ROLLUP: ETH Pumps 50% | Tariff Deal Boosts Markets | Coinbase Data Leak | Robinhood Buys L2

📣 BANKESS x FRAX MEETUP | Permissionless 2025 https://lu.ma/uf9mmcoa ------ This week, Ryan and David break down Ethereum’s explosive 50% surge and the surprising macro catalyst behind it: a U. S.–China tariff deal that has markets ripping. They cover Coinbase’s massive customer data leak (and Brian Armstrong’s $20M bounty response), Robinhood’s stealthy Layer 2 acquisition, and the rise of meme coins funding real apps. Plus, why Arthur Hayes thinks the bull market is just beginning. ------ 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 0:06 “Who is laughing now?” statement from NYC Mayor https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1922036267685908761 3:47 Prices, Uniswap, & Aave https://x.com/jbrukh/status/1922315929578299580 https://dune.com/mud2monarch/countdown-to-three-trillion-united-states-dollars https://x.com/StaniKulechov/status/1921478583337312339 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1921925615923388864 https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary 14:10 Tariff Truce - US and China agree to slash tariffs for 90 days - We’re Saved!!! https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/12/us-and-china-agree-to-slash-tariffs-for-90-days.html https://x.com/biancoresearch/status/1921927955573264802 https://polymarket.com/event/us-recession-in-2025 https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/fatty-fatty-boom-boom 28:40 Bad Coinbase news first - Coinbase MAJOR customer data leak Coinbase $20m award leading to the arrest of hackers https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1922967787309256807 https://x.com/coinbase/status/1922967576209998133 https://x.com/0xBreadguy/status/1923006791031587248 https://x.com/adamscochran/status/1923018728800686532 https://x.com/lemiscate/status/1922984240318193934 35:48 Coinbase becomes the first crypto company in S&P500 https://x.com/iamdcinvestor/status/1922068706084970750 https://x.com/cbfutures/status/1920850444093448225 https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NASDAQ-COIN/ 37:28 Internet Capital Markets Meta https://www.jellyjelly.com/ https://dexscreener.com/solana/3bc2e2rxcfvf9op22lvbansvwos2t98q6ercroayqydq https://x.com/gabrielhaines/status/1922293923420000346 https://www.believescreener.com/ https://x.com/believeapp/status/1922780481684148519 https://x.com/alex_leiman/status/1922075531966550488 https://x.com/msg/status/1922708357686743551 https://x.com/pasternak/status/1922493500504867290 https://dune.com/adam_tehc/memecoin-wars https://x.com/WazzCrypto/status/1922826087467204636 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1922635525992644770 https://x.com/pumpdotfun/status/1921941742854512924? https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1922006135520764094 50:29 Robinhood will acquire Kevin O’Leary-Backed WonderFi - Leads to ETH L2. https://x.com/RobinhoodApp/status/1922245928691421671 https://www.wonder.fi 52:12 CryptoPunks have a new owner! https://x.com/cryptopunksnfts/status/1922291088431448396 https://x.com/econoar/status/1922339944774664660 https://www.coingecko.com/en/nft 53:46 Is the SEC becoming awesome now? pro-capital, pro-crypto SEC Paul Atkins said that his priority is to develop new rules for crypto tokens https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1921977322871140360 https://x.com/SECGov/status/1922001045087027349 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1920585655039529220 https://www.sec.gov/files/ctf-memo-blackrock-05092025.pdf 58:42 Superstate is launching Opening Bell platform with their first client! https://x.com/superstatefunds/status/1920479311728869826 1:00:01 JD Vance will speak at Bitcoin 2025 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/politics/u-s-vice-president-jd-vance-to-speak-at-bitcoin-2025-confer 1:00:32 Meta is exploring stabecoins again! https://x.com/degeneratenews/status/1920557131201122806 1:01:59 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?

  This is New York Mayor Eric Adams.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I was the first American mayor to have my initial three paychecks converted into crypto way back in 2022. Many people laughed at me and all I can say is who's laughing now?

• 0:21David Hoffman?

  Wait, Ryan, didn't we already hear this? Didn't we already do this bit?

• 0:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, there was like, I feel like it was like three or four months ago and it was Eric Adams basically saying those exact words. Like I was the first mayor to get my paycheck in Bitcoin. Who's laughing now? And it's funny to me because he keeps saying it, David.

• 0:39David Hoffman?

  This is the second time we have heard this.

• 0:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, and he's such a crypto person now, right? Just like reminding people that he got in early, reminding him that it was like such a contrary bet. Everyone thought he was stupid and like who's laughing now? Eric Adams is one of us. I think he's actually hosting a New York City sort of crypto conference? Something like that? That's also why he was like talking about crypto. So a complete crypto person.

• 1:08David Hoffman?

  Right, right. So that's the news that this is being packaged up in is that New York City Crypto Summit is what Eric Adams is announcing. I think kind of doing like a Trump alignment thing.

• 1:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:20David Hoffman?

  It would be great if New York was more crypto aligned. We need to get rid of the Bit license as a state. That needs to go away. But yeah, it would be great.

• 1:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's only a mayor. He's only a mayor. He can't do everything, but he can definitely buy Bitcoin. He can definitely get his paychecks in Bitcoin. So you know Bitcoin's over 100K if he's bragging about it. David, we got a lot to talk about on the roll up this week. First of all, the tariff truce. The US and China, they came to an agreement on tariffs, at least an agreement to pause them. The market is up on the news. I got some macro takes for you. I've been trying to make sense out of macro. I think I got it, man. This week I think I've got like, I understand what's about to happen. All right? So I want to give you the take here.

• 1:57David Hoffman?

  You cracked the nut? I'm excited to hear about that. Over in the crypto side of things, we got both good news and bad news coming out of Coinbase this week. The good news, S and P 500, our crypto company, the number one crypto company to go public is now in the S and P 500. We're going to talk about that. Bad news, there's a major, there's a customer data leak coming out of Coinbase. Hackers are demanding $20 million in ransom out of Coinbase, but Brian pulls the reverse Uno card, so we'll talk about that. And then I'm going to explain the internet, I'm going to do my best to explain the internet capital markets meta to Ryan. So strap yourself in, we're going to see if I can get anywhere close to what's going on in the trenches.

• 2:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think that's going to be a hard one to explain to me what the heck that means. Also, Robinhood is acquiring an Ethereum Layer 2. We'll, we'll talk about who and what's going on there. And David, you know what's making me kind of bullish on the week?

• 2:48David Hoffman?

  Eric Adams?

• 2:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  The SEC.

• 2:51David Hoffman?

  What?

• 2:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Securities and Exchange Commission is actually making me bullish. I want to tell you about that, too.

• 2:56David Hoffman?

  Before we get into all of this and more, we're going to talk about our meetup that's happening at Permissionless. So if you are going to Permissionless, it's happening in just a few short weeks in June 24th through 26th in Brooklyn. We are doing a meetup with Frax. We're hosting a little bankless Frax meetup at Permissionless. And so if you are a bankless citizen, or a previous podcast guest, or just a friend of the pod, there's a link in the show notes so you can come to our meetup at the Attila Beer Co. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. So there is a link in the show notes to sign up, to join us and Frax. We're all just going to hang out and drink some beer. Beer is on us. We are paying for the beer, Ryan.

• 3:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, nice. Is this, you said it's open to friends of the pod. Is it open to enemies of the pod? Can anybody just drop in?

• 3:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's no, there's, there are a few enemies of the pod, but generally speaking, most people are automatically friends of the pod.

• 3:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's right. That's right. All right, David, tell me about prices. I really want you to tell me about prices. Please embellish it. Please take your time, okay, to let it sink in to my pores here. Yes.

• 3:57David Hoffman?

  All right. Okay, are you ready? Bitcoin is up 1.5% on the week to $103,000. $103,000. We got almost up, I think we maybe, we touched $105,000 on a couple of exchanges. I think all time high for Bitcoin is something like 106, 107. So Bitcoin is very close to striking distance of all time highs. So overall, up 1.5% on the week, an okay week for Bitcoin. Ether price?

• 4:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 4:26David Hoffman?

  Ether price is up 30% on the week to $2,560. On the eight day, if we just extended seven days to eight days, Ether is up 42% on the week. It touched at its all time high. It was a 51% gain over eight days from peak to trough. 80, 50% on the week. The new recent high is almost $2,700 Ether, but we are currently at 2,560.

• 4:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is not something you see every week, is it?

• 4:58David Hoffman?

  I don't think I've ever seen a 50% candle on Ethereum in a week.

• 5:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, is there any, there's no explanation for this, right? I haven't seen any kind of like, other than it was time, which is the obvious explanation. That feels almost like a narrative. It was just like time, but we're not really seeing. One notable thing is we're not seeing an ETF flows really. So this has to be some sort of, it's not an institutional buyer buying the ETF suddenly. This is like more convicted crypto native types of buyers who are just saying, hey, like this number should not be this low. It should be much higher and they're going and buying in size.

• 5:31David Hoffman?

  I think that's right. Yeah, I think there's a handful of like kind of narratives that you could put into this. Like one of them that I think is a minority of an explanation as to like why ETH did this is like everyone's looking for stablecoin exposure. And with $150 billion of stablecoins on Ethereum, like ETH actually starts to look like that. But I think the real big thing is it was just oversold. .018 Bitcoin, which is where it started at, is just so goddamn low. It's so incredibly low. And so it went from .018 to .025 versus Bitcoin. And yeah, I mean, it's still, it's still a low price. Like $2,500 versus Bitcoin's $104,000 is still very, very low.

• 6:12David Hoffman?

  And so I would say that, yeah, like the market decided that this was too low. And there were a lot of shorts going on Ether at the time. Cause when it goes down for two years straight, like it's easy to short it. And so this thing finally just rejected the low price to still be a low price. It's still low, but now it's a higher low price.

• 6:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, if you want to get a sense for this, yeah, a few things that are interesting. One is the chart that I'm sharing on the screen, and I'll get to in a second. But another, just like the size of ETH in comparison to Bitcoin. First, maybe, let me do the size of ETH in comparison to Solana. So this teleportation, this like 40% teleportation, that was basically one Sol market cap worth in size. Like, that's how large it was. It was like $90 billion, so an entire Sol's worth of like weekly price movement on Ether, right? So Ether's already much larger than Sol, but it is much smaller than Bitcoin, okay? It's like one benchmark that's interesting. When Bitcoin was priced at the market cap of Ether today, you know, 310 billion, something like that, in that range.

• 7:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  The last time that was the case was November 2020. Remember that? So Bitcoin would have been, I don't know, I want to say about 16K, something at the time? Less than that, more than that, something like that? And so, we're basically like, if you believe that Ether can do what Bitcoin has already done as a global store of value asset, then this is like buying Bitcoin in 2020. If you're bearish, and you don't believe anything will ever be like Bitcoin again, then it's a different story. And then, here's a chart of, Jake is putting this, Brookman is putting this out. Bitcoin, ETH, and Solana market share reality? You can see, look at the orange. Orange is all Bitcoin.

• 7:56David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin is so dominant. Bitcoin dominance is still so high.

• 8:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It is still so high in proportion to all other crypto assets, in particular to Ether and Solana right now.

• 8:05David Hoffman?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, I think there's like two perspectives about this, where you say like, ETH added one Solana in a market cap in one week. That implies Ethereum's large. Like, it's putting on a whole entire Solana in market cap. And then you look at it versus Bitcoin, and you see Bitcoin dominance, like, well, ETH is small compared to Bitcoin. And it's all, it's all a matter of perspective. Like, ETH is both big and small at the same time.

• 8:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, as always, you can interpret these price moves however you like, whatever your thesis says, right? Total crypto market cap on the week, we're flirting with 3.4?

• 8:38David Hoffman?

  3.4 trillion, 3.4 trillion, yeah. Healthily growing back up to that $4 trillion number, which we have never touched, but we are trying to touch, yeah.

• 8:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so movers of the week, anything else move this week?

• 8:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, in addition to ETH's 50% gain over eight days, Coinbase is up 30% on the S&P 500 listing, we're going to talk about that. EtherFi up 120% in two weeks. Maybe on the launch of their EtherFi credit card, which a lot of my friends have gotten their new credit card. 3% cash back on a credit card that pulls from your on-chain account, so you can get yield on stable coins.

• 9:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome.

• 9:11David Hoffman?

  Available in the US, that's right. Launchcoin is up 1,000% in a new week, we're also going to talk about this, because that's the internet capital markets shenanigans. Then Dogwith Hat up 120%, Athena up 60%. So overall, there were some very big moves over the last seven days in the crypto markets. It was actually one of the more exciting market days in crypto than I can remember in recent history.

• 9:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, and there's also some protocols that continue to ship and are hitting milestones somewhat in the background. So one of them was Uniswap. So Uniswap, kind of like the very first DEX to actually reach some sort of critical mass and take off, just hit 3 trillion in all-time volume. So look at this chart here, all the way from January 2019, and just like an ascent up, all the way past 3 trillion in value. So this team obviously continues to ship, building a chain, doing all of these things. It's just fantastic to see some of these long-term games also being played. I know you're going to tell me about the short-term meme games, but long-term games are being played. Another team that continues to ship is AVE.

• 10:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  So AVE just passed 25 billion in total value locked. So these are the original DeFi primitives that got us so excited about crypto, right? The ability to trade without a centralized intermediary, the ability to do lending and borrowing without a centralized intermediary. AVE at 25 billion right now. So if you were to kind of rank that... That places it at like number 83 in terms of the largest banks in the US.

• 10:45David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 10:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you were to give a bank AUM benchmark, number 83, right? So like moving our way to top 10, moving our way to like past Wells Fargo. Uh, I think that's where AVE is going in the fullness of time and they're just quietly building the background to accomplish that.

• 10:59David Hoffman?

  You gotta really give a tip of the hat to AVE. It has just been this absolute like staple of Ethereum, DeFi and just a massive foundation for so much of the on-chain economy built on Ethereum. And you know, it's just rock solid, you know, it's had, it's had its like minor incidents and they have all been minor. Like when's the last time anything big happened to AVE, like almost never. Uh, and so you really just gotta tip your hat to this incredible structure that AVE has built for the Ethereum economy.

• 11:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, totally agreed. Uh, another layer two also joined the stage one club this week that was Starknet. So look at this now, David, this, this looks pretty nice. This is a table from L2Beat. We've got the top five layer twos on Ethereum that have now achieved kind of stage one decentralization. This is basic protection for user, user in property rights. Uh, so that they kind of the centralized sequencer can't censor transactions or you know, like rug pull users. Uh, so that is fantastic to see. And I was just looking at this, do you see this clock on some of, uh, like the, um, the names here? So like base has this, um, layer two clock and it says this project, this is on, uh, L2Beat.

• 12:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  This project will be downgraded to stage zero in 74 days, six hours, 48 minutes, five seconds. There's like a countdown timer. And this is L2Beat saying, hey, we're actually changing our criteria for this. We're enhancing it, we're adding some more detail. And right now we won't consider base a stage one. We'll revert it back to stage zero unless you meet this criteria and the criteria is you, uh, not having compromising 75% of the security council. Uh, as the only way other than bugs for a roll up to be indefinitely block an L1 to L, uh, like L2 to L1 message withdrawal or an. Valid withdrawal. I was just looking at this and L2B has gotten so sophisticated.

• 12:54David Hoffman?

  That's so good, yeah.

• 12:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's sophisticated and clear. Sophisticated and clear. And what it's doing is basically it's playing the role of a regulator, David. I know we've made this point before, but I'm seeing it now more than ever. They're just like creating objective criteria and then making it transparent for when different rollups achieve various kind of like property rights guarantees, right? And they're publishing that and it's become a shelling point for the community. This is, it's basically like, again, I'm going to say some good things about the SEC a little bit later, but this is kind of like what a regulator should do in crypto. This is like sort of the SEC of crypto and it's a, it's an underrated asset that Ethereum has. All of this criteria. I mean, look at all this stuff, right? You know, like, look about like all these new

• 13:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  requirements that L2B is like putting in place in the background.

• 13:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's really, and it's just, it's, there's a difference between enforcement and standards. The SEC is about enforcement. Layer 2B is all about standards and standards is this kind of like market-based, bottom-up opt-in phenomenon, but it's great that we have Layer 2B like establishing standards and then the community establishing norms around those standards and actually doing like social norm setting about like this is what's appropriate and this is what is not appropriate.

• 14:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  So David, do you see this? We'll pivot to macro for a minute. Do you see this over the, I think it happened Sunday and then the news broke Monday. What are we looking at here, the headline?

• 14:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the announcement that I think we first heard out of a Truth Social tweet that then started rocketing around Monday is the US-China trade war, trade war ending, turning into an agreement.

• 14:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 14:30David Hoffman?

  And so there's a 90-day slashing of tariffs based on this, a trade breakthrough and trade agreement. And then Bitcoin didn't, the only, so this was announced on like Saturday or Sunday, so during the weekend when markets were closed. And so then everyone, like whether you're a TradFi commentator or a crypto person, started looking at Bitcoin to see how Bitcoin would react. And Bitcoin did not react, which was interesting.

• 14:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it didn't.

• 14:52David Hoffman?

  But nonetheless, when the markets opened up on Monday, it opened up very, very green and we've had a very green week ever since.

• 14:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, pretty. Much so as NASDAQ jumped 4% on that news, S and P jumped about 3%. And this was on the back of negotiations between China and the US. So Scott Besant, Chinese representatives, they met in Geneva and both sides to agreed to lower reciprocal tariffs. It was like in the triple digits, like 115%, 145%, something crazy to lower it back down to 30% and 10% respectively. And just some history, like all this tariff stuff, it's just barely a month old, David. So April 2nd was liberation day. That's when the kind of the tariff shock started. And then we had this back and forth between Trump administration and China doing this tit for tat game of like, now I'm going to tariff you. I'm going to tariff you, no, more, more. And they went back and forth.

• 15:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  And now it's kind of like reset back down to kind of a lower amounts, at least for the next 90 days. So Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, says this is a substantial de-escalation. And I think that's how the market is viewing it. So what do you think, man? Do you think tariffs are over?

• 16:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think they are. I don't really, I'm not, I'm not informed here, but I think I'm trying to like map Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0. And Trump 1.0 started in this very big way where he elevated tariffs to be a very big deal. And then like after one year into his presidency, no one said the word tariffs anymore. And so it was just like a first, first year negotiating tactic to get what he wanted. And so understanding that like, yeah, I think tariffs will slowly approach becoming irrelevant over time.

• 16:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that is the, the take. And so do you remember two weeks ago, I would, I say, hey, there's three things I have an eye on with respect to macro. One is, one is the tariffs and the possible recession that causes. Well, you know, number one, the tariff threat kind of went down. Polly market, remember there's odds of US recession in 2025? That week it was at 66%. Now it's spiked down to below 40%, okay?

• 16:53David Hoffman?

  Still high.

• 16:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Still high, still high, but like not that much higher, I guess than like February. So still high, but significantly decreased. The second thing I was keeping an eye on was lies capital flight from, from the US as a result of, of these tariffs. Like foreigners exiting all their US assets. And the third thing was global liquidity. And I feel like I got some answers on this, actually, David.

• 17:19David Hoffman?

  Tell me.

• 17:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so there was, there was two, there's a lot of sources, but there's two people who had a big impact on where I think the market's going and like their analysis was fantastic. One is Russell Napier. Have you heard of him? He's a Scottish monetary historian. He's kind of an investor. Okay. He's kind of like a, you know, a money guy, money systems guy. He looks at all this stuff through history. The other person I know you know, it's Mr. Arthur Hayes, the crypto trader. You know Arthur?

• 17:48David Hoffman?

  I know Arthur, yeah.

• 17:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so Arthur, of course, is a colorful character. Actually, I recorded, you were out, you were traveling and I recorded with him earlier this week. That episode's going to come out on Monday and it's his kind of thesis for what happens. And I think between them, they're kind of right about this. So what do you think Arthur's saying about all this right now?

• 18:07David Hoffman?

  Arthur, I kind of understand to be a perma bull. So I'm going to guess that he was bullish.

• 18:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 18:12David Hoffman?

  Okay, that's all, that's all I have. That's all I have. What am I looking at?

• 18:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. You're looking at his most recent post. I, I said he was a colorful character. Some would say offensive. All right. So he's starting this, he titled this post fatty fatty boom boom. I'm not going to get into why. I'm going to give you the meat of his thesis. All right. Because he, he takes, he takes monetary concepts and he really like turns them into kind of trader DGN type language. But he basically thinks that this backtrack between with Trump and China, it's permanent. It's not a 90 day pause. Tariff season is completely over. Okay?

• 18:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, okay, sure.

• 18:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  So similar to you. He still thinks that there is a massive problem and a massive policy objection, objective that the Trump administration wants to make. And this is, they want to reduce the US trade deficit. Okay. And they have monetary system reasons for this. National capitalism and reindustrialization. Okay. Remember those words. And then also, what they actually want to do, you know how the treasury is the world reserve asset, basically? Treasury is US treasuries? They don't want that to be the case anymore, according to you, Arthur. Now, they're not going to say the quiet part out loud, but they're going to take actions to devalue the dollar and devalue treasuries to stop the

• 19:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  You remember the Triffin Dilemma? To stop that whole thing and to stop the hollowing out of America's manufacturing. So they found they tried tariffs. They tried to accomplish these policy objectives by tariffs. They didn't work because there is geopolitical blowback with allies. And also, it's not super politically popular, right? So representatives in Congress said, Trump, you keep doing this shit. We're not going to get elected again. Okay, so they had to back off that. And now they're going to pivot according to Arthur Hayes to something different. And this is capital repression. So capital controls, financial repression. Basically, Arthur thinks, and he outlines why in this essay. He thinks that the Trump administration is going to, through some sort of action,

• 20:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  maybe executive order, something like this, slap a 2% tax on all, something like this, on all foreign assets in the United States of America. Okay, so the monetary system we have right now, right? Is basically, America is in like the debt. We import all the things. We kind of consume them. Asia supplies the cheap labor. What does Asia get in return? They get dollars in treasuries. They store those treasuries inside their central banks. The treasuries are great because it's petrodollar. It's linked to the dollar. It's the global reserve asset and they can buy things with them. So they get purchasing power. America gets cheap stuff. We become completely hollowed out by that. But as a result, all the dollars that they withdrew,

• 21:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  they pour back into our capital markets. They buy S and P 500. They buy NASDAQ. They buy even like more treasuries. Okay, and so that's the current system that we have going right now. And there's $33 trillion of foreign owned capital assets in the US. And what Arthur Hayes thinks is that the Trump administration is going to be like, foreigners are going to pay for our taxes. And he's going to put together 2% tax on all of that. Okay, so this is capital controls that is, are going to be implemented in order to get the dollar lower.

• 21:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that's his like, that's his base thesis. Are you with me so far?

• 21:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm tracking this. This initially feels very aligned with Ray Dalio's post that he's been putting out on Twitter where like China needs to stop being dependent on the United States dollar to fuel their manufacturing industry. And so because, because why do they need to stop being dependent on the dollar? Because we are about to devalue the dollar and all of the bonds that they own. And then vice versa, we need to stop being so dependent on Chinese manufacturing, just because of national security issues. And so we need to bolster our own manufacturing in the United States. And so we need to sever the Triffin dilemma. We need to stop having the United States be the capital center of planet Earth, which is going to be

• 22:20David Hoffman?

  painful because the exorbitant American privilege comes from the fact that we get to buy things for free because we just print and export dollars for free. And I'm worried that I'm scared about that. And then I'm also understanding that like this deal that we had where we would print dollars, we would sell them to the world, we would sell them to China, they would give us stuff, and then they would reinvest their dollars back into our economy. It was great when they were buying treasuries, but when they are investing in the S and P 500, they when they are investing in the stock market, they are starting to buy American companies. And so this like process is gobbling itself up the fat tail to like, okay, it was one thing to buy our bonds, which we can't

• 23:03David Hoffman?

  just inflate, but it's one thing to reinvest in the S and P 500. And now you own, now China owns X percent of Apple or Google or all of our, all of our companies. And so ultimately China's the net winner here. If they can just buy all the companies with the dollars that we keep on giving them, then all of a sudden they own us. And that is the concern. But unwinding that, all of that sounds very painful.

• 23:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the unwind could be interesting, but it's painful based on what assets you own. And you know, the most toxic asset to own, according to Arthur and Russell Napier?

• 23:35David Hoffman?

  Treasuries.

• 23:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bonds.

• 23:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bonds. The solution here is just don't own bonds. But the question is like, okay, Besen is got to sell all these bonds. How does he do it? And the answer, according to Arthur Hayes, is money printing. Fed just buys them. He sells it to the commercial banking in the US. He sells it to the Fed, basically, and we have a whole round of money printing. And then other countries need to buy store of value assets rather than treasuries. What are they going to buy? And the answer is gold and Bitcoin, non-sovereign store of values. Hopefully, some other crypto assets down the pike. But that's the basis of Arthur Hayes' bull case for crypto and what he thinks is going to happen in macro. And Russell Napier, he's not a crypto person, but he basically agrees. They both agree, bonds are toxic, don't own any of them.

• 24:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Russell's like, you should have 25% gold and you should have 75% just like value-based stocks that are throwing off cash. Now, he wouldn't say Bitcoin, we would say crypto, right? In your allocation instead. But that, I think, is the most cohesive story for what might happen in the months to come under the kind of the next Trump administration move. So we'll see how that plays out.

• 24:46David Hoffman?

  That sounds like it's QE, but being done fiscally rather than the Federal Reserve. As in, the government is just going to buy all of the bonds and buy and add liquidity rather than the Federal Reserve. Because the Federal Reserve, I think, is going to keep interest rates high because this is going to be highly inflationary. But I think the government fiscal policy is going to override any sort of like high interest rates because they are just going to print the money and buy the bonds.

• 25:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Arthur thinks it's going to be both QE, probably under a different name. You can't say QE anymore, but actually the Fed buying actual bonds. And then also fiscal stimulus.

• 25:22David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 25:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  There we go. It's a great setup.

• 25:24David Hoffman?

  All right.

• 25:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  If, like, unless you own bonds, like.

• 25:27David Hoffman?

  That's why Bitcoin is at all-time high and gold's at even higher than all-time high.

• 25:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's right.

• 25:32David Hoffman?

  All right, so we're going to get to some crypto native news coming up. The Coinbase news, both good and bad, as well as a bunch of other stuff. But first, before we get there, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, like Uniswap. It's a browser wallet, it's a mobile wallet, it's also the best place to do DeFi. Let's go hear from Uniswap right now. Uniswap is your gateway to a more efficient DeFi experience. With Uniswap swapping and bridging across 13 chains is simple, fast, and cost-effective, helping you move value wherever, whenever. Liquidity on the Uniswap protocol, you'll enjoy a minimal price impact on every trade. And now Uniswap V4 takes it even further. Swappers benefit from gas savings on multi-hop swaps and ETH trading pairs, while liquidity providers can create new pools at 99% lower costs. The best part: you don't have to do anything extra.

• 26:14David Hoffman?

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• 26:59David Hoffman?

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• 27:43David Hoffman?

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• 28:27David Hoffman?

  Visit frax.com now to start earning with Frax USD and staked Frax USD. And for Bankless listeners, you can use frax.com/r/bankless when bridging to Fractal for exclusive Fractal perks and boosted rewards. An interesting video came out of Brian Armstrong's Twitter account this morning of him just talking to his phone, just reading out a statement about a $20 million ransom that Coinbase is being held for. And if they don't pay this $20 million ransom, hackers are going to just release a bunch of customer data. Let's go hear this video. We're going to play the first 30 seconds of this video and then we're going to talk about it.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Hey, everyone. I want to make you aware of a disturbing email that we received recently at Coinbase. It was a ransom note demanding $20 million in Bitcoin in exchange for these attackers not releasing some information they claimed to have obtained on our customers.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Now, we like to do things transparently here at Coinbase, and so I'm going to respond publicly to these attackers by saying no. We are not going to pay your ransom.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  In fact, I have a few next steps in mind that I'm going to share at the end of this video.

• 29:32David Hoffman?

  No, we are not going to pay your ransom. David, but what were those next steps, by the way? What's he doing here? Yeah, so if you continue to watch the video, which again will be linked in the show notes, they say that less than 1% of Coinbase's monthly transacting users were affected by this data breach. This breach did not involve passwords, private keys, or any funds. It was just like customers' personal information, like address, home, email, telephone number, stuff like that. The attackers demanded $20 million ransom, which of course, as we heard Coinbase is not going to pay. Instead, Brian Aronfim is doing a reverse Uno card and they are offering a $20 million bounty for any information that leads to the arrest and the conviction of the perpetrators.

• 30:17David Hoffman?

  And so there's a $20 million bounty out there for anyone who can help arrest these people. If a user, and so this has been plaguing Coinbase for years now. Coinbase is losing something like 300 to 400 million dollars per year. This is numbers modeled out by Zach XPT and other internet sleuths who are identifying just the incredible wave of phishing attacks on Coinbase customers who are getting them to like answer their phone saying, "Hey, a transaction just got approved out of your Coinbase account to move all your funds. Call us if you did not approve this transaction." And so then users naturally like will say, "I didn't approve any transaction. Let me go call this number."

• 31:00David Hoffman?

  And then they call what is the actual attacker, what is the actual exploiter who gets to them to give them their password and actually do the attack. And so, Bankless listener, if you have a Coinbase account and you get a text message saying, "This asset transfer has been approved." That is likely a scam. Do not call anyone. Coinbase will not call you. They will not ask to call you. That's not how they communicate. And so just make sure you have 2FA on your account and all this kind of stuff. They said that any users impacted by this will be reimbursed and then they are working on figuring out how to enhance their internal systems to prevent future breaches. Overall, this is a huge problem for Coinbase because they keep on losing lots and lots of customers' funds from these phishing attacks.

• 31:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and it's not so much, it's not Coinbase directly losing customers' funds, but it's data like this in the hands of hackers who can use this data to enhance their phishing attempts against customers, right? It's like you mentioned some of the data that was leaked, right? Stuff like phone numbers, it's stuff like email address, it's stuff like home address, it's transaction details. So they might know like where you live, what your email address is, your phone number, how to reach you. So what are they going to do? If they're phishing, they're going to send you text messages, they're going to send you emails, they're going to try to impersonate Coinbase. They might have details on your account that only Coinbase should technically know about.

• 32:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's basically a honeypot for hackers to enhance their fishing, right? And like, that is what's happening. Did you see how it actually, this breach actually happened? It was on the support team at Coinbase. So Coinbase likely, like most companies, farms out some of its support to kind of like, you know, lower wage, like, support workers. I'm not sure exactly how this works. And basically, the hackers went to the support teams, individuals, like, I would, I would think, and just bribed them. Hey, I'll pay you X if you give me Y data. And like, it was not a sophisticated breach. And because the support team had access to all of the data, including, by the way, government IDs. A whole bunch of government IDs were also leaked as part of this.

• 33:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now, it seems that Coinbase is, at least I've heard from some people who have been contacted by Coinbase, like, maybe a more official email that says, hey, you know, you've been breached. But I don't know if they're doing this with everyone. So if you're a Coinbase customer, I don't know, TBD on you know, on whether you know if your data was involved in this particular breach or not. But it's not great.

• 33:28David Hoffman?

  Are you getting these text messages, Ryan? Because I get, I get a couple of these text messages every single week saying, hey, you're like, there's been a transfer out of your account.

• 33:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, I don't do anything with anything anymore, right? I just like, I'm completely off. Like, if you're not in my contacts, I just, I, you know, I do not respond. I don't, I don't answer anything. Emails, I'm totally locked down, right? And it has been that way for a while. Yeah, so, so part of this is obviously depending on, you know, low-paid support staff to safeguard data. And like, you know, like, shouldn't be doing that. But, but the other part, and the deeper reason for like, why this type of thing, and why these honeypots even exist, I think is like, actual AML KYC, right? It's like, AML KYC makes it such that if there's any institution that's doing anything with you financially, right? They have to take all of these details about you. And they have to put it in the database. They have to collect your government ID, all the other details, they know about them.

• 34:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they create these honeypots so that, like, all of these honeypots are susceptible to hacks and data leaks. Like, We've created like a privacy nightmare here with our AML KYC legislation. I mean, the better way to do this is obviously something like AVE, something in DeFi, where they don't actually collect this information in the first place. But if you want some sort of, you know, is this person a good actor or are they a terrorist whitelist, then you use ZK proofs for that, right? It's cryptography is the answer for this. What I'm a little bit worried about though, David, is, you know, we might get kind of like the worst of all worlds here. So, because you know, there's a bunch of teams working on on-chain privacy and that's great, but you know who the first actors to use on-chain privacy will be?

• 35:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It'll be some crypto natives, but it'll also be like a whole bunch of bad actors. They'll be using the on-chain privacy. And if we have bad actors using on-chain privacy and all the good actors have to do the AML KYC shit, right? Then we get the worst of all scenarios because we still have the data leaks and then the hackers have the protection, they can use the privacy, right? And so we can't even track them down. We have no idea what they're doing. And so this is the importance of like legislation as well as strong cryptography in the process because we can prevent these things from ever happening in the first place if we get there.

• 35:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah, I've never gotten a text message about any of my assets out of AVE getting withdrawn. That never happens. And it also, they never get withdrawn either, so they also stay put there. Yeah. So that's the bad news out of Coinbase, but the good news out of Coinbase this week is that they are the first crypto company in the S and P 500. It's also worth noting that they did not enter at number 500. Apparently that's not how it works. They are in like 139. So they're jumping up to like 139 or something. And so for foreign listeners who aren't aware of what the S and P 500 is, it's the index that tracks the performance of the largest 500 publicly traded companies in the United States. Criteria for inclusion, you have to be in the United States.

• 36:19David Hoffman?

  You must be listed on a major US exchange like the NASDAQ and the YSE or CBOE. And you must have at least a market cap of $20 billion and 50% of shares must be in public hands. And then you also have to have positive earnings in the last four quarters and the latest quarter. And so with all of Coinbase meeting that criteria, they enter S and P 500. Replacing Discover Financial, which is a boomer tradfi company, which I think is great. Coinbase immediately jumped 9% on the news and then it continued that rally to end being up something like 22% on the week. So, congrats to all coin holders and congrats to Coinbase for making his way into the S and P 500.

• 36:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like that's a huge milestone, right? Because that also means when you're in an index like this, that means like the average American, their 401k probably owns crypto stock now. They own Coinbase now.

• 37:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, if you, if you put in $500 into your 401k every single week, you are buying Coinbase. And so there is this perpetual bid under all S and P 500 companies. And so now Coinbase is just being owned by the average person in the United States, which is great.

• 37:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's a big milestone. All right, David, tell me about internet capital markets. Okay, it's like, that feels very tradfi, actually. It feels buttoned up, but I don't think you're going to tell me it's not, it's something that, what are we talking about here?

• 37:40David Hoffman?

  The concept of internet capital markets, I think you and I are both very aligned. The idea of internet capital markets is kind of like a Rorschach test because it can mean different things for different people. When I hear internet capital markets, I'm like, yeah, like capital formation on blockchain.

• 37:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what we were doing the whole time, honestly.

• 37:56David Hoffman?

  That's what we were doing the whole time. Yeah, that's totally right. There's a specific flavor and like meme going around this week about internet capital markets. You were gone, Ryan, for the whole Jelly Jelly thing. And even if you were here in crypto, I don't think it would have gotten on your radar because it's just not your vibe. Do you know Jelly Jelly?

• 38:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I have no idea what you're talking about.

• 38:17David Hoffman?

  Jelly Jelly is a meme coin that was launched in combination of the launch of an actual real consumer application. And this thing, the consumer application, I still don't know what it does, but there was this, it's a product launched from a startup. It's called Jelly Jelly. And they launched a meme coin in combination with the launch of the startup. And the meme coin, it was like promoted by like the slow capital guys and like some of the people that, there's like the ex-Venmo co-founder. So it had some clout to it.

• 38:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 38:46David Hoffman?

  And the meme coin goes up to $200 million like inside of a couple of hours of launch. And then it goes down basically to zero and it got so low to the point where there's like a short squeeze on it on hyper liquid. But the meme coin went up to 200 million, like 280 million and then down to zero. And now it's

• 39:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is wild. Look at this chart, man.

• 39:05David Hoffman?

  Okay. Oh, you know, that's just the recent, most recent history. You have to go out and go to like the all time view where you can see it like spike up to a. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah. Okay. It's like 280 million dollars for the start. Okay, so this is what launched this idea of meme coins that launch in combination with apps. And there's this new thing on the, on the, on, on, in the meta today called Believe App. And it is a token launchpad, not unlike pump fun. In fact, it might actually just be the same thing as pump fun. Except instead of just being a meme coin, there are meme coins associated with real consumer

• 39:47David Hoffman?

  applications. And so there are a number of startups, the people are calling them startups, that have launched meme coins on Believe App. So like Yapper is one of them. There's this, I don't, I don't know what Yapper does.

• 40:03David Hoffman?

  Deep fake videos that have, it helps you make deep fake videos, AI dubbed deep fake videos. And it's this app, it's an app that does things. And now there's a meme coin associated with it. There's also noodle dot GG, Ryan, which is, you know, the old game of worm.

• 40:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like a worm. It's a worm Tron hybrid game. And so you're a worm and then you go out and eat these little dots and you grow as you eat the dots. So your worm gets larger. And then if you find another worm who's another player, you can circle them and you can kill them and then you can eat their dots and you get their money. And so you actually have to pay like $10, $25, $100 in soul to enter the game. And then if you eat other worms, you get more money. And so people are playing this, they're like making money here and there. But there's also a meme coin launched on Believe App.

• 40:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, when you say, when you say they're making money, are they making money denominated in the meme coin in the token or are they making like money, money?

• 40:58David Hoffman?

  You put up soul because it's on Solana.

• 41:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  You put up soul, okay.

• 41:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and then you so you you buy a $10 entrance ticket, or you can buy a $200 entrance ticket and you start with a larger worm. But yeah, you buy an entrance fee and then that gets you in the game. And then you can go and you can go eat other worms. You can go eat other players. And if you eat another player, you get their money.

• 41:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, that that makes sense to me. But like, so where does the meme coin piece fit in? But there's also a meme coin, you're saying?

• 41:24David Hoffman?

  There's also a meme coin. What do you mean, where does it fit in? You just launched a meme coin and now there's a meme coin associated with the app.

• 41:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that's what you're earning? Like, if you if you're if you're the longest worm? No, if you're the longest worm, you earn soul.

• 41:34David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes. If you eat other worms, you earn soul. There's also a meme coin. In what ways are the meme coins tied to the functioning and utility of the app?

• 41:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 41:45David Hoffman?

  Don't know. Don't ask that question. No, it's not. But this has even attracted the attention of Product Hunt. So a product, the Product Hunt co-founder made a tweet that says, "Product Hunt handshake emoji, Believe app," hinting that Product Hunt might launch a meme coin with this new this new Believe.app launchpad.

• 42:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I see what's going on here.

• 42:06David Hoffman?

  The founder of Believe App. Pasternak, it's this guy Pasternak. He goes, he tweets out, "The amount of inbound talent from talented founders looking to launch on Believe has been incredible. We are going to revolutionize the entire startup ecosystem." And so this is the narrative that's going on is that we are able to fund startups earlier in their lifecycle before VC funding with meme coins. With meme coins. Because the the you can launch the meme coin, you get the trading fees. And so these apps are talking about the revenue that they're making from their application. And noodle.app is making $40,000 a month, not from people paying them money, but from the trading fees of the meme coin.

• 42:50David Hoffman?

  And so this has become, now this has been the game of like, oh, how do we disrupt Pump Fund? And there are all these different like combinations of pump like token launchpads that are being thrown together to try and figure out how do we dethrone Pump Fund? And this is the latest iteration of that. And for some reason, we are calling this Internet Capital Markets Meta.

• 43:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, okay, I see what's going. So, okay, so it seems like what's happening is basically, so, you know, Trump, the president launches a meme coin, right? So you just bust through the Overton window. It's like, it can't be illegal to do meme coins. Like, it's not, I mean, the president's doing it. Everyone can just say the president's doing it, right? So what this is, internet capital markets is, is like a new cohort of people discovering meme coins for the first time, and they happen to be web two app developers and like companies. And so they're basically discovering meme coins in the same way crypto has already discovered them. And it doesn't have to have a link for revenue. It's like beautiful. It's just kind of like a brand thing. It's like all fun. And this is the start of kind of a new cohort joining the ranks here

• 43:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  and starting to play around with meme coins, it seems like.

• 43:58David Hoffman?

  I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah.

• 44:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is it bullish?

• 44:03David Hoffman?

  So, okay, so you can go to the, we'll go to the Dune dashboard and we will look at all of the different, like, pump fun competitors that have come on the scene. And I'll just say that like, okay, this has been the meta. People are now realizing that pump fun is not OpenSea of 2021. Like, it's not a flash in the pan. It's actually here to stay. The more apt comparison is actually it's Coinbase in 2013 rather than OpenSea in 2021. Pump fun is a sustainable business model there.

• 44:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are we sure about that? Do we have enough time to like, be like, actually validate that?

• 44:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like pump fun to this day, its revenue of pump fun is down like 95% from the peak. And on top of that, it is still making like hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. And so there's still tons of value to dethroning pump fun and going after pump fun. So, yeah, I think token launchpads are here to stay. We are trying to find, everyone's trying to, you know, make the new pump fun. So radium, do you know what radium is on Solana?

• 45:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not that bad, David.

• 45:02David Hoffman?

  Okay, all right, cool. So, you know, pump fun made pump swap, which is, they are trying to kick out radium out of their tech stack. Radium made Launch Lab, which is their competitor to pump fun. But not exactly. It's not a pump fun competitor one to one. Instead of it being a token launchpad, Launch Lab is a token launchpad's launchpad.

• 45:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I've seen this. We've seen this already. We've seen it all, man. We've seen it all. Okay, so here's my question to you. It's like, when you say like, this is like durable, this is not like open. By the way, OpenSea is still around, just NFTs kind of like totally faded out, right?

• 45:36David Hoffman?

  True.

• 45:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  I saw a report this week that basically said the thing that everyone knows, which is like 99% of new token launches on PumpFun are basically pump and dumps. And you could argue with the definition of what's a pump and dump.

• 45:50David Hoffman?

  Depends on what the definition of the pump and dump is.

• 45:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  But let me just define it as like, I don't want to get into moral, you know, puritanical things. This is evil. Like, what is morally right? Isn't that bad UX, is all I'm saying, right? A certain amount of times in the casino, you buy your token, you lose money. It starts to become like, just like negative UX for you. You're just like, the reason you buy tokens is so that the number goes up. And when they, and you promised that it would go up. You thought it would go up. And if it always goes down, over enough time, for enough people, that's just bad user experience. And then people leave. This is what happened with NFTs. Will the same cycle just like not play out with memes and launch like pads?

• 46:30David Hoffman?

  So there are people who are pointing towards that this cycle has already started to show signs of playing out exactly like all the other meme coin metas previously. So if you go to Waz's, Waz Crypto's Twitter, his tweet, he goes, he just highlights a token that's two hours old. And he just shows the first 10 people who bought the token. And they bought like, one bought $21,000 of the token, cashed out $737,000 of the token. The third person bought $13,000 of the token, cashed out half a million dollars. Fourth person put in $5,000, cashed out $188,000. So people are always saying like, this is already pump and dumping itself into, and which is the destination of all meme coins.

• 47:10David Hoffman?

  All meme coins are destined to become pump and dumps, which is, I think, what some, many people think about meme coins. And I, this whole idea of internet capital markets claiming that we are re-revolutionizing the whole startup pipeline by allowing founders to launch tokens sooner and not have to go through VC funding, I think is complete.

• 47:31David Hoffman?

  Opium?

• 47:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  We've already done it. We've already done cycles of this, right?

• 47:35David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes. So like my tweet, I tweeted out this tweet, like 2017, we had altcoins. 2020, we had altcoins with food emojis. 2021, we had altcoins with pictures. 2024, we had altcoins with memes. And now in 2025, we have altcoins with five coded apps. And my opinion here is that the real internet capital markets comes when developers can issue equity coins that have real claims on real cash flows. And everything else is just a bootloader to get there. That is internet capital markets. That's the internet capital markets that I want.

• 48:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, speaking of that, did I tell you I'm pretty bullish on the SEC? Hey, wait, is that, is that why you're bullish on the SEC? Did we just pair these two news events together? I think we did. I think we did. Actually, I think that's the way out. It might be the SEC. So we'll talk about that in a second. And CryptoPunks have a new owner. It's not you, David, though you are an owner of a CryptoPunk. You gotta tell me about that. Robinhood also acquires an Ethereum Layer 2. All that and more, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 48:32David Hoffman?

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• 49:17David Hoffman?

  like Mantle Network, ME, and FBTC. Ready to step into the future of finance? Follow Mantle on X at @mantleofficial and join the on-chain revolution today. Have you ever imagined Bitcoin and Ethereum truly working as one? Unlocking the full potential of Bitcoin, DeFi, and more? Meet Hemi, a groundbreaking modular network designed precisely for that vision. Co-founded by early Bitcoin core dev Jeff Garzik. Unlike other Layer 2s, That treat Bitcoin and Ethereum as separate silos. Hemi connects these giants into a single, powerful super network. With Hemi, users gain unprecedented asset portability and possibilities, combining Bitcoin's security and value with Ethereum's versatility. Hemi's unique innovation, the Hemi virtual machine, integrates a fully indexed Bitcoin node directly into an EVM, enabling DApps that seamlessly interact with both networks.

• 50:01David Hoffman?

  And with Hemi's proof of proof, or POP consensus, users benefit from truly decentralized, censorship-resistant Bitcoin-level security. Since its recent mainnet launch, Hemi has rapidly ascended the ranks as one of the top Bitcoin chains. With a thriving global community and robust ecosystem support, Hemi isn't just building a network, it's shaping the future of Web3, DeFi, and beyond. Visit hemi.xyz/banklist to learn more, discover ways to interact, participate in a leaderboard program, and be part of the community that's uniting Bitcoin and Ethereum. And we're back. Robinhood will acquire Kevin O'Leary's backed WonderFi. And so, WonderFi, if you've never heard of this, this is a Canadian company, actually a pretty large Canadian company. Robinhood is acquiring it for $250 million Canadian. That's $180 million Freedom Bucks.

• 50:47David Hoffman?

  This is going to close in the second half of 2025. So this company runs Bitbuy and CoinSquare, two of Canada's oldest, most regulated crypto exchanges. They have $2 billion in client assets. So it's not nothing, these are not shells of companies. And then, WonderFi is also building Wonder Chain, which is an Ethereum Layer 2, and also has a non-cosodial WonderFi wallet. So, Robinhood just acquiring a ton of assets here with customers, and just like TVL or AUM. And so, the market reaction here, Hood jumps 10%. That's a stock, not a token. Yeah, that's the stock, yeah. Robinhood's stock. And this has really just been Robinhood doing a buying spree. They bought Bitstamp for $200 million last year, which also has a ton of licenses.

• 51:31David Hoffman?

  And so, they're getting a Canadian crypto exchange, they're getting $2 billion of assets, they're getting a proof-of-concept Layer 2, and a bunch of other like families of brands as well. So people, I think last week, we reported, or Bloomberg reported that Robinhood was designing a blockchain platform, potentially on Arbitrum. On Ethereum, potentially on Solana. With the Wonderfy acquisition, they acquired the Wonder Chain tech stack, which is an Ethereum layer two built on the ZK stack from ZK Sync. So it's actually a pretty big win for ZK Sync.

• 52:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  It also just suggests that Robinhood is totally in the game. I mean, they're coming against Coinbase. They are, they are full on crypto. I mean, they're basically a crypto company at the, at this point in time, for sure. David, tell me about the new owner of CryptoPunks.

• 52:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Okay. So the owner of the CryptoPunks IP is going to be transferred from Yuga Labs to a new organization, a node, the Node Foundation. So Node, the Node Foundation is buying the IP of CryptoPunks. What is the Node Foundation? It's this nonprofit committed to the preservation and expansion of contemporary digital art. So I think it's like a sort of internet collection of art, an internet museum of sorts, digital museum. Representatives from Yuga will join as advisors to this as well.

• 52:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because they purchased it from Yuga, right? Which is the parent company, Board Apes.

• 52:51David Hoffman?

  Yes. Yeah. Board Apes and MeBits.

• 52:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  I always thought it was weird that like Yuga, like Board Apes. I thought they were the art enemies of punks. You know, back, back in the day, it was Apes versus punks. And then the kind of the Apes bought the punk IP. It felt kind of lame.

• 53:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't really have a take about that. I mean, it was Yuga.

• 53:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's the reaction?

• 53:09David Hoffman?

  That's mixed. Like, I've never really thought that the IP of CryptoPunks is significant. Because like, I don't really care who owns the IP of CryptoPunks, because I own my CryptoPunk as according to the Ethereum blockchain. And no one else will be able to take that away from me. And that's, and the data of CryptoPunks is on-chain. And so I've always kind of thought of it as, it's always been like an interesting note, but not actually substantial to my consideration of like my CryptoPunk.

• 53:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I should remind people that punks are still the most valuable NFT collection right now. And they were up 5% after this collection. So it seems like the punk owners are kind of happy.

• 53:43David Hoffman?

  One punk is worth more than one Bitcoin, finally.

• 53:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. David, I actually think the SEC is becoming kind of awesome right now. And I never thought I would say that.

• 53:52David Hoffman?

  You're a SEC fanboy?

• 53:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  In the whole history of this podcast. I might be, I might be turning into one because they are, they are pro-capital, they are pro-crypto. This is Paul Atkins. So he is the new Gary Gensler of the SEC. I'm just going to play the clip. You tell me if this is bullish.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  A key priority of my chairmanship will be to develop a rational regulatory framework for crypto asset markets that establishes clear rules of the road for issuance, custody, and trading of crypto assets while continuing to discourage bad actors from violating the law. Clear rules of the road are necessary for investor protection against fraud, not the least to help them identify scams that do not comport with the law.

• 54:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Isn't that what we've always wanted from the SEC, David?

• 54:43David Hoffman?

  That's great.

• 54:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Clarity? Clear rules of the road? A framework for this stuff?

• 54:47David Hoffman?

  I think, I mean, I think this is great. We have been hearing this for, ever since Donald Trump got elected. And so we've been hearing the right sounds and the right noises coming out of the SEC. Is there anything to show for? Do we, what do we get?

• 55:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think we are going to get some big things pretty soon, David. I don't have the specific thing I can show you, but I'll give you some more indicators that we're headed in the complete right direction. The SEC might just be becoming awesome. Do you remember this account? This is the SEC account on Twitter. And I remember a time when on the weekly roll up, we'd bring this up and it would be some Gary Gensler troll coming to the office hours, like, don't forget, most crypto is a scam, blah, blah, blah.

• 55:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah, some influencer marketing video?

• 55:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is from the SEC account this time. It says this, "This movement of securities from off-chain to on-chain systems is akin to the transition of audio recordings from analog vinyl records to cassette tapes to digital software decades ago." Okay? They're basically saying crypto blockchain is the future.

• 55:44David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 55:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, just as, this is their account, okay? This is not some crypto fanboy saying this. "Just as the shift to digital audio revolutionized the music industry, the migration to on-chain securities has the potential to remodel aspects of the securities market by enabling entirely new methods of issuing, trading, owning, and using securities." David, internet capital markets.

• 56:05David Hoffman?

  Internet capital markets.

• 56:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's go. The level of comfort that I think this statement, these tweets give to founders should not be underestimated. Totally. And so now you have a leadership that's aligned, but you're asking like, do we get something out of this? Guess who's still there? Hester Purse is still freaking there. She's had ideas around this for like five years. They just haven't been able to be implemented. So I don't know if you read her speech, but it's just basically her sandbox idea where she's talking about creating, letting firms in a sandbox style, issue, trade, and settle tokenized stocks, just like totally on-chain, right? Cutting through the red tape, allowing that to happen. Right now it barely happens because there's like no way to do it. And

• 56:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  this would be an SEC program that encourages tokenized securities rather than chills it. There's not even a neutralization, right? So I think some people, when thinking about the SEC model, they're like, Gary's out, so now the SEC is not going to come after us. That's true, but I think it's more than that. What I'm saying to you is like, now we have a pro crypto SEC that's actually trying to promote tokenized securities. That's what these statements mean to me.

• 57:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah. What I'm saying here is that the SEC is seeing blockchain technology as an extension of its mandate rather than an antagonistic technology.

• 57:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, imagine that.

• 57:26David Hoffman?

  The technology itself is the thing that helps fair and orderly capital formation, which is the mandate of the SEC. Yes.

• 57:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Their mandate. We also have BlackRock talking to them right now. So I think, by the way, David, we don't have any official information about this, but it seems like an ETH-staking ETF has got to be on the way. I think this year that that's got to be approved.

• 57:47David Hoffman?

  Do you think the, if, when all of the ETH ETFs get converted to ETH-staking ETFs, which I think is inevitable, it's just a near-term or long-term debate, how bullish do you think that that is?

• 57:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  For price?

• 57:59David Hoffman?

  For ETH price, correct. Yeah.

• 58:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, I like, I think that I hazard to guess at this point because I've been so freaking wrong on like the ETH ETF since this summer. Like the inflows have been okay, but they haven't really like been super impressive. So I don't think that independently will actually make price go up. I don't think the stake in ETF.

• 58:22David Hoffman?

  I do not, I do not think that the conversion of the ETFs to stake in ETFs will have a material impact on the dollar price of ETH.

• 58:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  I get it. So, so maybe because we think that, that's a counter indicator and actually will this time. So who knows, man?

• 58:35David Hoffman?

  We should be bearish on ETH about everything.

• 58:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was our big mistake.

• 58:42David Hoffman?

  Okay, downstream of all of this very bullish news about the SEC giving us the words that we need, being awesome, and giving us the words we need to put tokenized stocks on-chain. Superstate is putting tokenized stocks on-chain. They are launching their OpenBell platform with their first client. And so what is OpenBell? Opening Bell, that is the platform that for Superstate, Superstate is Robert Leschner's startup, that is going to issue tokenized securities, basically, and put them on-chain. And so, Robert Leschner wrote in his press release, "Through Opening Bell, stocks will become fully transferable, programmable, and integrated into DeFi." Their first client, Sol Strategies, a Canadian public company focused on being the micro-strategy for Solana. And then they're going to have a few other clients as well.

• 59:26David Hoffman?

  And so, it's nice to have this news in the same, in stark contrast to the fake internet capital markets, which are tokenized, vibe-coded, meme-coin-issued apps. You actually have Robert Leschner tokenizing real securities, putting them on-chain, which I think is great. Wouldn't it be so funny if Robert Leschner, the guy that made Compound and is now tokenizing securities, tokenizes Sol Strategies for the Ethereum blockchain and tokenizes them on Ethereum?

• 59:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  What am I bullish on in this situation?

• 59:58David Hoffman?

  I don't know, I'm confused.

• 1:00:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just buy all the things, I guess. Speaking of buying all the things, JD Vance, he's a Bitcoin holder, and he's going to be attending the Bitcoin 2025 conference. First time a sitting vice president is going to a Bitcoin conference, I believe, or any crypto conference. And Trump administration is just locked in. I mean, this is another hats off to the Bitcoin community. They're just stacking up political win after political win here and like playing the game well.

• 1:00:25David Hoffman?

  You know, I cannot look at a picture of JD Vance today and be like, is that a real one or is that a fake one? I can't tell.

• 1:00:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love the JD Vance memes. David, lastly, you know Meta, that Mark Zuckerberg's company? They're talking about stablecoins again, all right? Integrating them with WhatsApp. So I don't know if you saw the interview, Mark Zuckerberg and it's one of the Colsons from Stripe, just talking about Libra where that went wrong and what Facebook is, what Meta is actually doing with stablecoins. And the answer is, they're like evaluating it seriously. I would not be surprised if you saw a stablecoin in WhatsApp, if you saw a stablecoin maybe on Instagram, Facebook, they've hired around this. They actually picked up a new hire that's going to lead this effort, Vice President. She's actually from Stellar, by the way. So I don't know how this is gonna go.

• 1:01:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  But conversations are heating up and like, you know, every, if Meta does this, every single tech company is going, social tech company is going to have a stablecoin strategy.

• 1:01:27David Hoffman?

  You know, it's hard to have, it's hard to be bearish right now. It's actually, it's quite easy to be bullish. Like, everyone is trying to build a stablecoin. We have all the macro news that we went through, which is leading into a gargantuan Bitcoin pump. There's, there's a lot of things to be bullish about.

• 1:01:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't think there's reason to, like, I think it was harder, like, when, when I was out, it seemed like it was hard to be bullish, you know? Like, like February, March?

• 1:01:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you came back at the right time.

• 1:01:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  I came back. I skipped, I skipped all the bear stuff. I'm here for the bull stuff.

• 1:01:54David Hoffman?

  You skipped the worst three months of crypto that I've ever remembered.

• 1:01:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, hopefully you are timing this as well as I am. Risks and disclaimers, God, let 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.