ROLLUP: 2nd Week of December

🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: http://bankless.substack.com/ ✊ STARTING GUIDE BANKLESS: https://bit.ly/37Q17uI ❤️ JOIN PRIVATE DISCORD: https://bit.ly/2UVI10O 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 👕 BUY BANKLESS TEE: https://merch.banklesshq.com/ ----- GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS: ⭐️LEDGER - BEST HARDWARE WALLET TO SECURE YOUR CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/ledger 🚀 ARGENT - INVEST IN DEFI FROM ONE PLACE (download it now!) https://bankless.cc/argent 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith 🤖YEARN - YIELD-SEEKING MONEY ROBOT THAT FARMS DEFI FOR YOU http://bankless.cc/yearn ------ ROLLUP: 2nd Week of December MARKET BTC Price - 18,297.90 BTC on Ethereum - Down from to 147K to 145K - BTC above 18k for 9 days in a row. - In 2017, BTC wasn’t above 18k for like 9 hours ETH Price - $560 TVL in DeFi - $14.7B to $14B - $DPI from $116 to $101 Ethereum 2.0 1 week stats https://twitter.com/AlexanderFisher/status/1336280548084477953 - ETH 2 deposit contract adding 40k ETH per day - 3x more ETH than what is being issued per day - Over 1% ETH in the deposit contract USDC outpacing Tether https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F46c07bef-9100-4d24-9a57-b8b26801f9bd_1200x726.png (RELEASES) What got released? Messari 2.0 https://messari.io/ Yearn quarterly report https://github.com/iearn-finance/yearn-pm/blob/master/financials/reports/2020Q3-yearn-quarterly-report.pdf 4 Takeaways from ETH 2 deposits - Blog from Etherscan https://medium.com/etherscan-blog/4-takeaways-from-deposits-into-eth2-28c64dd2863 Circle launches payments platform for USDC https://www.circle.com/blog/circle-launches-major-platform-upgrade-aimed-at-bringing-digital-dollar-stablecoins-mainstream New Square competitor Maker Governance vote to add https://twitter.com/MakerDAO/status/1335993149076869123?s=20 - AAVE - DAI-ETH LP token - USDC-ETH LP token (NEWS) What’s in the news? 8,000 Nodes live outside the US https://twitter.com/PhABCD/status/1335349619467968519 - More than the total number of ETH nodes from just a few months ago The STABLE Act - Unintended consequences https://www.coincenter.org/the-unintended-consequences-of-the-stable-act/ MicroStrategy issues $400 in convertible debt to buy $BTC https://cointelegraph.com/news/microstrategy-will-issue-400-million-in-securities-to-buy-more-bitcoin MassMutual buying $100M BTC https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/87378/massmutual-bitcoin-insurance-purchase - More legit than Microstrategy according to Joey Krug "measured yet meaningful exposure to a growing economic aspect of our increasingly digital world." Ray Dalio warming to BTC in Reddit AMA https://twitter.com/RyanWatkins_/status/1336438172142739458?s=20 The Ether Fund - 3iQ Corp IPO closes Dec 10th (today), raising a maximum of $107M, already raised $75M so far Tyler Winklevoss Tweet: https://twitter.com/tyler/status/1336839087093919744 France maybe extending KYC laws https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/87001/france-crypto-rules-mandatory-kyc-crypto-to-crypto Rumors that Steven Mnuchin is thinking about regulations on Digital Self Hosted Wallet -Warren Davidson getting ahead of the issue with a letter to Mnuchin https://twitter.com/WarrenDavidson/status/1336804544320327683?s=20 Paxos files for a Federal Bank Charter https://www.coindesk.com/paxos-becomes-latest-crypto-firm-to-file-for-federal-bank-charter Venezuela pays for Imports from Iran/Turkey with Bitcoin https://news.bitcoin.com/venezuela-pays-imports-iran-turkey-bitcoin-evade-sanctions/ JP Morgan says that Gold will suffer because of Bitcoin https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-09/jpmorgan-says-gold-will-suffer-for-years-because-of-bitcoin Yahoo Finance also speaking more positively for Bitcoin CoinGecko is better than CoinMarketCap https://out.reddit.com/t3_k8jct1?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmaxbit.cc%2Fcoingecko-looks-to-overtake-coinmarketcap-with-huge-uptick-in-traffic%2F&token=AQAA_YjSXxU46BXDalbUf4Pv-UkKhy4yT938Vzi-qo7VV6usja4b&app_name=reddit.com https://out.reddit.com/t3_k8jct1?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmaxbit.cc%2Fcoingecko-looks-to-overtake-coinmarketcap-with-huge-uptick-in-traffic%2F&token=AQAA_YjSXxU46BXDalbUf4Pv-UkKhy4yT938Vzi-qo7VV6usja4b&app_name=reddit.com ------ Don't stop at the video! Subscribe to the Bankless newsletter program http://bankless.substack.com/ Visit the official Bankless website for resources http://banklesshq.com/ Follow Bankless on Twitter https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ Follow Ryan on Twitter https://twitter.com/ryansadams Follow David on Twitter https://twitter.com/TrustlessState Disclosure. From time-to-time we may add links in this channel to products we use. We may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. We'll always disclose when this is the case

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

• 0:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, it is Friday morning. What is it time for?

• 0:10David Hoffman?

  It is time for rollups, weekly rollups where we inject a whole entire week's worth of news into your brain in as short of a time as possible. We go through a number of different topics. First, we start with the market. We ask what the market is telling us. Then we move into releases. Who released what in the last seven days? Then we go into the news, what's happened in the news cycle. Then we finish off with some takes. Who had some interesting takes this week out in the crypto ecosystem? And then we top things off with what David and Ryan are excited about. Ryan, are you ready to get into it?

• 0:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm ready, man. Let's get started with the market. I am setting the timer. Keep us on track, David. Let's talk about the market. So we had like, what, a mini bear market? And now we're out of it? What's going on with Bitcoin?

• 0:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we had a famous two to three day long bear market. We ended last week with Bitcoin touching $42,000. So all this happened in the last seven days. Bitcoin touched $42,000, fell down to $31,000, and then it regained $40,000 earlier this morning. It's currently just a couple hundred dollars below $40,000. So we experienced, you know, a quote unquote, two day bear market, and now we're back at it. Pretty interesting price action.

• 1:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel pretty good that we kind of predicted this. On the last rollup, we said, get ready for 30 to 40% drops. We just saw, what, a 30% drop, closing in on 40 with Ether. Do you think we're out of this yet?

• 1:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this has been really interesting. The conversation about crypto prices leading up to last week was that, you know, quote unquote, there's a new paradigm, right? Because we would think, we would see like 5 to 7% dips, and then they would just get bought, right? So we never really had those famous like 30 to 40% corrections. And so that's what we talked about last week. We said this, the likelihood of a correction is coming. But previously, corrections can be like, you know, we saw a 30% correction. And previously, we've seen 40% corrections that, you know, turn into like two weeks of just bearishness, sometimes even three weeks. But this is very much in line with like, the dip got Bought so hard. So we still had one of our big 30% declines. Again, that's actually below average for how large one of our classic retracements is.

• 2:19David Hoffman?

  And then it just got bought within seven days. So we are already back into bullish territory. It's all happened within seven days. That's pretty incredible.

• 2:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, let's take a quick look at the Bitcoin price from this week to, uh, from last week to this, uh, excuse me, the Ether price from last week to this. So we fell to about 900 and what are we hovering at now?

• 2:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we are roughly $20 above $1,200. Again, roughly six days ago, five days ago, ETH started to pump above $1,300. It touched 1350, 13, uh, 1350, which I got me, it got me really excited. I, I sat down and just watched the charts just to see if we were going to all time high. Didn't quite make it again. Then we dumped to 900 and now we're back above $1,200.

• 3:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, remind us, what's that magic all time high number that we're looking for for Ether?

• 3:09David Hoffman?

  1420, 1420 is the number to beat.

• 3:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, we'll see if Anthony Sisano can be freed if we get to 1420 or higher. What happened with the, the DeFi pulse index? So this is again, the top 10 DeFi tokens, uh, number go up there too, right?

• 3:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, just a little bit. Last week we were at $22.7 billion. Today we are at just over $23 billion locked in DeFi. DeFi tokens and DeFi in general has actually done really, really well. Uh, I've been calling it a slow crescendo that doesn't stop crescendoing. We're not really seeing a pop, but things are starting to heat up. Things are starting to boil.

• 3:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Total locked value looks like it is just touching all time high as well. So that's essentially all assets under management in DeFi protocols. So it's an important vanity metric. It sort of measures the economic bandwidth of the DeFi ecosystem. Let's talk about a particular DeFi token that is Maker. It's kind of been a sleeping giant for almost like the last year or so. Ever since, um, uh, ever since that Black Thursday in March of last year, where it sort of took a big tumble. But it had an explosive week. This is a 70. Day chart, even the 14 day chart, looks like it's massive run up. What's going on with the with the Maker token?

• 4:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think what's even interesting, Ryan, if you hit the max button to zoom all the way out, the Maker USD price has been flat ever since like since like late 2017 or 2018. It dipped down to $500 in the bear market and then it stayed at $500 literally until, you know, just a couple of days ago where it exploded upwards. The Maker ETH price, that has also been something worth watching because of the MKR ETH ratio has just been suffering like there you are getting less and less ether for your MKR. Ever since like the middle of 2018, yet that that trend finally reversed MKR just yeeted itself

• 5:06David Hoffman?

  to right below its almost all time highs back in 2017. And so it just made up for so much lost ground in such a short amount of time. Pretty interesting price action.

• 5:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, you know what this reminds me of? Like it's that old investor quip that, you know, time in the market beats timing the market. And that is so true. Projects with good fundamentals like assets like ether, even assets like like Maker, I mean, the die stablecoin is has been on a terrace above a billion dollars. You don't want to try to time those things. If you looked at the last year and you'd be like, oh, project is dead. It's flat. It's no longer cool. And then suddenly you get these 14 days and you like double in price, almost triple in price and hit all time high, right? So you can't time these things, guys. You have to invest in assets and tokens with strong fundamentals and just hold, right?

• 5:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Timing is a swing trading thing that you might not be equipped for with explosive growth like this.

• 6:03David Hoffman?

  And I would like to say before we move on, actually, the DPI price was heavily influenced from this. So DPI went from last week $185, which is the DeFi Pulse Index token, went from $185 to $208. And that the DeFi tokens did not get a big of a hit during that retracement as many other assets like ether and Bitcoin did. And a part of that rise in the DPI token price was because of that's very strong Maker appreciation.

• 6:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. Makers weighted heavily there. Okay, it looks like retail is starting to enter as well. We're coming up with some new metrics and numbers for that. This is one I really like. This is new weekly Twitter followers for crypto exchanges. So it looks at Kraken, Binance, Coinbase, their Twitter accounts, actually, and it charts the number of net new followers that they've had on a weekly basis over time. And you can see in this chart, we are, for the first time, approaching something closer to 2017 numbers, but we've got a lot of room to grow. So 2017 started adding like more than, what's the number? What's the number?

• 7:11David Hoffman?

  Hundred thousand.

• 7:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  A hundred thousand.

• 7:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  A week.

• 7:14David Hoffman?

  And then it peaked out at 200,000 per week.

• 7:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  200,000. And we're at about 75,000 per week now, which is explosive growth from the last two years, but still not at its peak. This indicates that retail is starting to use crypto exchanges, starting to get back into crypto. What do you make of this?

• 7:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and also using crypto exchanges as probably their new source, because they probably don't know where else to go. They probably haven't been introduced to bankless yet. I can definitely, I can definitely corroborate some of this retail entrance. I'm starting to get text messages from, from some old college buddies that, you know, we are pretty close with back then, kind of lost contact with them, but because I'm, I'm pretty degenerate with my Instagram stories, I put a lot of Bitcoin and Ether talk up there. So people know I'm in the industry. And now everyone, everyone's coming to ask, like, should I buy Bitcoin? And it's always an interesting answer to that question. I, it's, I try and pack as much information as I can into that question, but it never really seems to do it justice.

• 8:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's starting, isn't it? It's starting, and we might be at just the start. We think it's still going to go a lot higher from here.

• 8:17David Hoffman?

  Aave is a borrowing and lending protocol on Ethereum and just recently released Aave version two, which has a ton of cool new features that makes using Aave even more powerful. With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi, Money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can deposit in order to gain yield. And all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have deposited collateral. Here you can see me getting a 200 USDC loan against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens and ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option. But I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock that interest rate in permanently.

• 9:02David Hoffman?

  One of Aave's V2 features is the ability to swap collateral without having to withdraw your assets. Trade them on Uniswap and then deposit them back into Aave. Aave does all of this for you, all in one seamless transaction. So you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com. Synthetix is Ethereum's decentralized derivatives liquidity protocol. What does that mean? Synthetix is a platform for creating and trading synthetic assets, which are assets that are priced via an oracle rather than bids or asks. Traders can use the Quenta exchange, which hosts and trades all of the synthetic assets created by Synthetix.

• 9:46David Hoffman?

  Traders on Quenta can trade synthetic tokens like SBT, S Oil, or S DeFi. Because Quenta is powered by Synthetix, traders experience zero slippage on their trades. No, I didn't mean low slippage. I meant no slippage, because that is the power of the Synthetix platform. No slippage on your trades. You can also easily short assets with iSynths, which are synthetic assets that move inversely to their target asset. Synthetix isn't just for traders. Developers can build on Synthetix to access the infinite liquidity offered by synthetic assets. Or investors can stake collateral to the protocol and earn fees that the protocol collects. If you're a trader and you're looking for a trading platform and not found in the legacy world, check out quenta.io.

• 10:30David Hoffman?

  If you're a developer or you just want to earn yield on your collateral, go to www.synthetix.io, where you can stake your SNX or ETH and earn fees from Synthetix.

• 10:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Another thing that I think is interesting is that all of the numbers are so much bigger now in this bull cycle, David. So Masari put out this tweet that Bitcoin is now moving by its entire market cap from the March 2020 low, its market cap there at a price of 4,800 multiple times a day. So it is moving by its entire market cap on a daily basis. Its entire market cap from less than a year ago is now the daily volatility of Bitcoin. Absolutely insane. These numbers are just so much bigger. Even the Coinbase volume is bigger, starting to show the early signs of

• 11:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  a retail market. Yesterday, actually, this was earlier this week, rather, Coinbase just recorded its highest daily volume ever of almost $10 billion. This is crazy when you look at the chart and compare it to growth. It's like a, you know, 5X already of the peak of 2017.

• 11:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And Bitcoin moving as much of its previous market cap back in the depths of the bear market is an interesting metric. I don't really have any evidence to back up this claim, but I kind of have this rule of thumb that with the day that Bitcoin paints a like a $20,000 one day candle might be like the blow off top that ends the bull market, $20,000 being the previous all time high. So like the day that Bitcoin runs from like $200,000 to like $220,000 or something, maybe that's the blow off top. I don't know if that's if that has been backed up by anyone, but that's something that I'm looking forward to.

• 12:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  David's got his own superstitious numbers around these numbers, but you know, could be the case. It's definitely the numbers are bigger. Another reminder, of course, I actually saw an advertisement, David, when I was looking at EtherScan earlier today, was CME advertising Ether futures, and they are coming, they're still coming on February 8th, 2021. So speaking of bigger numbers, this of course allows large institutional investors to make bets on Ether in ways that they couldn't before, that they can't. Currently on Bitcoin. What do you think is going to happen as a result there? Famously, that kind of when Bitcoin got its futures on the CME sort of marked the top of the Bitcoin market. I don't think that'll be the case for Ether.

• 13:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  But what's your take? Are we going to see any volume, any kind of price appreciation as a result of this event?

• 13:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, futures are the way that, you know, some preferred high capitalized institutions prefer to get access exposure to some of these assets. They just, it's just a more capital efficient way to deploy capital. For some reason, institutions like it more. So when futures open up to big institutions, it is a new mechanism for accessing exposure to Ether. And I think that not, this is not at all near the top of the market. I think the fact that Bitcoin, when Bitcoin got its futures, it was just a complete coincidence that it happened at the top of 2017. I expect this to be very bullish for Ether long term because it's opening up the floodgates for more institutional exposure into this asset.

• 13:55David Hoffman?

  Aave is a borrowing and lending protocol on Ethereum and just recently released Aave version two, which has a ton of cool new features that makes using Aave even more powerful. With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi, Money Legos, yield and composability all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can deposit in order to gain yield. And all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have deposited collateral. Here you can see me getting a 200 USDC loan against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens and ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option. But I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock that interest rate in permanently.

• 14:41David Hoffman?

  One of Aave's V2 features is the ability to swap collateral without having to withdraw your assets, trade them on Uniswap and then deposit them back into Aave. Aave does all of this for you, all in one seamless transaction. So you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com.

• 15:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk releases. The first is some news on layer two scaling. Tether is launching on Hermes. I've not heard of Hermes before.

• 15:10David Hoffman?

  I have not heard of this.

• 15:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so this is a layer two scaling solution. It's based on ZK Rollup. So some interesting tech here. I've not heard of Hermes. I think it's part of the layer two story of Ethereum, though. Why is this potentially interesting?

• 15:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's just, I think, one of the many stories about L2 adoption. I don't know if Hermes is going to be the L2 that is adopted. Tether is also on Omise Go Network. Tether is one of the biggest gas consumers of the Ethereum blockchain. So they should, they also have the incentive and the capital to experiment with a bunch of L2s. And this looks like one of them.

• 15:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ultimately, the winning L2s are going to be the ones that everyone else wants to be on. So there's sort of a coordination game going on there. And I think it's very much up to some of these L2 solutions to prove themselves this year. Also, some interesting news. Nexus Mutual, we had Hugh Karp on the podcast. Their decentralized smart contract insurance protocol, they are now expanding their decentralized insurance. They still do insure smart contracts against protocol rest, like hacking rest, that sort of thing. They're now moving that same offering to insure centralized exchanges.

• 16:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this is a good example of DeFi starting to enter into the the C-Fi space. This is the centralized space, after kind of conquering all of the the smart contract insurance area. Now Nexus is moving into centralized exchanges. What do you make of this?

• 16:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is just one more step of software eating the world. And I think this is a great feature. We know that one of the biggest chinks in this industry's armor is centralized exchanges getting hacked. You know, DeFi has this negative connotation to some for being, you know, very rug pulley and very hacky. And like you're getting, get your funds swiped from you in DeFi. But if you look at the total dollars lost, DeFi is dwarfed by centralized exchange hacks. And so that, I think this is a fantastic product that is Obviously very needed and I think perhaps an interesting customer for this product is the exchanges themselves. This offers like Kraken or Gemini or Coinbase to purchase insurance against their own hacks.

• 17:24David Hoffman?

  That's pretty interesting and this is also just one more step closer for something like Nexus Mutual. For to offer products for like people like me to insure my car or something. This is just something further out like into the real world. It's the next closest hanging fruit, but again, the real world is for next or the real goal is for Nexus to be able to ensure anything. So this is them breaching that territory.

• 17:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's probably a five to 10x of the total addressable market size for Nexus, the protocol. So that's very exciting, I think, for everybody who's supporting that project and maybe invest in that token. Something else interesting, I saw this on the block this week, David. So this is a Bitcoin mining, the second largest Bitcoin mining pool, a pool called Poolin. And they just rolled out a hash rate token that is essentially an ERC 20 that tokenizes hash rate. So it tokenizes the, basically the ASIC power of their individual pool. And they're selling that as an ERC 20 token.

• 18:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's interesting about this?

• 18:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is a, it's really important for Bitcoin miners to have financial infrastructure because they need hedging options. Because Bitcoin miners are inherently long Bitcoin. They don't have a way to express any alternative view unless they have access to like financial options. And, and you know, what is DeFi other than just like endless financial engineering? There were already options like this available to Bitcoin miners, but they were very much a centralized, centralized play. Few like Bitcoin futures first off are like a great option for miners, but also hash rate futures, which are a real thing. And now a hash rate token on Ethereum, I think it's actually going to be offer, you know, competitive differences to some of these centralized alternatives.

• 19:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so interesting that, once again, it's kind of the gravity well of Ethereum sucking another type of asset into itself and settling on Ethereum. Also, back to kind of Layer 2 and what we're talking about, I don't know if you've been following Connects, but they have recently been talking a lot about their vector platform. What does that do, David?

• 19:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Connects is a payment layers infrastructure and they are doing, maybe it's a pivot, maybe they're just adding on to their current offering, but just offering what is kind of like middleware or middle payment layers between other L2s, right? So, you know, allowing one L2 to talk to another L2 using the Connect L2, right? So lots of L2s going on, but mainly we're just finding different ways to communicate and pass value around the Ethereum ecosystem without having to make transactions on Ethereum.

• 20:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the reason this is really important is because ideally we want to live in a world where all of the different Layer 2 rollups are integrated and connected and interoperable and at some level composable with each other, so that even fiat on-ramps can happen in L2. And we just use the mainnet for security, right? That is a much more gas efficient and like more scalable world, and that's what Connects is starting to build. So that's, that's cool as that develops. So David, this was really interesting this week as well. Cloud Fair has created a name resolver for the distributed web. So they're using two pieces of technology. One is IPFS, so that's, you know, Filecoin.

• 20:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is sort of a distributed storage type of protocol. And also Ethereum, particularly Ethereum names, domain names, ENS names. I have Ethereum domain names. I know you have Ethereum domain names. What this essentially does is connect Ethereum domain names to the rest of the web, so that you could type in your Ethereum domain name in a browser without an extension and actually be directed to a website. So what this means is, instead of Using DNS, which is the centralized domain service that the entire internet uses, people can start using Ethereum as a decentralized name service and create unstoppable websites.

• 21:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is part of a sliver of that promise of Web 2, essentially this whole decentralized internet that no single party could could shut down. And I think it's super exciting for Ethereum use cases. And this is an Ethereum use case that's a little bit outside of the the money title as well. I know lots of people have been, you know, talking about that and asking about that for for years. What's your take on this?

• 22:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is kind of goes back to the original vision of Ethereum before we kind of knew what Ethereum could do. Like Ethereum was supposed to be the quote unquote, the world computer and also run unstoppable code. This is kind of a return to some of that early thinking of Web 3 technologies, trying to build a totally persistent decentralized and permanently available internet stack. That is something that is completely part of the Ethereum roadmap. It just doesn't have the tokens and price charts to go with it. So it's kind of forgotten and lost under the noise. It's something that fascinates me, just doesn't get as much attention as some of the other things. But I'm very, very excited about, you know, a completely trustless and decentralized web built on Ethereum.

• 22:49David Hoffman?

  I think people kind of forget how trusted the internet is. DNS, that is a centralized trusted system that is just kind of, you know, an organization that we give the rights to organize the internet for us too. But it is not, it does not belong in the protocol sync thesis and something like this totally does.

• 23:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just a centralized database. What's also interesting, I think, is that maybe this increases the value of ENS names. More adoption, of course, like definitely increases the value in the sorts of things you can do with ENS names. That's something to watch as well. Argent is one of our favorite wallets for DeFi. It's like one of my number one recommendations when somebody asks me how to get started in DeFi. And they've just released ETH 2 staking inside of it as well. What's your take here?

• 23:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, just a really nice feature out of Argent for those who want to stake their ETH, but maybe they don't want to run a node and maybe they just don't even want to manage their own private keys or ledger and they just want to have their Argent. You can put your Ether inside of Argent and using an integration with Lido, which is a staking as a service provider, they can stake in Ethereum 2.0.

• 23:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's nice about this too is if you have less than 32 ETH, you can start staking with Argent. Synthetix is doing some things on Layer 2 as well. This is the optimistic rollout. They just laid out a roadmap for adoption. Actually, starting, they're going on mainnet, actually, on the day you're listening to it, on January 15th. And then they have some next steps after this. David, is this going to be the year of Layer 2 for Ethereum?

• 24:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is such a big deal. This is optimistic Ethereum coming live to mainnet. Synthetix has always been ahead of the curve with integrating and tinkering and experimenting with optimism. So Synthetix was always destined to be the first team, this first big dap to incorporate optimistic Ethereum, optimistic rollups into the Ethereum mainnet. And it looks like that day is finally here. We are actually going to see a significant amount of the Synthetix activity, which itself is significant, move off into the L2. So the way that they are doing this is that they are starting to migrate some of their most basic functions into an L2.

• 25:10David Hoffman?

  So SNX staking is moved on to the L2, where some of the, some other things like minting is also going to be moved on to the Synthetix L2. Some things are being kept on the L1, just for simply because something needs to be there. But you can now think of Synthetix as a protocol that exists with one foot in the Ethereum L1 and one foot in the Ethereum L2. And depending on what you want to do, you would participate on either side of that boundary.

• 25:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. This is part of DeFi kind of re-architecting itself in this new rollups L2 paradigm. So very cool to watch that play out. David, let's get to the news and I want to start here. This is a fascinating rumor and it just came out yesterday. This is Gemini considering going public as well, following in Coinbase's footsteps. Coinbase, of course, has announced an IPO. Why not? Gemini, it sounds like there's rumors of that. What does that mean for crypto this year?

• 26:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and this is, I believe, the third IPO rumor that we've heard. Well, I guess Coinbase wasn't a rumor because they straight up announced their intention.

• 26:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 26:20David Hoffman?

  And then there was one more that I can't remember what it was. It was another like pub company with announced plans to go public. Gemini marks the third. And interestingly, Gemini is also an exchange right behind Coinbase. And I think Coinbase did a fantastic job with announcing the timing their announcement, literally on the day of the Bitcoin breaking the all time high. And I think you and I are both pretty bullish on the Coinbase IPO. They, the initial valuations were estimated to be at 50 billion. But I think you and I, Ryan, are ready to commit to believing that that is going to be well above 100 billion. Just because there's going to be a crypto mania and people are going to want exposure to Coinbase as exposure to crypto.

• 27:00David Hoffman?

  Gemini is going to get all of those same benefits. So it's no surprise that Gemini is trying to capture some of the mania going on so that they can boost their IPO price.

• 27:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  A few things I'm glad about here. One is I am glad that they are going public rather than selling their companies to a bank or somebody in big tech like a Facebook or Amazon. So I'm glad about that. The second thing I'm glad about is that there's some competition here. It's not just Coinbase. If Gemini joins the ranks as well, they're going to push Coinbase into maybe more innovation. In particular, I wonder how these exchanges and their public offerings on the stock market are going to compete against DeFi offerings, right? So there was an airdrop quite famously with Uniswap. Why not an airdrop for Coinbase users? And if Coinbase doesn't decide to do it, why not an airdrop for Gemini?

• 27:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can issue some sort of a tokenized security on Ethereum today. That could be an exciting future, and I think is more likely to happen if there's some competitive pressure between these giant exchanges.

• 28:05David Hoffman?

  You know, I'm, I don't really know the details behind this, but I can't imagine that airdropping equity to customers is all that different than airdropping tokens to customers. Maybe, maybe, maybe the infrastructure in DeFi is way easier. But I, I would imagine that's, that's a, that's a possible innovation to have.

• 28:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, if you're going public, if you're going public, you don't need, you don't have the accredited investor laws, at least in the US to, to, to go through. So why not? Why not? Coinbase, Gemini, if you're listening to this.

• 28:35David Hoffman?

  Drop us some Gemini tokens.

• 28:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Speaking of Gemini, uh, this is pretty exciting as well. Gemini is launching a credit card. They just announced that, uh, today as well with potential crypto rewards. So what does this mean, David? I know you're particularly excited about using this.

• 28:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, totally. So this is a credit card that you can apply for and you get cash back. I think up to 3% cash back is what they advertise in Bitcoin or other crypto rewards. Ether is in there as well. This is the second credit card that we've seen. BlockFi, uh, did a similar 1.5% uh, cash back on fiat purchases in Bitcoin form. Gemini, uh, looks like they're rolling out a credit card with even more cash back, with even more crypto assets cash back. And importantly, Ether, uh, I will be getting this credit card 100%. Totally. I'm pretty excited about that.

• 29:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  So important that this is not like a, a Visa card that's just a debit card that you load with crypto and spend, right? This is a, a credit card. So you're actually like, you know, it's, it's, it's based on credit. It's not money that you already have, which is a little bit different. So are you going to basically replace the other credit cards that you have from the traditional banking system and something like this?

• 29:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So I have an Apple card, which I really like just because it integrates with all my other Apple products. But it doesn't give me Ether cash back. So everyone, everyone knows I like Ether. So I'm going to be migrating.

• 29:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome. We had some interesting regulatory news as well here, David. So we have a new SEC chair that was just named under the Biden administration. This guy's name is Gary Gensler. Sources say, from what I'm hearing, I, I, I don't know that much about him. And of course, the, the proof will be in the actions he takes. But apparently Gary could be a more crypto friendly SEC chair than Jay Clayton was. You know, maybe, maybe not going as far as, as we would like being like sort of a, like a crypto insider and advocate. But he, he might not be crypto hostile and he might actually be crypto friendly. Certainly had a history of pushing back against the big banks in the past. Do you have any takes here?

• 30:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that, I feel like that's kind of surprising. I could totally see a world where the Biden administration came in and recommended a pretty, you know, top heavy, heavy handed regulator, somebody that might, you know, be in the rural on gray camp, you know? So having a friendly one is really, really awesome. I think having a friendly SEC commissioner as we, as it relates to crypto is as, as good as we could hope for.

• 31:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, and I want to be clear. I don't think we totally know how friendly he's going to be, but he does know about this technology, has written about it before. He does know about crypto and blockchain. So it remains to be seen, but it could be good news.

• 31:16David Hoffman?

  It's a story to watch.

• 31:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  It is a story to watch. And speaking of good news, David, we did it.

• 31:22David Hoffman?

  We did it.

• 31:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  What did we do?

• 31:24David Hoffman?

  We kicked out the comment period from 15 days to 45 days for that FinCEN guidance that was proposed by Secretary Mnuchin, which said, which was coming down like super heavy on unhosted wallets, saying that exchanges would not be able to send crypto outbound to wallets that they did not KYC themselves personally. We don't like that. That's bad. And as a result of over 6,000 comments, I think was submitted. That's a very high number. The, the very short 15 day comment period got extended to 45 days. But what's important about this is that the Biden administration said that they are going to end all midnight regulation proposals if they are not finalized by the time the Biden administration comes in.

• 32:07David Hoffman?

  And that 45 day comment window period extends beyond when Biden will become president, which means that this will probably not make it.

• 32:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is huge. The crypto community really delivered and the Bankless Nation really delivered on these comments. I think it's an example of how we can take political action, even the nation state, to accelerate the types of monetary freedoms that we want. In other good regulatory news, David Anchorage has become the first OCC-approved national crypto bank. So Anchorage is a crypto custody type of solution. So they custody assets on behalf of individuals, on behalf of funds. And now they can custody crypto assets for federally chartered banks. So that means a JP Morgan who doesn't want to create its own crypto custody type of solution

• 32:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  can farm that out to someone like Anchorage and have a regulated solution for that that is OCC-approved. I think, David, this is an example of regulation and particularly banks in the US starting to adopt crypto infrastructure. Brian Brooks has been pivotal in all of this as well. He currently leads the OCC. So very exciting development.

• 33:25David Hoffman?

  In other news, Morgan Stanley has boosted their stake in MicroStrategy to basically 11%. So Morgan Stanley, big bank, owns 11% of MicroStrategy, which means that they have a claim on 11% of MicroStrategy's Bitcoins. And MicroStrategy has a lot of Bitcoins. MicroStrategy has 70,470 Bitcoins, which means that as a result of that, Mike Morgan Stanley has a claim on roughly 7,600 Bitcoins. So that's pretty cool. Bitcoin by proxy. This is kind of like what Michael Saylor was trying to get done in the first place when he just Yolo'd all of his company's treasuries into Bitcoin and then also took on debt to get more Bitcoins. And now everybody wants his company's share price. So that's cool.

• 34:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's funny. He's looking like a genius now. I think when you're early to things, you do look like a genius. And he's definitely been early on this trend. Absolutely.

• 34:19David Hoffman?

  Gemini is the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange. I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got Back into crypto back in 2017 and it has been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and over 50 countries worldwide and on Gemini, there are markets for over 30 various crypto assets, including many of the hot DeFi tokens like Wi-Fi, AVE, Uni, and also they are one of the few exchanges that has liquid DAI markets. Having both the option of logging into the Gemini.com website or instead opening the Gemini mobile app has allowed me to be able to access any and all exchange and on or off ramp services that I've needed to on a moment's notice.

• 35:02David Hoffman?

  With instant deposits and fast withdrawals, I'm able to make my money do the things I want it to when I want it to. You can buy crypto safely and securely on Gemini with the peace of mind of knowing that your investments are insured and protected with industry leading cybersecurity. You can open up a free account in under three minutes at Gemini.com/goBankList. And if you trade more than a hundred dollars within the first 30 days after signup, you'll be gifted a free $15 bonus. Check them out, Gemini.com/goBankList.

• 35:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, do you want to get into some takes?

• 35:38David Hoffman?

  Let's do it.

• 35:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. First take here, sushi is on the rise. What is sushi for people who don't even know what we're talking about?

• 35:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Sushi Swap is a Uniswap clone fork, clone fork, something like that. And it had this rocky start where it was a product of DeFi summer, product of yield farming, product of that speculative mania. And then I also had that kind of rocky start where the, the original founder, Chef Nomi, took off with the dev fund. So there was a dev fund for all the LP rewards, the farming rewards, 10% went into a dev fund and Chef Nomi snags that and ran. Later he returned it and then the protocol has kind of been handed off to new management, particularly with Zero X Mackie, who we are in talks with, with getting on the Bankless podcast for a State of the Nation episode.

• 36:23David Hoffman?

  So that's pretty cool. Ever since then, ever since people have written off Sushi Swap as it's like a product that's just got, got tainted by, by the, the swipe of the funds. It's been on the rise, both in volume and in share price. And now it's kind of a beloved DeFi project. People love Sushi Swap. And now it is a topic of conversation as to like how this very similar product to Uniswap is taking its own path, providing its own value to the to the ecosystem that is separate and distinct from Uniswap.

• 36:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, Eric Voorhees had an interesting comment here that I think relates to what you're saying. He said, and he's describing the liquidity battle between Uniswap and Sushi. He said, "A public realtime liquidity battle between two relatively decentralized crypto protocols exists in cyberspace. Nobody's forced to participate. Nobody can turn it off. This is sci-fi, digital, hyper-capitalism finance, and it's coming for the banking system." So of course, this appeals to Eric's sensibilities, these kind of libertarian sensibilities. But he's also talking about like the predatory nature. We're really in the jungle with these DeFi protocols. It's kind of a liquidity war zone, and they're going to battle amongst themselves first.

• 37:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  But then they're going to go take on the banks, and the banks won't know what hits them.

• 37:45David Hoffman?

  Right. When the banks have been just sheltered and in this protective bubble from, you know, ever since the 08 crisis, they've been protected by the Federal Reserve. They don't have to fight in that competition. They are not in a tooth and nail fight that is DeFi. DeFi is a crucible of economic financial innovation. If you do not do good, you die. Interestingly, Eric, when he made this take, when he made this tweet, he was retweeting Ryan Watkins. We've also had him on the Bankless State of the Nation, where Ryan says, "The best part about the competition between Uniswap and Sushi Swap is that it is completely transparent and trackable in realtime. No need to wait for financial filings, no need to wait, make estimates. It's all auditable on-chain,

• 38:26David Hoffman?

  an open window into competition at hyperspeed. That's what's so cool about this industry. The competition is inside out, and we get to see every single trick and that every single protocol has up their sleeve, and we get to vet them in realtime, something that we do not have access to in the legacy financial system."

• 38:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, what do you make of these dividing lines? This discussion in the community between Uniswap versus Sushi? Now, Sushi is almost being painted as kind of a community-led project, whereas Uniswap is now getting painted as sort of this VC insider project. And Sushi is shipping really fast, but they're shipping smaller features. Whereas Uniswap, it feels like it's kind of frozen what it's doing right now, and it's gearing up for a massive V3 launch, which who knows all the cool things it could contain? So maybe going for the grand slam rather than the single hit. What do you make of this discussion?

• 39:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and that just shows how much room there is left to grow these protocols as is. Sushi Swap is making incremental improvements, integrations, you know, listening to the community, doing the low-hanging fruit things that the community really wants. And then Uniswap is doing something, I would say, similar to Synthetix, where they are pushing the boundaries of crypto economics. They are really pushing the limits on L2. So when their L2 announcement comes on to Ethereum, I'm sure it's going to be absolutely massive. And I don't think Sushi Swap is really focusing on that level of frontier exploration that Uniswap is doing. Yet, at the same time, Sushi Swap is given extra credit for being really good business developers, really having open conversations and open invitations

• 40:07David Hoffman?

  towards integrations with the rest of DeFi. And that is something like, and both of those domains are really important for all of all other DeFi money apps. We both need exploration into the L2, and we also need integrations. And it seems to be that there's so much areas to innovate in that not even one protocol can go in all directions all at the same time. So as a net benefit to this ecosystem, really happy to see Sushi Swap expanding the fold in integrations, and at the same time, Uniswap expanding the fold of L2 scale. Both of those things are good, and I expect the rewards and spoils that one finds to be ferried over to the other in the future.

• 40:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep, we definitely all benefit from this competition. David, did you catch this article? We were talking about Brian Brooks earlier. I can't access it. There's it looks like there's a paywall, but he made this this great comparison. This is in the Financial Times between DeFi and this idea of self-driving cars. And so he painted the picture for like, man, so what are you laughing at? This giant bull?

• 41:12David Hoffman?

  I'll let you finish your take and then I'll give mine.

• 41:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so I actually thought this was a really useful analogy for people who have no idea what's what's happening in DeFi and crypto at all, but they do know something of like self-driving cars. And he sorts of sort of walks through kind of like how everyone was afraid of self-driving cars at first, but obviously they're kind of a revolution, but we also recognize that regulation had to change as well. Like self-driving cars were going to shake up the insurance industry, is going to shake up everything. And he, you know, like, says that DeFi is going to do the same thing for money and going to do the same thing for finance, and regulation has to change

• 41:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  as well. I really like this line, "Those antiquated rules, the existing regulations, need to be revisited just as regulations that mandate the use of the fax machines should be revisited." So get ready for self-driving banks. He is telling the financial system. Kind of cool.

• 42:14David Hoffman?

  I can't remember where I saw this take. It was on Twitter. I think it was from Larry from the from the block, but he said that self-driving banks is the most boomer meme of all time. And you know what? That's maybe that's just what we need. You know, I don't

• 42:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what we need.

• 42:27David Hoffman?

  I don't think anybody in DeFi could have made the self-driving bank meme, but I guess we have that one for all the boomers out there.

• 42:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think it does speak to to a certain audience. David, what do you think of this message to another audience? This is an audience on like CNBC, which is the the existing place, I guess, you know, some generations get their their financial news. An investor, Bill Miller, said on CNBC that Bitcoin gets less risky

• 42:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Higher it goes. This is kind of a controversial sort of statement. Do you agree with it or disagree?

• 43:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I I I agree with it. It's because like, you know, tulips as a mania popped and didn't come back. But if tulips came back a second time or a third time, or what Bitcoin just did, which is a fourth time. If tulips came back a fourth time, that would indicate that, you know, maybe this isn't a mania, maybe something is really here. So, you know, the return of the Jedi four times in a row, the Jedi is coming back, you know. So like the risk there, the risk to reward profile is lower, I would say. Buying $3,000 Bitcoin, I think is more risky. From this perspective is more risky than buying $30,000 Bitcoin, but there's also much less upside. And if you had been sticking it out through the bear market because you understood

• 43:41David Hoffman?

  that this was this tulip mania was coming back anyways, and it's actually not a mania because manias don't come back twice. That's how you profited off of people like this, buying in when you can measure out that asymmetric upside.

• 43:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think comments like this on CNBC are are causing a lot of people to start to talk about crypto more and more. We've got something from Mark Cuban too, I can hop to that. He said that watching cryptos trade, he calls them cryptos, is exactly like the internet stock bubble. Exactly, he said. Some might survive like Bitcoin and ETH. But others are dot com era, they will die. This is going to be a bubble burst, right? What's interesting about this, David, is like he makes that comment. And then it's just like, Mark, we've seen this happen four times now, right?

• 44:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of course, this is how it's going to play out. This is the crypto cycle that we've been talking about forever. It's happened three times already. This is the fourth. We're going to bubble up to some insane valuation. And then things are going to pop and the survivors will come back and, you know, start building and they'll be alive for the next cycle. I expect it to play out like this. Do you think this is like news to Mark, like the first time he's seen this? Or what's your take here?

• 45:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think what's news to Mark is that, you know, he Probably wasn't really around for the ICO mania, which other people also called similar to the dot com bubble. And I do think that there's perhaps, perhaps, you know, another dot com bubble ahead of us. This time actually at the size of the actual dot com bubble in crypto. I think that is a possible future ahead of us. I think what Mark is saying in this time where, you know, you, your comment below was pretty funny. This is our fourth of these, Mark. But Mark is just like, this is his new to the game, but what's the same for Mark? That's different this time is the size of where our base is, right? So Bitcoin ether, starting from a much higher position. And, uh, you know, the, the, the dot com bubble was massive.

• 45:45David Hoffman?

  That was a trillion, I can remember then, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but it was way bigger than the mania of crypto and back in 2017. So I think what's more similar this time is the count comparable sizes.

• 45:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, I asked this question, you're, you're talking about the crypto bubble in, in 2017.

• 46:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Was it a net good or a net bad? I asked this question on Twitter specifically talking about ICOs. Were ICOs net good or net bad? 65% of the people that answered this survey said it was a net good. 34% said it was a net bad. I feel like enough time has passed now, and now that we're entering another bull market, we can actually ask this question. What's your take on this question, David? Net good or net bad?

• 46:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I like those balances actually 66 to 33 because, you know, we can obviously say both, you know? But I think if I wanted to give a concrete answer, I think in the moment it's a net bad. Because in the moment, people lose money, you know, teams, you know, swindle their cash and then they run. They don't fulfill their promises, people lose, people get burned. That's what a bear market happens. But then over the next like two, three, five, 10, 20 years, we start to incorporate the lessons we learned. And so in the moment it's bad. As time goes on, we actually are able to extract value and lessons that improve this industry as a whole. So over the long term, net good. And that's why I like the 63, 33% or 66, 33% distribution. You know, we're like three, four years away from the ICO mania.

• 47:13David Hoffman?

  We, we've started to incorporate and, and, you know, bake in some of the lessons that we learned to not repeat them. And so I think that's a good thing. It would be worse if we didn't learn those lessons.

• 47:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so much infrastructure was built and there were some survivors, right? Aave is an example, Synthetix is an example. These are ICO companies. These survived and built something really great. You know, the last thing maybe we should cover in the take section because this is a take that's broader than crypto, but has some intersection with with crypto. I thought Fred Arson summed it up well. Why decentralized matters? He put in quotation marks went from being theoretical to mainstream overnight. So he was, of course, talking about, you know, censorship on some of the web platforms that we use today. What's your take on this and how does it intersect with crypto?

• 48:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, with the absolute scrutiny that Facebook has been put under because of it being a centralized platform, especially as it relates to the 2016 and 2020 elections and social dynamics in America. And then also with the deplatforming of Donald Trump, which, you know, crazy to think that Silicon Valley tech companies can silence the president of the United States, regardless of what you think about him. To me, that signals a starting gun for some of the values behind Web three permissionless protocols. Permissionless protocols don't just have to be about money. They can also be public squares, you know, public institutions for communication like Twitter, but using decentralized protocols. Fred's comment, why decentralization matters, going from theoretical to mainstream overnight? I think that's a really great take.

• 48:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and it's this idea, I think it's Protocol Sync thesis idea. Basically, like protocols are more scalable than centralized entities, and they can certainly be more scalable for for things like like free speech. But decentralization is is back on the menu, I think, and that'll have some interesting implications for for crypto. David, let's get to the last thing on our agenda. What are you excited about right now?

• 49:14David Hoffman?

  I am excited about the Justin Drake episode that we are about to record tomorrow. I'm really excited about that. Justin did a fantastic job putting out an agenda, really making my job easy for me. For those that don't know, Justin Drake is a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. He's been with Ethereum since the beginning. He's very, very intelligent. He's specifically very smart with cryptography, which is what this whole entire industry is based on. And so the subject matter that Justin wanted to introduce to the Bankless Podcast was what he called moon math, or what happens when we, you know, really unlock all of the crypto cryptographic tools that we have been researching and developing in the last few years. Justin says cryptographic hashes and signatures are the modern day fire and

• 49:58David Hoffman?

  wheel, two breakthroughs considered moon math at the very beginning of this industry. We have achieved so much with just these two innovations. Bitcoin, BitTorrent, Ethereum 1.0 are just, it's a protocols combined of hashes and signatures. And so Justin continues saying, imagine what we can achieve with Snarks, MPC, TLP, FHE, I O. I only know some of those acronyms. Snarks is a scaling mechanism. MPC is multi-party computation. Basically, there are many, many tools in the cryptographic tool belt that we have not yet used to create a more protocol sync depth world. You know, what happens when we can actually leverage

• 50:39David Hoffman?

  cryptography more and more and more in ways that we have not yet been able to. A lot of cool things can come out of that. Really excited for that to podcast to come out a week from Monday.

• 50:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, how technical do people have to be to listen to that podcast? Is Justin going to break it down? Are we going to help break it down into like language in terms that anyone can understand?

• 50:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so I actually had a pre-call with Justin to go over some of these topics, and I think this is going to be really easy to understand. He does a really good job of bringing cryptography down to, down to the 101 level. And, you know, I'm not even ready to go into like the 200 level of cryptography. So as hosts, because I don't think either of us really have strong skills in cryptography, I think that's going to make it really easy for listeners to understand. And we'll do a good job breaking it down for the listeners.

• 51:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I will be right there with you, ready to ask some dumb questions of Justin Drake to help break this down. Really exciting.

• 51:33David Hoffman?

  All right, Ryan, what are you excited about?

• 51:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, I'm just excited about everyone who is about to enter crypto because they're going to enter crypto with a blank slate. I tweeted this out this morning. The next 100 million people entering crypto aren't maximalists. So there's huge opportunity there in that they don't have religions, they don't have preconceived notions of what crypto should be, or what particular asset should be. They're open to learning, they're open to new narratives and new ideas. And ultimately, for like DeFi projects and all of the crypto projects out there, it's going to be about user experience. What new superpowers do they now have in this

• 52:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  crypto world that they didn't have previously? So it'll be, I think, a lot less about ideology, and more about user experience, and more about practically how this thing works. So it's going to be great to have some fresh blood in the space. I feel like, you know, partially the last two years, it was like the same crypto community over and over again, having the same debates and the same battles. And I'm just really excited to get some fresh blood in this space, some new entrants who are core blank slates, and are excited to learn about crypto and DeFi.

• 52:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, on a similar note, I'm also very excited for crypto media. This has been something that I've been beating the drum on for a while. Back in 2016, 2017, when you wanted to get into crypto, there were very few media options. There were a few Bitcoin podcasts, or a few Bitcoin writers, but there was nothing else. There was basically only Bitcoin. And that really bolstered just the Bitcoin maximalist bent, which I know that you and I just do not agree with. Bitcoin, there's not going to be one asset to rule all of crypto. It's not going to be like that. There's going to be a diverse set of many, many assets. And so I'm excited for this, to see what happens in this cycle, when so many different media options are available to people, so they don't get stuck in the rut of Bitcoin maximalism. And if you want to help promote that effort, you can give Bankless five-star reviews wherever

• 53:33David Hoffman?

  you listen to your podcasts, because we are trying to climb the iTunes Business and Investing charts, so we can get the Bankless gospel into as many ears as possible. So if you want to help make sure that people don't get stuck in the maximalist rut, give us those five-star reviews, so we can help spread the truth.

• 53:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  I like how you linked that in there, David. And of course, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe. Guys, this has been your weekly roll-up. Thanks a lot.