ROLLUP: Steph Curry & Tom Brady FTX | Crypto Regulation & SEC | Solana & Arbitrum

2nd Week of September, 2021 ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 🔀 BALANCER | EXCHANGE & POOL ASSETS https://bankless.cc/balancer 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING http://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ 📣 SoRare | Collect and Play! https://bankless.cc/SoRare ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 2:43 MARKETS 2:53 BTC Price 3:30 ETH Price 3:53 ETH/BTC Ratio 4:17 Flash-Crash Liquidations https://twitter.com/lawmaster/status/1435261928335712256 8:48 DeFi Action 11:11 BED Index https://www.indexcoop.com/bed UMA: https://twitter.com/Crypto_Texan/status/1435648928117051395?s=20 12:18 Layer 2 Crossed $1B: https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1434767992781344770 L2 Fees: https://l2fees.info/ Uni Optimism: https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1433283225183395840 16:58 EIP 1559 Watch the Burn: https://watchtheburn.com/ 96 ETH Block: https://etherscan.io/block/13180434 Deflationary Day: https://twitter.com/DocumentEther/status/1434063085229150216?s=20 22:45 ETH Killers Solana: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/solana Trading Multiples: https://twitter.com/tokenterminal/status/1435851178265485312?s=20 L1 Season: https://messari.io/screener/smart-contract-platforms-DC75E6E0 32:00 RELEASES 33:00 Merit Circle Correction https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1435238163195342857?s=20 37:55 dYdX Governance Token https://twitter.com/AntonioMJuliano/status/1435412508555169796?s=20 39:35 Ultimate DAO Report https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1435733988325281793?s=20 41:03 Rocketpool Mainnet https://medium.com/rocket-pool/rocket-pool-staking-protocol-part-4-2635c44e4f7e 43:04 HopProtocol Integrations https://twitter.com/HopProtocol/status/1435304869712248832 44:01 Argent Teasing L2 https://twitter.com/argentHQ/status/1435637539956736001?s=20 45:53 Hyppe https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ/status/1433101142406451202?s=20 48:10 Tokenizing MEV https://multicoin.capital/2021/09/08/tokenizing-mev/ Robert Miller: https://twitter.com/bertcmiller/status/1435686477359419395?s=20 52:12 Bankless Jobs https://jobs.banklesshq.com/ 52:55 NEWS 53:07 Probing Uniswap https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1433746723554435074?s=20 55:18 Coinbase & SEC https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1435439291715358721 1:02:35 SEC wants Names https://twitter.com/NeerajKA/status/1435574854040924164?s=20 1:06:05 Regulation Takes Jake: https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1435691779970506752?s=20 Adam: https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1435458298698993665?s=20 ChainLinkGod: https://twitter.com/ChainLinkGod/status/1435452080068567040?s=20 Mark Cuban: https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1435454959441620995?s=20 Jerry Brito: https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1435557430910459906?s=20 Ryan: https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1435586734046302214?s=20 Eric: https://twitter.com/econoar/status/1435445187682005000?s=20 1:13:45 Brian Quintenz a16z https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/09/09/former-crypto-friendly-regulator-quintenz-joins-vc-firm-a16z/ 1:14:33 Panama https://twitter.com/gabrielsilva8_7/status/1435015640226615299 1:15:54 Quick Takes 1:19:30 NFT News Polygon: https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic/status/1435958909651537922?s=20 Immutable: https://twitter.com/Immutable/status/1433703349061242882 Christies: https://twitter.com/ChristiesInc/status/1435346651217108996?s=20 Polymarket: https://twitter.com/PolymarketHQ/status/1435631367598088201 Vitalik: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1435413681588736007?s=20 Loot: https://twitter.com/dhof/status/1435673868920836097?s=20 1:24:09 Bitcoin News El Salvador: https://cointelegraph.com/news/el-salvador-purchases-first-200-btc-president-bukele-confirms Adoption: https://twitter.com/kerooke/status/1435670696248725508?s=20 1:27:00 TAKES 1:27:30 Web3d https://twitter.com/jackbutcher/status/1435232382257405958?s=21 1:29:15 Consent of the Governed https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1435670359492071424?s=20 1:30:05 The Shadow Bank https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1434549938466136065?s=20 1:31:38 Celebrities 1:33:45 What David’s Excited About 1:34:54 What Ryan’s Excited About https://www.reddit.com/r/ethfinance/comments/pk57n7/why_rollups_data_shards_are_the_only_sustainable/ 1:39:00 Meme of the Week https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1435596609618735110?s=20 1:40:00 Closing & Disclaimers ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

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

• 0:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, it is the second week of September and it's roll up time. How are you doing, David?

• 0:13David Hoffman?

  Pretty good, Ryan. Ready to get into the weekly roll up. Again, so much happened this last week. The crypto world only gets crazier and crazier. Got celebrities getting into crypto. We had a flash crash. NFTs continuing to do NFT thing. So we got to go ahead and get right into it and roll all of this up.

• 0:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, did you get some gray hairs from that flash crash, man? It's like, it's like an instant, 25% down. Did that cause any pain?

• 0:37David Hoffman?

  Nah, nah, we were on, we were on a call while it happened. I was like, hey, Ryan, look at the, look, go look at the ETH price. And you were like, what, what was it at? Is that, and I said, oh, is that 3,000? You go, oh, wow, 3,000 is really doing well. Like, no, no, no, dude, not 4,000, 3,000.

• 0:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 0:52David Hoffman?

  I was like, oh, wow, holy crap.

• 0:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  4K.

• 0:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and then we popped right back up.

• 0:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was also not bothered by that. Anyway, this is crypto. This is what you come to expect. And this is definitely what you come to expect in the roll ups. We get you the entire week that was crypto, all packed into markets, news, some hot takes, meme of the week. We're about to get into it. But before we do, David, we got to tell them about SoRare.

• 1:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, SoRare Fantasy Football on Ethereum, where you can actually pick out your team and create a fantasy sports, but using NFTs on Ethereum. So you can even create your lineups, you create, yeah, select a captain. You get points based on real life performances as one does with fantasy sports. And you can even get weekly prizes by playing fantasy football with SoRare.

• 1:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's super cool is these are all NFTs, right? And they're all layer two NFTs. So that means like bye bye gas fees, no gas fees on this. SoRare just let us know too, that La Liga, which is one of the top five world football leagues, just signed a major long-term NFT partnership with them. That just happened this week. If you are a soccer fan, if you're a football fan, you know, that is absolutely massive news. That includes both of their leagues, their first division, La Liga Santander, and also La Liga Smart Bank. That's super cool. And I didn't know this, David, but SoRare already Has half a million registered users. They've sold over 130 million dollars worth of NFTs

• 2:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  since January. So this is absolutely exploding and it's no wonder, right? Like you could see it coming. We've got sports over here, fantasy sports. We've got NFTs over here, match made in heaven. You add some, some layer two, so low gas fees and you've got a platform that is expanding and growing. So Bankless Nation, if you are interested in this, go check them out at sorare.com. We'll include a link in the show notes. That's S O R A R E dot com. Go check it out.

• 2:44David Hoffman?

  Just further proving that NFTs are how Ethereum markets itself to the rest of the world. So thanks to Sorare for sponsoring this Bankless Blitz.

• 2:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Totally true. Okay, David, we should get to the markets. What's happening in Bitcoin land?

• 2:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Bitcoin started the week at $46,000, got down to the low of 45,250, got up to the high of 52,700 and then back down to where it is currently at $47,000. So overall down 3.5% on the week. Yeah, look at that. Yeah, you're muted, Ryan. But yeah, that is a straight line down from 52,000 down to 47,000. It all happened within like two hours, it looks like.

• 3:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I was just saying, it looks like an elevator all the way down. That happened on Tuesday, was it right? Like Tuesday morning. Okay, it's all a blur. Same thing happened with ETH price, right? We see that elevator down effect. So where did we start? Where do we end on the week?

• 3:37David Hoffman?

  Started at 3,760, hit a high of 3,975 and then found a low at 3,300 and we are currently clocking in at $3,520. Overall down 6.5% on the week.

• 3:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, what's our ratio looking like? The ETH to Bitcoin ratio, which we monitor on a weekly basis is, are we up or are we down?

• 3:59David Hoffman?

  We're a little bit down, but not by much. I believe we started the week at 0.7877 and now we are clocking in that point, excuse me, 0.078, I think is the high that we also started the week at. And then we are at 0.075. So down 3.4% on the week.

• 4:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's explore this flash crash a little bit. That's what they're calling it, a flash crash, of course. This is Larry Sermack. He said, "More than 2.6 billion worth of positions were liquidated in the last hour. Looks like there was a lot of leverage clean out, and that was over 1.1 billion in Bitcoin leverage flushed down the toilet. $700 million worth of ETH." Larry says, "If you ask me, perfectly healthy leverage flush. Funding rates on alt were spiking too much," he says. What's your take on this? Was this just leverage getting flushed out of the market? Do we need to detox ourselves?

• 4:52David Hoffman?

  It's always leverage, dude. It's always leverage. Everyone gets really scared when, like, sometimes a crypto market's just like, cut off like, you know, 15% of the total market cap in like, you know, like, five blocks, right? Like, 15 minutes, right? And like, everyone, like, all my normie friends, everyone asks, like, "What caused the market crash? Was it a whale that dumped?" Like, no, the answer is always leverage. It has been leverage every single time. It will continue to be leverage. When you see these extremely violent rapid moves, and it looks like the whole entire industry's going to zero for a brief moment, and everyone gets spooked, it's always leverage. People got too leveraged, then they levered up way too much, then the market moved in a, you know, modest degree to the downside, which caused some people to get liquidated.

• 5:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cascading liquidations, baby.

• 5:37David Hoffman?

  Liquidations, which caused liquidations, and then it bottoms out at some point in time. And overall, like, as far as a, like, cascading liquidations event, this one was pretty modest. This one was pretty modest.

• 5:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's funny, because, so I tweeted out, not long after this, David, "Quick, everybody, go look for an unrelated news event to blame this flash crash on," because I think that's what always happened. What was interesting about Tuesday was, there was nothing really going on in the news, so crypto media and, like, wider media couldn't attach any event to this thing. I think if it happened maybe like Wednesday or Thursday, they would have blamed it on the SEC news with Coinbase, but of course, this happened before that. So, sometimes these things just happen, as David says. It's like, it's just leverage flushing its way out of the system. One take for you, I want to ask you a question. I saw a Reddit post, somebody said, "This is why crypto will never be mainstream. It's because you can get it like, in instant..."

• 6:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  10, 15, 20% drop in terms of price. What's your take on that?

• 6:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So the reason why crypto always gets like these leverage flushes is because people keep on leveraging up because people are so incredibly bullish. They're like, oh, I missed out. I need to grab more. So I'm going to go on leverage. And so it's really just like there's an, everyone in crypto is bullish. So they're always leveraging up. And like, if everyone in this industry is bullish, like that is a mainstreaming phenomenon. Like all, all people in the crypto markets are bullish. And that's why we, this whole entire industry is proponent towards leverage. And so when someone comes and says like, this is why crypto will never be mainstream. The reason why these happens is because everyone in crypto understands that we are going mainstream, right? Like, that's why we're all leveraging up all the time.

• 7:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I also feel like, uh, what's going to happen is actually volatility is going to become normalized.

• 7:25David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes.

• 7:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think people are just going to get used to it.

• 7:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? Just like, yeah, a 10, 20% day, whatever. As soon as we start creating tokens out of everything and then markets out of all of the tokens we just created, we're going to have spikes in volatility like this and it will become just part of the daily thing that happens. This is not the S and P 500 folks. We don't have a Fed backing these assets and a plunge protection team that's going to come out and make sure everything's like super stabilized. We live in a real wild free market. So we're not, this volatility is not going away. I think people just get used to it.

• 8:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I mean, this is a different subject, maybe not for the weekly rollout, but I also think that like volatility, volatility is going towards the traditional markets as well. I think crypto is just a sign of things to come. And also volatility, if you can handle your volatility, you are anti fragile. Right? It's, it's the markets that can't handle anti, that can't handle volatility are the ones that break. Uh, and so this is why like crypto is a great foundation because we are born inside of like volatility. Like we are birthed inside of it. It's like that Bane meme. Like we understand volatility to the nth degree.

• 8:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. One last thing I'll say is don't take leverage, folks. Be careful with margin. This can happen in a hurry. If this is your first cycle, be very wary of taking leverage. You could be the next one liquidated. All right, let's talk about this total locked value in DeFi. Ah, man, we were skimming that 100 billion mark. We got to 98 billion, but now we're down, David. What are we looking at for total locked value in DeFi?

• 8:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think at the last weekly roll up, we had just breached the last all time high. And even after of this liquidation flash, like flash crash, which again, didn't really set us back all that much. We are still like tied with the previous all time high, right? So now the, now the all time high is $98 billion locked in DeFi. We are clocking in currently at 90 billion locked in DeFi. But the overall definitely up on the week for sure.

• 9:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about DeFi tokens themselves. Where are we on the week? It looks like we're down.

• 9:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we're down a little bit with the DPI started the week at $425 and we went down to $366 overall. Down 14% on the week. So DPI, DeFi got hit harder than BTC and ETH.

• 9:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Down 14% on the week. Part of me wonders, David, if these DeFi tokens are starting to get attractive. At least these Ethereum DeFi tokens, like they haven't seen a bull run in a while. And some of them, I mean, YFI is cranking out some serious cash. I think its valuation is something like, you know, fairly low billion dollars or something like that. Anyway, let's talk about.

• 10:03David Hoffman?

  Are you just teeing this up about how low the DPI slash ETH ratio is?

• 10:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was trying to help you out here, David, but why don't you tell me what the DPI to ETH ratio is?

• 10:15David Hoffman?

  Holding its head above water at point one, which is meaningfully below my point one, three bottom call. About 30% lower than it.

• 10:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  He said it meaningfully below.

• 10:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, no, this is, it did not hold. Hey, it held it for a while, put up a valiant effort. But overall, that downward slope from like the March high that DPI versus ETH painted at point two, five. We are just continuing this downtrend, setting new lows with DPI versus ETH.

• 10:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, ETH is holding up fairly strong and then DPI is kind of staying stagnant is sort of the reason for this.

• 10:49David Hoffman?

  ETH is a really tough benchmark to be evaluated against, right? Like, this isn't DPI versus the dollar, this is DPI versus ETH. So like, yeah, like, losing versus ETH is kind of expected.

• 10:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  We've also seen some seasonal shifts, which we'll get to in a little bit further as we talk about markets. It very much seems like ETH killer season, alternative layer one season, which we'll discuss in just a minute. But before we do, let's talk about the bed index. Where are we on the week? This is, of course, Bitcoin, ETH, and DPI, 33, a third, a third, a third split. What are we looking at?

• 11:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is the first week that the bed index had a meaningfully down week. It's had other down weeks before, but it was only like 1% or 2%. This week, the bed index is down 8% from $164 to $149. But if you zoom all the way out, the total all-time chart looks great. It is still pretty solid. And so, we are, the bed index has some sort of floor that is painted, right around like $145 to $150. And that's kind of what it's been doing for the past, like, month or so, ranging between $175 and $145. So, yeah, that's the bed index.

• 12:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Invest in bed, sleep comfy at night, folks. UMA Protocol is doing that. They just purchased a million dollars' worth of the bed index for their treasury. It's pretty cool to see other DAOs dipping their toes in the water. Good way to diversify your treasury if you are a DAO. Let's talk about layer twos, David. 1 billion now locked in Ethereum layer twos. This does not include Polygon. This is just layer twos. We crossed that mark last week pretty massive.

• 12:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, up to almost 13% on the week. I believe we might have dipped below 1 billion in the, because this tweet is, I think, two days old. But we crossed 1 billion and like, we're right around it right now. But overall, definitely a lovely adoption by the L2 ecosystem.

• 12:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's pretty impressive and we'll continue to monitor L2s. But another way to look at L2s is this new metrics board that came out. This is a l2fees.info. You can check out Ethereum Layer 1 is expensive, but how much does it cost to use Layer 2? That's the question. And look at this. Loopring clocks out at the cheapest. This is to transfer ETH only 37 cents per ETH. Whereas on Ethereum right now, if you're moving ETH around, it costs like $9, $9 to $10. And then we see some other solutions here like Hermes, Polygon's Hermes is 40 cents to transfer ETH, all the way up to Optimism and Arbitrum. Arbitrum costs about $3, Optimism close to $6. What's your take here?

• 13:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a couple of takes here. This A illustrates how more cheap ZK rollups are versus optimistic rollups. The ZK rollups are the extra super, super cheap ones, clocking in at below a dollar. The optimistic rollups, which are Optimism and Arbitrum, they have throttles on their L2s right now because they're kind of still in that rollout phase. So they haven't actually totally unlocked all the capacity that they have. And so they just, they just don't want to like just yeet into a fully just like open ecosystem. They want to have a more controlled rollout. So they've throttled their, their Layer 2 capacity, which is why those, the ETH transfers are still in the multiple dollars range. And but like as, as they open up more capacity and as more people enter the L2,

• 14:12David Hoffman?

  those numbers are actually going to come down and down and down over time. So while, while we're kind of watching the Ethereum L1 gas fees kind of be up only, I also kind of think the L2 fees are generally going to be like flat or down only until it actually does hit some like inflection point where the actual capacity of these things do max out. But we are still pretty far away from maxing out the capacity of both Arbitrum and Optimism. We talked about this subject in length with the Arbitrum team on today's State of the Nation. And so if you want to understand the gas markets on optimistic rollups, like to a pretty like expert level degree, definitely watch that, that show with them.

• 14:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. It helps me really understand like gas fees on Arbitrum in particular. Optimism works similarly, but as you were saying, David, as they get more users, they actually are able to spread some of the fixed fees that it costs to settle on main chain across a wider set of users. So gas fees go down for everybody. And I think we will see a continued decrease in gas fees on Layer 2. But then, super interesting, and we'll get to this maybe toward the end of that episode, once we get data sharding in ETH 2.0, that's just a massive unlock where we get like

• 15:28David Hoffman?

  A 90% reduction in fees.

• 15:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, even like, it's just going to be absolutely crazy. And that is a big unlock coming to ETH 2, happening after the merge. Sort of put that together after talking to Arbitrum, talking about Ethereum's rollup-centric scalability path that it's on. Anyway, some cool stuff there, but let's talk about this. They're also printing the revenue too, these Layer 2. So Optimism had a record trading volume day yesterday.

• 15:56David Hoffman?

  Uniswap, Uniswap on Optimism had a record trading. Yeah, so Uniswap traded almost $7 million on Optimism yesterday. And so if you are frustrated by the gas prices on Ethereum, and you're still using Uniswap on L1, consider moving over to Optimism. That's what it's for.

• 16:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's it like to move over, David? You've moved over, I assume, a few times, trying Polygone, trying Optimism, that sort of thing. It just costs some fees to bridge across, and then it's fairly easy after that, right? You use the same tools you have?

• 16:26David Hoffman?

  Right. No, that's exactly right. Like, you just point your MetaMask to a different RPC endpoint. It's as simple as like dragging and dropping on a dropdown menu. I think if you go to the Optimism site, they actually even generate the prompt for you. So you just have to click accept. And then it's just one L1 transaction from your wallet to the Optimism contract. And then, once you do that, the money shows up in your wallet on the Optimism chain. And then, you can like, you know, swap freely for funsies as much as you want. It's

• 16:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Easy as that. All right. Let's talk about the ETH burn, David. It's had a crazy week in terms of the amount of ETH being burnt. Of course, that's because gas fees are high. That's because Ethereum block space demand is high. But what are we looking at on the week as far as ETH burned? Is this a record-setting week?

• 17:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we almost had seven days of deflationary issuance, right? So we had, how much total issuance? 94,000 Ether issued in the last seven days and 87,000 of that Ether was burnt due to EIP1559. So we had a net issuance of 7,300 Ether over the last seven days, which over proof of work, or excuse me, over pre-EIP1559, we actually reduced issuance. EIP1559 reduced issuance by 92%. And that is not even talking about proof of stake, which also lowers issuance by another like 90%. So we are seeing, watching Ether become ultrasound in real time.

• 17:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, I saw this metric yesterday. We don't have it up, but you know, all of the ETH that's been minted for ETH 2.0 and this as a result of people staking, right? That's kind of collecting on the stake.

• 18:03David Hoffman?

  Deposits into the deposit contract?

• 18:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, and but the issuance from the deposits in deposit, so the staking reward essentially. You take that entire like reward and, and you subtract, well, if you take the, the entire amount of reward and you subtract the burn, we've actually burnt more than everything we've issued in ETH 2.0. It's absolutely crazy. Over the first like, it's been 30, 40 days now of ETH burnt. And we've already compensated for all of that additional issuance that has come from the ETH 2.0 staking contract. So pretty phenomenal there. What are we looking at this particular block? You wanted to highlight this, David?

• 18:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is the new highest burned block ever. So block number 13180434. Congratulations to that block. It burned 96 Ether inside of one block. 96 Ether. That's more Ether than is what is issued over the The next 45 blocks, I think that's the right math. So that is pretty crazy. The base fee for this block clocked in at 3,200 Gwei. So like that's going like, imagine going into your MetaMask and you're saying like, okay, setting, setting my gas price to 3,200 Gwei.

• 19:26David Hoffman?

  Well, it was definitely an NFT drop or no, maybe this, this actually could have been the liquid, one of the, one of the liquidation blocks, right? So there, this could have been a lot of like arbitrage. Uh, and, uh, people like people actually liquidating people out of their positions in Ave Compound or DYDX or any like leverage platform. Uh, and so like the, this is, uh, where a bunch of like, MEV bots are competing to, to buy out people's collateral because they were over collateralized. And so this is where we get into the meme of bullish selling, right? So like, if there's a bunch of liquidations, it actually burns more ether because everyone's clamoring to buy block space. Uh, it's always a fun little meme when we see like ETH price goes down it, but then it also burns a ton of ETH in the process.

• 20:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  But that's what's funny about this, right? So, um, we'd only see a block with gas prices, the gas fees this high if it was worth it for somebody to actually pay these to get the economic value, um, out of that transaction. If it wasn't worth it, like we wouldn't see the gas fees bid up to this. So this is an economically valuable block.

• 20:25David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 20:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  I suppose it was worth it to somebody.

• 20:27David Hoffman?

  This block produced at least 96 ether worth of value for all the transactions inside of it.

• 20:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's, that's one way to put it. Absolutely. This is another graph of ETH's first deflationary day, David. So if you guys are watching on, on YouTube, you can see it depicted very well. What are we looking at here?

• 20:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we're just seeing, so in the blue, we have the issuance and in the red, we have the burn. And I mean, this is almost implied. Uh, we said that we almost had our first week of deflation, uh, with, with ether and its monetary policy. We had actually two days inside of this week where ether was actually more deflationary than it was, uh, inflationary. Uh, and we were just seeing these, these gas fees just go up and up and up. And it's largely because of NFTs. Uh, and there's actually some fantastic data about this that, that we're, we're going to show. Yeah. Here is the second day. So. The two, the top two days, number one was the 8th of September, which is yesterday at the time of recording. And then the, the number two day was the 9th of September, which is

• 21:25David Hoffman?

  today. And that was 16,000 ETH burned and then 14,800 ETH burned on those last two days. And then the number three day was the fourth. So it's all in September. It's all in the last like two weeks or so.

• 21:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this is correlated with NFTs. You could see that in this graph. What are we looking at?

• 21:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So NFTs are gas intensive. Since they are unique tokens, they are unique objects and require like much more gas and computation to make a transaction. And so all these NFT activity is really, it's over, is really over consuming gas on Ethereum more than anything else, right? And so according to Takes theorem, this was a fantastic tweet. NFTs account for 42% of the variation in the base fee, as in like when you go and you look at like the base fee or the GUE costs to get your transaction in, 42% of the reason of why that number is whatever that number is, when you look at it, is because of NFTs. As in like NFTs are dictating the direction of the gas costs on Ethereum, 42% of it.

• 22:26David Hoffman?

  Like there's, there's 58% of unaccounted, like generalized Ethereum activity that's not NFTs. And then 42% of that activity is NFTs. And so you can see like as NFT markets heat up, base, base fee prices also heat up.

• 22:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this is an interesting, I think, like segue into our next conversation, which is this monster Solana run. And maybe even more broadly than this, like a monster layer one, alternative layer one, non Ethereum ETH killer sort of run that we've seen. Because here's the narrative, David. The Ethereum people are over here celebrating like fee burns, right?

• 23:04David Hoffman?

  We're celebrating high fees.

• 23:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're, we're celebrating high fees in a way, right? With this fee burn metric, which is good for the entire ecosystem, and certainly way better than, than pre EIP 1559. Meanwhile, the, it's costing $80 to, to do a Uniswap transaction. If I want to mint an NFT, maybe that's going to cost $150. Like people are Saying we can't afford to use Ethereum and then they're also starting to see some NFTs on other chains like some DeFi on other chains. So Solana is one, Avalanche is another. So let's talk about that in the context of what we have seen over the last 30 days. And even just this week, even with despite the flash crash, an absolutely monster run that Solana has had.

• 23:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  So this is kind of 90 days. 90 days ago, Solana was $37. Now we're above $200. I mean, I could look at that on the one year too.

• 23:59David Hoffman?

  It was even further, yeah.

• 23:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's like $3 to over $200. An absolutely monster run. What do you think is going on here? What's the, what's the narrative that's taken hold?

• 24:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, first and foremost, it's always something when something moves this violently, especially to the upside. And especially when it didn't have that much of like a history prior, it's always reflexivity. Like people are seeing people pile into a trade and then they pile into a trade and then more people pile into the trade. The amount of reflexivity that this kicked into gear was like absolutely insane. I think this is one of the biggest like reflexivity price movements I we've ever seen. But when something goes from like $50 to $200 in the course of like 30 days, like it's traders. Traders are acknowledging that people are also acknowledging like how Solana might actually be the ETH killer. That actually takes the ETH killer slot.

• 24:52David Hoffman?

  But then you also see like there's other, other quote unquote ETH killers have also performed like just as well as Solana in the last month. Like Phantom comes to mind, even Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot. And this happens every single bull run. And just like we were talking about with, with the high fees, like Ethereum has a certain amount of block space. And it has like its population of people that's willing to consume that block space. And as that population of people that is willing to consume that block space goes up, so does the cost of buying that block space, which also pushes out more and more people who and out prices them out of that block space. And so those people have to find alternatives. We like, we are proponents of layer two alternatives, but the other all answer is that there's other blockchains that you can go do like crypto stuff on.

• 25:36David Hoffman?

  And so the, the narrative that why these trades get reflexive is that everyone's like, all right, like people are going to like get price out of Ethereum. Where are they going to go? And I think a lot of people have. Included Solana as like the first and primary destination after Ethereum that people go once they get priced out of that block space. And so this kind of created that reflexivity in the price action. So people, in my opinion, people are pricing in Solana as like the ETH killer that like beat out all the other ETH killers.

• 26:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  The ETH killer that lived.

• 26:07David Hoffman?

  The ETH killer that lived, yeah.

• 26:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So I mean, that's an interesting narrative, right? It's like, and here's actually what this looks like on Token Terminal as well. So you can definitely see that as a function of the amount of transaction fees, the revenue that it's producing, it's still trading at a colossal multiple to ETH. So like, as a function of transaction fee revenue, ETH is a price to sales ratio of about 40, whereas Solana is 3,800. So Solana is definitely pricing as if you take the lens of a capital asset, it's pricing in a tremendous amount of growth, right? In order to justify that, fee revenue would have to increase by 100 to match what Ethereum is doing. But it feels like it has sort of consolidated and taken the mantle from a bunch of the other ETH

• 26:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  killers. Although, I will also make the argument that maybe we're just in a season here, David, like ETH killer season, okay? We didn't get DeFi season this summer, but maybe we got ETH killer season, at least over the past couple of months. Because if you look at this, this is an assortment of all smart contract platforms, and I'm going to sort this by 30-day, David. So you see, like Phantom, you're talking about earlier, that's even up more than Solana over 30 days. It's up 509%. Solana is up 388%. But then you also have like Near Protocol, 250%. Cadena, 180%. That's a blast from the past. Elgorand, 171%. Avalanche, 161% over the last 30 days. If you look at this

• 27:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  year-to-date, it's absolutely even, like, it's even crazier. You have to scroll all the way down, I think, to like, number 40 or something, to see Ethereum in the 30 days. So it's also possible we're just in a season that we see every other cycle, that this is kind of a new narrative that's taken hold. Do you think that's what's going on? Or do you think that some of these alternative layer ones actually have some staying power?

• 28:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, we definitely saw this in 2017, 2018. Like when Ethereum was congested in 2017, we saw EOS pump right afterwards. But as soon as like the bear market came, all the activity on the actual Ethereum blockchain and the developer activity just died out. And then as went the EOS price. Do I think that that is, we're going to just see a repeat of that? Like perhaps not. I don't really think a bear market is going to come and therefore like more and more activity can come on to these non-Ethereum chains because people are going to continue to be priced out of the L1 and then also not migrate over to the L2 and just choose to migrate to a different L1. Also, at the same time, like EOS has not seen the level of just like brute force like marketing from like Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, right?

• 28:51David Hoffman?

  So this is going to be another thing we're going to talk about later on the show, but like we get there. There's Tom Brady like shilling FTX on like global commercials, right? Along with Steph Curry, who also just signed a deal with FTX. And FTX is kind of just a proxy for Solana, right? Like FTX is Sam Bankman-Fried, Solana is Sam Bankman-Fried. So like if you're seeing FTX cast a wide net trying to capture new users, those new users might be going over to Solana because FTX is like incentivized to like, you know, shill Solana more than anything else.

• 29:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  So what does this mean? Does this mean, do you think that the ETH killer value proposition is winning, is correct? Or are we just in a, in a cycle that assumes it is? What are we, what are we, what's the market pricing in here, David?

• 29:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think the market is pricing in people not prioritizing decentralization as the current cohort of people that find themselves inside of crypto. I think the people that aren't yet in crypto, the people that are still not crypto people, but destined to become crypto people in the future. I think those people will care about decentralization less than the people that are already in crypto. Because if you're already in crypto, you probably cared about decentralization more. That's why you came here already. And so I think traders and like the Solana run are pricing in a new generation of crypto people who might not have the same like decentralization values as the old crypto people. And so like that, which is something to be concerned about.

• 30:19David Hoffman?

  I'm kind of concerned about the concept of like, if you can be regulated, you will be regulated. It's an outstanding question as to whether or not Solana can be regulated. But when you have like a centralized company, FTX, and a centralized person, Sam Bankman-Fried, like promoting this thing, like And like also, there are significant decentralization compromises to the Solana ecosystem, right? And so like, that is going to be the thing that this industry has to like parse apart and come to terms with is like, do if we want to onboard all the world, like, can we how significant can we sacrifice our decentralized values in order to onboard more and more people? And is that going to be a net positive trade in the long term?

• 30:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you know, two other things that that might indicate that this is kind of a cyclical narrative is, you know, one, I don't think we've seen layer two on Ethereum really hit its stride. And so, once it does, this might sort of change things. The other thing I would say is like, it's really hard to get signal out of a market that prices Cardano at $80 billion. Okay? Like, Cardano does not really have DeFi. It has staking that you can do in Cardano, but like, there's not much there as far as an ecosystem. I would contrast that to the Solana ecosystem where there's actual apps, there's a well, there's stuff you can do. Cardano, it's kind of like tumbleweeds ghost town, and yet it's worth more. It's worth $80 billion.

• 31:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I just have a hard time parsing the signal out of this, and we'll have to see how this plays out over the long term. I will say, Bankless is definitely biased towards the most decentralized platforms ultimately winning. Not to say that other layer ones don't have a place, and other platforms won't have a place in this story. But I think the the Bankless thesis has been from day one, like, hey, in order to have a monetary system and a monetary unit and true DeFi, you need maximal decentralization. And the platforms with maximal decentralization, the Bitcoins and the Ethereum's of the world, will power law accrue most of the value. Now, we'll see how that thesis plays out and holds up over time. But hey, this has been an interesting

• 32:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  three or four months to witness. All right, guys, we will be back with releases. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 32:37David Hoffman?

  Banklist is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum, which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswap ecosystem is the Uniswap Grants Program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again. DAOs have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswap DAO, apply for a grant to Uniswap.

• 33:21David Hoffman?

  Just look at the size of the Uniswap treasury. It's almost $3 billion. This mountain of capital is looking for labor. Do you have something of value to contribute to the Uniswap DAO? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a uni-grant at unigrants.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Banklist and you can do the same for your project. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Banklist. The Aave Protocol is a decentralized liquidity protocol on Ethereum, which allows users to supply and borrow certain crypto assets. Aave version 2 has a ton of cool features that makes using the Aave Protocol even more powerful.

• 34:04David Hoffman?

  With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi money legos, yield and composability, all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can supply to the protocol in order to gain yield. And all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have supplied collateral. Here you can see me borrowing 200 USDC against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens in ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option. But I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock in that interest rate in permanently. V2 also features the ability for users to swap collateral without having to withdraw their assets, trade them on Uniswap and then deposit them back into Aave.

• 34:48David Hoffman?

  With Aave, users can do this in one seamless transaction, saving you time and gas costs. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com.

• 35:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey guys, we are back with the news of the week. David, we've got to start here with Merit Circle. Last time, I called these guys a ZK rollup and I was confusing them with another solution called Metis. In fact, I think I just called them a rollup. Metis is a solution that is basically a fork of optimism. They're doing some interesting things in the rollup world, but Merit Circle is completely different. They tweeted me after the show, they said, "I guess we're a ZK rollup now?" Sorry guys.

• 35:29David Hoffman?

  Hey, we don't make mistakes often on Bankless. This is the first time we've had to like actually do a correction on the last week.

• 35:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Usually we edit those out.

• 35:38David Hoffman?

  We do usually edit those out. Usually we find them before we publish it.

• 35:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  So with that said, I think Merit Circle actually deserves some explanation. These guys are creating a DAO, which is kind of a play to earn DAO, which is a super cool idea. In my World of Warcraft Diablo days, I used to be like part of all of these different guilds and you'd like come together. You'd like win items as a group and you'd like succeed as a team. Basically, they're kind of DAO-ifying these play to earn games. So it looks like what Merit Circle is doing is one of their early initiatives is they've got 420 people on scholarships, playing Axie for them essentially, so playing to earn in the Axie game and they're providing some sort of reward structure for them. I think that this concept of you launch a DAO in a play to earn like business model

• 36:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  and you just kind of maximize profits and a portion maybe goes to the DAO is something that's super attractive. I wish I had this in my early gaming days and I think it's going to be something that takes hold. Look, the Metaverse market, the crypto gaming market is only $36 billion right now. So like we are just getting started on this. I think it's going to be worth. Multiple hundreds of billions, even trillions possibly into the future as things shift into the metaverse. So really cool to see merit circle getting started with that. Guys, I hope that was a better explanation of what you guys are up to. But yeah, really cool to see that progress.

• 37:06David Hoffman?

  The combination of crypto asset powered gaming plus DAOs with treasuries plus players is insanely powerful, right? Like, we already know people play games. We all already know that there's these concepts of, you know, treasuries, that's nothing new. And now we have DAOs. And like, when you combine all these things, like, imagine how many zoomers and whatever comes after zoomers are going to be employed by like DAOs where they pay you to play video games and collect valuable in-game assets that can be sold on Uniswap for Ether or Stables or whatever to go into the DAO. Like, that is just going to absolutely explode.

• 37:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is gonna happen quick, man. Give it a few years. Like, we're not talking like, in 20 years, this will be the, you know, like-

• 37:50David Hoffman?

  This is happening right now, under our very eyes.

• 37:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Three years, yeah.

• 37:53David Hoffman?

  Eyes.

• 37:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Let's talk about DYDX. So DYDX governance token dropped, at least for some people. I think if you are a US citizen, maybe, maybe didn't capture that drop. But doing pretty well on the markets. Yeah. What do you want to say about this, David?

• 38:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, congratulations for DYDX for actually getting their token out the door. If you were paying attention to Antonio on our interviews with him, we would always ask him about when token. And of course, he would never actually explicitly say we are going to do a token. But he would say that we will do whatever the community wants us to do. And obviously, the community likes tokens. And so finally, that token is actually here. And doing pretty well on evaluation performance right out of the gate. So congratulations to DYDX for getting over this obstacle.

• 38:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, these are some launch stats, but 30,000 DYDX holders, fairly even distribution. So they incented it well. Yeah, a whole bunch of open interest in this. So really cool to see. Of course, US investors did not get this. Make sure to thank your unelected officials for that. There was also a little bump along the road to something to do with the staking contract. What happened here?

• 39:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the staking contract was broken. When people came and staked their DYDX token, they would be receive zero staked wrapped, wrapped, staked DYDX tokens in return. I think like something like 64 users got affected by this where they staked their tokens and then didn't get anything back. So effectively burning their own tokens, whoopsies. But I believe this has already been fixed and those people are being able to be re enumerated by the foundation. I think that's what's happening.

• 39:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very cool. All right, David, the the Bankless DAO and Gitcoin just

• 39:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  put out the ultimate DAO report. So this is, I think, the biggest DAO report of its kind where they actually surveyed about 400 people who are actively involved, working in DAOs, as DAO members. And a whole bunch of insights came from this report. So first of all, really cool that this is kind of a DAO to DAO research report. Not a lot of information has ever been like created about DAOs or research DAOs. And then there's just some fantastic summaries here or key takeaways here. One, one of which is DAO fatigue is real. Like I felt DAO fatigue from like time to time if you're involved in too many DAOs, but only for a minority of highly engaged participants. I found that interesting. Also interesting is the amount of intra DAO coordination.

• 40:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  So there's some findings on that. As of September 2021, many DAOs have ecosystems in the billions of dollars in capital and hundreds of creators working for them. So some people might not even be aware of the level of activity that that's that's going on already. A lot of the people surveyed were part-time members, but there are also some full-time members who all they do for their job is work for a DAO. So it sounds kind of cool. Sounds a little bit like living the dream, maybe. Anyway, we will include a link in the show notes to the full Dow report. So if you're interested in digging in further, make sure you check that out. This next, David, this is a promise of a release, long time coming from Rocket Pool. What's going on here?

• 41:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Rocket Pool finally announced their launch date, which is going to clock in at the 6th of October 2021. So under a month. And so this has been a long time coming. Rocket Pool has been on with Ethereum since 2017. One of the few ICOs that was A, a good ICO, and then also B, was building throughout the bear market, super committed to decentralizing staking for Ethereum. Yeah. So actually, if you don't know what Rocket Pool is, it is a decentralized staking as a service application on Ethereum to for for people that don't have 32 ETH or people that just want to actually run nodes for the Rocket Pool application and then actually receive more Ether rewards than they would if they had just staked solo.

• 41:50David Hoffman?

  These products are for you. And so it's been a long time coming. It's hard to do decentralized staking as a service. That's why they've had had to like rewrite. Because as ETH2 has been developed, Rocket Pool has had to develop around ETH2. ETH2 has like changed its course a number of times. Therefore, it made as a forcing function Rocket Pool changes course a number of times. But now we are finally here with a launch date, October 6th for Rocket Pool's staking as a service app. So congratulations to the Rocket Pool team and community for getting to this point.

• 42:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this is the second, like, obviously, the the best way you can keep the Ethereum network decentralized and, you know, stake your ETH in a decentralized way is to be a validator yourself, run it at home, run it on the Raspberry Pi. You can do that. It's actually not that difficult. But this, to me, is probably the second best way, at least it promises to be. I should mention that October 6th date, it's going to be a phased rollout. So only a certain amount of stake will be allowed in in the first phase of that rollout. And then they have a second phase where they're going to open it up to more ETH and a third phase and a fourth phase. So it will be sort of a scaled rollout over time. But if you've been waiting to stake some of your ETH for a more decentralized solution, not wanting To run your own validators, you might want to check this one out.

• 43:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, let's talk about HOP protocol. It is, it is growing in terms of integrations. Who's HOP integrating with? And what is HOP for people who haven't listened to previous rollups?

• 43:17David Hoffman?

  All right, HOP is a protocol to protocol, layer two to layer two to Ethereum. Bridging protocol to allow assets to flow through layer twos. Without having to go back to the Ethereum main chain. And then if you do want to go back to the Ethereum main chain on optimistic rollups, you have to wait seven days, but HOP protocol will ferry you across instantly for a small fee. So it's a layer, it's a layer bridging platform similar to connects as well. And they've already integrated like Polygon, X, D, Optimism. And then they also have USDT, USDC, Matic. And then they are working on their Arbitrum bridge with Ether and D. And then something hidden as well. So HOP protocol continues to build like a webbing of bridging between all of these different layers of Ethereum.

• 44:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  So many people have been building this entire time and building with the plans to deploy on layer two. I feel like Argent is another one. So probably my favorite smart contract wallet, the most usable that I've seen. I think they've been stymied in terms of their growth because gas fees are so high on layer one. So there's been this persistent questions like, when is Argent coming to layer two? Looks like they're teasing us some more. Can't wait to share our layer two wallet when? In the next few weeks, this tweet from Argent with a screenshot. And I think a post about their layer two plans. David, did you dig into this? What is Argent planning to do, do you think? What can we expect?

• 44:40David Hoffman?

  I think this is just execution on that same talk that we had with Vitalik about the combination of smart contract wallets on layer two. Like the quality of life is going to be orders of magnitude better when it comes to smart contract wallets on layer two. And so it's really going to be, it's really going to unlock so many integrations that would have been largely unfeasible on with a smart contract wallet on layer one. And so as DeFi gets built on layer twos, Argent wallet is going to come over and be accessible towards DeFi on layer twos. And so I think it's really going to be a fantastic portal towards cheap and instant DeFi stuff in your mobile wallet, which is really a very powerful way to onboard so many more people.

• 45:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the beauty of a smart contract wallet, of course, is it's normie friendly. I mean, you have social recovery. You don't have to memorize like 12 to 24 keys. And if you, if you, if you lose your keys, it doesn't matter because you have social recovery in place. This is a huge UX upgrade and I'm, I'm pretty excited about Argent's ability to execute on this because their original wallet has been absolutely fantastic, very easy to use. So well, high expectations. I'm excited to see what they finally release. David, let's talk raises for a second. This is something that we thought would happen and now is happening. We've got NFT specific social networks that are getting funded and coming to market.

• 46:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  This one is Hype and they are announcing a $1.5 million seed raise from Electric Capital. What's the story here?

• 46:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we all know that NFTs are social phenomenon and kind of this kind of reminds me of like the loot structure for building an ecosystem around NFTs. Lou, if you guys didn't watch the last week's roll up, it was a new kind of NFT that doesn't actually have a JPEG or any sort of file embedded with it. It's just text in the token. And then now we have like a similar kind of model where we have this hype, new NFT, like social media platform, but it's not specific towards NFTs. It is just a wrapper around NFTs and allows you to embed your NFTs into this new social media platform. And a social media platform can wrap around the NFT ecosystem. And so I think we're going to see some pretty cool stuff coming out of the intersection of social media and NFTs.

• 46:56David Hoffman?

  And Hype seems to be building a platform to allow people to tell stories or just do things with their NFTs that, you know, Twitter is like the best we got when it comes to like NFTs and social media, like everyone's putting in their profile picture as their avatar. And so Hype is taking this, which is clear demand to have some sort of social environment with NFTs and building an open ecosystem around NFTs without actually dictating what those NFTs are.

• 47:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, look, like, somebody's gonna build the Instagram for NFTs, basically. It's like, you know, Facebook started as just a web platform, right? But they totally missed at first the mobile initiative where people are taking pictures and they just wanted Instagram totally captured that medium. Well, now we have a new medium shift. We have these things called NFTs that are all surrounding digital scarcity, social signaling, memetics, if you've listened to that Bankless episode. And I think new social media platforms have to be built that actually optimize and draw the strengths out of this entirely new medium. So I don't know if it's hype or if it's gonna be something else, David, but I think we're going to see an Instagram for NFTs being created here.

• 48:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And then, of course, the big social media companies, they'll be slower movers, but eventually they'll figure this space out, too. Let's talk about this: tokenizing MEV. So Eden Network just got some funding from MultiCoin, Jump Capital, who else? Wintermute, Defiance Capital, a few others as well. And what is Eden Network, David? What are they trying to do here?

• 48:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this seems to be a way to manage and control MEV in the same way that Flashbots has. And so it is a system or a protocol that is parallel to Ethereum, that if you are proposing an Ethereum block, you can propose it under the Eden Network, and it'll be an Eden block. And the MEV inside of this block will be managed according to the rules of the Eden Network, same kind of gist as Flashbots, but they are doing it in a different way. And my technical knowledge is going to be limiting how these differences actually are, but it's basically, there is a world of MEV out there, and there are different systems for managing MEV. And these different systems point the captured value of that MEV into different spots based on how the system is constructed.

• 49:13David Hoffman?

  And this Eden Network is doing it differently than Flashbots.

• 49:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and the MEV problem is really a thorny problem. We've done podcasts on this in the past with Flashbots and the Paradigm folks. What's really interesting is this post from Tushar, and I think the approach that Eden has had on this, or maybe the marketing surround it, has really stirred Up some controversy in MEV space. So I think this, these two paragraphs in particular, where Tushar from MultiCoin is talking about Flashbots and also BlocksRoute, two other MEV solutions. And says this, "Other MEV projects such as Flashbots and BlocksRoute attempt to create efficient markets between mining pools and bot operators to extract as much value from average network participants. These systems do not attempt to mitigate malicious MEV.

• 49:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Instead, they make it easier to extract. Their systems are closed with centralized integration processes that exclude some block producers and leverage opaque reputation scores that favor certain addresses over others. Whereas Eden is focused on reducing malicious MEV and creating positive externalities for Ethereum as a whole." That's really interesting that they say they are trying to reduce, creating positive externalities for Ethereum as a whole and reduce malicious MEV. Well, Robert Miller from Flashbots had a thing or two to say about this post, David, do you want to get into it?

• 50:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, again, the details, MEV is a really hard subject, so I'm not like an MEV expert as to how this works. But like you said, this has stirred up a ton of controversy from the Ethereum community, especially from the Flashbots team. Robert Miller says, "Contrary to MultiCoin's claims, minimizing MEV is a core component of Flashbots' mission and products. That shows from our Funding of Fairness and Ethics research work on MEV aware DApps and hundreds of users that have used the Flashbots to skip the men pool and protect themselves from front-running." So there's some jabs being thrown back and forth between Tushar and Robert Miller and overall like the Flashbots team and ecosystem.

• 51:18David Hoffman?

  Flashbots has like a pretty insane amount of alignment with the health of Ethereum and therefore also like the deep Ethereum community. And so the deep Ethereum community did not like the way that this Eden network was messaged by the MultiCoin boys, who have also done a decent like amount of like marketing damage.

• 51:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  They don't mind trash talking Ethereum.

• 51:38David Hoffman?

  They like to trash talk Ethereum quite a lot.

• 51:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Miller, I mean, Robert Miller says explicitly, multicoin is lying about Eden. Which is super interesting. It's not permissionless or transparent. Anyway, you guys can get up to speed on some of this drama, but I think we have it to do probably on our side. David, at some point in the future, we've got to sort through these different MEV solutions and, and you know, roll this into a podcast, into a panel to help educate folks, get our arms wrapped.

• 52:07David Hoffman?

  Or ourselves.

• 52:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, that's mainly why we do panels, to understand ourselves. Guys, we should talk about the jobs that are available to you in the crypto space as well. For the best jobs, you can go to the Bankless Job Board. We have three posts today that we want to profile. The first is a Senior Software Programmer at Popcorn. Second is a Community Lead at Popcorn. Popcorn is a decentralized yield, you know, yield generating protocol. It looks super cool. You can check them out at popcorn.network. But if you're not a programmer, this community lead position might be sort of interesting to you. Put those communication skills to work. We also have a Senior Front End Web Developer at Tracer Dow. All of those are featured.

• 52:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  There are dozens of jobs that you can find on the Bankless Job Board, so make sure you check that out. All right, David, you want to get to the news?

• 53:01David Hoffman?

  Oh, boy, here we go. This is gonna be, this is gonna be a long one.

• 53:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Regulatory. You ready? Let's, let's talk about our shadowy super regulators, David. That is the, that is the subject, I think, this week and everything that they are doing. We've got to start with maybe the, the few events that happened, starting with Uniswap. So on Friday, just after we recorded our last weekly roll up, it appeared that there were some investigations going on at Uniswap and from the SEC. Tell us about that, David.

• 53:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Uniswap got a letter from, an investigative letter from the SEC asking just for more information about the business. I mean, so in theory, these letters are totally just like peaceful and just casual. It's like, hey, we would like to know more about you. But also like the context, the sub-context is that like, we are looking to like figure out what to do with you guys. And so like, while it doesn't indicate that they, that Uniswap has done anything wrong or is being charged with anything, the SEC is just probing into Uniswap, trying to like get more information. It's not, it's not a positive thing. It's definitely a negative thing.

• 54:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is not the kind of letter you can ignore, right? It's not the kind of thing, oh, junk mail, just gonna throw that out.

• 54:11David Hoffman?

  As you see, I don't know them. I'm just gonna recycle that one.

• 54:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  You cannot ignore these letters and it's also, it's like, you know, perjury, some very bad things can happen. If you falsify the letters or don't provide the necessary information, it just gets you in the bad books with the SEC as well. So I think investigation is maybe a bit more serious in some ways. It's not a formal charge, but this is not a small matter. Like, I don't know what questions are being asked from the SEC to Uniswap, but you can bet that there's a lot. And like very detailed, right? And so Uniswap is definitely, this is Uniswap Labs, of course. They're definitely going to need to put in the time to answer these questions as accurately as possible. So that, that in and of itself is sort of a shot across the bow.

• 54:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. And that is just the first of the regulatory issues that came out this week. So like that story is currently being like told, like we're gonna be hearing more and more from this, I'm sure. The SEC is not done with Uniswap or DeFi. This is just the first of a very long story. But that story took another turn this week when Coinbase was informed by the SEC that the SEC, if, if they release a product, which they have been in open communications with the SEC, if they, if Coinbase was told by the SEC that if they release a lending product, then the SEC is going to sue them. And that is extremely aggressive and there's absolutely no dialogue going on between the SEC and Coinbase.

• 55:42David Hoffman?

  Coinbase or anyone in the crypto space. And so this has been a this blew up the whole Twitter sphere and crypto sphere in the last two days.

• 55:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you mean by lending product for people who aren't familiar? What does that mean?

• 55:52David Hoffman?

  Right. So people might remember BlockFi getting a cease and desist letter from the SEC because they the SEC said that their lending products are securities, which has, you know, some debate about that. Again, I'm not a lawyer. Don't listen to me about any of this. But this is the same kind of deal like so lending products are maybe securities and the SEC is trying to get Coinbase's lend product, which is just the same that we've known, like all these other centralized lending products, right? Like come and deposit your Bitcoin, your Ether, your stables, and then we'll get a yield on them. The problem is that the SEC doesn't like is that like how they are, how yield is being achieved on these things is opaque.

• 56:30David Hoffman?

  And so investors don't have like good clarifications or clarity on how that yield is coming. And so like if like a black swan event happens, maybe depositors might actually lose their deposits, which is not enjoyable. And so that's what the SEC is claiming that they are trying to protect from.

• 56:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's Coinbase claiming? Coinbase is claiming that none of this qualifies as a security. It's like, you know, it's we're lending money. We take your ETH, we take your Bitcoin, we lend it, just like if you, you know, lend money to a bank and they generate interest on those returns, it's just a lending product. This is not a security and is therefore outside of their jurisdiction. But that SEC is coming back and saying Coinbase, if you release this, we will sue you.

• 57:13David Hoffman?

  Right. What they didn't do is provide explanation as to why the lend product is a security. They just said, if you release it, we're going to sue you, which is meaningfully different than providing any sort of guidance or indications as to their logic or analysis as to why this thing is a security at all. Apparently in the letter, in a letter to Coinbase, they said that they have done the analysis, but they didn't share what that analysis is, right? And so the threat is that like when we sue you and take you to court, we already have our analysis ready to go. Rather than broadcasting that to the entire industry and saying like, here is our guidance, here's our analysis and allowing the industry to work around that. They say like, okay, we've we have our analysis.

• 57:58David Hoffman?

  We're going to keep our cards close to our heart. And then if you like, you know, do anything wrong and if you break this analysis, we're going to sue you, which is just like. Infuriating. It's infuriating. It's what that is.

• 58:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's absolutely infuriating and I can understand the frustration because this is um, this is not a typical move, right? Where a three-letter agency from the Fed comes and says, "Hey, we're going to sue you if you do this thing." And then the company that's being threatened like this comes out and tells everybody about it.

• 58:26David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 58:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Usually the legal advice that you get in a situation like this is like, "Don't talk about it."

• 58:30David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 58:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Until we can reach settlement, until the investigation's over. But this is Coinbase now saying, "Okay, it's on. We're going to let everyone know what's going on." And so the chief legal officer has written this blog post that's clearly not meant, maybe it's partially meant for the SEC, but it's more meant for public support, wouldn't you say?

• 58:52David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 58:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  The title of it, "The SEC has told us it wants to sue us over lend. We don't know why." And then Brian Armstrong put out this Twitter thread about, and it begins like this, "Some really sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC recently." And he goes into Storytime where he talks about what the SEC is doing. He says, "Millions of crypto holders have been earning yield on their assets over the last few years." BlockFi is an example of that. David, as you said, it makes sense. If you want to lend out your funds, you can earn a return. Everyone seems happy with that. A bunch of great companies in crypto have been offering versions of this for years. So Coinbase came out recently and said they would be launching their own version. If you're a Coinbase customer, you might have seen the announcement. In fact, Gemini has a version of this, David, like BlockFi.

• 59:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, this isn't even the only exchange that's doing this, Celsius. "We were planning to go live in a few weeks, so this is all built out. It was all ready. So we reached out to the SEC to give them a friendly heads up." And this is what they always recommend, by the way. The SEC always says, "Hey, come tell us."

• 59:54David Hoffman?

  Let us know first, right?

• 59:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  "If you're doing something..." Well, in this case, it sounded like it kind of backfired. "They responded by telling us this lend feature is a security." "Okay, seems strange," Brian says. "How can lending be a security?" "So we asked the SEC to help us understand and share their view. We always make an effort to work proactively with regulators and keep an open mind. They refused to tell us." Why they think it's a security. Instead, they subpoena a bunch of our records. We comply. Demand testimony from our employees. We comply. Then tell us they will be suing us if we proceed to launch with zero explanation as to why. Look, Brian says, we're committed to following the law. Sometimes the law is unclear. If the SEC wants to publish guidance, we are also happy to follow that.

• 1:00:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's nice if you actually enforce it evenly across the industry, by the way, he says. But in this case, they are refusing to offer any opinion and writing to the industry on what should be allowed and why. No clarity. This is something Gary Gensler promised David. Clarity, we're not getting clarity. Instead, they're engaging in intimidation tactics behind closed doors. Whatever their theory is here feels like a reach land grab versus other regulators. He goes on with a few more tweets. I won't finish this out, but that gives kind of the tone for what's going on here. And here's the thing, Coinbase from day one has always been their message, their branding, their approach to all of this has been, we're going to be by the book, like US regulated, okay?

• 1:01:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Binance, Bitmex, these companies will be more aggressive. They'll list other products earlier, but we're going to play it by the book because we think that's the better long-term strategy for a company and for a US-based company. At the cost of growth, and they could have done things the Binance way and gone into kind of hyper growth, but they decided to play it by the book and it feels like they're getting punished from that. And like, I gotta say, if you're a regulator, you can't get along with Coinbase. I mean, who can you get along with?

• 1:01:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they're like the goody-two-shoes, you know, teacher's pet of the crypto industry. They do everything right. And like, just like you said, if the teacher's pet is getting in trouble by the teacher, then there's obviously bias towards the whole entire classroom, right?

• 1:02:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Something wrong with the teachers, what's going on? This is hitting the front page of the Wall Street Journal, by the way. SEC investates Coinbase over crypto lending plan on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. So they are getting the press. I wonder what kind of public support they're getting. They certainly have the crypto industry's support. Here's a take from Niraj, David, you want to go into this?

• 1:02:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this is something we haven't covered about this yet. The SEC wants Coinbase to turn over the name and contact information of anyone who has said that they are interested in their lending platform. And so like, think about this, if this is a security, the people who have expressed interest in purchasing said security doesn't change whether that's a security or not. And so Niraj says, why would that be relevant to their investigation into whether the program is compliant or not? And so the SEC is targeting people that have expressed interest in lending their crypto assets on Coinbase. They want your name, they want your address, they want your phone number. For why? I have no clue.

• 1:03:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why, to prosecute them in the future?

• 1:03:19David Hoffman?

  I have no clue. I mean, I do have a conspiracy, actually, but...

• 1:03:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I'm on this list because when I saw the Coinbase email, like, I love to try things in crypto, so I put my hand up and I was like, yeah, but, you know.

• 1:03:30David Hoffman?

  Am I going to need to get a new co-host sometime soon?

• 1:03:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Confession time. I'm on the SEC's list for this, but why would they want that? What's, like, what are some of the ideas floating around?

• 1:03:41David Hoffman?

  Okay, so the conspiracy, which, again, I'm on board with, is that when we, again, when we zoom out and view the nation state as a holistic concept, we have the Treasury who's frustrated about people who aren't reporting their crypto taxes, which is legitimate, and they have tried and found, tried to find ways to find the same information, like, who are all the people that, like, own crypto or have interest in crypto? And then we add, now we have the SEC coming from the other side, who's making this claim that this lending product is a security, when everyone's like, why the hell is this a security? While they are making that claim, they're asking for everyone's, you know, name, birthday, address, their nation state identity.

• 1:04:22David Hoffman?

  And so like, the conspiracy is that, like, the SEC and the Treasury are like pincer attacking crypto people by trying to figure out who they are, right? And that is, in my opinion, an infringement on personal privacy and personal sovereignty. That's my take.

• 1:04:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, I don't know if that conspiracy theory it like holds, but you have to, I don't know

• 1:04:44David Hoffman?

  Gotta ask.

• 1:04:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  explanation, right? Like, what is the explanation for why they are asking for all of these details? Here's kind of a take I'd meant to say when we were talking about Uniswap. This is the complete backwards way of how a regulator should approach a Uniswap or a Coinbase. I mean Coinbase is built a phenomenal company, like a company that the US as an economy should be proud to host within its borders, right? Like, part of the next Silicon Valley. But Uniswap too, Uniswap is even more amazing. One of the most innovative and empowering tech projects to come out of America, an American team in the last decade. That's what I think Uniswap is, David.

• 1:05:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I feel like the US should be giving Hayden Adams and the Uniswap team a medal, right? Like, thank you for doing this. Instead, those guys are getting an investigation. This is like a financial prison type stuff. This is completely backwards from the way they should be handling it.

• 1:05:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, what's going on to me is like, we have found ways out of this financial prison using DeFi. That's what DeFi is. Breaks you free from your banks. This is the lines we've been using. And then we have the Treasury and the SEC is like, no, no, no, no, get back in your cage. I don't know. How did you get out of your cage? Get back in your cage.

• 1:05:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's basically what they're doing. Yeah, and I do feel like that. Let's do some other takes from around the crypto industry. This is from Jake Chervinsky. I think this is interesting, David. Why don't you read it?

• 1:06:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Jake says, "If the SEC thinks that all non-bank interest products are securities that require the offer to become a public reporting company, then they're not just picking a fight with crypto. They're going after the entire fintech space." So this, to me, this take lends itself towards, huh, lends itself towards the whole concept of protecting incumbents, right? Like, protecting the banking incumbents. You know, the banking, the banking side of the world, all the bankers, they were probably okay with fintech because they were built on banks. But now that there's crypto, fintechs don't need to be built on banks anymore. They can now be built on crypto rails, which is again, breaking free from your bank.

• 1:06:46David Hoffman?

  So to me, this illustrates how this might be incumbent protection, rather than just like, you know, investor protection.

• 1:06:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Get back in your cage.

• 1:06:55David Hoffman?

  Get back in your cage.

• 1:06:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at this. Adam Cochran, "Part of me wonders if the SEC's unwillingness to provide Coinbase guidance on why they are blocking their lend program is because they can't." Like, maybe they've realized that things they think are a security may not at all be accounted for in an act from 1933. They don't like it. They have concerns. Feels to them as if it should be a security, but under the Howey Test and Exchange Act, they know it won't really stand up in court. And they don't want to set a precedence that would make the, this industry harder on them. So Adam's basically saying, maybe they're doing this backroom threatening because they don't actually have a case, right? It's a bluff card.

• 1:07:33David Hoffman?

  It's a bluff.

• 1:07:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Coinbase is being like, no, sorry, we're calling your bluff. Maybe they finally overreached and like, played their hand, extended their hand too far. And maybe now's the time where Coinbase, why shouldn't it be Coinbase, David?

• 1:07:48David Hoffman?

  It's gotta be Coinbase.

• 1:07:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're so well resourced. Like, they, they have the reputation, they have the prestige, they have the leadership to actually stand and fight this. Maybe now is the time. Maybe this could flip into a good thing.

• 1:08:00David Hoffman?

  Hey, SEC, get back in your cage. Get back in your cage.

• 1:08:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is, what, so some of these crypto natives, what has Chainlink God think about? Here he is responding from Brian Armstrong.

• 1:08:09David Hoffman?

  Right. So Chainlink God says, so the SEC is pushing people through a minefield without telling anyone where the mines are, yet at the same time telling to not step on any of the mines or else you will, you will die. This makes zero logical sense. Right? Yeah, this is just the approach that we've have been asking, as long as I've been in crypto, we've been asking for more regulated, regulation clarity. And instead of giving it to us, they're just taking us to court, which is absolutely insane and absolutely irresponsible and against the American principles.

• 1:08:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Get back in your cage.

• 1:08:41David Hoffman?

  Get back in your cage.

• 1:08:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Mark Cuban, he had a response to this too. Good to have more allies. And Mark Cuban is definitely an ally. He responds to Brian Armstrong. He said, Brian, this is regulation via litigation. They aren't capable of working through this themselves and they're afraid of making mistakes in doing so. So they just leave it to the lawyers. Just the people you don't want impacting the new technologies. This is the key line. You have to go on the offensive.

• 1:09:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is Mark Cuban saying, hey, they're trying to do regulation by litigation. So like, they better arm up because we need to go on the offensive as a crypto industry and settle this in other ways, settle this in the court of public opinion, settle this in the actual court system as well. We need to get offensive because they're clearly being aggressive. It's, it's no longer like, live and let live.

• 1:09:30David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:09:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is actually some aggressive impact. Like, I want the ability to lend through my Coinbase account. I like Coinbase. I use it. Why shouldn't we have this ability?

• 1:09:43David Hoffman?

  These are all great questions.

• 1:09:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Jerry Brito, what's he say?

• 1:09:47David Hoffman?

  Jerry Brito says, if true, this is pretty underhanded. I know it's easy for me to say, but Coinbase should go ahead and launch its product, let the SEC sue it and go to court. Let the SEC make its case and let a judge decide what the law is. Jerry Brito basically saying, Coinbase, take the offensive. Coinbase, don't ask for permission. Coinbase, we need you guys to, to break free out of this financial prison and lead the charge out of it, right? And I, and to push the SEC back. This is government overreach and we need people to plant, draw a line in the sand and saying like, no, no, no, like back off.

• 1:10:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's how this can get resolved, though.

• 1:10:24David Hoffman?

  Right, right. And if they're not gonna, if the SEC is not gonna give us regulation willingly, we will force them to give us regulation by beating them in court.

• 1:10:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, then you have like, then you have court case, like, rule, rulings, and you have precedent established. I just wonder how long this process is gonna take, right? It's like, I do think this is, the SEC is not gonna give us clarity, so we have to get clarity via the courts. It just takes so much longer to do it. It'd be so much easier if you had a regulator that was just like, armed across the aisle, hey, crypto's doing some great things, we have these concerns, let's address these concerns over time. But we're not getting that from SEC. Maybe we're getting it from other government agencies, I'm not sure, but it doesn't feel like we're getting that from the SEC right now. So I guess we have to go to court. But what does Coinbase do? Do they just release this product in the meanwhile?

• 1:11:14David Hoffman?

  Yep, and let people sign up, yep.

• 1:11:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fight the court battle alongside? I wonder if they'll do that?

• 1:11:18David Hoffman?

  I, I hope they do. I hope they do.

• 1:11:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here's the big take here. I just have one question to SEC. Who are you trying to protect?

• 1:11:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Their mandate is to protect investors, David. Are they protecting us?

• 1:11:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is not an action.

• 1:11:34David Hoffman?

  They're investors in bank, no, investors in banks, Ryan. Bank investors, that's who their job is to protect.

• 1:11:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  It feels like, I don't, I don't actually know who they're trying to protect. I know it's not the average retail investor, right? Is it, is it banks? Is it the treasury? Is it their own regulatory control? Is it, you know, some other shadowy figure in, like, in the nation state government?

• 1:11:57David Hoffman?

  Some bond firm?

• 1:11:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not sure. I don't know. But it's not us. I do know that. But that would be the question I think we would have to Gary Gensler. It's like, who are you guys trying to protect?

• 1:12:08David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:12:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not feeling protected by this. I didn't, I didn't get my.

• 1:12:11David Hoffman?

  Please don't lose the plot.

• 1:12:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Did you get your DYDX airdrop, Fred?

• 1:12:14David Hoffman?

  Absolutely not.

• 1:12:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you feel protected because you didn't make like?

• 1:12:18David Hoffman?

  Lost out on a significant amount of money. Let me tell you that.

• 1:12:23David Hoffman?

  Okay, so this, this came, this take came from Eric Connor, who talks about Anthony, Anthony Sizano. Anthony and I talked about this on a recent podcast episode. But I think the elected officials are extremely underestimating the influence coming from the crypto community. There are, there's a gigantic power, culture and wealth shift happening that most are ignoring. And I think the SEC is making this mistake as well. Like, the, the crypto news ecosystem, like what you guys are listening to right now, is vibrant. We got Mark Cuban, we got like all of crypto Twitter, who like, there's a lot of wealth in crypto. And so like, all of these people have interests in like rallying their support behind Coinbase and against the SEC.

• 1:13:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  We have Reith, Reith Witherspoon now.

• 1:13:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we got, we got Reith.

• 1:13:10David Hoffman?

  Inside joke, okay. But like, that, that, all the nation state regulators don't understand how vibrant and engaged the crypto community is and how willing we are to like die for what we believe in. Like, we will, we will take this all the way to the very end. And I'm not sure the regulators will do the same for whatever the hell they believe in.

• 1:13:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm not sure there's that fervor either. And yeah, this is, I think this is actually going to turn into a good thing for crypto. So there you have it, guys. Are we at war with the regulators? I don't know. We didn't fire the first shot, though. Seems like they did. We'll see how this ends. Let's get to some other things really quick, David. Oh, this is actually related to regulatory. So Brian Quintenz, we had on the show on Monday, former CFTC Chair. He just, Commissioner, excuse me, he just joined A16Z to help advise their crypto fund. So that was something Brian hinted at. He was going to do something maybe next in crypto. Looks like the next thing he's doing is joining A16Z

• 1:14:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  as a regulatory crypto advisor, I would imagine. So, good move, Brian. Fantastic person, great values-aligned ecosystem. I'm sad he's no longer a regulator because we need people like that on the other side, but at least he's staying in the space and fighting for values this way.

• 1:14:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, maybe. Hopefully, he joins the offensive fight rather than just the defensive fight of the crypto industry.

• 1:14:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. This is an interesting juxtaposition. So apparently in Panama, they're doing the complete opposite. They're trying to become compatible with cryptocurrency and the digital economy that is coming. David, what's your take here on what's going on in Panama Congress?

• 1:14:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Panama is kind of doing a similar thing as El Salvador, but with a little bit more options. They are trying to, like you said, the gist of the bill is that they are trying to make their country crypto-compatible. And so that is using cryptos as payment rails that includes Bitcoin and Ethereum, which I think implies all the stable coins on top of it. But also goes even further. They talk about making their DAOs legal entities inside of Panama as well. So this is pretty like precise and well-versed crypto regulation coming out of Panama. I think there still needs time for this story to steep and really get digested by the broader community.

• 1:15:27David Hoffman?

  But we are seeing, again, nation-states have relationships with crypto and then choosing very intentfully what those relationships are. El Salvador and Panama choosing very positive stances towards crypto. United States? Choosing very negative stance.

• 1:15:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know that nation states get that they actually have to compete for their citizens in the 21st century, right? Like that should be a global competition. And so what are the crypto friendly nation states? Maybe Panama is becoming one. Let's burn through some of these, David. Mastercard is acquiring CypherTrace. What does this mean?

• 1:15:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah. CypherTrace is a kind of a blockchain analytics company. So like, you know, tracing transactions and addresses through the blockchain, making it more, you know, illuminating what's actually going on. And Mastercard, which is again, a payments network, has acquired them, which is a very intentful and like, with a very specific direction as to how Mastercard wants to enter the crypto space. So that is pretty interesting. It says, this article says, "Details of the acquisition were not disclosed." So we are going to hear more about this in the future, I suspect.

• 1:16:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Lido is also a staking company that provides a staking organization in DAO, really, that that provides staking support for ETH. Now they are also including staking support for Solana for their sole token. So we knew that was coming and it looks like it is here now.

• 1:16:44David Hoffman?

  Congratulations to Lido.

• 1:16:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Steph Curry, this was big. Steph Curry is partnering with FTX crypto exchange. FTX is just making moves in celebrities, in sports and gaming and everything. They're trying to buy their way into mainstream legitimacy. And I think doing an okay job. Steph Curry is a like, definitely a good name to add to the roster. What's your take?

• 1:17:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Again, right after Tom Brady, right? So Tom Brady, probably the most famous football player out there. Steph Curry, probably the most famous basketball player out there. We do know that like sports players really like crypto for some reason. There's resonance behind people that play professional sports and investing in crypto. And Steph Curry also recently tweeted out like, yo, what's up with this crypto thing? Crypto Twitter, what's up? And FTX, again, doing a fantastic job, just like buying the support of, you know, public figures. I think I think it's going to do like extremely well for them. That's those are the options that are available to you when Solana token pumps a ridiculous percentage.

• 1:17:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  They bought Tom Brady as well to have him as a sponsor and a commercial came out with Tom Brady.

• 1:17:53David Hoffman?

  High production, high value commercial. Yeah.

• 1:17:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, pretty good. And this is like, so I'm kind of divided on this, right? I don't love that crypto banks are dominating all of the mind share because there's so much more to crypto than just what FTX provides. Yet at the same time, this is how we mainstream crypto is doing, right? This is how we make it normal. Now it's not just the SEC against all the weird people on, you know, Twitter, uh, doing shady crypto stuff. They also have to go against Tom Brady and Steph Curry and his entire fan base. That's a, that's a harder fight. I think we are breaking into mainstream consciousness at this point.

• 1:18:31David Hoffman?

  Right now, it's going through sports is actually a really, really smart move. And I mean, I, I'm with you in that I don't like crypto banks, like being the representative face of crypto. According to like the commercials that we see on television, but also who else is going to do it, right? Like, it's not going to be Uniswap. Uniswap is not going to run a commercial. It's gotta be a crypto bank. So, I mean, somebody's going to buy out all the celebrities and turn them into crypto celebrities. And like by the very definition, it can't be the DeFi apps. It has to be the centralized companies because that's really where they get alignment the most.

• 1:19:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ethereum stuff, MetaMask just crushing it. They just surpassed 10 million monthly active users. Largest, uh, non custodial crypto wallet in the world. I, I've heard rumors that that's actually like 14 million now. So even since that this was posted, so they're just absolutely exploding in growth. I feel like it's healthy growth too. It's not like 2017 growth. People are actually using these protocols. So there's a different feel and flavor there. David, uh, let's go through some of this NFT stuff. Did you know that Polygon is actually compatible with OpenSea? This is something I did not know and that's one tidbit, but, but the second is this, there's actually more OpenSea NFT users on Polygon than Ethereum Slayer one. What do you think this means?

• 1:19:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I, I think people are finding ways to do all the things that they want to do on DeFi, but without having to pay all the fees. And that has always meant L2s or in this case. Sidechains. And that's how you can like mint your NFTs because minting NFT costs over $100 on Ethereum. I think it costs under a dollar on Polygon. And that NFT that you minted can be sent back to the Ethereum main chain and have that sovereignty tied to Ethereum itself. And so congratulations to the Polygon team for getting so much NFT volume on Polygon because there's like a lot of people that have straight up been priced out of NFTs on the main chain. And we definitely don't want to lose those people to just either lack of interest or centralized chains.

• 1:20:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Immutable is doing the same thing. So now you can mint and trade on Immutable X. Super cool. Of course, this is a ZK rollup. It's fully secured by Ethereum, so it's not a sidechain, but that provides another avenue for cheap minting of NFTs and trading of NFTs. It's great to see. Also, Christie's is doing more in the NFT space. What's this, David?

• 1:20:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they're selling off Art Block sets, Art Block curated sets one through three as part of their post-war to present auction in New York on the first of October. So they have a Chromie squiggle and a bunch of other Art Block sets from the first three sets out of Art Blocks. So Art Blocks making their way into mainstream culture.

• 1:21:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of cool. Prediction markets on DeFi are a thing. This is Polymarket. They have just introduced an NFT floor pricing market. So you can, long or short, the floor price of something like CryptoPunks or Bored Apes or even Loot. Really cool. We'll include a link in the show notes where you can see that live on Polymarket and start getting price exposure to these NFTs in a less direct way, but maybe a more capital efficient way, depending on what you're trying to do. Also, David Vitalik has been posting about NFTs, like big brain stuff about NFTs on Layer 2, getting them on Layer 2 to cut fees. What's the TLDR of this ETH research post that he published?

• 1:21:56David Hoffman?

  Right. So earlier in this episode, we talked about that post of the, that was the correlation between gas consumption and NFTs. As NFT activity heats up, it disproportionately makes the gas Gas price move in the same direction. And so Vitalik has identified this as a huge problem. And he says that the NFT ecosystem is growing rapidly and is a significant part of Ethereum's gas change consumption. The youth and relative lack of entrenchment of the ecosystem, as well as the greater need to avoid high fees due to the non-financial nature of the large part of the NFT sector, makes it a prime target for moving on to Layer 2. However, this opens the question of how to move, how a move to Layer 2 could actually happen. One simple proposal is to socially coordinate a move to a single rollup platform, as in

• 1:22:40David Hoffman?

  Optimism or Arbitrum, but this has some important downsides. All existing major EVM capable rollups have backdoors, centralized sequencing, or other training wheels, and it's risky to commit an entire ecosystem to a single rollup when there's uncertainty as to how that rollup will graduate beyond such features. And so what Vitalik's blog post is offering is a way to make NFTs move on to Layer 2s without having to commit to any specific Layer 2. And so this is maybe a short-term stopgap as allowing you can have your NFT on Layer 1 and then have it wrapped and then wrapped onto a Layer 2. So your NFT actually stays on Layer 1, but the wrapped version can hop around seamlessly around other Layer 2s.

• 1:23:23David Hoffman?

  And then maybe as the Layer 2 ecosystem gets more built out and more diverse and more solidified, then we can actually have native NFTs on Layer 2s after some of those important design choices have been built out on the Layer 2s. It's actually a really complicated post, so if you want to learn more, you got to go read the post yourself.

• 1:23:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  That guy has some good ideas sometimes.

• 1:23:42David Hoffman?

  Just sometimes.

• 1:23:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Usually valuable to listen to what's going on.

• 1:23:46David Hoffman?

  Okay, oh yeah, loot time, loot time. So Dom, Dom Hoff, D Hoff, the guy behind the whole loot project that kickstarted that whole mania, has submitted a proposal to burn the keys to the loot contract, which would just basically remove the option of minting any more loot bags. That is up for debate as to whether the community wants it or not, but the proposal is out there.

• 1:24:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. David, let's touch on Bitcoin stuff. El Salvador said they would purchase a bunch of Bitcoin when they legalized it as tender, and here they are. They just purchased 200 Bitcoin. This is really interesting. This is the president tweeting this out. Buying the dip, winky smiley emoji. 150 new coins added. Just like a Bitcoiner, he is telling about buying the dip as he is purchasing the dip and broadcasting that on Twitter far and wide. Interesting to see for sure.

• 1:24:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, really. Quacks like a Bitcoiner, walks like a Bitcoiner.

• 1:24:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can also see this on the usage side. So of the top six finance apps in El Salvador, all of them are Bitcoin apps. PayPal is number seven. El Salvador's largest bank is number eight. So it appears making Bitcoin legal tender actually does increase adoption. Who would have guessed?

• 1:25:00David Hoffman?

  El Salvador going Bankless. So that's pretty cool.

• 1:25:04Ryan Sean Adams?

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

• 1:25:09David Hoffman?

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• 1:25:55David Hoffman?

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• 1:26:39David Hoffman?

  I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got into crypto in 2017, and it's been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and in over 50 countries worldwide, and on Gemini there are markets for over 30 various different crypto assets, including many of the hot DeFi tokens, and it's one of the few exchanges that has liquid DAI markets. Gemini just launched their Earn program, where you can earn up to 7.4% interest on 26 various crypto assets. If you're tired of paying fees in DeFi, or you don't want to worry about DeFi exploits, but you still want to earn interest on your crypto assets, Gemini Earn is the product for you. Another product I'm stoked to get my hands on is the Gemini Crypto Back Credit Card,

• 1:27:22David Hoffman?

  which gives you 3% cash back on all of your purchases, but paid to you in your preferred crypto asset. When I get my Gemini credit card, I'm going to make sure that I get my cash back in ETH, so whenever I buy something, I get a little bit of ETH bonus back to me at the same time. You can open up a free account in under 3 minutes at gemini.com/go-bankless, and if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after signup, you'll be gifted a free $15 Bitcoin bonus. Check them out at gemini.com/go-bankless.

• 1:27:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back with the takes of the week. The first is from Jack Butcher. He talks about Web 3D. That's what we're in. Web 1D, it's all about just information, space protocols. Web 2D, it's information plus people, the social network layer of things. Web 3D, we have information, people, and money. I think that's a great take. I think that's exactly what's happening. Crypto is just the next revolution of the web. It's the next iteration of the web. It adds a money layer. The web adds digital scarcity layer to the web. I think he absolutely nails it. That's why I'm more comfortable calling this web three.

• 1:28:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, I feel like two, two years ago, David, web three was like this nebulous, I don't know, are we going to decentralize Twitter? Are we going to decentralize Uber? I don't know. They called that web three and I gravitated away from that term for what we're doing now. But now we understand it's all about digital scarcity. We understand it's all about capital assets. We understand it's all about money. And I like the framing of web three. This is the third iteration of the web.

• 1:28:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah. The only corollary I would add to this is that web three means that information, people and money are going on to web three platforms. Right? Like the whole people, that's the identity layer of Ethereum. We're not using web two to establish people. We're using new identity tools to establish people.

• 1:29:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's, that's a good take. What's Balaji talking about? He is talking about consent of the governed and self sovereignty. What's his take here?

• 1:29:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, he tweeted this out less than a day ago. So this is definitely coming after the SEC Coinbase Uniswap news. And Balaji says decentralization restores the consent of the governed, right? And this is what we have been preaching about DeFi and being your own bank and controlling your own assets, right? Like the SEC, they can come knocking on Coinbase's door and tell them that if they do a, offer a lending product, then they're going to sue them. But that doesn't mean that you can sue the AVE protocol or the compound protocol or the Uniswap protocol. So as users of these things, we don't have to ask the SEC permission to make a transaction that interacts with Uniswap. And so it restores the consent of the governed, as in we, they, we don't have to ask permission to use these things.

• 1:30:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Elizabeth Warren had a take this week, calling everything in crypto, a shadow bank. Crypto is the new shadow bank. She said Anthony Sisano had a counter to this. The traditional finance system is the actual shadow bank. It's the very reason we're building a new decentralized censorship resistant, transparent, permissionless and global financial system. Well said, Anthony. Elizabeth Warren either needs to get educated or get out of the way. I feel like this with a lot of our members of Congress, David. Don't actually understand what they're talking about here. Sent a letter to my congressman, Mark Warner, my Senator, my Senator Mark Warner, about the infrastructure bill. He replied back and said, basically, nice hearing from you.

• 1:30:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  I've taken this under consideration, but I'm super concerned because Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is used by criminals and terrorists. Right?

• 1:30:58David Hoffman?

  Classic.

• 1:30:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's his 2014, 2015 mindset on what we're doing in crypto. Right? Meanwhile, we built a $2 trillion industry over here. The most open financial system that's accessible to everyone that's ever been built. And they're just not educated. We have a lot of work to do there. The question is, do they want to get educated? And I'm not sure the answer to that question.

• 1:31:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Elizabeth Warren, you can't just call something you don't understand a shadow. Like, just because you don't know what it is, doesn't mean it's opaque. You just haven't learned about it yet.

• 1:31:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. She's sticking with that term shadow. I don't know, she must not know about the memes.

• 1:31:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about celebrities getting into crypto.

• 1:31:40David Hoffman?

  Celebrities.

• 1:31:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a defense mechanism. So we got Wraith Witherspoon, who just bought her first. That was last week, I think on Friday of last week. Pretty cool. She's getting into it. Who's our next celeb?

• 1:31:53David Hoffman?

  Steph Curry, just getting started in the crypto game. Y'all got any advice? Which almost got 100,000 likes, which is crazy. Mike Tyson, Solana or Ethereum? So Mike Tyson getting into the game, trying to learn the differences between Solana and Ethereum, of which there are many.

• 1:32:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I hope someone's underneath this, pointing them to a Bankless episode. Maybe.

• 1:32:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, no, we haven't. Oh, he's got a crypto cat as his NFT profile.

• 1:32:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, he's already in.

• 1:32:20David Hoffman?

  I didn't even realize that. Wow, that's a pretty cool cat.

• 1:32:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  So what does this mean? I think Chris Berninski summarized it for us.

• 1:32:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Chris Berninski says, major celebrities getting started in crypto is the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. And so I think what he is saying is that, like, the early days of crypto, they're over. Like, the Wild West, it's not so wild anymore. Like, the crazy days of, like, all this, like, crazy rampant speculation. I mean, there's still gonna be speculation.

• 1:32:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's no longer a weird niche off the beaten trail.

• 1:32:49David Hoffman?

  Exactly, exactly. Like, no, crypto is mainstream, is bringing on mainstream people with mainstream use cases. And the celebrities getting into that is indicating that the end of the beginning is upon us. That's the right way to put, yes. The, we are no longer in the beginning stages of crypto. We're in the middle. We're in the middle of the story now.

• 1:33:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Part of me that's gonna miss that, like kind of that hipster thing, like, hey, it's a small group and we don't have to worry about Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan tweeting out some stupid, you know, NFT. Do you miss part of that?

• 1:33:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but like, it's also, we are currently where we've always wanted to be. And while that now comes with way more baggage than we thought, such as like the SEC being dumb. I guess this is what we wish for.

• 1:33:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do think actually some of these celebrities in the mainstream adoption, per our earlier conversation, actually provides a heat shield to some of these regulatory agencies as well. So there is that side benefit. But yeah, Chris nailed it as usual. David, I'm gonna ask you the question. We end with, which is what you're excited about. What are you excited about this week?

• 1:33:51David Hoffman?

  Well, what I'm excited about this week is what's happening next week and the week after. MCON in Denver. I'm gonna go to MCON, the Meta Cartel Convention. And that's gonna be a ton of fun. Gonna see all the homies there. And then, right after that, I'm going to Mizzari Mainnet in New York with Chief, Chief of Culture at Bankless, Michael Wong, as well as Lucas, the Chief Editor of the Bankless Newsletter, as well as a bunch of other just friends all hanging out in New York. The Pleaser Dow Doge Party is happening. So there's gonna be a party which is gonna be Doge themed, because Pleaser Dow owns the Doge NFT. So I'm excited to go and do a bunch of traveling and see all the people in the different cities.

• 1:34:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's awesome, man. It's like, you know, we couldn't do any of that in, in 2020, right? Because of COVID. Now some of that's coming out again. So it's, it's great to see. And I'm glad you're going. You know, I don't, I can, I could just not go. It's fine. It's one of us goes.

• 1:34:48David Hoffman?

  Again, you'll just live vicariously through me and I'll tell you all about it.

• 1:34:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's how it usually goes.

• 1:34:53David Hoffman?

  Ryan, what are you excited about?

• 1:34:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm actually super excited about Layer 2s this week, right? So Layer 2s are cool because I feel like this is. We don't have to take shortcuts. I think that a lot of high transaction throughput chains are saying, "Hey, we're less decentralized, we're more centralized, but do we really need all that decentralization?" Is kind of the question. And, you know, it's hard to answer that question and say, "Yes, there is a reason for you to pay $80 fees on Uniswap, right? When somebody can pay almost nothing on a centralized Layer 1. But with Layer 2, we actually don't have to take shortcuts. And I think Layer 2 on Ethereum is massively underrated because it's not just what we're seeing like today.

• 1:35:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is in its infancy. It's very early years. It's what we're going to see in the future. Somebody wrote a fantastic post on this, actually on Reddit. This is ETH Finance. Liber- Liberost? Liberosty?

• 1:35:51David Hoffman?

  Liberosist?

• 1:35:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Liberosist, yes, thank you.

• 1:35:55David Hoffman?

  It's weird either way.

• 1:35:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  He goes through and he talks about Layer 2 and he specifically talks about ZK rollups. This is where I think things get really exciting. It's because with ZK rollups, you actually don't have to make these trade-offs between centralization and decentralization to get the high throughput. Specifically when we have data sharding in Layer 2, right? So this is like, do you remember that episode we did with Justin Drake about the magic of cryptography? It's like cryptography really is the magic that this entire space rests on, right? And that's where we get like, not just Moore's Law increasing kind of every year, but like we get these massive leaps in terms of capability.

• 1:36:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  And we do things like have large supernodes and we centralize because we haven't created better cryptography. Well, ZK technology and ZK rollups, that is better cryptography. And when you combine that with, you know, the data sharding on Ethereum, we're going to be able to scale this out to like as much as we need to. So this guy talks about, you know, on Reddit, he talks about speculatively, up to 15 million TPS by the end of the decade if you combine various ZK rollups. Roll up solutions on Ethereum. So 15 million transactions per second without decentralization trade off.

• 1:37:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I think now we're in the season of like, hey, gas fees are high. We need, you know, centralized layer ones. Ethereum will never scale, but I'm really excited about this kind of dark horse that's, that's, that's coming up, which is ZK roll up tech, uh, layer two ecosystem on Ethereum. So it's going to be exciting to see that develop, but it's also not going to happen overnight. It's going to take like months and probably years for this to, to come to fruition. But I think it's worth waiting for.

• 1:37:47David Hoffman?

  This has always been Ethereum's commitments, right? Like, uh, we as a community understand that there is like that, uh, scalability trilemma. There's security, decentralization and scalability. And Ethereum doesn't at all want to sacrifice, um, uh, security or decentralization. So it chose to sacrifice scalability, but the whole gist is that we will figure out the scalability via improvements and innovation and research in cryptography. And if you find scalability on your L1 chain and you did it without cryptography, you compromise on one of the other two things. It was either you either compromise on security or you compromise on, on decentralization. The only way to make your base layer one better is through innovations in cryptography.

• 1:38:30David Hoffman?

  And that is why Ethereum has been a cryptographer's developmental playground. And that's why Ethereum has always been like, oh, developers, developers, developers, not just on the app layer, but also cryptograph, cryptographic researchers. The way to improve your system is through cryptography. And if you're not doing it with cryptography, you've done it in a way that shoots yourself in the foot with one of these in very crucial dimensions of what makes a crypto system, a crypto system.

• 1:38:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  The ability to run a node at home is super important. It's probably fundamental to these systems and this preserves that. All right, David, meme of the week.

• 1:39:02David Hoffman?

  Meme of the week.

• 1:39:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are we talking about? Meme of the week?

• 1:39:04David Hoffman?

  Let's do it.

• 1:39:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let me show you. Let me show you this one.

• 1:39:07David Hoffman?

  Okay. So this is the, uh, the rich bankers holding glasses of champagne, laughing their asses off meme.

• 1:39:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  And politicians.

• 1:39:13David Hoffman?

  And politicians. Yeah. Uh huh. Oh God, that's Reagan. I had no idea Reagan was in this one.

• 1:39:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's Reagan. There's also, uh, Bush.

• 1:39:19David Hoffman?

  Bush senior.

• 1:39:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  In the background. Yeah.

• 1:39:21David Hoffman?

  Okay. Okay. So these are politics. These aren't bankers. These are politicians. Maybe they're the same thing.

• 1:39:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Same.

• 1:39:26David Hoffman?

  Maybe. Okay. We'll get to, we'll get to the, uh, the actual text. And then so all these politicians are laughing their asses off. And it says, and then we would tell them that we are protecting investors.

• 1:39:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. I mean, like, this is, this is kind of how I feel about this is, um, man, they're pushing all this down our throats, but under the guise of protecting us. And that's what feels

• 1:39:51David Hoffman?

  Protecting me from a vacation because I didn't get the DYDX airdrop.

• 1:39:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, I'm not feeling very protected this week from all of the gains we could have made as US citizens. There goes, guys, that was the roll up. Thanks for hanging with us. Of course, none of this has been financial advice. Bitcoin, ETH are risky, so is DeFi. You could lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:40:17David 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

• 1:40:59David Hoffman?

  and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the bankless nation.