ROLLUP: Jack Dorsey vs Web3 | Apes Flippening Punks | Weeknd NFTs | SOS & GasDAO Airdrop | FEI RARI

Last Week of 2021 ------ 📣 HASHFLOW | POOL & TRADE OTC https://bankless.cc/Hashflow ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🍵 MATCHA | DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE AGGREGATOR https://bankless.cc/Matcha 🔐 LEDGER | SECURE YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger 🧙‍♀️ ALCHEMIX | SELF-PAYING LOANS http://bankless.cc/Alchemix ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 2:20 MARKETS 2:35 BTC Price 3:05 ETH Price 5:24 ETH/BTC Ratio 5:47 BED Index https://www.indexcoop.com/bed 6:06 Dex Volume https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/128500/decentralized-exchanges-saw-over-1-trillion-in-trading-volume-this-year 7:45 YFI Tokenomics https://thedefiant.io/yearn-tokenomics-change/ 11:00 RELEASES & RAISES 12:30 Shopify NFTs https://www.shopify.com/nft 14:29 Opera Polygon https://twitter.com/opera/status/1473654561059446784?s=21 16:23 Clarity DAO Tool https://twitter.com/clarityteams/status/1471913111309504512?s=21 17:27 Parachains on Polkadot https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/128026/parachains-officially-launch-on-polkadot-network 18:30 BitMEX Token https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/12/21/bitmex-announces-bmex-tokens-to-revive-retail-interest/ 20:20 Hashflow HFT Token https://twitter.com/hashflownetwork/status/1473463052951760899?s=20 20:59 Huobi on Arbitrum https://twitter.com/HuobiGlobal/status/1476045335357132801 21:54 Alexis Ohanian & Polygon https://twitter.com/VentureBeat/status/1471857751223582728?s=20 23:35 Figment https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/20/figment-reaches-unicorn-status-with-110m-series-c/ 25:25 B. Protocol https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/22/bprotocol-raises-22m-to-backstop-defi-liquidations/ 27:25 Jobs https://pallet.xyz/list/bankless/jobs NEWS 28:59 Airdrop Szn SOS: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/28/opendaos-sos-token-hits-250m-market-cap-despite-unclear-goals-security-risks/ GIV: https://giv.giveth.io/ GasDAO: https://mirror.xyz/gasdao.eth/AwZGIpiVuIOkcwUaKqn4ZdcI4MetmYmvVdnuZsNZlaQ 32:06 Merge Testnet https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/ 32:53 Polygon Bug https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/128784/polygon-critical-bug-24-billion-matic-tokens-at-risk-hard-fork 34:41 FEI RARI Merge https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/12/21/rari-capital-fei-protocol-token-holders-approve-multibillion-dollar-defi-merger/ 36:24 Mastercard & Consensys https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/16/consensys-collaborates-with-mastercard-on-new-ethereum-scaling-solution/ 37:32 RadioShack https://decrypt.co/88712/yes-radioshack-pivoted-defi 39:17 BlockbusterDAO https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/128564/a-dao-wants-to-buy-blockbuster-and-turn-it-into-a-decentralized-film-streaming-service 39:49 Jeopardy https://twitter.com/davidesilverman/status/1475989132598026240?s=21 40:50 .eth Leaderboard https://twitter.com/ethleaderboard/status/1476647213044416512 41:58 Apes Flip Punks https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/128338/bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-flip-cryptopunks-floor-price 44:32 Adidas NFTs https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/17/22843104/adidas-nfts-metaverse-sold-bored-ape 45:33 Weeknd NFTs https://decrypt.co/88839/the-weeknd-releases-ethereum-nfts-via-tom-bradys-autograph-platform 46:02 Meta Web3 Compatibility https://decrypt.co/89153/meta-targeting-deep-compatibility-blockchain-web-3-incoming-cto 47:42 Jack vs Web3 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1473139010197508098?s=20 55:12 Ray Dalio https://blockworks.co/ray-dalio-crypto-should-be-part-of-a-diversified-portfolio 57:00 Kraken Acquires Staked https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/128294/crypto-exchange-kraken-acquires-staking-startup-staked 1:00:11 Web3 Candidates https://blockworks.co/a16z-poll-voters-will-prefer-candidate-that-supports-web3/ 1:02:30 TAKES 1:03:30 Decentralization is Insurance https://twitter.com/hughkarp/status/1471446570382118916?s=21 1:07:03 Hacks vs Banks https://twitter.com/lay2000lbs/status/1472691654121426966?s=21 1:07:59 BTC vs ETH https://twitter.com/stakeborg/status/1474327539657342976?s=21 1:09:53 Risk is Relative https://twitter.com/danielgothits/status/1474904081072209920?s=21 1:13:10 What David’s Excited* About 1:15:32 What Ryan’s Excited About 1:17:02 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1474270619189473280?s=20 1:17:28 Closing & Disclaimers ----- Not financial or tax advice. Do your own research. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm just excited about next year. I'm excited about 2022. Excited about crypto. Bullish crypto, David. You believe that? I'm bullish crypto. Yeah.

• 0:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, Bankless Nation. It's Friday morning. Happy New Year to you. Well, it's almost New Year. I guess it's New Year's Eve day that David and I are recording this. And it's roll up time, David. Well, actually, I stole your thunder. What time is it, David?

• 0:23David Hoffman?

  Oh, it's roll up time, Ryan. Thanks for stopping that one to me. Yeah, no, it's time to roll up the whole entire year. Actually, we already did that, but this is going to be the last roll up of 2021. We are covering the last two weeks. So there's a lot to cram in, but also it's one of those times of the year where there's kind of quiet. So it might actually just be the same kind of length, same roll up, covering two weeks, but about the same amount of stuff, hopefully. And hopefully, we can get this done in a reasonable amount of time. We were really, really good at it last time. We'll see if we can do it again.

• 0:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  So some of that stuff we're going to cover is Shopify. They just opened up their platform to NFTs. That's really cool. It's also been like airdrop week for the past week and a half. Everyone's dropping coins. You know, I guess right before the New Year. I don't know why, but we'll talk about some of those airdrops that are coming. Also, the biggest protocol merger ever was just approved this week. Two big DeFi protocols teaming up. We've also got like old brands like Radio Shack. They are entering the DeFi space.

• 1:20David Hoffman?

  Are they, though? Are they?

• 1:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah. Good question. We'll get into that. And also Jack Dorsey versus Web3, a tussle on Twitter. We're going to talk about that, too. So a lot of things going on in the holidays as well. And once again, we will roll this up for you and talk about each of those with some additional things. Before we do, David, let's talk a little bit about Hashflow.

• 1:41David Hoffman?

  Hashflow, alright.

• 1:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so Hashflow is like this DeFi OTC desk. What is an OTC desk, David? And what does this protocol do?

• 1:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, an OTC desk is if you have a big trade, if you're a trading firm, or just you want something just to have your price be optimized. An OTC desk is where you go. You throw them a bunch of money and then they get you back your trade back to you at an optimized price. Hashflow is that, but as a DeFi app, OTC DeFi. So they work with you to automatically get you the best price on your trade, as well as things like MEV resistance, front-running resistance, and just a number of other things to make sure that you get the best price when you make your swap. So you can check them out at app.hashflow.com.

• 2:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's pretty cool for whales too. And rumor is they are issuing a token as well. We'll get to that a little bit further in the roll up. All right, David, well, let's talk about Bitcoin as we get into the markets. The markets this week for Bitcoin and David, why don't you give us like the the two weeks? We usually do just one week, but what's the the two weeks highs and lows look like?

• 2:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, two week, we started this two weeks ago at $48,000. We are currently at 4,730. So over two weeks, we're down $700 with Bitcoin. Hit a low of 46,000, hit a high of 52,000. Overall, down 3% over the two weeks.

• 3:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just down 3%. It felt like it was down more. Maybe that was because of Ether price has been down and it feels like a lot more. What's the last two weeks been for Ether?

• 3:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, two weeks ago Ether started at $4,000, hit a low of $3,650. A little bit surprising how low that got. It's it's high during that time period was 4,150. We are currently at 3,750. So overall, down 6% over the two week period. My take on this is this is just low liquidity shenanigans. This is the the end of the year. All the traders and market makers and all institutions that place bids and asks on on exchanges. Just, you know, they take a break too. And so just the the markets are very, very low liquidity and low liquid state towards the end of the year. And so this is a ripe opportunity for whales to play some whale games.

• 3:54David Hoffman?

  That I suspect that that's kind of what's going on here. I don't really treat these numbers as real. I'm going to wait until the first week of January to to actually reaffirm the actual what the real prices are.

• 4:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like retail is taking some time off too. Like retail isn't really bidding these things up either. They're just kind of letting it happen. So maybe that's what's going on as well. But I'm I'm kind of glad that we're not ending the year in euphoria territory, to be honest. Like, I feel like this tees us up for next year and I'm anticipating a big year next year. Bullish going into 2022. How about you?

• 4:25David Hoffman?

  Oh, absolutely. And you have the one month chart pulled up on Ether right now. And it's a bad one month chart.

• 4:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that is bad, actually.

• 4:33David Hoffman?

  Starting the month at $4,700, ending the month at $3,700. So down $1,000 on the month.

• 4:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Three month looks okay, though.

• 4:40David Hoffman?

  Three month looks great. Yeah, so starting the three month at $3,200, hitting the high of $4,800 and ending at $3,700. Just a crab, crab two months, slightly up three months, bearish one month. Overall, just like a quieter market than what we have been used to. So I think that's setting us up for a fantastic January.

• 5:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we're looking at it. Let's look at the year. $730 at the start of this year. And now we're 3,700. So not a bad way to finish it.

• 5:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  But also not euphoric, right? Like, things didn't get crazy last year. So maybe we'll save some of the craziness for next year. How about the ratio? What's that doing?

• 5:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, ratio also down, down with the market as well. It's down to 0.086. So kind of broke through that 0.08 number, but still overall in a satisfying place if you believe in the flipping.

• 5:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you believe in the flipping, sir?

• 5:41David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 5:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Core believer in the flipping. Founder of the flipping belief. How about the bed index? All right, this is a third, a third, a third. DeFi, Bitcoin, and Ether. We must be down on the two weeks.

• 5:56David Hoffman?

  We are down 18% on the one month. The last two weeks have been flatter-ish. I think we're down roughly $6 from 141 to 135 where we are now.

• 6:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, there we go. Let's talk about decentralized exchanges, though, over on markets, David. Because if you aggregate this and look over the year, this has been an incredible year for decentralized exchanges. Over $1 trillion in trading volume activity in 2021. Absolutely phenomenal. You can see this chart. This is kind of the compilation. You see a lot of Uniswap here from V2 and V1. Also Sushi Swap, Curve, Serum. There are about 14 others, kind of a long tail of. Of Dex's Uniswap by far the most dominant, but what an incredible year for decentralized exchanges. I remember not too long ago, people said that decentralized exchanges would never take off. Right. It's like because you couldn't out host an order book on Ethereum is too slow.

• 6:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that wasn't that long ago. That was like, you know, 2017, 2018. Zero X was trying to make it in that world and really just couldn't. And now decentralized exchanges like they're just taken for granted, but this is something that has totally burst onto the scene and what an incredible year, 1 trillion in trading volume.

• 7:09David Hoffman?

  Dex's breaking through Coinbase's volume numbers on a 24 hour or even a weekly basis is now like, kind of feels like normal. Dex's volume numbers don't make big headlines anymore. People are just assuming that they are the things that just carry us into the future when it comes to markets.

• 7:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. I mean, the next milestone to break her, it's like NASDAQ, right?

• 7:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 7:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like, wake me up when Dex's are bigger than the NASDAQ and, you know, New York Stock Exchange.

• 7:37David Hoffman?

  2022?

• 7:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not going to call that. Okay. I got my predictions, but that's not one of them yet. Not for 2022. Let's talk about Urin Finance. So this is the YFI token, the protocol behind the YFI token. It had a pretty good week despite DeFi collectively being down, soared over 85% one week. And the reason is token economic changes. Okay. Governance put together a few ways to juice the YFI token or to deliver more value to token holders. One of those ideas that went forward through governance is the ability to stake YFI tokens in exchange for X YFI tokens and then holders would receive additional YFI

• 8:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  and Urin would buy that YFI in the open market. So it's almost like an open market operation in exchange for staking YFI. They also are considering implementing a

• 8:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  A model that's based on Curve Finance, where the more you Wi-Fi you lock up, the greater rewards that you get in Wi-Fi tokens as well. There are a number of other things, but I think the big takeaway here is like,

• 8:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  this is sort of what we anticipated. Every token protocol is very much incented through its governance process to start capturing the value that's accrued by its protocol and by its token. And sometimes this happens during bear markets. This will also happen during bull markets. But every DeFi token is going to do this. This is why I'm not worried about token value capture long term, as long as it's governed by individuals with a profit incentive. And they all are. What are your thoughts on this, David?

• 9:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's this inevitable friction behind the value that a protocol offers to the ecosystem and then the actual valuation of the token on the secondary markets. Those things are separate things. And the field, the domain of knowledge that we are calling tokenomics, is about how do we get those things more aligned? How do we get those things to overlap rather than be separate? And Urn has really struggled with this throughout 2021, where I think it's more or less been flat versus the dollar and then absolutely got smashed versus ETH in 2021, just because the tokenomics were a point of contention as people would consider Urn a very valuable protocol, offering a very valuable service, and the value of the token could not capture that value.

• 10:05David Hoffman?

  And so naturally, as Ether has like, you know, 5Xed and Urn has stayed flat, Wi-Fi has stayed flat, there's a growing incentive for everyone to figure out like, all right, how do we more closely align the value of the protocol with the value of the token? So this is an attempt at that. There's a little bit of like pumpamentals or ponzi-nomics in here, but kind of that's what tokenomics are. How do we align the value of the protocol with the value of the token on the secondary market? And these changes created an 85% Wi-Fi price increase. And so the market so far seems to agree that these are good changes.

• 10:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. I do think other tokens are going to do this as well. So this is the final form, the final state of all DeFi tokens. Guys, we will be back with the releases of the week, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 10:54David Hoffman?

  Arbitrum is an Ethereum scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use DeFi and NFTs. And now it's live and has over 100 projects deployed. Gas fees on Ethereum L1 suck. Too many people want to use Ethereum and it doesn't have enough capacity for all of us. And that's why teams like Arbitrum have been hard at work developing Layer 2 solutions that makes transactions on Ethereum cheap and instant. Arbitrum increases Ethereum's throughput by orders of magnitude at a fraction of the cost of what we are used to paying. When interacting with Arbitrum, you can get the performance of a centralized exchange while tapping into Ethereum's level of security and decentralization. This is why people are calling this Ethereum's broadband moment, where we get to add performance onto decentralization and security.

• 11:35David Hoffman?

  If you're a developer and you want to save on gas costs and overall make a better user experience, go to developers offchainlabs.com to get started building on Arbitrum. And if you're a user, keep an eye out for your favorite DeFi apps being built on Arbitrum. Many DeFi applications on the Ethereum L1 are migrating over to Layer 2s like Arbitrum, and some are even skipping over the Layer 1s entirely and deploying directly on Layer 2. There's so many apps coming online to Arbitrum, so go to bridge.arbitrum.io now and start bridging over your ETH or any of the tokens listed and start having the DeFi or NFT experience that you've always wanted. Alchemix is one of the coolest new DeFi apps on the scene. It introduces self-paying loans, allowing you to spend and save at the same time.

• 12:16David Hoffman?

  Deposit the DAI stablecoin into the Alchemix vault in order to get an advance on the interest it generates. Borrow up to 50% of the total amount of your deposited DAI in the form of AlUSD stablecoin. Here's the craziest part: the loan pays itself back and you cannot be liquidated. Unlock your asset's potential in the ultimate DeFi savings account. And brand new to Alchemix is the ETH vault, where you can deposit ETH into the application, borrow Al ETH against your deposits while having your advance gradually paid back. Over time, V2 is rapidly approaching, which will allow for even more collateral types, plus a variety of yield strategies to choose from. Harness the power of Alchemix at alchemix.fi.

• 13:00David Hoffman?

  That's A-L-C-H-E-M-I-X dot F-I. Follow Alchemix on Twitter at @AlchemixFI and join the Discord to keep up to date with Alchemix V2 and to get involved in governance.

• 13:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back with the releases of the week. Let's start with this one. Shopify plus NFTs. Shopify, massive e-commerce protocol platform, plus NFTs, the ability to sell NFTs, just spin up a Shopify store and sell your own NFTs. That is coming, that is now here. What do you think about this, David?

• 13:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, on their page, they say, "Mint and sell your own branded NFTs with Shopify and Shopify Payments right from your store. Join the NFT beta program today." So Shopify, already out of the box, has like half of an NFT platform ready to go. All that's missing are the actual NFTs. And seems like that's what's here today now. And so Shopify, already a digital e-commerce store, like integrating digital products into your digital e-commerce store seems pretty trivial as far as things go. And so it seems like they're diving headfirst into NFTs. The URL for this is Shopify.com/NFT. So relatively easy, if you want to go check that out.

• 14:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's super cool. There's so many wins for existing like Web2 platforms in the NFT movement, and this is just another win. And this provides another fiat on-ramp directly to NFTs. So it serves consumers as well. Bullish that, great to see Shopify diving in. I mean, they're absolutely massive, and they've grown like crazy recently. David, let's talk about the browser game. So Opera's doing a big move here. What are they up to? Opera, the browser, of course.

• 14:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Opera is integrating Polygon. Polygon applications and the Matic token are integrated directly into the browser, coming in Q1, so like in two days. Well, Q1 starts in two days. I don't know if it's coming in two days. It's sometime in Q1. And they say, "Get ready to benefit from the fast, scalable, low-fee environment of Polygon and access over 3,000 apps on the Polygon network." So Polygon integrated right into Opera, which is a pretty interesting choice because Polygon isn't everything about crypto. There's stuff elsewhere, but Opera has decided to not integrate Ethereum, not integrate Arbitrum or Optimism, just only select Polygon for now. Pretty interesting choice, but definitely makes sense because you've got to have something scaled in there.

• 15:22David Hoffman?

  So, but congrats to the Polygon team and also really awesome to see Opera moving forward into the Web3 world.

• 15:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I wonder what this integration will look like. I know it's particularly aimed at their mobile device and I know Opera has a wallet as well. So I wonder if this is just like a seamless browser to DAP to DeFi app sort of experience inside of your mobile browser. And if so, like, that's awesome. That is, that is super bullish. I've been looking for more seamless integration between crypto native applications and the browser. Like, right now, we're doing it through extensions and third parties, but like, what if it was completely integrated? If it was just, there's no need it. There's no fundamental need for it to be like a whole separate application inside of a browser. Like, it could be part of a browser. And I wonder if this is what Opera

• 16:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  is pushing towards. Love to see Chrome, Firefox, the other browsers follow suit, but they seem a little sleepy compared to Opera. Opera is like hungry for market share, right?

• 16:21David Hoffman?

  Absolutely.

• 16:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about this, David. Clarity DAO. This is a new coordination and information management tool for DAOs. Lots of DAO infrastructure being built out these days. This is a way for DAO contributors to solve the access control problem. So it's the ability to, I think, you know, segment access to certain things within a DAO to an Ethereum username. So if there's some piece of content on a webpage, or maybe there's a Discord server, and only certain whitelisted DAO participants should have access to it, I think this provides a way to provide access control and you know, segment that access to particular Ethereum usernames. So it's sort of a sign in

• 17:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  with Ethereum type of application here, specifically targeted at DAOs.

• 17:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it sounds like it's a Google G Suite, like some admin management tool with permissions and lets you access different parts of the drive, but instead of the drive, now it's the DAO. Makes sense.

• 17:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it makes sense and good to see that stuff being built out. Parachains also officially launched on the Polkadot network. David, what is this about?

• 17:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Parachains are Polkadot's big, that's their big thing. That's their big innovation, kind of some sort of hybrid between sharding and rollups, but built inside of Polkadot. It's been the flagship feature of Polkadot since inception and now it's finally here. So, congrats to Polkadot.

• 17:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Five Parachains went live. I think of these sort of as rollups. What's interesting about these is you actually have to, the Parachains actually have to bid for a slot. They're not just like, you can't permissionlessly just start using Polkadot. You actually have to bid in dot tokens for one of these slots. And so, these first five Parachains that successfully bid, they went live. All told, it cost about 99 million dots, I believe. That was garnered by these five projects during the auction period. That's $2.4 billion. Not sure all of the details of how that works, but it's definitely a different and interesting mechanism as compared to Ethereum rollups. David, what's this? BitMEX is announcing a token, okay? I thought BitMEX was anti-token.

• 18:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are they doing here?

• 18:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, for those that came into crypto in 2021, you might not be familiar with BitMEX. It has a pretty long track record. BitMEX is a centralized exchange for margin and leverage trading. It's kind of been known to be like the casino, just like where people just go 100x long on Bitcoin and inevitably get wrecked, or not, or they get riches.

• 19:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was like, David, it was like the DGEN playground before DeFi became the DGEN playground.

• 19:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, before DeFi and then also before Binance, Marching kind of took over the casino thing. But yeah, Bitcoin, it was famously Bitcoin only for the longest time. Arthur Hayes was like on the run from, I think- The CFTC or the Arthur Hayes, the founder of Bitmex, there's a long backstory. Ever since Bitmex ended up getting, I'm not sure, like charges from the CFTC or some three-letter agency, they've kind of taken a new turn, new turn. And what was formerly a very like Bitcoin-centered ecosystem is now issuing a token, which like previously was blasphemous coming from the leaders behind Bitmex, but now Bitmex has a token. It's basically a loyalty token, some sort of like, kind

• 19:51David Hoffman?

  of like airline miles, but specifically for the Bitmex exchange. So the BMEX token is out and live.

• 19:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Interesting thing is like, why not? Right? I mean, like, why not issue a token and see what happens? I guess that's their play on it. And I think they're, they're trying to revive some retail interest, right? So give some retail users a reason to continue using Bitmex and compete against the FTXs of the world and the binances of the world who've really taken center stage over the last couple of years and leapfrogged Bitmex. Let's talk about this. So Hashflow is issuing a token as well. We were talking about Hashflow earlier in the introduction. That's that OTC DeFi protocol. What are they up to here, David?

• 20:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they're issuing a token. So if you have traded on Hashflow or contributed to the community and early on, do you own a Hashbot NFT, for example, then you might have the HFT token. And so that's Hashflow's governance token and will be able to free to claim towards the end of January. And so stay tuned. If you are a Hashflow ecosystem participant, you might have a token coming your way at the end of the month.

• 20:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. More fiat onramps to Arbitrum. This one from Huobi, who is a centralized exchange. Now they are allowing deposits and withdrawals for ETH directly to and from Arbitrum. It's kind of cool. What are your thoughts here?

• 21:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, knocking them down. We need more, more, more, more. This is good news and I want 50 more news items like this over the next like month.

• 21:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's coming though in 2022, right? Like including Coinbase. That's a big one I've been waiting for.

• 21:24David Hoffman?

  Yep. Coinbase, I bet Coinbase Q1 2022.

• 21:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, was that a prediction? Is that official David Hoffman prediction?

• 21:31David Hoffman?

  That's a, god, the last time I did this, I did not end well.

• 21:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Certified fresh.

• 21:34David Hoffman?

  Yes, it's an official David Hoffman prediction. Coinbase on and off ramps onto an Ethereum Layer 2 in Q1 2022.

• 21:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you have it, folks. He took the bait. We got him now.

• 21:46David Hoffman?

  I'm texting Brian right now. It's like, Brian, I need to do something.

• 21:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Please, please, Brian. Tweet outstanding. Okay, raises this week. Alexis Ohanian and Polygon, they're investing a cool $200 million into decentralized social media. Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, of course, a venture capitalist. He's coming on Bankless a couple of weeks. We're gonna ask him about this. But what's up with this news? What's going on?

• 22:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a lot of just excitement and energy around decentralized social media platforms. While the details on what that means and what that is is still fuzzy, regardless, people are still working on them. AVE is working on this. Polygon is working on this. I mean, it would be huge for any ecosystem to be like the thing that figured out decentralized social media. So there's obviously a lot of reward there for whoever can crack that nut. And it makes sense for Alexis Ohanian to be right there. He's the guy that created Reddit, which is the most, you know, kind of like, Reddit itself isn't decentralized, but it kind of looks and feels like it, right? With all the subreddits. And so, really, really cool. $200 million in the war chest to build out some sort of decentralized social media. And in a time where we kind of really need it right now, Ryan, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that later.

• 22:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. Have you seen any decentralized social media that you've liked so far? Like, I've tried BitClout a little bit, and it's just been kind of meh.

• 23:08David Hoffman?

  I mean, I don't even know what, like, decentralized social media, what does that mean? Like, what does decentralization, how does that impact the social media aspect nature of it?

• 23:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't know. I just, it's always been my gut that it's not going to look like the social media platforms of the past.

• 23:21David Hoffman?

  It's not gonna be Instagram, but decentralized. That's not gonna be, that's not gonna be.

• 23:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. It's gotta be something different. I do think there's something here, but you can't just slap decentralization on the thing and call it decentralized social media. So we'll see what they have in mind, but it's good to see the innovation. Talk about this, Figment. Reach unicorn status. Wow, everyone's a unicorn these days with $110 million Series C. Figment is a staking services provider. They've got some big investors in the round here, including Binance. What I think is interesting here is, David, there are a number of probably a couple dozen or so staking service providers. Figment is one of the larger ones. There's Corus One. There's a number of others. One called Staked was just acquired by Kraken. We'll talk a little bit about that.

• 24:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  But interesting to see these just pure staking as a service companies accruing such massive valuations so quickly. What are your thoughts?

• 24:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, being a unicorn is just not the same this day and age, not after we printed like a bajillion dollars in 2020.

• 24:26David Hoffman?

  This is going to be a huge story. It already is a huge story, but even bigger going into 2022 is staking. Proof of stake, staking. It felt like 2021 was the year of staking anticipation. I feel like 2022 is the year of actual staking and staking services being coming into their full production ready environment because of all the chains that are also coming in to production ready staking. And so some of the evaluations on Figment, Staked and all these other protocols starting to make a lot of sense.

• 24:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this wouldn't have happened, in my opinion, without like alt layer one season completely taking off, right? It's like, because many of these networks, they're semi-active in ETH 2 staking, but not really. They're bread and butter. It's like the Cosmos ecosystems, the Solana ecosystems of the world, all of those alternative layer ones.

• 25:14David Hoffman?

  The ecosystems that the individual has a hard time staking on. Yeah, weird how companies start to fill that niche, huh?

• 25:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Kinda, right? And you're gonna take on that when it comes to news, when we talk about stake, but we'll save that for the news section. B Protocol, they just did a raise, $2.2 million. What's the B Protocol, David?

• 25:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah, B Protocol came out of the Black Tuesday. Was it Black Tuesday? Black Thursday?

• 25:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Black Thursday, wasn't it?

• 25:37David Hoffman?

  Black Thursday, yeah. When the crypto markets got cut in half by like 50, 55%.

• 25:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Such a distant memory.

• 25:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right? You remember that? Yeah, Ryan, we were recording. Recording Bankless Podcast number two that day.

• 25:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 25:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  We stopped the podcast and we're like, oh my God, ETH gas fees are like 1,200 Glares or something.

• 25:57David Hoffman?

  And everyone's getting liquidated.

• 25:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 25:59David Hoffman?

  So what happened on that day was Maker DAO had zero die liquidations, as in people would pay zero die to bid on the collateral. Because gas congestion was so high, no one, no one other, no one else's bids on underwater Maker vaults were going through because gas was so high. And also, by the way, that was novel for the time. Like, gas fees had started to creep up, but gas fees were still not a thing back in February of 2020. Like, gas on Ethereum was still relatively cheap at that point. So having gas congestion was very new to Ethereum. And turns out that created an unprecedented scenario with regards to liquidations as what happened with Maker DAO. So like Maker DAO had $8 million of collateral that was purchased for zero die, which is a problem.

• 26:43David Hoffman?

  And so B protocol is a solution for this. It is basically like a protector around your vaults. So your compound position, your maker position, and when you deposit into maker or compound through B protocol, it gives you a, like a wrapper of protection. It gives B protocol the right to liquidate you before anyone else. And so B protocol is a DAO that is going to liquidate you at the most favorable rates without gas fees. And you can take part in the liquidation or have your, your positions be protected by B protocol. Really just a great effort here as well. Disclaimer, Ryan and I are in this angel investment round.

• 27:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very cool. All right, David, let's talk about jobs. Hey, it's a new year, just about, anyway. It's time to consider a job in crypto.

• 27:33David Hoffman?

  A new job, new year, new job.

• 27:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  New year, new job, new outlook on life. You've been listening to Bankless for a long time. How about getting a job in crypto? Hey, no regrets for me, man. I jumped ship full time in 2017, my corporate job. And it's been absolutely awesome. I had no idea what I was going to do next. And in crypto, you just kind of figure it out. Right? Like you meet the community, you figure out your niche and you go develop it. Growing industry, tons going on. Here are some of the jobs this week. First, a senior software engineer, I'm gilded. A founding full stack engineer. A founding full stack engineer? That's awesome. Utopia Labs. Senior iOS engineer, senior backend engineer at Smart DeFi.

• 28:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Community ecosystem lead, DYDX, Bitwise. Still has some positions open. NFT specialist, smart contract platforms and web three research analyst, crypto research analyst, governance specialist as well at Bitwise. A head of growth at Dex Guru. Check that out for you, marketing types. Technical lead, draftly blockchain developer. You gotta be specialized in rust at Solidex as well. And we could go on a ton of different jobs for you. You could check those out, bankless.pallet.xyz. Grab a job in crypto this year.

• 28:52David Hoffman?

  Grab a job in crypto. Ryan, shall we get to the airdrops? Cause there was a lot of them.

• 28:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  New time, airdrops time. Yeah, let's hit them. There's like, there's like five or six or maybe seven, David, but we're gonna hit like the three that are.

• 29:05David Hoffman?

  The three big ones, yeah.

• 29:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the three that are, you know, kind of worth claiming, maybe. Why don't you start with this one?

• 29:10David Hoffman?

  SOS tokens. Here's the headline. Open Dow's SOS token hits $250 million market cap despite unclear goals and security risks. Unclear goals and security risks. Man, does that not just sound like the start of the very beginning of a token?

• 29:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  An airdrop?

• 29:28David Hoffman?

  That sounds about par for the course.

• 29:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what's your white paper? Unclear goals and security risks?

• 29:34David Hoffman?

  The SOS token is basically OpenSea, but decentralized, but a DAO is what they are claiming to be. So if you ever bought, sold NFTs, bought NFTs on OpenSea, you might have an SOS token airdropped to you. I had my SOS token. I think I got like 0.6 ethers worth of SOS tokens. Haven't done anything with them.

• 29:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. You're holding.

• 29:56David Hoffman?

  Maybe. Maybe selling for either one of the two.

• 29:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  That just means David hasn't had time to sell yet.

• 30:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  How about this next airdrop? Cause that's, you know, one of three that we're gonna highlight. What's this one?

• 30:07David Hoffman?

  This is from Giveth. Giveth has been around Ethereum for a really long time. If anyone has listened to the Layer Zero with Griff Green, he talks about Giveth. If you have participated in the Giveth economy, you might have an airdrop. You can check that out at G I V dot G I V E T H dot I O. Giveth is something that's been trying to spread out money and wealth into the different corners of the world, both with giving grants and trying to spin up the giving economy. And so, yeah, definitely check out that Layer Zero with Griff Green, especially if you want to like get a front row seats for the DAO and what happened there. And then after that, we talk about Giveth.

• 30:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a responsibility token, guys. So a valueless responsibility token. So the power to vote. A cool claim process, too. I went through and I claimed and you can claim on X D I. So cost no gas in order to do that. So you can plug in your ETH address and check, see if, see if you are a potential recipient. Why don't you do this last one, too, David?

• 31:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this one is gas DAO. Have you spent more than $1,559 on gas? You might recognize that number. You can go claim your gas tokens if you have spent more than $1,559 on gas. What it does and why it exists, absolutely no clue. But you can claim a proportionate amount of gas tokens to how much you have spent on gas. Yeah, I'm, I'm selling that one.

• 31:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  15, 5, 9, though? Like, those are rookie numbers, man. How much, how much gas have you spent?

• 31:34David Hoffman?

  Oh, my God, a lot.

• 31:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  It also depends, right? It's like, on what value? Like, is it the value, the snap, what dollar value? Because if you spent, you know, some ETH on gas a couple of years ago, that, that

• 31:48David Hoffman?

  It was, you spent pennies at the time, yeah.

• 31:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Spent pennies at the time, that could amount to like dollars, you know, hundreds of dollars even today. So that's a pay. Have you ever plugged one of your addresses into like, how much gas have I spent?

• 32:01David Hoffman?

  I don't like to do that too much.

• 32:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I never do that. I still want to know. This is, I don't want to know. Let's talk about this Ethereum news. Testnet is out. The testnet for the merge, the long awaited merge fork. Kintsugi is the testnet and this is a post. From the ethereum.org website from Tim Bako as well. This is just another step towards getting the merge into production on mainnet. Hopefully coming in the first half of next year. We'll have to see though. Any thoughts on this?

• 32:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is where we do mock merges, mock merges. We also talked about this with Vitalik Buterin on the podcast that's coming out on Monday, all about the future of the Ethereum roadmap and more. So stay tuned for that.

• 32:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that was a good podcast, man. We just recorded that earlier today. Yeah, good stuff in that podcast. Make sure you check that out. David, this was huge too. This happened during the holidays. Well, it didn't happen during the holidays, but the news came out during the holidays of a critical Polygon bug that put $24 billion in Matic tokens at risk. Basically, all the Matic tokens, like not quite, but like 92% or something like this. What happened here?

• 33:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there was an exploit in the token contract. I think, this is kind of hard for me to parse apart because I'm not a developer, but the token itself had an exploit, which is now patched. There is nothing left at risk. All fallout has already happened. Black Hat attackers did manage to hack, get away with $800,000, I believe, worth of Matic tokens. But in contrast to the 24 billion that was at stake, that's basically nothing. Two white hackers were paid out many millions of dollars, I think $3.3 million for the white hacker that discovered the bug and then helped patch it. And so this is now in the rearview mirrors. Unfortunately, that happened in the first place.

• 33:56David Hoffman?

  Also, very nice that we are paying white hackers millions of dollars to discover these things. That's very important.

• 34:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what was the reward here? This was huge, right? It's like 3.4.

• 34:04David Hoffman?

  $3.3 million, yeah. In Matic tokens, yeah. And so, yeah, real, real close call with the, with the whole Matic thing, right? That happened in the last couple of weeks.

• 34:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and this was, this all happened and was resolved on like, I think, December 5th or something. But news just came out this week. They like, they quietly like patched that and then issued the news a few weeks later, taking care of that. I mean, goes to show you like.

• 34:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  There can be zero day bugs in some of this stuff, even with thousands and hundreds of thousands of users and billions in value.

• 34:39David Hoffman?

  Even with billion-dollar networks, yep.

• 34:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about this. This is probably the biggest protocol merger being proposed in history, and it was just passed by governance. Rari Capital and Faye Protocol, token holders approving a multi-billion-dollar DeFi merger. What's happening?

• 34:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, on the surface, this kind of seems like what is a borrowing and lending protocol, which is Rari? Why are they being acquired by or merging with a stablecoin protocol, which is Faye? On the surface, doesn't make much sense. From, I haven't unpacked this myself, but the people that I listen to in this ecosystem are very, very bullish on this partnership. There's a bunch of aligned incentives here. And this has also been adopted overwhelmingly by both sides. There was a, it was basically on both Faye and Rari had like 90 to one, or yeah, 90 to one approval with regards to the token votes for saying like, yeah, everyone's a big fan of this. There was some criticism about this,

• 35:42David Hoffman?

  how hasty this was from some community members. That was definitely a critique. But overall, I think this is going to be a great alignment and incentives for over the long term.

• 35:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  I actually want to hear the story here. I think we should get Faye and somebody from Faye and somebody from Rari on the podcast to just like, discuss like, why this is happening and what the benefits are for both parties. Really, somebody who can dissect this for me, because I haven't quite followed it, but it seems like it could be a very big deal and maybe a harbinger of things to come. More of these protocol-type mergers in the future.

• 36:14David Hoffman?

  That was a formal request, by the way, for all the listeners out there.

• 36:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Jay from Rari and somebody from Faye, come on Bankless. We'll host you guys and talk about this. Consensus is collaborating with Mastercard on a new Ethereum scaling solution. They're built using consensus rollups? What is this, David?

• 36:34David Hoffman?

  So this is the old consensus quorum, which used to be a sidechain. I believe they might now be folding it into a rollup. This quorum was previously sold to JP Morgan and then bought back by Consensus from JP Morgan and now is, I think Consensus is now positioning it as a CBDC Stablecoin Payments Protocol. That's a little bit, something a little bit closer to IBM's Hyperledger than it is to an open public permissionless blockchain, which is, I think, probably the right foundation for something like a CBDC where, you know, it's permission gets controlled by private public partnership and there's actually somebody to call if something goes wrong. But Consensus is moving forward with, you know, institutional stablecoin CBDC stuff.

• 37:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's cool that Mastercard is involved here too. So Visa has a massive play in crypto and Mastercard has some catching up to do. And I've started to see them trying to catch up in the back half of 2021 and I expect they'll, they'll continue to ramp it up. David, let's talk some meme stocks, man. Well, I guess, maybe not meme stocks, but like meme tokens or old brands becoming tokens. Radio Shack is pivoting to DeFi, apparently. So Radio Shack, two guys bought it in 2020 and I assume they just purchased it for like nostalgia reasons for the name. Obviously, there are no Radio Shack stores that I'm aware of anymore. At least, you know, all, all the malls I've seen no longer have Radio Shacks. But I feel

• 38:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  like this pivot to DeFi is sort of a, an asking to become a meme stock, right? It's a kind of like following GameStop, following AMC, some of these older brands that have some retail nostalgia and pivoting into a new and interesting space. Maybe that's just the skeptical take? Maybe there's something really here? I guess their plan is to provide a bridge between DeFi and larger corporations, the world's corporations, but it also seems very vague to me. What's your, what's your take on this?

• 38:36David Hoffman?

  I think this is just a bunch of hot air. Do you remember in 2017 when the Arizona Ice Tea Company added blockchain to their name formally and then-

• 38:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the stock price went up, right?

• 38:47David Hoffman?

  The stock price like doubled overnight in the middle of the ICO mania. I think that's, this is, that's something closer to what's happening with, with Radio Shack. Some people just bought the defunct Radio Shack brand, slapped DeFi on it, and now they are just dancing it around. Radio Shack DeFi, Radio Shack DeFi. And now people like you and me are talking about it. I think that's what's going on.

• 39:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, probably so. I mean, that worries me a little bit because that was a top signal in 2017. But, you know, like, top signals are different every single time in the market. But here's another one. A Dow wants to buy Blockbuster and turn it into a decentralized film streaming service? Is this more of the same?

• 39:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, same kind of energy. I mean, they just want to make a... They just want to buy the Blockbuster brand and have it turn into some sort of Dow-related streaming service. Again, I think this is just a headline, and I will wait for this to turn into something real before I expend any more brain power on it.

• 39:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  But aren't memes real, David?

• 39:45David Hoffman?

  Not without fundamentals, Ryan.

• 39:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Good answer, sir. Let's talk about this. Speaking of memes, so a meme made it onto Jeopardy.

• 39:55David Hoffman?

  No, Constitution Dow is not a meme. That's not a meme.

• 39:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, you don't think it was a meme? There's tons of meme energy behind that. We're gonna form a Dow to buy the Constitution. Nothing's more meme-y behind that. They were actually able to raise some money, so I guess maybe...

• 40:09David Hoffman?

  There were fundamentals there, yeah.

• 40:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's maybe some fundamentals there. Anyway, the Jeopardy question from Alex Trebek was: Billionaire hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin outbid a group of crypto enthusiasts and paid $43 million for a copy of this seminal American document. The answer, of course, is: What is Constitution Dow?

• 40:30David Hoffman?

  Well, actually, no. The answer is: What is the Constitution of the United States of America? And actually, the Dow was not actually a part of this.

• 40:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's right. Bummer, okay. I misread the answer, hoping it was Constitution Dow. Yeah, it was just...

• 40:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sorry. Alex Trebek, I'm sorry. My apologies, sir. All right, moving on. Let's talk about Paris Hilton getting on the ETH leaderboard.

• 40:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there's a website that tracks the most-followed Twitter handles that have .ETH following them, and Paris Hilton is now up there as well. A few other ones came in... Who was it? Oh, yeah, Shaq.

• 41:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Shaq.

• 41:08David Hoffman?

  Shaq and Paris Hilton are... Paris Hilton's coming in at number one at 16.8 million followers, so paris-hilton.eth on Twitter. Twitter, shaka dot ETH at 15.5 million. We also have Trey's songs. That's new to me. He's got a bored ape. 13.8 million. And then coming in fifth is our friend Vitalik. Vitalik is number five.

• 41:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Unseated.

• 41:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, unseated, big time, coming in at a mere 3 million followers.

• 41:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, I mean, he's gonna be booted out of the top 10 before long. It won't take much. Mainstream is coming to dot ETH domains. David, I'm sure you're somewhere on here, right?

• 41:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you're on here. You're on here.

• 41:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're all on here.

• 41:46David Hoffman?

  I think.

• 41:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not for long. We're not gonna be on the front page for long.

• 41:49David Hoffman?

  We have 100,000 followers. Yeah, we're up there somewhere.

• 41:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. We're somewhere. But, you know, it's cool to see mainstream, I guess, joining the dot ETH club. Mainstream's also joining bored apes. So bored apes just flipped CryptoPunks. I believe this is briefly, or has it been persistent? I don't know. I haven't really paid attention, but that was a flippening that some NFT holders were predicting for quite some time, and it actually happened. David, I know you're a CryptoPunk holder. So what's your take on this?

• 42:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is regards to the floor, the floor price. So the floor price of bored apes is at 59 ETH right now. And I'm pulling up the CryptoPunks floor price, oh my gosh, floor price, which is clocking in at 65.8 ETH. So CryptoPunks have reclaimed the higher floor price. But I wrote this in the predictions article that we haven't released yet, two weeks ago, that I did say that bored apes are probably gonna flip punks. Just because I think they have so much more surface area. They're newer. They have the momentum. They're just kind of in pulp culture. So, I mean, bored apes, one of the big stories of 2021 is definitely the bored apes.

• 43:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are they doing different things versus CryptoPunks? Like, are they?

• 43:05David Hoffman?

  CryptoPunks are like the Bitcoin of NFTs. They don't do anything.

• 43:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 43:10David Hoffman?

  There was a theory that, like, Bitcoin actually needs to pay for security and CryptoPunks don't. And so, like, CryptoPunks can work where Bitcoin.

• 43:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's like the fat CryptoPunk thesis?

• 43:20David Hoffman?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 43:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Idea?

• 43:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah. We'll see how well that plays out into 2021, but CryptoPunks are. Definitely more of a crypto native Ethereum native type of NFT and the board apes have reached into new horizons.

• 43:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  And board apes are still building, right? Like they're still doing things or adding utility to the board apes and that maybe that's part of it.

• 43:37David Hoffman?

  Never ending project. Yeah.

• 43:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Snoop Dogg got in as well, David. So he just aped. And this is from his main account, not his, uh, not his, um, Medici account. Looks like he's got four.

• 43:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, one, one actual board aped, two mutant board apes, and then a board ape kennel club as well.

• 43:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Man, that's crazy. You know what I'm waiting for though? Is this, this graph right here, David? Speaking of flipping things, look at this.

• 44:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  So first the apes pass the crypto punks and then long-term, real long-term, this might be like years in the making, the turtles come and dominate.

• 44:14David Hoffman?

  I'm pretty sure that's like at the end of this year. That had that green spike is like for tomorrow, Ryan.

• 44:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, no, no, no. This is a dot, dot, dot, you know, who knows? That timeline just kind of like, this could take thousands of years, David. You know, turtles move at the speed of turtles. How goes?

• 44:28David Hoffman?

  Turtles move at the speed of turtles.

• 44:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Adidas, they just sold $22 million in NFTs. That's crazy, man. So what are they doing here?

• 44:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they sold 30,000 NFTs at point two each and they all sold out, which is nuts. Made, they made $22 million. They also did this right. Uh, they, they got into the NFT influencers. They bought a board ape, put on an Adidas jacket on their board A, put it as their profile picture, started doing, and did NFTs right. And so look what happens when you do NFTs right as a company. You get $22 million in revenue.

• 45:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crazy. They gotta be so happy about that and other brands have got to be following. Um, I wonder who the buyers of these things are. Do you think this is more mainstream or do you think this is like, I can't, this can't be the traditional crypto NFT collector.

• 45:21David Hoffman?

  It's gotta be mainstream, even though like $750 for an Adidas NFT, like mainstreamed, ready to cough that up. That was kind of confusing.

• 45:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  I sort of surprising, but yeah, good for them.

• 45:31David Hoffman?

  Success, success either way.

• 45:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Weekend is releasing an NFT as well on Tom Brady's platform, his platform called Autograph. This is Blinding Lights' single that is inspiring seven NFTs that are going to be auctioned on OpenSea. So now we have mainstream artists entering the fray as well. That's been a story that has been continuing to develop over the course of the year.

• 45:54David Hoffman?

  NFTs are for everyone and we're just gonna see celebrity, more and more celebrities all throughout 2022, so get used to it.

• 46:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Get used to it. Should we get used to Facebook being called Meta? I'm finding that hard to get used to, okay? But like, let's call them Meta. Here's the Facebook CTO promising deep compatibility between what Meta is doing in the Metaverse and blockchain. I guess they're bullish Web 3, at least that's what they're saying. What do you think about this?

• 46:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, deep compatibility is not what I want it to be, which is built on top of. Compatibility implies two things coming together where the Metaverse significantly needs to be built on top of a decentralized protocol. So, nice try Meta, not a fan. But I mean, they're gonna, you know, they have to actually onboard crypto assets, crypto monies, NFTs anyway. So, I mean, this isn't anything a surprise. This messaging is expected.

• 46:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think they still think that they can become like a blockchain killer? Do you think they think they are the Metaverse? Or what do you think they're trying to do here?

• 47:04David Hoffman?

  They are probably at the very least trying to become people's first Metaverse. Like, hey, you wanna get into the Metaverse, start with Facebook. I think they know they can't capture the whole entire thing because that's antithetical. But if they can, like, it's just a fight for mindshare.

• 47:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's funny because it's something I'm still not worried about at all. Like, I still think they don't have a shot at competing against like the property rights and, you know, strong settlement guarantees of crypto networks. And they will have to provide deep compatibility with them in order to execute on their strategy. So, not worried about Facebook long-term and its threat on Web 3. About Jack, he's got a different perspective on Web 3. Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter. He, of course, stepped down a few weeks ago. That was a big story when we talked about it. But he's pretty anti-Web 3, it seems like. What's this meme that we're looking at, David?

• 47:58David Hoffman?

  Jack Dorsey's been anti-everything that's not Bitcoin, basically, for as long as I can remember.

• 48:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Everything in crypto, yeah?

• 48:04David Hoffman?

  Everything in crypto that's not Bitcoin. Jack's not a fan of it. And he's explained some of his reasoning why, but it boils down to the same old arguments that he thinks that nothing other than Bitcoin's actually decentralized and everything else is just a cash grab. So he retweeted a comic that has a pipe just flowing water into the mouths of Silicon Valley VCs. Meanwhile, there's a very famished-looking retail investor that is under a small, small, small hole in the pipe, just getting some drops, just those few drops. And so, all the value of Web 3, what Jack is claiming is he's retweeted this with a 100 emoji. He's claiming that Web 3 is just putting all the value into Silicon Valley VCs.

• 48:47David Hoffman?

  And implying that, you know, Web 3 is just this VC-created, you know, way to make a bunch of money. Just overall, very cynical and skeptical on the fact of the idea of Web 3 at all. I have my opinions on this. Jack follows this up and says, "You don't own, quote, 'Web 3.' The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It's ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you're getting into." So, wow, some pretty harsh words coming out of Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, about the whole entire concept of Web 3. I've got my thoughts, Ryan. What do you think?

• 49:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, I think harsh and wrong, right? So like, the idea that VCs are the owners of Web 3s, I think this is particular to some protocols, right? Some DeFi protocols, maybe governance protocols, you could say. VCs own some of those. But, you know, at its core, something like Ethereum, which is actually depicted in this meme, is not VC-owned. It's really interesting that there were no VCs as part of- The original sale of Ethereum, like for one. Here's Balaji saying Ethereum raised $0 from VCs as kind of a comment on this. And I mean, that's true. Also, VCs do not control Ethereum. I mean, like, if you think VCs control Ethereum,

• 50:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  then you have to apply those same rules to Bitcoin, say like whales and VCs control Bitcoin. But like, they don't. They don't control Ethereum. They don't control Bitcoin. So the entire assertion is false. Maybe he's like focusing on some sliver or some subset of Web3 that like, we have criticized as well as being kind of overly whale or VC owned. You know, the Binance chains of the world, you make the case for that. You make the case for some like DeFi protocols. You could make the case maybe for some elements of, you know, alternative layer ones. But I think it's unfair to categorize all of Web3 as being completely owned by VCs. What's your take?

• 50:51David Hoffman?

  Apparently, if you were following this story very, very in depth, that Jack was really going after A16Z and Andreessen Horowitz specifically. Apparently, he has a bone to pick with them. I think that's kind of what's going on under the hood.

• 51:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Makes more sense.

• 51:06David Hoffman?

  But overall, there's been a ton of investment, a ton of deal flow into a ton of Web3 platforms, Web3 protocols that are happening right now. So maybe this critique is more about 2021 Web3 and not like maybe the foundations of, you know, how Ethereum didn't raise any money from VCs. Maybe he's talking about more about the apps that have raised money recently. But there's still some, some big, big things that we need to parse apart here. First off, the comic of all this value flowing into VC's mouth and then the retail just only getting droplets. We have to remember where we came from because before Web3, it was absolutely nothing into retail. It would, it would go straight into VCs and you would never even hear about it. So the fact that we are even complaining about this just tells you how much Web3 actually has moved the needle.

• 51:52David Hoffman?

  Retail didn't even have an option or even knowledge about how to complain about not having deal flow from early-stage startups. Now that we actually have a taste of it. Because of Web 3, now we actually put up a fight about like, hey, don't give all the money to VCs. You gotta give some to retail too. So first off, there's that, like the Overton window has already shifted to the point where we are allowed to complain about this in the first place.

• 52:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you see this meme, by the way?

• 52:17David Hoffman?

  There's goddamn airdrops. What are airdrops except for giving tokens and value towards users? The Uniswap airdrop, the ENS airdrop, the Gitcoin airdrop, all the airdrops, every single airdrop you've ever gotten. You didn't even have to invest. You just had to use it. The VCs had to invest money. The users just had to use it for free. And so there's a great meme of somebody crying with wiping their tears with hundred dollar bills. And the caption is, "Me with my ENS airdrop after Jack said Web 3 only makes money for VCs." To me, like, this is one of those things that like, it's actually so incredibly the opposite of what Jack is saying that is kind of dumbfounding. It's like, somehow Jack went full circle and said like, "Web 3 is all about giving money to VCs."

• 53:02David Hoffman?

  It's literally the opposite. It is literally about how can we make our users wealthy? That is what Web 3 is.

• 53:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I agree with that. There's also another comment from Balaji. He says, "I respect everything you built talking to Jack, but I also disagree here. Twitter started as a protocol, the free speech wing of the free speech party. Then corporate and political incentives led to deplatforming and censorship. Web 3 offers the possibility, not a guarantee, of something better, turning Twitter into a protocol." Something that unfortunately Jack was not able to accomplish during his tenure at Twitter. He says, he follows up, "Of course, I don't believe Twitter set out to bait and switch developers or promise free speech, get people to invest years in their profiles, then censor them. But that is where the incentives landed upon.

• 53:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Web 3's smart contracts may prove more durable than Web 2's social contracts." This is what I also fundamentally don't understand about Jack's take is Web 3 offers a solution to the things that Jack... You know, claims are his values, which is, you know, values of free speech and minimization of censorship resistance. So I don't know, it's ongoing back and forth between Jack Dorsey and the Web3 and crypto community. I guess my invitation would be this to Jack is like, I think the community wants a longer conversation about this with you, Jack. Like, do you, are you rejecting the VC definition of Web3? Or are you rejecting the entire premise of Web3?

• 54:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, that's a question that I think we have. Do you see Bitcoin as Web3? I mean, the way you and I define Web3, David, it's kind of synonymous with crypto. And so if you say you hate Web3, then you also hate Bitcoin. Also, Ethereum is like very close to Bitcoin from a values perspective, right? It's like Vitalik has called it moderate Bitcoin values. I really feel like that's the case. So why the hate for Ethereum all of the time? That's the discussion we want to have with Jack Dorsey of, you know, on the Bankless Podcast. DMs are open, man. So, you know, come on, let's talk about it. Let's hash it out. Ray Dalio, someone else we want to get on the podcast. I've been listening to a

• 55:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  lot of Ray Dalio podcasts, actually, over the past week or so break. But apparently, he says crypto should be part of a diversified portfolio. This is new in 2021. He wasn't saying this in previous years. This is new for Ray Dalio. Of course, billionaire hedge fund investor, fantastic insights on long-term macro trends. Have a lot of respect for him. Now he's coming around to crypto, it seems. Any thoughts here?

• 55:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think I would classify Ray Dalio in 2020 and 2021 as cautiously optimistic. And now in 20, or at the end of 2021, I would call Ray Dalio decently well convinced. Listening to him on the Lex Friedman podcast and also in this article right here, he talks about how Bitcoin has stood the test of time. And so this is one of, you know, our biggest advantages in the crypto industry. We have time on our side. If you don't invest in crypto in the first zero through five years, totally fine. Five to 10 years, totally fine. But 10 to 20 years, like now you're gonna have to start to actually account for like, hey, it's been here for a while. Like, it's not going away. And Ray Dalio is, I think he's calling it good at 12 years of crypto. He's like, okay, 12 years of crypto, like, it's

• 56:26David Hoffman?

  here to stay. And now it should be a part of your portfolio. And so I think that's a perfectly pragmatic and reasonable conclusion.

• 56:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, David, on the podcast I was listening to, he's actually talking about NFTs too.

• 56:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Issuing his own NFTs, purchasing NFTs. It's really funny how, how all of this provides surface area to like getting people on the crypto train.

• 56:47David Hoffman?

  Right, because it's one thing to just stick around for 12 years, but it's also one thing to also, as an ecosystem, be exponentially growing for 12 years.

• 56:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And garnering more attention. I mean, it's always part of the conversation. Everyone wants to talk about it. So this is the story we're talking about in Releases, a little bit alluded to this. Crypto exchange Kraken, that is a crypto bank, crypto exchange, they just acquired staking startup Staked. So Staked, like Figment, which is $1 billion unicorn type valuation status, is a staking services provider. And they were just acquired by a crypto bank. What's interesting about this story, David, is like, so I spent some time in the, in the staking game. Actually, I was one of the, with Figment and Staked, one of the original validators on the Cosmos network back in the day.

• 57:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  And one of the things I saw happening is because like Cosmos and many of these other protocols operate almost like a delegated proof of stake type of network. So individuals really don't run their own nodes, run their own staking nodes in these types of networks. They generally, they stake them with a third party, someone you trust, right? And so one thing that I observed in my days kind of staking and it's part of these networks is like,

• 58:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  they were all becoming sort of like whale staking service providers. They had to in order to

• 58:08David Hoffman?

  Make their margins.

• 58:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Make their margins and like do the best in the game. And so in that kind of game, the thing I, I saw was like the, the bigger fish would just snap up the, the smaller fish and then you'd get a smaller and smaller pool of staking service companies. Like, you know, over time. And this is finally what's happening, right? It's like, I, I was pretty certain at that time that all the staking service companies would eventually, you either go public or you're acquired by a crypto bank of some form or another. And to me, that is such a It's a very big centralization vector for this entire space because now essentially

• 58:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  all you're doing is you are staking directly with Kraken and you're kind of back to square one. So like Coinbase of the world, they're smart, they're going to grow their business, they're going to acquire other staking service providers too. And they have in the past, they've acquired Bison Trails, for instance, and incorporated that into their staking service provider. So the protocol itself, I feel like, is incented and basically pushes in the direction of more centralization with fewer and fewer staking parties. And we're seeing this with Stake here. I don't fault Stake for this, right? And obviously, this is a good play for Kraken, like, so I understand why everyone's doing it. It's just back to the fundamental decentralization of so-called layer-one protocols. There has

• 59:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  to be some resistance against this, or you'll end up with just a very small set of staking, you know, service providers that everyone's using. And then, like, what's the point?

• 59:44David Hoffman?

  There's a huge line between being able to stake on computers that you naturally find in people's homes and any other type of staking. Because any other type of staking just more and more tilts towards centralization, especially delegated proof of stake. Delegated proof of stake and actual proof of stake are completely different beasts. And that's all I will say about that.

• 1:00:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep. All right, let's keep moving. A16Z, they just put out a poll. Voters prefer candidates that support Web 3.

• 1:00:17David Hoffman?

  Nice.

• 1:00:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  The title of this poll. Americans want policymakers to play an active role in supporting the next generation of the internet. This is from a survey of individuals in the US. One in five people in the US own cryptocurrency, the survey finds. Thirty-five percent of those between 18 and 34, a key demographic. Kind of cool. I guess more support for the idea that voters will vote in candidates who support Web 3.

• 1:00:45David Hoffman?

  Crypto, the word crypto has always had this negative connotation like it scares my boomer parents like, oh crypto, like, oh, weird stuff's happening. Web 3 is the perfect rebrand for cryptocurrency. It's exactly, it just fits right in. People understand it. They, they kind of understand that there's an evolution of all the negative stuff that's happening with Facebook, causing like civil wars and how we're moving into a digital future with NFTs and Web 3. Like, it's just enough to get people's heads wrapped around it. And turns out, it's a huge hit with people. It just pulls well. So shout out to a future podcast episode that's coming with Erica Rhodes, running to unseat Brad Sherman, the guy that was making fun of about crypto and mongoose coins and Congress and all that stuff. We're having her on State of the Nation sometime in

• 1:01:30David Hoffman?

  January. We're going to talk about her being a Web 3 candidate, if she likes the Web 3 branding and if she's trying to lean into that. So also, if you are in the California 30th District, which is northwest of LA, Erica Rhodes might be your representative. And if that's true, we need you to vote for her. So we're, we're going to talk about that on the State of the Nation. So stay tuned for next couple of weeks when that comes out.

• 1:01:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we will be right back with the takes of the week. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 1:02:00David Hoffman?

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• 1:02:44David Hoffman?

  allows you to make limit orders on chain. So you can set and forget your DeFi trades and they will go through automatically while you're away. So when you're making a trade, head over to matcha.xyz/

• 1:02:55David Hoffman?

  Bankless, connect your wallet and start getting some of the best prices and most liquidity when you trade your crypto assets. Living a bankless life requires taking control over 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, which makes proper private key management a breeze. But the Ledger ecosystem is much more than just a secure hardware wallet. Ledger is the combination of the Ledger hardware wallet and the Ledger Live app. And if you're used to seeing all of your crypto services and favorite DeFi apps all in one spot, Ledger Live is where you want to be. Not only does Ledger let you buy your crypto assets straight from the app, but it also hooks into all of the DeFi apps and services that you're used to.

• 1:03:36David Hoffman?

  Using Ledger Live, you can stake your Ethan Lido, swap on DEXs like Paraswap, or display your NFTs with Rainbow. You can also use Wallet Connect inside of Ledger Live to connect to all the other DeFi apps that keep coming online. DeFi never stops growing and the Ledger Live app grows alongside with it. So click the link in the show notes to see all of the DeFi apps that Ledger Live has and stay tuned as more apps come online. And if you don't have a Ledger hardware wallet, what are you even waiting for? Go to ledger.com, grab a Ledger, download Ledger Live and get all of your DeFi apps all in one space.

• 1:04:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back with the hot takes of the week. Let's start with this first one from Hugh Karp. He's the founder of Nexus Mutual, a insurance protocol, so not surprised with this take. "Not valuing decentralization is like being uninsured," he says. "Most of the time it's fine and then it's not." What does he mean?

• 1:04:27David Hoffman?

  I think that's just a great way to illustrate the value of decentralization. Decentralization is this invisible shield of protection that you're not supposed to notice. You're not supposed to notice a decentralization and it's there for you regardless of whether you're thinking about it or not. Yeah, I think it's a great take.

• 1:04:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's there for you and then like most of the time it's fine and then it's not. In what cases does it become not fine?

• 1:04:56David Hoffman?

  Oh, so many, so many different cases. Well, it depends, also depends on the severity of the centralization. I mean, if you have all your money with a bank and then the bank goes under, boom, you're effed. If you are on a centralized blockchain and the blockchain halts and you need to get your money out, ouch. Decentralization just protects you against not only just like accidental bugs in code, but also just from centralized control. You know, banks, you know, you actually don't own your own money when you put your money in a bank. They, they give you IOUs and so you have to trust that. And so there are so many different attack vectors that are just completely mitigated with decentralization. And so without decentralization, you're kind of at risk to all of them.

• 1:05:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, I always worry about here, this, maybe this is a point about insurance too, is humans are really notoriously bad at quantifying risk and assessing risk, particularly over longer term time horizons. And I think this is why we have such a hard time quantifying the value of decentralization is because like, you know, if everything is going okay and the banks aren't stealing from you and you know, Binance isn't halting the chain and you know, the hedge fund isn't calling, isn't calling Robinhood to halt stock trades, right, reverse trades, then it all works very seamlessly and all, it all seems fine.

• 1:06:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it's those, it's those, it's those edge cases when you really need decentralization. That's, that's the value. But human beings are really bad at quantifying this and taking that risk into account. So I don't know if we'll ever get out of that cycle, but it doesn't just provide a defense to the individual, I guess I would say. It's like, it's a defense to the entire system. Like it's a public good for the entire system, kind of like similar to privacy. What's the value of privacy? It's like, the value is aggregated. It's a public good for everyone in society. It's not just for one individual. Yeah, so.

• 1:06:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. Hopefully, hopefully, humans have the ability to quantify that a little bit better. This is Leighton with the tweet quantifying some things, though, quantifying hacks. Why don't you take this, David?

• 1:07:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, not only quantifying hacks, but also comparing the size of hacks to bank overdraft fees in 2020. So in 2021, crypto lost $7.7 billion in crypto hacks and scams. But in 2020, $12.4 billion was lost in bank overdraft fees. So all of these hacks that we're just like, you know, in an uproar about and all these exploits that people get money and they get frustrated. Crypto or bank overdraft fees were almost twice that amount in 2020. And so Leighton finished it off, saying, "All the scammers and hackers in the world still can't rob people as well as banks can." Nice, nice and spicy. Nice job, Leighton.

• 1:07:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love that, by the way, like over bank overdraft fees is just one of the ways banks steal your money, right?

• 1:07:55David Hoffman?

  That's just one product from them.

• 1:07:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's just one of many. Let's see this tweet. This is a quote from Vitalik from a recent interview. What's this quote?

• 1:08:04David Hoffman?

  He says, "I think the big difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that Bitcoin is a platform where the value of the ecosystem comes from the value of the currency. And in Ethereum, the value of the currency comes from the value of the ecosystem." And this is something that I've said in a different capacity. I always like to say, "The Bitcoin blockchain is meant to serve BTC, the asset, whereas in Ethereum, the ether, the currency, is meant to serve Ethereum, the blockchain, or Ethereum, the economy." Ether, the currency, is a means to an end to provide the strongest security to Ethereum possible, so that Ethereum can host as many things as possible securely. Bitcoin, the blockchain, is a blockchain that the whole entire point of it is to do one purpose,

• 1:08:46David Hoffman?

  which is to allow for 21 million Bitcoins to be sent from wallet to wallet, and that's the whole thing. And so there's just different priorities in these things. And so you can go ahead and choose your ecosystem with whatever values that you resonate with. Do you resonate with the hard cap? Or do you value a platform that has free and public security for all applications? Or you can do both, but that's kind of the main differences between these two ecosystems.

• 1:09:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  The interesting thing about that, too, is like that Ether, the asset, scales as well with Ethereum, the economy. Whereas Bitcoin, not so much. Bitcoin, to me, is a bit more like gold. And Ether and Ethereum, to me, is a bit more like, we've the analogy of a nation state, crypto nation state. It's a bit more like the United States, right? Not a fiat currency, because this currency is scarce and deflationary.

• 1:09:35David Hoffman?

  An ultrasound.

• 1:09:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  An ultrasound cannot be changed by a central government. But it scales in the way the US's S and P 500 scales. According to the value and the growth of GDP, the value and growth of the economy. So it's a different way to value these assets as well. Let's talk about this take. This is our last one of the week from Daniel. Daniel Gothits. Yeah, Daniel Gothits is the Twitter handle. People say crypto is too risky for me. Me, being dependent on a single employer for all of my income and not being able to access my retirement funds until I'm 65 is too risky for me. Good point.

• 1:10:16David Hoffman?

  I love this. I love this. And this reminds me of a quote from Nassim Taleb's book, Anti-Fragile, where he compares two people with different jobs. One of them is a barber and the other one is like a white collar office worker. The barber has very unstable, volatile income. Sometimes five people come into his shop every single day. Sometimes zero people come into his shop. His income is volatile. But over the long term, his job security is stable because hair grows. Whereas the white collar worker, his income is very, very stable. It's a cool $60,000 a year, promised by his salary that he's going to get it no matter what.

• 1:10:56David Hoffman?

  But his job security is very unstable because he might just get axed at any moment of any moment. And so this is about leaning into towards volatility as a way to actually grow stronger and more robust as an individual. And so if you work in crypto, a highly volatile, highly rapid environment, you actually gain job security because you learn how to live in a volatile world. And the skills that you come out with and the connections that you come out with, the opportunity cost of being in crypto is just immense. And so there's just different kinds of risk out there. Like, what kind of risk do you want? Do you want the risk of crypto volatility in the assets? Or do you want the risk of absolutely getting left behind in your corporate job?

• 1:11:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is why I have such a hard time answering the question of like, is crypto a risky asset? Because I honestly, in my heart of hearts, I don't think it's a risky asset.

• 1:11:48David Hoffman?

  I don't.

• 1:11:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, it's a volatile asset.

• 1:11:50David Hoffman?

  But volatility. People conflate those things way too much.

• 1:11:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  And in fact, like finance textbooks conflate those things. This is what finance people are taught, that volatility equals risk, like the one and the same. But that's not actually true, right? It's like crypto is far less risky than it first appears, even though price fluctuates and it's far more volatile. And I think there are things in our everyday life that we don't quantify, right? Like, you know, inflation, for instance, or, you know, collapse of the central bank digital currency, or a job loss, or my job just basically and the skills that I have,

• 1:12:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  like losing all value in the economy because the economy converts to some new form and becomes more digital and enters the metaverse, that sort of thing. Like, the risks of those things aren't quantified by the average individual when they're just following the path that everyone else takes. So, yeah, way less risky than people think.

• 1:12:47David Hoffman?

  Ryan, what do you think is going to be here in 100 years? What's more likely, Ethereum or the US dollar?

• 1:12:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  See, that's, that's so easy to answer for me. It's definitely Ethereum.

• 1:12:57David Hoffman?

  Right, it's like. Even in its relatively nascent form, yeah, your answer is still Ethereum.

• 1:13:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  100%.

• 1:13:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like 100%. And I guess that's why I'm betting the way I'm betting and you're betting the way you're betting. But a lot of people don't realize that. David, what are you excited about this week, man?

• 1:13:14David Hoffman?

  I'm actually, I got something else other than being excited. Not to say I'm not excited, but I'm reading this book called Humankind. It's the case that humans are inherently good. And it's just a very feel-good book to read, by the way. So if anyone is feeling like down or they just need something to pick them up, read this book called Humankind. It's the case that humans are very, are just inherently good. And Ryan, while I was reading this book, they were talking about how humans

• 1:13:42David Hoffman?

  succeeded where. So Neanderthals didn't. And one of the reasons why they said that while our brain powers were about the same, the main difference between the Neanderthal brain and the the human brain is that our brains are all connected better, as in we're very, very social creatures. So my question to you, Ryan, is this isn't true at all, but I'm just going to say that it is for for hyperbole's sake. What do you think the very first consensus mechanism that humanity ever had? What do you think that was?

• 1:14:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, I would probably say language would be my guess, but you know, there's probably stuff before that. But the big one that comes to mind is definitely language.

• 1:14:23David Hoffman?

  So the going even earlier than that, the main difference in the evolutionary paths of Neanderthals versus humans is humans developed whites of eyes and Neanderthals had very, very big black eyes. And so they didn't really have whites of the eyes and the whites of human eyes allows me to look at you and see what you're looking at. And so my node can check out your node and see what your node's up to.

• 1:14:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's wild.

• 1:14:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And so like, oh, what's Ryan's looking over there? Why is he looking over there? I'm going to go look over there. And all of a sudden, like a group of people can all come to consensus about where other people's attention is. So the humans have been social creatures from day one, and that's been our main competitive advantage, because we've been able to sync up with each other. We've all been on the same protocols. And so whites of the eyes, the OG consensus mechanism.

• 1:15:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's wild. I guess this is why also humans developed the fantastic facial recognition software, right? It's like, we're very like, how much of communication is nonverbal? Like 90, 90%, 95%? It's like tone, intonation, but like also body language, facial expression? That's all nonverbal. I guess that's baked into our DNA.

• 1:15:29David Hoffman?

  So learning, learning that, Ryan, was what I have been excited about. Ryan, what are you excited about?

• 1:15:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's cool, man. Well, like, I'm just excited about next year. I'm excited about 2022. I'm excited about bank lists. We've got a killer lineup of podcasts, starting the first one of the year with Vitalik, a number of others in Q1. Super excited about that. Excited about crypto. I'm bullish crypto, David.

• 1:15:49David Hoffman?

  Are you?

• 1:15:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  You believe that? I'm bullish crypto. Yeah. But like, a lot's going on, okay? Like, roll. Pull up, still haven't had their moment. So that's all ahead of us. If Ethereum merge hasn't happened yet, that's still ahead of us. Been waiting for that for years, right? I know both of us have. NFTs are just starting. Okay, well, maybe they'll have a bear market in between, but there'll be new use cases for NFTs unlocked. We're just tapping into this thing called DAOs and figuring out how that works. So 2022, I'm going in there, I'm going, I'm bullish, I'm bullish both from a price perspective, but I'm also bullish, you know, Chris Dixon style bullish in the podcast, he's like, hey, I look at the builder cycles, I don't care about the price cycles, I look at the builder cycles, and I'm seeing more builders,

• 1:16:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  more talent entering this space than ever. So it's like being simultaneously bullish on price of these assets and mainstream attention, and also bullish on the building that's getting done in this space. It's a really cool, unique time for crypto that I don't think we've ever seen before. 2021 was a breakout year in a lot of ways, but I'm just as bullish, if not more so, going to 2022.

• 1:16:55David Hoffman?

  I'm just as bullish, right there with you, my man.

• 1:16:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Two bulls on the Bankless Podcast, bullish from day one, can't go wrong there. All right, here we go. Meme of the week time. David, what are we looking at?

• 1:17:05David Hoffman?

  We are looking at an actual, real, completely undocumented photograph of somebody at their wedding, eating their wedding dinner. They just got married, and the groom's got his phone out watching the Bankless weekly roll up while he eats dinner with his new wife. Totally real, it totally happened. Haters will say it's fake, and that is your meme of the week.

• 1:17:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  What a great meme to wrap up 2021. Guys, we hope you have a happy new year, and we'll see you again in 2022. As always, none of this was financial advice. None of the things we talked about on Bankless in 2021 were financial advice. ETH is and remains risky, so is DeFi. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks

• 1:17:53David 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, podcasts, 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 we summarize the week in crypto and other

• 1:18:38David Hoffman?

  fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.