ROLLUP: $2B Polymarket Bet | Election Pump? | Ethereum Optimism | Trump 'WLFI' Launch

With 17 days to the election, Trump launched WLFI token sales, while Kamala’s positive crypto comments sparked reactions. Polymarket shows Trump at 62%—can that be real? In Ethereum, despite price drops, Fuel launched a high-performance L2, and Paradigm introduced its own with Reth at the core. Meanwhile, Saylor plans a Bitcoin Bank, and Kraken is rolling out wrapped Bitcoin. ------ 🎮B3 | THE FUTURE OF ONCHAIN GAMING https://bankless.cc/b3 ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap 🪄MAGIC EDEN | HOME OF WEB3 https://bankless.cc/MagicEden 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🤖0G | MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE, INEVITABLE https://bankless.cc/0G ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/80?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 4:17 Markets, L2 Update, & Blobs https://farside.co.uk/?p=1518 https://x.com/Evan_ss6/status/1846592303143776269 https://x.com/growthepie_eth/status/1845076141054345464 https://x.com/ryansadams/status/1845111043250393569 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1846458384842916143 https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs https://x.com/litocoen/status/1846455792461140222 https://imgur.com/a/hGxZIyT https://x.com/pythianism/status/1846502438624231605 https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1845944946991276494 21:52 What’s going on on Polymarket? https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1729178339570 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1846660964105453836 https://x.com/fewture/status/1846667819200795038 https://x.com/adamscochran/status/1846677802583838768 https://x.com/divine_economy/status/1846677795423785150 https://www.natesilver.net/p/whats-behind-trumps-surge-in-prediction https://x.com/fozzydiablo/status/1846369866091319743 https://x.com/fozzydiablo/status/1846647506446246089 https://x.com/hosseeb/status/1846395633806331914 31:12 Let’s check in on Trump and Kamala - 17 Days until election First Trump - kicked off World Liberty Financial token sale https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1845179557852377508 https://x.com/tier10k/status/1846641132731552018 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1845926256292122767 34:43 Then Harris - said something about crypto - appreciates the help of crypto in broadening access to wealth https://kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/FMfcgzQXJZxzLGgcKmSNQSXCRKXShwxJ.pdf https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1845920172638605768 https://x.com/Matt_Hougan/status/1845832802316751251 https://x.com/BanklessHQ/status/1846552111217045904 https://elections2024.thehill.com/massachusetts/massachusetts-senate-warren-deaton/ https://polymarket.com/event/massachusetts-us-senate-election-winner?tid=1729152612507 46:16 Galaxy researched released their Crypto policy scorecard https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/1845845163588907486 51:29 Kraken with a big release…Wrapped BTC - KBTC https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/10/17/crypto-exchange-kraken-launches-wrapped-bitcoin-token-kbtc/ 52:17 Fuel mainnet is live! https://x.com/fuel_network/status/1846536888003313786 53:54 Paradigm is launching a new L2, Odyssey https://x.com/gakonst/status/1844757392061542781 https://x.com/danrobinson/status/1844759810421805069 55:49 Conduit introduced Conduit G2 https://x.com/conduitxyz/status/1846567345864536468 57:41 Michael Saylor wants to turn Microstrategy into a Bitcoin bank https://x.com/isoandso/status/1844772434991325287 59:15 Italy will raise capital gain tax on Bitcoin from 26% to 42% https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/italy-stiffens-terms-digital-services-tax-2025-budget-2024-10-16 1:00:41 Bankless Summit is coming! https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1846722706919838081 1:02:34 Meme of the Week, David’s Fight & Kyle Samani Drama https://x.com/Jesseeckel/status/1845491020492124361 https://x.com/sgoldfed/status/1846183598832959617 1:06:29 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  Trump token stuff, his DeFi token is out. How is it going? Kamala also said something about crypto. Is that a pivot? Or is it just really weird? Also, the election odds, also doing something weird. Why are crypto prediction markets giving Trump such a massive lead? Or are they being manipulated?

• 0:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Station is the third week of October. It's time for the Bankless Weekly Rollup. David, since our last rollup, you got punched in the face. You punched a man in the face.

• 0:28David Hoffman?

  I did.

• 0:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Lots of things happened. We're gonna talk about that maybe toward the end. But, okay, how you feeling, dude? How you feeling on the week? You won your fight.

• 0:36David Hoffman?

  I'm feeling, feeling great. The week has been awesome. It's a fun week in crypto. If you're talking about the context of like being post-fight, like, my head still hurts.

• 0:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not as much as the other guy, maybe? How's K doing?

• 0:48David Hoffman?

  I'm assuming not as much as the other guy.

• 0:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Well, that's the mark of a champion fighter. We'll talk to David more about the fight at the end of this episode. But first, David, we are 17 days until the election. So we gotta check in on our candidates. Donald Trump kicked off his WLFI token sales. Remember that DeFi protocol? Well, he kicked off the pre-launch, he sold some tokens. How'd that go? We'll check in. And on the other side, Kamala Harris said something about crypto? Was it positive? Was it negative?

• 1:17David Hoffman?

  Was it weird?

• 1:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it was kinda weird, definitely.

• 1:20David Hoffman?

  It was kinda weird. And then also, speaking of Trump and Kamala, the poly market has completely diverged on these two candidates, giving Trump a 62% odd to Kamala's 37%, where just a week ago, it was neck and neck. So what's going on over in the world of poly market? And do other polls, do other predictions line up with that? Meanwhile, in Ethereum land, while ETH price is kinda in the basement, the community's starting to get kinda spicy. Seeing a lot of confidence out there, a lot of ratioing of alternative communities out there. And meanwhile, New Tech is also shipping fuel, is launching their high-performance Layer 2s. Paradigm is introducing their high-performance Layer 2s.

• 2:02David Hoffman?

  And then Conduit has taken all of its change, of which it supports, to also become high-performance Layer 2. So a lot of scaling coming around. Around in the different corners of the Ethereum ecosystem.

• 2:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  In the Bitcoin world, we're going to talk about Sailor. He's getting ready to launch a Bitcoin bank. What actually is that? And Kraken with a wrapped Bitcoin product. We'll talk about all of that. And David, speaking of Basements, we got a fun kind of basement, not the prices down kind of basement from our friends and sponsors over at B3. This is a Layer 3 gaming ecosystem and you can find more about it at basement.fun. David, what is this?

• 2:40David Hoffman?

  Think of like the OP stack but for games. The base chain, and this is Basement is coming out of the Corebase team before they then pivoted into building basement.fun. Because the base chain, pretty fast, but still not fast enough to build on-chain games. And so this is what Basement is building, a Layer 3 ecosystem that's optimized for games. I think like right now, the games are kind of like what you would find on, I remember playing on addictinggames.com or miniclip.com back in like the early 1000s. Think like games like that, except there is a big on-chain element for them. Some of the logic it might be on-chain, you can farm XP points, experience points, which are of course tokens on-chain. Each one of these games might have their own token as well.

• 3:24David Hoffman?

  Just a collection of on-chain gaming activities that you can find on their website. They're kind of a distributor of all these different games that you can go fund. And hopefully they're addicting. And so you can find them at basement.fun today. Start collecting some XP. They've already partnered with notable gaming brands such as Parallel, Mighty Bear Games, Nifty Island, and already have thousands and thousands of players. And so since it's on-chain, you already know, you're going to earn some tokens. You can check them out at banklist.cc/b3.

• 3:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, there's a Mudang game that I've been wanting to play.

• 3:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you like that one?

• 3:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I didn't get there.

• 3:55David Hoffman?

  And I do like the idea that when you collect coins in the game, that those coins can become coins in your wallet. That is, that's interesting.

• 4:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  But they don't like, it's not like the play to earn type of like advertising. This is like an appeal to normies thing. Like it's kind of like fun first.

• 4:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they've taken advantage of some like wallet abstraction tech. So you don't need a wallet to go there. They will just spin up a wallet in the backend.

• 4:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, okay, let's check in on October, shall we? Okay, we're 18 days in to the month. This is supposed to be a glorious month for crypto prices. How are we doing? Let's check in on our friend Bitcoin. What's the price in the week?

• 4:30David Hoffman?

  Uh, on this week, up 11%. Started the week at $59,000, currently clocking it in at $67,300. So a very solid week on the week. We also basically, the last weekly roll up, we just painted the floor. Uh, so that was the low. Uh, and so we're kind of measuring from, from trough to peak right now. Yeah. But we could peak even higher. We could keep going even higher.

• 4:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, like post-fight, right? That's why the market's bullish, uh, post that Kane versus, uh, David fight.

• 4:58David Hoffman?

  There's only one reason.

• 5:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  We are up in October, though. It actually has, like, October has actually delivered. So it started the month at 63K on Bitcoin. How about ETH? What is, has it been October for ETH?

• 5:10David Hoffman?

  I, I want even more Uptoberness for basically all these assets. Uh, I think we are at current starting prices. Uh, the first thing that happened in October was we dumped. Uh, we have now returned to October 1st levels.

• 5:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why did we dump that hard? What happened?

• 5:25David Hoffman?

  Why did we dump that hard?

• 5:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, I'll have to go back and listen to the first roll up of the month to actually find out, like, look at these red candles here. Was this?

• 5:34David Hoffman?

  Anyways, ETH up 9%.

• 5:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, I know, I remember. Uh, this is like war stuff. Do you remember? This is Middle East.

• 5:40David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah, war stuff, right.

• 5:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, God.

• 5:42David Hoffman?

  The third war of the recent era.

• 5:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, okay.

• 5:44David Hoffman?

  Anyways, this week ETH is up 9% in the week, started the week $2,350, ending the week $2,610, where we currently are.

• 5:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Flow's looking pretty flat, David, but actually, you know, like...

• 5:54David Hoffman?

  Um, no, inflows, inflows, inflows.

• 5:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, inflows, more inflows than outflows, uh, I guess, on the week.

• 5:59David Hoffman?

  That's right.

• 6:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  So ETH still has a lot to chip away. It's like net outflows.

• 6:03David Hoffman?

  We've got a big hole to climb out of.

• 6:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  You like, what is this, 500 million? Um, still net outflows, flows. So I'll be, I'll be happy when that gets to zero, but it's just like, we're chipping away at it. Um, how about the ratio? Are we chipping away on the ratio?

• 6:15David Hoffman?

  Uh, we have been flat on the ratio since October 3rd. Uh, with 0.038739, um, flat ratio.

• 6:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  People are sad.

• 6:24David Hoffman?

  Not down though, not down though. The first step to going up is to stop going down. And we've done that.

• 6:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you mean? What do you mean? Do you want to see down? This has been down over the last two years. Let me show you the ratio over time. This is Evan SS6, who is actually like, I think, an ETH bull on Twitter anyways.

• 6:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, he's an ETH bull.

• 6:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  He says, "Kudos to anyone who could still bull post when this has been a straight line down for two years. You have more conviction than me. We haven't had two consecutive weekly green candles since May 2023." And he's showing a chart of the ETH Bitcoin ratio, the ratio we were just talking about, David. It's been in this descending channel here over the past two years. And we haven't had two consecutive weekly green candles since May 2023. Kind of bad.

• 7:07David Hoffman?

  Bullish, bullish, bullish. Like, at some point, the ratio gets so low that, like, a basic, like, unopinionated mean reversion becomes the status quo. And like, we're kind of, kind of getting there.

• 7:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sentiment's kind of bad out there on ETH still, although, David, and we'll talk about this more.

• 7:25David Hoffman?

  I feel good. I feel fine.

• 7:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like things are turning around, right? I think things are turning around, but we'll have to see. How about crypto market cap as a whole?

• 7:34David Hoffman?

  2.4. We're almost at that 2.5 watermark, which is totally arbitrary, but I'm still paying attention to it. So 2.41 trillion dollars in the week.

• 7:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, if we want to get bullish, let's flip over to the layer two. Some good things happening in L2 land. Of course, this layer two update brought to you by our friends over at Mantle, which is a fantastic layer two. You should definitely check out. Okay, where should we maybe start this? I think this was a fantastic tweet from the Grow the Pi folks. They put out fantastic L2 analytics. And I think this really, this data point pushes back against this narrative that L2s are parasitic for Ether, the asset, and for Ethereum. And here's what I mean. They tweet this. "Layer 2s have more value locked in ETH than in stables. There is $11 billion worth of ETH on layer 2s right now."

• 8:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is split between like Arbitrum, Base, OP, mainnet, and like on down to the other layer 2s. What I think this shows is that's $11 billion worth of ETH being consumed. Assumed in these layer twos as a monetary unit. What you and I would say is like ETH as money. Others would call this kind of like, you know, store of value or, you know, being used as economic bandwidth or collateral. So I think there's an untold story here of ETH actually being used as money in these layer two economies and that being a source of demand. The market doesn't see that right now as clearly. They're looking very much at ETH from a, you know, like from a fees perspective and they're seeing fee revenue drop on Ether.

• 9:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think they're not paying as much attention to this story, which is ETH emerging as a monetary unit inside of these L2 economies. What are your thoughts on this?

• 9:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think the bear perspective here is that there used to be all of this ETH, this massive amounts of ETH, how much, like 10 billion, $11 billion of ETH that used to be on the Ethereum layer one. And now it's not on the Ethereum layer one. Now it went elsewhere. And so the Ethereum layer one is like being left behind, right? It's not capturing the fees. It's not capturing anything. And a lot of people just don't see the perspective of money. Like maybe we need to find a different word for people that don't like the money word. Like high quality liquid asset is apparently a term used in TradFi. That kind of means the same thing that we're saying when we say ETH is money. ETH is like the high quality liquid asset of these layer twos. And these layer twos are using them.

• 9:59David Hoffman?

  But also it's like this tweet is positioning ETH versus stable coins. In my mind, it's like ETH and stable coins. Like these things are making each other much more liquid. The more stable coins on Ethereum there are, the more liquid ETH is and vice versa. Just, I want more. I just want more total value put on all of these chains.

• 10:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I do think these layer two economies are still in their infancy too. There's a lot of cool things happening there. There's another story in L2 land I think is interesting. This is a tweet from Anthony Sisano. "BLOBS almost at target. Going to be interesting to see what happens when BLOBS enter a period of sustained price discovery." And then he posts a Dune Analytics dashboard here. Can you explain this to us? A lot of people don't understand what this tweet means, what the context is, like what even BLOBS are. Can you explain what Anthony is saying, what the significance is?

• 10:49David Hoffman?

  So every 12 seconds, we produce an Ethereum Layer 1 block. In one block, there are, there's three blobs. There's blobs, there's space for three blobs. Layer 2s can use one of these blobs to post their data for all of the recent transactions, the, the proof of the transactions into Ethereum Layer 1 Blob Space. So every 12 seconds, we have space for three Layer 2s to do this. You can, Layer 2s don't need to post a blob every single slot. They can just choose to use blobs as they see fit. But it's one of the bandwidths. It's a, it's a component of bandwidth on the Ethereum Layer 1. We have Layer 1 Block Space where you can do actual, like, normal execution transactions,

• 11:31David Hoffman?

  or you can post blobs to Blob Space and there's space for three blobs.

• 11:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Blob Space, David, is like a fast lane for Layer 2 specifically.

• 11:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, because the, the data that's being posted to blobs is aggregate of hundreds, thousands of user transactions on the respective Layer 2s that are consuming Blob Space. Right now, we have been under target, as in, there has been like, maybe an average of 2.7 blobs consumed per Ethereum block, but that number is approaching 3. And once that number hits the target, it's kind of like an EIP 1559 mechanism. Once we start being 3 or above, all of a sudden, we start to induce blob fees. And so it starts to cost more money. Right now, blobs are, blobs are free. They're not being charged to the Layer 2 for anything. This is part of the component of just like, oh, Layer 2s are parasitic to Ethereum, because they're not paying any fees.

• 12:24David Hoffman?

  Oh, once they hit the 3 number, then the blobs will actually start to cost money. And then Layer 2s will start paying for Blob Space. I think people are starting to get like bullish about this, as in like, yo, like, we're gonna start to capture, like, we have 2 fee revenues, right? We have Layer 1 Execution Fees, that's EIP 1559, and then we have Blob Space Fees. And so everyone's like, ooh, we're getting price action, we're gonna get some fees coming in for Layer 2s. I think like, whoa, guys, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. We, we want to scale blobs very far. Like, we want to see price discovery when- And there are 256 blobs per block, not three. And so it's too soon to get excited about blob fee capture.

• 13:09David Hoffman?

  Because we want, we need like 100x more capacity than what we currently have. So I think it's a little too soon to start like being excited for fee capture. Because we have scale, we need 100 times more scale. And we get that with 100 times more blobs.

• 13:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  One thing I'll add to that, though, is I think that's not the only reason that people are bullish. It's not just from like because of fee capture that comes with blob space contention. I think they're also bullish that this blob space filled up so quickly. And this is a tweet saying, "L2 blob demand is starting to reach the target. I didn't really expect this until like 2025." The fact that this has happened so quickly really shows the induced demand in the layer two ecosystem and all of that picking up. One interesting question that falls out of this is, okay, how many transactions per second can we support? With the existing like proto-danksharding blob space that we have on Ethereum? There was a series of blog posts that it seems like Vitalik is writing on the Ethereum roadmap.

• 14:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  And one of them this morning that was published actually answers this question. So apparently with the current amount of blob space that we have, if you're just considering ERC 20 transaction. If everything was kind of on a layer two rollup and they used Ethereum for data availability. So we're not talking about Valiums or anything else. About 174 transactions per second is what we can support throughout the entire rollup economy. So, I mean, it's still quite shy of Vitalik's North Star like target, which is like 100,000 transactions per second across the L2 rollup ecosystem. Now with with PeerDAS, which is kind of the next upgrade and expansion of Ethereum blob space.

• 14:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  We can get close to 1,000 TPS in terms of you like rollup. But again,

• 14:56David Hoffman?

  PeerDAS gives us a count of blob target of 8 to 16. So going from 3 to 8 to 16.

• 15:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. So now we're in this stage and we said this when proto-danksharding was like Introduced of just continuous expansion of blob space. Since we have our first batch, our first blob space stimulus. And then Pirdas will be a next one. There's also things we can do on the layer one, right? To increase like, you know, gas limits and capacity for more blob space. So I think now we're in a stage of like incremental progress on expanding the blob space. And I guess to your point, David, we better do it because the L2 demand is here. We don't want to, you know, like, take the foot off the gas pedal in the Ethereum community.

• 15:40David Hoffman?

  A lot of the layer twos are saying like, yeah, we would enjoy consuming more blobs. And we haven't even entered the era of base rollups, which I think is coming. And also, base rollups are incredibly blob consumptive. They need more blobs than the average rollup. They're very blobby.

• 15:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  I didn't know that, really.

• 16:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. Base rollups want, they want more blobs.

• 16:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hungry for blobs?

• 16:04David Hoffman?

  They're hungry for blobs. That's right. And I think base rollups, I think people are starting to like figure this out. They're slowly starting, everything's starting to point towards the base rollup future. But like, so much of everything that like, people are figuring out how to FUD Ethereum. And from the different ways that they can FUD Ethereum, like base rollups is like, there's really elegant solution to all of them. And when they start to like, really come online and gain adoption, like, we need more blobs for them.

• 16:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, you and I are very bullish on base rollups. If you don't know what base rollups are, or what we're talking about right now, we will have a series of episodes.

• 16:37David Hoffman?

  Don't worry. We've got a podcast for you.

• 16:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Stay tuned for that. Okay, what are the odds that our friend over at BlackRock, Larry Fink, knows what a blob is, David? What do you think? Over/under on that?

• 16:47David Hoffman?

  He has, he has heard the words blobs before.

• 16:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  You think he's heard the word blobs?

• 16:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think he's heard the word blobs. Yeah.

• 16:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really? So, okay, well, that would surprise me. But you know, like, you know, he's CEO of BlackRock. He's like, a pretty smart guy from all reports here. So he had some comments on not just Bitcoin, but also Ethereum on the week. And I gotta say, the wider context of this is, I don't think BlackRock could be any more bullish on crypto as like an asset class. And like, this also came through, and we were talking to some And BlackRock crypto folks at the Permissionless conference last week. It's just like very clear to me that they are kind of going all in to this asset class. So there was a Q3 earnings call for BlackRock where Larry Fink was kind of reporting out to analysts.

• 17:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  And he just gave the stats of like the iShares, Bitcoin, you know, like ETFs, you know, like just kind of promoting that. And he said this, "We believe Bitcoin is an asset class in itself, is an alternative to other commodities like gold. And I think the application of this form of investment will be greatly expanded to the role of Ethereum as blockchain can grow dramatically." On presidents, right, Kamala versus Trump, he said this, "I'm not sure if either president or other candidate would make a difference. I do believe the utilization of digital assets is going to become more and more of a reality worldwide." So he's saying, hey, regardless of who's elected, you know, this, this, you can't stop this train, as Lynn Alden might say, right?

• 18:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  These crypto assets are going to be a big deal.

• 18:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I've heard that take actually more and more. That was one of the themes of Permissionless is actually the election outcome doesn't really matter nearly as much as the Senate outcome. Because the Senate outcome, if we can flip that to being more pro crypto, then we can finally get some crypto legislation in. And that's going to be the thing that moves the needle a lot. But that being said, like, we had a very green week in crypto prices, the same week that, like, Trump has pulled ahead in the polls. And the Kamala campaign seems to be on their heels. So who knows? All right, coming up next, more Trump token stuff. His DeFi token is out. How's it going? He's currently in the middle of the sale. How is that sale doing? Kamala also said something about crypto. Is that a pivot? Or is it just really weird?

• 19:04David Hoffman?

  And then also, the election odds, also doing something weird. Why are crypto prediction markets giving Trump such a massive lead? Or are they being manipulated? So we're going to talk about all these stories and more. But first, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken and their new Kracked BTC. If you want to use a new Bitcoin, check out Kracked BTC. It's not actually called Kracked BTC, it's Kraken BTC, but I think they should call it Kraken. BCC newly from Kraken. We're going to talk about that later in the show, too. But let's go here from Kraken right now. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Kraken, one of the longest-standing and most-secure crypto platforms in the world. Kraken is on a journey to build a more accessible, inclusive, and

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• 21:12David Hoffman?

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• 21:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  17 days until the US presidential election. All right, some numbers that are interesting we should check in on is this one from Polymarket, right? So Donald Trump has pulled ahead on prediction markets like Polymarket. So Trump is now at 62% at the time of recording his odds of winning the presidential election. Kamala Harris at 38%. This is kind of crazy because this has been trading like neck and neck for quite some time here.

• 22:24David Hoffman?

  Ever since Kamala got actually named as a candidate, it's been basically within 3%.

• 22:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, look at these numbers, like, you know, Kamala ahead, then Trump ahead, 50/50, 50/50, and then suddenly this divergence.

• 22:36David Hoffman?

  It's a complete divergence, yeah.

• 22:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and this is getting tweeted all around. Like, Polymarket is mainstream at this point in time. It's on mainstream news, like Twitter.

• 22:45David Hoffman?

  The app is getting downloaded more than any other news organization's app. It's in the news category.

• 22:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's crazy.

• 22:51David Hoffman?

  It's getting downloaded.

• 22:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Elon Musk is tweeting this out, of course, particularly because it's favorable towards Trump. So a question I think we all have is, why is this so different than the poll-based predictions that are going on? So, David, you know, we had Nate Silver on, we talked about this a little bit, but at that time, Polymarket was like, you know, trading 50/50, kind of, it was a coin flip. But now it's really diverged from models like Nate Silver's model. So this is Nate Silver's model. Let me pull this up. Look at this. This is as of kind of the same day.

• 23:22David Hoffman?

  That's 50/50.

• 23:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  50/50, okay? And so, like, the question I was asking is like, all right, why is there the divergence between Polymarket and like, say, Nate Silver's model? I got some interesting answers. One, you know, like, is some detail around, it's not just Polymarket, if you're curious, oh, this is just a Polymarket thing, it's kind of the crypto bros bidding it up. It's not just Polymarket, actually, David, it's all of the prediction markets, pretty much. So Pinnacle has Trump at 60%, Bet365 58%, BetOnline 58%. It's not just crypto bias from using Polymarket. Some people said it's because Polymarket is a, this is according to Adam Cochran, a single-input crypto product.

• 24:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I'm asking why a multi-input model would have different outcomes than a single-input crypto product. I'm pretty sure that's wrong, David, because I don't think Polymarket is a single input at all. It's just kind of like the entire market.

• 24:16David Hoffman?

  No, it's actually, it's the most incredibly diversified input model.

• 24:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so when I asked this on Twitter, I got a lot of wrong answer. I think Adam Cochran is kind of like wrong on this. And another take is because prediction markets are some of the most powerful entertainment tools ever created for fans to rally around their favorite all-stars with real stakes. This might be actually closer to what I think could be going on. It's basically like, hey, this is like entertainment-based betting. It's not just for kind of like the win. It's not a perfectly efficient market.

• 24:45David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 24:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's more like, you know, like my sports team. I want my sports team to win.

• 24:49David Hoffman?

  You're gonna watch the election. I'd as well put some money on it.

• 24:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Nate Silver actually wrote a blog post about this. I had to unlock, so I've unlocked this for you guys. His explanation is, he says that sometimes market sentiment has a mind of its own. That can especially happen when traders are bored and angsty because they're in the doldrums. He continues, "As I describe in my book, for certain types of major events like the Super Bowl, there's so much recreational money that there's often not enough sharp money to take it all off the table. So a single whale with bottomless pockets can feed a market for years."

• 25:21David Hoffman?

  There's more dumb money than smart money.

• 25:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's basically what he's saying. He goes on, "And these are asymmetries in who trades at these markets and the political moods they strike. In the Trump era, Republicans tend to project confidence while Democrats tend to project anxiety." So this might be a reason, just like Trump voters are kind of like overconfident or Trump, like betters are overconfident. Anyway, a slew of different answers to this, including one, another one that I like is basically, think of Nate's model as based on poll data, right? So he's almost like a fund manager, like kind of like making a bet. Whereas like Polymarket-

• 25:56David Hoffman?

  A fund manager of statistics.

• 25:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, he's like a fund manager, whereas Polymarket is like what the market says. And so, you know, Nate could be like, nah, the market's wrong. Here's what the poll says, and you can make a bet on that. But the general market is prediction markets, and it's giving Trump a sizable lead here. Are there other explanations from this that you've seen?

• 26:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there is another corner to investigate the way I, why polymarket is so divergent, and this is the world of on-chain data. And so this is a tweet that has gone viral in the last like couple of days or so from Fozzy Diablo, who says, "A mysterious trader with four different polymarket accounts, Freddie9999, PrincessCaro, MitchyTheo4, have all been making substantial bets in favor of Donald Trump winning the election. Freddie9999 has conducted over 1,600 trades supporting Trump in the past 24 hours, totally more, totally more than $4 million. They have also purchased more than 3 million shares betting that Trump would win the popular vote, and nearly 1.5 million shares that Trump

• 26:58David Hoffman?

  would carry Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state that is viewed as the most likely tipping point state in this cycle." And so he has also made investments into these contracts endorsing Republican politicians, such as Ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And so all in total, Freddie999's positions is valued at more than $14 million on the platform, all in favor of Republican candidates. The second holder, PrincessCaro, joined in September with position valued at $16 million with a current profit of $661 million. Wow. Wow, doing well. And traded $21 million across 14 different markets. But also, they did these time analysis

• 27:39David Hoffman?

  of when these accounts are making their trades, and there's very clear clustering in time preferences. So they're all happening in the same time, but also when like one of these accounts stops trading, another one of these accounts starts. So like Freddie9999 will make a bunch of trades, and then they will stop, and then PrincessCaro will make a bunch of trades, and they will stop. And they're all happening in the same time of the day. And also, interestingly, they all have either 1 million or $500 million clips of USSEC being withdrawn from Kraken to send into these accounts. So very similar behavior coming from these accounts. And all in all, there's something like, I think, $24 million that

• 28:22David Hoffman?

  was come out of Kraken into these accounts to make Pro Republican candidate bids, especially on the Donald Trump Kamala Harris market. So much, in fact, Ryan, that people are starting to make arbitrages across the different prediction markets. So all financial markets are linked together. And so even though other prediction markets are following suit, they're all saying the same things. It's because arbitrage is happening across all of them.

• 28:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, wow. Like so, polymarket's really like the biggest liquidity book, but other markets are just following that because of arbitrage?

• 28:52David Hoffman?

  Exactly. There's so much volume going into the polymarket from these buyers, these Republican account buyers, that it's yoinking all of the other prediction markets with them. And so there's a link in the show notes for this guy who kind of did some investigative journalism on who this trader is. They think it's a Frenchman of all people. And it's definitely in European hours, maybe even later.

• 29:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 29:18David Hoffman?

  They found this guy in the polymarket Discord and he said, hey, are you this person? And then they got erratic and then deleted their account, which is like, it's weird to get erratic while also holding like $25 million.

• 29:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  But say this is true. Like, what's kind of the implication here? So like some whale is betting on a bunch of Republican candidates, right? Like it's a free market. Everybody's able to bet, you know, or not bet. They put skin in the game. If he's right, he wins. If he's wrong, he loses. Like, but is there some other implication here?

• 29:48David Hoffman?

  Well, I think that's going to be answered as to like where this money came from. Is it one DGEN's money and they're just like yellowing $25 million on Trump and other Republicans? Because that's what they believe. Like, okay, maybe. Or another conspiracy that I've heard, it's actually a super PAC and they've decided that this is actually the best use of their money to like influence sentiment and positivity towards one side. Haseeb didn't like that take. He says, actually being the underdog is bullish. So if you believe this, then if you were like pro Kamala, this is what you would do. Because now all the Kamala supporters are like, oh no, like we gotta get off our butts and go vote.

• 30:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 30:28David Hoffman?

  It really depends on where the money came from.

• 30:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. Well, it's interesting. Yeah, because if Trump isn't such a lead, the other way you could read this is like, oh, Trump voters can just stay home.

• 30:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, just chill. Like, we've got this.

• 30:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we don't know if somebody's manipulating this. We don't know what side is manipulating, or if that's even worth the cost. Anyway, so interesting, I think, what's going on with prediction markets. And of course, this is, to me, this is a much richer dataset than just like polling data. Because polling data just kind of captures polling. It's like, you know, delayed. And so there's something to this market. You just gotta like balance all the signals together and see like what it means. But I guess, David, we'll find out in 17 days what, hopefully, hopefully, anyway, what really happens with respect to the election. Let's check in on Trump's DeFi token. So, launched this week. Is this just to accredited investors? Like, I'm pretty sure, right?

• 31:21David Hoffman?

  Accredited investor sale. Yeah, that's right.

• 31:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  What happened with the WFLI token? This is the World Liberty Financial Token, which is kind of like a reskin borrowing lending platform built on AVE, I believe. So how did the token sale go?

• 31:35David Hoffman?

  Okay, so WLFI tokens being sold at 1.5 pennies a pop. There's a 100 billion total supply. Again, this token will be non-transferable for 12 months. They have been planning on raising $300 million at a $1.5 billion fully diluted valuation.

• 31:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  So big ICO, right?

• 31:56David Hoffman?

  Big ICO, selling 20% of the total token supply. The current sale, the time of recording, is clocking in at $12.4 million of sales, which is a lower number than the $300 million target.

• 32:12David Hoffman?

  Incoming sales is starting to taper off. So overall, it's not like looking great. 12,000 number of individual investors here, or at least individual sales. But unless some whale comes in and starts like really like pumping up these numbers, we're going to be falling short of the target $300 million raise.

• 32:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's for sure.

• 32:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, at a $1.5 billion valuation, I like, I don't want to invest in that. Okay, so what's next for World Liberty Financial, the first phase, and they're going to launch on Scroll, which is actually interesting. They made checks out as to how Sandy Pang from Scroll became the advisor to World Liberty Financial. They're going to just start with letting users lend and borrow, starting Bitcoin, Ether, and Stables. Then they integrate with centralized exchanges to have native on-ramps. And then they will, they say they will fractionalize real-world assets and obtain regulatory licenses for doing so after that. And they also plan to launch a stablecoin debit card. So like, actually, kind of like leaning into, this was on my panel on Permissionless with all the DeFi folks.

• 33:17David Hoffman?

  There's like this whole like reskinning of DeFi, like investment category that's going on. Like, this is what Kane from Infinix is doing. This is what World Liberty Financial is doing. Hey, there's DeFi out there. Let's just skin it up, make it sexy, smooth it over.

• 33:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Stamp Trump name on it.

• 33:34David Hoffman?

  Stamp Trump and then sell it for $1.5 billion.

• 33:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I mean, that was very ambitious, a very ambitious plan, let's just say, to do that kind of like on a ICO basis. Yeah, I think the reskinning meta is hard to raise at a $1.5 billion valuation on that, especially when you're going from like nothing. But I think they were betting on sort of the Trump brand to carry them through. I sort of wonder if Trump is just like, I'm launching a meme coin. Like, how well that would have done.

• 34:04David Hoffman?

  Honestly, like, running that experiment, like, launching a meme coin on Pumped On Fund, like, how much fees does Pumped On Fund give you?

• 34:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who knows?

• 34:13David Hoffman?

  But like, some. And now with this money that he's raised, this $12 million, now he has to go build this thing. With a meme coin, he doesn't have to do anything. And you could probably make more than $12 million of fees just on the meme coin.

• 34:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know, just like the meta right now, the narrative, like, utility is bearish, right? It's like, you actually have to do work when there's utility. But just like meme coins, it's just whatever, you know, people will buy.

• 34:39David Hoffman?

  He is a meme.

• 34:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not saying that's the way it should be.

• 34:40David Hoffman?

  Why not just do the meme thing? Everybody doesn't understand it.

• 34:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anyway, that's Donald Trump. That's what he's doing. Let's move to Kamala Harris. So she said something about crypto this week. What was the message coming from the Kamala Harris campaign, David?

• 34:53David Hoffman?

  Oh, you're gonna make me say this? Kamala released a proposal called the Opportunity Agenda for Black Men that mentions that over 20% of Black Americans own or have in the past owned crypto and that she wants to support a crypto regulatory framework that protects black men who invest and own crypto. Did you have that on your bingo card?

• 35:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I didn't. This is from the kamalaHarris.com website. It is exactly what he said. It's part of a platform Vice President Harris will deliver for black men. And they talk about crypto as a subcomponent because 20% of black American men own crypto, according to them. And then they also bring in other things about debt forgiveness for black entrepreneurs and also legalizing recreational marijuana and creating opportunities for black Americans. So it's not a program targeted at crypto users. It's a program targeted as like, oh, we're losing the black American vote here.

• 35:57David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 35:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like male American vote. So what do we do? Oh, what are some things this cohort likes, right? They put together these things.

• 36:04David Hoffman?

  And we know that black men or all the other populations of the United States, people like crypto. Like, it's actually a very strong voter base, including black men.

• 36:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 36:16David Hoffman?

  But also not specifically other people. But since the Kamala administration campaign has decided that black men are like the next most marginal voter that they want to get to vote for them. They're like, okay, what do black men like? Crypto? All right, all right, we're gonna say some things about crypto.

• 36:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, I don't know, man. It feels so, it's weird. Like, that's what we've said many times. It feels so cringe to me. This is like the fourth thing the Kamala Harris campaign has said about crypto. And it's done in kind of a weird way. Like, first of all, I think this is like a, like vague promises and nothingness. Like, even the statement, ignore kind of the black men thing, but like, we're going to support digital asset regulation. So that black men who invest in it and own these assets are protected, right? What does that even mean?

• 37:05David Hoffman?

  I'm actually, I'm putting that to bias towards negative.

• 37:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? Like Gary Gensler says he's like always protecting people. That's why he does what he does.

• 37:13David Hoffman?

  I don't want the government to protect me.

• 37:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so there's vague nothingness.

• 37:15David Hoffman?

  I want the military to protect me. I don't want the government to protect me.

• 37:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's, there's like, there's, instead of actually putting together a policy document, which she had a lot of time to do on this issue. She puts like, this is what the campaign produces. So pretty lackluster from that perspective. And the other thing that's kind of like foreign, like, like at least to me is just crypto is open to everybody. Just like, why, if you're trying to target a particular demographic, like, that's okay. This almost reads like it's an internal memo inside of her campaign. Do you know what I mean? Like, oh, we're really losing this demographic, so we have to target them. What they could have done differently is they could have just said, like, we are pro crypto. And if you're like, a black male, or if you're like any, you know, demographic in the US, you would benefit from that.

• 38:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I don't understand why you don't reach the same outcome.

• 38:06David Hoffman?

  You would get more benefits.

• 38:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. Why just say, like, why not just say, hey, we're gonna be pro crypto? And we're going to support crypto assets for men, women, any, like, gender of any race in the United States.

• 38:20David Hoffman?

  Black men. Like, attention, black men.

• 38:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  I get if you're doing that inside your own internal, like, campaign for demographic. But like, why make that your external press release and like that to be your message for crypto?

• 38:33David Hoffman?

  I feel like you're really failing the assignment on that. Honestly, kind of amateur hour.

• 38:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  A little weird. So, okay, that's Trump. So, so Trump is doing a DeFi token, Kamala Harris, you know, like... Making these types of statements about crypto. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is actually battling for her seat against a Republican.

• 38:53David Hoffman?

  God, we got all the characters today.

• 38:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and what I love about this is she was actually asked a question by a moderator of a debate about her anti crypto armor army rhetoric and whether she still stands behind it. Should we tune into that?

• 39:09David Hoffman?

  It's gonna be a long clip. This is actually, okay, so John Deaton is the first person to really go after Elizabeth Warren, could go after her seat. He is a Republican from Massachusetts, extremely pro crypto, like very much one of us.

• 39:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, you'll hear it. You'll hear it.

• 39:26David Hoffman?

  The community is like kind of rallying behind John Deaton, definitely an underdog, but it'd be like kind of sick if he took out Liz Warren. Okay, so let's go play the clip.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  You two take a very different view of the cryptocurrency industry. Senator Warren says she wants to build a quote anti crypto army to rein in what she calls crypto's threat to financial stability, consumer protection, climate and national security. You have criticized her and federal authorities for what you claim is overly aggressive regulation of crypto. What's the right balance? One minute.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Well, listen, I want everyone to know, when I found Bitcoin, I thought of my mom because my mom was on welfare and food stamps and she couldn't keep a bank account because she couldn't keep the minimum balance and the bank would hit her with the predatory fees and we needed that money. And then she had to go to the check cashing stores that you see in the hood and they would charge her a fee. My mom would beg them, please, can you take less so that we have the money for food? And then when I went to college and I would send her money from college, I used Western Union and Western Union would take 15%. It made a difference. So when Bitcoin came, I was like, great, you could cut out the predatory banks and the middlemen and the money grams of Western Unions and you could help unbank people like my mom. But the better question here is for Senator

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Warren, with illegal immigration bankrupting this state, with inflation pricing regular people out of economy, with a debt crisis where 40% of the people don't have 500 bucks in case of emergency, with foreign wars taking place, why did this senator wake up one day and say, with all that, I'm gonna build an anti crypto army because crypto's so important to her?

• 41:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Great question.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  That's a question that she needs to answer. Thank you, Senator, one minute.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  So, look, I'm fine, people want to buy and sell crypto, that's great. I just want to make sure that crypto has to follow the same rules as every bank, every stockbroker, every credit union, and that is some consumer protection laws and some laws to make sure that it's not open for terrorists and drug traffickers and human traffickers in Iran. So, that's what I want, but I want to be really clear about what's really at issue here. And that is, who are you going to represent in Washington? There's one candidate standing here who gets 90% of the funding to keep their campaign going from one industry, the crypto industry.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  One candidate who has said quite openly that his personal worth is 80% tied up in crypto. Look, people of Massachusetts know me, you know I fight for everybody, fight for working people. If John Deaton has a chance to go to Washington, his crypto buddies are going to want a return on their investment. He's going to be there to fight for crypto.

• 42:16David Hoffman?

  I am so bullish that- Okay, the crazy thing about that statement is that, you know who's the biggest financial supporter of Elizabeth Warren? Who's that? Banks, the big banks out there. She has been so favorable to banks and bank incumbents. The clip ends right here, but I hope that's what John Deaton replied with, because she, unfortunately, I think she actually did a good job kind of deflecting, counter, like, rebuttling what he said, and she's like, "Look at this corrupt individual for people who don't care about crypto, for people just the normal American." And they're like, she just said, like, "This guy, of course this guy likes Bitcoin, he's funded by all the crypto bros." And I think that might have, like, actually landed-

• 43:00David Hoffman?

  But like, she's, she's paid by the incumbents. Like, she's even worse.

• 43:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, so what's interesting, though, is like, when she says that if he gets elected, he'll like, you'll fight for his crypto buddies in DC. I'm like, that is good. That's what we want. Because what she doesn't understand is this is not like the, the banking cabal, right? Like, this is about a civil liberty. It's about Americans' right to own non-custodial digital assets. Basically, do you have the right in the United States to go bankless? It's not just like, a set of like, you know, the Coinbase and like, the Krakens, all of these exchanges, and like, A16Z, right? They are fighting for a right, the, the ability to buy, own, hold crypto

• 43:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  in a non-custodial way for all Americans. And so like, I want John Deaton or any politician in there, like, going to DC and actually fighting against the banks for our rights. Anyway, that's, that's the discussion that, that's going on.

• 44:00David Hoffman?

  She's like, pointing at like, this crypto cabal, these like, very small group of extremely wealthy insiders that is like, promoting John Deaton. It's like, no, there's actually millions of us, and it's we, the people. It's actually the banking cabal that is the very small, concentrated, wealthy group of insiders that's pulling the strings.

• 44:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, and the other thing is-

• 44:19David Hoffman?

  It's just a complete, like, reverse Uno card that needs to be played here.

• 44:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  So a couple of things about this. Like, one is probably John Deaton, like, doesn't have a chance here. I mean, this is kind of like-

• 44:30David Hoffman?

  22% behind Senator Warren.

• 44:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so it's not looking good-

• 44:34David Hoffman?

  In the polls, not in Polymarket. So Polymarket has like, Warren at like, a 95%. It would be a massive upset.

• 44:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  It would be a massive upset. And it is true that crypto is spending in a, in a big way in DC, in these elections. Like, so this is an article from Politico, "Crypto has quietly become one of the biggest electoral players." You wouldn't know it from their ads, and they go on, and you know, they're kind of pitching crypto as like, "Oh, they're coming in here and they're trying to sway election outcomes." And I always go back to the reason is, it's because it's existential for us. Because it's existential for the crypto industry. Like, you didn't see this in previous elections. It's because Gary Gensler and Operation Choke Point, and the executive branch, and like, all of the lawmakers actually trying to choke this industry out. That, you know, that's something that this article doesn't acknowledge. So, anyway, mainstream sees that kind of thing.

• 45:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  They also seen Trump with a cryptocurrency. I don't know. I don't know what people in the street actually think about this issue who are not in like crypto holders themselves.

• 45:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think our headlines haven't like looked that great. Like if I I'm guessing if I just put myself into the shoes of just the average person. And the last time I heard about crypto was SBF. And now I'm hearing about the crypto industry buying the elections. I'm like, oh, they're it's coming back. Like they're gonna get us. We gotta make sure like gotta stamp them down. And like the other headlines that people are reading this week is here's from Newsweek. Trump tells followers to buy family-backed cryptocurrency.

• 45:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 46:00David Hoffman?

  Not not a great headline. Like our headlines aren't amazing right now.

• 46:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know. I know. It's like, it's definitely difficult. We got to win on the ground game. Back to the presidential in summary, right? The question is, what happens if Kamala Harris wins to crypto in the US? And what happens if Trump wins? And this is Alex Thorne commenting on this. He says, the bottom line, while Trump is undoubtedly more favorable for the industry, we're optimistic. He's saying that on behalf of Galaxy Research, that we're optimistic that Harris could be more supportive than Biden has been. And he like sources this chart where he goes through the main issues, you know, and the main government bodies like the SEC, Treasury, IRS issues, Bitcoin mining, self custody, and he scores them. Red, yellow, green, green being of course, good, red being bad.

• 46:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can see the Biden column here. It's like basically all red. There's like one yellow. And then you go to the other side, you see the Trump like column, and it's all pretty much green. There's a little bit of yellow, but mostly green. And then in the middle is Harris and Walz. And this is a bit more mixed. There's some light shade of green, just a little bit more yellow, a little bit of red.

• 47:11David Hoffman?

  Well, yellow's bad.

• 47:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 47:12David Hoffman?

  It's not in the middle. It's yellow with they got a couple neutrals, one green, a lot of yellows, and then one red.

• 47:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Basically, it seems like not from, from his perspective and from Galaxy's perspective, not as harsh as the Biden administration, more toned down, certainly not as bullish as Trump and Vance would be. So that I guess is a change in the right direction if this comes to pass.

• 47:39David Hoffman?

  Kamala, the Kamala campaign being indifferent to crypto is unfortunately a step in the right direction based off of Biden, like, because Biden was just like so bad. If Kamala just doesn't, if she gets elected and just doesn't care about crypto, that's actually still like an improvement.

• 47:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And also we'll have to see what the Senate does and the rest of Congress. Coming up next, we got Ethereum with some new roll-up technology. David, I want you to tell us about the new fuel chain and this super performant EVM chain coming out of Paradigm and Kraken wrapping up some Bitcoin. What could that mean for the future? Oh, also, this is great, David. They caught the guy who hacked the SEC Twitter on that Bitcoin ETF announcement day. So we'll talk about all of that and more. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including Mantle, which is an L2 you absolutely have to check out. Here they are.

• 48:28David Hoffman?

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• 49:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So this was great, David. They caught the guy who hacked the SEC Twitter account. Do you remember this? There was like this fake announcement from the SEC Twitter account. And it was like, we're announcing- It was the day before the ETH ETFs. Yeah. Yeah. Or was it ETH or Bitcoin? It was the Bitcoin ETFs, right? Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. And it turned out that the SEC Twitter account was compromised. Of course, there was market activity based on this tweet. And everyone was like, oh my God, you're like a government agency. How did this actually happen? Well, the FBI tracked the guy who did this. Apparently, he lives in Alabama somewhere. This is the tweet. Oh, he lives inside the country? Oh. All right. So get this. It gets better. The FBI arrests the man behind SEC Twitter

• 50:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  account for posting the fake ETF approval. Here were this man's Google searches. Okay, just like after, you know, make this hack. After he sim-swapped the SEC, he Googled "SEC gov hack." That was his first Google. Followed by, "How can I know for sure if I'm being investigated by the FBI?" Followed by, "What are the signs that you were under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI, even if you have not been contacted by them?" These are terrible queries. This guy's not Googling very well. Which caused Doge Toshi on Twitter to say, "We have some of the smartest and dumbest people in the world in crypto, and they're often the same." So there you go. A full story there.

• 51:21David Hoffman?

  All right, coming out of the world of more serious news, crypto exchange Kraken launches wrapped Bitcoin token KBTC, available both on Ethereum Layer 1 and the OP mainnet. Call it Cracked BTC, I'm calling it Cracked BTC. I mean, Kraken has been one of the biggest and strongest custody providers of Bitcoin. They are big Bitcoin bulls. Makes sense to wrap it up and put it on Optimism and Ethereum.

• 51:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it does make sense. And they're partnering with a whole bunch of blue chip DeFi apps. So they're getting this cracked Bitcoin far and wide in the DeFi Ethereum ecosystem. Of course Coinbase launched their wrapped Bitcoin product about a month ago. So this is Kraken with a fast follow there, looking to gain some liquidity.

• 52:09David Hoffman?

  Also, in the world of Layer 2s, Fuel Network finally launched a supercharged Ethereum Layer 2. Fuel's kind of one of the more differentiated Layer 2s in the Ethereum space. It's a UTXO-based model, so instead of an account model, it's UTXO-based. It's got its own virtual machine, they call the Fuel VM. It's also got some native account abstraction, parallelization. They claim 21,000 transactions per second. It's Ethereum Layer 1 for DA, and it's aiming for a Stage 2 launch. So one of the most sophisticated, robust Layer 2s coming out of the gate. They've been, Fuel has been working on this for a long time. You've already had their kind of like their V1 network that's been up and running. And so congratulations to Fuel.

• 52:53David Hoffman?

  I know David Mihal, who we have used his websites in the past, like CryptoFees, MoneyPrinters.info. He's got, he got Fuel pilled and joined that team about a year ago. So Fuel has been like nerd sniping a bunch of devs for a while.

• 53:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a really cool project, right? Some OGs in the space. And it's like, as Stage 2, you're talking with respect to decentralization, right? On L2B, so it'll be like the most decentralized Layer 2 that we have. And they've really dialed it up, because it's not the EVM, as you said. They really dialed this up to be like a payment type chain, right? 21,000 transactions per second is absolutely insane. And so people can download the Fuel wallet. If they want, there'll be a link in the show notes to that. Also, Bankless put together a Fuel Points program on its Airdrop Hunter. So if you're a Bankless citizen, you can go check that out. That's a good onboarding technique to get started with Fuel, do some of those quests as well. That wasn't the only Layer 2 that launched something big this week.

• 53:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  We got something coming out of Paradigm. It's a new Layer 2 called Odyssey, and this has another take on Layer 2 tech. What is this, David?

• 53:59David Hoffman?

  Interesting curveball out of Paradigm these days. Georgios Konstantopoulos from Paradigm, the CTO of Paradigm, is now also spinning off to this $20 million raise of this company, Ithaca. Ithaca is a new company that is producing Odyssey, which is the Reth base, the client that Georgios has been producing internal to Paradigm, Reth-based OP stack using Conduit at the core. And so the CTO of Paradigm is now also the CEO of Ithaca, which produces, excuse me, the, yeah, the CEO of Ithaca, which produces Odyssey, a very juiced Layer 2. I think this is like Paradigm's version of Mega ETH.

• 54:41David Hoffman?

  Paradigm's a very juiced-up Paradigm with a very strong, a very strong technical lead, Georgios, at the helm. And so this is both a client that I hope becomes a dominant client of the Ethereum Layer 1,

• 54:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Reth, you mean?

• 54:58David Hoffman?

  Reth, yes, while also being one of Ethereum's biggest and fastest Layer 2s.

• 55:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 55:03David Hoffman?

  So, big congrats to Georgios. He's been working on Reth for a very long time. Dan Robinson tweets out, "Georgios pioneered the idea of building open-source software at a VC firm on the theory that the best way to help the portfolio is to advance the tech for the whole industry. With Reth and Foundry, his crack team did that and more excited for him to go all in on the effort."

• 55:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think it's pretty cool because, you know, like, all of this is open source, of course, and Reth is a new client. It's a super-high-performance EVM chain. That's why you sort of compared it to Mega ETH there, because that's another, like, high-performance Layer 2 that's just totally dialing up transactions per second. And that's what we have to expect out of this project. So some big Layer 2 tech upgrades. This is coming down on a weekly basis. And another one from Conduit, which we just mentioned in the context of this Odyssey chain, but Conduit, it's like a roll-up-as-a-service provider, and they are launching something called G2. What is this?

• 55:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the conduit G2. So many rollups use conduit to host, maintain, manage, upgrade their rollups. Zora is one, for example, AVO Synthetix uses conduit. Mode Network is a conduit chain. Proof of Play is a conduit chain. And so if you just want somebody to manage your chain, these are professional chain managers. Again, rollup as a service provider. And so they just built out conduit G2, which they are presenting as the most powerful sequencer. And so all of conduit chains have the ability to upgrade to conduit G2, which is offering 1,000x the compute of Ethereum. That is somewhere in the realm of 50 to 100 megagas.

• 56:37David Hoffman?

  Now, remember Jesse and bases rode to one gigagas? Well, conduit is providing 100 megagas. And so they're already one tenth of the way there. I'm pretty sure they leapfrog base here. They claim 10x higher performance than any other off the shelf sequencer, claiming 4,700 transactions per second. Then, and this is 100% compatible with the OP stack and orbit chains, which is like most of the chains out there. So all of the conduit chains that exist, all the chains I just mentioned, they get to just flip over to this G2 and then they have this like massive upgrade. Really big news coming out of the Ethereum like scaling story this week.

• 57:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I think this is just like going to compound and it's going to be sort of every week. These, these types of improvement, we'll see these types of improvements. David, let's switch over to-

• 57:27David Hoffman?

  We have been seeing this like every week. This is kind of just what like Ethereum scaling looks like. It just comes from all over the place.

• 57:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Well, Ethereum is building out its layer two infrastructure. I think Bitcoin, and in particular, Michael Saylor is wanting to build out Bitcoin in the TradFi system. In particular, he wants to turn MicroStrategy into a bit of a Bitcoin bank. He says this, Bitcoin is the most valuable asset in the world. The end game for MicroStrategy is to be the leading Bitcoin bank or merchant bank, or you'd call it a Bitcoin finance company. So if we end up with 20 billion of converts, 20 billion of preferred- Stock 10 billion of debt and 50 billion of some kind of debt instrument structured will have 100 to 150 billion of Bitcoin.

• 58:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  So turning MicroStrategy into a services-based Bitcoin bank company seems to be part of the end game strategy for Michael Saylor.

• 58:23David Hoffman?

  I mean, just because MicroStrategy owns a ton of Bitcoin, I don't think it actually advantages it in any way. I think the only thing that's really happening here is Michael Strategies using his brand, the brand of MicroStrategy, which I guess works.

• 58:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, no problem with building out a Bitcoin bank for, I think this is part of like, you know, the Bitcoin standard. Safedine, a moose. It was never about like building out layer twos or decentralized finance. It was just like building Bitcoin, the asset, and then letting a whole bunch of, you know, centralized custodians, other banks, like just, you know, start using the Bitcoin network as kind of a whale chain. So that seems to be what's coming to pass here. David, there was some interesting news coming out of Italy this week. Italy plans to raise capital gains tax on crypto from 26% to 42%. What was interesting-

• 59:18David Hoffman?

  Specifically on Bitcoin, only Bitcoin.

• 59:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was all crypto. No, no, all crypto.

• 59:22David Hoffman?

  Crypto, excuse me. It's crypto.

• 59:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  But specifically on all crypto, right? So, and I think this is an example of a country like targeting crypto specifically. This is something that, you know, Ray Dalio has predicted. This is something that the sovereign individual has predicted that as capital flees fiat due to like bad government policy, you know, like deficits and just they're spending too much more than they're taking in. Capital responds in kind and it tries to flee to safer non-sovereign assets essentially. And so what do governments do? They react by constraining the crypto exit ramps and putting in additional taxes. So this has played out many times in history. It's going to play out again with crypto.

• 1:00:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  So watch for this type of thing. We're very early in this. It's, you know, only, I guess, only a 42% capital gains tax, but this window could continue to close in the future.

• 1:00:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and at some point, the book would predict some countries are just, you know, instead of raising the capital gains tax, they raise it to 100% by making it illegal. You just can't have Bitcoin.

• 1:00:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 1:00:29David Hoffman?

  And so you need to get your Bitcoin out of the system before you do that.

• 1:00:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Well, speaking of getting out of the system and going bankless, we got another bankless summit that is coming up. So we just did a conference at Permissionless, but the Bankless Summit, tell us about this. This is on the heels of DevCon that's happening over in Thailand, yes?

• 1:00:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is the first Bankless Summit ever. I've never done one of these before. I'm pretty excited. Bankless Summit is happening the day after DevCon, as you said, Saturday, November 16th. 12 speakers, zero panels. 12 speakers, zero panels, just straight information. All of these speakers of Bankless Summit, which I've hand-selected to be because they are the best orators in crypto, they have the best ideas, they're the most passionate, they're just really entertaining to listen to. I have charged them with the assignment of producing the most interesting talk possible. Do something interesting is the assignment. And Anthony Sizano is going to open it up. Justin Drake told me that his talk is painfully bullish.

• 1:01:29David Hoffman?

  Hansgar and Casper will talk about the ETH monetary policy. Max Resnick is going to talk about making the Ethereum Layer 1 great again. Mike Neuer, who's a researcher, he's getting his PhD sometime soon. He always just makes really good presentations. Same thing with Matt Cutler from BlockNative. Eric Wall is going to be there. Sriram, who I know has like way more ideas and really fascinating ideas than I think he's even able to get out, he's going to speak. And so this is the day after DevCon, so you need to get your ticket. There are not a lot of tickets. There's like over 10,000 people going to DevCon. There are only 600 Bankless Summit tickets and 200, we've already sold 200 of them. Do the math, there's 400 tickets left. And so you got to get your ticket. Again, it's the Saturday after DevCon, so it's going to be the last thing you do at DevCon.

• 1:02:12David Hoffman?

  It's going to be, I think it's going to be the one of the most interesting things you can do at DevCon. So you don't want to miss it. It's going to be pretty fun.

• 1:02:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I also think this summit will be very bullish Ether the asset. If, I know the content that you're planning and what these speakers are planning, so I will be sad to miss that, but I am. Enjoying the recent resurgence of ETH bullishness on my Twitter timeline. David, did you catch this meme this week? This is from

• 1:02:35David Hoffman?

  I did catch this meme.

• 1:02:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Jesse Ecto. This is David Hoffman punching Kane Warwick right in the face. I can't believe he like

• 1:02:43David Hoffman?

  It would have been funnier if Kane was like a Bitcoiner or a Solana person.

• 1:02:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know, because you're like your friends, but like this is

• 1:02:49David Hoffman?

  It was technically ETH on ETH violence.

• 1:02:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, David punching like and he's labeled ETH, you know, like punching through 20K ETH price. As you know, like the soul maxies, crypto Twitter and the alt layer ones are all kind of looking in, you know, like in the background, looking in the audience and yeah.

• 1:03:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, dude, that was a great fight. That's, that's all I gotta say, so.

• 1:03:11David Hoffman?

  You and Ben as commentators, you guys had a lot of fun.

• 1:03:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I, I have seen though, it seems like, I don't know if you're seeing this, but the Ethereum community is like fighting back a bit more in the narrative war. Did you catch this Kyle Samani and Steven from like Goldfetter from Arbitrum interaction? This is Steven at the top saying, the genius of Arbitrum Arbitrum is it doesn't force another token into your chain design. And then he goes on to say governance is freedom, never give it up. And then Kyle Samani says, LMAO, you literally issued a hundred percent superfluous token. And then Steven goes

• 1:03:45David Hoffman?

  Which is a hot take.

• 1:03:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a hot take. That's a hot take. And then Steven goes, sorry, we didn't let you into the series A, bro. I know you're still salty, but it's been years. Might be time to let it go. And then what happens, David?

• 1:03:57David Hoffman?

  Kyle Samani responds, huh? We never spoke. So he's like declining the fact that he was not allowed into the Arbitrum series A. He's just saying that, that we never spoke, that never happened. And then Steven Goldfetter says, I know honesty and debate is not your strong point, but dude, you were relentless and I have receipts. Here's one of many. And then here's, he just screenshots a Telegram conversation with, well, it's gotta be multi coin and the Arbitrum people. And there's, I'm guessing what is like a multi coin, like associate partner says, uh, somebody named Mabel says, uh, let us into the, uh, let us know if there is an update on the round. We'd be very keen to participate. And then no response from any Arbitrum people.

• 1:04:39David Hoffman?

  The next day, Kyle Samani comes in. So like the big guns, the GP says, hey, guys, just checking in. We want to roll up our sleeves and help, which like in VC land is like, they're knocking on the door every single day. It's like, hey, guys, like, we want in the round. We want in the round, blah, blah, blah, blah. Please listen the round. They apparently were not let into the Arbitrum A round, series A round. This tweet has 1,000 likes on it, whereas the tweet before, or the Kyle Samani tweet, has like seven.

• 1:05:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09David Hoffman?

  It's one of the biggest ratios in crypto Twitter history that I've ever seen.

• 1:05:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gotten kind of spicy out there. And Kyle says, I guess you got me. But it doesn't really change anything in the thread above. Yeah.

• 1:05:21David Hoffman?

  Okay, so question, question, question.

• 1:05:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22David Hoffman?

  Did Kyle Samani lie? Or did he forget?

• 1:05:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. That's, that's all between Kyle and God, man. I don't know.

• 1:05:29David Hoffman?

  Did he, did he lie about not remembering that he's getting into one of Ethereum's largest layer two series A round? Did he forget that? Or did he lie?

• 1:05:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll leave that to the listeners to decide. How about we do that? It is getting kind of bullish out there on Ethereum. I think the tides have, have turned. We've got Vitalik posting about the roadmap.

• 1:05:48David Hoffman?

  This was like the first of like seven ratios between Ethereum community members and Ethereum antagonists out there. I think a lot of the Ethereum community, yeah, because the Ethereum community is not like militant.

• 1:06:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, not usually.

• 1:06:01David Hoffman?

  They're militant. There's a lot of people, they're militant. The Ethereum people are just like, whatever, like we got work to do.

• 1:06:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a good setup.

• 1:06:07David Hoffman?

  And so it actually takes a lot to, it's pretty hard to rabble the Ethereum community up. But the Ethereum community feels very rabbled at this present moment.

• 1:06:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, they feel like they're, it feels like they're done with the shit. So they're, they're going on the attack. Anyway, we'll see what happens next. But of course, got to let you know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.