dude.

• 1:00:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:40David Hoffman?

  They're arguing over an 80 byte cap limit on an op code.

• 1:00:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tell me about Uniswap, David, TEEs.

• 1:00:48David Hoffman?

  Okay, yeah, okay, so UniChain becomes the first layer two, I think the first blockchain ever to use TEEs for block building trusted execution environments. And so this is technology brought by Flashbots and Uniswap Labs to the UniChain. TEEs isolate execution from tampering, tampering even by the operator of the TEE. So it enables verifiable priority based transaction ordering. So this just mitigates extractive MEV by enforcing transparent, auditable sequencing. It reduces the failed transaction costs and weighted gas, wasted gas via revert protection. It also allows for 200 millisecond blocks.

• 1:01:27David Hoffman?

  And so there are sub blocks, so a real UniChain block is one second, but you have four sub blocks, so four increments of blocks. So for the end user, it feels like a 200 second block, which is the fastest block in crypto. Arbitrum is at 250, Solana is at 400 milliseconds.

• 1:01:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is just killer execution, right? You were just talking about earlier what Wall Street wants.

• 1:01:46David Hoffman?

  Exactly. UniChain, if we want to compare the execution of all blockchains, UniChain has the best trend, like trading execution technology out of any blockchain in crypto.

• 1:01:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58David Hoffman?

  I'm pretty confident in that statement and. So like, you know, maybe retail doesn't care because retail is happy to pay like 10, 20, 30% slippage on illiquid casino shitcoins on Pumped Up Fun. And, you know, more power to them. That Pumped Up Fun token has the opportunity to do the 1000x. That's why they're all there. That's, that's good. Keep on, keep on doing that. Wall Street is hypersensitive to bips. They pay attention to bips and this is prioritizing and optimizing, maximizing the return of bips to traders on Unichain.

• 1:02:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know what's really also important for bips though is like liquidity. You have to have deep freaking liquidity. And I can't help but think like if all of the rollups, if the liquidity wasn't fragmented and the user experience felt kind of the same across all rollups. And there's like one unified liquidity pool, Ethereum would like be miles ahead.

• 1:02:50David Hoffman?

  You know what we need to do that, Ryan?

• 1:02:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 1:02:53David Hoffman?

  We need to have fast finality on the layer one.

• 1:02:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 1:02:56David Hoffman?

  We need to have fast layer one block speeds. We need to have a coherent cross-chain interoperability standard. Shout out base rollups for tapping into layer one liquidity. And then we also need to scale block space, which is exactly what Ethereum is doing.

• 1:03:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, well, let's see.

• 1:03:11David Hoffman?

  With a less than satisfactory emphasis on layer one scaling.

• 1:03:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  By the way, meanwhile in TradFi, did you see this? Let's send here Charles Schwab, CEO eyeing spot Bitcoin trading. So if you're looking for Bitcoin trading on the spot in your old Chuck Schwab account, okay, that's coming.

• 1:03:27David Hoffman?

  I'm not looking for that.

• 1:03:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's coming in 2026.

• 1:03:30David Hoffman?

  That is not the product that I am looking for.

• 1:03:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just think it's, it's hilarious how they're all showing up now, just like, you know, five years too late to actually beat out some of the like, you know, crypto incumbents in this field. So, you know, Charles Schwab coming to Bitcoin here.

• 1:03:46David Hoffman?

  Hold your breath Bitcoiners for trading Bitcoin on Charles Schwab in April of 2026.

• 1:03:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  So here we are. ETH feels like it's slowly getting back on track. David, stable coins going to a trillion.

• 1:03:56David Hoffman?

  Two trillion.

• 1:03:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Two trillion app stores opening up. Yeah, feels pretty bullish on the week, I'd say.

• 1:04:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. You know what else I'm pretty bullish on, Ron?

• 1:04:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 1:04:05David Hoffman?

  You listen to the AI rollups with me, Ajaz and Josh?

• 1:04:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I did.

• 1:04:09David Hoffman?

  I think that those are killer episodes. I have a ton of fun doing them with Josh and Ajaz. We are rolling out, Bankless is rolling out our second podcast. It is called Limitless. This is not a joke. This is for real. We are spinning out all of our frontier tech content, which I'm just pilled about AI. I'm pilled about frontier tech. We have enough content and enough like co-hosting power to build out a second Bankless podcast called Limitless. So this is the call to action. There is a new YouTube channel. There will be a new Spotify out soon called Limitless. Go subscribe to that podcast. We're putting the AI rollups on the Limitless podcast. We are putting all of the frontier tech conversations on the Limitless podcast.

• 1:04:50David Hoffman?

  We are interviewing founders in manufacturing, founders in like space exploration, robotics. Josh is just a huge robotics bull. So anything that's going to materially shape our world, especially AI, we are building out this podcast to explicitly explore those frontiers so that you will get the Bankless podcast feed focused on crypto and markets, crypto macro markets, TradFi, all things crypto. And then all things AI and frontier tech will be going on Limitless. So if you are listening to all those things, go subscribe to the YouTube. Go subscribe to the podcast when it comes out. Make sure to give us a five star review. I'm pretty stoked.

• 1:05:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  He goes, I've got two podcasts coming out on Limitless that I'm guest hosting, David.

• 1:05:31David Hoffman?

  Ryan is hosting. Ryan is also a host on Limitless too.

• 1:05:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Occasionally for subjects that are super interesting. Yeah, I'm very excited about what we're doing in that space too. Of course, guys, you know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.