ROLLUP: SBF Pleads Not Guilty | Winklevoss vs Barry Silbert | Predicting 2023 | ETH Staking | Inflation 2023

Bankless Weekly Rollup 1st Week of 2023 ------ 📣 Osmosis | Your Gateway into the Cosmos Ecosystem www.osmosis.zone/bankless http://www.osmosis.zone/bankless ------ 🚀 JOIN BANKLESS PREMIUM: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🚁 EARNIFI | CLAIM YOUR UNCLAIMED AIRDROPS https://bankless.cc/earnifi ——— 0:00 Intro 9:00 MARKETS 11:00 2022 in Review 15:00 Decline from All Time High https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/zyphch/the_2022_bear_market_in_context/ https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/16089343695358812161 17:00 Inflation https://twitter.com/michaeljburry/status/1609767590494371840 18:40 Liquid Staking Derivatives https://imgur.com/NJtjom5P 21:40 ETH Staking 24:00 Arbitrum Size https://twitter.com/SizeChad/status/1608638568339243011 28:00 SBF Denies https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1608908562851598336 30:42 Pleading Not Guilty https://www.theblock.co/post/198982/bankman-fried-pleads-not-guilty-to-criminal-charges https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/01/04/why-did-sam-bankman-fried-plead-not-guilty/ 35:00 Winklevoss vs Barry Silbert https://twitter.com/cameron/status/1609913051427524608 37:55 SEC Investigation https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1610706188093607937 38:30 Celsius Customers https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1610706613207285773 40:20 New York Suing Celsius https://twitter.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/1611023481285578752 44:00 Eric Wall’s Predictions https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1609798030814748672 52:50 Bankless Predictions https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/publish/post/94677142 1:05:30 Forking Optimism https://twitter.com/stonecoldpat0/status/1610443274367426561 1:06:16 Zombie Punk Sold https://twitter.com/cryptopunksbot/status/1609004341112733697 1:07:20 Bullying NFTs https://twitter.com/pcgamer/status/1610229116283883521 1:10:45 BTC Dev Hack https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-core-developer-claims-to-have-lost-200-btc-in-hack 1:12:45 Cuba NFT Embargo https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-blocks-cuban-artists-from-the-platform-due-to-u-s-sanctions 1:13:05 Jobs https://pallet.xyz/list/bankless/jobs 1:14:00 Inner Circle Discord https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/?utm_source=banklessshowsyt 1:16:15 Questions from the Nation 1:23:00 TAKES 1:23:25 Money Lego https://twitter.com/taha_crypto1/status/1608548726930567168 1:24:00 Ossification https://twitter.com/domothy/status/1609584446545575937 1:26:45 Not Journalists https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1610809232621723655 1:29:36 What David’s Bullish On https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1610475293537443840 https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1610826559207706625 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMeny9Jlp9Q 1:35:00 What Ryan’s Bullish On https://www.joinfire.xyz/ https://app.uniswap.org/ 1:37:22 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/stockmart_/status/1610416315608473600 ----- 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

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

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  SBF pleads not guilty. Bold strategy. We'll see how that plays out.

• 0:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, welcome to the first rollup of 2023. David, you ready for this?

• 0:13David Hoffman?

  Fifty-two more weekly rollups to go in 2023. How is that intimidating, Ryan? Do you think we can do it?

• 0:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, I think we can do it. I've got the stamina. I'm coming into this year fully energized. Actually, that break was really good for me and some time to reflect. And I was feeling kind of burnt out by the end of the year, but no longer. I'm ready for 2023. I'm excited about it. How were your holidays, Dave? Did you get any special Christmas gifts? Anything cool?

• 0:37David Hoffman?

  We only do stocking suffers in my family, and I got dry bags, which I think is just great because dry bags are what you are bags you put stuff into when you put into your mountaineering like backpack so you can like go walk through snow and rain and not get your stuff wet. So yeah, your boy is going to be having a dry sleeping bag while he climbs some mountains this year.

• 0:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just dry bagging it, huh?

• 0:57David Hoffman?

  Dry bagging it, yeah, dry bags, yeah.

• 0:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's like a disease. It doesn't sound too great.

• 1:00David Hoffman?

  It doesn't sound like a sexy present, let me tell you.

• 1:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, dry bags. But awesome, man. I know you're doing some mountains this year, so that'll come in handy for sure, right? I also noticed, by the way, when you're setting up for this episode, that you've got a little portrait behind you that I don't know if people can see. Okay, so maybe our editors can kind of cut this in, or David's gonna try a zoom in on the portrait. It almost looks like a shrine.

• 1:24David Hoffman?

  It's actually there, yeah.

• 1:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  But at the top of it is, I think, a memento from 2022. That will be a long time memento to help us remember that year, which is a picture of you tearing up during during a rollup. This was a rollup where we were talking about how bad everything was and all of the scammers in the space. And I think it like kind of hit you. And it became a meme. Like I saw Twitch streamers talking about this and somebody turned it into-

• 1:55David Hoffman?

  Normally Twitch streamers, yeah.

• 1:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Somebody turned it into an NFT and like an art piece, and it's just fantastic. Like, crying crypto, bro, is probably what mainstream might might tag this.

• 2:04David Hoffman?

  No, that's exactly, that's exactly why it got caught traction in like the gamer Twitch sphere. The person that painted this really phenomenal like piece of artwork, I'm gonna zoom in on it again, is actually a Hexakin. That was a Hex community member that I bought.

• 2:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  For people who aren't familiar, that's just somebody from the Hex community, right?

• 2:22David Hoffman?

  Yes, exactly. That's what they call them, Hexakins. Yeah. It's like a really good like watercolor and I paid them 100 USDC and they shipped it to me. Yeah.

• 2:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome. I love that.

• 2:33David Hoffman?

  I also think that so far that is marks the bottom.

• 2:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  That marks the bottom?

• 2:39David Hoffman?

  That's the bottom.

• 2:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think you think, okay, well, so part of the topics for this week, guys, we'll get into the topics. But one of them is our 2023 predictions.

• 2:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you may have already heard a tease, David, sounds like he's calling a bottom.

• 2:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  But I might check you on that. We'll see. We'll see when we get to the predictions. Also, we've got SBF pleading, "Not guilty. I didn't do it," he says in court. We're gonna talk about that. What else are we covering today?

• 3:03David Hoffman?

  The Winklevoss have picked a fight with Barry Silbert on Twitter. The Winklevoss, of course, are operating the Gemini exchange, which the Gemini Erm program has money stuck inside of Genesis, which is part of Barry Silbert's Digital Currency Group empire.

• 3:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that's both twins, mind you, right? Because if you mess with one, you mess with the other.

• 3:19David Hoffman?

  Exactly.

• 3:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're the Winklevoss for a reason.

• 3:21David Hoffman?

  Exactly, yeah. And so we're gonna pick apart that fight. And also some bad news on the Celsius court proceedings. Ryan, I'm sad to say that you are not a customer of Celsius. You actually are just an investor, depositor, creditor, just like the rest of them.

• 3:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just a sucker?

• 3:39David Hoffman?

  Just another sucker. Yeah.

• 3:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, cool. That gave my private keys to Alex Mashinsky and he ran off with them?

• 3:45David Hoffman?

  That's exactly what happened. Yes. And yes, that's exactly right. And then, of course, we have to talk about 2023 predictions, ours. We're also gonna rate some of our 2022 predictions and also talk about some other very awesome predictions that we've seen throughout the space. Eric Waller, in particular, I think we're gonna go through his. But first, in the market section, we gotta talk about all the things going on in the liquid staking derivatives ecosystem, because that's a very hot topic leading into 2023 this week. So all of these topics and more coming throughout the show.

• 4:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, we're gonna get right into it. Before we do, we want to tell you about our friends and sponsors over at Osmosis. David, one of my New Year's resolutions going into 2023 was to do more DeFi stuff. I felt like 2022, last year, was all about just keeping my head above water and just talking about all the shit, all the craziness that was going on. This year, I've made a concerted effort to go use more things. One of those things I've started using is Osmosis on the Cosmos chain. This is really cool. If you want to explore the Cosmos ecosystem, particularly DeFi Cosmos, Osmosis is the place to start. The way you do it is you spin up this wallet. It's called the Kepler Wallet. You're from the Ethereum ecosystem. It's kind of like MetaMask, only for Cosmos.

• 4:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you go to app.osmosis.zone. There's a link in the show notes. You can deposit atoms to this chain. You can bridge across USDC and WETH, small amounts to start. That's, that's all I would advise, but it's a great opportunity to start this chain. And David, starting this chain, and David, I'm surprised at how easy and how good the UX was. It'd probably been like two or three years since I went down the Cosmos rabbit hole. I hadn't been here in a long time, and the UX has just like 10x improved. On Osmosis, you can not only trade, it's kind of like a Uniswap type app, but you can also stake. You can also view all of your assets. So it's almost got kind of like a Zerion zapper type flavor to it, too.

• 5:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really cool thing to try in 2023 if you're looking to explore the frontier of crypto.

• 5:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and Bankless listeners who listened to our episode about why UniChain is inevitable within Elite Sir, this is highly synonymous with that whole thesis. Osmosis is basically kind of Uniswap, but as an app chain in the Cosmos ecosystem. So just wanted to connect that dot there. Ryan, you said you, you, one of your New Year's resolutions is to be more of a DeFi power user. Because, and I think I want to draw your attention to this tweet. If we could actually just derail this conversation.

• 6:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, sure. It's your podcast, David. Go ahead, derail.

• 6:17David Hoffman?

  I stopped, I stopped being a DeFi like super heavy power user and just have it having like latent positions that I would hold open on like. The blue chips like Ave Maker. And that's because in 2022, a lot of the DeFi stuff you and I didn't really vibe with. And so the tweet that I want to call attention to, if you can pull that up, I just sent it to you in Zoom chat.

• 6:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:35David Hoffman?

  This is one year ago to the day when we got into a fight with Daniel Sesta. By the way, so this is just a one year anniversary of our first of many fights throughout 2023, starting with Daniel Sesta. When he came in super hot in my DMs after I said Maker is the most unsustainably valued, most sustained unfairly valued asset this industry has ever produced. And then Daniel Sesta, who I didn't know who he was at the time, I knew what Wonderland was. I knew what like time and spell and all that stuff was. I just didn't know Daniel Sesta's name. And so.

• 7:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  And he's a DeFi, he was a DeFi developer doing some DGEN. He's like a DeFi wonder kid kind of person, right?

• 7:12David Hoffman?

  Exactly. Yeah, right. And like big populist leader with big populist tweets. And this was like the after the time token and all of these like Danny tokens were like at their all time highs. So he follows up and says, this is why I'm not surprised you've never invited us to your DeFi show. Fair to protect your bags.

• 7:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Air quotes.

• 7:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And your suit friends. I have never ever been charged with having suit friends before, so that was a first.

• 7:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really?

• 7:38David Hoffman?

  I was like, who the hell is this guy? Yeah.

• 7:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bit Boy did that same thing to me. He called me a suit like to.

• 7:42David Hoffman?

  Right. So it's the same people like going for after populist tactics, right?

• 7:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 7:46David Hoffman?

  I just thought this is January 4th, 2022.

• 7:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a dark time.

• 7:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm feeling so much better than I was at that point in time. Like I was just getting sick of it. And this like where, where's, where is Danny Sesta now? Right? And kind of washed out, projects were destroyed, turned into kind of like just a short term pump and dumper.

• 8:06David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 8:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what it was. And it was revealed only like, what, six, six weeks later?

• 8:10David Hoffman?

  It's such, it's six weeks later. Yeah. And then we got in a fight with Do Kwon. And about six weeks later after that, that fell down. And then, and then we did it again. And then we, that was the story of 2022 is us getting in fights with people and then blowing them, them blowing up a few months later.

• 8:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I want to be more of a DeFi user. I have time for that rather than kind of chasing all this, you know, speculation or all the craziness going on, right? I have more time for that too. Another thing is I don't intend to pick any fights like right now.

• 8:38David Hoffman?

  Fight anymore. They're all gone.

• 8:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. I mean. I don't want to say it's only the good people left. I mean, like, we could go fight Richard Hart right now if we wanted to, but I don't have as much energy as that guy.

• 8:49David Hoffman?

  He's gonna stick around.

• 8:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so, anyway, it's a refreshing way to start the year. And speaking of which, let's talk about markets, David, all right? Because we've got to get to where we're starting in the market section. Let's talk about Bitcoin, and we should get cracking on that right now. Thanks to Kraken for showing us these prices. What is Bitcoin looking like on the week?

• 9:10David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin started the week at 16,600. It is up about 1.2% to 16,834, where we currently are. By the way, Ryan, since we're level-setting because it's 2023, we are about a little bit more than one year away from the next Bitcoin halving. Early 2024 is when the next Bitcoin halving is scheduled.

• 9:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like no one's talking about it, David.

• 9:35David Hoffman?

  Well, the halving's not priced in. It's still a year away. It's still more than a year away.

• 9:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  But still, I mean, I remember, like, previous halvings, the 2020 halving, there's such fervor, like, even 18 months from the halving, 18 months out from the halving Bitcoin community was talking about it, but it's actually becoming less and less impactful over time.

• 9:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I mean, and that checks out, right? Because every halving has, like, 50% less magnitude than the halving prior. It's like an asymptote, right? But also, just like, Bitcoin isn't as a center point of this industry as it was four years ago.

• 10:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's look at the year for Bitcoin. Down on the year, huh? Big down on the year.

• 10:11David Hoffman?

  Big, yeah, big down on the year. Down 60% on the year.

• 10:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  40,000, all the way down. How about ETH? What's that looking like?

• 10:18David Hoffman?

  ETH, ETH, up 3.9% on the week, going up from 1,200 dollars up to 1,250 dollars in seven days.

• 10:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a little pump here.

• 10:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is like, on January 3rd, there's a pump. We had a, you know, 3% to 4% rise in one day.

• 10:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. And people are pointing at the ETH BTC ratio for, there were just a bunch of TA about convergence on the ETH BTC ratio. That was either going to break up or break down. People were placing their bets, and turns out, it broke up. It broke to the upside. Which leads us to the ETH BTC ratio, which is up 2.8% on the week, .072 up to .074, where we are today. And so, yeah, that's the state of the markets with Ether and Bitcoin and the ratio.

• 11:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, uh, let's talk about some other metrics and we'll do a yearly recap here. So how about the total crypto market cap? Where are we? Under a billion?

• 11:09David Hoffman?

  Oh yeah, under a billion. 850 billion on the total crypto market cap.

• 11:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  How does this compare on a year over year? So when we look at the performance of 2022, some numbers coming in. So the S and P 500, David, was down. So this is stocks down about 18% last year. NASDAQ, so this is like tech stocks, remember, growth stocks, which boomed like crazy in 2020, 2021, um, down 33%. So stocks down bad-ish, but not compared to crypto. Let's take a look at some of those numbers. Total crypto market cap, David, down 65% for 2022.

• 11:48David Hoffman?

  Now, now, uh, that includes the stablecoin market cap. So there's some, some bad, uh, just bad measurement there because a bunch of that market cap is, went flat. And so the actual crypto asset market cap is down worse than that.

• 12:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I see. In, in terms of investable assets, the pain that people feel. Right? Yeah, that's a good, good note. Uh, Bitcoin, down 65% during 2022. Uh, ETH, down 68% 2022. Sol, Solana tokens, down 94%. Other alt layer ones, similar. DPI, this is the DeFi Pulse Index. So these are the top DeFi tokens, down 80%.

• 12:33David Hoffman?

  Which, which doesn't sound so bad, but I'll remind you that it was down 80% the year prior to that too.

• 12:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, okay. Back to back, down 80%. So, uh, predictions. This is a comeback year, right? Can't get any worse.

• 12:45David Hoffman?

  Right. Like that's got it. They're, DeFi is in a, been in a bear market. They're like, hey, welcome guys. We've been here for a year now.

• 12:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  We've already been down in the eighth circle of hell. NFT blue chip, this is the top 10 NFTs. This is a metric coming from Nansen, which is interesting. Only down 15%.

• 13:05David Hoffman?

  Is that in ETH?

• 13:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Denominated.

• 13:06David Hoffman?

  I think that, yeah, in down 15% in ETH. So you have to take this negative 68% in dollars and then go down 15 more percent. Yeah.

• 13:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess the way to measure your NFTs is in ETH.

• 13:17David Hoffman?

  That's cool. It's still, yeah, that's, that's all right.

• 13:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that how you measure it? I don't think, I don't think, I think that's not how mainstream measures it. It's all dollars. Like you bought a million dollar punk. You're not going, you're down in ETH to that.

• 13:28David Hoffman?

  Somebody, we'll talk about this. Well, somebody bought a punk for a certain dollar price. That's about the same dollar price that it was sold. So it was a wash in dollar terms, but they were up about 3X in ETH terms. Was that a victory or was that not a victory?

• 13:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, you and I know the answer. That was a huge victory. That's a huge victory. Cause ETH is money and it's the money you want to hold. Stablecoin market cap. So to your point, this is the total volume, value, excuse me, of all stablecoins out there. Down 17%. So we had some exit from stablecoins. DeFi total value locked. This is like assets under management, down 76%. Layer two, total locked value is also down actually on the year in dollar terms, down 28% yet.

• 14:12David Hoffman?

  Yo, that's a win.

• 14:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tell me, but tell me the silver lining because if you denominate it in ETH, what is it?

• 14:18David Hoffman?

  Yes. A layer two TVL denominated in ETH is up 118%. So that in the grand scheme of things, that's what a bull market looks like in 2022. You are only down 28.7% and your ETH denominated TVL is up 120%. The L2s are currently in a bull market despite the rest of crypto being down an average of 65%. If you are only down 28% in US dollar terms, that's a win. That's a huge win.

• 14:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you're down least, you're winning in this market. L2's had a good year. So that's how we wrap 2022. That's what went on. We'll talk a little bit more about what we can expect in 2023 later in the episode. But of course. Crypto spot volume on exchanges down as well. So you could see the peak here. Like the peak was around May of 2021.

• 15:11David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 15:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  In terms of volume on exchanges. What is FTX? Where's FTX here? Do you see it on the right?

• 15:18David Hoffman?

  I don't see it.

• 15:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Huh. They must have stripped FTX from these charts, but legitimate.

• 15:22David Hoffman?

  Well, I think they're not counting that as no longer legitimate volume.

• 15:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess. All right. Well, take us to some traditional finance metrics as well. Give us some context for the S and P market that we're in, the stock market that we're in, and this decline versus others.

• 15:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So we're looking at a graph on the screen here that basically has every single negative 20% or more decline from all time high of the S and P 500. And there's a bunch on the screen. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 different 20% declines from all time high since World War II. And so you can see 2022 in red. It's kind of hard to see because at the very beginning they're overlapping, but I'm highlighting it here with my arrow here. Ryan can't see that. In red, we have a 2022, and I would say it's among the herd. It's definitely on the lower end of the herd, as in it has dropped faster than the herd of these many, many, many different declines. But I would say mostly par for the course, slightly worse.

• 16:22David Hoffman?

  But also like we're in the middle of it, it could continue.

• 16:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not over yet.

• 16:27David Hoffman?

  It's not over necessarily.

• 16:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  It kind of looks a little bit at this point like the way 2007 looked.

• 16:33David Hoffman?

  Right. And so we are declining at about the right, the same pace that 2007 was. Except we are not at that point of 2007 where it was declining as much as we were. And then it went down like two to two and a half times more. Yeah.

• 16:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's interesting.

• 16:50David Hoffman?

  There's some fear for you guys.

• 16:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, so, so if we get a 2023 that matches in the stock market 2007, then we're down another 30% from here, basically.

• 17:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we got, we got way more to go. Yeah.

• 17:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that could take another, what, you know, nine months to play out, something like this?

• 17:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. That's, that's like worst case scenario for sure.

• 17:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  We also had this 8.3 trillion was wiped out of the stock market in 2022. If that's a headline number for you as well. What is Michael Burry's take on inflation? I thought that was interesting as we entered this year as well.

• 17:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Michael Burry is calling for the peak of inflation. He says inflation peaked, but it is not the last peak of this cycle. We will are likely to see lower CPI, possibly negative in what's 2H 2023?

• 17:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  The second half.

• 17:40David Hoffman?

  Second half of 2023 and the US in recession by any definition. The Fed will cut and government will stimulate and we will have another inflation spike. It's not hard. So that's what he's saying. We've currently spiked, but it's not going to be the last spike that we will see. But we're going to come down for it and then we'll spike again. And then he's probably saying we're going to come down from that spike and then I'll spike again thereafter. I think that's what he's calling for.

• 18:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is kind of when we talked to some of the macro experts who we like and respect. Lynn Alden, for instance, in the summer, and this is kind of what she was predicting. Basically that we would be able to slay the beast, but then it would return. And it would just be basically chop from inflation from here on out.

• 18:21David Hoffman?

  We're going to just trade blows between inflation and our insurmountable debt problem. And so we're going to be like, oh, inflation, it's too high. We need to, we need to raise interest rates and then we'll raise interest rates and like, oh, interest payments. They're too high. And then we'll go back and we'll just bounce back between those two things.

• 18:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  A bright spot in the crypto markets recently, crypto asset markets have been liquid.

• 18:42David Hoffman?

  LSD.

• 18:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  LSD. What is, what is LSD, David? Explain what those are and show us some numbers here.

• 18:48David Hoffman?

  So LSDs are liquid staking derivatives, not the compound made by Albert Hoffman in 1947.

• 18:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, you know an odd amount about that.

• 18:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, let me tell you, Albert Hoffman, yeah, two N's on his name. Okay, so to lead the pack, we have Lido, Rocket Pool and Swise out of the LSD sector. Lido is up 45%, which is a big deal because it's a pretty high market cap. It's currently clocking in at $1.3 billion in fully diluted valuation.

• 19:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do liquid staking derivatives?

• 19:21David Hoffman?

  Sure, yes.

• 19:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Basically, this is like, these are ETH?

• 19:25David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 19:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like staking service providers, basically.

• 19:27David Hoffman?

  Exactly, yes. And so the idea is that you can stake your ETH with one of these systems, Lido, Rocketpool, Swyze, there's also a few others, and they will return you a staked ETH token as a result. And so that staked ETH token is Ether plus the staking rewards that that Ether is also getting. So the rewards are built into the token. So Lido has staked ETH, Rocketpool has our ETH, Swyze has some, I don't know, can't remember the name of it, but it's got something similar. And so then what we're talking about are the tokens associated with that protocol, right? So LDO is the Lido DAO token, which is up 45% at a fully diluted valuation of $1.3 billion. That's a big move, 45%, and these are over two-week time horizons, by the way.

• 20:09David Hoffman?

  So 45% in two weeks, a big move for a $1.3 billion valuation project. Rocketpool up 15% to $420 million fully diluted. And then Swyze, as the smallest of the bunch, up a whopping 61% for a $125 million valuation. Ryan, did you know that we had exposure to Swyze and the Bankless Fund?

• 20:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do know that.

• 20:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, nice job, Ben. Well done, Ben.

• 20:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, David, you mentioned the Bankless Fund. What is this Bankless Fund thing?

• 20:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so we've got a super Chad analyst, Ben Giove, on the Bankless team. He's also highly active in the inner circle, and he also does a ton of analyst research for the Bankless newsletter, which ends up turning into the Bankless Token Report and also the Token Bible. So if you want some of this research, you can go get that if you are a premium subscriber. And using some of that research, him and me and Ryan are in a little Discord room in the HQ chat, and we talk about what we want to invest in, based off of the research that he is doing for the Token Bible and the Token Reports. And so if you want access to some of Ben's research and what we are thinking about when we invest in the Bankless Fund, you can subscribe to Bankless and get some of that research.

• 21:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Swyze was in there?

• 21:24David Hoffman?

  Swyze was in there, RPL was in there. I do not believe we have Lido exposure, no.

• 21:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, and of course, all of our disclosures are posted at all times at banklesshq.com/disclosures where you can see the composition of all things bankless, everything we hold. All right, David, let's, let's talk about ETH staking because that number has gone up as well. This is, we're looking at total ETH deposited, 16 million or so ETH. I don't know what percent that is, about 13%? Maybe close to 14% of all ETH supply is now staked?

• 21:58David Hoffman?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a big deal.

• 22:00David Hoffman?

  Of course, it only goes up into the right because withdrawals are not enabled.

• 22:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  But yeah, it can't go down.

• 22:05David Hoffman?

  This thing has never not gone up into the right. That thing is just an absolute rocket ship. So 16 million ETH there state, wow, like not too far away from 20 million.

• 22:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  A big event catalyst, I think, this quarter is the question of will we actually get withdrawals enabled maybe this quarter or shortly after into the next quarter? And what will, what will happen to this number once withdrawals are enabled? I think David and I have said before, we don't think it'll go down that much. Others are a bit more bearish on this, say it'll decrease dramatically and that will be a net negative for Ether. You know, I'm still keeping the bull position on that. I don't think this number goes down very far, even post withdrawals. When, when withdrawals are enabled, I still think it creeps up and we definitely finish the year higher than when we started. But what's your take on this?

• 22:50David Hoffman?

  Oh, I think that's exactly right. I think that it'll, there'll definitely be a short term decrease because people will withdraw. There will be more churn than there is a decrease, as in people will be able to finally withdraw from Lido. And this is kind of the meta that's going on right now with the, with the LSD derivative like meta is like, all right, with like, a lot of stuff is locked. When there's finally churn that's enabled, like who's going to try and capture Lido's market share? Is Lido going to even lose market share? But like, you know, the fish are hungry and they're trying to capture some of that churn. I think there's going to be way more churn.

• 23:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Shaking of the snow globe.

• 23:26David Hoffman?

  Yes, exactly. Yeah. And so this, and because of withdrawals as a conversation, people are just saying, thinking that just like the attention is going to be on the LSD meta. And so that's why we're talking about. This right now, the trade, the LSD trade has definitely shown up in the charts. You can see it. And whether I think the staking supply will go down, I bet you in the quarter, in the three month period, it will be net up. So I bet you it could be down for a month, maybe it's down for two months. By around three months, I'm pretty confident that whatever withdrawal, the net withdrawals happen will have already happened and will be up into the right once again.

• 24:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  So LSD doing well. So is Arbitrum. Arbitrum had a big year. This is size Chad saying Arbitrum sizes size. By the way, I met size Chad in person at Permissionless. He absolutely lives up to his name. This man is a beast.

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  That is not a manufactured name. That is an organically discovered name. Size Chad is truly size Chad.

• 24:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know there's a picture out there somewhere? I've never been able to find it of me, size Chad and Cooper Turley? All like standing next to each other and I'm in the middle.

• 24:30David Hoffman?

  I have not seen that.

• 24:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, it basically it looks like I'm like Frodo and there's like Aragorn and like, you know, Boromir or something like, I look like a child. I'm child sized compared to these people. Anyway, what's, what's the size Chad of Arbitrum? What's this graph we're looking at?

• 24:48David Hoffman?

  So on the left, we have the deposit of ETH into Arbitrum one, which is totaling a little bit over 800,000. And on the right, we have deposits in ETH to literally every single other layer two, which is coming up to 700,000.

• 25:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now, this isn't TVL. This is to, this is ETH. This is bridged ETH.

• 25:09David Hoffman?

  Which is in my mind, the best kind of TVL, but you're right, not all TVL. And so Arbitrum is literally the size Chad of, of layer twos. So congrats to the Arbitrum ecosystem. And one thing I've definitely noticed on Twitter is that the Arbitrum community has started to delineate into sub communities. And so you're seeing that same sort of thing that we saw on Ethereum over 2020 to 2022 of Ethereum developing into its own sub communities, communities. You're seeing that in Arbitrum as well. So the Arbitrum like ecosystem is really strong.

• 25:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we'll see. This is another snow globe where this is just getting started. This competition for L2s is just getting started. And so I'd love to see this number at the end of 2023. David, what do we got coming up next?

• 25:54David Hoffman?

  SBF pleads not guilty. Bold strategy. We'll see how that plays out. The wink of eye of twins pick a fight with Barry Silver of DCG and Genesis on Twitter. And again, like I said, a not so great update from the Celsius court proceedings. So that's all the big news of the week. And so we'll get to all these conversations and more. But first, a moment to talk to Kraken, who is our strategic sponsor of 2023. Because Kraken knows that if you're going to adopt crypto protocols, you're going to adopt crypto values. And that philosophy has been why Kraken has stuck around for over 12 years now. And so we're going to hear from them right now. Kraken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years. Dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto. Kraken puts an emphasis on security, transparency and client support,

• 26:38David Hoffman?

  which is why over 9 million clients have come to love Kraken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the Kraken UX is simple, intuitive and frictionless, making the Kraken app a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned Kraken Pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs, integrating key trading features into one seamless interface. Kraken has a 24/7 365 client support team that is globally recognized. Kraken support is available wherever, whenever you need them, by phone, chat or email. And for all of you NFTers out there, the brand new Kraken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash.

• 27:21David Hoffman?

  Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that Kraken does? And if not, sign up with Kraken at kraken.com/bankless. Hey, Bankless Nation. If you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free Bankless RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad-free version of Bankless that comes with the Bankless premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the Token Report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates. From the Token Report, go into the Token Bible, your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless Premium also gets you a 30% discount to the Permissionless Conference, which means it basically just pays for itself.

• 28:03David Hoffman?

  There's also the Airdrop Guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023. But really, the best part about Bankless Premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the Bankless team in the Inner Circle Discord, only for Premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the Analyst's DGEN pit, where you can ask him questions about the Token Report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have. At Bankless, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities, and we're super excited to ship what we are calling Bankless 2.0 soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to Bankless Premium. It's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord.

• 28:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I hope we left SBF in 2022, but he's back. This time, he's saying he's not guilty. But before that, he also said, "It wasn't me." What is he talking about here? This tweet, "None of these are me. I'm not and couldn't be moving any of these funds. I don't have access to them anymore." What funds is he talking about? People think he moved some money?

• 29:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so on Crypto Twitter, this conversation happened as soon as this one wallet, which was known to be SBF's wallet, started moving hundreds of thousands of dollars from one wallet A to wallet B. And then SBF retweeted a CoinTelegraph article talking about this, saying, "None of these are me. I couldn't be doing this because I don't have access to them anymore." And then Crypto Twitter replies like, "This is an address that you stated was yours." Like, SBF frequently, like, previously identified this address that money is coming out to as my address, as SBF's address. It's been noted by other people that it is SBF's address. And now SBF is saying, "It's not me." And I don't know, maybe it's not him,

• 29:51David Hoffman?

  but can you really trust him anymore? Like, damn.

• 29:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was my comment. I was just basically, "Yeah, but what if you're lying?" Which at this point, there's no defense for that.

• 30:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I have no idea, but remember last we left him before, at least I broke for the holidays, he was out on bail. So he's still out, you know, maybe on a house arrest. I don't know if that's the case anymore, but clearly he has access to Twitter now.

• 30:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  So not in jail any longer. We'll see if that changes this year.

• 30:21David Hoffman?

  And I think this meme really just summarizes everything. It's the they don't know meme, of course, but this time it has the curly hair of SBF as the guy in the corner. And the curly hair SBF guy in the corner says, "They don't know. It's not me moving the funds." And then the people dancing are like, "You doxed the address, you dumb MF'er."

• 30:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, yeah.

• 30:40David Hoffman?

  Summarizes it.

• 30:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's also pleading not guilty.

• 30:43David Hoffman?

  Oh.

• 30:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  To criminal charges.

• 30:44David Hoffman?

  Really?

• 30:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  So he's had his day in court so far. And when the judge asked, "What do you plead, Sam Bankman-Fried?" He said, "Not guilty. I'm innocent of all the charges."

• 30:54David Hoffman?

  Hmm.

• 30:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why do you think so? I know there's been some conspiracy about this, that again, this idea that maybe he has some get out of jail free card. He has some politician, maybe the WEF's involved. Somebody's involved, like the global elites, to get him off the hook. What do you think about this?

• 31:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there, I think there's the very simple take, and I think then there's the more nuanced, let's read into this take, and I'll let you take that conversation. The first one is that the plea deal that he got was so bad that he was like, he, it wasn't a good plea deal at all. So he's like, "Damn it, I'll just fight this," right? Because he is so incredibly guilty that they basically gave him zero compromises on his plea deal. And so he decided that, because the plea deal was so bad,

• 31:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'll just fight it.

• 31:41David Hoffman?

  I'll just, I'll just fight it because it's a lose-lose scenario. I think that is a pretty simple explanation, but I know that there's another explanation that you've got that you want to talk about.

• 31:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this is an interesting opinion piece that I read in CoinDesk, but basically the idea that maybe Sam Bankman-Fried actually is so deluded that he thinks he's innocent. He thinks that he is the victim. You know, it's often said that nobody ever sees themselves as the villain.

• 32:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I think that's the case with Sam Bankman-Fried. I mean, he might legitimately think that he is innocent of at least some of these charges. I don't know what kind of moral framework he operates under. It's been incredibly confusing for me to see over the last six months to, you know, or longer. But he may be really deluded enough to think that he's got a chance to fight this. And that would be consistent with all of his interviews and the press tour he was going on before he actually got put in jail. Still, though, David, I would have thought some nights in prison in the Bahamas would have woken him up to the reality that like, he's in deep.

• 32:49David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 32:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  And he's not going to get out of this with an interview and an aw shucks and saying, I'm sorry 10 more times, that these are serious charges laid against him and he doesn't really have a way out. There's mounting evidence. I mean, his two partners in this, Caroline and who's the other, but they've effectively, you know, ratted him out. They are effectively, you know, telling everything and divulging everything. And I would imagine behind closed doors blaming him. So I don't know if he gets out of this, but he might just be deluded enough to think he can try.

• 33:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm always happy to try and put on armchair psychologist, David, but like some sort of prince syndrome might be in effect here by his like Harvard, highly educated, elite parents treating him like a prince and telling him, and this is a quote from the article, Sam Bakman's freed self-image, in other words, is both of a gifted and good person. We are watching that clash with the reality of his behavior, that of a conniving, stimulant addicted screw up. And they also talked about the disposition of his parents. We saw signs during the hearings in the Bahamas that his parents are struggling in similar ways to reconcile their idea of their son with the reality of his actions. Barbara Freed, Sam's mother, was seen laughing at descriptions of her son as a criminal.

• 34:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 34:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 34:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is delusional. I don't know what to make of that. Again, we'll have to see how this turns out. But what's the probability that Sam goes to jail this year? Do you think that's a slam dunk going to happen?

• 34:20David Hoffman?

  I would bet my, I think it would be rational to bet my net worth. Yeah.

• 34:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  It would not be rational because there's no upside, David. You don't have to do that.

• 34:30David Hoffman?

  What do you mean there's no upside?

• 34:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I bet it like double or nothing.

• 34:34David Hoffman?

  If I'm right, yeah, it's a double or nothing. Yeah. If I'm right, my net worth doubles. Yes.

• 34:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  I wouldn't do that.

• 34:38David Hoffman?

  You wouldn't do that?

• 34:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I definitely wouldn't do that.

• 34:40David Hoffman?

  I think that's a rational bet. I think so.

• 34:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I would say I'm 90% certain is how I'd phrase it.

• 34:48David Hoffman?

  So will you put 90% of your net worth?

• 34:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I'm not gonna put any money. This is like betting on Ripple or doing something like this. Like, I don't do that either down or up. I don't bet against it. Who knows what could happen? The world is a very strange place. Let's talk about the Winklevosses versus Barry Silbert, talking about a strange place that we're in. They put out an open letter on Twitter this week. What does this say from Cameron Winklevoss?

• 35:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's basically a damnation of Barry Silbert and Digital Currency Group and how it is up to Barry to make things right again. That Barry has the power to make things right again and he's not doing that. And so I'll read one specific paragraph. "The idea in your head that you can quietly hide in your ivory tower and that this was all just will just magically go away or that this is someone else's problem is pure fantasy. To be clear, this mess is entirely of your own making. This is Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to Barry Silbert. Digital Currency Group, of which you are the founder and CEO, owes Genesis $1.67 billion. That is the money that Genesis owns to Gemini-earned customers and other creditors.

• 35:54David Hoffman?

  You took this money, the money of schoolteachers, to fuel greedy, yeah, right? To fuel greedy share buybacks, illiquid venture investments in kamikaze grayscale net asset value trades that balloon the fee generating AUM of your trust, all at the expense of creditors and all for your own personal gain. It's now time for you to take the responsibility and to do the right thing." Wow, pretty damning. And that actually kind of paints a picture that is pretty similar to what was going on with FTX, right? Like, taking in customer deposits, doing illiquid venture capital bets and like share buybacks and all. That's kind of what SBF did, perhaps in a much more above board fashion. But this is what the Gemini twins are charging Barry

• 36:38David Hoffman?

  Silbert with. Barry Silbert, who's been very quiet on Twitter lately, woke up from his hibernation, if you will, and responded and said, "DCG did not borrow $1.67 billion from Genesis. DCG has never missed an interest payment to Genesis and is current on all of its loans outstanding. DCG delivered to Genesis and your advisors a proposal on December 9th and has not received any response." And then Cameron Winklevoss responds on Twitter, "There you go again. Stop trying to pretend that you and DCG are innocent bystanders and have nothing to do with creating this mess. It's completely disingenuous." And basically the fight, that's basically the fight, yeah.

• 37:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sparring back and forth, right? And this is Cameron Winklevoss really turning up the heat on Barry and making this public and disparaging him quite openly. So I don't know what this is, negotiation tactic? They're obviously talking behind closed doors as well, at least their legal arms are. But this still doesn't look like it's close to getting resolved. And I do feel for everyone who has money in earned accounts, right? You know, I don't know that we're any closer to seeing those deposits freed up with this ongoing dispute. It's crazy to me that all this takes place publicly too, over Twitter. Like, what a weird time we're living in.

• 37:55David Hoffman?

  At least we get to talk about it. And the last update on the DCG/Genesis case that we have actually happened right before we started recording. So we are still waiting for further details, but a tweet out that seems to be corroborated and accepted. Update: "DCG/Genesis is under active investigation by the SEC. Sources confirm that there are multiple whistleblowers that have come forward." So this is just breaking as we are recording this. We're probably going to hear about this in further detail, perhaps Friday and throughout all of next week. And I guess we'll have to recover that on the next weekly rollup.

• 38:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is still some mess, carryover from last year, spilling into 2023. So hopefully this gets taken care of soon. David, there's some bad news, though, for Celsius deposits. Why don't you break it to us?

• 38:36David Hoffman?

  Yes, so in the Celsius bankruptcy court proceedings, it has been ruled that if you are a customer who deposited money into Celsius, that is not your money. And it belongs to Celsius at the moment of deposit. And so you are a creditor, not a customer. And so that you have to, as a former customer of Celsius, line up in bankruptcy court, just like everyone else.

• 39:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you're last in line behind other creditors as well, unfortunately, right?

• 39:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. So this is another stark reminder that not your keys, not your crypto. If you have to read the fine print in order to understand if you are an owner of your own deposits or not, you should probably consider yourself not the owner of your deposits.

• 39:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is from Martin Glenn, who is the bankruptcy judge here. He said, "As explained below, the court concludes, based on Celsius's unambiguous terms of service..." Did you read those? "...and subject to any reserve defenses, that when cryptocurrency assets were deposited in earned accounts, the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius's property."

• 39:45David Hoffman?

  Oof.

• 39:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, once people hit that deposit button, it was no longer their money.

• 39:51David Hoffman?

  According to the terms of service.

• 39:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, according to the terms of service, they gave it to Alex. They entrusted Alex Maschinsky with it. And of course, he was off gambling with it in all sorts of ways. So how brutal is that?

• 40:05David Hoffman?

  And remember, of course, Alex's warning to us all on his T-shirt, if we could put that image up, Luke on the screen, "Banks are not your friend." Thank you, Alex, for letting us know.

• 40:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  What a reminder. Pretty brutal. So my Celsius deposit never coming back, huh, David?

• 40:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, sorry, brother.

• 40:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, what is the Attorney General of New York doing about it?

• 40:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this also came out just a few hours ago. So New York Attorney General tweets out, "I'm suing the former CEO of cryptocurrency platform Celsius Network for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars. Alex Maschinsky lied to people about the risk of investing in Celsius, hid it from deteriorating financial condition, and failed to register in New York." So the NYAG going after Alex Maschinsky, which I definitely think is like... Probably right.

• 40:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Prosecute the villains.

• 40:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, please prosecute him. I'm worried about overreach and overflow into the crypto world. So it's like, hey, let's regulate crypto as a result of this. Like, just nice, let's place it on the table. We should regulate and criminalize fraudsters who do bad things. And if they happen to use crypto to do that, that is an adjacent fact. Not, it's not crypto that is about this. I would like to place that on the table.

• 41:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I, look, I agree. I'm glad that Attorney General James is taking this action. It's fantastic. But I do get worried when the last line of her tweet is, "We will continue to protect people from the risks of investing in cryptocurrency."

• 41:35David Hoffman?

  Brian, the risks of investing in cryptocurrency are why I'm here.

• 41:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, and you also can't like protect people from them without like, how do you do that? Yeah. So I'm just worried about that last line. What it should say ideally is continue to protect people from the risks of centralized.

• 41:56David Hoffman?

  Banks.

• 41:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Banks.

• 41:58David Hoffman?

  Banks.

• 41:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Providing cryptocurrency services.

• 42:01David Hoffman?

  Trust.

• 42:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Where we need protection.

• 42:02David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 42:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  In that, in that area where we don't have public information, that area where we give up our private keys, we need protection there.

• 42:10David Hoffman?

  If there's small print, we need protection.

• 42:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  If there's a terms of service, we need some help.

• 42:17David Hoffman?

  All right.

• 42:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  So what do we got coming up next, David? I think we're getting into prediction zone, huh?

• 42:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is gonna be super fun. We're gonna talk about our predictions for 2023. We're gonna talk about other people's predictions for 2023, and of course, the rest of the news as well. A Bitcoin core dev has all of their Bitcoins stolen in a self custodial fumble. Love to talk about that, as well as the rest of the news. Some Cuba news, some NFT news, a zombie punk got stolen, and a bunch of other cool stuff. So all of this and more, right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors to help you go bankless. Arbitrum One is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web3 landscape. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum One, producing flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. With the recent addition of Arbitrum Nova,

• 43:03David Hoffman?

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• 43:47David Hoffman?

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• 44:31David Hoffman?

  So go to app.uniswap.org today to buy, sell, or swap tokens and NFTs.

• 44:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Predictions for 2023. We'll get to ours, but first let's start with Eric Wall. David, let's read these one by one. You got the first one from Eric Wall. He's got a bunch of them here.

• 44:48David Hoffman?

  Number one, Binance and Tether survives. I agree. That's they've already survived all these years. They're going to survive again. What's number two?

• 44:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also agree.

• 44:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Number, I agree with that. Number two is Sam Bankman Fried goes to prison for 10 plus years. I, yes, we already said, I agree with that.

• 45:04David Hoffman?

  Betting my net worth, yeah.

• 45:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  David's really, he's really going for that one. What's number three?

• 45:10David Hoffman?

  I'm now susceptible to a huge flight risk from Sam Bankman Fried. Number three, Bitcoin's $15.4,000 was the bottom. Agree.

• 45:19David Hoffman?

  You agree?

• 45:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, you guys calling a bottom?

• 45:20David Hoffman?

  Yes. Come on, Ryan.

• 45:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not going to agree with that.

• 45:24David Hoffman?

  Oh, you, what you dirty. All right. All right. Ryan, Ryan's out for that one. Number four.

• 45:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not going to bet my net worth, David.

• 45:32David Hoffman?

  Number four, Noster interests fizzles out. Elon resigns. What's Noster? I don't know what Noster is.

• 45:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Don't know.

• 45:38David Hoffman?

  Okay, skip that one.

• 45:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Elon resigns, though? Do you think that will happen?

• 45:41David Hoffman?

  Resigns from what? Twitter? I guess so.

• 45:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. He was unclear, so he's got three shots at it, I guess.

• 45:47David Hoffman?

  I don't know what's going on.

• 45:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  How many companies and Elon? Okay, Ethereum enables withdrawals. That's a big yes. That's happening.

• 45:52David Hoffman?

  Big yes, big yes.

• 45:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're right, Eric. Go six.

• 45:55David Hoffman?

  You should like the ones that you agree with. Number six, the most interesting thing in crypto continues to be AI, LLMs, GPT, and stable diffusion. So Eric's saying that crypto is going to be super boring and we're all going to be talking about AI stuff throughout 2023.

• 46:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nope, downvote.

• 46:11David Hoffman?

  I don't know, actually, man. AI is pretty interesting.

• 46:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're going to be talking about crypto. It's not going to be the most interesting thing in crypto. Come on. That would be a super boring year.

• 46:21David Hoffman?

  I'm not, I'm not a slam dunk. No on that one? Or yes on that one? Okay, moving on.

• 46:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  I will bet my net worth.

• 46:30David Hoffman?

  Solana $8 was the bottom. Agree.

• 46:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I disagree. I don't think so.

• 46:35David Hoffman?

  I don't agree so much as Ether or Bitcoin on that one, but yes, I do agree. ETH BTC touches is .09. Yeah, I agree. I definitely agree. By the way, the flipping is at .16. .072, .09, I think would be a high. It would be a high.

• 46:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a good, it's a good call. I'm going with a yes on that. Mt. Gox coins are finally redistributed. I have no idea.

• 47:01David Hoffman?

  I don't have an opinion on that one.

• 47:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  How about this one? NFT slump stops, returns 1 billion monthly?

• 47:09David Hoffman?

  Yes, so he is calling the bottom on NFT volume.

• 47:13David Hoffman?

  I don't have a strong opinion on that one.

• 47:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Neither do I.

• 47:17David Hoffman?

  I don't have a strong opinion on that one.

• 47:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gonna be a good year for NFTs, but not a crazy year, in my opinion.

• 47:21David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin pumps above $30,000. I think odds are that volatility will take it above $30,000 and then it could return to below $20,000.

• 47:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Agreed.

• 47:31David Hoffman?

  In the same year. And so I agree with that one.

• 47:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the thing is, I don't think we've hit lows yet, but I also think we'll be over 30K at some point.

• 47:39David Hoffman?

  At some point, yeah. 12 months is a long time. Ethereum, 80% OFAT compliance was the top. Agree. Big agree. OFAT compliant blocks are down only from here on out.

• 47:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  The SEC brings a case against Hex, drops below a cent? What do you think?

• 47:55David Hoffman?

  At least one of those two things will happen, yes.

• 47:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, I'll go with one of those two things.

• 47:59David Hoffman?

  Do you know, do you know where the price of Hex is right now, Ryan? I bet you don't even know.

• 48:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not a thing that's burnt in my memory at all.

• 48:06David Hoffman?

  It was like 1.7 cents, last I checked.

• 48:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh.

• 48:10David Hoffman?

  It's at 1.9 cents right now.

• 48:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  1.9 cents? I mean, who knows?

• 48:15David Hoffman?

  He wants a 50% drop in Hex.

• 48:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  There could be SEC brings a case and Hex explodes to $10, who knows?

• 48:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Trump NFT for revisits all time high. This is not something I have an opinion on, David.

• 48:27David Hoffman?

  Opinion on that one.

• 48:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Celestia launches above 1 billion fully diluted valuation.

• 48:33David Hoffman?

  If Celestia does launch, it will certainly be above a $1 billion fully diluted valuation.

• 48:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  How about this one?

• 48:39David Hoffman?

  16. Taproot adoption doubles and hits 3%. Okay, I'm not sure if this is a real prediction. This is actually Eric Wall just being mean about Taproot and Bitcoiners.

• 48:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know what this means.

• 48:48David Hoffman?

  He's just saying that Taproot adoption doubles and that means it's going to hit 3%. He's just being mean in that one. No new Bitcoin soft fork, agree.

• 48:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's probably a pretty easy one. Look at this one's hard, though. 18. Cardano finally drops out of the top 10. I'm not sure I could say that.

• 49:06David Hoffman?

  I'm also not. It's at number nine right now, Ryan. And with it's got Polygon on its heels at number 10. But the next biggest thing that I believe in that follows after that is Lido. And it's that's at number 12. And so the Lido market cap right now is 6 billion.

• 49:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think this is, this is hard to define because of course it's going to fall out of the top 10 at least once next year. Easy, slam dunk. But does he mean for a sustained period of time? You know what I mean? Like our fall permanently out?

• 49:39David Hoffman?

  I think he's implying it stays out of the top 10.

• 49:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what I think he's implying. I'm not, I don't think that's gonna happen.

• 49:47David Hoffman?

  There's not strong contenders. Yeah, it's not. Cardano's got $9 billion valuation.

• 49:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Somebody'd have to replace Cardano right now. And who has? It's like, right now, a lot of these top 10 are trading on meme power. Who has the meme power to replace it?

• 50:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we would need another stablecoin to make its way to the top 10. That could happen. A stablecoin. DAI could pump, could knock Cardano out. Anyways.

• 50:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  DAI? That'd be big. Risk Zero changes the game for ZK Rollups, enables smart kind of know that.

• 50:15David Hoffman?

  Risk Zero? I, Risk Zero, it's an EVM parallelization, I think, startup. Ashley Schapp was explaining it to me in ECC.

• 50:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  This must be something Eric invested in.

• 50:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 50:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sorry, Eric, I mean.

• 50:29David Hoffman?

  Ethereum Layer 2 TVL reaches above $10 billion. I want to say yes to that.

• 50:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Definitely yes.

• 50:36David Hoffman?

  I want to say yes to that.

• 50:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I'm a hell yes.

• 50:38David Hoffman?

  We have a long way to go.

• 50:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Seven right now.

• 50:39David Hoffman?

  No, it's, we're at four. We're at four right now.

• 50:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Four. Okay. Well, we've been near before. We've been close to seven. That's why I remember that number four.

• 50:46David Hoffman?

  I think it can hit 10 billion. Yeah.

• 50:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Lightning Network public channel capacity stays below 10K. So he's bearish on Lightning.

• 50:53David Hoffman?

  Yes, he's always been, uh, yes. Oh, wow. Coming in at 22. Larry and Frank leave the block and start their own competitor. Wow, that is a hot, hot prediction. At this point, this has to just be meme predictions.

• 51:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Huh. I mean, I think they could.

• 51:10David Hoffman?

  I think they could.

• 51:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's there's space for it for sure.

• 51:13David Hoffman?

  They seem to really care about their jobs and care about the block. But there was that drama at the end of the year.

• 51:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, this turns out to be decent call. Uh, both Lido and Coin will 10x at least.

• 51:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so that that's his, uh, and he agrees with, uh, this is also DJ and Spartan's bags is Lido and Coinbase.

• 51:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's this number 24, David?

• 51:34David Hoffman?

  I think we are, man, we're really getting into the bottom of the barrel predictions from Eric. Kobe tweets comments, JFC more than eight times with 1,000 likes each, probably. Um, Suzu and Kyle Davis Davies miraculously could become influential Bitcoin maximalists.

• 51:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  I could totally see this.

• 51:50David Hoffman?

  Honestly, yeah. Uh, Vitalik graduates from crypto after Ethereum's migration to proof of stake. Vitalik will feel like he owes both it to Ethereum and himself to step back slightly, probably by taking up a few non-crypto responsibilities like AI or charity. You know, I don't know if it's 2023 that Vitalik does something like this, but I can totally see like, yeah, I could totally see this. Yeah.

• 52:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, not quite yet, in my opinion, but I think this last part is taking up a few non-crypto responsibilities. I could totally see that, but graduating from crypto is too strong.

• 52:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so.

• 52:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, re-hyplication, uh, re-hypothecation of ETH stake becomes cool. It's called restaking and liquid staking. We'll see a lot more of this. Yeah, of course.

• 52:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  That will happen. No, the grass doesn't get any new tattoos.

• 52:35David Hoffman?

  Yes, he does not get any tattoos, or at least he doesn't tweet about it. 29, Doquan is caught. I don't know. He's in Serbia. He's like in the place that you can't catch him in.

• 52:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ah, you can catch anybody anywhere, don't you think? Is he tweeting lately?

• 52:50David Hoffman?

  Who's coming after him? I don't know if anyone's coming after him.

• 52:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, he's not going to get caught.

• 52:53David Hoffman?

  I'm saying I'm not betting.

• 52:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Red notice, man.

• 52:56David Hoffman?

  Oh, that's right. All I'm saying is I'm not betting my net worth on it.

• 53:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. Uh, last one. A bit late, but Luke Dash Jr. loses his Bitcoin.

• 53:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is how you knock this being mean.

• 53:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, all right. Well, what are the bankless predictions, David? I think we're, uh, maybe less spicy with some of those. But first, before we get to the 2022 predictions, we should get to our 20, our 2023 predictions, we should get to last year's predictions and, uh, give a report card here. How'd we do in our layup predictions for last year?

• 53:26David Hoffman?

  So Ryan, you and I, this time last year, were bullish and it was also the top.

• 53:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. Sounds like you're justifying something.

• 53:36David Hoffman?

  I'm just saying, we were bullish when we, when it was the top. And so all of our bullish predictions are eh. So crypto crosses new all time highs. That did not happen. Uh, that, these are our layup predictions. And so these were the ones that we all kind of felt were true as a company. We all kind of came together. It's like, all right, what are the easy ones? Uh, so we didn't do so great. Um, crypto crosses new all time highs. Did not get that one. ETH 2 merge happens. That totally happened. Total crypto market cap reaches $5 trillion. Uh, we only hit 3 trillion. So we did not get that one. Uh, Bitcoin gets adopted by another nation state. We got that one, but I will say just barely. Um, CAR. What's CAR?

• 54:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, this is, um, the, it's a country in Africa. So this is, uh, Central African Republic.

• 54:22David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 54:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Adopted it and did happen.

• 54:24David Hoffman?

  Ethereum becomes a trillion dollar network. Uh, we didn't get there. We only got to about 0.56.

• 54:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Half a trillion.

• 54:30David Hoffman?

  Half a trillion. Yeah. Layer two reaches $25 billion in total locked value. We only got to seven. Oof. Uh, NFT sales hit $30 billion, uh, which totally happened. Uh, it hit $30 billion by April. Uh, one DeFi protocol will reach the top 10 in market cap. We are almost there, but it did not happen.

• 54:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, with what? Like US swap or something?

• 54:53David Hoffman?

  Lido. Uh huh.

• 54:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, okay. Lido. Fair, fair. That did almost happen.

• 54:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Uh, and DAOs will make an eight figure purchase for an in real life item.

• 55:04David Hoffman?

  I don't really think that happened.

• 55:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, it didn't happen, but we're giving ourselves, again, we're grading this report card, David, so we can be nice to ourselves. So we're giving ourselves partial credit for this because Ukraine Dow legitimately bought, obviously, tons of military gear. And it was almost eight figures. It was something like $8 million, right?

• 55:22David Hoffman?

  But the item that was bought was a NFT of a...

• 55:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, partial credit. All right, partial credit.

• 55:28David Hoffman?

  Wow, we're really being lenient here. And then the last one, of course, Michael Saylor buys more Bitcoin. That was just a free space. He totally did.

• 55:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was very easy. My predictions, I did worse than that.

• 55:38David Hoffman?

  This is, okay, now we're getting into Ryan's specific predictions. So here's Ryan's predictions.

• 55:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, I said crypto would be above 7 trillion, and it only reached 3 trillion. So I was overly bullish. I said ETH would get to 10K. And by the way, that's what all of this was based on.

• 55:53David Hoffman?

  That was the bull market, yeah.

• 55:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And so, look, I mean, the basis was, I thought we would do another 10X from last all-time high, which was in the, you know, 1,000 zone. And we didn't. We only hit 4.5K. Doesn't mean 10X isn't happening. It means it didn't happen in 2022 and probably weren't in 2023. Layer 2's enter the top 10. I think that's a yes if you count Polygon, which I do. Bridges to billions. So across and hop issue tokens, bridges. I was more bullish on bridges going into 2022.

• 56:24David Hoffman?

  Cross Layer 2 bridges specifically.

• 56:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. Bitcoin to 100K. It only hit 63K. This should actually be an X. I don't know why that's a check. Web 3 gets social. We had some launches, Farcaster, Lens, DSO. It's still too early for Web 3 to really succeed on social.

• 56:43David Hoffman?

  We're punting on that one.

• 56:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I said DeFi would return. It definitely did not return. Okay. And yet, David, it did serve us when C5 failed. And that's a big plus. I thought there'd be some crypto banks that would IPO. Nope.

• 56:57David Hoffman?

  We almost got that one with Circle. And then the SEC said no.

• 57:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  So there you go. Blocked by the SEC. DAOs get weirder. I'll count Ukraine as kind of a weird DAO that, you know, fighting a war, raised like for a DAO that's kind of interesting. NFTs add extensions that what I meant is that they would expand into other media properties. 48 yacht club definitely did that. I thought GameFi would build a niche. It didn't. They're way too early. Overall, my grade is a C minus, and I think this is because I expected the bull cycle to have about 50% more upside than it did. But by April, the Fed was tightening and then after April, just everything unwound.

• 57:37David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 57:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  As the tide was coming out and apparently no one had shorts on in crypto. So

• 57:44David Hoffman?

  You didn't expect everyone to be completely immature and irresponsible.

• 57:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I didn't. And I think like some of these predictions just don't take into account macro, right? Because we kind of ignore it because like, who knows what's going to happen with macro? So that's what messed me up. This year, I'm being more cautious, David.

• 58:00David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 58:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think we're gonna, I think there's gonna be a lot of ups and downs in crypto, but we're gonna finish above 2 trillion.

• 58:05David Hoffman?

  That is more than a 2X, brother.

• 58:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep, I think that's ahead, but there'll be ups and downs. ETH withdrawals will be enabled. That's probably an easy one, but I also am hopeful for proto dank starting in 2023. Now, that's a, that's gonna be hard to hit. If it happens, it'll be down to the wire. I think ETH will spike down to three digits. Sorry, David. If it does, that will give us one last final generational buying opportunity because I don't think we're going back to three digits again.

• 58:35David Hoffman?

  It's not happening.

• 58:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I can't tell you for sure if that's gonna happen, but I think it is.

• 58:38David Hoffman?

  It's not happening.

• 58:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'll err on that side. Ethereum outperforms Bitcoin, but we don't get a flipping next year. A crypto law almost gets through Congress. It won't be the end of the world. It'll just be something watered down. I am super bullish on layer two still, David. This is probably the biggest call, the biggest reach here. I think layer two's reached 25 billion. Eric Wall called for 10 billion. I'm saying 25 billion in TVL.

• 59:04David Hoffman?

  Whoa, bro.

• 59:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that's

• 59:05David Hoffman?

  That's bullish.

• 59:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just carried over. I copied and pasted from last year, right? It's gonna happen. And if it doesn't happen next year, I'll just copy and paste. It'll happen in 2024. DeFi rebuilds back to TVL of 125 billion. We'd have a ways to go there. I think that's like a 5X or 4 or 5X or something like that. So those are some of my predictions. What do you got? Do your report card first.

• 59:29David Hoffman?

  All right. All right. Here's my report card. I led with the bear market never comes. I don't think there's a phrase I could have phrased that by and not been more wrong. So that was wrong.

• 59:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you were a super cyclist.

• 59:41David Hoffman?

  I, I, I mean, dude, we, we had just broken off into all time highs. We had just hit all time highs and like the momentum was continuing. Like I had the ETH to 10K mindset, just like everyone else. I was, I was dishing out that Kool-Aid.

• 59:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  But you said it this way, which is different.

• 59:57David Hoffman?

  The bear market never comes. The bear market definitely comes. I, my next comment was crypto newbies care less about centralization worries. And I'm claiming victory on that one because what did we learn? Celsius, FTX, like exchanges, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm also betting on the complete opposite for 2023. So I'm going to take the victory on that one. The merch happens. Yeah, I got that one right. ETH competitors try to fix their monetary supply schedules. I have not seen any lick of that whatsoever. All of these.

• 1:00:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's still not.

• 1:00:29David Hoffman?

  It's still not. Yeah. I'm claiming all of these ETH competitors still have currently their heads buried in the sand about their oversupply of block space and therefore oversupply of token issuance schedules. Solid fee markets arise on an ETH competing chain. That did happen for a moment on Avalanche and then it went back to zero. My next, my next prediction was optimism and Arbitrum develop into thriving metropolises. And I'm, I think that happened, definitely. Yeah. Big time. And I also thought that EVM equivalents will push optimism into dominance. Didn't happen in 2022, but I'm still holding out for this one. I think EVM equivalents is the long game and optimism has been pioneering that. NFT flipping loses steam.

• 1:01:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Definitely did.

• 1:01:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, definitely did. Retail ran, ran out of money. So it became less profitable for everyone. I might, I made a claim that RAI receives adoption tailwinds. This was during inflation, big inflation moments. And so I said, as a result of inflation, RAI will receive adoption tailwinds. I will, will say that RAI certainly received mindshare adoption, but that did not translate into real adoption.

• 1:01:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, not at all. Unfortunate because it's a really cool project.

• 1:01:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, bored apes flips punks. I predicted that and I also linked a link to a video because why did bored apes flip flip punks because security like properties. Did I just trigger a bunch of bored apes? Then go link, watch the video that's linked in the release that we're talking about right now. Web three will become adopted as a household name. That kind of happens, but not really in a way that I wanted it to.

• 1:02:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's definitely a household name.

• 1:02:04David Hoffman?

  And then the last three predictions I made, the bankless meme picks up speed. That happened because of FTX. So thanks for that. Politicians rise to defend Web three protocols. Tom Emmer and Pat Toomey, shout out to you guys for helping me be right on that one. And then bankless keeps delivering. This was when I was in control over and so.

• 1:02:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a free space.

• 1:02:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a good one. And we got a lot of things coming out more. So I was given a grade by our newsletter editor, a beat.

• 1:02:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's good, David. Some good predictions there. So what do you have in mind for this year? What's your 2023 predictions?

• 1:02:39David Hoffman?

  My, my first and foremost prediction centers around Ethereum scaling factor. And this is this metric that is being pioneered by layer two beat. Ethereum's current scaling factor is 2.4 as in all of layer twos are doing 2.4 times the amount of transactions of the Ethereum layer one. I think we are going to see that number increase to five. So there will be five times the number of transactions on Ethereum layer twos as the Ethereum layer one.

• 1:03:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that's safe. That's I definitely think that's happening.

• 1:03:07David Hoffman?

  At least one generalized ZK EVM will open up its playground for users. So this is ZK sync, this is scroll. But I do think this dark net ecosystem will maintain its lead ahead of the rest of the ZK EVMs. Collectible NFT communities will increasingly look like Balaji's network stake thesis. And the only ones that are going to make it through the spare market will survive by injecting utility into their assets. That's my hot take there. Ethereum DeFi blue chips will outperform alt layer one tokens and layer two tokens, by the way, for that matter, because Ethereum DeFi has already been in the bear market ahead, one year ahead of everyone else.

• 1:03:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's maybe your boldest prediction yet because we've had two back to back 80% down years.

• 1:03:49David Hoffman?

  Well, maybe we have an 80% down year in the blue chips and DeFi actually has an up year in that. DAOs still will not have their shit together, figured out probably. Most DAOs will continue to operate at a loss in a this is fine while the room is burning manner. One or a few DAOs will attempt to focus on their P and L. And that will eventually come to be reflected in their token price. Whether that happens by the end of 2023, hard to say. I always like to say, Ryan, on Bankless, there's always a bull market somewhere. And I think this one will be signed in with Ethereum. This will be a current reoccurring topic throughout 2023 as we see more websites with.

• 1:04:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  How do we measure that, though? There's not really like a token. You just think.

• 1:04:28David Hoffman?

  Number of instances of logins with private keys, logins, instances with private keys. And then the last three here. Bitcoin maxies will continue to become more and more insane and disconnected from reality. Corey Clipstone specifically will spearhead this effort. Nice job. Dual encroachment from the CFTC and the SEC will push crypto into its only safe place. The intangible land of decentralization, AKA they're coming for us. And the only way out is through decentralization. And then lastly, Richard Hart will still be here. He'll find a new scam to promote after Pulse Chain wears off. And also, Ryan, did you know that his last name was Schuler?

• 1:05:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I have no.

• 1:05:10David Hoffman?

  That is Richard Hart's real last name.

• 1:05:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  How'd you find this out?

• 1:05:14David Hoffman?

  Google.

• 1:05:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 1:05:16David Hoffman?

  Doesn't have the same ring as Hart.

• 1:05:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, Hart's a great last name if you're trying to pump a Ponzi scheme. So that's good, David. We'll see how that plays out then, man. So those are the 2023 predictions for you. You know, Bankless gets some of these things right. Directionally, I think we are right. When we call for specifics, not so much.

• 1:05:36David Hoffman?

  Not so great.

• 1:05:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  But directionally, and eventually some of these predictions will happen.

• 1:05:40David Hoffman?

  The longer we're here, the more right we are. That's right.

• 1:05:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Optimism this week. A bunch of people are forking it. What does this mean?

• 1:05:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this is a tweet from an optimism person. Another day, another startup planning to fork optimism. The OP stack narrative is very strong. From my startup data sample, it's becoming the go to repo for startups to deploy their own roll up. And so this is actually a continuation of the thesis that I said that EVM equivalents will help optimism with its slower start. And for those, I made this video called the OP stack, which explains the OP stack and the philosophy behind this prediction. It came out the day that FTX went under. So there's this like super awesome video that is super informative that got drowned out by the FTX debacle. So if you want to go down the OP stack rabbit hole, definitely watch this video.

• 1:06:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  We got some NFT stuff too. So a zombie punk was just sold for what looks like to me, anyway, a lot of money. But maybe this is down from what it was worth at some point in time. $1.3 million for this punk. You're looking at it right here. What's the significance of this sale, David?

• 1:06:47David Hoffman?

  It's just one of the biggest NFT sales in a very long time. I accidentally said when we led into sponsors that a zombie punk got stolen. No, a zombie punk got stole, sold, but it was a steal. Coming in at a 1,155 ETH price tag, we got a zombie punk. And so that in my mind is very cheap. That is a good purchase.

• 1:07:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  And are they up on their ETH from that sale?

• 1:07:10David Hoffman?

  The owner, click that link and we'll be able to find out what it was last bought for. Yeah. So if you scroll down to previous sales, oh, it was, okay. It was last sold, Ryan, for 500 ETH in May of 2021. So that was, they are up 660 ETH on that trade.

• 1:07:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the way to be up, denominated in ETH. You denominate in ETH during the bear market. It's the only way to do it. This was an article I noticed. I don't know if you saw this, but from PC Gamer, it got a lot of traction on Reddit. And the title of the article is, "Good Job Internet. You Bullied NFTs Out of Mainstream Games." And I saw so many threads on Reddit this week about, yeah, I'm glad they're gone. Hate NFTs. Glad like they're the worst. They're kind of a scourge on gaming. And I was just reflecting on how Just negative. The world has turned on NFTs, particularly NFTs in games. This was a meme I also picked out from Reddit, which was, "Whose opinion matters the least?"

• 1:08:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it picks on all of these tribes, furries, weebes, influencers, Discord mobs, and then crypto bros too, and NFT artists. And look who's in the crypto bro picture. It's Vitalik.

• 1:08:22David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 1:08:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Vitalik is the least crypto bro person like I know. I guess if that's what you think a crypto bro actually is. Anyway, I was just reflecting on this.

• 1:08:33David Hoffman?

  Well, Ryan, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that any representative in any one of these quadrants are probably saying the same thing about their particular quadrants.

• 1:08:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's probably true, right? We just don't know. And I was just reflecting on, I remember the early stages of the internet and there was this new idea. This is like kind of the birth of Wikipedia and, you know, reviews, Amazon reviews and Yelp and all of these things. Web 2, it was like wisdom of the crowds. You remember that phrase? Wisdom of the crowds? Well, like, internet mobs are kind of dumb. It felt like stupidity of the crowds.

• 1:09:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so, I don't know, this is just another example of the internet, I think, not getting it and not seeing the potential of these things. And people making comments on things they actually don't know about. And yeah, I think the internet is completely wrong about NFTs. It's just like being mad about a file format like JPEGs or GIFs. Maybe you don't like how they've been used, but how can you be mad about NFTs as a property rights mechanism?

• 1:09:32David Hoffman?

  I think it's actually pretty easy to push back on that one because the NFTs in their current form are not doing the things, Ryan, that you imagine that they will do in their heads in the future. And so the internet is currently pushing back on NFTs as they stand today because we, as an industry, have not learned how to actually produce an NFT that is actually desirable towards mainstream.

• 1:09:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you are basically, your take is, well, we haven't actually deserved their respect, is what you're saying.

• 1:10:01David Hoffman?

  Correct.

• 1:10:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you also, would you also say that about the crypto bro, you know, scape too? Because that's also being scapegoated right now. The crypto, a bunch of scammers, that sort of thing, right? Do you think that crypto deserves this too, this kind of mockery? Or do you think this is a broad brush?

• 1:10:19David Hoffman?

  To talk about like this meme at a high level, whose opinion matters least? Like NFT artists, Andrew Tate fans, crypto bros, weeb's, Discord mods, influencers? These are all like communities of people that have members of them that believe in what they're saying and doing. Right? For better or worse, right? And like it's, it's like you could also put in like a CrossFit person here or like a vegan or you know, somebody who like has principles that they stand on and like are gnawing on the internet about it. And so this is just an amalgamation of like all of those people.

• 1:10:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a good take. That's a good take. Anyway, uh, yeah, it's the, the internet still doesn't like NFTs. Maybe we deserve it, maybe we don't, but I think this warrants further investigations, probably some upside opportunities while everyone else is ignoring it. David, what's this story about the Bitcoin core developer losing all his Bitcoin?

• 1:11:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So there's this Bitcoin OG core developer Luke Dash Jr. Who tweeted out that he'd lost over two, his Bitcoins, over 200 Bitcoins in a hack. He had a PGP, pretty good privacy. If you have been listening to our before Bitcoin series, you would know what that is. He says his PGP was compromised and he had all of his Bitcoins stolen. He says he has no idea how. Uh, and uh, there's two kind of main takes that I've seen as a response to this. It's what the hell is a Bitcoin core dev, uh, holding on PGP keys onto a hot computer? That is exposed to the internet. That's like just bad, bad opsec. And then the other take is like, haha, nice boating accident, bro. Um, no one really knows.

• 1:11:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's also another take, which is like, if a Bitcoin core developer can lose their private keys, what hope is there for normies? What do you think about that take?

• 1:12:00David Hoffman?

  I mean, I've definitely at times held private keys in insecure ways, but I've always logged that in my head. And then like, okay, I need to get rid of those private keys. Uh, I don't know. It's, it's a personal responsibility thing more than it is like, if this one guy can't do it, none of us can. And then also the solution to that is always innovation, innovation, innovation. Bitcoin doesn't have account infections, so.

• 1:12:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I'm super bullish on the future of smart contract wallets to make UX easy and opsec. Yeah, I think we'll build them. Um, about this, David? Open source blocking Cuban artists from the platform due to US sanctions? What do you make of this?

• 1:12:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's, I mean, the headline's basically the news. OpenSea had to deplatform some Cuban artists because of sanctions. It's a sad day. A lot of people are mad at OpenSea for this, but at the end of the day, like, they want customers. They want every customer under the sun. Why can't they do this? Because of regulation. This is the design choice that OpenSea has chosen, like a web 2.5 thing, which centralized front end in the front and just uses Ethereum rails in the back. And so this is a result of that. So sad day.

• 1:13:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's unfortunate, but as long as these sorts of prohibitions don't happen on the protocol layer, that's where they matter most, right? So NFTs can still be deployed if you're in Cuba or wherever you are in the world. And you can access it, just can't open access OpenSea, unfortunately. All right, for the first time in 2023, we're going to remind you that this is the year you should be getting a job in crypto.

• 1:13:26David Hoffman?

  We're not stopping.

• 1:13:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're not stopping. We've got some jobs. I'm going to read them on the Bankless job boards. As usual, it's bankless.pallet.com/jobs. Uniswap Labs has a senior software engineer they're looking for, Elkemy, a backend engineer, Webacy, a software engineer, Webacy also, QA analyst, Dimension, a crypto-native content marketer, and more. You guys can find that at the Bankless job site. That's bankless.pallet.com/jobs. All right, David, what do we got coming up next?

• 1:13:53David Hoffman?

  We got to get to some questions from the nation. We used to ask the Twitter, we used to ask Twitter, what questions do you have? But we have changed that up, and now we are asking the Bankless Inner Circle, what questions do you want us to cover on the Bankless Weekly Rollup? And so we got three questions that we're pulling out, out of the Inner Circle. And this is a perk for the Bankless Premium subscribers. If you are a Premium subscriber and you are not in the Bankless Inner Circle, you should definitely go there. We've been having a ton of fun there lately. And this is where we are now asking the questions for the Weekly Rollup. So this is a place where me and Ryan and the rest of the Bankless team hang out. This is where the token report that we talked about earlier from Ben Giovi gets talked about and discussed. You guys can ask all of us questions and more. Ryan's got a little bit of the Inner Circle up on the screen.

• 1:14:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm sharing it on screen. This is kind of like, I think of this as like a watering hole for the Bankless community. Like, it's, you know how you always say, David, like, It's the bear market, so go find a bear market buddy.

• 1:14:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is where you guys find a bear market buddy. All right. David and I met on Twitter and then that just quickly transitioned into Discord. Discord is a fantastic tool for meeting friends in crypto, especially when, if you don't go outside like me, or you don't go to conferences, or you can't get out there, you want to meet some people before you go to the conference. This is the place to do that. So there are something like 15,000, close to 20,000 people on the bankless journey in the Inner Circle Discord. And look at these channels. We talk about general stuff, NFTs. We talk about the podcast. We talk about token ratings. There's off topic areas. David, you and I jumped in and did an AMA in here not too long ago. We've done a few of those as well.

• 1:15:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  So there's a section in the Inner Circle Discord with a question we're going to answer in just a minute from Hashara. Is there a layer two that is IBC compatible? This is Cosmos standard IBC. Or would it be possible to build one? Such an L2 would remove the need for multi-sig bridges between different ecosystems and would greatly benefit the entire crypto universe. We ask, are asked questions like this. We answer questions like that in the Inner Circle. So it's a great place to, to meet the bankless community and level up on the crypto journey. And David, how do people become Inner Circle members and go premium?

• 1:16:03David Hoffman?

  Sure, there is a link in the show notes for you to go click that, click that button and it'll take you to where you can sign up for Bankless Premium. And then you can ask some of these questions here. We're also in the middle of planning our ETH Denver in real life event for the Bankless Inner Circle. It's going to be our first one. We're super stoked for that. Shall we get into the questions, Ryan?

• 1:16:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So why don't we start with that first question that was just asked. So is there a layer two that is IBC compatible and would it be possible to build one? What's the answer to that question, David?

• 1:16:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, sadly, this is where the lines are drawn between what Ryan and I call different countries. IBC is the rules of the Cosmos ecosystem. The EVM are the rules for the Ethereum ecosystem. And sadly, you cannot cross those lines without having to change languages. And what that means is that we cannot cross lines with our assets either without having to have a trusted intermediary in the process. That service. So there is no way to build an IBC layer two, because if you are building a layer two on Ethereum, you are specifically creating a very formalized relationship with the Ethereum layer one, and you cannot have two layer ones that you consider equal. You

• 1:17:11David Hoffman?

  have to pick a single layer one to adhere to the rules towards. So if you are building a layer two on Ethereum, you cannot build an IBC compatible, a Cosmos compatible app chain as your Ethereum layer two, just doesn't work like that. I'm sad to say.

• 1:17:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is it possible that it will in the future? I mean, is there research on going about this?

• 1:17:29David Hoffman?

  Think that's possible. I do not think that that is a possible thing to do. So this is, this kind of goes back to why you and I are like, kind of like maximalist in the sense of there's going to be a very low number of ecosystems, because all of these cross-layer-one like communication bridges are just fundamentally insecure. And so it makes sense for, from a security perspective, for there to be a fewer number of chains that all adhere to the same rules. And that's why Cosmos actually fits inside of a lot of the bankless philosophy that we've been talking about, and why the multi, multi, multi-layer-one thesis just does not work.

• 1:18:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what's, what's interesting about Cosmos, if you want, like, we did an episode with Zaki about, and Sonny from Cosmos about this very thing. And they talk about this idea of mesh security, which is sort of interesting, where a set of app chains can kind of share the same security in some way, that starts to simulate a little bit what Ethereum is doing. Of course, Ethereum is just saying with its layer two ecosystem, hey, everything is secured by and settles on layer one. So you don't have to worry about that problem of, you know, diluting your security when you transition from one chain to the other with IBC.

• 1:18:42David Hoffman?

  This question is from PD in the inner circle. On the return of the ball. ETH becomes significantly deflationary and at the time, a significant amount of ETH is staked, scarcity could be an issue. Well, good for price, could it be damaging for the system? Is there a mechanism in 1559 to control the level of deflation? And so this is the concern that the ultrasound economics of Ether are so good and so strong that Ether becomes so scarce that its price is so high that we just don't want to use it inside of DeFi. We don't want to turn to Xact with gas. We don't want, it's just overly deflationary. And this is actually a question that I asked Justin Drake directly. And so if you want to hear this answer from Justin Drake,

• 1:19:25David Hoffman?

  there is an interview I did with him on YouTube about this very thing at DevCon. Basically, first and foremost, there is a limit as to how much Ether we can burn. As Ether goes up in price, you burn less. And so it doesn't just burn straight to zero supply. The more you burn, the harder it becomes to burn more. So the lower supply of Ether there is, the more resistance there is to further burn. And so this is why people like Justin Drake thinks that we kind of asymptote somewhere between like 60 and 90 million supply of Ether. And so there will always be enough Ether to go around. And then the other thing is like, Justin Drake in his answer delineates between what he calls collateral money and debt money. And collateral money is like Ether, bearer assets, bearer instruments.

• 1:20:08David Hoffman?

  And you want collateral money to always go up in price. And then you want debt money, like dollars, to always go down in price. That's kind of how our economy works out because then no one ever gets liquidated if their collateral goes up and their debt denominated value goes down. And so this is actually the foundations of a very robust economy. And the concerns that like there's just not enough Ether to go around doesn't really like actually play out in economic terms.

• 1:20:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, another way to term that is collateral money is like store of value money. And debt money is more what you want for a medium of exchange. We don't actually think that Ether is going to make a good medium of exchange, right? Something like a stablecoin is a much better medium of exchange. Something like DAI, for instance, or even RAI can be a much better medium of exchange than Ether. But as Ether accrues value and gets more valuable, then it becomes a better collateral money. There's more economic bandwidth. We haven't talked about that concept in a while, but that applies here too. All right, last question for you, David. This is from Sell. Norocos.

• 1:21:12David Hoffman?

  Norocos, yeah.

• 1:21:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sell Norocos asks, he's thinking about, or they're thinking about ETH Denver for the first time this year, what's the best way to make the most of it? And this is from a non-technical person. So going to the ETH Denver, that is a conference in February, of course, in the Ethereum community, but really welcomes all ecosystems. If you're non-technical, what's the way to make the most out of that type of an experience?

• 1:21:36David Hoffman?

  There's a bunch of different answers that I've got for you, Sell Norocos. And since you're in the Inner Circle Discord, I hope to see you at the meetup that we're going to host, so the Bankless HQ meetup, where you'll be able to meet other members. Generally, people in the Bankless community are non-technical, so that's a great place to start. But also, I'm also a huge advocate of non-technical people joining hackathons, which seems to initially be like, what? That's weird, that's the opposite of what I want to do. Let me tell you, technical people need non-technical people to explain their shit. And so if you can market something, or promote something, or write a presentation, and present things that technical devs aren't very good at presenting, there is always a supply gut

• 1:22:19David Hoffman?

  for non-technical people joining hackathons to be like the marketers, the promoters, to actually do the pitch. And that can really make or break a lot of hackathons, hackathon projects. So that's definitely a very strong way to get involved there as well. And then overall, Denver, ETH Denver has developed into a more and more and more non-technical conference, even though it is a hackathon first and foremost. The first ETH Denver I did in 2018, I just went to every single booth, one by one, by one, and I was like, hey, what are you guys doing? Hey, what are you guys doing?

• 1:22:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  You just talk to people.

• 1:22:50David Hoffman?

  I just talk, you just talk to people. And then you meet other people who are listening to your questions, because some people are just really shy, and they have questions, but they just don't, they're too shy to answer, to ask them. So they'll listen to you ask questions for people at the booth, and if you're asking good questions, people will pick up on that. And so like, booths are conversation starters. And so that's what I recommend if you are a non-technical person going to ETH Denver, go to the Inner Circle meetup, sign up for the hackathon as a non-technical person, and talk to people at the booths.

• 1:23:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  And talk to everyone is probably good advice, right?

• 1:23:23David Hoffman?

  Come say hi to me.

• 1:23:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, takes of the week. We got the first one. What are we looking at from Taha's Offer?

• 1:23:30David Hoffman?

  Taha's Offer. So this is a meme. This is a very old meme, and it's funny to see this resurface. And it's basically a picture of two Legos. One is Ether, one is Bitcoin. And Ether actually has the little Lego dimples that let other Legos latch on to them. And BTC is just completely smooth. And so it's just a funny illustration. I think this meme actually came from the Money Legos meme, which I created way back when. I don't know if I can pat myself on the back on that one. But yeah, so this is the Money Legos meme, except Bitcoins without the like, you know, the composability part.

• 1:24:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why remind people of this? Like, this tweet got a lot of traction.

• 1:24:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I don't think people have seen this meme in a very long time. Yeah.

• 1:24:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  So they're like, oh, this is new. What a great way to articulate it.

• 1:24:11David Hoffman?

  Right, no, this is an old meme, yeah.

• 1:24:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is interesting from Domathy. So he says this, "This is about the ossification, in particular, of Ethereum. I think the question is about when is Ethereum going to ossify? So when are all of the changes going to be in? You know, the roadmap fully complete, and the code is not touched anymore?" Domathy says, "Ossification is a Bitcoin meme. In my opinion, the Ethereum equivalent should be homeostasis. The chain self-regulates to keep its core properties intact forever. Through crypto, graphic means first, then crypto-economic means, then through the social layer as a last resort. Really interesting,

• 1:24:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  really good take, I think. Ossification is out. Homeostasis should be the goal." What's your take on this?

• 1:25:03David Hoffman?

  I just thought that this was a really elegant way of differentiating the end game of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin loves to talk about how ossified it is. And from the Ethereum perspective, we consider that fragile, and also, they did it too soon. The homeostasis balance of Ethereum, whenever I hear a biology word in cryptoeconomics, Ryan, you know I get super excited.

• 1:25:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Homeostasis just means in balance and self-regulating. And if something is deviated from a particular set point, then it naturally and organically returns to a homeostatic balance. And I just really, really like that. And then also, the order of operations of, first, fix things with cryptography. And if that doesn't work, then do it with cryptoeconomics. And if that doesn't work, then you have to go to the social layer in order to fix something that breaks. Well, a perfect example of this to me is like, let's say, quantum computers come out and both Bitcoin and Ethereum need to be quantum resistant. If you're ossified and the code doesn't change, how do you become quantum resistant? Right. Well, you really can't.

• 1:26:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  You have to break the ossification principle, right? But if you're going for homostasis, then you acknowledge that the principle of both Bitcoin and Ethereum is for it to be secure. And obviously, that means quantum resistant. And so you upgrade the protocol as necessary to adapt to that new reality. Now, nothing fundamentally has changed about the core values of the system. You're just updating the cryptography. Yep. Right? But you can't say it's ossified if you're still making code changes. And of course, we're going to need to be making code changes for both Bitcoin and Ethereum moving forward. And I think Ethereum acknowledges that. I really like this mental model, homostasis. I'm gonna start using that. Thank you, Domethi. Hundred percent. Here's another take, David. You say this one.

• 1:26:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this is a take from Ryan Shon Adams. Let's be clear on one thing. David and I are not journalists. We just like talking about crypto stuff. Ryan, when you tweeted out this meme, this tweet, I definitely saw the same tweet that you did right before that caused-

• 1:27:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really?

• 1:27:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that inspired you to write this tweet.

• 1:27:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  What was it?

• 1:27:09David Hoffman?

  It was the person who was in our Twitter was like, "Why doesn't Ryan and David talk about Polkadot?" Like, at some point, it's like, it just doesn't interest me.

• 1:27:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's bad journalism.

• 1:27:18David Hoffman?

  It's bad journalism. You guys aren't doing your jobs.

• 1:27:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:27:22David Hoffman?

  Like, who defines what my job is? No one does. And we just, Ryan and I just talk about stuff that we like. And that's like, as, people like, sometimes read into, like, there's this grand conspiracy is like, "We're not covering Chainlink, and we're not covering Polkadot, and we're not covering my favorite ecosystem." And that, and like, why, what's the conspiracy here?

• 1:27:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  It could be because we just haven't gotten there, guys, because we're busy.

• 1:27:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we're super busy.

• 1:27:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It could also be just like, we're not interested in the moment, right? But it could also be like, this idea, I think of a journalist as something different. It's, it's almost like, in a way, David, a true journalist is doing something even like, more sacred than you and I are doing. Right. Like, what I would say is, what are we? We're just like, investors on the crypto journey, on the bankless journey. Like, we care deeply about these values, we're gonna talk about them, we're excited by the technology, by what's going on, we're excited about the social movement. What a journalist does is something different. They need to be getting at kind of like- The ultimate facts and truth of circumstances. So like even in these rollups, I mean, we're doing our best when we, when we report on things, where we talk about things to uncover the truth, but we're not doing like deep journalistic

• 1:28:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  investigation on the things.

• 1:28:35David Hoffman?

  We're just giving our takes.

• 1:28:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're giving our takes, right? And so, but that like, I have a ton of respect for real journalists and I would love to have more real journalists who are doing the deep work in this space to uncover truth, even if it's uncomfortable and talk about that truth. It's just not what you and I are doing.

• 1:28:57David Hoffman?

  It's not what we do.

• 1:28:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just tweeted this out just to kind of make that, you know, make that clear. And I hope that's clear to you, Bankless listeners, that, you know, we try our best on here. We're pursuing what we think is interesting in 2023. It would be a different standard if we started calling ourselves journalists and I never will. I don't think you ever will either. It's just not a thing that we are.

• 1:29:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's, that's the wrong mental model to consider what Bankless is. Bankless is a thesis driven media company. We have biases and attitudes about the way that we want the future to be. And those, those biases and attitudes and theses all are enveloped under what we call the Bankless movement.

• 1:29:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. Well, on that note, David, this is not journalism, of course. This is not the news, but why don't you tell me what you're bullish on?

• 1:29:45David Hoffman?

  One of my theses, Ryan, is the flippening. And so I'm bullish on the flippening. One of your 2023 predictions was that the flippening is not going to happen this year. I'm not necessarily going to predict that it is, but I definitely think it's on the table more than what people think that it is. Um, I think ether versus Bitcoin can go up way faster than what people expect because of proof that we are in proof of sake with, with EIP 1559. Like we are in a new paradigm of ether price action. And so like the previous coupled relationship that we had with Bitcoin from proof of work, I think is much more broken. And so I tweeted out this tweet, the lapping is going to be 10 times easier than the flippening.

• 1:30:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's the lapping, David?

• 1:30:31David Hoffman?

  Oh, I'm so glad you asked.

• 1:30:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's your private meme.

• 1:30:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and so the flipping is when ether flips Bitcoin in market cap as in with ether as an ecosystem, ether market cap is worth more than Bitcoin. The lapping is when ether is worth 2X what Bitcoin is. And I'm saying, what I'm saying here is that it's taken a ton of work to even come remotely close to the flipping. We're like less than 50% of the way there, although I do think we're closer than we actually, we perceive it to be. What I'm saying is, once we do flip Bitcoin, when we get to 2X Bitcoin, which is the lapping. The lapping is when we go 2X the market cap of Bitcoin, that is going to be 10 times easier than getting to the flipping. Because once you flip Bitcoin, it's so easy just to do it again, and again, and again.

• 1:31:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can I ask you, why do you care about this? For someone thinking like, oh, is this just David's bag bias? He has much more ETH than he has Bitcoin. I don't even know if he has any Bitcoin. So of course, he's talking about ETH. Does this matter beyond like your bags, David?

• 1:31:30David Hoffman?

  So this goes back, kind of why we made Bankless in the first place, is we had theses and ideas about how crypto economics works, and we didn't feel like the rest of the crypto world had heard these theses, and no one was broadcasting them. And the whole ETH is money thesis is largely where Bankless started. Back in 2018, 2019, when you and I were first getting to know each other, like, the whole ETH is money thing was a very contrarian bet. And so we came together over that shared frustrations, like, why don't people understand ether, like this protocol?

• 1:32:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also DeFi, David.

• 1:32:05David Hoffman?

  Also DeFi, yeah. And so like, the ether is the best crypto asset of all time, if not the best asset in the world ever, is one of our foundational theses that has pioneered like our own thinking in this space. And as a result of my belief on that, I have purchased a bunch of ether, because that aligns with my theses and beliefs about how the future of crypto will be. And so, my claim is that the crypto economics of Ethereum is just 10, 100 times more sound than Bitcoins, and I expect that to show up in the price sooner or later, especially after the merge and proof of stake and EIP 1559.

• 1:32:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  So this is a bet based on a thesis.

• 1:32:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  How about this? What are we looking at this tweet, David?

• 1:32:51David Hoffman?

  Right. Okay. So this is on, there's two charts here and we're looking at the first one. This left, this left chart is how bullish, if you believe in the flipping thesis, this is roughly about how bullish you are. The ether flips Bitcoin.

• 1:33:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bitcoin ratio we're looking at.

• 1:33:03David Hoffman?

  This is the ETH to Bitcoin ratio chart and I've drawn a green line at the end to indicate where I believe that we are going. We are currently at point 074 and I think we will, this is what people who believe in the flipping think that we're going to do. It's like, oh, we're going to flip in Bitcoin at like point 17 and that will take somewhere between one and three, four more years to get that done. And so that's what this chart shows. This is what the typical flipper believes. Here's, here's what I believe, Ryan, which is.

• 1:33:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  What have you done here?

• 1:33:32David Hoffman?

  And so.

• 1:33:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Shortened the time range here?

• 1:33:33David Hoffman?

  No, I've actually increased the time range and so this arrow goes all the way out to 2030. But where people think the flipping happens at point 15, yo, keep, keep going, guys. Because once ether flips Bitcoin, there's no reason why it can't keep going after that. It doesn't stop after flipping Bitcoin. We flipped Bitcoin a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And it definitely takes time, but.

• 1:33:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  By the way, so when you, when you put it the ratio, the other way you could like, that this could play out is Bitcoin collapses.

• 1:34:06David Hoffman?

  Sure, sure. It could go down versus ether for sure.

• 1:34:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think that's a, like, that's a possibility?

• 1:34:11David Hoffman?

  I don't think Bitcoin collapses. I don't think Bitcoin collapses. I just think it has a cap on growth.

• 1:34:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Stagnant?

• 1:34:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 1:34:17David Hoffman?

  Proof of work is fundamentally a cap on growth because as your price of your proof of work token goes up, so does the net average sell pressure. And so the arrow at this point, where it's pointing to Ryan, is at point 7 ETH to BTC. So that is ether being worth 10 times more than it is right now in Bitcoin terms. So that's five Bitcoins. So I'm saying by 2030, ether is five Bitcoins.

• 1:34:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're creating content again about this, too. I watched this video, it's like a 13 minute video on our other bankless YouTube feed. Did you know we have a bankless YouTube feed? Two bankless YouTube feeds. This is the bankless podcast that you're listening to, but there's a bankless short video feed. And this is a 13 minute video about ETH season. Got me bullish, David. That's my job, brother. Watching this video. It's fantastic.

• 1:35:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  I get people bullish. David's bullish on ETH. And that's what I'm bullish about. Specifically relative to Bitcoin, huh? Yeah, that's exactly right. What are you bullish on, Ryan? I'm just being a user again. I get to be a user again this year. Everyone was obsessed with speculation last year and I'm really excited about using some new tools in crypto. I feel like I have more time to do this. I feel like the builders are continuing to build. And it's, the whole narrative is less about speculation, it's more about try new things. This is crypto. It feels very much like 2019 to me, 2020 to me, where we're just like trying a whole bunch of things. So some cool things that I tried recently is, I mentioned the Kepler wallet. That is a wallet like MetaMask for exploring the cosmos ecosystem, all the app chains. I recommend that. It's a really cool place to start.

• 1:35:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, this David, I don't know if you've seen this browser extension, it's called Fire. But you know that problem that you have where in MetaMask, you don't really know when you're clicking on buttons, what is actually happening here? Yeah. Well, Fire is kind of another extension that explains exactly what's going on. So, look at this. I am transferring this NFT to this particular address. It's explaining in human terms what I'm actually doing. A really useful extension that you can add on top of MetaMask to sort of explain the transaction before you click approve. So it's an extension for an extension? It's an extension for an extension and very useful one at that.

• 1:36:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Even recently, I was going back through Uniswap and now with Uniswap, there's a Fiat Onramp on top of Uniswap. There's NFTs. You can just trade NFTs on Uniswap. Yeah, most people don't realize. You can trade NFTs on Uniswap. I almost haven't realized it because I've been so busy not actually getting to use these apps. So anyway, I just, high level here.

• 1:36:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Everything's great in terms of the tools that are available versus the last bear market.

• 1:36:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  And yet, people are down in the dumps, but I think it's a great time to be a user. So ignore price, start using some more apps. This is what we do during the bear market is we level up on these sorts of things. And as always, there's rewards on the other side. So I'm bullish about being a user again and having that opportunity. Yeah, I hope you get some time to do that, too. Try some things out this year, David.

• 1:37:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I have to take a break from making content. Usually I just ask other people's experiences.

• 1:37:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. All right, what do we got? Meme of the week this year?

• 1:37:28David Hoffman?

  Meme of the week, meme of the week. Okay, so we have a picture of SBF in a nice suit and a backpack. And I'm not gonna bother to try and sing this, but you can hear it in the background. Making my way downtown, scamming fast, made Luna crash, I'm homebound. I don't know how the song goes, but you can hear it right now. And just like, it's so perfect. Hearing this music, looking at this picture is so great.

• 1:37:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  There we go. Guys, your first roll up of 2023. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed the meme of the week. We're excited to bring 51 more to you in the coming year. Risks and disclaimers, as always, gotta let you know that crypto is risky. So is DeFi, so is ETH. You could definitely 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 once again for another year on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.