ROLLUP: SBF Trial Underway | ETH ETFs Are Here | Ripple Wins Again

WRU 1st Week of October ----- 🏹 Airdrop Hunter is HERE, join your first HUNT todayhttps://bankless.cc/JoinYourFirstHUNT ------ 📚 a16z Startup School | Applications are now open! https://a16zcrypto.com/crypto-startup-school/?utm_source=bankless&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=css_london&utm_id=css https://a16zcrypto.com/crypto-startup-school/?utm_source=bankless&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=css_london&utm_id=css ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🦊METAMASK PORTFOLIO | MANAGE YOUR WEB3 EVERYTHING ⁠https://bankless.cc/MetaMask https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/MetaMask ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Arbitrum ⁠ 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE ⁠https://bankless.cc/uniswap https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/uniswap 🔗 CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 4:57 MARKETS https://www.growthepie.xyz/ 8:14 Uptober or Rektober? https://twitter.com/stackhodler/status/1708421490264166754 11:00 Arthurs Take https://twitter.com/cryptohayes/status/1709775837271388267?s=46&t=LKBC7Qtm18FnZ380xCF2pA https://twitter.com/cryptohayes/status/1709775837271388267?s=46&t=LKBC7Qtm18FnZ380xCF2pA 12:14 US Debt is Insane https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1709321746673786896?s=20 13:40 China is Selling https://apolloacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/China_Outlook_Oct3_2023.pdf https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-hide-your-foreign-exchange-reserves-users-guide 18:43 SBF Trial Has Begun! https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/investing/sbf-trial-jury-selection/index.html https://twitter.com/lex_node/status/1709318776078877071 25:24 Day 2 30:45 Michael Lewis Takes 36:24 Anthropic Plot Twist https://www.theblock.co/post/254667/anthropics-new-raise-could-mean-full-payout-for-ftx-creditors-lawyer 38:05 ETH Futures Derby https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1708841958020366838?s=20 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1708953284495708559?s=20 https://x.com/vaneck_us/status/1708113739881337125?s=20 https://x.com/vaneck_us/status/1707888396171977036?s=20 41:30 ETF Takes https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1708865693481836849?s=20 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1709187579352875039?s=20 https://x.com/vaneck_us/status/1709353826937889152?s=20 https://twitter.com/brianquintenz/status/1708966869284073929?s=46 https://twitter.com/NateGeraci/status/1708954390701236544 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1709552867088924820?s=20 46:01 Grayscale Files For Spot ETF https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1708822647369273637 48:59 Celestia Launches Token https://twitter.com/CelestiaOrg/status/1706671239572676881 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1706714159235142081?s=20 https://twitter.com/MessariCrypto/status/1707773950732771740?s=20 51:15 Su Zhu Arrested https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-29/three-arrows-capital-co-founder-zhu-apprehended-liquidator-says 52:43 OP Fault Proofs https://twitter.com/OPLabsPBC/status/1709236296604930487 54:14 SEC Loses again to Ripple https://x.com/BillHughesDC/status/1709345748930748708?s=20 57:38 Questions From The Nation https://discord.com/channels/615592155481767941/1058053004705669211/1159165917045981245 1:01:21Takes Of The Week https://x.com/mdudas/status/1709350657918939557?s=20 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1709002107238432928?s=20 https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1709219774020899079?s=20 1:06:13 What Are We Bullish On https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1709343459201499404?s=20 1:08:32 Meme Of The Week https://twitter.com/bulltrapper0/status/1707759825151561943?s=20 1:11:06 Disclosures ------ 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  He said, you have to understand that when it went in there, it was a rounding error. That I felt like we had infinity dollars in there and that I wasn't even thinking about it.

• 0:06David Hoffman?

  That, that I think is very revealing. That, that is how SBF treated FTX. I have infinite money. And I was like, where did I put that $500,000? Is it under my desk? And the reason why they had to send it to Alameda is because they knew FTX could not get bank accounts. It's not like, oopsies, we don't have bank accounts to send it to Alameda. Like that's, it's their biggest problem.

• 0:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, it is the first Friday of Uptober, I mean October. David, what time is it?

• 0:38David Hoffman?

  Oh, it's time for the bank this Friday, weekly roll up, Ryan, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, especially this week. It's one of those weeks, yet we persevere into the frontier nonetheless. How are you?

• 0:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, are you, are you team Uptober? You think it's going to be up month, down month? What do you think?

• 0:53David Hoffman?

  Uh, I'm not ready to be hurt again, so I have no strong opinions.

• 0:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  You've been hurt too many Octobers? Previous?

• 1:01David Hoffman?

  Just like, there's so many reasons to be bullish. And if I keep on saying like, look at all these reasons to be bullish, and then we get like $1,200 Ether, I'm going to be like, it did it to me again.

• 1:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's that time in the market, but okay, but let's contrast this with October last year. All right. So October last year, it was just before the fall of SBF.

• 1:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  And we got through an absolutely grueling summer where we had like the collapse of Terra Luna. We had three hours capital liquidation. We had triple digit ETH. It was an absolute grueling summer, 2022, and here we are in October and we're getting ready to take a breath and be like, oh man, that was crazy. We're on the other side of that.

• 1:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm so glad all of that's over. Like we're good, right? It's like, that wasn't so bad. Like it, we're, we're good. We're good. We made it.

• 1:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  And then what happened?

• 1:50David Hoffman?

  Meanwhile, CZ and SBF are just duking it out on Twitter. Yeah, that was a year ago.

• 1:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was a year ago, but we got some SBF news. Now, one year later, what's happening with SBF this week?

• 2:00David Hoffman?

  The SBF trial has begun. It began on Tuesday. So there's been the jury selection that has happened. So we know who the jurors are. The opening statements have come out from each side, both the prosecution and the defense. So we know what their general strategies gist is. We've had the first witnesses. So the first witness has come on and then we have today, Thursday, the second round of witnesses. Some familiar names that you will be familiar with. All of that happened this week. It's going on and it will go on for the remaining six weeks of this whole thing. So we will recap it all and also tell you what's to come. But that's not all, Ryan. What else is going on?

• 2:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  The ETH futures ETF Derby. Okay. Remember last week, we said we might have ETH futures by Monday and boom, we got ETH futures. So we're going to talk about that. Who's in the arena? Who's ahead in the race? What all of this means for crypto?

• 2:53David Hoffman?

  The SEC takes another L. Gary just can't stop losing. But to top it all off, Suzu of Three Ours Capital arrested in Singapore while trying to leave the country. And the order is out for Kyle Davies arrest as well. Kyle Davies on the run. Man, like, that's just good stuff, man. But then, of course, the market's not necessarily doing following suit. So this is why I'm saying I'm not ready to get hurt again.

• 3:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, not ready to get hurt again, not ready for October, though there are some believers. We'll talk about that in the market section. But before we get there, David, it's back to school time and I'm not talking about regular school. I'm talking about crypto startup school, my friend. This is from A16Z. What is crypto startup school?

• 3:36David Hoffman?

  A16Z crypto startup school is famous. It is an accelerator, a 12-week accelerator program with some of just the biggest entrepreneurs and founders as your mentors in the industry, along with a lot of the partners at A16Z. And so you apply, you apply with your startup and you apply to the school and then you get accepted, hopefully, to go and be a part of this accelerator. We at Bankless Ventures look at a lot of the startups that come out of accelerator programs like this, especially A16Z. And so being accepted to the A16 startup school is I would I would call that bullish. So like I said, 12 week program is in London from March 27 in London in Britain. And so, I mean, it's just like some straight market experience. Don't get your MBA.

• 4:21David Hoffman?

  Don't do that. Just go to A16C crypto startup school.

• 4:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's like a startup MBA. I can't recommend a program like this enough. Chris Dixon, of course, is a mentor there. Jing Wang from from optimism, just absolutely world class. I don't think anyone else does it better. And the call to action is if you are a crypto founder, web three founder, make sure you hit the deadline and apply to A16C crypto startup school. You got to do this by October 20th, 2023.

• 4:50David Hoffman?

  14 days.

• 4:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  14 days.

• 4:52David Hoffman?

  14 days.

• 4:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  15 days. Get on it. Let's do it. This is a build market, so let's get building. David, market section. Let's talk about it. What's Bitcoin price doing on the week?

• 5:01David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin price happy up 2%, 26,900 where we started. We are up $600 more to 27,500, up 2% on the week. Nice drop. Oh, we kind of erased a little bit of the gains, a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit.

• 5:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Hopefully 2% by the time you're listening to it.

• 5:16David Hoffman?

  Overall, a good, good 30 days, good 30 days. ETH price starting the week at 16,060, down 2%, WTF at 1620. Bitcoin up 2%, Ether down 2%. What gives? I don't know.

• 5:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, ETH got futures. Bitcoin, what did you get this week?

• 5:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, what the hell?

• 5:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  You didn't get futures. You already had those. How come ETH is down?

• 5:39David Hoffman?

  Stop all the good news. It's bearish.

• 5:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, how about the ETH Bitcoin ratio?

• 5:45David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin ratio below 0.06 at 0.059.

• 5:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Got to thank the Kraken charts for this. These charts are glorious.

• 5:52David Hoffman?

  Tell me exactly how bad I feel.

• 5:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't like the candle direction.

• 5:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh-uh. This is October. Everything changes, David. How about crypto market cap?

• 6:01David Hoffman?

  1.12 trillion dollars.

• 6:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like it's always that.

• 6:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it really is.

• 6:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Does this ever change, week to week?

• 6:08David Hoffman?

  It's pretty flat. Do you remember when prices used to change?

• 6:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now, look at all this flatness. It's about a year of flatness.

• 6:16David Hoffman?

  It's a year of slight incline up. Well, because, well, okay, a year ago, October, prices were maybe around where they are now, and then they dumped. Bitcoin, Bitcoin set its yearly low 11 months ago. Ether said it, said it like 15 or 16 months ago.

• 6:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what a, what a year it's been, hon. How about Layer 2s? This is a different chart than we usually use. GrowThePie.xyz. This is actually somebody from the Bankless Nations. Got some different analytics on it versus Layer 2B. The Layer 2 user base, David, you checking these numbers? This is the number of unique addresses interacting with Layer 2 networks in a given week. And what are these numbers that we're looking at here?

• 6:57David Hoffman?

  The, the shape of the chart, first and foremost, are shapes that I enjoy. That is an up and to the right chart. Yeah, what is that number? 2.1, 2.2 million unique addresses across all Ethereum Layer 2s in the last week. And that's, wow, that's great.

• 7:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's pretty impressive.

• 7:16David Hoffman?

  ZK Sync Era coming in at 1 million, Arbitrum coming in at almost a half a million, OP Mainnet, almost 200,000, Base, 170,000, Immutable X, 250,000. Okay, cool, cool.

• 7:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I enjoy looking at it from this perspective. You can also see the, the transaction count, 3.11 million. You can see the stablecoin market cap on, on Layer 2.

• 7:38David Hoffman?

  That's just great signal. Yeah, whoever put these, whoever put these particular metrics together, love that. Oh, you, well, you can definitely tell that it's a Bankless listener because they have rent paid to the Layer 1. Those are the words we use.

• 7:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thanks. And what is that? 176K. I guess that's on the maybe the month.

• 7:58David Hoffman?

  A daily? That's a 24 hour number.

• 7:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Daily, daily. Oh, yeah. Good, good, good. I like that. On the daily.

• 8:02David Hoffman?

  Very useful.

• 8:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  So some good signs, as usual, in the layer two markets. It doesn't look like a bear market in layer two land. David, let's get to some market news, okay? The question is, is this going to be October or is this Rectober? We've got two contrasting opinions here. Let's talk about the happy one, the October one. This is coming from Bitcoin land. Apparently, Octobers historically, David, have been pretty good for Bitcoin. Not all of them, but many of them have been. And that's the the base case for Bitcoin October. What's this tweet telling us?

• 8:34David Hoffman?

  It's saying eight out of the last 10 Octobers were positive for Bitcoin with an average gain of 22%. That's double digits. It's been a while since we've seen double digits. And then they also go through some looming bullish catalysts specifically for this October. ETF approval coming soon. TM is what people are speculating. Marketing pushes by, of course, you know, the big boys, BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin, Templeton. There's bond markets are forcing central bank intervention. We did kind of a show, a macro show this week that was talking a little bit about that, just the inevitability of, of course, the money printer being turned back on. We don't know when, but it will it will be inevitable. That's kind of the theory. Awareness of US debt starting to become more than what we

• 9:15David Hoffman?

  can service. So we have more in interest payments than we make as money as a country. It's just healthy financials. And then, of course, the happening in early 2024 Bitcoins gets its happening, I think in March, late March. And so the issuance of Bitcoin will be cut in half, of course. This is traditionally being considered a ceremony of Bitcoiners. I don't I don't think Bankless has existed since we've had a Bitcoin happening. I think we started Bankless right after the last happening. So this will be.

• 9:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that true?

• 9:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

• 9:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  When was the last happening?

• 9:46David Hoffman?

  May 11th, 2020. So the podcast had started, the company had not.

• 9:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we were probably four or five podcasts in by that time, and we celebrated happening then. And.

• 9:58David Hoffman?

  No, no, we were four to five months in. So multiply that by four.

• 10:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, wait, when was it? What month?

• 10:04David Hoffman?

  May of 2020.

• 10:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  May?

• 10:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, we started in March, right? 2020?

• 10:09David Hoffman?

  We started in, I thought we started in January, bro.

• 10:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, no, no, it was, I think our first episode was the beginning of March 2020.

• 10:17David Hoffman?

  Uh, yes, no, you're right, you're right, you're right, because the second one we recorded while COVID was decimating the markets.

• 10:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's right. I remember that. That was absolutely brutal.

• 10:26David Hoffman?

  That was extremely distracting.

• 10:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I think here's the key point here. The weak hands have been brutally shaken out during this bear market, right?

• 10:33David Hoffman?

  Brutally.

• 10:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Brutally. Seventy-six percent, that's Bitcoin or talk, seventy-six percent of supply is now in the hands of long-term holders, all right? And so with these bull catalysts, it can't really go down

• 10:43David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 10:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  much further because the high conviction diamond hands are the ones holding the Bitcoin at this point. So, you know, that's the bull case, I guess, for Uptober. Now, whether that happens in October or it takes a little bit longer, I mean, who's to say? But it's a fun meme. Arthur Hayes, however, is taking the other side here. He's calling this Rektober. And he's not so much talking about crypto as he is, he's talking about the banking sector, okay? They say, he says, "The banking crisis is contained." Nah, it's about to be Rektober. Thanks Jay Powell and Grandma Yellen for the bear steepener that will bankrupt the banks.

• 11:20David Hoffman?

  Grandma Yellen?

• 11:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Grandma Yellen, he calls her. "Small bank index only eight percent higher than April lows." Yahtzee, so he's saying, "Do you know when we were talking about the bank crisis last March, April?" He's saying, "Well, we've been on a pause, but it's about to come back around." I didn't know this. "Small bank index only eight percent higher than April lows," right? So the small banks certainly haven't recovered from those lows. And Arthur here, more than implying, explicitly saying that worse is coming for the banking sector. It might require some more bailouts here, David.

• 11:51David Hoffman?

  There is one thing I've learned about Arthur in the last like year or so. He's kind of a bombastic individual, I would say.

• 11:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  You just learned that.

• 11:58David Hoffman?

  I just learned that recently, yeah.

• 12:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, he is fairly bombastic.

• 12:03David Hoffman?

  Although the small bank index only being eight percent higher is what was predicted, like universally across the board. So that's playing out.

• 12:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we'll have to see. Here's one thing that's pretty easy to see, though. The US adding 275 billion in debt.

• 12:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  In what's the interval? One day, David. One day, 275 billion in debt.

• 12:26David Hoffman?

  Yo, what's the crypto market cap right now? 1.1 trillion and we added, we added over a quarter of the, we added an Ethereum of market cap to our debt.

• 12:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like an Ethereum per day.

• 12:39David Hoffman?

  This is what the bull case for crypto is, is like, we are in absolute dust speck into the size of the debt that we are accumulating. And the relationship between these two things, that gap must close. That is the case for crypto. It's like the gap between the size of the United States debt and the market cap of crypto closes over time. That is, that's the bull case. And remember, we are miniscule, absolutely miniscule to the size of debt.

• 13:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, look at this. Total US debt is now 33 trillion. It hit 33 trillion two weeks ago. It's now it's 33 and a half trillion and it's on pace to rise by $1 trillion in one month. So the totality of crypto market cap in one month.

• 13:26David Hoffman?

  That's absurd.

• 13:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is being added to US debt.

• 13:28David Hoffman?

  That is absurd.

• 13:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, zero hedge, what WTF is going on? That's a big question. What are the implications of this when the US is getting to wartime debt levels as a percentage of GDP? One interesting question on the minds of fintech this week is maybe yields are continuing to rise because China has stopped buying bonds. Has stopped buying US treasuries. And so this is a chart I found this week, making the case that China's kind of done with treasuries. This is a chart showing the holdings of US treasuries on China's central bank balance sheet going down all the way from 2012 up to 2023, going down by as much as $300 billion.

• 14:14David Hoffman?

  Well, it was, it was flat from 2012 to maybe 2018, 2019, 2020. And since 2020, it's been accelerating downwards. So the bulk of this is the last, has happened in the last four years.

• 14:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  This chart looks like China is kind of selling, right? And that's the thing, when the US increases its debt, it has to have buyers of that debt. Who are the buyers going to be? Are they going to be baby boomers, wealthier generations? Are they going to be pension funds? Are they going to be foreign governments? I mean, historically, there's been a ton of demand, mostly in the form of central bank balance sheets. China has been buying a lot. Japan has been buying a lot. What happens if they reverse course? I guess there's also been some debate about this. Some other people are saying, well, China's really not selling that much. As far as treasuries, they're still continuing to buy. Apparently, the data set here is pretty opaque. It's not very transparent. It's hard to tell exactly what China is doing.

• 15:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  So there's some back and forth. But I don't know. Like, my TLDR is, if you're China, are you bullish on US bonds? Or are you bearish, considering what's going on? Considering 1 trillion in debt is being added every single month at this point in time? And the US is at, as relative to GDP, kind of World War II level of debt ratios. What would you do if you were a central banker?

• 15:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not like the fiscal situation in the United States is great, but it's also not like anywhere else is any better. Like, a decent amount of, significant amount of this kind of capital that we're talking about is going to stay in foreign asset currencies or their foreign asset bond markets, right? It's not like China is saying, like, hey, we have decided that we are going to be short United States bonds and long equities or gold like that. We're talking apples or oranges here. And so, like, remember, like, as bad as the United States fiscal situation is, it's more or less worse everywhere else. I mean, Argentine peso, for example, is inflating at 100, over 100% a year. And the Argentine peso doesn't have a large market cap, but we do have to kind of put these things in perspective, I will say.

• 16:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that's a good point, and maybe being the least bad fiat is going to be enough for the US for some period of time.

• 16:28David Hoffman?

  Being the least bad fiat is pretty bullish in fiat terms.

• 16:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  That said, is it bear, is it bullish compared to other non-fiat assets, I ask you, all right? As, as Ether is hovering at only $200 billion, the amount of debt the US puts on its balance sheet in a single day. That's a question to ponder, my friend, but we got a lot more coming up next, David. What are we talking about?

• 16:49David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, the SBF trial begins, everything that you need to know, along with the opening shot of the ETH ETF Derby. But of course, and also Suzu's arrested, so get your Schadenfreude hat on because that's where we're going. But first, a moment to talk about all these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken, a preferred exchange for crypto in 2023. If you're not having an account with Kraken, consider clicking the link in the show notes to get signed up with Kraken today. Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Kraken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real-time market data, and lightning-fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs.

• 17:31David Hoffman?

  Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen. With Kraken Pro, you have that power. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro.kraken.com to get started today. Cello is the mobile-first, EVM-compatible, carbon-negative blockchain built for the real world. And now, something big is happening. Introducing the Cello Layer 2. It's a game-changing proposal that's going to bring Cello's rapidly growing ecosystem home to Ethereum. Vitalik has shared his excitement for the Cello Layer 2 on the Cello Forum, so has Ben Jones from Optimism. But why? The Cello Layer 2 will bring huge advantages, like a decentralized sequencer, off-chain data availability, and one-block finality. What does all that mean?

• 18:13David Hoffman?

  Rock-solid security, a trustless bridge to Ethereum, and more real-world use cases for Ethereum without compromise. And real-world adoption is happening. Active addresses on Cello have grown over 500% in the last six months. With the Cello Layer 2, gas fees will stay low, and you can even pay for gas using ERC20 tokens. But Cello is a community-governed protocol. This means that Cello needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard. Join the conversation in the Cello Forum. Follow @celloorg on Twitter and visit cello.org to shape the future of Ethereum.

• 18:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  The SBF trial has begun, David. This is getting mainstream attention to it, not just crypto. I'm not, I'm not trying to say this is big as the 90s OJ trial, okay? But it seems like it's a, it's a big deal here. And the stakes couldn't be higher for SBF, okay? On the one side, he could be acquitted of all of his criminal charges here. On the other side, he could be facing 110 years in prison.

• 19:06David Hoffman?

  A lot of years.

• 19:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, that's a lot of years. So, so give us the update. The trial just started this week. What's going on?

• 19:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, specifically on Tuesday in Manhattan, federal court in Manhattan. So just to set the table here, SBF, he's pleaded not guilty to seven accounts of wire fraud and securities fraud and other conspiracies. He's maintained his innocence since his arrest last December, while also starting to try to shift the blame to others, including FTX's lawyers, as well as his former business partner and ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who headed up Alameda, of course.

• 19:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's just blaming everyone else, isn't he? He just loves to blame.

• 19:41David Hoffman?

  Taken zero responsibility. Blame, blame, blame. Okay, so how long will this trial last? It's expected to last up to six weeks. And so this could, this is going to be a theme. We're going to probably have this in the next five weekly rollups. The expected defense, we've, we've started to get like snapshots of, of things to come because we are three days into this whole thing. And so the defense of SBF, what is this? Is that SBF is an inexperienced businessman and was simply in too deep and never really actually knowingly committed fraud.

• 20:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what he's gonna say.

• 20:14David Hoffman?

  That's what he's going to say.

• 20:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, I didn't know. I just got ahead of my skis here. And you know, I was just trying to do this crypto thing. Crypto's hard, everybody, but you know, oopsies.

• 20:23David Hoffman?

  TLDR, they're going for the Sam was just a kid argument. They're also going for the Sam acted in good faith argument throughout his time as SBF. So they're, they made a plea to the jurors. We're going to talk about who the jurors are in a second. They, they made a plea to the jurors of as FTX was operated, as it was run, as Sam made choices, he was acting in good faith. So they're not, they're asking, they're pleading to the jurors to not judge SBF in hindsight. They're asking them to fill the position of Sam as he was put through very big decisions and asked for them, for their empathy to understand that some hard choices were made by Sam and that they were made in good faith. That is what is being requested.

• 21:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think they're gonna have some tweets to explain. I'm pretty sure.

• 21:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  During this crisis, some of the SBF tweets were not making a lot of sense if this person is acting in good faith.

• 21:18David Hoffman?

  Yes, the opening statements from the prosecution actually cited tweets from Sam that Sam has since deleted, but you know, you can't really delete anything from the internet.

• 21:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so what would happen if he's convicted and how about some of his cronies? Like you mentioned Caroline earlier.

• 21:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so you gave out the up to 110 years in prison is potentially on the table for Sam. I'm sure he's not going to get all of those, but I mean, if you get.

• 21:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  That would be the max.

• 21:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that'd be the theoretical max. Ellison, Wang, and one more Singh, I don't know who Singh is.

• 21:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  These are executives, right?

• 21:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Gary Wang is the CTO of FTX, Caroline Ellison of Alameda, one more executive. They all face potentially decades in prison, but they are likely to get a reduced sentence because they are cooperating against SBF. So when SBF is like, it was them, they are all like, it was him, of course.

• 22:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Classic prisoners to the left.

• 22:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so we also got an artist rendition. If you want to go to the next tab, Ryan.

• 22:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, that's beautiful. This is great.

• 22:18David Hoffman?

  Here's an artist rendition of Sam in court. That is not, that's not accurate, but that's.

• 22:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  But I don't know if this is much more flattering than the CNN photo that was just here.

• 22:28David Hoffman?

  They gave him a haircut in his cartoon. Okay, so all right, ready for the jurors, the jury selection? Cause that was day one.

• 22:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, so jury selection matters a lot.

• 22:38David Hoffman?

  It actually is kind of like the bulk of it, right? Like most of it's decided.

• 22:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's 12 jurors that decide his fate. And where do these people come from? Are they DeFi users? That were crypto users that were screwed over by SBF? Yeah, tell us about the jury selection, David.

• 22:56David Hoffman?

  So in the jury selection process, it was asked by the juror selectors, are you familiar with this case? And I'm guessing that if the jurors selected said yes, then they were asked to not be jurors. They were like, okay, you get out. And so the jury is composed of a bunch of professions that are like pretty far away from crypto and finance. There is a train conductor. We have a nurse, a retired corrections officer. Social worker.

• 23:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  A corrections officer?

• 23:24David Hoffman?

  Corrections officer, yeah. A social worker, postal service worker, a stay at home mom, a high school librarian, one retired investment banker with a Stanford MBA. That would be the closest in relevance that any of the jurors are. So like notably absent in the jurors are like people that work in tech, legal and finance. Now, like, what's the significant?

• 23:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  A lot of regular people, though.

• 23:46David Hoffman?

  Regular old people, yeah, like not crypto degen, like normal, normal people. I don't, I'm, this is not, I'm, understanding court dynamics is outside my wheelhouse. I would, my gut take is that like, if they were closer to tech and finance and legal, then Sam would have a worse situation than the current situation. But Martin Scraley, who is familiar with these dynamics, Martin Scraley, of course, the guy that went to jail for-

• 24:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolute terrible human being, not a friend of the bank.

• 24:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, pretty, pretty, not, not a great human. He, he went to jail for like jacking up EpiPen prices, but a subject for a different day. He's also, he's actually in crypto, he's actually in crypto. He was the guy that Pleaser Dow bought the Wu-Tang Clan album from, and that's why he is bitter about Pleaser Dow, if you remember, this is all aside, anyways.

• 24:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  He just seems like a bitter person, but he does know his jury selections, doesn't he? From firsthand experience, what was his take on this?

• 24:40David Hoffman?

  He generally summed it up as a disaster for SBF. So, looking at who these people are, he's just saying, here's what the social worker would, will do, based on like the meme of what a social worker is, they'll convict him, yeah. Non-for-profit fundraiser will convict, the special education teacher will convict, the librarian will send SBF to hell. Now, Martin Scraley might be trying to drum up some less engagement on Twitter, he might be doing that?

• 25:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, yes he might be.

• 25:12David Hoffman?

  So, but, I mean, he's got probably one of the best perspectives out there, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think it's useful. But his TLDR is that jury selection, it does not favor SBF.

• 25:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't think it does. And that was just day one was jury selection. Okay. Day two, which was yesterday, I believe, that's where opening arguments began.

• 25:34David Hoffman?

  Yesterday, Wednesday, yesterday is Wednesday. Opening, opening arguments were that, okay, so the prosecution opened with the, a, their arguments that were generally perceived to be cleaner and easier to follow than the defense. I mean, I think it's pretty easy to present the case that SBF was a fraud. So they used very simple words like SBF lied and SBF stole very repeatedly. The, the line, Sam Bankman Fried used his company to commit fraud on a massive scale, was a quote, another quote, "The money he was using to build his empire, he stole from customers." And then that's, this is when they cited previous SBF tweets that SBF has since deleted, but again, the internet never forgets. And contrast-

• 26:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  They didn't use those, uh, they didn't use those fancy finance words, right? Like, uh, margin, or collateral, or liquidity, or any of those scary words.

• 26:25David Hoffman?

  In fact, that's, these are the words that the defense used. The defense gave a little bit more of a convoluted storyline that was a little bit harder to follow that, uh, Mackenzie Sigalos from CNBC even said that for crypto people, it was kind of hard to follow. So, not great. SBF's lawyer, Mark Cohen, uh, instead gave the line, uh, "He was a math nerd who didn't like to drink or party," and called him Sam a lot. Uh, so you know, like, trying to target the heartstrings, like, "Good old Sam, he was acting in good faith. Sanny boy."

• 26:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  He didn't drink, didn't party. Don't mention the amphetamines, though.

• 27:00David Hoffman?

  Okay, so the prosecutor, the defense asked the court, "Hey, can we, um, can we strike from the record, all talk about recreational drug use?" And the court was like, "Absolutely not. That is a very relevant factor."

• 27:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  True story.

• 27:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that was a part of this whole thing.

• 27:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 27:18David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 27:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  But they had witnesses too. Who are the witnesses?

• 27:21David Hoffman?

  We have, this is the next phase of this court. Yesterday, Wednesday, we had the first witness, Mark Antoine Juilliard, who is a FTX customer, lost $150,000 with FTX. Mark was asked to explain kind of his like due diligence on FTX and also his due diligence on why he kept his money inside of FTX while FTX was imploding. So Mark explained that he perceived SBF as wanted to do good by the industry. He said that SBF's tweets in the days leading up to FTX's collapse assured Mark that his money was safe so that he decided to not withdraw his funds.

• 27:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, Mark.

• 27:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Mark.

• 27:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not getting that back, huh?

• 27:57David Hoffman?

  Right. So that was witness number one. Witness number two, Adam Yedidia, was a close friend of SBF. He lived in the penthouse, the $35 million Bahamian penthouse with like nine other roommates, software engineer at FTX, trader at Alameda, said that he resigned immediately from FTX when he learned that SBF directed FTX to repay Alameda loans with customer deposits. So like, pretty damning to say like SBF acted in good faith when one of the employees was like, yo, I am out of here. And that was yesterday, those two witnesses.

• 28:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  We have some interesting witnesses coming up that are actually on Thursday, as of today, at the time of recording, which they will have already given testimony by the time you hear this. And who are those, David?

• 28:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, very interesting people. Matt Huang of Paradigm, so one of the two Paradigm co-founders. Why Matt Huang? Well, they were an investor in FTX. So they have some information that we would all like to know. Gary Wong, the CTO of FTX. And so, you know, this is the prisoner's dilemma and Gary Wong has chosen defect. So what does Gary Wong have to say? Sam Tribuco, who we have not heard from in a very long time.

• 29:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who's he again? Remind me, who is he?

• 29:13David Hoffman?

  The guy that Caroline Ellison eventually replaced. Sam Tribuco yeeted himself out of Alameda forever ago. No one really knows why. Why did he do that?

• 29:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's right.

• 29:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think we know why now.

• 29:25David Hoffman?

  Find out it's gonna be the first that we've heard from Sam Tribuco since forever. And so I think it's a safe assumption to say that he's also choosing defect on the prisoner's dilemma. And he's chosen to cooperate with prosecution so that he doesn't go to jail.

• 29:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, was also interesting this week. Okay, so we've been waiting for this for a long time. But famed financial writer, Michael Lewis.

• 29:48David Hoffman?

  Author of the big short.

• 29:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Actually writing, author of the big short. What else? Moneyball.

• 29:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Turned into a movie, big short turned into a movie. Flash, um, Flash Boys.

• 29:57David Hoffman?

  Flash Boys, yeah.

• 29:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Remember Flash Boys, which is a fantastic book I read.

• 30:01David Hoffman?

  The Blind Side is also him?

• 30:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so I think one of, one of your finances most influential writers, I would say, in telling stories, telling narratives. He was actually with SBF. Well, all of this was going down because he was prepared to write a, a story about SBF. Write a book essentially, and all of this went down. And so he apparently went on 60 Minutes last Sunday, David. I didn't see all of the interview. But we've got a few clips and I gotta say, he had a completely different portrait of SBF than the one you've probably heard and are used to from Bankless. So should we play some clips?

• 30:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, let's do it. These are the first times I've heard these clips, so I'm kind of excited for this.

• 30:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, let's take a look.

• 30:45David Hoffman?

  Oh, by the way, his book is out. His book is out as of a couple of days ago.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  You think he knowingly stole customers' money, Sam? Put that way, no. So there's another side of this in the very.

• 30:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  No.

• 30:57David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 30:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Michael Lewis says, no.

• 30:59David Hoffman?

  All right.

• 30:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  He doesn't think SBF knowingly stole money.

• 31:03David Hoffman?

  Let's hear why.

• 31:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Should we let him explain?

• 31:05David Hoffman?

  Let's explain, yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Money into so that it would go to FTX, but it was held in Alameda Research, Alameda Research bank accounts. And eight billion something dollars piles up inside of Alameda Research that belongs to FTX customers that never gets moved.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  It never gets transferred over.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Never gets transferred.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  That sounds like a problem.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  It's a huge problem.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  What's the toughest question you think Sam's gonna have to answer?

• 31:30Speaker 00

  How do you not know that $8 billion that's not yours is in your private fund? I mean, really, how do you not know? Explain. $8 billion is in your private fund that belongs to other people and you're saying you didn't know? Please explain how that's possible.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Did you do that?

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  What did he say?

• 31:46Speaker 00

  He said, you have to understand that when it went in there, it was a rounding error.

• 31:49David Hoffman?

  Why?

• 31:49Speaker 00

  That I felt like we had.

• 31:50David Hoffman?

  Why does that mean that SPF didn't know that he stole customers' money?

• 31:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know.

• 31:56David Hoffman?

  What is the logic there?

• 31:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's because apparently FTX couldn't get bank accounts and so this is why? I don't know. So here's Michael continuing here.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  It's the toughest question you think Sam's gonna have to answer.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  How do you not know that $8 billion that's not yours is in your private fund? I mean, really? How do you not know? Explain. $8 billion is in your private fund that belongs to other people and you're saying you didn't know? Please explain how that's possible.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Did you do that?

• 32:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  What did he say?

• 32:26Speaker 00

  He said, you have to understand that when it went in there, it was a rounding error. That I felt like we had infinity dollars in there and that I wasn't even thinking about it.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  I could see people watching this.

• 32:33David Hoffman?

  That, that I think is very revealing. That, that is how SPF treated FTX. I have infinite money. And I was like, where did I put that $5 billion? Is it under my desk? Like, who, did it, who put that $5 billion somewhere? Like, bro.

• 32:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  The thing here, though, is this is customer deposits.

• 32:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right?

• 32:56David Hoffman?

  And the reason why they had to send it to Alameda is because they knew FTX could not get bank accounts. It's not like, oopsies, we don't have bank accounts to send it to Alameda. Like, that's, it's their biggest problem.

• 33:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, well, let's let Michael finish his statement here. Here, here you go.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Saying, come on, guys, this is Elizabeth Holmes in cargo shorts. And this is all a ruse. Don't fall for the shtick. This is a bad actor.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  It is a little different supplying, you know, phony medical information to people that might kill them. And in this case, what you're doing is possibly losing some money. That belonged to crypto speculators in the Bahamas.

• 33:29David Hoffman?

  Whoa, whoa. Possibly losing the money of crypto speculators in the Bahamas. Really belittling what actually happened. Wow.

• 33:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think, I think so. You could see Michael Lewis, right? Speaking on kind of both sides, but almost the sympathetic kind of clip for, for SBF.

• 33:47David Hoffman?

  It's, it sounds like he just hung out with SBF for a long time while writing this book and got like the SBF, I'm an innocent autistic kid charm.

• 33:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what it feels like, but you'd, you'd have to think that Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, do you know, he's hung out with.

• 34:05David Hoffman?

  Penetrate this, yeah.

• 34:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  You'd, you'd have to think that he's a journalist would be able to figure this out. So here's where the interviewer flat out asked him, was this a Ponzi scheme?

• 34:14David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Fun story and it's crypto in the Bahamas, but this is the oldest architecture of a financial collapse that's been going on for centuries.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  This isn't a Ponzi scheme. Like when you think of a Ponzi scheme, I don't know, Bernie Madoff. The problem is it's, there's no real business there. The dollar coming in is being used to pay the dollar going out. And in this case, they actually had a great real business. If no one had ever cast aspersions on the business, if there hadn't been a run on customer deposits, they'd still be sitting there making tons of money.

• 34:45David Hoffman?

  No.

• 34:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 34:46David Hoffman?

  No.

• 34:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  See, yeah, that, so it continues like this. So of course, many people, yeah, it continues like this. A lot of equivocation for SBF and the predicament he was in. It almost sounds a bit like a defense attorney might present this court in case. So I'm not sure where Michael Lewis was coming from on this, but of course, you know, the internet had a lot to say about this, in particular, corners of crypto. This is Ram Alawalia. What does he say, David?

• 35:15David Hoffman?

  It says, Michael Lewis is a great storyteller, but his, he delivers narratives rather than true understanding. FTX was a money losing business that led to fraud. FTX was getting arbed by their own clients. An exchange can withstand any run on the bank because its deposits are never rehypothecated if it's a good exchange. Basically Ram is saying, FTX was not a good business. They were not making money and that's where the hole came from.

• 35:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, he sums it up here. FTX raised $2 billion in venture capital, but it had $10 billion in losses. Raised $2 billion, you have $10 billion in losses. That's how bad of a business FTX was. What was the difference between those two numbers? Customer funds, fraud, $8 billion worth of fraud. I mean, it's a pretty simple story, honestly. So, yeah. Well, I will have to, I guess, read the book to get Michael Lewis's full take, but yeah, that's how it's going. But here's a plot twist, David. So, apparently, FTX invested in a company, of course, it was investing in all sorts of things. One of the things it invested in is equity in a company called Anthropic. What is Anthropic? And why is that a plot twist? Why is that relevant here?

• 36:29David Hoffman?

  It's an AI startup. It's an AI startup that FTX invested in at a very early round, and Anthropic is currently looking to raise for another round that would boost its valuation to $30 billion, which would make FTX's ownership worth quite a lot. In fact, so much that it might actually be enough to plug the hole that FTX owes creditors, if they can find liquidity on their deal. So if they can sell their Anthropic ownership on the secondary market to interested buyers, they in theory have enough money to pay back creditors, because they made a venture

• 37:10David Hoffman?

  bet that somehow paid off. That massively paid off, you know, like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, something like this. And it's now the stake in Anthropic could be worth $3 to $4.5 billion if they can find liquidity for it. And with that, they could help FTX creditors receive 100% recovery. Okay? So, do you think FTX's defense is just going to be like, hey, no one got hurt. Look, these are good investments. Think they'll be able to use that as part of the defense here? Yeah, like Sam doesn't need to go to jail. He didn't lose any money. He just delayed-

• 37:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's effective altruism, man. It doesn't like ends justify the means.

• 37:50David Hoffman?

  Unreal.

• 37:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gonna be interesting, but that could be a very good outcome for for creditors, which of course is, you know, a happy state here. Wow, that was just week one of the FTX SBF case saga. So I'm sure we'll have more to talk about in the weeks to come. But David, you want to get to the ETH futures derby?

• 38:07David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes, I do.

• 38:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's more exciting.

• 38:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the futures derby is now underway. The starting pistol went off on Monday morning at 9:30 in the morning. And so now there are a bunch of futures ETF from a various number of issuers, VanEck, ProShares, Bitwise, Valkyrie, Kelly, volatility shares. And so they're they're off. This is the SEC doing the thing of not king making any one particular ETF. And so they're allowing nine of them to all launch at once. And so this has created a competition between all of the ETF issuers, who in their first moments of inception really need to clamor for market share and mind share, which has created some really awesome marketing efforts by some of these organizations.

• 38:54David Hoffman?

  I'd like to highlight one, VanEck with two big moves. First, their big move number one, some absolutely hilarious marketing. We don't have enough time to watch all of their video ads about their ETH futures ETF, but they are really good.

• 39:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  This one's worth it.

• 39:10David Hoffman?

  I'd say and very zoomer. Yeah, let's watch this one.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  Just close your eyes to enter the ether. The ether is within you. Prepare to harness the potential of the theory. Now finally, in an ETF form, coming soon.

• 39:29David Hoffman?

  There's just a go at the end that buzz. I don't know why. There are, okay, if you go to the VanEck, you want some entertainment, go to the VanEck Twitter account, just like scroll down because like there's there's some just.

• 39:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're getting me excited about ETFs right now.

• 39:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 39:45David Hoffman?

  And like.

• 39:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not gonna do it.

• 39:46David Hoffman?

  The point is that they are actually advertising these to like TradFi. This is not for the crypto people. This is for TradFi.

• 39:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 39:52David Hoffman?

  That's big move number one, some of their most hilarious marketing. And again, I can't emphasize enough, some great zoomer meme video. That are worth watching. Big move number two out of VanEck donating 10% of their ETH futures ETF profits to the Protocol Guild. What's the Protocol Guild? The Protocol Guild is this organization. It's kind of like this DAO that is an effort to unbundle the EF. And so a lot of Ethereum core developers are a part of Protocol Guild who are building and maintaining the Ethereum codebase. Just like the ETH cordebs and related people. And so 10% of the VanEck ETH futures ETF profits gets donated to the Protocol Guild.

• 40:34David Hoffman?

  This tweet thread announcing this and talking about like their decision behind this got 3,500 likes, which is a lot. We got Tim Baker retweeting it saying, "Very cool to see a TradFi company directly fund Ethereum core development out of its profits. Hope that they can set an example for many of the businesses in this space that are building on top of open source protocols." I, everyone liked that. So here's a bunch of tweets that I just like put into a Photoshop. I got David dot ETH, David EV dot ETH from Polygon saying, "VanEck understood the assignment," talking about, you know, giving back to open source protocols. We got Light Clients Matt saying, "Wow, thank you." We got Liam saying, "Public goods are good." We got Crypto Texan saying, "This is pretty badass."

• 41:15David Hoffman?

  We got NoSleepJohn saying, "Based whoever runs the VanEck crypto stuff, DEF has a dot ETH alt, probably."

• 41:23David Hoffman?

  Some great stuff.

• 41:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's good stuff. I mean, who said Wall Street was just full of a bunch of greedy schmucks, huh? This is them giving back. Good job, Wall Street. We're the only one that released an ETF as well, right? That's why we called it a derby because the horses were off to the race. So Bitwise as well was one of the others. Their ticker is AETH. And there are a couple of others as well.

• 41:45David Hoffman?

  The outshone Matt Hogan, who we've had him on the podcast, wrote this thread about why ETFs are such a great opportunity. We're not going to read it because it's actually about why Ether is such an opportunity because that's what is in an Ether ETF. And why Ether is such a compelling asset. If we read this, listeners would be like, guys, we've heard you guys say this 10,000 times. We know. The point is that TradFi still doesn't, which is why Matt Hogan is writing this thread. And so, yeah, that's kind of the TLDR. Big question. Okay, now that Ether Future ETFs are out in the market, how have they done? How did they do? Ryan, how did they do?

• 42:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not great, David. Pretty meh, honestly. So Ether ETFs as a group, a 2 million, that was their first day. And that's about normal for a new ETF. But if you compare that to the Bitcoin ETF.

• 42:35David Hoffman?

  Futures ETF.

• 42:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  That did, the futures ETF, that did 200 million in the first 15 minutes.

• 42:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 42:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 42:41David Hoffman?

  At the top of a bull market in October 2021. So very different phases of crypto acceptance.

• 42:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. Is that cope, David? Are you coping right now? Uh, I think Eric, actually, the ETF analyst thinks this is still pretty, a pretty good sign, though. Uh, he says this, "I think for the crypto world, it would be dumb to get bummed about this." He's talking about the low volumes for the first day. "If you are a long-term investor, you should look at these ETFs as new bridges being built to a wider TradFi audience that will facilitate traffic over time versus, say, a quick trade opportunity, in my opinion." Do you agree with that?

• 43:14David Hoffman?

  100%. I think if the listeners listening to this and they are bummed about, "Oh, like TradFi didn't like Ether, they don't like us," that means that it's still early. Eventually, they will like us. And if this was like an absolute bang out of the gate, it would be, it would mean that we are further along in the social maturation acceptance of Ether. So, I mean, this is just like, you know, it's still early. JPG.

• 43:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Um, one thing we should specify, of course, this is a futures ETF. Bitcoin has already had a futures ETF for a while. This is the first Ether futures ETF in the US to be listed. And that is not as good as and not the same as an Ether spot ETF. That's what we're all kind of gunning for. Yeah, it's not futures as you, when you're actually buying ETF, you're actually buying an IOU for Ether on the other side. That would be a spot ETF. And Bitcoin is gunning for that as well, so it's a little bit different.

• 44:11David Hoffman?

  And in good fashion, the VanEck Twitter account tweets out in all caps, "Low volume, just like your JPGs." Bro, who is running this account?

• 44:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  That one hurts, actually. There are some second order effects here, too, Dave. This is Brian Quintenz. He says, "By approving ETH ETFs based on ETH commodity futures contracts, the SEC has officially provided clarity on ETH status as a non-security." Who's saying, "By approving an ETH futures ETF, now the SEC is capitulated?"

• 44:42David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 44:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now it's quite obviously a commodity, or a non-security.

• 44:46David Hoffman?

  Yes. This is an official statement implied that Ether is not a security by the SEC.

• 44:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think it's gotta be. How else would this hold up in court?

• 44:56David Hoffman?

  A take from Nate Girasi says that "This just makes the inevitability of the Bitcoin spot ETF approval come sooner than expected." Matt Hogan says this, "That I expect we'll see a spot Bitcoin ETF this calendar year." Whoa, 2023? Wow. VanEck CEO says, "It looks like in early 2024, we will probably see a spot product." So, I mean, just the likelihood of a spot Bitcoin ETF coming soon TM is up. On that note, there are a ton of pending ETFs related to crypto stuff. So, there's like VanEck Bitcoin Trust, Bitwise Bitcoin ETP Trust, iShares Bitcoin Trust,

• 45:38David Hoffman?

  Franklin Bitcoin ETF, Grayscale's Ethereum Futures Trust. There's so many pending financial products, both spot and futures for Bitcoin and Ether, that are waiting to get approved or denied soon TM. So, the line to get access, to get approval is large. And the claim here is that the SEC is running out of ways to say no. One of the big news is here is that Grayscale filed to convert their ETH E Trust, their Ether Trust, into an ETH ETF. So, again, this is just like the amount of pressure, the amount of ETF approvals that are pushing on the door of the SEC, saying, "Approve, approve, approve," is like large. Eventually, that door's gonna break.

• 46:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. And that ETH price, I just looked at it a couple of weeks ago. It was trading off like 30% ETH spot price, so 30% off NAV.

• 46:32David Hoffman?

  I bet that's gonna catch a lot of people off guard.

• 46:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  That could correct.

• 46:37David Hoffman?

  Like fast.

• 46:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, what do we got coming up next?

• 46:39David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, the Celestia token, TIA, is out. We actually missed this last week, so we're covering it this week. Are you eligible? How valuable is Celestia? We'll talk about that. OP stack finally getting some fault proofs. I dare you to think that Layer 2 is on Ethereum, we're never getting fraud proofs. SEC gets another L in the Ripple case. How many Ls can Kerry take before he retires? He's going for all-time highs. We're gonna get to all of that and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of this fantastic sponsor that make this show possible, especially MetaMask and MetaMask Portfolio. As you are gearing up to be bullish, make sure that you know how to use MetaMask Portfolio. If you already use MetaMask, you already have a MetaMask Portfolio, so you should go open it up there. It's a link in the show notes. You a MetaMask user? Well, you're listening to Bankless, so of course you are. The wallet you know and love just got a whole lot better.

• 47:23David Hoffman?

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• 48:08David Hoffman?

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• 48:49David Hoffman?

  now go directly to DeFi with the Uniswap mobile wallet. Safe, simple custody from the most trusted team in DeFi. Download the Uniswap wallet today on iOS. There is a link in the show notes.

• 48:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Celestia, which is a data availability network, just initiated its genesis drop. They're dropping a token. It's called TIA. David, give us the details here.

• 49:09David Hoffman?

  6% of the total supply is being airdropped. That's 60 million tokens. So 20 million tokens are being airdropped to developers and researchers, including contributors to public goods and key protocol infrastructure, ETH research, and early builders of the modular ecosystem. 20 million TIA tokens are being airdropped to 576,000 on-chain addresses. Many of those are active users of Ethereum rollups. 20 million TIA to stakers and IBC relayers of the Cosmos Hub and Osmosis. And so this is one of the more interesting airdrops in that it is a multi-chain airdrop because Celestia is a modular data availability chain. It's meant to be in the multi-chain ecosystem. So tokens are getting-

• 49:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wants to serve all the chains.

• 49:53David Hoffman?

  Right. So like if you're a Cosmos user, an Ethereum rollup user, a core dev of Ethereum, like they're just bringing in the tokens all over the place because that's what makes sense in the modular world. Ryan, did you claim yours?

• 50:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I didn't, David, because Gary says I can't. If you live in the US, the genesis drop is not available in your country. So it's been fully, fully geo-blocked because Gary doesn't want you to have free money. So let's take-

• 50:19David Hoffman?

  How much money would you have gotten?

• 50:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm actually not sure. It depends on the value of the token, but I will tell you, Celestia's implied valuation, this is a fully diluted valuation based on kind of the fully diluted market cap of all TIA tokens, 2.75 billion.

• 50:37David Hoffman?

  Woo! Woo!

• 50:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's big, right?

• 50:39David Hoffman?

  That's large. That's large.

• 50:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, to justify it, this is what a Mousari analyst says, Celestia would need roughly 2X the rollup adoption of Ethereum. Can it get there? So definitely trading with some expectations on top of it. I also don't know-

• 50:54David Hoffman?

  Fun fact, that would place Celestia at-

• 50:58David Hoffman?

  28 market in-market cap.

• 51:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  28 in-market cap.

• 51:02David Hoffman?

  Right behind Nantl Network.

• 51:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we'll see how well that holds up over time, of course. David, tell us about the Three Hours Capital guys. We're talking about bad boys of crypto and, you know, justice meeting them. What happened to Suzu this week?

• 51:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Suzu was arrested in an airport in Singapore, where he's been, while trying to travel out of the country. Interesting timing. The Three Hours Capital liquidator, Tenno, received a committal order against Suzu after he did not comply with a court order to cooperate with an investigation involving liquidation. The order has sentenced Su to four months in prison and has also placed an order out against Kyle Davies, who has not been arrested, which I can only presume means that he is on the run.

• 51:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's been doing like CNBC interviews and such.

• 51:49David Hoffman?

  Not in a while.

• 51:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not like, not in a while, but like three months ago he was.

• 51:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Quote from an article, "As a result, Mr. Su will be held in prison to serve his sentence of four months under the committal order, during which time the liquidators will seek to engage with him on matters relating to Three Hours Capital, focusing on the recovery of assets that are either property of Three Hours Capital or that have been acquired using Three Hours Capital funds. The liquidators will pursue all opportunities to ensure Mr. Su complies in full with the court order made against him for provision of information and documents relating to Three Hours Capital and his former investment manager during the course of his imprisonment, and thereafter will make, will may make applications for further court orders as required." So only four months in jail, but I think in my interpretation of this is that it just starts there and we will let this ball roll.

• 52:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure Singapore does not go lightly on this type of thing. David, OP stack has some fault proofs live on Testnet. What does that mean? Why is that a good thing?

• 52:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the fault proofs, AKA fraud proofs, these are the same things, this anonymous, has been probably the OP stack's biggest void that needs to be filled. They've been working on their OP stack, they were working on Bedrock, and ever since Base was launched, their focus has been working on their fault. Their fault proofs are now live on test net. So if everything goes according to plan and you don't need to rewrite anything, they can slot that in right into the OP stack. And any OP stack chain, which includes optimism mainnet, base, Zora, goods networks, OP stack chain, will be able to insert the module of the fault proofs just like that. And then all of a sudden, every OP stack chain will have fault proofs.

• 53:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  On layer two beat, that means they get their badge.

• 53:34David Hoffman?

  They get their badge.

• 53:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Which of these badges is the state validation? They get that badge right now. It's orange and that turns yellow or green? One of those two.

• 53:43David Hoffman?

  That will go green. It'll go green. Yep. And again, not just green for one chain, green for all the chains, which is pretty cool.

• 53:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  All OP stack chains. That's a, that's a big move. I'm very excited. Is there a call to action here about a security bounty too?

• 53:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a bounty out there. Bring fault proofs into production ASAP. OP optimism is calling all security experts to help them test the alpha system and find bugs. Bounties up to $2,042. Can't forget that extra 42.

• 54:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  42 is important, I think. Gary G just eaten else yet again in the court system. So you know, the case he lost with Ripple, SEC lost against Ripple. Well, SEC lawyers appealed that and a judge just smacked him right down. Said, nope, you can't appeal it. You already lost. That loss is now permanent. A federal judge rejected the SEC's bid to appeal its loss against Ripple. Sheet this. The SEC has failed to meet its burden under the law to show that there were controlling questions of law or that there are substantial grounds for differences of opinion. You could try again in April 2024, apparently. That's the next time they can appeal. So Gary just getting smacked down again.

• 54:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bill Hughes says this is pretty satisfying. I tend to agree with him. What's his take here?

• 55:01David Hoffman?

  His take is that the SEC's position in this motion is directly inconsistent with their position about the Howey test, basically calling Gary Gensler out for being two-faced and, you know, taking one side when it is convenient to him and a different side when it's also convenient to him. The court saying, hey, no take backsies.

• 55:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  That coming up next, David.

• 55:23David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, we've got some questions from the nation. Are we even ready for a bull market? Man, some time to have some self-reflection. I think I am. The bald alignment chart, you can't miss that. And what are we bullish on this week? Of course, the usual Bankless Nation. We're going to get to all of this and more. But first, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Formerly known as BitDow, is the first DAO-led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle network, a brand-new, high-performance Ethereum Layer 2, built using the OP stack, but uses Eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle Network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications.

• 56:07David Hoffman?

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• 56:50David Hoffman?

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• 57:35David Hoffman?

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• 57:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thing of the week from Art Democrat: Are we ready for a new bull market? The thinking here goes: user interfaces, security, account abstraction, rollup maturity, interoperability, privacy, on/off-ramp capabilities, but also regulation.

• 57:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Our Democrats take is that we could very well use another 12 months before we open our arms to the next wave of normies. Do you know what, David? I can't say I disagree with our Democrat, and this is clearly a bankless listener is listening to a lot of episodes talking about the things that we still have to improve on. User interfaces, security, account abstraction, rollup maturity. Feels like we could use some time in the oven. The one thing I'll say before throwing it to you is, I don't know that we necessarily get to choose when a bull market happens. I was thinking the same thing. I don't think it's up to us, brother. Unfortunately, but what do you think? Are we ready for a new bull market? Should the bull gods decide that it is time and a bull market has been bestowed upon us? Where will we feel some of the growing pains of that?

• 58:35David Hoffman?

  I don't think we have ever been ready for a bull market. I don't think we ever will be ready for a bull market. What does being ready for a bull market mean? It means that when people come into crypto for the first time, that they stay in crypto for goodies. Like, we have-

• 58:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  They like it.

• 58:53David Hoffman?

  They have a perfect one-to-one ratio of incomers to settlers. So that's to me, it's like, when will we have a bull market where every single incomer stays as a crypto person? I don't think we're ever gonna get there. We can always improve on that ratio, but like, we had a bull market in 2013, we had a bull market in 2017, we had a bull market in 2021. We always lose people because we're never actually ready. I think our Democrat identified a bunch of things that could definitely use improvement on, like, is account abstraction ready? One out of 10 is account abstraction ready. Absolutely not. Interoperability, layer twos, layer two abstraction, we are like 3 to 4 out of 10 on that.

• 59:36David Hoffman?

  Online on-ramp, off and on-ramp capabilities, definitely improving, yeah, I would say. Rollup maturity, 4 to 5 out of 10, maybe. Security, ooh, dogshit. 2 out of 10. But the thing is, is this like- We get better because of bull markets. And so like it, we, the bull market will identify the weaknesses. They'll exploit the weaknesses. We will feel pain and then we will solve those weaknesses. So are we ready for a bull market? No, will we get one anyways? Yes, will it provide valuable motivation and identification of things we need to work on to be ready for the next bull market? Yes, it will.

• 1:00:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Another way to answer that is we are way more ready than last time.

• 1:00:19David Hoffman?

  Always, always.

• 1:00:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  So like, I mean, last time Ethereum mainnet, where it's like 10 to 15 transactions per second. Now we have a whole bunch of cheap block space.

• 1:00:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right, so, so that's going to feel good. One of the things I, I think I'm most worried about for, for the next bull market in terms of like hacks is actually bridge risk though, David. That's why it's really great to see, um, you know, OP stack, get fraud proofs kind of together and iron that out. But I still worry a lot about the brittleness of our bridges, particularly in the multi-chain environment.

• 1:00:51David Hoffman?

  Are you talking about the canonical bridges?

• 1:00:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not the canonical bridges so much. That's like smart contract risk. Once we get fraud proofs down, I'm talking about just all of the bridges from, you know, Arbitrum to Optimism or Cosmos to somewhere else. All the cross-chain type stuff. That's a worry point for me. There are others, but we're more ready than last time is what I would say. In particular, our block space is going to be a lot cheaper. Uh, so that at least is good. Some takes of the week. This first one is from Mike Dudis. Here's what he says. We're actually in the very beginning stages of the, and then you win phase, but you wouldn't believe it.

• 1:01:31David Hoffman?

  I think that's, that's perfect. Just mic drop. We are, we, it feels like we are winning. Other than the prices, it feels like we are winning.

• 1:01:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Where does it feel like we're winning? Financial markets, ETFs right now?

• 1:01:43David Hoffman?

  ETFs, getting ETFs, getting more ETFs soon. Gary taking L's. We're getting regulatory clarity. Yeah, those are some big ones.

• 1:01:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think layer two adoption has been great.

• 1:01:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, patching up fault proofs before they break, which is the correct order of operations.

• 1:02:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Definitely some wins here. Take from David Hoffman this week. I'll read it out. In the last two weeks, I've heard the take, the SBF overhang of crypto is gone multiple times. Kevin O'Walkie, after visiting Capitol Hill, Matt Hogan discussing TradFi clients and interest, and the SBF trial begins this week, too. Soon, we will be totally rid of SBF's curse. David, you think SBF has cursed this industry or getting ready to cast away that curse?

• 1:02:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. It's taken a long time for us to get one year, actually, to get rid of the curse of SBF. Like, oh, crypto, it's the SBF thing. Like, we're getting rid of that. O'Walkie said, and when he was in Capitol Hill, that the stank of SBF seems to has mostly lifted. The opportunists who used SBF and the FTX implosion to advance their agenda last year have played their hands already, implying that like, anyone who wants to use the FTX as like, to gouge the knife into crypto, they've already done that and they don't have any more juice to squeeze there. Matt Hogan says that as soon as BlackRock filed their Bitcoin ETF, clients stopped being concerned or like, raising the topic of FTX and SBF.

• 1:03:10David Hoffman?

  And this is before we put SBF in jail for decades, right? So, once that happens, then like, what do you mean, SBF is crypto? We put him in jail. Like, he's not crypto. That's gone.

• 1:03:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Unless he gets acquitted, David. Hey, FTX creditors are made whole.

• 1:03:29David Hoffman?

  And SBF returns to the throne. Yeah, right.

• 1:03:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wouldn't that be a dark ending to this whole thing? No, I tend to agree with you.

• 1:03:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here's my take. You should read mine, because I read yours.

• 1:03:40David Hoffman?

  Adam says, people talk about crypto-friendly countries, but we should be asking what type of friendly? Because there's Wall Street friendly, and then there's citizen-friendly. Wall Street friendly gives economic freedoms to banks and institutions. Securities, clarity, stable coins, and ETFs are all Wall Street freedoms. Citizen-friendly gives freedom to individual citizens.

• 1:04:02David Hoffman?

  Right to encryption, right to custody of your own assets, right to peer-to-peer commerce. These are citizen freedoms. I expect most jurisdictions to grant Wall Street crypto freedoms eventually. But citizen freedoms, citizen freedoms will be a fight. I love this dichotomy. I love this dichotomy.

• 1:04:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, this came after our episode with Sandy, when we were talking about Hong Kong. And that episode could be on your Bankless listener, your feed here pretty soon.

• 1:04:26David Hoffman?

  Wednesday.

• 1:04:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  But yeah, it very much struck me that even even some of these ETF wins and some of these security wins in court. These are still kind of the surface level Wall Street freedoms and they're they're worth fighting for and they're good for crypto. And I couldn't be more pleased. And I think we eventually win there. But what I'm more worried about is the actual citizen freedoms. So I'm worried about us being able to go through kind of the full DeFi gauntlet and preserve that as an open, permissionless, censorship-resistant a protocol that anybody in the world with an internet connection can use without having to use a state ID, AML KYC, without it being controlled by some sort of centralized gatekeeper or intermediary.

• 1:05:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Those are some of the freedoms, like the right to encryption, the right to privacy, the ability for me to pay you, David, without some, you know, Eye of Sauron kind of watching that transaction with the ability to kind of gatekeep it. That's what I worry about. And those are the things that I think Bankless cares most about. And if we just get the banker freedoms, but we don't get these citizen freedoms, I'm not feeling great about what we've accomplished. I mean, it's maybe incrementally better, but it's more of the same.

• 1:05:40David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:05:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's worth fighting for more ahead, I guess.

• 1:05:44David Hoffman?

  Right. Is it fair to have this be the dichotomy between the West and the East, the Wild West and the Civilized East?

• 1:05:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, I think so. I like that. I think you said that at the end of a recent podcast. You were like, hey, now, you know, we're going east a little bit. And that's great. Let's go east.

• 1:05:59David Hoffman?

  The East is being developed. Yeah.

• 1:06:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  The East is being developed, but we can't. Like let it, yeah, we can't let it shift the real frontier here, which is this is about open permissionless money system for the entire world for everybody. Those are our takes of the week. David, what do we got? What's on your mind for being bullish? What are you bullish on?

• 1:06:20David Hoffman?

  One of the themes I've been noticing lately is this, like, there's frustration with the crypto prices, mainly from myself, but also from others, while there's so much good news. So like, what is with that juxtaposition? I thought good news means good crypto prices. There is a gap between all the good news that's happening, Gary taking the L's, getting the ETFs, but the prices are absolute dog shit. What's up with that? That is called opportunity, my friend. That is, the difference between those two things is what you should be bullish about. If you have conviction and you're seeing good news happen and you are seeing prices get cheaper, that should be awesome for you. So that's what I'm bullish on, the gap between the positive news and the negative crypto prices.

• 1:07:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's a good buying opportunity is what you're saying, right?

• 1:07:05David Hoffman?

  Yep, yep. What are you bullish on, Ryan?

• 1:07:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I gotta say the ETFs, the futures ETFs. I mean, I've been in crypto for a while, you know, Bitcoin first and then Ether. And I remember Ether in the early days. I mean, just this new weird internet money crypto asset that was programmable. And to see it seven years later, now it's in ETF form. ETF form is not just, it's not just about the liquidity. To me, it's about kind of the legitimacy. This has like been adopted by financial markets, right? It has no banking, has no centralized company, has no 10Ks, no SEC statements, doesn't register anywhere, and it's worth $200 billion and you can get

• 1:07:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  it in your Schwab account, right? And that took seven years, but that's relatively short compared to like where we've come from. I mean, it's a weird internet money. It's like a digital asset, and we've gotten this far in such a short period of time. And so when I look back on that, I'm pretty blown away at our progress, actually. And so that's what I'm bullish on, this increasing legitimacy of this asset class. And now we've leaked into Wall Street. We've got them in. This is kind of a Trojan horse. And it's pretty cool when you look back at how much we've accomplished over this time.

• 1:08:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, now they're on our side.

• 1:08:32David Hoffman?

  That's right. That's right. Uh, David, we got a really good meme of the week. Okay? This is gonna take some time. Okay. What are we looking at here? Uh, we're looking at one of the classic Dungeons and Dragons alignment charts. Uh, chaotic, neutral, uh, chaotic, good, lawful, neutral, except chaotic. And all that stuff is replaced by bald or receding or hairy. Yeah, it's a hair joke. We got bald, good in the top left corner with Brian Armstrong, of course. He's super bald and he's also good. We got bald, neutral Jeremy Alair, uh, the creator of USDC. There is that, is he good? Is he bad? Is he playing regulatory arbitrage? He's a stablecoin maxi, that's for sure. So he gets bald, neutral.

• 1:09:17David Hoffman?

  Uh, and then there's bald, evil coming in hot with Gary Gensler, bald, of course. Uh, going into, I guess I'm explaining these one by one. I think it's, keep going. I gotta, can't stop here. Uh, we got receding good Vitalik Putin with a very high hairline and clearly good. Uh, we got receding neutral with Hayden Adams. This is controversial. Is Hayden a neutral? He definitely got pushed out of receding good by Vitalik, I'll say that. Uh, I would put Hayden Adams in receding good, but that place is taken by Vitalik. You could have been there too, right?

• 1:09:54David Hoffman?

  Well, Vitalik, I mean, he's, he's the best. No way. Yeah. We got receding evil with Suzu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got hairy good with Jesse Powell from Kraken. Uh, hairy neutral. Uh, yeah, very well praised. Uh, hairy neutral, which is, uh, God, Jack Dorsey of Twitter. My God, that is a, that is a hard picture of, of Jack. That is a Gandalf beard that we are looking at. Gandalf Dorsey right there. And then we just got hairy evil with Sam. No way, that's a real picture. That is a real picture. He's tromping on a cucumber, bro. That's a cucumber? A full cucumber? That is a cucumber. It's not a jumbo pickle or anything? He's just going straight for the cucumber? Well, he's vegan. So, yeah. So Sam Bankman-Fried just sucking on a cucumber.

• 1:10:38David Hoffman?

  Harry A. F. I will say, out of the hairiest, Sam Bankman-Fried, just absolutely wild wiry hair.

• 1:10:47David Hoffman?

  Jack Dorsey, just like wild wiry beard. Jesse Powell, flow, just flow locks. Just elegant blonde locks. You gotta love it.

• 1:10:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Some of the best hair in crypto.

• 1:10:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. Thank you, sponsor Kraken.

• 1:11:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what this is all for, huh? Teeing up for that. All right, disclosures for you guys. David and I mentioned optimism, I believe, in the show today. David and I are both investors and advisors to optimism. And of course, you know, David and I hold ETH. I'm sure we talked about ETH a little bit with those ETFs coming this week. Gotta let you know, we are long-term investors. We're not journalists. We don't do paid content. But there's always a link to the Bankless disclosures in the show notes at bankless.com/disclosures. I need to end with this. You know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. It could recede your hairline, make you go bald. 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.