ROLLUP: Celsius CEO Arrested & ETH CC Conference Recap

3rd Week of July 2023 ------ 🚀 Join Ryan & David at Permissionless in September. Bankless Citizens get 30% off. 🚀 https://bankless.cc/GoToPermissionless ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🦊METAMASK PORTFOLIO | TRACK & MANAGE YOUR WEB3 EVERYTHING https://bankless.cc/MetaMask ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ⁠ 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle ⁠ 👾POLYGON | VALUE LAYER OF THE INTERNET https://polygon.technology/roadmap 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku ----- Timestamps 0:00 Intro 12:53 Markets 17:33 What is GHO? https://twitter.com/AaveAave/status/1680216586047885312 https://defillama.com/stablecoin/gho 19:18 $116 Million ETH Wakes Up https://twitter.com/econoar/status/1681454803988414464?s=20 https://www.theblock.co/post/240429/ethereum-ico-participant-kraken 23:51 Alex Mashinsky Arrested https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1667540580484653058?s=20 https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/celsius-founder-and-former-chief-revenue-officer-charged-connection-multibillion 28:05 The Ripple Case https://twitter.com/MikeSeligEsq/status/1679529061926809600 https://twitter.com/ohaiom/status/1679839368502992897?s=20 https://www.theblock.co/post/240105/gensler-responds-to-ripple-decision-says-hes-disappointed-over-treatment-of-retail-investors https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1680218456006819840?s=20 https://twitter.com/collins_belton/status/1679902309814267904 38:30 UniswapX https://twitter.com/Uniswap/status/1680955621343129600 https://twitter.com/0xshittrader/status/1681706099966083077?s=46 https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1681325514286600192?s=20 47:07 Celo Becomes An L2 https://forum.celo.org/t/clabs-proposal-for-celo-to-transition-to-an-ethereum-l2/6109 52:39 Base Mainnet Is Open https://base.mirror.xyz/hwNwqXHVoLlO8s4DZppog4DfGvM34tigaDjOWuEJQfY 54:44 zkSync Boojum https://twitter.com/zksync/status/1680820952991408129 56:55 Polygon Upgrades MATIC to POL https://twitter.com/0xPolygonLabs/status/1679427540790681600?s=20 1:01:08 Ben Mckenzie vs Crypto https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1680956126584602625?s=20 https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1680959901403684864?s=20 1:04:39 RFK Vows to Back Dollar With BTC https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/07/19/us-presidential-candidate-rfk-jr-vows-to-exempt-crypto-from-capital-gains-tax-if-elected/ 1:07:55 Gnosis Pay https://gnosispay.com/ 1:09:07 Espresso Partners With Eigenlayer https://twitter.com/EspressoSys/status/1681335468518957056 1:12:53 Questions From The Nation 1:15:24 Takes Of The Week https://twitter.com/antoniomjuliano/status/1681034203406712833?s=46&t=LKBC7Qtm18FnZ380xCF2pA https://twitter.com/antoniomjuliano/status/1681034203406712833?s=46&t=LKBC7Qtm18FnZ380xCF2pA https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1681653643240525825?s=20 https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/07/19/new-us-senate-bill-wants-to-regulate-defi-like-banks/ https://twitter.com/BillHughesDC/status/1681729154360721410?s=20 1:21:50 What Are We Bullish On? https://imgur.com/mGXAZEZ 1:29:18 Meme of The Week https://twitter.com/BoxersPandoras/status/1680990527343284225?s=20 https://twitter.com/LilMoonLambo/status/1679483007822974977?s=20 1:30:37 Moment Of Zen https://twitter.com/yzymigos/status/1680397652393971712?s=46 ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: ⁠https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ https://%E2%81%A0https//www.bankless.com/disclosures%E2%81%A0

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

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  And here we are, not just, just over halfway through 2023. Kwan is in jail in Montenegro, waiting to be extradited to the United States. Sam Bankman Fried is under house arrest, can only assume he's going to jail. Mashinsky is going to jail. Suzu and Kyle Davies are still on the run, but they are completely ostracized from the West. They can't step anywhere outside of Dubai, or otherwise they would be arrested. So that box is not yet checked. However, with all the other boxes checked and the complete fall from grace that is three O's capital and probably the very likely cases and efforts going into actually grabbing those guys is probably going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. I say that we have permission to be bullish.

• 0:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, it is the third Friday of July and it is time for what David?

• 0:47David Hoffman?

  Uh, it's the Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup, Ryan, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless into the frontier, no matter where we are in the world. Uh, as you can tell, I'm in a, you know, you kind of a cramped little, this is the most cramped podcast recording setup I've ever had.

• 1:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  It looks good, actually. So, uh, David's in Paris. And by the way, Bankless Nation, this is the first time we are actually doing an episode in three weeks. All right.

• 1:13David Hoffman?

  This is Ryan, mine and Ryan's first podcast in three weeks, which is the longest time that we've gone since starting this podcast.

• 1:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so we've had, uh, David's been off climbing mountains and you've got some more mountains to climb, by the way.

• 1:25David Hoffman?

  I've got one more.

• 1:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we, we queued up some podcasts, we, we, um, put those out for you for the last, and I've been doing some solo episodes. David's got one more mountain. How has it been so far?

• 1:35David Hoffman?

  Uh, it's been pretty good. Let me tell you, the whiplash between being on a mountain and then the next day flying to Paris to go to ECC, so like from mountain to crypto conference in under 24 hours was a lot. I was sitting on the plane, there was a few moments I had, like halfway up the mountain, I was like climbing, climbing Rainier and we were at like 12,000 feet with 2,000 feet more to go and I was pretty exhausted and I'm like, this is my first vacation.

• 2:02David Hoffman?

  And then I'm like,

• 2:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that's what you choose to do.

• 2:04David Hoffman?

  That's what I choose to do, yeah. And then, and then just a day and a half later, I'm on a flight to go to Paris and I'm like 10 days behind on anything crypto related, like crypto is a new industry 10 days later.

• 2:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:16David Hoffman?

  I was like, sitting around, I was like, man, I need to catch up on crypto. What do people do? How do people consume crypto news? What do they do when they need to catch up on the week? Oh, I can listen to the roll up. I started listening to the weekly roll up with you and Anthony. And I was like, oh, this is so useful.

• 2:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it, you know, it is really useful. I mean, Bankless, I think for, for me and for you, David, has just been about kind of a journey of creating content, exploring subjects that we would have wanted to explore otherwise. So it's just kind of a chronicling of that, of that journey. I'm glad you found the roll up so useful, David. That's great. That's great to hear. No satisfied customer.

• 2:52David Hoffman?

  I am, I was very satisfied.

• 2:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 2:53David Hoffman?

  It's very informative.

• 2:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Remind people what you're doing in Paris.

• 2:56David Hoffman?

  Anthony did a great job. Huge shout out to Anthony Cisano for tapping in three times over the last like five weeks or so.

• 3:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, he really is the third podcast co-host, even if he doesn't know it.

• 3:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, he's better than us.

• 3:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so what are you doing in Paris? You said a crypto conference. What conference is that?

• 3:13David Hoffman?

  ETH CC, so I'm at the Ethereum Community Conference. So I actually, ECC is interesting because it was the super spreader event right before COVID. So it was the last Ethereum conference before we shut down conferences. And then it was also the first conference in 2021 that started things up again. So this is the third ECC since the conference season really got started. And conference season started after like in 2021 where crypto like was dead between 2018 to 2020 from the perception of the outside world to very, very much alive. And so this July, it's always in July, it's always in the same place. It's always the same org, like running and programming this thing. And so it always feels like, you know, one trip around the sun. It's like an arbitrary birthday for all the conference goers out there.

• 3:57David Hoffman?

  It's like, oh, it's a nice landmark every single year. So this is ECC number six. This is my third. It was great. It's been great.

• 4:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I always like to ask because as you know, I don't go to these things. I only go to like one conference a year and that is Permissionless, which is coming up by the way. When is that coming? That's the next one you're doing. That's in September.

• 4:16David Hoffman?

  That is next. Permissionless is next. Yeah.

• 4:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So Bankless Nation, make sure you grab a ticket if you already haven't. But ETHCC is different. My impression, it's very, it's kind of a technical type of track.

• 4:27David Hoffman?

  Very technical.

• 4:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  My favorite question to ask people, and we'll get into some of the events, some of the announcements that were made at ETHCC, but the question right now is because we're still in a bear market is like, what's the vibe among the builders? So how's everyone feeling? Like, what's your assessment? Because you've been to so many ETHCCs, how does it compare to previous ones?

• 4:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, since it's at the same venue every single year, I walked up to the venue this year and there's always people like kind of like hanging out outside. People come without tickets and so they come and just hang out outside and then people take a break outside. So there's always people hanging out outside the venue. And I was walking up and I see like the massive people that's always there. And I could just tell it was like, oh, thank God it's a calm one this year. Because last year's was insane. And also, it was 100 degrees last year. This year was only 80 in Paris. So I would say it's calm and relentless. Like, the building, the rate of building in Ethereum has always been like redlining, in a good way, like at the highest RPMs possible, whether you're

• 5:29David Hoffman?

  in a bull market or in a bear market, that hasn't changed. And specifically, the building now, it really feels like people have always been building hard, but rubber is really meeting the pavement here. And I think we'll see that as we go through this weekly roll-up agenda. You can just kind of look around this space, like Layer 2s are shipping, like the infrastructure around Layer 2s are shipping hard. Entire ecosystems are transitioning. Everything is, all the hard problems, if they are not being currently solved, they are on the cusp of being solved. And that's, that's kind of how I would share the sentiment of builders is like, it's real inside of, it's been real in the last like six months and like the next six months, like a lot of very real stuff, hard problems are getting solved.

• 6:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  I like those words, calm but relentless, is a really interesting way to describe it. And there was a Bankless Party event as well that we had for Bankless citizens. This is a photo from one of these. So what was the vibe there?

• 6:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is the the Bankless team. So this is at the end, end of the party. We took a took a team photo. Party was great for all the Bankless citizens. Shout out to all the the Bankless citizens that were out there. I talked to John Iced Cool from the Dow quite a lot there and just a number of other people. You know, while talking to all the the Bankless citizens, there's like certain archetypes across crypto, of course, we know this, the different, different tribes. I would call the Bankless citizens like the Athenians of crypto.

• 6:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really?

• 6:52David Hoffman?

  They're like, yeah, they're like, there's a lot of dads. We have a lot of dads. Shout out to all the dads that listen to Bankless, but like, there, there are a lot of people who really care and really care deeply about crypto. And they're living like, they're like, it's a lawyer with the two kids or like, and the why I call this the Athenians is in the 300 movie, you have the Spartans and the Athenians talking to each other. And the Spartan, the the Spartan guy, who's, I can't remember the name, the guy.

• 7:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just like a warrior society, right?

• 7:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And like, he's asking the Athenians who wants to join the fight and is like, what's your profession? And one guy says like, oh, I'm a blacksmith. And it's like, oh, what's your profession? It's like, oh, I'm a cobbler. And like, oh, what's your profession? I'm a farmer. We're the Athenians. Like, it's this, this very diverse group of very like, humble, focused people who live in a society, live in a collective. And so I, I just, it's like, everyone's just really appreciative, of course, of like the the podcast, but like the diversity, I think diversity is really the word I'm going for here, is, is pretty, pretty cool to see.

• 7:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  I really love that description of the Bankless as the Athenians. I feel like an Athenian myself. So that's, that's really cool to hear, David. I see a lot of plants at this venue. Was that intentional, David?

• 8:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So I wish I could say I picked this place, but Rachel, who is in the middle, she picked, she picked this place, curator of vibes. The, the drinks were fantastic. I had a number of chin and cocktails, so I got, I got a little loose. And because we had this beautiful event sponsored by Sega, all of the drinks for the Bankless citizens were free. These are the rules. If you're a Bankless citizen, you come to the Bankless meetup, you get free drinks. The founder of Sega was there and we were talking a little bit. Ryan, do you know what an exotic option is?

• 8:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, it sounds fun. Is it fun?

• 8:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so it's an option that it's it's so you have normal options. You have vanilla options and you have exotic options. I think the simplest way to explain an exotic option is if this then that statements for options. So like conditional options. So he was like walking me through what like you can do with with exotic options. And so if you're interested in exotic options, or you are interested in free drinks, Sega might be the place.

• 9:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Free drink protocol.

• 9:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So thanks for Sega for providing DeFi exotic options and providing the bankless nation with our liquidity.

• 9:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the next time the band gets back together, of course, is at Permissionless and hope the Athenians, the bankless citizens show up for that one. Anyone who's listening, of course. You can catch that in Austin, Texas, September 11th through 13th. There's a link in the show notes to tap into this. David, you still have some conference energy in you for the back half of this year?

• 9:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I actually signed up for one more here at ECC, but we'll talk about that later. So you called ECC a very technical conference and you're totally right. Like for people that like hear me and Ryan talking about conferences and hear the crypto industry talking about conferences, ECC is like, it's like, you know, 301, 401, kind of hard mode. Like it's like professionals and teams and people coming to like, get shit done. And definitely that's also true for Permissionless. But I think if you're looking for a stepping stone into being a conferencer, and I can't recommend being a conferencer enough, Ryan, Permissionless is a great place to get started. It's like the vibes last year, just like, yeah, the Athenians, like so many different people, a hodgepodge group of people coming

• 10:11David Hoffman?

  to all coalesce under Permissionless. And Blockworks is a killer job, just like facilitating and organizing and operationalizing a conference. And so we will have our next bankless meetup for citizens at Permissionless. That is September 13th, 11th through 13th in Austin, Texas.

• 10:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you only go to one, if you only go to one.

• 10:28David Hoffman?

  If you only go to one is Permissionless.

• 10:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this is me. I only go to one. This is the one I go to.

• 10:32David Hoffman?

  From personal experience.

• 10:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  We got a lot to cover this week, David. Man, we're talking about conferences. It's good to catch up with you, but there's so much going on in crypto. I'm glad you stayed up to date on the roll up. But topics of the week, Alex Mashinsky, remember that guy? Scammer from Celsius, he was just charged by the SEC, the CFTC and the FTC. Finally, they are busting the scammers. We'll talk about that. What else we got going on?

• 10:56David Hoffman?

  The Ripple case. I know the Ripple case happened right after you stopped recording with Anthony last week and then you added that little bit, but we're going to get the reactions from the Ripple case. I actually have a take. I think Ripple actually lost, but crypto still won. So that's my, that's my hot take about that. Yeah. And then also I interviewed Hayden Adams about this next announcement. Uniswap X, I interviewed him right before ETH CC. So we're going to go into what is Uniswap X? It's a brand new protocol to pair with the Uniswap AMMs. We also got an L1 that wants to become an L2 and we'll talk about all the ETH CC relevant things along the way as well.

• 11:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Before we get into it, guys, want to give a shout out to our friends and sponsors over at Stater Protocol. This is a new ETH staking protocol. It is decentralized. One of my favorite things about this is that it is permissionless. So similar to some of the decentralized protocols out there like Rocketpool. And second, this is if you're ever looking to run an Ethereum node yourself, okay, this is the lowest cost way to do that, lowest capital requirements, I should say, way to do that, only for ETH to spin up a Stater node, which is really cool. And they also have a pledge to keep staking decentralized on Ethereum, including a self cap on the amount of ETH that they'll accept in their protocol. So David, I got to tell you, I am now in the season where I'm

• 12:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  thinking about staking my ETH. Okay. I've staked some in the past, but now I'm kind of ratcheting that up. It feels like a lot of the risk has been boiled out of it. And it's so fantastic to see all of these new staking options. Right now, as far as launch incentives, Stater has a 1.5X staking boost this month that you can be eligible for. And they've got some LP rewards too. So go check them out. And in general, look for options to stake your ETH. That is the bankless way.

• 12:41David Hoffman?

  That 1.5X boost that then is you are getting a little bit extra from the SD token paid as incentive. So token incentives is where that boost come from. If you want that boost, there's a link in the show notes. So you can go and get started with Stater.

• 12:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, let's talk markets, man. It's been too long. Where are we at this week on Bitcoin?

• 13:00David Hoffman?

  I'm not going to get out the words out of my head, but at the bankless meetup where everyone says that they just chuckle when we do the prices, but we're doing them anyway. We're doing them anyway. Bitcoin last week, seven days ago, 30,900. It's currently down Thursday afternoon, 4% to 29,700. So down 4%. Bitcoin down 4% on the week.

• 13:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think pricing in the crab market is difficult because it just doesn't change from week to week. It's kind of, I mean, this is basically

• 13:27David Hoffman?

  It's been single digits a lot.

• 13:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. How about Ether? Me as well. What's Ether on the week?

• 13:33David Hoffman?

  Down 3%. So 1930 to 1890. So down 3%. And then of course, that means the ratio is up. It's up a little bit more than a percent. So you would call it, I would call it a negligible week.

• 13:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  This feels like our crab market numbers, right? You know, 30K.

• 13:48David Hoffman?

  These are big crab markets.

• 13:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is where we are. Crab, by the way, it just is a market that goes back and forth, back and forth. It continues. And that's sort of where we are.

• 13:56David Hoffman?

  Left to right.

• 13:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Before this influx of new money, which where's it going to come from? I think that's a major theme for us this year in 2023, 2024. But what's the ratio look like? Any change there?

• 14:07David Hoffman?

  Up a percent, a little percent and a half, 0.063.

• 14:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Market cap, I think we're above a trillion. I'm not even

• 14:14David Hoffman?

  1.3 trillion. We're at 1.3. You saw, you said 1.3 trillion last week with Sazil. That was the first time we hit 1.3.

• 14:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, that feels big, right? To be above a trillion. That's another big number for me. Let's talk about TradFi. David, you remember stocks, those things that you could, they're like tokens. They're like ERC20s, but

• 14:31David Hoffman?

  Honestly, like I've completely forgotten about stocks. I only look at the charts that you have pulled up, the NASDAQ and the SPY.

• 14:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, look at them. It's a nice looking chart.

• 14:41David Hoffman?

  I'm, I shouldn't have forgotten about stocks. I'm just telling you that. They're almost at all time highs, both in the NASDAQ and the SPY are almost at all time highs, which is around where crypto set its all time highs. Crypto set its all time highs at the end of 2021 and going into 2022. The SPY and NASDAQ did the same, and they are almost back there. What gives?

• 15:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what gives? Where's our bull market?

• 15:07David Hoffman?

  Where's our all time highs?

• 15:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, and I, it's funny because people in crypto are bragging about like how, you know, Bitcoin and Ether are decoupled from stocks. Now great that is. I'm like, but it's decoupled in the wrong direction. That's not fun. That's bad. Yeah.

• 15:22David Hoffman?

  So this is a take from Anthony Cizano where he said, "Max pain for crypto investors is watching stocks hit all time highs while ETH and BTC are range bound, AKA crab market. Ultra pain is selling crypto for stocks just before crypto starts a new bull market." And like, I comment below this and I say, "The year is 2019." If you, this is exactly what 2019 was. The equities markets were ripping and crypto was just lagging so hard and it gave us all so much FOMO. We were so bummed about that. And then, and then you know, all know, it happens in 2020, but man, this, the 2019 to 2020, 23 discrepancies, not the

• 16:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know what? It's different for me. I'm feeling zero FOMO. Like I just, I go ahead and rally stocks. Like, I don't care. Like, we are so well positioned right now in crypto. I'm just like, okay, that's great. Go do your thing.

• 16:13David Hoffman?

  In fact, it's like, now that the discrepancy is there between SPY and NASDAQ all time highs and crypto is still flat, like, that, it would be dumb to chase that because you, the discrepancy is bullish for us, for crypto assets.

• 16:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it makes me

• 16:26David Hoffman?

  You have permission to be bullish.

• 16:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, do you have permission to be bullish? Is that the theme for the episode? Do we have permission?

• 16:31David Hoffman?

  That's the theme for the episode. Yes, yes. There's, I've put this in the agenda a number of times. There's, this is the first of many reasons in this roll up and why, Bankless listeners, I think you have permission to be bullish now. If you are a bullish person on crypto and your friends are saying, "Ha ha, you're dumb for being in crypto," you're like, "No, you should be buying crypto." You have permission to be bullish about that.

• 16:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 16:52David Hoffman?

  Like, there's enough evidence there.

• 16:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I totally agree. I think I am, I've never, should I say I've never been more confident about crypto? But like, I just feel like we are so well set up. It's like, we are, the spring is coiling right now.

• 17:07David Hoffman?

  And like, it resonates with what I'm seeing here at ECC and all the hard problems about like, sequencers and layer twos and ZK stuff, all of that, all the hard problems coming into fruition, being solved. Man, okay, again, theme of the episode, it'll be the reagging theme, we'll keep going.

• 17:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, well, be patient. You have permission to be bullish now. It's David Hoffman, my co-host. So good to have you back, man. I like that bull energy. Okay, how about GO, the protocol? That's GHO. This is AVE. This is a stablecoin that launched on top of AVE. They've hit 4 million in market cap in two days and are probably larger by the time we're recording this. So a pretty good, pretty good entry, I would say into this. Yeah, it's 4.56 right now. Remind us what GO is, David?

• 17:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, just a, it's pretty similar to DAI from MakerDAO, except this is GO from AVE. Pretty, pretty similar. If your mental model starts there, you're off to a great start. So AVE, you know, it's an, has assets in its vaults and it has extra margin because, you know, people deposit more than they withdraw. And so you can mint GO from your deposits into AVE, just like how you can borrow anything else. And so now AVE is a hybrid compound maker protocol, which is bullish, I would say.

• 18:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 18:21David Hoffman?

  That's cool. And then also similarly, this is, there's a, I would say another theme of what I've noticing is a lot of, a lot of parallel development. MakerDAO, this is aside from the news of this week, but MakerDAO is doing its spark protocol, which is AVE for MakerDAO. So AVE has got a stablecoin and MakerDAO has got a lending facility. So all these verticals

• 18:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, MakerDAO has always had a lending facility. What do you mean by this?

• 18:44David Hoffman?

  It is, it's different. It's been compartmentalized now. So the stablecoin and the lending, yeah, so it's got an AVE. So AVE is different than MakerDAO. And now MakerDAO, the system as a vertical, has the credit facility, which is DAI, and then the money market facility, which is AVE.

• 18:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's definitely, this is a meta-pattern. There's definitely a lot of convergence here. Like one, one thing I'm seeing is like, there's a ton of convergence on layer twos as a strategy.

• 19:08David Hoffman?

  Exactly. That's another, that's another big theme that's going on.

• 19:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  This was completely unsettled two years ago. Anyway, let's keep going on. Do you, do any whale watching, David? I'm talking about crypto whales? All right, well, I don't either, but this one-

• 19:20David Hoffman?

  I don't, I don't, I feel too jealous of people who I see moving their funds after ICOs after eight years. I'm like, man, you-

• 19:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  You gotta remember, there's still some behemoths out there. There's still some massive whales out there. This, this address awakened after eight years and just moved $116 million to Kraken. Oh, our friends and sponsors Kraken. What other exchange would you use? Of course, it's gotta be Kraken.

• 19:45David Hoffman?

  To sell your ETH ICO. Imagine investing in the Ethereum ICO and not making a single transaction. And the next thing you do is you send it to Kraken to sell it. Like, I don't, I wonder if they like lost their private keys and magically found it somehow, which is the best day ever for them. Or they just have the biggest diamond hands of all time and they just don't even care about DeFi.

• 20:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe it's just patience. So you wrote that thing from, I mean, how much was this when they purchased it?

• 20:13David Hoffman?

  25 cents, 25 to 33 cents.

• 20:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, well, that, that was the price of Ether, right? So it's 116-

• 20:19David Hoffman?

  At the ICO price, yeah.

• 20:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, no, it's 61K worth of Ether times, you know, 25 cents, whatever that is. I don't know, $15,000, $15,000, something like this.

• 20:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  So $15,000, okay? You buy this thing, wait eight years, and then you send it to Cashout, presumably, at 116 million. Wow, that is a patient investor right there.

• 20:45David Hoffman?

  I can't, they must have had another address. They never, because like, they never got themselves like, I don't know, a house, a car.

• 20:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 20:55David Hoffman?

  Like, they never glowed up their life in eight years when they had access to hundreds of millions of dollars multiple times.

• 21:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Patience, who knows? Wow, what are the chances that whale-

• 21:04David Hoffman?

  That's insanity to me.

• 21:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Listening to this right now and us, us talk about this individual and they're like, yep, that was me.

• 21:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Their bankless listener, maybe. Uh, David, we got a lot more to talk about. What else we got coming up next?

• 21:18David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, we got Mashinsky arrested on fraud, but I have a conversation starter that actually starts with a Nick Carter take, which leads into our second reason of the week as to why we're allowed to be bullish. Ripple put the SEC on its heels, and I also have a take as to why Ripple actually lost. But crypto still won. ECC has brought plenty of announcements and Base is open soon to builders. We're going to talk about that. I interviewed Jesse Pollak here at ECC, Ryan. We're going to talk all about that and more as soon as we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken. If you have a dormant ICO that you haven't touched in over eight years, consider using Kraken to get your liquidity. We're going to go hear from them right now. Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade.

• 22:03David Hoffman?

  On Kraken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real-time market data and lightning-fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs. Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen. With Kraken Pro, you have that power. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro.kraken.com to get started today. Enter Mantle, an entire ecosystem dedicated to the adoption of decentralized token governed technologies. Mantle, formerly known as BitDow, is the first DAO-led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle Network,

• 22:47David Hoffman?

  a brand-new, high-performance Ethereum Layer 2, built differently from the other Layer 2s that you may be familiar with. Mantle asks the question, "How would you build a Layer 2 if you had the technology of 2023?" Mantle Network is a modular Layer 2, built using the OP stack, but uses Eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle Network's gas fees by 80% compared to other Layer 2s, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle Treasury is one of the biggest DAO-owned treasuries in DeFi, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub-communities from around Web3 on-boarded to help the growth of Mantle, like Game7 for Web3 gaming, or EduDAO for the world of DCEI,

• 23:31David Hoffman?

  and Bybit for TBL and liquidity and on-ramps. So if you want to build on the Mantle Network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first Dow-led Layer 2 ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle.xyz and follow them on Twitter at ZeroXMantle. Alex Mashinsky, one of the big, great scammers of 2022, has been arrested on fraud and a bunch of other charges. Wire fraud, we're going to talk about all the details of what he's getting charged. But first, before we get into that conversation, I want to pull out this take from Nick Carter. I want to start this conversation here. Nick Carter, in November of 2022, right after FTX collapsed, he tweeted out, and I remember him talking about this on his podcast.

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  He says, "If we can't purge the three R's Capital Boys, SBF and all of his cronies, Mashinsky and Kwan, we don't deserve to move on as an industry. Good people will continue to leave because they can't morally justify participating." I remember reading this take and I was like, oh, that's bearish. That's going to take so long. There are so many of them. They're all over the world. And today, Alex Mashinsky is arrested on fraud and all these other charges that we're about to go into. And so the details here, and we're going to come back to Nick Carter's take at the end. The details, CEO of Celsius, of course, charged by the Department of Justice, lawsuits from the SEC, CFTC, and FTC. The Department of Justice accused Mashinsky and his cronies

• 25:00David Hoffman?

  of orchestrating a years-long scheme to mislead customers on the market value of the company and interest in the sell token. The SEC has accused them of securities fraud and misleading investors. The CFTC has accused Mashinsky of engaging in a scheme to defraud customers by misrepresenting the safety and profitability of the platform. And the FTC has accused Mashinsky of violating the Federal Trade Commission Act in connection with the marketing and sale of cryptocurrency lending and custody services. The companies have agreed to a judgment of $4.7 billion, which will be suspended to permit Celsius to return its remaining assets to consumers in bankruptcy proceedings. Basically, like, that is the comprehensive takedown of Alex Mashinsky at all. That book is closed. And while we can go into the details of Alex Mashinsky,

• 25:45David Hoffman?

  I think we can really just summarize it there. And I kind of want to go back to the Nick Carter take. Three Ours Capital, Alex Mashinsky, Do Kwon, and SPF. And he goes, "If you want to pick a bottom, it is when all of Kwon, Bankman, Mashinsky, Livingstone, and Suzu have reached their reckoning. Only then can we recover." And I remember being intimidated by this take, like, I didn't want to admit that that's true, but because I thought that was such a crazy hill to climb. And here we are, not just, just over halfway through 2023. Kwon is in jail in Montenegro, waiting to be extradited to the United States. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest, can only assume he's going to jail. Mashinsky's going to jail. Suzu and Kyle Davies are still on the run, but they're completely ostracized from the

• 26:27David Hoffman?

  West. They can't step anywhere outside of Dubai, or otherwise they would be arrested. So that box is not yet checked. However, with all the other boxes checked, and the complete fall from grace that is Three Ours Capital, and probably the very likely cases and efforts going into actually grabbing those guys is probably going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, I say that we have permission to be bullish. I say those boxes are checked.

• 26:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, it's, um, it really, I think, I think it showcases the value of the bear market as well. I mean, if prices didn't go down and we didn't see the collapse that, that we saw, if we just continued to go kind of straight up, then, uh, all of these frauds would still be here in this industry. And we'd have that toxic cancer inside of the body and not even know it. I mean, some of, some people would know it, but like, it wouldn't be obvious. This is the value of the bear market. It'd be the minority. We saw the same thing in, in 2019, too. All of the, all of the ideas were tested. We had a whole bunch of ICOs that were just like raising ungodly amounts of money for

• 27:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  what, like slides, white papers. Remember it was the white paper season? You should create a white paper, raise $50 million in a token. And then just like exit scam, basically, all of that was lifted during the bear market of 2019, 2018, 2019. So we need these purges. I, this is the reason for bear markets and why I'm glad that and thankful that we have them. David Ripple case, we talked about this at the outset of last week's roll up. So of course, XRP, a judge ruled in the US that XRP itself isn't a security. According to the court, we talked about this and including we had Mike Selig on the episode. Maybe we should just recap this for folks because you weren't here.

• 28:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  And then I'd, I'd love to get your takes on this in terms of like catching up and what you think about it. So what happened last week that was so momentous?

• 28:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So last week, that's course case came out finally, we knew it was coming, but we didn't know the specific dates. And then it finally comes out and the TLDR of the case is that it's both a win and a loss for both the SEC and Ripple, both sides won and lost, depending on which part of the case that we're talking about. So Mike Selig, who says it's a massive win by the Ripple team against the SEC, where Judge Torres clearly affirms that the view that these same crypto asset may be sold in an investment contract as a standalone good. So what he's saying is there's a line being drawn here. And it's a line that is so elegant to me and it actually really like it restores my faith in the court system to actually methodically and clearly and thoughtfully come to the correct conclusion.

• 29:20David Hoffman?

  So we have sold as an investment contract and then later sold as a standalone good. And those are two different things. And this is why I think this is so elegant. The SEC is charging Ripple and Ripple's loss here is that they are being charged with selling an investment contract of SRP to certain large institutions under the premise that later there, because of the efforts of Ripple, they will be able to sell those tokens to retail for after price appreciation. That was a security, that was a legal securities offering, that was an investment contract. The actual XRP that is sold later to retail is not a security. So retail did not buy a security, a security was not sold, it was a standalone good. So Ripple.

• 30:02David Hoffman?

  Who I think you and I would say is like, I do not agree with the strategy and ethics, perhaps of Ripple as a product. And they got charged for what I think you and I would agree on is what they ought to have gotten charged for, which is quote unquote dumping on retail. They just did it with these institutional security sales, primarily the primary sales of XRP, which was an investment contract. But then it's a huge win for crypto because XRP is not a security when retail, the interested retail parties permissionlessly bought that XRP token of their own volition of their own accord. So the bad guys got for the right

• 30:44David Hoffman?

  reasons and crypto got protected also for the right reasons. And Ripple has to pay fines for all of their legal securities offerings and Gary Gensler has to put his tail between his legs. And we, as an industry, get to say that all of our crypto assets on secondary sales of programmatic DeFi exchanges and also crypto exchanges are not securities. I think it's a three for three. Ripple goes down and has to pay fees for the things that they did are bad and the sins that they've had. And Gary Gensler has to put his tail between his legs and be like, oh, I got beat by Ripple. And crypto gets to go free saying like, none of our things are securities anymore. It's like three for three, dude. It's perfect.

• 31:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think that, I mean, some would argue that, well, you know, let's say, let's assume that Ripple and XRP is actually selling vapor, of course, right? So they could continue selling those tokens to the public as long as it's not in an investment contract. And in fact, they did do that. You know, and that act in itself was not a security. And some people would look at that and say, well, that's a net bad, David, right? Because there's not much of a product here. It's overvalued. These assets aren't worth what people think that they're worth. And so they're selling it. I don't really have a strong comment on that. What I'm most excited about is the refutation that

• 32:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, of Gary Gensler and SEC regimes, their claim that all crypto assets, all tokens are securities. That's what they said. That quite plainly is not true and cannot hold. Right? And so that's what was most strongly refuted in this particular case, that that very strong posture of all tokens are securities. And therefore must be regulated by the SEC. This was a massive pushback against that. So yeah, I'm it's it's super. It's I'm very pleased with the outcome of this particular case. There's some takes back and forth about this, but one of the takes was from Gary Gensler. He responded to the ripple decision. His take was he's disappointed over the treatment of retail investors.

• 32:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, look, guys, I was just trying to protect retail this whole time. I don't see that. I see most of retail being very excited, like the actual crypto investors being very excited about this particular ruling. So I'm not sure who Gary Gensler claims to represent on the retail crypto investing side, but he's just sad for retail. The true losers over this outcome.

• 33:10David Hoffman?

  I don't think Gary Gensler knows a single retail investor. I think he's saying like, oh yeah, the retail investor whispered in my ear that they're disappointed. I'm like, well, Gary, the retail investors whispered in my ear that they're super happy. So actually I think retail investors are celebrating.

• 33:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I am. And by the way, it's not my like, it's not my opinion that we need no protection for retail investors in this whole like. To the extent there are centralized, you know, parties, then of course we need protection. I mean, we're just celebrating Alex Mashinsky and SBF. It was a centralized service that regulators and enforcers of the law are actually prosecuting. And we want that, like, go, go after the scammers. It's just that when the SEC is taking a posture to completely kill innovation in the space. And basically take the posture that all tokens are securities. That's just like. Unworkable. Of course, they're not all securities, right?

• 34:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so that's what I'm celebrating mostly here. Here's a comment from Jake Trivinsky that I thought was pretty good. Some financial journalists, I don't know if you've caught up on this, but Matt Levine, for instance, at Bloomberg, wrote a post about this, saying that there's still a lot of confusion. This is what Jake Trivinsky is replying to. Some folks, read, financial journalists are still confused about the Ripple decision. The key holding is that investment contract analysis must focus on transactions, not assets. Tokens are not securities. Transactions in tokens can be, depending on the facts and circumstances. He goes on. This is a critical distinction that the industry has made and the SEC has ignored for years. The fact that a federal district court has explicitly acknowledged its validity is a

• 34:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  monumental shift in US crypto regulation and a forceful rejection of the SEC's theory of law. It's particularly important for the SEC's ongoing cases against exchanges that list tokens for trading like Coinbase. Although the court didn't directly say trades on exchange order books aren't security transactions, it's extremely hard to read the decision any other way. Of course, we saw many of the exchanges, including Coinbase, re-enable trading for XRP on the back of this.

• 35:21David Hoffman?

  Right. How crazy is that? XRP is once again trading on Coinbase. It's been so long. It's been like two years.

• 35:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you think this is all permission to be bullish? Maybe this tweet by-

• 35:30David Hoffman?

  I think this counts as two, actually. This is, there's two reasons to be bullish here. Permission, reasons that you can have permission to be bullish. One-

• 35:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are they?

• 35:39David Hoffman?

  Is that all of the FUD and negativity and fear out of all of our assets, our securities, is gone. And that was, that was a decent amount of sell pressure over the last like year or so. The regulatory oversight of Gary Gensher is going to label everything as a security. So that's gone. And then this, this, that's the first of two. Here's a second one. So the, this is the take from Colin Speltin. He's a lawyer that we've had on the show before. He goes, "In the long term, absent rulemaking or new laws, there will be an explosion of token sales and distribution, similar to what happened in 2019," he's referencing DeFi Summer, "after people's fear of the 2018 crackdown resided." DeFi summer may look quaint in comparison. We've did that episode, Ryan, about the history

• 36:20David Hoffman?

  of crypto bull markets and what was the common denominator of all crypto bull markets is there were appetites for tokens. People were hungry for tokens. Tokens were on the menu. And what Colin is saying is that because of this clarity that we have, we now have the room for an explosion of tokens or sales of distributions of such, similar to what happened in 2019, the precursor to DeFi summer, after people's fear of the 2018 ICO crackdown resided. DeFi summer may look quaint in comparison. There's two reasons why you have permission to be bullish. We're at three. Three total. Is that three so far? No, four with the, yes, four. We're at four. We're at four.

• 37:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, well, let me ask you. So bullish prices, that kind of thing. I get that. All right. So when I hear where it's like a DeFi summer may look quaint in comparison.

• 37:13David Hoffman?

  Nice.

• 37:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm worried that we're not ready for that. Obviously.

• 37:17David Hoffman?

  I could use some more time personally.

• 37:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but obviously the posture of all tokens are securities. Like, that's bad. I reject that. But are we ready for an explosion of tokens? Right? Like, are we smart enough as an industry? And like, will we put in kind of, I don't, I'm just worried about stupid FOMO season coming back. And I remember how much I hated it in 2021, when everything was going off the rails, in the same way I hated it in 2017, when it was just animal spirits. Like, are we ready for this level of responsibility?

• 37:52David Hoffman?

  It does feel a little bit too soon. But I don't think, it might just be happening either way. That kind of felt like the bull market for me ended sooner than I expected it to. I kind of expected it to have six more months in it than it actually did. I think these, I think it's fair to say that crypto cycles are moving faster because information is moving faster and we understand cycles faster now.

• 38:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  So the bear market ended before you thought it would, but maybe.

• 38:16David Hoffman?

  Bull market.

• 38:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sorry. The bull market ended before you thought it would, but the bear market is maybe ending sooner than you thought it would.

• 38:22David Hoffman?

  Might do the same. Yeah. I mean, again, the theme of this episode is we have permission to be bullish. We're at four. We have, there's more. There's more in here. We got more to come.

• 38:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Definitely seeing signs. I'm definitely seeing signs. Okay, here's another one. Uniswap Labs, they launched an aggregator for Dex liquidity. It's called Uniswap X. I know you did an entire episode on this. What's the TLDR for the roll up?

• 38:42David Hoffman?

  The TLDR Uniswap X pairs with the Uniswap AMM. So you have Uniswap 1, V's 1 through 4. Uniswap X pairs with those. If you understand what CalSwap is, basically start there. Uniswap X is pretty similar to CalSwap. It is a order- Dutch auction is CalSwap, right? Yes, it's a Dutch auction that allows for market competitiveness in order fulfillment. So you can come to Uniswap X and say, hey, I have this token. I want that token. And with this Dutch auction mechanism with off-chain order routing. So instead of making a transaction on Ethereum, you just sign a message and broadcast that freely. You say, hey, whoever wants to fill this order can do that. So you actually don't pay for gas because you are not making a transaction.

• 39:26David Hoffman?

  The cost of the transaction comes out of the trade. So you don't pay for Ether. So you can swap, you can just broadcast a transfer that says, hey, I have 500 USDC. I would like to swap it for DAI. And then the market will give you the best offer. The free market will come and compete for the best offer to give you as much DAI as possible. And the gas will come out of that trade. So actually, you don't have to touch Ether. There's a bunch of other benefits as well. In the long term, this is not what's happening today. But in the long term, you will be able to say, hey, I have 500 USDC. I would like as much DAI as possible on this particular layer 2. I'd like it on Optimism, or Arbitrum, or Polygon, or ZK Sync. And because it's off-chain order routing, whoever a service provider wants to just deliver you

• 40:10David Hoffman?

  your desired crypto assets on your desired chain, so long as there is a bridge to provide a proof that the actual assets were delivered back to wherever the originating order came from. So long as that's there, it's, it's, it's bridge minimalism. Because instead of sending assets over bridges, you are only sending a proof over bridges. And then off-chain, third-party service providers just fulfill your order for you. I think it's really cool. It, it seems to be to me the yin to the yang of Uniswap AMMs to Uniswap X. So this is another layer in the stack of Uniswap that I think really completes the vision. And- There's a fee switch. It's additional fee.

• 40:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a fee switch.

• 40:50David Hoffman?

  Yes, there's a, there's a fee that goes to

• 40:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  For uni token.

• 40:53David Hoffman?

  For uni tokens, goes to Uniswap DAO. There's a fee switch inside of Uniswap X.

• 40:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. So that's an interesting tidbit of information there. This, this Uniswap X is not generally available, but is open to an opt-in beta right now. So I definitely plan on trying it. I, it's really interesting, David. So like, I love what you're saying about, basically the UX is going to be much more seamless. I just signed a transaction. We're not talking about gas fees, really cheap trade. I can, I can see this being incorporated in wallets everywhere. I can see it being really good for, for end users. That said, I'm a little bit worried about this function being pushed off-chain. This, this third party, does this introduce another kind of trusted intermediary into the system? And I want to listen to the episode that you did with Hayden Adams and explore this a little bit. But I haven't listened to that yet, David.

• 41:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, but I, I did see this pushback on Twitter from DeFi Guy. Very deep in Uniswap X docs, behind the public messaging of a permissionless protocol is a completely centralized permission opaque off-chain RFQ system. Let's take a look at how it works.

• 41:58David Hoffman?

  RFQ is request for quote.

• 42:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. By the way, so don't have time to get into this entire thread, but basically the charge is we're pushing some things off-chain. And this is a centralization vector. And this is concerning and people should be concerned because it's a departure from a permissionless protocol. I don't know what the response is to this kind of question or concern. It's something I want to look, look into in some more details. Do you have any hot takes on this?

• 42:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, if I understand Uniswap X correctly, again, I would need Hayden to really be able to, to drive this point home. But the idea is that you broadcast, hey, I have this much of one token. Give me as many of the tokens that I want in the place that I want. And then the free market competes to service provide for that. So it's a third-party service provider, but that being a third-party service provider is permissionless. So anyone can be that. There's not one canonical third-party service provider. It's the free market. And when the free market is competing, that is decentralization in my mind.

• 42:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  I would also need to go through this.

• 42:57David Hoffman?

  There's like.

• 42:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I understand what this guy is talking about. It feels like there's an analog to like builders and searchers in Ethereum.

• 43:03David Hoffman?

  Very much.

• 43:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's just kind of like brain breaking. Like, it took me a while to sort of understand builders and searchers and to understand what the points of centralization would be in that new function and whether that is sufficiently mitigated by the protocol to justify or not. My conclusion for Ethereum was like, yes, but if you.

• 43:23David Hoffman?

  After a while.

• 43:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Permissionless.

• 43:24David Hoffman?

  In the fullness of time, the answer is yes. If we stopped halfway short of the proposer builder separation progress.

• 43:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 43:31David Hoffman?

  It would have become central.

• 43:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I was concerned, I was very concerned about proposer builder separation going in because I like the idea of builders and searchers being sort of the decentralized groups. It was like, okay, but how are we maintaining centralization? And the key is like validators are still kind of in control of the network, right? And you still have fork choice. Anyway, it might be a similar dynamic working here, but the first thing you should do, bankless listeners, go check out the episode that David has already published with Hayden Adams on Uniswap X.

• 43:58David Hoffman?

  The first of my three ETH CC interviews, those three podcasts while I was here.

• 44:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  What else you got?

• 44:03David Hoffman?

  Who else? I might do a fourth tomorrow. One is with Jesse Pollock from Base and the other is, oh my God, it was so good, Ryan. You're going to nerd the F out when you listen to it. Justin Drake and Tim Bako, the sci fi roadmap for Ethereum.

• 44:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, geez.

• 44:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 44:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. See, see, I don't have to go to conferences because you do it. And you bring the best content back. Thank you.

• 44:24David Hoffman?

  That's what I do, baby.

• 44:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  We got a lot more reasons to be bullish because you have permission to be bullish this week. David, what's coming up next?

• 44:32David Hoffman?

  Polygon is about to upgrade the Matic token. We're finally converging the discrepancy between the Matic token and the Polygon network. Those are two different words, but that's actually the most insignificant part of the upgrade. It's just the part that I thought was funny. So we're going to talk about all the Polygon network upgrade, token economic upgrades as well. In addition to that, a layer one is about to become a layer two. Is the bankless thesis finally coming true? I told you.

• 44:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you mean finally? What do you mean finally? Come on.

• 45:00David Hoffman?

  The Bankless Layer 2 thesis is finally playing out. Let me be more specific. ZK Sync's got a brand new prover. It's pretty groundbreaking. We're going to talk about why and what that means, all of this and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Since this theme is you have permission to be bullish, make sure that your portfolio is ready for the bull market. MetaMask Portfolio can help. There is a link in the show notes to get your MetaMask portfolio opened up. We're going to go hear from them right now. MetaMask has something new. Introducing MetaMask Portfolio. MetaMask Portfolio is the best way to view your crypto portfolio from a holistic level. See everything across all the chains all at once. In your portfolio, MetaMask will report the aggregate value of all the assets in your MetaMask wallets and even the other wallets you import too.

• 45:45David Hoffman?

  But MetaMask Portfolio isn't just a passive portfolio viewer. It is a place to do all of the money verbs that make DeFi so powerful. You can buy, swap, bridge and stake your crypto assets. So not only is MetaMask the easiest place to see your wallets in aggregate, but it's also a powerful battle station for all of your DeFi moves. So go check out your MetaMask portfolio because it's waiting for you to open it up. Check it out at portfolio.metaMask.io. Arbitrum is accelerating the Web3 landscape with a suite of secure Ethereum scaling solutions. Hundreds of projects have already deployed onto Arbitrum 1. With a flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystem, Arbitrum Nova is quickly becoming a Web3 gaming hub. And social dApps like Reddit are also calling Arbitrum home.

• 46:25David Hoffman?

  And now Arbitrum Orbit allows you to use Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own Layer 3, giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar and fully EVM compatible. Faster transaction speeds and significantly lower gas fees. Are you a dev but you don't know solidity? With Stylus, Arbitrum's upcoming proposal for a programming environment upgrade, developers can write smart contracts in Rust, C, C++ and many more coding languages. Arbitrum empowers you to explore and build without compromise. Visit arbitrum.io where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets and start building your first app on Arbitrum.

• 47:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  A Layer 1 wants to become an Ethereum Layer 2. This has been a long held.

• 47:13David Hoffman?

  Oh yeah, I love those words. Can you say that again?

• 47:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  A Layer 1 wants to become an Ethereum Layer 2. This has been a long-held, I think, Bankless prediction. Many roll-up bulls like Palenia have predicted this for a while too. And here's the first proposal of its kind that we've seen. A proposal for Cello to transition to an Ethereum Layer 2. David, what does Cello and what does this proposal call for?

• 47:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Cello is a, it's always been a Layer 1 blockchain. Fun fact, it's actually the only Layer, non-Ethereum Layer 1 that we've accepted as a sponsor of Bankless. Why did we do that? They are focused on public goods, regenerative finance, that whole movement, blockchain for good. And so they are working on adoption in third world countries. Just a lot of just making sure the long tail of, of the globe gets, gets access to blockchain services. So we've, I've always enjoyed what Cello has done. And it's always seemed to me, Ryan, that they've used the blockchain as a means to an end to provide public good services to the world. Like, and this, so this is why this makes so much sense for

• 48:17David Hoffman?

  Cello to become an Ethereum Layer 2, is because they want to use crypto for the regenerative finance movement, and they've just been using a blockchain to get that done. Now, they are saying, like, hey, we actually can achieve our mission better if we become an Ethereum Layer 2. So they have submitted a proposal, Cello has submitted a proposal to its own governance community to transition into an Ethereum Layer 2. So they are proposing to become an OP stack to help Cello developers utilize all of the Ethereum tools and libraries out there, because the OP stack is basically Ethereum. They want to use off-chain data availability, using Eigenlayer data availability. So Eigenlayer's got the supporting DA services for them. And then also, end users of Cello, if you are a transactor of Cello, use the

• 49:02David Hoffman?

  applications of Cello, or if you're anywhere in the, of vast apps that Cello does really actually truly have, then you would not be affected. It would be a seamless upgrade for you. So I think this makes sense. This is exactly what we've been predicting for a long while. I think this is the first of many. I was talking to one of my friends here at ECC, we were talking about Cello. I actually don't remember this, but apparently I told her that I think Cello will become a Layer 2 eventually. And I told her that about like, six months ago. And she goes, she went up to me today, you know, six months later, or yesterday, and she goes, "Did you know something when you said that Cello's going to become a Layer 2?" And I'm like, "I don't even remember saying that in the first place."

• 49:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you know something?

• 49:41David Hoffman?

  These play out, the bankless theses always work.

• 49:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not always, you know, but like greater than 50% of the time.

• 49:49David Hoffman?

  Which ones haven't worked?

• 49:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not, none of the big things, I don't think. And you know, the ones that haven't worked were just like, oh, just wait, just wait a while, you know? The, the timings, uh, not, not right on for that, but we did get D5 right.

• 50:00David Hoffman?

  It'll eventually.

• 50:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ethereum, right? Yeah. Um, okay. So I guess one of my questions is, are we going to see this with other layer ones? Right? Is, is Avalanche, is Solana, are they going to become a layer two? And like my take on this is, uh, the reason that a layer one becomes a layer two is kind of for three reasons. Right? It's tribe, it's network and it's economics. It's the three reasons. And there's various weighting, but let's roughly assign them a third, a third, a third. One is there is some tribal affiliation, right? If you switch, uh, from one tribe and now you're a team Ethereum, right? You get some love and a support for, say, the Ethereum tribe. That can be a motivating reason to do this. So it's kind of marketing, that sort of thing. We're talking about it on the roll up. It's that sort of thing, right?

• 50:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  The second is network and that's the thing that has been lacking before, but is now present in sort of the super chain. They already have the network effect of the EVM, but when you become an optimism participant in kind of the optimism ecosystem as a part of all of the other layer twos that are developing on top of Ethereum, you get plugged into a network and you get some beneficial network effects of interoperability, right? It's just connected to this ecosystem. That I think is a driver for, for Cello and others. And the third I would say is economics. All right. Rather than issuing token, which is a cost to the Cello business to pay for security, a layer two doesn't have to do that. All right?

• 51:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's much cheaper to maintain your security as a layer two. The, the analog here is this is why the state of Tennessee doesn't have its own private military. Right? It gets that from the federal government. All right? And it's much more efficient, uh, to get that cost, that security cost from the feds than it is to create like a state military of force, of course, it just makes sense. And so, uh, Cello doesn't have to pay that security budget. So it's those three things. It's tribe, it's network, uh, and then it's economics. And I don't know what other layer twos, these three forces will come into play with, but I don't think Cello will be the last layer one that makes the switch.

• 52:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, my next prediction for my next for my next trick, I think you're going to see Cello and many Cello apps participating in Optimism's retroactive public goods funding. So you're going to see OP tokens being distributed to the Cello ecosystem. And so it's what do networks do? They are basically the the local governments for their domain, and they need to provide services. And one of the big poles of optimism is being part of the retroactive public goods funding. And so if a lot of the Cello ecosystem can get funding from optimism, that is just a huge service that optimism can provide Cello.

• 52:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  All of these layer two ecosystems will be competing for chains, won't they? Speaking of which, here's another layer two base. This is from Coinbase. Mainnet now open for builders. David, what's this announcement?

• 52:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Base Mainnet is here. This is Mainnet. It's open for builders. So the going back to the theme park ride, which has really stood the test of time. The base theme park is open. The real estate is open for ride builders, for ride operators. So if you would like to go build a ride on the base theme park for the inevitable flood of people going into the theme park, which is happening in August, then now is the time. So Mainnet open for builders. One of the interviews, like I said, Jesse Pollock of Base, I talked to him for 40 minutes all about this and all the other like layer two manias that are coming, layer two season that we that we talked about. And also just his collaboration with optimism and all of this.

• 53:34David Hoffman?

  So Base Mainnet open for builders. Mainnet, actual Mainnet coming early August. I can't say the date. I actually don't know the date. I do know the date, actually. But you can watch the interview that I do. It might be out by the time you listen to this episode. It'll be out soon, TM.

• 53:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, did we mention the base in base stands for Coinbase? This is Coinbase's layer two attempt, in case you forgot.

• 53:56David Hoffman?

  Oh, yes. This is one of the another reason to you have permission to be bullish. Oh, Coinbase, the layer two mania, the layer two summer, like you would be excused if you made bets that this would be coming. Base Coinbase flooding in users into the layer two ecosystem. We have public goods. I'm just gonna at this point, just listen to the episode with Jesse. We talk about this, but layer twos and providing public goods and onboarding users onto changing Coinbase leading that charge is going to be a huge legitimizing factor for the industry. Base spearheading layer two summer, layer two mania, I think is permission to be bullish. It's a big one.

• 54:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  You've got a, what, 110 million or so users on Coinbase that could be converted over?

• 54:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's absolutely massive. ZK Sync announced its new prover. It's called Bojum. What is this?

• 54:49David Hoffman?

  Bojum? Bojum? It's ZK Sync's era new high-performance proof system. So why do we love ZK rollups? Because of proofs, because of the ZK. You don't have to have that seven-day wait period for fraud proofs from optimistic rollups. You have just the proof that cryptography gets you. The problem and the vector that all these ZK Layer 2 teams are competing on is the efficiency and of their ZK circuit. How manageable is actually producing that proof? This is the thing that Polygon, Scroll, ZK Sync are all competing on is how solid can you get your proof? Your ZK proof system. And so Bojum is ZK Sync's era's new high-performance proof system.

• 55:34David Hoffman?

  It used to, the average prover is, they are saying, needs about 500 gigabytes of hardware on a GPU, on a consumer-grade piece of hardware. 500 gigabytes if it is a GPU, I think it is a GPU, to make a proof. 500 gigabytes is insane. My gaming computer, I've got a gaming computer, it's got 16 gigabytes on its GPU. The Bojum requires eight, which is not so low. It's not so low, like some GPUs are down to four, but they're kind of like the low-end ones that need to be upgraded. Modern GPUs, eight to 16 gigabytes. I really hope that it's GPUs. I'm pretty sure that's true. But if Bojum can be proved with just eight gigabytes of hardware, what does that mean?

• 56:16David Hoffman?

  That means if you have a GPU with eight gigabytes of memory in it, you can produce a Bojum proof for ZK Sync era. You can run a ZK Sync, you can produce a proof. Why do we like this? Because it means you only need one prover to work. Whereas Ethereum proof of stake needs two-thirds, ZK rollups need one. You need one prover to produce a proof. That could be you if you have an eight-gigabyte GPU. And so that's why, and so this is, it's taking the ZK stack that I'm so excited about and making it real small, real manageable, so that it can permeate into the internet, which is again, why I say the ZK stack will inherit the internet.

• 56:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  More layer two stuff going on. Polygon is upgrading its Matic token to something called Pol. So there are some big changes in the Pol Matic ecosystem. This is like a token improvement, I would say, maybe an economic improvement. But the TLDR is this one Pol token is now going to power all of the chains. So that's Polygon Supernets, Polygon ZK EVM, even the Polygon ZK EVM, Validium, of course, it already powers the proof of stake change and they're chain and they're going through a rebrand of it. So no longer will it be called Matic, it will be called Pol, P O L. Is it Pol or Pol? I don't know. One of those two things.

• 57:33David Hoffman?

  Why isn't it Poly is the better question.

• 57:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm sure.

• 57:37David Hoffman?

  What are they doing?

• 57:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you remember, wasn't there like a company? Wasn't there a company or a project called Polymath or something?

• 57:44David Hoffman?

  Polymath, yeah, it was a security tokens issuance platform.

• 57:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you remember this.

• 57:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I was in that security tokens world back then. They're totally relevant. Yeah, it's permission. Take Poly.

• 57:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can't take it. They already have it. Well, it's Paul.

• 57:58David Hoffman?

  I can't actually submit a governance proposal to change from Pol to Poly because I'm a US citizen. I think that's true, actually.

• 58:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, really?

• 58:05David Hoffman?

  But Paul, come on, Poly. Okay, yeah, no, I think I'm pretty sure that's true. Okay, but as more serious note, not semantics. One of the big critiques of Polygon is like, it's not a roll up, it's just a proof of stake sidechain. And there's no like, it doesn't inherit the security of Ethereum, blah, blah, blah. I think the very important thing to emphasize is that you have the Matic token, which is the proof of stake token for the current Polygon proof of stake network. Now you have the Pol token, which is the actual validating token for every single network, actual fees, all the networks, the many networks of that is part of the whole Polygon ecosystem. They're calling this a third generation because first generation, they were calling it Bitcoin. Second generation is ETH for the Ethereum network.

• 58:47David Hoffman?

  And third generation is Pol for the, you know, Poly number of networks. That's a, that's a good pun, I think. The Poly networks of Polygon. Oh, that's why they call it Polygon. Oh, I get it. Holders can become validator. So if you own, hold Pol, you can now become a validator, you can get the transaction fee. So all of the many, many networks that makes up Polygon, one token, many networks.

• 59:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think I like what they're doing here. So Matic holders, this is a one-to-one upgrade. So Matic to Pol is a one-to-one upgrade, right? Notice what they didn't do. So what they didn't do was make it like a different ratio and

• 59:22David Hoffman?

  10 to 1 token split.

• 59:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 59:23David Hoffman?

  Or even deeper.

• 59:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Inflate.

• 59:25David Hoffman?

  Polygon's pretty cheap. It's like 50, 60 cents or something.

• 59:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  They did so, so, but yes, but they didn't kind of, I guess, kill or nerf existing Matic holders, which is good. They also didn't do a thing that they could have done, I suppose, would just create tokens for all of these chains, right? So I feel like this is a good move. It's a long-term game type of thing. So the initial supply will be $10 billion, same as Matic. Now, I will say that there is some issuance that has been added. So there's a 2% yearly emission of Pol tokens on top of this, whereas Matic was fixed. So Matic was fixed at 10 billion. With Pol, there's going to be some issuance. So there was some issuance added on the back of this. 1% goes to validator rewards, 1% to community treasury,

• 1:00:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  which of course pays for protocol development. All in all, you know, I think this is a pretty, pretty good move for, and most Matic holders that I've seen have been pretty excited and about this. And of course, you can not only use Pol for staking inside of proof of stake in the future, but you'll also be able to use it in, you know, other, other roles that rollups present, say maybe sequencers, that, that kind of thing. So.

• 1:00:35David Hoffman?

  And just as a reminder, before we move on, Ryan is an advisor to Polygon and Ryan and I are both advisors to both ZK Sync and Optimism. Turns out we like layer twos.

• 1:00:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, you remember this guy from the, a show called The OC back in the 2000s? Not at all? Okay. Well, this guy was a pretty big deal back in the day. Some bankless listeners.

• 1:00:56David Hoffman?

  Like a teenage heartthrob type.

• 1:00:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep. That's totally what he was. Ben McKenzie is his name, former star of The OC. So I woke up on Monday and suddenly here's Ben McKenzie and he's at war with crypto. All right. I did not expect this guy from the past. He hasn't done a lot of acting since his OC days.

• 1:01:12David Hoffman?

  This is who they're sending?

• 1:01:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is who they're sending, David. The context is yes, Ben McKenzie, former OC. C stars published a book this week on how all crypto is a scam. And that really is the the conclusion of the book. So his story is he discovered crypto in 2021. He invested in quotes 250 K in it. Don't know what he bought, but he indicates that he lost almost all of it, if not all of it. Proceeded to talk to the the crypto people, of course, which include Mashinsky, SBF, Justin Sun, you know, the best representatives of the crypto.

• 1:01:48David Hoffman?

  He was tied, he was hanging out with them.

• 1:01:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's who he was.

• 1:01:51David Hoffman?

  How did he find his way into them?

• 1:01:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Talking to, right? He didn't talk to the vitals of the world. He didn't, you know, talk to anybody.

• 1:01:57David Hoffman?

  Didn't talk to us.

• 1:01:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Didn't look up our guest list and talk to, you know, Hester personal. Didn't talk to any of those people.

• 1:02:03David Hoffman?

  I bet you he doesn't even know what bankless is.

• 1:02:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And so he drew a whole bunch of.

• 1:02:06David Hoffman?

  First mistake.

• 1:02:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I don't know, like, I think he does. It almost feels at this point like he is purposely ignoring that in order to to send a contrary message, which is all of crypto is a scam because they're scammers in the industry. Obviously, all crypto is a scam. So here he is, he's doing the media circuit tour. I'm going to play this clip. You ready?

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  You dug in and yet you admit you still didn't get it.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  It's it.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  I don't get it either. It's not rooted, it's not, it's not a thing. It's not like if you buy a stock, it represents a company. If you buy a bond, you've got debt on somebody.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Tangibility, yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 04

  If you invest in grain futures, like there is a farm somewhere making grain. Like, what is crypto actually rooted in or on?

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Nothing. It's a story. I mean, these are bits of computer code that are uncorrelated with any real world asset. To your point, if they're an investment.

• 1:02:55David Hoffman?

  That's so bullish. That's what I'm here for.

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  The reason that I use the word Ponzi scheme in front of the Senate is that an investment scheme without value is a Ponzi scheme. I mean, that's the definition and Ponzi schemes are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. So in my opinion, the cryptocurrency industry does represent the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

• 1:03:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  There he is. I could play more, but that's about the summary. So Bankless Nation, this is who you're up against when you're trading.

• 1:03:20David Hoffman?

  So bad.

• 1:03:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, you know what? To me, why is this significant? To me, it just, it kind of represents a bottom signal for me. Right? It's just like now this person is coming out with a book on how all crypto is a scam and the conclusion and just this is on CBS Morning, like this, the show host is like, I don't understand this crypto thing. It's not backed by anything real. It's not backed, it's not like weed. It's not like, you know, a security. It's not like equity or anything else. I think that this is

• 1:03:49David Hoffman?

  Do we not live on the internet in this modern era? Like, what do they think this is?

• 1:03:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm very excited to take the counter trade here. So this, this makes me bullish. This is the type of stuff that I'm like, alright.

• 1:04:01David Hoffman?

  This is who I get to trade against?

• 1:04:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is, okay, permission to be bullish? This clip, Bankless Nation, is your permission to be bullish right now. This is the bottom signal of bottom signals.

• 1:04:12David Hoffman?

  They're just handing to this, handing this to us on a platter. They have Ben McKenzie and the whole Fiat font at the top of the banner. Oh my god, dude.

• 1:04:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:04:24David Hoffman?

  Let's get this man's take and put him on, on

• 1:04:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Talk to the Senate, cheat. I can't believe we talked to the Senate. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, OC actor is coming out hard against crypto and that is the ultimate bottom signal.

• 1:04:35David Hoffman?

  I'm shaking in my boots. I have full of fear.

• 1:04:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  In politics, I don't know if you've noticed this, David, but Robert Kennedy Jr., Robert RFK, he's been taking some very pro crypto stances. Last week, just earlier this week, David, he vowed to back the dollar with Bitcoin. All right, not a lot, just under 1%. Very, very small. He's had perhaps of 1% of issue T bills by Backcoin and other hard currencies like gold, silver and platinum. He also

• 1:05:05David Hoffman?

  Not 1% is Bitcoin, 1% is hard currencies like gold, silver, platinum or Bitcoin.

• 1:05:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, yes, very pro Bitcoin stance. He said it's a mistake for the US government to hobble the industry and drive innovation elsewhere. His Biden's 30% tax on cryptocurrency mining is a bad idea. He also wants to remove capital gains from Bitcoin. I'm assuming in smaller amounts, right? So probably not large investments of millions of dollars. But like if I send Bitcoin, you know, to pay for something, pay for my Starbucks, that's a capital gain on my Bitcoin potentially if it's gone up for paying for a cup of coffee. Other currencies aren't treated that way. So he brings a lot of points to bear and is definitely taking a crow crypto posture,

• 1:05:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  regardless of what you think of any of his other politics, which of course many people have complaints about or different opinions on. Ron DeSantis as well, he's coming out hard against the central bank digital currency. He says this of CBDCs, he says this of CBDCs. They want to get rid of cash. They want no cryptocurrency. They want this to be the sole form of legal tender will allow them to prohibit undesirable purchases like fuel and ammunition. So the minute you give them power to do this, they will impose a social credit system on the country. CBDC is a massive threat to American liberty. What's interesting about this is, politics aside, it seems like all politicians are now, in this presidential race, having to weigh in on crypto.

• 1:06:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I haven't heard Biden weigh in on a big way. I haven't heard Trump weigh in recently on a big way, but this is elevated in 2023, 2024 to kind of national level of conversation. And that is quite a departure from the previous crypto cycle. Do you have any takes on this?

• 1:06:52David Hoffman?

  My take is that everyone's got a take about crypto. And I think that's really just the summary. It's now mainstream in politics. And so we have risen to that level. Like, you can't, everyone's good, like, you're gonna be running for some office somewhere, and then one day you will be asked, hey, what's your take on crypto? That's just, that's where we are.

• 1:07:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  100%. Another, maybe, permission to be bullish, that it's elevated to the national conversation here. This is not permission to be bullish.

• 1:07:20David Hoffman?

  As all the others.

• 1:07:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this, this one is not strong at all. Binance cutting back employee benefits, citing decline in profit. Apparently, Binance cut 1,000 workers this week. CZ had a response on this.

• 1:07:33David Hoffman?

  CZ said that was FUD. He said that it was, there were layoffs, but it wasn't 1,000.

• 1:07:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Four? Is it one of the four FUD things?

• 1:07:40David Hoffman?

  It's a four.

• 1:07:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know what to think about all that, but, you know. CZ, as we continuously strive to increase talent density, there will be involuntary terminations. This happens in every company. The numbers reported by the media are way off. It's just FUD, it says.

• 1:07:55David Hoffman?

  All right. New update from Gnosis Safe. This is a Gnosis Pay. See that little Visa card, that Gnosis Pay Visa card that you see on your screen?

• 1:08:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I see it.

• 1:08:03David Hoffman?

  When you, so I actually talked to some of the Gnosis team at Zuzalo about how this works. When you run your, that credit card, the magnet induces enough of an impulse of electricity for that chip inside the card to make a private key transaction, signature. So there's a private key in that Visa card, and just scanning it makes a transaction happen.

• 1:08:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, what?

• 1:08:25David Hoffman?

  Yep, yep. There's a private key in that Visa card, and it runs on top of Gnosis Chain. And so we have Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Card running on top of Gnosis Chain.

• 1:08:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Gnosis Chain is like a side

• 1:08:38David Hoffman?

  Turning into this like bankless system and payment system along with your vault Gnosis Safe. So like Gnosis Chain, Gnosis Pay, Gnosis Card, Gnosis Safe. I think there's a few others as well. It's a pretty impressive vertical, but the news here is that Gnosis Pay is out.

• 1:08:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Gnosis Chain, that's a like a side chain on Ethereum.

• 1:08:58David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 1:08:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  EVM side chain.

• 1:08:59David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love Gnosis Safe. I will say that. Best multi-stake I've used. It's absolutely fantastic. Really cool to see this.

• 1:09:07David Hoffman?

  It says, "An announcement out of ECC Espresso announcing an ecosystem partnership with Eigenlayer collaborating to bring restaking to the Espresso Sequencer Network." This is one of the things I was referencing earlier with the rubber hitting the pavement about very hard problems. Is everyone's getting real excited about Espresso sequencing and shared sequencing and just overall the growing infrastructure.

• 1:09:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, what is this?

• 1:09:28David Hoffman?

  One of the big problems about all these Layer 2 networks and the fractal superchain, fractal scaling, hyperchains and all of and then all the restaking Eigenlayer chains is there's a lot of parallelization going on between all these chains. Like there's 10, there's going to be 10,000 OP stack chains. How are we going to parallelize and then combine all of the transactions? We do that with sequencing. Espresso Systems is attacking, tackling this problem head on and they're doing it alongside of Eigenlayer. It sounds like this is a rabbit hole that I think we actually really haven't explored yet.

• 1:09:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we have it.

• 1:10:00David Hoffman?

  I think, I think we should, we should probably do an episode on sequencing. So call to action for who is the best sequencer guest? Might be Torgal from Scroll.

• 1:10:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I just

• 1:10:10David Hoffman?

  Should have him on.

• 1:10:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, I feel like I need to scroll up because most sequencers right now are run by kind of internal teams like Arbitrum runs their sequencer. Optimism runs its sequencer, but this can't be the state moving forward. So yeah, I would love an update on that. Very cool to see. David, we got more coming up, including questions from the nation, some hot takes from crypto Twitter as well. Stay tuned. We'll be right back at you. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 1:10:35David Hoffman?

  Introducing Polygon 2.0, the value layer for the internet. For too long, the limitations of blockchains have held back app development and stifled user adoption. The internet allows anyone to create and exchange information. What's missing is a value layer that lets anyone exchange, store, and program value. That's where Polygon 2.0 comes in. Polygon Labs has unveiled a series of innovations that will radically alter the Polygon ecosystem and Web 3 as a whole. By leveraging groundbreaking ZK innovations such as Polygon ZK EVM, the next iteration of the best-in-class Plonki2 proving system, and a first-of-its-kind ZK-powered interoperability layer, Polygon 2.0 will give users and devs unlimited scalability and unified liquidity.

• 1:11:15David Hoffman?

  Right now, there is a Polygon improvement proposal regarding a potential ZK-powered upgrade of Polygon Proof of Stake. If approved, Polygon Proof of Stake would become a Layer 2 ZK EVM, Velidian. So make your voice heard on this proposal by joining the Polygon Discord today. You have a chance to help the Polygon community give the internet the value layer it deserves. Are you planning to launch a token? Is your token already live? And are you granting your employees and contractors vesting token awards? And are you trying to figure out how to take care of taxable events for your team? Toku makes implementing a global token incentive award simple. With Toku, you will get unmatched legal and tax support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Toku will help you navigate across the lifecycle of your token, from easy-to-use pre-launch token grant award templates

• 1:11:58David Hoffman?

  to managing post-cliff taxable events with payroll. For legal, finance, and HR teams, it's a huge, complex task to have to comply with labor laws, payroll and tax obligations, tax reporting, and crypto regulations in every country that you employ someone. It's difficult, time-consuming, manual, and costly, and it's drawing more attention from global regulators and governments. Toku makes it simple for leading companies in the space: Protocol Labs, Hedera, Gitcoin, and many more. So if you want some help navigating the complex world of token compliance, go to toku.com/bankless or click the link in the description below.

• 1:12:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Question from Bankless Citizen Kyle Kaplan this week. So if optimism switches from optimistic fraud proofs to ZK proofs and chooses the ZK Sync Prover, we were just talking about that, will it reduce the need to bridge between the networks? And would that make it a hyper-superchain? This is a great question. It's kind of a question that I've had in my mind as well. All right. So part of my worry is we create all of these island ecosystems. We have, you know, the ZK era ecosystem. We have the optimist arbitrary ecosystem polygon. They're all kind of separate ecosystems and it would be really nice if we had some standardization in a way to kind of easily bridge between them. Or we shared some security assumptions or shared some UX or something good could come of that. I think that's what Kyle is asking about in this question.

• 1:13:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Will it reduce the need to bridge between networks? What's your, what's your answer to that, David?

• 1:13:19David Hoffman?

  I think Kyle's tapping into my fascination about stacks lately. So we've had the OP stack for a while. The ZK stack is brand new and I, when I was talking about the ZK stack, I was talking about what is the ZK stack? It is ZK syncs, ZK circuit emphasis, like, like concentrated, put into a small little package. And I think what Kyle is saying is, oh, a small little package? You mean like a module and how the OP stack is like a module for layer two chains? Can you take the ZK sync circuit and put it inside the OP stack? And the answer is yes and no. It is theoretically possible to do that and things are progressing in forward in that. Specifically, the ZK sync circuit is not EVM compatible. So the puzzle piece does not fit.

• 1:14:03David Hoffman?

  But I, and this is coming from Ben Jones. I had to ask Ben Jones to make sure I was getting this right. He said it doesn't fit yet. Important point, yet. So it is possible to, to, it is eventually possible to do that. You could put the ZK sync circuit inside of the OP stack. It just needs to be made more EVM compatible. However, O1 Labs, O of one Labs, we saw this announcement not too, not too long ago. They are also building a ZK circuit for the OP stack. So there is competition from the ZK world to build the ZK circuit for the OP stack. Because then whichever one becomes standard is, is the one. And so there is a competition here.

• 1:14:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I like competition and also I want very much standardization, right? So one thing that's nice about the

• 1:14:53David Hoffman?

  It is standardization, but yeah.

• 1:14:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it's like competition and standardization is like, like you want a monopoly for standards, don't you? Like HTTP is a monopoly, one of the protocol of the internet, right? And this idea of a hyper super chain that Kyle is tapping into the question, that's what we all want. We don't want like all sorts of different stack chains here. We want one hyper super chain.

• 1:15:13David Hoffman?

  The poly ZK Opti RB stack.

• 1:15:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh my god, right?

• 1:15:18David Hoffman?

  I don't know if we can get that. I don't know.

• 1:15:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, right? So, um, so, and by the way, I do think that if Ethereum doesn't figure this out with, with layer twos, as bullish as I am about kind of the modular thesis, right? And I'm very bullish on this. I think this is the chink in its armor, right? Where a monolithic chain, a Solana, for instance, has an approach and they're like UX is seamless. You get from here to here, it's easy. We don't make you change any wallets. You don't have to change your security posture, your assumptions. The UX is just seamless and it's easy. So it's really the modular, um, you know, modular way to scale this, really important that we figure out UX and get some standardization here. Great question. David, we got some takes of the week. Here's a take from Antonio from DYDX. What's he saying?

• 1:16:02David Hoffman?

  Antonio from DYDX, DYDX of course, was once a Starkware based, Stark X based layer two, and then pivoted into being a Cosmos app chain. And he says DYDX was early and right on DeFi, very true. E early and right on perps, also very true. Early and right on Ethereum layer twos. And then he finishes in saying DYDX will be early and right on app chains too.

• 1:16:29David Hoffman?

  I don't know about that take.

• 1:16:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why? I think he's totally right, but my, my follow up question was, do you still like Cosmos app chains over layer two app chains?

• 1:16:39David Hoffman?

  He's, he's in his tweet, he's talking about Cosmos app chains.

• 1:16:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 1:16:42David Hoffman?

  However,

• 1:16:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's not clear in the tweet.

• 1:16:44David Hoffman?

  We have an independent layer one becoming a roll up on layer two. And you can do app chains as roll apps on Ethereum. And I'm pretty sure he's not talking about that.

• 1:16:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it's interesting, right? So, um, I'm also very bullish on app chains, but I'm much less bullish on app chains. Without shared security. Independent app chains.

• 1:17:03David Hoffman?

  Which means you're not bullish on Cosmos, which is what.

• 1:17:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, because and and why? It's because it it kills the kind of the economic, remember, are we talking about tribe, tribe network and economics? It kills that last leg of the stool there. The economic arguments to have to pay for security, don't you?

• 1:17:17David Hoffman?

  Well, it also makes you weaker tribes because all of the Ethereum layer twos are anchored by ETH. Cosmos app chains are not anchored by Cosmos.

• 1:17:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Federation of city states. That's what the Cosmos vision has always been, rather than kind of the empire type model of Ethereum. Uh, so yeah, he's taken a bet, big bet, big builder bet.

• 1:17:35David Hoffman?

  Big bet.

• 1:17:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  On the Cosmos app chain ecosystem. So.

• 1:17:38David Hoffman?

  I think he paper handed layer twos. I think I think D Y D X paper handed.

• 1:17:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Antonio is pretty smart, man, and he's a builder. I don't know. Maybe he he sees something that um that others don't. We'll have to see.

• 1:17:48David Hoffman?

  That's my that. That's my take is that Antonio paper handed layer twos.

• 1:17:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's my take. Well, he's always been early. Sometimes, like he was, he was doing app chains before app chains existed on Ethereum. Let's let's let's say that, right?

• 1:18:01David Hoffman?

  And then he stopped. He was so early and he stopped.

• 1:18:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, we're rooting for you, though, Antonio and D Y D X is a great platform.

• 1:18:09David Hoffman?

  Antonio, you're you're great. D Y D X is killer.

• 1:18:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh.

• 1:18:12David Hoffman?

  Right. This one's your take.

• 1:18:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's just a lot of, I've I've heard a lot of conversation about tokens being securities this week, and I just think that's the wrong framing. Like, why are we even asking that question? Okay, tokens aren't securities. Tokens are tokens, David. Can't like, it's not that hard. Tokens can be money. They can be memes. They can be loyalty points. They can be N F Ts. They can be shares. They can be coupons. They can be IOUs. They could be commodities. They could be cons. They could be whatever you want. Because anything that represents ownership can be expressed as a token. What are we doing? What is Ethereum? A property rights system in which you can express ownership of a scarce unit on the internet. Ownership of anything that's scarce. Ownership scarcity. That's what we're doing with tokens, right?

• 1:18:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  So when the S C C or anybody analyzes tokens under the securities framework or that rubric, it's like, why are we even talking about this? It's so. Like, we're not thinking about first principles. And that's why I feel like our regulators and our lawmakers are doing this stupid thing where they're they're pigeon, they're either pigeonholing crypto into securities into something it's not, that's limiting. Right? Or they're nannying us into a list of thou shalt, thou shalt nots with tokens. And it's really stupid. The one thing they could be doing that would actually be helpful for us is disclosures. Remember, like, that's what the SEC is set up to do. It's a disclosures-based institution, not a merit-based.

• 1:19:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  They don't get to decide what investors buy, right? That's beyond like that, that they're not supposed to do that. They have to help with disclosures, right? So you could see what a company's financials are. So they're fired, filed quarterly. They maintain a bed, a database called Edgar, which lists all of this disclosure information about companies and they require the filing. So what can regulators do? They can help the public know what it's buying. We have a lot of public data on chain. They can maximize. I would love the SEC or the CFTC to create Dune boards. That would be a start. Wouldn't that be a prototype? Like,

• 1:20:16David Hoffman?

  Wouldn't that be, that's too productive of them.

• 1:20:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  We got the disclosure information and we can even, as a crypto industry, team up with them and help. We got builders. Like, one thing that our regulators can do and our lawmakers can do is they can help with the coordination problem. They can help solve Moloch and they could just be like, hey, here's a list of 15 things that we think should be encompassed in a, you know, a protocol. And here's where we're going to organize everything on this set of like Dune boards, let's say, for instance. But, so I don't understand why this is so difficult. And the, the constant back and forth about tokens, are they securities or not? It's just totally missing the point. I just wish our governors, the people running things, our regulators

• 1:21:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  and our lawmakers would actually do their jobs and use their brains and govern. Cause that's all, that's what we need here. Anyway, I think I got triggered because I was reading some other financial analyst's opinion on whether tokens are securities or not. And I'm just like bubbling up to, that's not even the right question to ask. What, of course they're not securities.

• 1:21:22David Hoffman?

  Lack of imagination. If you're trying to say tokens are securities.

• 1:21:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:21:25David Hoffman?

  It's because like you're trying to take this new thing and categorize it and pigeonhole it into this old thing. It's the same conversation. It's like, is Ether a capital asset? Is it a commodity asset? What is it? No, it's something net new. It is a new thing. It doesn't fit into the old things. It's kind of like the old things, but it's a new thing.

• 1:21:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  The answer to the question is almost like, we'll see. You know what I mean? Like, we just have to see where the use cases bring us. David, let's end with this. What do you bullish on this week?

• 1:21:54David Hoffman?

  I am bullish on, this is the last of my ammo of you have permission to be bullish. Okay, does this graphic make sense? Do you see what I've done here?

• 1:22:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let me get my bearings here. I'm looking at ETH over the dollar. This is a chart.

• 1:22:08David Hoffman?

  We're looking at a log ETH chart from 2020, halfway through 2020 to now.

• 1:22:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, and I'm seeing some bars and I'm seeing like kind of two sets here, some candles here, two sets here. So, well, yeah, what am I looking at? Flipped? Okay, so you just copied and pasted and you flipped the bull market and swapped that in for the bear market?

• 1:22:30David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes. So I cut the part, the bull market is in the blue box. And I've copied and pasted that and I've flipped it. So the bull market is now upside down. And then I've shifted that over to the bear market. I've lined it up over the bear market. And what am I doing here? The bull market of 2021, the bull market of old, had two tops. May of 2021, we had that blow off top. I can, oh, I don't, I can't point to it because I don't have the cursor. You can. You, so the 2020, May of, yeah, that was a top. And then we also had the November 2021, also that top is a double top.

• 1:23:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, here, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:09David Hoffman?

  The bear market had a double bottom. It had the 3ROs capital liquidation right after the Terra Luna crash. About a year ago. That was the bottom number one. And then we had the FTX insolvency, which was number two. And so I have loosely lined up the double top of the bull market with a double bottom of the bear market. And they kind of line up. And what I'm saying is like, okay, if the, and I flipped it around. The reason why it's upside down is that now the double top of the bear, the bull market falls into the, into the bear market. But the double bottom of the bull market, the point is, it's about the same amount of time. We are here. And so you have permission to be bullish because the bull market and the bear

• 1:23:49David Hoffman?

  market are about right now, the same length. We could, we could get a few more weeks or months

• 1:23:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why do they have to be the same length, length though? Just because it

• 1:24:00David Hoffman?

  Because of human psychology, at some time, we're done being bearish. And I think that people have bear fatigue and the bulls have room to take over. They have, there's enough evidence, there's enough permission for them to take over and be like, you know what, bears, get the F out of here. We're done with you. We're buying.

• 1:24:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're not gonna let the S and P rally so hard without

• 1:24:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right. No, I'm gonna hit the buy button. I'm gonna do it. F you. Get out of here. And so I'm saying you have permission to be bullish for the last time of this podcast.

• 1:24:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, it's a good bankless episode without some, is this TA? Some TA at the end?

• 1:24:32David Hoffman?

  This is, this is the craziest David Hoffen TA I have ever seen.

• 1:24:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is pretty crazy. But you know what, David? I want to believe. And all you're basically saying is, hey, human psychology plays out in the same way during a bull market. It's just the inverse in a bear market, right? Instead of hitting the sell button, we, we hit the buy button. But that's all you're doing. And you're just extrapolating that forward. So we got two bottoms here, just like we had two tops. And now we can proceed into, into a glorious bull market future. Permission to be

• 1:25:05David Hoffman?

  bullish. What I'm, what I'm bullish on? I'm just bullish.

• 1:25:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's great.

• 1:25:13David Hoffman?

  All right. What are you bullish on?

• 1:25:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, this week I'm bullish on staking. That risk free rate, baby. I was just looking at, do you remember we did?

• 1:25:21David Hoffman?

  Staking last week?

• 1:25:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't care. I'm still bullish. Do you know, uh, do you remember that episode we did a long time ago? Um, and I've just been too busy to kind of look at these videos again. Okay, sorry. The episode we did on how much ETH it takes to retire.

• 1:25:37David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  When ETH was, I don't know, ranging

• 1:25:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crab market between like 100 and 300 or something. That's what it was. And it was a fun exercise to figure out how much, like, this is before the beacon chain launched. We're trying to calibrate the rewards and interest before we even knew about kind of MEV execution layer rewards and how big that would be. We're trying to figure out how much ETH, how many validators you need to run to actually retire that whole exercise. Right. Anyway, what's really fun is like, Staking, we have a risk-free rate of return. There is some amount of ETH that you can acquire as a productive asset and stake it at a risk-free rate and then use the proceeds,

• 1:26:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  pay your taxes, of course, sell those proceeds and retire on that. To me, this is like the, like fire for millennials, right? Financial independence, that whole kind of like strategy.

• 1:26:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  So what am I bullish on? Staking, stacking and staking ETH has never

• 1:26:43David Hoffman?

  Stack and stake?

• 1:26:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's never, it's never gotten boring to me. That's still, in my opinion, ever since we started Bankless, that is still like the end game. You know what I mean? Like,

• 1:26:53David Hoffman?

  Always has been.

• 1:26:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  You got DeFi tokens, you got Layer 2, so you got all sorts of things out there. But ultimately, the denominator there, the unit of account to me is still Ether because it has this risk-free rate that serves as a productive asset. So I'm staking on, or I'm staking, I'm bullish on staking this week, David, and I'm bullish on people listening to Bankless getting to some amount of ETH where they can live off a portion of that, semi-retire. Do have, Bankless is about like freedom too, right? And so it's a freedom technology. You don't have to have an intermediary when you stake. You can stake on your own, you can run your own node, and then also having

• 1:27:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  a cash flow to fund the things that you want to do. That to me is, is pretty exciting and what we've been about since we, we started this episode. So I'm just returning that and being like, hey, you know, a lot of the risk has boiled out of this and I'm personally ready to stake. And yeah, it's exciting.

• 1:27:52David Hoffman?

  We should go back to that episode and see what numbers we came up with back then with that calculator, see how on track we were with all this data that we have. I think if I remember correctly, it was something like 3.2 or 3.7 validators get you $60,000 a year of passive income under a 10K ETH paradigm.

• 1:28:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you want to do that? We should just do a redo of that episode. And now that we have staking, we absolutely. How much, how much stake does it take to require?

• 1:28:17David Hoffman?

  I've got one more thing that I'm bullish on, Ryan.

• 1:28:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Go for it.

• 1:28:19David Hoffman?

  If I'm allowed, if I'm allowed two things. This is something that I know that you don't get to experience nearly as much as I do because I go to all the conferences. But I am always just like insanely humbled by all the people that come by and just say, hey, David, also tell Ryan this. Thank you for what you do at Bankless. And maybe this is me patting myself on the back, but I I'll do it. And I think you should too. But it's something that is always the theme of every conference that I go to is people like, I just find what you did so valuable, what you do so valuable. I've gotten to this. I got a web three job because of you guys. And because of the podcast, I listen to it all the time. And so thank for anyone who takes a moment out of their day, the conference to tell me that. And I'll always pass it on to

• 1:29:03David Hoffman?

  Ryan. I'm bullish on the Bankless Nation. So just, it's always pretty cool to to talk to these people at conferences. So I appreciate it.

• 1:29:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's really cool. You don't get that kind of energy on the Internet. It gets a little toxic sometimes, but in real life.

• 1:29:18David Hoffman?

  Real life is not like that.

• 1:29:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Meme of the week, David, what are we looking at? Oh, my God, did you see this? This is Vitalik. This is Vitalik walking. He looks like he has a bunch of people.

• 1:29:27David Hoffman?

  A mob of suits.

• 1:29:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Following him, mob of suits, look like an entourage. He's just calmly.

• 1:29:32David Hoffman?

  Vitalik in his like, you know, skinny, black T shirt and blue shorts.

• 1:29:38David Hoffman?

  They look like Pokemon shorts. You know, the kid who's like, I like shorts. It feels like those are the shorts. And then he's followed by what looks like a mob of people in suits.

• 1:29:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the tweet is, my entire net worth is in this man's hands.

• 1:29:52David Hoffman?

  Okay, the funny thing is, when I was staying at this is, this is at Zuzalu, the man that you can see in the center behind Vitalik is Mickey. He's the incoming prime minister of of Montenegro. And the guy to his right, our left, is the president of Montenegro. The security is for them. Zalou is like, is like 200 feet ahead of them. And the cameras zoom in shot. So it looks like they're close, but the Vitalik is, it's not, the security is not Vitalik. Also, the apartment that I stayed in is like, two rows of houses behind the apartments that you can see there.

• 1:30:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is funny. So the security is for the president of Montenegro, not kind of the founder.

• 1:30:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's amazing. All right, guys, you're gonna really enjoy the moment of Zen this week. So make sure you don't skip it. But David, you got to get people, I need some context for this. What is the, what is Pinky Doll?

• 1:30:43David Hoffman?

  This is gonna be the hardest thing you've ever asked me. Okay, so Pinky Doll is this TikToker, who there are animations on screen that people can pay money to make an animation pop up, and she's doing this thing where she's like a human bop it, you know, the bop it game?

• 1:30:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:30:59David Hoffman?

  Bop it.

• 1:31:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:31:00David Hoffman?

  Uh, slap it, uh, spin it, like that thing millennials will know. So like if you press one of these specific emojis and you have to pay money to do one emoji, she reacts in a particular way. Uh, this is not that.

• 1:31:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  People pay for this.

• 1:31:15David Hoffman?

  People pay, yeah, people pay for her to react in this particular way. Uh, and apparently she does it for like five hours straight and she's raking in like hundreds of thousands of dollars. Anyways, this is not that. This is Gary Gensler superimposed upon her. So this is what you are about to experience. I'm so sorry, Bankless Nation, and we are doing this to you.

• 1:31:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Thanks for explaining that. Uh, guys, I gotta end with risks and disclaimers, of course. It's pretty risky to stay till the end of a Bankless, a moment of Zen, of course, but also gotta 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. Enjoy Pinky Doll as Gary Gensler.

• 1:31:55David Hoffman?

  I'm so sorry.

• 1:31:56Speaker 05

  Good. Hmm. Polygon so good. Hmm. Polygon so good. Balloon. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Gib, gib, gib, gib. Hmm. Ripple so good. Gib, gib, gib, gib. Balloon. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Gib. Slurp. Hmm. Polygon so good. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Thank you, Solana. Got me feeling like a queen. Ahahaha. Thank you, Cardano. AVAX, AVAX, AVAX, AVAX, AVAX. Ooh. Gang, gang. Gang, gang. Slurp. Hmm. Ripple so good. AVAX, AVAX, AVAX, AVAX, AVAX. Thank you, Udi Slay. Ahahaha. Meow, meow. Hmm. That was so good. Solana pop. Amazing.