ROLLUP: Trump Pump | ETH ETF Next Week | Mt. Gox & Germany | Crypto Wars 2.0

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup 3rd Week of July 2024 ------ 🍵MATCHA | NEW PRICING ENGINE https://go.0x.org/matcha-v2-pod ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙 KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🛞 MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🦄 UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap ⚡️ FUEL | EARN FUEL POINTS https://bankless.cc/fuel ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUMa ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🗣️ TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/34 ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 3:44 Politics and Crypto https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/15/bitcoin-jumps-as-markets-see-increased-odds-of-trump-victory.html 4:28 Trump selects JD Vance as his VP https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112792061935980928 https://nypost.com/2024/07/17/us-news/trump-picking-jd-vance-as-vp-is-big-for-the-bitcoin-crowd/ https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1812933662880514479 https://www.standwithcrypto.org/politicians/person/jd---vance https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1812936021543149758 https://x.com/taylorjbarr/status/1812930126843126174 https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1812931244621000896 https://polymarket.com/ 13:05 Trump considers Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1813666502526329035 13:59 Trump wants the US to beat China in the crypto race https://www.theblock.co/post/305771/trump-wants-us-in-charge-of-crypto-before-china 15:46 Vitalik released a Blogpost: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/07/17/procrypto.html https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1813596134020895138 https://x.com/valkenburgh/status/1813634877910319499 https://x.com/tusharjain_/status/1813663311591870495 https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1813635524026048908 https://x.com/MarconiWight/status/1813320579631706598 25:02 MARKETS L2 Update Scroll TVL increased by 21.9% to $1.01B in the past 7 days https://x.com/WuBlockchain/status/1812732829345947915 Base now 30% bigger https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1811080797706932468 34:19 Bitcoin liquidity Events (Gox and Germany) https://x.com/News_Of_Alpha/status/1813167748115292467 What can MtGox do to the price? https://x.com/ki_young_ju/status/1813277728998609338 Germany is most likely done with selling https://x.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1811830991708639719 How much Germany sold? https://x.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1813601540516524291 38:24 ETH ETF next week!! https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1812930206933655759 https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1812961815833305104 https://x.com/jseyff/status/1813693107214717181 https://x.com/NateGeraci/status/1813698463403765780 https://x.com/coinage_media/status/1813539741851365812 https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1813571352105979946 . 49:14 BTC ETF daily net flows trending up over the last two weeks https://x.com/WClementeIII/status/1812996129648439633 https://x.com/ericbalchunas/status/1813187237762244840 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1812864261170905281 53:39 Uniswap Extension is now open to everyone! https://x.com/Uniswap/status/1813212643139711384 54:58Crypto Wars 2.0 Positive developments in Roman Storm's Tornado Cash defense https://x.com/valkenburgh/status/1811851516833394994 https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/07/12/conduct-versus-code-may-be-the-defining-question-in-roman-storm-prosecution/ 58:15 Molly White launched her new crypto initiative https://x.com/molly0xFFF/status/1811836793353884053 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1812950495218045424 1:03:27 MEME of the Week https://x.com/GoingParabolic/status/1813012646339465334 1:04:47 Moment of Zen Bitwise’s new ETH commercial is out! https://x.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1813553235703263276 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

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

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation is the third week of July. It's time for the Bankless Weekly Roll-Up. I feel like in this roll-up, David, I gotta get you up to speed because you've been out climbing mountains again, haven't you?

• 0:13David Hoffman?

  I feel like that's been that way for two weeks in a row. Last week, I was at ETH CC, and then this week, I just got down from a mountain like 12 hours ago. And so these episodes are actually Ryan just gets David up to speed with.

• 0:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. We got a lot to talk about, man. It was a bit political out here in crypto, David, so I gotta get you up to speed. So Trump chose a pro-crypto vice president. I'm gonna give you his name, and he says he wants to, quote, "beat China to crypto." Also, all of Silicon Valley is aligning behind Trump, and many in the crypto space are as well. And Vitalik gives a rare glimpse into some of his politics and his take on all this. What else we got?

• 0:51David Hoffman?

  The market fallout of Gox and Germany. Is it all over? Gox coins are finally getting distributed to people this week. What happens next? And this is the last roll-up before the ETH ETF gets approved. How do I know that? Because I just went and got the Horcrux. So this is the last time you're ever gonna hear that statement come out of this podcast, I promise.

• 1:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thanks, man. We appreciate that. So this is definitely the last week.

• 1:16David Hoffman?

  This is definitely the last one. I'm coming home.

• 1:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  David climbed a mountain to make this happen for us.

• 1:20David Hoffman?

  I got the Horcrux, I'm bringing it back home.

• 1:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, Uniswap has a big new wallet extension. We'll talk about that. And an update on Crypto Wars 2.0. I think this is the most important case, court case, in crypto's history. It's the Roman Storm case, and there's been a pretty big update on the week, so we'll talk about that. But first, politics?

• 1:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I just, so I was gone for four days. And so I had a great, fantastic, like, phone, you know, social media, Twitter cleanse for four days.

• 1:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that feels good.

• 1:50David Hoffman?

  And then I was able to, like, kind of look at Twitter, look at, like, all my feeds with fresh eyes when I came back. And it is just politics on politics.

• 1:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's crazy, right?

• 2:00David Hoffman?

  All, like, my podcast feeds, which are both crypto and non-crypto, are politics content. The crypto Twitter timeline feed is all politics. Granted, we just had an attempted assassination of what might be the next president, so, like, of course, people are gonna be talking about politics. But politics has just swarmed everything, just left and right.

• 2:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, you can't say it's not justified. This is a pretty massive election, and assassination. Okay, so where were you when you heard about this, the assassination attempt?

• 2:30David Hoffman?

  I was on my way out of Brussels to head to Chamonix, France.

• 2:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 2:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so it's at the end of ETH CC.

• 2:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  You see it pop up on Twitter and you're like, what is going on? Was it one of those situations?

• 2:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like-

• 2:41David Hoffman?

  It was right as I was about to go to bed because I was six hours ahead of, uh, you know, United States time. And it's just like one of those things where like, I'm, we're, I'm already aware that we're on the craziest timeline ever. Uh, and so like, I guess like, okay, here we go. Like, there's another weird thing that's unfolding.

• 2:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can you believe how close it came? That, that was crazy for me. It's like, when I, when I first saw the news, I just flashed and like, what happened? Like, is he okay? And then fortunately, it didn't take long for me to, uh, like, tell that he was okay. It's like, thank God. But in the aftermath of that, looking at how close we came, like an inch, a tilt of the head away, like, the wind blowing in a, like, a different, a different way, in a different direction, would have been a completely different outcome. And I just feel like, what, what timeline are we living in here? Like, this is, I mean, it could have been completely different roll up today. Could have been a completely different country. Could have been a completely different reality.

• 3:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's something, there's some, like, reference to, like, Schrodinger here, where just like, where we have chosen a particular fork of the universe. And it was very clearly, like, a choice that, that happened. Apparently, we're in the universe in which, uh, Trump gets a clip off of his ear and crypto prices start, like, rocketing. Like, I remember, like, just noticing that, like, watching the videos, going through the Twitter feeds, looking at the Trump assassination, and then looking at the crypto prices, which all, like, immediately jumped, like, 2%, 3%, which, but it was very noticeable, like, right after the failed assassination, crypto markets pump. And the stock market was closed, if I'm, if I'm remembering correctly. And it was just like such a, such a strong, like, correlation of just failed assassination, crypto prices pump.

• 4:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can you imagine? So assassination attempt, that would be absolutely horrible. I imagine the markets would go in the other direction, probably amplified by, like, a massive amount, because it's just like a massive amount of uncertainty. So that happened Saturday, David. Uh, Trump didn't get assassinated. And then, I believe this was Monday, he announced his vice president pick. A gentleman by the name of Senator J.D. Vance. This is, uh, his post- After lengthy deliberation thought, considering the tremendous talents of others, I've decided that the best person suited to assume the president and VP of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance. So the question is, who is J.D. Vance? You did some research on this while you're out, yeah?

• 4:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, I was actually prepping for this show. And since I'm six hours ahead of you, I actually did have time to actually catch up on the news. People might know this book, Hillbilly Elegy, which was a big book that catalyzed a lot of the populist sentiment right before the 2016 election. It's this book that is set in the Appalachian about this highly educated Appalachian lawyer. And Appalachia is known to be not educated for it. And it was kind of like a rallying cry for a lot of the conservative right, of the lower-class conservative right, that ended up just... It put a lot of sentiment into words about the right's feelings towards the social elite and the coastal elite.

• 5:40David Hoffman?

  And so this was an influential book that helped catalyze what came to be a very populist ran election. Like even Bernie Sanders, a populist president, was still very, very relevant back then. And so J.D. Vance is the author of Hillbilly Elegy. He is also a Republican senator. And so it's kind of an interesting pairing where you have Trump, the media man, with this Republican US senator who wrote this book, who is like also understands like culture and media. And it's another step away from just like the traditional lifetime politician. Interestingly, as it relates to crypto, J.D. Vance has previously drafted a bill that would completely overhaul the SEC and the CFTC's stance on crypto.

• 6:25David Hoffman?

  So this is a populist, right-wing senator who has explicitly made pro-crypto legislation and tried to get it pushed through Congress. And so this, in addition to the sentiment that the markets felt positively towards the failed assassination attempt, which I think markets are just pricing as like, oh, the failed assassination attempt is probably going to lock in the Trump election. So that was bullish. And then on Monday, we get this JD Vance guy who's going to be Trump's Vice President, who is explicitly very pro crypto and has tried to push through positive pro crypto legislation. So we get this like one-two punch in like the positive direction.

• 7:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so JD Vance is very pro crypto. Actually, I was on with Representative French Hill, who just mentioned JD Vance in passing. I asked him about him, and apparently JD Vance may be taking the lead on some legislation. You remember FIT 21 was going to the Senate? JD Vance is the Senate. He may be catching the ball right now and actually working on his version of legislation of FIT 21. So I don't know all the details yet, but Representative Hill mentioned this in passing. We do know a few other things. So he's young, particularly for US politician and Senator in these times. So he's like 39 years old. So he's a millennial generation, and that's interesting. He also has voted for the SAB 121 repeal, as you

• 7:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  can imagine. He's a crypto holder. So as of 2022, he owned at least $250,000 worth of Bitcoin, likely has more now. He slammed Gary Gensler in open letters. We have a clip we're going to play coming up. It's basically further evidence that he is a pro crypto candidate and that the Trump White House will be pro crypto, right? And he gets an A on Stand With Crypto, the StandWithCrypto.org website.

• 8:12David Hoffman?

  I think the big question right now is, is this JD Vance selection as Trump's Vice President, is it the fact that he is pro crypto, is that a coincidence? Or was that like an explicit influence in Trump's selection of him as well? And I'm kind of thinking it might be the latter. I'm going to go ask David Bailey, who is the founder, operator, owner of Bitcoin Media, Bitcoin Magazine, who is the policy advisor to Trump. He's the guy like kind of steering the ship in terms of like Trump's crypto policy. So I'm going to see if we can get him on the podcast and get his perspective.

• 8:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think you sort of like have to broaden it too. So I also didn't mention he's a VC under the Silicon Valley VC, under the tutelage of Peter Thiel. I don't know if you saw that this morning as well.

• 8:57David Hoffman?

  Also very conservative, pro Trump.

• 8:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's like a tech play here, which is very interesting, right? And we'll talk about that a little bit later. Silicon Valley has really rallied around Trump in the past week. And I think J.D. Vance is all part of that. So that's J.D. Vance. This is him. Maybe we should play a clip surfaced by Crypto Twitter of previous statements of Senator Vance. He's actually talking about Gary Gensler. And Crypto Twitter surfaced this. I think it's pretty interesting.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  If there's a candidate for worst person, in my view, at least in terms of my substantive disagreements, I'm sure he's like a nice guy, is Gary Gensler. Okay? So Gary Gensler is sort of the complete opposite of my view. And there are two problems that I have with Gary, one of which is that I think he wants to inject politics way too much into the actual business of securities in the United States of America. But in some ways, the more fundamental issue, or at least the most relevant issue for this particular conference is the approach that Gary has taken to regulating blockchain and crypto seems to be almost the exact opposite of what it should be. You know, and I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but the question the S E C seems to ask

• 10:03Speaker 02

  in regulating crypto is, is this a token with utility? And if it's a question, if it's a token with utility, then they seem to want to ban it. And if it's token without utility, they don't seem to care. I almost think we should be the opposite here, right? I worry about financialization. I worry about frankly, whether a lot of the crypto stuff is fundamentally fake. But if a token actually has utility, that's the sort of thing that, you know, by all means, regulate it, by all means, be careful about, you know, how consumers interact with it. But you don't want to just get rid of this stuff. And here's where I really, really worry about this is a lot of the newest challengers to social media, the social media incumbents of 2024 are going to

• 10:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  He seems to be opening the door for tokens that do more than just represent memes, like tokens with cash flows, tokens that are real and opening the door to that.

• 10:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and expressing a pretty like deep knowledge about what's going on in the industry, like beyond just like, oh, money on the internet. Like, he's talking about like, he's alluding to like, social platforms and, you know, underlying blockchain technology beyond just like, sending tokens around.

• 11:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Another win for crypto related to politics was an actual app. You know, people say, where the apps? Here's an app that works. It's called Polymarket, okay? And the great thing about Polymarket is a prediction market. It actually predicted that JD Vance was the best predictor, that JD Vance was going to be Trump's VP pick of any prediction market. It was the most accurate, and it reflected the probability, like, you saw it spiking up right before the announcement to like, 70% odds. And if you go to the Polymarket page right now, it is doing a fantastic job predicting some of these political outcomes. I even heard on the podcast-

• 11:46David Hoffman?

  And just being relevant. It's just extremely relevant.

• 11:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and it's getting, starting to get mentioned, referenced in mainstream. I even heard Sam Harris' podcast mention prediction markets as like, like, you know, just in the context of what's gonna happen? Is Biden going to drop out? Well, right now, Polymarket says there is a 76% chance that Biden drops out.

• 12:04David Hoffman?

  That is high.

• 12:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  And given, given its previous performance, right? I actually rate that as probably pretty accurate, with respect to probability. So, this is particularly with these political decisions.

• 12:16David Hoffman?

  Well, I don't think you know more than Polymarket, Ryan.

• 12:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't. Nobody does, right? But like, that's the beauty of it. That's what prediction markets should do. And like, it's just a great use case for crypto here.

• 12:27David Hoffman?

  It is very refreshing seeing Polymarket, either explicitly or implicitly, alluded to, like, on all of my non-crypto media feeds, like, prediction markets are being referenced. And I know they're all talking about Polymarket, because I can go and like, reference the numbers. But also because Polymarket has like, 85% of all market share of all prediction market volume. And so this is like, where liquidity and accuracy are actually intersecting. And liquidity kind of actually matters in like, what is more of a, like, a downstream market to place bets on is like, who's Trump's vice president gonna be? There's at least four more markets, five more markets that are ahead of him. Anyways, on other things that are about politics and also bullish crypto,

• 13:09David Hoffman?

  Donald Trump is apparently considering Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary. And not just that, but I will also add that a Forbes headline reads, Trump Reveals JP Morgan CEO's Sudden Bitcoin and Crypto Flip. And I want to emphasize, Donald Trump is saying that Jamie Dimon is now bullish crypto. Like the fact that Donald is the harbinger of this message is crazy.

• 13:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. Yeah. I mean, what happened, I'm sure I was like, hey, you want the job, Treasury Secretary, you gotta be pro crypto, you gotta be pro Bitcoin.

• 13:38David Hoffman?

  You think he said that?

• 13:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  110%.

• 13:41David Hoffman?

  Really?

• 13:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's just like not hard for Jamie Dimon to flip. I mean, Larry Fink admits it, he flipped on crypto as well. Like at first he hated it and then he flipped on it because he did more investigation, had some products to sell. I mean, this is exactly what's going on. When it's opportunistic, Wall Street will kind of like flip towards crypto. And this is what we're seeing here. Also this week, Trump says he wants the US in charge of crypto before China. It's a crypto race, I suppose. He said, if I throw it aside, it's going to be picked up by another country, most likely China. They're pretty advanced in this sphere, so you have to look at it. What I want again is what is good for the country. And so again, he's talking, he's putting crypto in the geopolitical context and said, this is another reason for why he is pro crypto and wants to foster innovation here.

• 14:24David Hoffman?

  I think Trump's pro crypto stance and other things as well as the nomination of JD Vance as his Vice President has really kind of won him a lot of hearts and minds. It's been slowly crescendoing in the last like month or so, but I think in the last week especially since the assassination, assassination attempt, just like so many tech giants have just lined up behind the Trump administration. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz came out as pro-Trump. Brian Armstrong, Elon Musk, the Winkleville, Kathy Woods, Jesse Powell, Eric Torenberg. Like Silicon Valley is just like lining up behind Trump, which is kind of funny because Silicon Valley, once upon a time, used to be a pretty like liberal bastion. But now they're all kind of like seeing that like Trump is just pro innovation and pro markets. And they're all kind of like lining up.

• 15:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's it. You know how we've said about the Democrat platform with respect to crypto is just they're leaving free real estate open, right? That's exactly what they're doing with crypto. And Republicans are taking it. Trump's taking it. But more broadly, they're leaving free real estate open when it comes to tech, big tech, AI, this sort of thing. They don't have a strong platform. And Trump is saying, hey, I'm the pro-tech, pro-crypto, pro-whatever you want me to be, pro-markets president, right? And so they're like lining up behind them. There is a podcast, I haven't listened to it yet, but you know, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, on just like why they're supporting Trump, basically. It's still in my queue to read, but like all of Silicon Valley is kind of lining up behind this candidate. Now, there is a counter to all of this. And there's another discussion at play in crypto.

• 15:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  So David, you might have seen a lot of pro-Trump takes in the crypto sphere for sure, but there was another take with a bit more nuance, you know, Vitalik-style take. In fact, Vitalik wrote a blog post entitled, yeah, "Against Choosing Your Political Alliance Based on Who Is Quote Unquote Pro-Crypto." Did you read this article? Did you get the gist of what he's saying?

• 16:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's actually the first thing I read this morning. And the way I would just summarize this is that Vitalik is advocating for a notion of crypto-values or crypto-politics in of themselves, cypherpunk values. And he's saying, instead of simply supporting pro or anti-cryptocurrency politics, we should instead view politics from a crypto ethos and decide on the merits of candidates based on their alignment with the values that crypto as an industry tries to enshrine. You know, freedom, censorship resistance, the ability to express freedom of speech and freedom of to transact. And so he's like kind of differentiating just like politics and policies that will like make more tokens legal and

• 16:50David Hoffman?

  allow more ETFs to happen and do things that are good for our bags. And like kind of reminding like, why are we here in crypto in the first place? Like, why do we value censorship-resistant technologies? What about like other facets of crypto that aren't cryptocurrency but cryptography? And he's basically saying like, hey, let's kind of view these candidates as like who they are as humans, rather than the policies and the things that they are trying to promote and judge them on their character. Which I thought was like refreshing, but also needed further unpacking, which is kind of what crypto Twitter did.

• 17:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it does need further unpacking, but it's interesting the way he opened this article was a picture of him with Vladimir Putin in 2018. And I think I recall him saying he actually regrets this meeting. He's sort of felt sort of used. Says at the time, many in the Russia government expressed willingness to become open to crypto. And then it turned out they really weren't like it turned out Russia was maybe open to it from a government perspective to evade sanctions.

• 17:48David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 17:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. But they weren't open to it to give like crypto freedoms to their citizen.

• 17:52David Hoffman?

  People. Yeah, it wasn't Russia's not pro crypto for the people. It's pro crypto for the oligarchs.

• 17:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And so that, that, you know, I think Vitalik is citing that as an example of a disalignment here where somebody could have a stand with crypto binary. Yep, they're an A plus because they like fit, you know, 21, but really behind the scenes, they maybe they disapprove of privacy on chain. Maybe they don't actually support custody, they self custody of assets, maybe they don't support the other like freedoms associated with crypto.

• 18:22David Hoffman?

  Things like you can imagine, like you can own Bitcoin in the ETF, but not with a private key, like a policy like that.

• 18:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, and could you imagine Jamie Dimon being pretty excited about that policy?

• 18:33David Hoffman?

  Would love that.

• 18:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, that's so. So there's a lot of nuance when it comes to pro crypto. This is the way I've kind of stated it because David, you noticed we've had to make some decisions on on bankless lately with respect to what guests we have on the program. Right. And so we've been having Republican guests. We've had Democrat guests in the past. So the question is like, should we have someone like JD Vance on the podcast? Should we have someone like even Trump on the podcast? And I think our platform has always been like, we're open to any guest, regardless of party, that wants to talk about crypto. So we can hear their stance. So I kind of articulated this. I want to see if you agree with this. This is just like, not the bankless editorial policy, but it's kind of like my personal editorial policy.

• 19:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cause I felt like people, people would say, oh, like they want you to pick a side, team red, team blue, you gotta pick a side, right? Of course. And even even pro crypto people, they're saying Republicans are clearly pro crypto. So pick a side.

• 19:26David Hoffman?

  David, Ryan, why aren't you guys like voting on the Republican administration? They're the clearly the pro crypto ones.

• 19:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Yeah. And first of all, I don't, I just like, don't want to disclose who I'm voting for. Like, I don't feel like people come to bankless for political insights.

• 19:39David Hoffman?

  And I don't want them to either.

• 19:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is kind of how I've articulated it and I want to see how far off or close this is to you. But my lane is pro crypto and anti authoritarian. I'm not a single issue voter personally, though I understand people who are. I support pro crypto policy from both political parties and at Bankless. Give voice so the voters can hear transparently where the politicians land. I avoid dishing strong opinions on areas I have limited expertise. My deep wish for America is that avoids 21st century trap of authoritarianism. And my contribution to this task is propagating crypto and in doing so restore some power to the people. This question that has come up of, you know, sure, you've got some pro crypto candidates, but they're authoritarian all of these other ways and they they present a list, right?

• 20:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's that's a challenge because maybe they are. It's just like outside of my lane. I just like, don't have the expertise to kind of like do the deep dive analysis. So what I have decided to do from an editorial perspective is bring various politicians on and basically just talk about crypto because in that lane, I have like enough expertise to understand what the the pro crypto like anti authoritarian policies are and like what where position, where politicians should be on this issue. What do you think about this?

• 20:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I will reflect upon your take in with my take after I read everyone else's take. So I'll summarize at the very end because I think other people had some useful takes. Starting with a more favorable and agreeing to Vitalik moving and moving away from that as we go along. Starting with Peter Van Valkenburg from Coin Center. He says, another headline for Vitalik's article could have been, "Don't sacrifice your cypherpunk ethos for a particular pro crypto politician or policy proposal." "I agree with that entirely with that principle. Politicians will come and go. Privacy speech and the rule of law must be preserved." So Peter, totally agreeing with Vitalik. Tushar Jain from MultiCoin says, "I believe that Vitalik fundamentally misses, misunderstands the real politic on how most politicians pick their policies.

• 21:38David Hoffman?

  Policy choices are rarely based on some deep beliefs that they hold. They pick policies based on what will win them elections. In my opinion, the job of a politician is to reflect the will of the constituents, not quote, be in it for the right reasons." And then lastly, Jake Shavinsky says, Too many people will read this headline as vote Biden and miss the rest. That said, overall, much of this seems too clever by half. Good crypto policy requires electing pro crypto candidates, period. Political reality beats idealism every time. So like a splattering of responses. And like, I think my, my first takeaway after reading the Vitalik piece was that this is very idealistic. I would ideally enjoy to have candidates that I know had like wore their values on their heart, on their sleeves.

• 22:23David Hoffman?

  It was very open and transparent and I would agree with those values and I would vote for them. But that's simply not how things work. Uh, I kind of resonate with Tushar's take of just like, well, like at the very worst, like being pro crypto is a pro cryptocurrency is a Trojan horse for crypto values. Like if you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. Uh, and, and so this is just the way that elections work. No one votes on like their deep rooted morals. They vote on, on who gets elected and how they get elected. And at the same time, uh, with what you're saying is like, I think the way I would interpret your tweet, which is like, if I see a candidate, a presidential candidate, a policy of something, I'm going to view that policy on like, does this make people like me more free or less free?

• 23:06David Hoffman?

  And that's kind of how I view both the left and the right. And honestly, neither the left or the right makes me feel very good about like that lens of viewing things. Uh, and so I kind of have to view like which, which of these like two camps are going to make me more free. Um, and that's why I'm generally become like pretty like politics agnostic. But now like all of the crypto industries shedding its political agnosticism because there's now an administration that is like explicitly good for our bags. And I think that's a problem that Vitalik is like, um, having a problem with.

• 23:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's pick a team season, uh, for sure. And, and I will say many of the positions in the GOP right now are just like, uh, pro crypto and pro freedom with respect to crypto in that lane. I don't know if I can say that about the broader Republican platform. And I, I don't know that, um, like our expertise is commentary on all of that either.

• 23:58David Hoffman?

  And that bankless nation is the last time we will talk about politics in this entire weekly. We just front loaded all of that. So welcome to the rest of the weekly roll up. But before we get there, I'm going to talk about our friends and sponsors over at Matcha, who is building the first serious Dex aggregator for on-chain trading. On-chain trading has typically been harder for traders because there's a bunch of other things to work on, but Matcha has built a new pricing engine. So it is unbeatable on large trades with smart routing that splits trades and uses intermediate tokens for the deepest liquidity and also has one-time token allowances so that your funds are never at risk after you make your trade. So Matcha, getting into the world of building infrastructure for the serious traders who typically trade on sexes, but Matcha wants you to trade on their

• 24:42David Hoffman?

  decks. There is a link in the show notes to getting started with Matcha today.

• 24:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love Matcha. I'm a, I'm a power user of Matcha. I guess that makes me a serious trader. Am I a serious trader, David?

• 24:50David Hoffman?

  No, you are not.

• 24:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  But when I trade, I'm serious about that, that button that I click.

• 24:54David Hoffman?

  That one trade, that you're, when you trade, you're serious about that trade.

• 24:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  High conviction, hold for a long time trade. Speaking of that conviction, let's see where the markets are in terms of conviction on the week. Bitcoin price, what are we looking at?

• 25:06David Hoffman?

  10% more convicted this week. Started the week at 57,300, ending the week at 63,700, which is a pretty good week. 10%. Yeah, the Trump, the Trump bump. Nice.

• 25:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. Is that a thing?

• 25:19David Hoffman?

  ETH price, starting the week at $3,100, up eight and a half percent. Touch $3,500. Well done ETH. And now currently at $3,401.10. Total crypto market cap, 2.46 trillion dollars. Coming in to our layer two update brought to you by Mantle, who's not just a layer two, but also an entire ecosystem of an LRT and its layer two and also on DeFi apps. Two big things I want to bring out on the, this layer two update. Scroll TVL has jumped by 22% in seven days.

• 25:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's impressive.

• 25:52David Hoffman?

  22% in seven days, becoming the eighth largest layer two by TVL. 80%, 87% of that is ETH, 11% of that is stable coins. Scroll, if you don't know what scroll is, it's a bytecode equivalent, ZK EVM is one of the first big. ZK EVMs that are that's by code equivalent. And so, congrats to Scroll for getting $200 million on your layer two.

• 26:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and you know what's also notable here, David, is in addition to achieving all of that in a short period of time, they also crossed a major threshold. So they now have over $1 billion in total value locked. So this makes them the eighth chain, the eighth layer two to achieve that on Ethereum. So there's seven other layer twos that have that they're basically TVL unicorns, of which now Scroll is one of those. So a big milestone achieved here as well.

• 26:40David Hoffman?

  Second big layer two update, Base is now 30% bigger. So Base had a hard fork, one of the good ones where things improve, instead of one of the bad ones where we have two different tribes. Improved transaction compression by 20 to 30%, which means that Base uses 20 to 30% less blob space for every transaction. Also reduced smart wallet fees, smart contract wallet fees by 90% as well. And so definitely as even the Ethereum layer one is getting into the smart contract wallet world, so are layer twos, which I think is going to be very needed by the time we actually do have like a retail-driven bull market, because this is going to be the way like retail presses more buttons that they want to press and less buttons like approve and also like abstract gas.

• 27:23David Hoffman?

  And so when I, when I hear that we are reducing smart contract wallet fees by 90%, I'm like, okay, this is, we're going to remove an entire just like logistics transaction from retail, which is like having to pay for gas. Imagine that.

• 27:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  More updates on the week to talk about. Mt. Gox coins, they're on the move. So how is this impacting markets? Are we done with the dumpage? Also, some ETF updates, both for Bitcoin, but most importantly-

• 27:45David Hoffman?

  Lots of ETF updates.

• 27:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, most importantly Ethereum. Ethereum. I feel bad that we don't have the ETF this week, but we will the next week. This will be the last roll up.

• 27:54David Hoffman?

  It was the last roll up.

• 27:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ethereum ETF, promise.

• 27:55David Hoffman?

  So it's what we said.

• 27:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. And Larry Fink is getting real bullish. We'll play the clip. So all this and more, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including the exchange. To go pick up your crypto, now's the time to buy. Go create an account on Kraken.

• 28:10David Hoffman?

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• 28:55David Hoffman?

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• 29:39David Hoffman?

  Click the link in the description below to get started. Fuel points are here. Go get it. Arbitrum is the leading Ethereum scaling solution that is home to hundreds of decentralized applications. Arbitrum's technology allows you to interact with Ethereum at scale with low fees and faster transactions. Arbitrum has the leading DeFi ecosystem, strong infrastructure options, flourishing NFTs and is quickly becoming the Web3 gaming hub. Explore the ecosystem at portal.arbitrum.io. Are you looking to permissionlessly launch your own Arbitrum Orbit chain? Arbitrum Orbit allows anyone to utilize Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own Orbit chain, giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you're a developer, an enterprise or a user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights.

• 30:23David Hoffman?

  All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum. Experience Web3 development the way it was always meant to be: secure, fast, cheap and friction-free. Visit arbitrum.io and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. Kraken says they have successfully received funds from Mt. Gox trustees and they will now distribute those funds within 7 to 14 days. And so if you are a Gox creditor with your Kraken account, Bitcoins are magically just going to show up in your Kraken account because Kraken actually has the Bitcoins.

• 30:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 30:56David Hoffman?

  This is also going to be true for a number of other exchanges that also are like signed up for this program, which this is how Bitcoins from Mt. Gox are going to be distributed.

• 31:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, should we just say also if you're a recipient of Mt. Gox, if you're like part of that group, congratulations?

• 31:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, congrats for holding.

• 31:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  You are one of the OGs in the original exchange-

• 31:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's kind of sick actually.

• 31:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  That started it all.

• 31:18David Hoffman?

  There are some people who, I mean, I'm sure they have made plenty of money because they were in crypto in 2013, but like, that's going to be a massive windfall for a lot of people.

• 31:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, 100%. Well, and that's the question. Will this result in some selling pressure? So this windfall, this locked Bitcoin that people have been forced hold for like 10 years, are they just going to sell it? Are they going to dump it? And what's the impact on the market?

• 31:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so whether or not it's a forced hold, I don't really think it counts as a forced hold because the liquid supply of Mt. Gox claims has been, it's been pretty liquid for a number of years now. So it's technically not a forced hold. It's just been a forced lockup of a supply of Bitcoins. So like, people who really wanted to sell, if they were truly motivated to sell before this Bitcoin distribution, they had that option. So this is one of the many reasons why people don't think the Mt. Gox Bitcoins distributions are going to impact the markets that much. In addition, there's just like, apparently, we have the data that there's just meaningfully sufficient liquidity to absorb any like meaningful amount of sell pressure. So even if people were materially selling their Bitcoins from the Gox distribution, it's just not going to impact the Bitcoin

• 32:30David Hoffman?

  price that much because Bitcoin's like pretty liquid and there's just actually not that much to be sold. I think some hedge funds might have just bought the Mt. Gox claims because they are directionally long Bitcoin, so they'll buy discounted Bitcoin anyways no matter what. And maybe that's like kind of- Similar to the grayscale GPTC trade that happened that resulted in GPTC outflows. So maybe there's some sell pressure that, but I think overall like everyone has, everyone generally has to take that this is not going to impact the markets that much.

• 33:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we've got the liquidity, we've got the buying pressure to absorb all of this. This is a tweet that corroborates what you said, even if MT Gox 3 billion is sold on Kraken, it's just 1% of the realized cap increase in this bull cycle, manageable liquidity. And of course, we have a new pool of buyers, which is the Bitcoin ETF buyers, which we'll get to in a minute, and they keep buying, David.

• 33:21David Hoffman?

  It's also worth noting that like, if you are a Bitcoiner in 2013 and you're still holding these like Mt. Gox claims, like what else has come around since 2013 that you haven't been able to buy because your Bitcoin has been locked up? Ethereum, Solana, literally basically every other blockchain. So if we're talking about like, where will this Bitcoin go? It'll either go, it will either go nowhere, and that is going to be neutral on the price. It might take leverage on Bitcoin, and that will be bullish the Bitcoin price, but I don't think a lot of that's going to happen. Or Bitcoin is going to be sold for ETH or Solana or anything else. And so actually, this event is bullish the long tail of crypto assets. And this might actually just not be a big deal. I might just be hypothesizing here, but like technically, it's actually more bullish for

• 34:06David Hoffman?

  everything else other than Bitcoin, because it's buying pressure for everything else and selling pressure for Bitcoin. So it's bullish long tail.

• 34:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Spoken like a true altcoiner, David. I can't believe you take this position.

• 34:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know Mt. Gox was kind of thrown under the bus for causing some of the recent dumbage that we've seen in the markets, but I actually think it was more the other G in the room, which is Germany, the country of Germany. The German government, they dumped a whole lot of Bitcoin, 1.6 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin. The good news though, is they dumped it all. They've got no remaining. The German government has zero Bitcoin to dump on us. So that was resolved last week. They just quit selling their Bitcoin.

• 34:46David Hoffman?

  That's such a hilarious, like bullish thing is that we are stopping, the dump age is stopping.

• 34:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And it's funny is, okay, so the German government sold. 50,000 Bitcoin for 2.89 billion. Oh my God, it's more than I thought. I thought this was less.

• 35:03David Hoffman?

  That's a lot.

• 35:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  An average price of almost $60,000 per Bitcoin. I think historically, this is going to be seen as like...

• 35:12David Hoffman?

  A terrible trade.

• 35:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, a terrible trade. Maybe they were forced to. I'm not sure. I haven't gone into the details of German law.

• 35:17David Hoffman?

  Like, no one in the German government is in charge of getting, of like, holding Bitcoin. Like, there's no one who's like, make sure you like, like, yeah.

• 35:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  But David, should there be? Should there be? What about your central bank? So I was looking at this just because I was curious. So here are the top five countries by Bitcoin holdings, okay? The United States is number one, actually. USA, number one.

• 35:41David Hoffman?

  What department is holding Bitcoin?

• 35:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Department of Justice? Like, this is all from seizure, like, they've seized these assets.

• 35:49David Hoffman?

  I'm assuming this is all from seizures. There's no, other than El Salvador.

• 35:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  FBI, and yeah, this is kind of cussing.

• 35:53David Hoffman?

  This is all just people that have seized Bitcoin. Oh, and Ukraine. Ukraine for maybe like donations and other things.

• 35:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. So I'll read the list, but like, the top three are all because like, criminal activity in the country and Bitcoin was seized. So it's not like it's on the treasury, like, bank backing a central bank monetary policy in the way that gold is in the country. But still, the United States, if it doesn't sell, has the most Bitcoin, 207 Bitcoin. Is that a bit more than Michael Saylor?

• 36:18David Hoffman?

  207,000.

• 36:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  207,000, I should say, yeah. Number two is China, 194,000 Bitcoin. There's not more? It's less than Michael Saylor, okay.

• 36:26David Hoffman?

  It's less than Michael Saylor.

• 36:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Michael Saylor has more Bitcoin than every single nation-state on Earth, huh? Okay. The United Kingdom has, number three, 61,000 Bitcoin. And then Ukraine, 46,000, El Salvador, 5,700. El Salvador, like, actually purchased the Bitcoin. Ukraine was donated the Bitcoin. The top three was all for seizures. Now, Germany would have been...

• 36:50David Hoffman?

  Ukraine donated, had all of that. 46,000 Bitcoins. They didn't have like $10 billion donated to them. I don't know where that came from.

• 36:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, a bunch of it was donated, but maybe not all of it. Some of these numbers are a little hazy. By the way, this is only the assets we have public records for. So I think you could say, yeah, but all of these countries are like, buying in secret.

• 37:08David Hoffman?

  But the Federal Reserve is secretly DCAing Bitcoin.

• 37:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, wouldn't you be? Germany was number four, now they got zero, so they're no longer number four. Idiots. Yeah, well, I don't know. Oh, by the way, you know what I learned as well? Do you know that Canada sold all of its gold reserves? Gold reserves? All of its gold reserves. That's right, because I saw your tweet using the word raw dogging. I'm like, Ryan!

• 37:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so they sold all of their gold reserves. So they actually had no gold, and they had a ton of gold in 1960s, and they just went complete fiat. This is the only G7 country to do this. It's like...

• 37:49David Hoffman?

  Can you explain how you ended up using the word raw dogging to explain this?

• 37:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're just raw dogging their monetary policy, David. It's pretty clear in the context. What does that mean? Just going at it alone, I don't know. Aren't the kids using this terminology? I don't know what I'm saying. No protection, just straight fiat. They have no gold, they have no hard asset currency. There's nothing there. Bond, SDRs, like, how's that make you feel? I mean, probably nothing, because you're not a Canadian, but like, I'm just like, why, guys? This doesn't seem sensible. Anyway.

• 38:19David Hoffman?

  No, definitely not.

• 38:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about ETFs.

• 38:21David Hoffman?

  Don't raw dog your monetary policy, kids.

• 38:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Eric Balchunas gives us a date? Is that what we're talking about? For the Ethereum ETF? What's the date?

• 38:31David Hoffman?

  It is sometime this coming week, and so you're listening to this on Friday next week, as soon as I get back to the United States with my Horcrux. 7/23, what day is that?

• 38:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tuesday.

• 38:42David Hoffman?

  Which is for Tuesday.

• 38:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  You don't know this, David, but I'm actually out that day, and you already scheduled, man. We already scheduled a podcast for you. So Eric Balchunas is coming on the podcast.

• 38:50David Hoffman?

  Oh, you scheduled a podcast for me?

• 38:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 38:51David Hoffman?

  While I was gone, while you were going to be gone, guys?

• 38:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly.

• 38:54David Hoffman?

  Perfect, thank you for doing that.

• 38:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you're talking to Eric Balchunas on Tuesday around 3:00 PM, and you're live streaming, just so you know.

• 39:01David Hoffman?

  I'm literally finding this out for the first time.

• 39:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you're going to be talking about the launch of Ethereum ETFs.

• 39:07David Hoffman?

  The ETH ETFs?

• 39:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's the plan.

• 39:09David Hoffman?

  Right, because I'm going to come, I get back on Monday, past market hours. So of course it launches on Tuesday.

• 39:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Well, thank you for your work in just trying.

• 39:19David Hoffman?

  It's a very hard climb.

• 39:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so this is a date, though, and they're all going to launch. Let's talk about who's launching on this date. Let's see.

• 39:28David Hoffman?

  Like all of them, aren't they?

• 39:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, all of them, but who are they? At least three of the eight spot ETH ETF issuers begin trading on Tuesday. So the products will be available to trade on Tuesday. This is a whole bunch, so Franklin, Templeton, VanEck, Bitwise, 21Shares, Fidelity, iShares. I always forget which one's BlackRock. Is that iShares?

• 39:49David Hoffman?

  iShares is BlackRock.

• 39:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's, that's BlackRock. Grayscale, of course, they got their mini trust, ProShares, Invesco, all of them. So it's another horse race to see who can grab all of the Ethereum ETF liquidity.

• 40:02David Hoffman?

  It's also rates on fees. Franklin Templeton is coming in at the cheapest fees of the ETH ETF at 0.19%, 19 bips, with a waiver. I don't know how long the waiver is, but like waiver means like maybe six months. I think it's standard three months. And so like months of no fees and then 0.19% fees for Franklin Templeton. VanEck at Bitwise are at 0.2%, 21Shares at 0.21%. Fidelity, iShares, Grayscale Mini Trust, 0.25%. Okay, now I can see why people say 25 bips.

• 40:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you guys say bips.

• 40:37David Hoffman?

  25 bips for Fidelity.

• 40:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, get track five.

• 40:39David Hoffman?

  Invesco Galaxy also 25 bips, but no waiver. Whereas Fidelity, iShares and the Grayscale Mini Trust will have a waiver. And then the Grayscale ETH, 2.5%, 250 bips. But they will convert 10% of the fund into the Mini Trust and their Mini Trust has 25 bips. Yeah, it's a lot of bips. Why are they doing this? Why are they like, if they can change their fee, why are they spinning up the Mini Trust at all? Why don't they just lower the fee on the 2.5%, the 250 bips? Why don't they just lower it down to their, what their Mini Trust is? Do they even need a mini trust at all? I know I have my conspiracies.

• 41:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't think it's a conspiracy. It's probably like a pretty rational, short-term business decision. But what is it?

• 41:23David Hoffman?

  If you are an owner of the grayscale ETH E trust paying 2.5% and then the ETH gets converted into an ETF, you will need to do something to roll that into the mini trust.

• 41:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 41:34David Hoffman?

  Or you will have to like sell it and to buy like one of the others. So you are going to actually have to open up your brokerage app, press that sell button and then incur your capital gains. And so if you are one of two people, you are caught paying this 2.5% fee. Two types of people. One, I'm going to call AFK Capital, away from keyboard capital. People who just aren't aware, don't know, just lazy, like retirement brokerage account.

• 41:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's summertime, you're on vacation, man.

• 42:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right. 2.5% fee, like fees, whatever. Like, fine, whatever. So that's you. Or somebody who bought ETH E at a very low price and you do not want to pay that capital gains tax bill. So one, both of these two populations are like basically cornered into paying this 2.5% grayscale fee.

• 42:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a business decision that grayscale is making, I guess. And so we'll see how it plays out in the, in the horse race here. A question was asked by, of Hester Purce. So Commissioner Hester Purce, what about staked ETF future? So we have a regular ETF as of Tuesday of next week. How about an ETF, an ETH ETF with staking? And her response was this, that the SEC is always open for reconsideration as far as I'm concerned. I think that makes sense as far as Hester Purce is concerned. I think that would also happen in a post Gary Gensler SEC, maybe on the back of a pro crypto president. You can see all of this starting to come together. It's not that difficult to convert this into a staked ETH ETF either.

• 43:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just some paperwork approval.

• 43:05David Hoffman?

  Right. And you see the path towards that actually getting, actually happening. JD Vance, the VP that Trump has nominated, Trump likely going to win the election now. JD Vance, very aware of who Gary Gensler is and disagrees with his position. And so will probably give Gary Gensler the boot if and when Trump gets elected. And we need to put in a new SEC commissioner. I don't know if it will be Hester Purce, but I would sure love it if it was. I do know that Hester Purce was like, kind of like on her way out of the SEC, like kind of fed up with Gary's shit. I wonder if this new administration might change her mind and maybe she could stick around, please, Hester. And then also give us staking in the ETF, please.

• 43:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, this is Jake Trivinsky on it. But by the way, did we just get into politics? We promised no politics. I guess this is markets, politics, but you know, breaking our promise already. ETH ETF next week, we promised last roll up without it. This is Jake Trivinsky. There's no good reason why the SEC should prevent ETH ETFs from staking. Staked ETH isn't a security. Yes, it's not. And investors can fully understand the risk of a stake product plus decide for themselves. They want to take that risk. It'll take a while, but this is a when, not an if, in my opinion. All right, that's the ETH ETF. Next roll up, it'll be live available. We'll have some episodes about it next week, I'm sure. David will be doing all of them. He doesn't know it yet fully. The question is, are people going to buy the Ethereum ETF?

• 44:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  And if we can take the playbook from the Bitcoin ETF, if it plays out the same way it did for Bitcoin, that is very bullish for the price of ETH and for ETH ETF inflows.

• 44:38David Hoffman?

  Especially when in the last two weeks, we have seen actual material inflows into the Bitcoin ETF. So two weeks in a row of inflows, which is actually kind of a record since it tapered off in the first place forever ago. So a new all time high in assets under management of the collective Bitcoin ETFs of 887,000 Bitcoins. Eric Balchunas, he also said Bitcoin ETFs are in two steps forward mode after one step back in June with another $300 million of inflows and a billion dollars for the week. And so we're really seeing some healthy Bitcoin activity. I think like, I would like to see like- I would like to know like inflows, high inflows means high Bitcoin price,

• 45:19David Hoffman?

  but also just like pro crypto sentiment as a result of all the politics of which I won't bring up again, will also create more inflows. So I think like price and inflows are actually going to be like more meaningfully one to one coupled than them being decoupled. So like any sort of like pro crypto sentiment that happens in the geopolitics macro world is going to result in inflows.

• 45:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you want to hear some more pro crypto sentiment this time from Larry Think?

• 45:43David Hoffman?

  It was a really bullish week, but yes, hit me.

• 45:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, okay. So this is Larry Think. We were talking about Jamie Dimon earlier. This is kind of Jamie Dimon's colleague in TradFi, Larry Think. This is what he's saying about crypto this week.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  As you know, I was a skeptic. Yes. I was a proud skeptic.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  And I studied it, learned about it, and I came away saying, okay, you know, my opinion five years ago was wrong. Here's my opinion today. This is what I believe in today. I believe the opportunity today. I believe Bitcoin is legitimate. I'm not trying to say there's not misuses like everything else, but it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have maybe uncorrelated, non-correlated type of returns. I believe it is an instrument that you invest in when you're more frightened, though. It is an instrument when you believe that countries are debasing their currency, debasing their currency by excess deficits, and some countries are.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  I believe we have countries where you're frightened of your everyday existence and have an opportunity to invest in something that is outside your country's, you know, control. Then you can have more financial control. And so I'm a major believer that there is a role for Bitcoin in portfolios. I believe you're going to see that as one of the asset classes that we all look at. I look at it as digital gold, as I said before, and I do believe there's a real need. For everyone to look at it as as one alternative to, I would say, the optimism that I have in the world.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  If you want to hedge hope, Bitcoin is not an instrument for hope unless you're hopeful you're going to make a lot of money on it. But I look at it as a vehicle in which you're expressing your your financial acumen in something that you're more frightened of the world. You're more frightened of your existence, and I believe there's a great industrial use for it. And I think a lot of people are missing that.

• 47:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  He goes on, David, for about another turn. Like, this is Larry Fink, fully converted, preaching the good word of Bitcoin. He's also, did you hear him, almost leaving an opportunity, an opening for other crypto narratives and other crypto assets? I mean, this is why BlackRock is just like the largest asset manager in the entire world is because like he knows how the narrative game is played with large institutional investors. So he's saying, this is the asset, digital gold, debasement, like monetary policy, like if you're concerned about the world, like fear in the world, leaves a space open to talk about Ethereum as, you know, like tokenization, you're optimistic about the world, like, look at all the, you know, restructuring the entire financial system, the entire world will be tokenized.

• 48:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's act two. He's going to do the exact same thing months into the Ethereum ETF as he did with Bitcoin. And the other thing I'll just notice is note that what a pivot that Wall Street has taken.

• 48:46David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 48:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  They just had to have products to sell. Now that they have products to sell.

• 48:49David Hoffman?

  They had to have products to sell and they needed it to be politically accepted. And I don't know what Larry Fink's politics are, but they are markets aligned. So like, pick your base.

• 49:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's making money is the politics, I think, of TradFi.

• 49:03David Hoffman?

  Also, the BlackRock Digital Assets team is called the Digital Assets Team. It's not called the Bitcoin Team.

• 49:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, there you go. That's broader appeal then.

• 49:14David Hoffman?

  And after all of that bullish sentiment, content, conversations, there's another bullish thing that often gets overlooked, but I think it's definitely worth paying attention to. For the first time all year, Bitcoin miners are producing more Bitcoin than they are selling, which means that they are profitable as companies. And when Bitcoin miners are profitable and they don't sell their Bitcoins, that means just more supply gets reserved for the markets. Miners, Bitcoin miners, really set like the climate around markets. They aren't acute, they aren't acute sellers, but when Bitcoin miners are not dumping because they actually are profitable, Bitcoin's supply gets withdrawn. And this has been actually a pretty good, like, kind of background indicator as to the health of the Bitcoin markets and therefore the rest of the crypto markets.

• 49:57David Hoffman?

  It's like, are the miners selling or are they holding? And if the miners are holding, that's bullish. And that's basically been bullish every single cycle. So this is just another indicator of like, we're kind of set up to, we're really healthily set up in the markets.

• 50:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I'm wondering if you think that, maybe I'm extrapolating, I don't know as much about Bitcoin miners, but it feels like Bitcoin miners are the absolute smart money when it comes to Bitcoin, because they have to be. Because if they are dumb, if they don't do this exactly right, precisely right, they die, they go to business. So it's a matter of survival. So we've gone through the evolutionary process, we've got like, so all of the dumb mining companies that made poor decisions with respect to, should I buy or should I hold? They're all, they go out of business and they lose every cycle. So now you have the smart Bitcoin money remaining, and they are holding at this point.

• 50:40David Hoffman?

  And this has actually been empirically proven. Bitcoin miners are some of the best traders in the crypto industry. If you look at like when they elected to sell and when they elected to hold. Coming up next, Uniswap has a big new browser extension wallet, but you know what a browser extension wallet is, so why is this one any different? Stay tuned for that. And how much money is crypto spending on politics? Are we outspending big oil?

• 51:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, you said politics, David.

• 51:04David Hoffman?

  I'm just invoking politics up here. And an update on Crypto Wars 2.0, one of the most important cases in crypto history, Roman Storm's case, we got an update on that as well. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, especially Mantle and the Mantle ecosystem, the vertically integrated Layer 2. CM ETH and all the other fun things you can do on Mantle. Check them out. You're gonna go hear from them right now. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA, powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming on to the Mantle Layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in DeFi and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion Mantle Treasury in the Mantle Reward Station.

• 51:49David Hoffman?

  Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto, or you're a user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's DeFi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle. The Uniswap extension is here. The self-custody wallet, created by the most trusted team in DeFi, Uniswap Labs, designed to make swapping feel effortless. This extension lives in your browser's sidebar, letting you swap, sign transactions, and send or receive crypto without ever losing your place on the internet. Plus, with human-readable transaction messages, you'll always know exactly what you're signing. Navigate a multi-chain world effortlessly with support for 11 chains

• 52:34David Hoffman?

  like Ethereum Mainnet, Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism. No more chain switching or token importing. All your assets are right where you need them to be. The Uniswap extension is designed to level up your swapping experience with other Uniswap Labs products as well. Easily onboard to the extension using the Uniswap Mobile Wallet to begin managing your assets across platforms and take advantage of smooth, seamless synergies with the Uniswap Web App. So go and download the Uniswap extension today by clicking the link in the show notes. Just another way Uniswap is helping you swap smarter. Launching a token? Don't let complex legal and tax issues slow you down. Toku provides specialized support to optimize your launch and ensure that you, as a founder, and your team, and your investors, get the most tax-efficient outcomes. The Toku team understands the crypto space inside and out and will ensure your token launch is fully compliant while maximizing tax efficiency.

• 53:19David Hoffman?

  Toku can connect you with the best attorneys, if you need them, to make sure that you have the best advice. And Toku can help to optimize your taxes so you pay the least possible amount of taxes while still maintaining legal compliance. With Toku's guidance, you can concentrate

• 53:30David Hoffman?

  I'm building your company while Toku handles the logistics. Token launches don't have to be complicated. Talk to Toku today to get a free initial token valuation. And we're back. Uniswap wants you to say goodbye to pop-ups. That little pop-up browser in your browser extension wallet. Because now the Uniswap browser extension wallet is a little sidebar. And this one is unique because, well, it doesn't pop up, not like most other browser extension wallets. But when, Ryan, when you're browsing, I'm going to assume you use Chrome. Is there a little pop-up bar on the right side of your window? That is the new location for the Uniswap's browser extension. And it's permanently there. So it's permanently embedded in your browser extension. And so instead of like your browser extension wallet popping up and like taking over your screen. And if you're in full screen, like you have to swipe back and it's confusing.

• 54:15David Hoffman?

  This sidecar, think of it like a motorcycle sidecar, is the Uniswap wallet. And it's just like persistently there. And if you have a web three JSON-enabled website, Uniswap wallet will just be right there, ready to go. And so it's a new form factor for a browser extension wallet. And I think it's going to be pretty sexy.

• 54:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I love it. I think it's a really smart move. It feels much like a much more integrated kind of like way to display a wallet inside of a browser. Right? So it's just like, it's almost like it's part of the browser in this type of experience. Yeah, much more seamless. And I think this opens the door for all sorts of things that we can do with crypto. Beyond just like the the trading verb that Uniswap's been known for.

• 54:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we need we need buttons to be closer to the action. And I think a sidecar extension like this definitely does that. Moving into Crypto Wars 2.0, we got some positive developments in Roman Storm's tornado cash defense. There was a motion to delay the trial date. And whether that notion was approved or not, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that we actually got the judge, Judge Falia. Oh, God, I'm so sorry for butchering that name. Is apparently asking really good questions about the details of the case. And apparently appears to recognize the danger in establishing a mere negligence standard for money laundering, which is what the Dutch did to Alexei Pertsev. And so some of the arguments that were brought during this process,

• 55:36David Hoffman?

  the judge mused on what the tipping point should be for when a service. ought to be shut down when it becomes aware that criminals are using it in the process of bad actions. And so the prosecutor Thane Ren argued that any legitimate business that becomes aware of criminal activity should be required to take steps to stop it. And then the judge respond saying, that's a lot. I'm not sure what you expect Mr. Storm and his colleagues to do. Should they have shut down tornado cash?

• 56:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly.

• 56:04David Hoffman?

  How do you saddle him with liability? And asked whether charges were comparable to criminally charging the creators of WhatsApp before criminals used it, which is the right question to ask? Thank you, Judge. And so this case is not over. This is just like one procedural event in this case. But we now just got an insight to the judge asking the right questions and taking the right perspective. We don't know how she will rule, but she seems informed to the arguments for both parties. And in my opinion, the law is on Roman Storm's side. And so hopefully, if she's asking the right questions, we get to the right conclusion.

• 56:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. She's asking the right questions in this kind of like pre-trial, and she's thinking about this in the right way. This is what the defense said, by the way, about this, which kind of encapsulates the entire case. This is the only money laundering case ever where the defendant didn't have control over the funds. Period.

• 57:00David Hoffman?

  That's such a hotline.

• 57:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? I mean, this is a smart contract. Put the code out, put it in production, right? Similar to like encryption or similar to like WhatsApp. You can't be responsible for every criminal use of a tool that you create, can you? I mean, that's just an extension of liability that is just like unprecedented. I think the judge might see this. So it's very bullish. So this motion to delay the trial has been approved, which means it's going to happen in December now of this year. So it'll probably be like a multi-week trial. We'll talk about it then. I think it's an absolutely massive case for crypto, because it's like, smart contract law, autonomy, like, you know, whether code is speech.

• 57:36David Hoffman?

  Huge bellwether.

• 57:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah, it's massive. This is really, this is what we call kind of crypto wars 2.0. This is like the 90s with Zimmerman in terms of the outcome here and the precedent that this will set. And since you mentioned Alexei Pertsev. Just a reminder, so he was actually in the Netherlands, he was actually convicted for something similar.

• 57:57David Hoffman?

  By the Dutch.

• 57:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's the co-founder of the Roman store of Tornado. By the Dutch, yes. He's been trying to appeal, but that appeal has been denied. So he is in prison, basically. His conviction was 64 months in prison. So he's serving that time now and continues to serve that time. It's an absolutely long time.

• 58:15David Hoffman?

  Pivoting gears here, back to politics, just betraying my listeners left and right. Molly White, previous Bankless Podcast guest, has released her new project, FollowTheCrypto.org, which is a website that provides real-time lens into the cryptocurrencies industries to influence the 2024 elections in the United States. And I would assume after the 2024 elections, it just pivots into crypto's money in Capitol Hill. And so you can see candidates that have received donations from crypto PACs, whether the candidate won that election, the list of crypto PACs and where they fall, recent donations and total expenditures in various states and races. And so Molly White, if you guys remember, if you guys listened to that episode, we had her on as a crypto skeptic.

• 58:59David Hoffman?

  And so it was somebody who doesn't like crypto and doesn't think it's necessarily good for the world. And so she's making this website to track crypto's influence in politics, which I think is just great. I love this website. I think this is awesome.

• 59:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you think is great? So it's like, my reaction is, I think it's great. First of all, more transparency is good. We should see where the money's flowing, who's receiving it, how it affects outcomes, how it affects decisions. I think she's kind of, because she's obviously thinks that crypto is a net negative for the world, she's framing this as a bearish thing. It's just like, look how crypto is buying all of the politicians, right? I think the crypto perspective on this would be like, we have to play this game in order to survive.

• 59:36David Hoffman?

  This is the game. It's not our game.

• 59:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we didn't create it. I wish money wasn't involved in politics. I wish this wasn't the way it worked, but if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, right? This is the, and we saw this. I mean, the administrative state is very much coming for crypto. And the way we turned it around was we organized, we created like Stand With Crypto, we started donating politically, we started to get involved in the way that the political Like process forces the crypto industry to get involved for our survival at this point in time. And because if we didn't, like, who knows what restrictions the US would put on crypto freedoms. It is notable, though, David, that crypto is actually outspending any other industry.

• 1:00:18David Hoffman?

  So this means Number one, we're number one.

• 1:00:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Outspending oil and gas, outspending the communications industry, outspending labor, outspending transportation with respect to its political contributions. Now, I don't know if tech is included in this, because like, you know, like, A16Z and those others, they're definitely, you know, spending big. Part of that goes to crypto, but part of it's more general. Anyway, that was my takeaway from this. It's just like, I could see how it can be corrupting influence, but like, don't hate the player, hate the game. And like, we've had to do this to survive.

• 1:00:50David Hoffman?

  Getting money out of politics is like, one of the few political things that I have in my history. Like, I was very motivated as that political alignment to get money out of politics. I have since given up on that effort. But I think having crypto be number one, even though when crypto is like a comparatively small industry, as compared to like pharmaceuticals and oil, it makes sense if you understand that crypto is an industry that like, we learned how to print money. Bitcoin is the removal of the power to print money away from the nation state. Like, if you disagree with nation states, like, usage of the money printer, buy some Bitcoin. And so it makes sense that we are punching way above our weight class, because we have our own money, our entire industry is money printers. And so we are defending our rights to use our tools. And I kind of think if you like, look

• 1:01:33David Hoffman?

  at this, I know you know that I like to look at these things in a biological lens. Like, this is a crypto industry, like, using its weapons, being a parasite, incepting its way into the politics of nation states, and buying its way into protection, and, like, a strong, healthy foundation for itself. I just think, I mean, it's an inevitable outcome. Like, don't go up against an industry that can print money.

• 1:01:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, no, I think it's good and it showcases crypto's ability to coordinate this cycle in a way that's just never had. So it's a bullish indicator to me. Although I can also see, you know, back to full circle of Vitalik's critiques at the beginning. I can also see how this, like, while it's net good right now to me, I can also see how this could become a corrupting influence. Imagine there's a world- Which is why I like having this website. This is a check on us. Exactly, exactly. So you could imagine a world where like crypto exchanges or like the baddies of the world. Maybe, maybe Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan buys up Coinbase and they become the banking establishment. And then they start to push things that aren't like citizen-aligned and freedom-aligned, self-custodial wallets. And they start to push like financial products, right?

• 1:02:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And like their banking services and start to really corrupt the process. I can totally imagine that as a possible outcome because- Honestly, it's probably the, should be the default scenario. We should be wary of that. And that's kind of what Vitalik is saying in his posts. And so I think we need to go into this of eyes wide open and be like, we have to play this game, I suppose. But it's a, it's a dangerous game to play. We have to be wary of the corruption that can fall out.

• 1:03:02David Hoffman?

  Molly, if you're listening to this, you should apply for a Gitcoin grant. Because crypto people who appreciate your effort will send you money via Gitcoin grants.

• 1:03:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hundred percent. Yeah, yeah. I forget, Molly White was like an editor of Wikipedia, right? She's very open source friendly. She's very kind of like internet native, internet-aligned. She just hasn't made the leap to crypto. She kind of thinks- Yeah, she doesn't like the financialization, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. David, meme of the week, what are we looking at?

• 1:03:30David Hoffman?

  This is a meme that I thought was pretty funny. This is the two universes that we were referencing at the beginning. The top one is the universe in which the bullet did go through Donald Trump's head. And as a result of that, we have a civil war. Like honestly, something like that would have happened, something very bad. But with the Trump head movement, the head movement where Trump just tilted his head just slightly to the left, stocks and crypto rip. So these were the two universes and we got the one where stocks and crypto rip. And also like we didn't have a political assassination, which is also good.

• 1:04:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think there's a version of the roll-up with David and Ryan living in a very different world and having a very different roll-up-

• 1:04:06David Hoffman?

  I don't want to think about that.

• 1:04:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  And kind of first scenario?

• 1:04:07David Hoffman?

  I don't want to think about that.

• 1:04:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, forget, forget those guys. We're in this one.

• 1:04:10David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin is down below 30% and like the left and the right are like at each other's throats. And like we're living in a, where markets are just totally confused and unsure about the future. No, I'm very happy to be in this one.

• 1:04:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Literally dodged a bullet. Also metaphorically dodged a bullet. In all possible ways, we dodged a bullet on this one. David, because this is the last weekly roll-up without Ethereum ETF, I think we should leave him with a moment of zen. This is the new Bitwise commercial around Ethereum. Enjoy, and I will end with some disclaimers. You know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  Hello, I'm Ethereum. And I'm Big Tech. What's going on here? Oh, I'm all about helping people connect. It's just some of these people don't belong here. What do you mean? Well, like this guy, he said something awful. What'd he say? Called soccer football totally un-American. Seems pretty random. Well, this one plays accordion, Nickelback fan, only speaks with caps lock on. Oh, well, I didn't mean to do that one, but how do you deal with this? I'm not into random deplatforming. What? You just let pickleball fans in? You're nuts.

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  What's wrong with pickleball? Everything.