ROLLUP: Celsius Bankruptcy, Vitalik's Book, GHO Aave Stablecoin, 3ac StarkWare Token

Second Week of July, 2022 ------ 📣JUNO | Crypto Friendly Banking https://juno.finance/bankless ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🚀ROCKET POOL | ETH STAKING https://bankless.cc/RocketPool ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ❎ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦁BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 🌴MAKER DAO | DECENTRALIZED LENDING https://bankless.cc/MakerDAO 🔐LEDGER | SECURE STAKING https://bankless.cc/Ledger ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:48 MARKETS 7:15 Inflation https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/us-inflation-june-2022-consumer-price-index-11657664129 Price Increases: https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1547198607539011585?s=21&t=e457gZL25lgi6P0Wx43tNQ https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1547198607539011585?s=21&t=e457gZL25lgi6P0Wx43tNQ 9:15 The Dollar Index https://imgur.com/MKEuGPM 11:25 The Market Reacts https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1547320884339286018?s=20&t=F5_D0tthgHnIzI-Wrx0zfA https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1547320884339286018?s=20&t=F5_D0tthgHnIzI-Wrx0zfA 12:15 Long Term Debt Cycle https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1547063441894023168?s=20&t=0fcQASOqnFpj3VikLD0-qQ https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1547063441894023168?s=20&t=0fcQASOqnFpj3VikLD0-qQ 15:18 Leverage and IRS Returns https://twitter.com/kofinas/status/1547585564253122560?s=20&t=lAdodYBFhqn3zSG4739A7w https://twitter.com/kofinas/status/1547585564253122560?s=20&t=lAdodYBFhqn3zSG4739A7w https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1547266090794831874?s=21&t=xVDAGNuF4hUXNheiY0iB2g https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1547266090794831874?s=21&t=xVDAGNuF4hUXNheiY0iB2g 17:28 JPY and BTC https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1547539513970393089?s=20&t=vi3nXg-hLmfTeAefjmZFUw https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1547539513970393089?s=20&t=vi3nXg-hLmfTeAefjmZFUw https://twitter.com/kylewaters_/thread/1537183959217414144 19:30 DeFi Treasuries https://twitter.com/darrenlautf/status/1547324258514239489?s=21&t=6UH6BaCJc3hdWyoyi1NzDQ https://twitter.com/darrenlautf/status/1547324258514239489?s=21&t=6UH6BaCJc3hdWyoyi1NzDQ 20:50 Lido Domination https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a82f74-2a92-444e-98ba-d5a4a0d3c17a_1920x1289.jpeg 22:00 NEWS 24:30 Celsius Bankruptcy https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/14/celsius-files-for-chapter-11-bankrupcty/ 26:30 Celsius DeFi Debts https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1546924519419514880?s=20&t=DN25Do0S6J6ryEtNdeModg https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1546924519419514880?s=20&t=DN25Do0S6J6ryEtNdeModg 27:48 Celsius 0xb1 Jason Stone https://twitter.com/0x_b1/thread/1545153652624691200 32:02 Celsius Money Back? https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1547571532687233024?s=20&t=yTl4oCOBI1yUQX0xhWsKXg https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1547571532687233024?s=20&t=yTl4oCOBI1yUQX0xhWsKXg 33:00 Su Zhu and StarkWare https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1546801270014758912?s=20&t=FD5wGwnHHtH6tJZsSNO0gw https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1546801270014758912?s=20&t=FD5wGwnHHtH6tJZsSNO0gw 36:30 StarkWare Token https://twitter.com/StarkWareLtd/status/1547223754832478209?s=20&t=Bf47hQ2qfHbtscx3jiCxvg https://twitter.com/StarkWareLtd/status/1547223754832478209?s=20&t=Bf47hQ2qfHbtscx3jiCxvg 41:30 Vitalik’s New Book https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1545164294576283649?s=20&t=-oHiYIQR90FvxeAe2F7O0A https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1545164294576283649?s=20&t=-oHiYIQR90FvxeAe2F7O0A 44:30 GHO Aave Stablecoin https://thedefiant.io/aave-gho-stablecoin/ 49:30 Polygon, Robinhood, Disney Accelerator https://twitter.com/0xPolygon/status/1545022519400271872 https://twitter.com/0xPolygon/status/1547253982133100544 51:04 ENS Domains https://twitter.com/twofivedev/thread/1546505824389963778 56:15 Bill Murray Cool Cat https://twitter.com/coolcatsnft/status/1546705413973966848?s=20&t=Nk6-jMtAwzwtwtE9Ffw2tg https://twitter.com/coolcatsnft/status/1546705413973966848?s=20&t=Nk6-jMtAwzwtwtE9Ffw2tg 58:30 Gamestop NFT Marketplace https://twitter.com/finestonematt/status/1546917601133076482?s=21&t=KuNjhiGmmcKTyzoZ20uqyg https://twitter.com/finestonematt/status/1546917601133076482?s=21&t=KuNjhiGmmcKTyzoZ20uqyg 1:00:38 Michael Saylor Bitcoin https://cointelegraph.com/news/btc-bull-michael-saylor-ethereum-is-obviously-a-security https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1546615920046514176?s=20&t=CJ2FC1QB7CkOR_rknfeM0w https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1546615920046514176?s=20&t=CJ2FC1QB7CkOR_rknfeM0w RELEASES 1:05:18 sudoAMM https://twitter.com/sudoswap/status/1545535663365165063?s=20&t=z4VF_2nZTstIdLHW3fR9AQ https://twitter.com/sudoswap/status/1545535663365165063?s=20&t=z4VF_2nZTstIdLHW3fR9AQ 1:06:30 LensTube https://twitter.com/lenstubexyz/status/1546533325442932737 RAISES 1:07:15 Lightspeed $7 Billion https://www.theblock.co/post/157116/lightspeed-raises-over-7-billion-across-four-funds-launches-new-crypto-native-team 1:07:35 Multicoin $430m Fund https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/12/crypto-focused-multicoin-capital-launches-430m-venture-fund/ 1:08:43 LiFi Router https://twitter.com/lifiprotocol/status/1546488975174422530 1:09:34 Chris Dixon Forecaster https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1546890612393140225 1:10:52 Gnosis Safe https://safe.mirror.xyz/zMPp8uqZpxKgeXotSFv76bd2G8lJTmghH1FDWFm604c 1:12:07 Jobs https://pallet.xyz/list/bankless/jobs 1:14:50 Questions from the Nation https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1547250346677903361 1:15:56 PoS Wealth https://twitter.com/mefford_jeremy/status/1547301425088266241?s=20 1:22:35 David and Carbs https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1547251457505869824?s=20&t=LZA3X8WFziRxIq4qlaQA-g https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1547251457505869824?s=20&t=LZA3X8WFziRxIq4qlaQA-g 1:26:15 The DeFi Dance https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1546166031890219009?s=20&t=4cEZgAZiUgjHLyHCtdpcUQ https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1546166031890219009?s=20&t=4cEZgAZiUgjHLyHCtdpcUQ TAKES 1:28:15 Spicy Vitalik https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1546776356083699712?s=20&t=Oa-t7XlX_fuXyE4sBNpxCg https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1546776356083699712?s=20&t=Oa-t7XlX_fuXyE4sBNpxCg 1:30:00 Become a Millionaire https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1544871855370149889?s=20&t=l7IqrAmRyWavzjdYP7Lk9w https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1544871855370149889?s=20&t=l7IqrAmRyWavzjdYP7Lk9w 1:31:20 DeFi Worked Great https://panteracapital.com/blockchain-letter/defi-worked-great/ 1:31:55 What David’s Bullish On 1:33:05 What Ryan’s Bullish On https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet 1:36:50 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/enjoyoor/status/1545432411630084097?s=21&t=ZOhA6SUWEtnR4i2KOj-e3w https://twitter.com/enjoyoor/status/1545432411630084097?s=21&t=ZOhA6SUWEtnR4i2KOj-e3w ----- Not financial or tax advice. https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  Like we need local, at home, decentralized, sustainable agriculture food production, which Ryan is veggies and meat. Veggies and meat. I have opinions on this thing.

• 0:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. David, doing a nutrition podcast is just about the most bear market thing I could think of right now.

• 0:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, Bankless Nation, it is time for the weekly roll up. Happy third week of July. I hope you have your morning coffee. David, you drinking a morning coffee?

• 0:28David Hoffman?

  Oh, two, two every single day. Yeah, absolutely. We never miss it.

• 0:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  No carbs in coffee, right?

• 0:33David Hoffman?

  Oh, absolutely. No, black, black coffee. As soon as you put anything into coffee, sugar, milk, anything, it becomes a beverage. It's no longer coffee.

• 0:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, dude, these, these takes.

• 0:43David Hoffman?

  These Matthew takes.

• 0:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, anti-carb maximalism here. I don't know if we're going to stand for it. We're not talking nutrition today, though. I know you want to start another podcast, but the topics of the week are crypto. David, what are we going to cover on the roll up today?

• 0:55David Hoffman?

  Celsius files for bankruptcy after paying off its DeFi loans. Important, very important order of operations there. So we're going to cover that. Suzy of Three Arrows Capital leaks the Starknet token and then the next day Starknet announces a token.

• 1:12David Hoffman?

  Go figure.

• 1:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thanks, Sue.

• 1:13David Hoffman?

  We're going to cover.

• 1:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  You gave us something.

• 1:15David Hoffman?

  Cover all of that, both like why he leaked the Starknet token and all the Starknet token details. Also, Vitalik writing a book coming out on Amazon called Proof of Stake. Do you have it preordered, Ryan?

• 1:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  I did preorder that. Yeah, just last week.

• 1:29David Hoffman?

  And then Ave doing a stablecoin. G H O for goats, the go stablecoin. Cool.

• 1:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Lot, lot, lot happening in crypto, of course. We're going to talk about markets in just a second. And of course, if you like the roll up, if you like the Bankless podcast, if you appreciate what we are doing here, if you want to spread the word, make sure you like and subscribe. Give us a review if you are viewing this podcast, listening to this podcast in your podcast player too. Spotify, Apple, if you will. This comes out every Friday, of course.

• 1:56David Hoffman?

  Also, something new on Spotify. We actually have video on Spotify now.

• 2:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. I was just going to say that.

• 2:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So if you are on Spotify and you also want to see mine and Ryan's faces, that option is available to you.

• 2:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's great. I actually started seeing that on the Lex Friedman podcast. It was the first time on Spotify I saw Spotify video and I kind of like it. It gives us another avenue for distribution of the video beyond YouTube. So we get some redundancy there.

• 2:20David Hoffman?

  YouTube is the only place that we have our video. Well, not anymore because of Spotify, but it's kind of crazy to think about like, oh, well, we put out the podcast everywhere, but like YouTube's the only place that gets the video.

• 2:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  And do you remember that one time YouTube kicked our channel off?

• 2:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Remember that one time the YouTube CEO apologized for kicking us off YouTube?

• 2:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was pretty cool. Can't believe that happened. That was this year, right? Did that happen this year? It's all a blur.

• 2:43David Hoffman?

  Wasn't that long ago.

• 2:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  One thing you need to do though, is go check out Juno. Juno is sponsoring this message. I really like what Juno is doing. This is a crypto native bank account. Of course, I have a bank account, David, like full confession. I know you do too. We have fiat bills that we have to pay.

• 3:01David Hoffman?

  My landlord doesn't take Ether sadly, not that I would pay.

• 3:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, sadly, maybe someday, but my bank account, I bank at Wells Fargo, like true story. It sucks. I can't do anything in crypto inside of my fiat bank account. And that is why if you have a bank account, you also need a crypto native bank account. What features does Juno bring to the table, David?

• 3:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so your Juno checking account can turn into your token on Polygon in like one click, five minutes or less. And so like, you know, my world also bank at Wells Fargo. That's why we pick on Wells Fargo all the time. It goes from Wells Fargo to my Gemini to swap to Ether to then into my crypto wallet. On Juno, it goes from your checking account to Ether on your preferred layer two of choice, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, ZK Sync and Starkware coming soon, in one click, right? And so we're just cutting out like 30 minutes and like 17 button presses. And you probably have to reset your password anyways. And so that's like super awesome, like checking account to layer two, crazy. 6% on your USDC if you want that, that's an opt in thing.

• 4:05David Hoffman?

  3% on Bitcoin and Ether. But then also if you sign up, if you get a direct deposit, which also can be turned into crypto. So you go from your employer paycheck to crypto to a layer two, all inside. Of one app, which is awesome. But that the direct deposit gets turned into crypto. And if you sign up and get your direct deposit, they will pay you $100. And if you deposit crypto on the crypto side, they'll pay you $10. So there is a link in the show notes to sign up for Onjuno. This is the new era of banks. We're going to have banks for a while, sadly. But we do want the good ones to have cool crypto native features that allows you to leave your bank easier if you so choose.

• 4:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Another step to going bankless. Click the link in the show notes. That's bankless.cc slash Juno to find that out. David, let's get to markets. What's Bitcoin doing this week, my friend?

• 4:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Bitcoin, a little bit down on the week. Start of the week at $20,400. Oh, it's gone up since I wrote down these prices. Crazy. Okay, so crypto markets, they move.

• 5:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not that much, though.

• 5:01David Hoffman?

  Not that much.

• 5:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Don't get too excited.

• 5:02David Hoffman?

  So down from 20,20,400 up to down to 20,150. So like down 1% ish, 1.5%.

• 5:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  And how about ETH?

• 5:12David Hoffman?

  Ether, start of the week at 1185, currently at 1115. So down about, what is that? I have to redo these numbers because like when I wrote these numbers, it was 1080, not 1115. So like rough 6% down 6% call it. Quick math.

• 5:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, as of now, as of now, when you listen to this on Friday morning, it'll be completely different. So none of what David said actually matters.

• 5:35David Hoffman?

  Why do we even do this?

• 5:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. Why do we even tell you price? You know, it's just going to change. But we're looking at trends over time, David. And the trend is down bad. But but there's also some interesting inflation news. And crypto is not responding as negatively to that recent inflation news as it could have. So maybe, maybe there's a silver lining there. We'll get to some of that later. But what about the ratio, David?

• 5:57David Hoffman?

  Ratio flat on the week, flat on the week. It's flat, 0.055.

• 6:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not telling us anything. It's telling us market doesn't know what to do right now. Global cryptocurrency total market cap. We are under a trillion dollars. What are we headed at today?

• 6:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, last, last week, we were up to 976 billion. This week, we're down to 929 billion.

• 6:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  The good news is we get to celebrate that 1 trillion yet again. And probably get back down again and again and again. Repeat. What is the point of looking at any of these prices? How about Ethereum gas prices? Not doing too bad there. I mean, they're down as well. So if you're trying to get a transaction through, it's a good time to do that.

• 6:38David Hoffman?

  DeFi is cheap right now. I think the the average gray price in the last week was like 20 something.

• 6:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  You doing anything new on Ethereum? It's like all the cheap, all the cheap gas transactions?

• 6:49David Hoffman?

  I'm not doing too much.

• 6:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  No?

• 6:50David Hoffman?

  Well, that's reflected in like the usage charts, like the usage charts are generally down. Except, you know, I was looking at the usage charts, you know, the usage chart that's actually up in terms of like usage and volume?

• 7:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  US, uh, USDC, stablecoins? I was gonna say, the transactions I actually did on Ethereum this week were all like withdrawals and deposits and like stablecoin stuff. I was like, oh, it's nice, I only have to pay like a dollar for that. Usually it's like five, six, something like this. All right, well, let's talk about the big macro story, which continues to be inflation. David, new numbers came in this week and they were the worst in 41 years.

• 7:25David Hoffman?

  They were higher than last month.

• 7:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, US inflation just hit a four decade high of 9.1%. That is the headline in the Wall Street Journal. We should break this down a little bit, but first, first, here's the chart. Look how bad it is. 9.1% inflation just shooting up like a rocket in 2022. And then from a category perspective, what are the big contributing categories, David?

• 7:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, energy is obviously the big one. So the biggest ones are fuel oil in the last year has doubled, gasoline has gone up 60%. Gas utilities up 38%, electricity up 14%. So like those are the biggest ones and they're all energy related. The next one after that is food, like groceries, up 12%, which is also a proxy of energy. And then new cars is like the first non-food, non-energy one, which is up, up 12%. Overall CPI up 9.1%. I heard this really awesome illustration for like energy. Like, why, why is, why do people pay attention to energy? Like so much in the global macro space? Energy is like nature's interest rate, is the cost of doing things.

• 8:34David Hoffman?

  If you need to move yourself any further than where you can walk, you have to consume energy. Elevators take energy, escalators take energy, cars, energy, trains, energy, buses, planes. Like those things also move all of the things that people need, like, like food. And so when, when energy prices goes up, like the cost of existing also goes up, which makes the world a harder place to exist in as it goes in. So this is why everyone's concerned.

• 9:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's like a transaction fee for real life, right?

• 9:04David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 9:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess that's why they call it gas on Ethereum. It is really the analog. If you want to do anything in the metaverse on Ethereum, you have to pay gas. If you want to do anything in real life, it's going to come at you through the price of energy and fuel costs. David, we are also looking at the DXY, which is, this is basically US dollars, the ratio of US dollars to primarily the yen, Japanese yen and the euro.

• 9:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's both of those.

• 9:30David Hoffman?

  The euro is the dominant one, but it's a basket of currencies. I think the euro is the biggest one, followed by the yen.

• 9:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  And what's the story with the DXY? What's it doing?

• 9:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we are hitting like also a very, very long time high, all time high and for a while. I think like the last time it was this high was something like 2001 or 2002 or something. 109 is the index. For record, let's see, in the most recent high was like 102 back in like 2017, also when they were like raising interest rates most recently. But then COVID hit and it dumped. When the dollar is high, everything else is low by comparison. And so like you, when you see this dollar index, you're like, and you're seeing that go through the moon, like all assets have suffered because that's the dollar going up versus, well, not all assets is a basket of currencies, but like strength in the dollar, right? A lot of like, everyone's going to France for ECC in a little bit, myself included.

• 10:22David Hoffman?

  And all of a sudden, like my fiat, my fiat dollars are gonna buy me some extra breakfast, you know?

• 10:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you see, David, euros and the dollar are at parity now?

• 10:30David Hoffman?

  They're both down below parity.

• 10:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Below parity?

• 10:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, one euro is one dollar, 99, wait, one dollar, one dollar and one cent is now one euro. No, wait, the inverse. Damn it, I'm so bad at math.

• 10:45David Hoffman?

  Anyways, the dollar is stronger than the euro.

• 10:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, but in that was like, so early in the week, I made the joke that Circle is just releasing a new staple coin, the Euro staple coin is called USDC.

• 10:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Kind of funny, but also like, I mean, if you're European, holding euros, not that funny. And it's, I don't know how long this is going to persist for, but our episode coming out with Luke Grauman is fantastic for answering this question about dollar strength and why it is strong. Doing a lot of macro content recently. I've really been enjoying and learning a lot, but how did the market react? Yes, so do I. How did the market react to all of this? You've got a meme for us.

• 11:27David Hoffman?

  I thought this was a great tweet. So, Northman Trader, good Twitter account, says, "Today, markets sold off on a hot CPI print," right? Because if CPI is high, that means like, oh no, like the Fed's going to raise interest rates, scary. That means like, you know, risk on assets is going to get plummeted even more. So, Northman Trader says, "Today, markets sold off on a hot CPI print, as it implies more aggressive rate hikes by the Fed. But then stocks rallied, realizing that this would result in a recession sooner, implying rate cuts earlier than expected, before dropping again, realizing that a recession would come first." Basically, like, hello volatility, hello uncertainty, we don't know what happens next. And just like, people are confused.

• 12:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hello, this face. This is the face that investors should be cheering on.

• 12:07David Hoffman?

  Podcast listeners don't have to look at that face of that dog.

• 12:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  But you should. This is why you should watch on Spotify right now. This is, you know a question I've said that I've had in the roll-up for the last couple of weeks about macro markets? Well, I feel like I finally got my answer. The question was, I was mystified why some people in macro are saying, "The Fed should just raise rates to 4% to 5%, like, we need that immediately." And other people are saying, "No, if the Fed raises to 4% to 5%, like, it breaks everything. The US goes insolvent, can no longer pay its interest payments." I was trying to understand why there's a difference of opinion. And here's one thing I concluded in our episode with Lynn Alden, our episode with Luke Grauman, that things are different. They're much different than the 1970s and Paul Volcker,

• 12:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  where we could just increase interest rates. And the big difference is, we are at the end of a long-term debt cycle. We have a massive amount of debt now in, you know...

• 13:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  The modern nations, modern economy, the US, Europe, Japan, China, all around the world. And so I tweet this out, we're at the end of a long-term debt cycle and the only way to deleverage is to hold interest rates below inflation for most of this decade. Inflation is not politically tenable, so Powell must play the idiot by pretending to fix inflation while simultaneously pursuing it. That actually might explain some of the actions of Powell, right?

• 13:31David Hoffman?

  I thought that was a really good and very nuanced take. Well, well done, well done.

• 13:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was, it's, it, well, this is kind of what I gleaned from our Luke Raman episode is just kind of, everyone's like, what the hell? Does Powell not know what he's doing? Maybe he knows what he's doing.

• 13:44David Hoffman?

  He's playing dumb.

• 13:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe he has to play the role of an actor, play the role of an idiot. Because the only way out of this, when you have wartime debt, like debt, debt levels, then you kind of get wartime inflation on the, on the other side of this. And this is to Lynn Alden's point, very much like the, the way the 1940s played out, where for that entire decade, you had about 6% inflation, while interest rates were at 0%. So the delta was 6%. In some years, you had 19%. That is basically the way out of this.

• 14:18David Hoffman?

  And Lynn Alden said this too. She said, what does the Fed know versus what does the Fed know and not, aren't telling us? So this is just a game of game theory. It's just like, all right, what are we going to portray to the markets that we're going to do? And what do the markets think that we're going to do? And so it's just really, it's just, it's a game of game theory between the markets and the Fed. And so like, how smart is the Fed? And like, if they're just playing dumb, like, oh yeah, we're going to raise interest rates as long as CPI goes higher, and then the CPI goes higher and the market just crashes on the CPI, high CPI print, the game theory works in favor of the Fed. Like it did the thing that they wanted to do without actually raising interest rates.

• 14:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and they know the only way out is through high CPI.

• 14:58David Hoffman?

  We hope that they know that. We don't actually know what they know, Ryan.

• 15:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  The other alternative is, is this, or Jerome Powell is an actual idiot and we're all screwed.

• 15:07David Hoffman?

  I don't know, I'm actually uncertain, which is true.

• 15:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess we get to find out. Man, the 2020s are fun.

• 15:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is great. Theory with all of our economic lives. Dmitri Kofrinis, we've had on the podcast before. I also thought that was a gave a really useful take. He says, I've been saying this for months. The Federal Reserve exists within a political system and that system is currently fighting a proxy war with Russia and increasingly China. Policymakers are aware of that. A rising dollar creates leverage in that war. When you are a current nation state with a currency and that currency is strong, you have more ammo to shoot with. As in when you print money and that money is stronger, you can do more things with that money. And so I thought this was a really good take. Like, we need a high dollar so that we can fight our actual kinetic war with Russia as a proxy. And then our economic war with China.

• 15:58David Hoffman?

  So a rising dollar is like in the is interest of like the incumbent political establishment of the United States.

• 16:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, David, I just realized we need to do an episode on this macro episode. The weaponization of the dollar. I want to, I want to dive into this in more depth.

• 16:13David Hoffman?

  I mean, I was just thinking I have Dmitri back on. I'm sure he would, he would, well, he says he's going to do this. So maybe we'll let him do this and then we'll just invite him on and he can tell us what he learned.

• 16:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  He does the hard work and then we snatch it from him. Thanks, Dmitri. Love you, man.

• 16:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  What else, David, as we're talking about inflation? Do you know, just do run some of the math here, right? On like gains, if you're thinking about your portfolio, where to store your value. Of course, if you have it in a savings account, a dollar in a savings account, it goes down 9% every year. Terrible place to hold value. So what do you do? Do you invest it? Well, everything's going down, so you got to be careful of the asset class. But Ryan Peterson makes this point. With a 9.1% inflation, if your portfolio makes less than 12% per year, the IRS takes 100% of your real dollar returns. The tax optimizer is here to remind you. There's still taxes too. And so even a 12% return, you're actually making zero in terms of real returns.

• 17:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nominal returns maybe, but zero in terms of real returns because you got to pay 30% of that at least to the IRS. So where does anyone make money?

• 17:17David Hoffman?

  Less than 12% this year. I'll tell you that.

• 17:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's probably the negative. Well, that means you don't have to pay any taxes, David. There's your silver lining.

• 17:26David Hoffman?

  Can't pay taxes if you aren't making money. Here's Arthur Hayes, and he says, "Must watch the JPY and the Euro, the Japanese yen and the Euro. Expect an, quote, 'intervention to weaken the USD if Japan is greater than 150 and the Euro is greater than 90 cents on the dollar. Intervention means Fed money printing, printing money means be a coin number go up. The situation is fluid." So this is what I'm seeing more and more, is more and people seeing like, "There's a path forward that seems not implausible, where like the money printer gets turned on again."

• 17:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think, and this is also to pump our Luke Grahman episode on Monday. Go listen to that episode, what he talks about is basically, a very likely way forward is that the Fed is going to start having to bail out Japan and Europe, its allies. Do that in various ways by probably purchasing bonds. And so, watch out for that, and I guess that's good for crypto. I don't know what it means for the rest of the world, but it's good for a scarce commodity asset.

• 18:22David Hoffman?

  The take here is that in times like these, the economy is now like under the whim of politics. Like, the economy used to be a free market, it's no longer a free market. It's going to do the thing that like the political institutions want it to do.

• 18:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, which is exactly why we need to do more on geopolitics here, David, to understand this. All right, what's happening in the crypto world, getting out of the inflation conversation? This is a stat about miners.

• 18:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, new all-time high set by miners selling Bitcoin. A net of 88,000 Bitcoins were sent to exchanges from miners, a new all-time high. So I guess that doesn't mean actually sold, miners have sent it to an exchange, but like miners don't buy...

• 19:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  The implication, though.

• 19:01David Hoffman?

  Miners don't buy Bitcoin, they mint Bitcoin. And so, a net outflow from miners to exchanges was hit at an all-time high yesterday.

• 19:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why do you think this is happening? Are they just trying to cover costs?

• 19:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, they gotta protect themselves from like further downside, because like, if Bitcoin goes down like another 50%, like a bunch of miners go underwater. So they also have to like hunker down for the winter.

• 19:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like miners are a massively resource-intensive kind of industry, right? It's like all the energy costs, but also all the hardware costs. What is this take about treasury values of DeFi protocols?

• 19:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Hozu had a really good take on this a while ago, where like treasuries that count their own native token as like their treasury, like you shouldn't be doing that. Because you can mint your token as much as you want anyway, so it doesn't really count. But for some reason, we do it. So anyways, the treasury of AVE at the peak was 1.08 billion dollars. Today, it is 101 million dollars. Uniswap at the peak, 4.8 billion dollars. Now it's 1.3 billion dollars. Index, peak 105 million dollars. Now it's 4 million dollars.

• 20:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  4 million?

• 20:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So like these treasuries, which are largely held in the native tokens, but other DeFi tokens as well, are all down bad. And so like this, Hozu was ringing the alarm about this. It's like, guys, need to diversify your treasuries at the peak, not at the bottom, or else you'll be in trouble. And no one really seemed to do that.

• 20:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think very few took his advice. But that's a great point. It's like, you know, if you look at Apple's balance sheet, and you're like, how much cash on hand do you have, Apple? They're not going to count all of the Apple shares that they could potentially mint, or they might have in reserve somewhere. They're going to tell you about the actual money in the bank.

• 20:37David Hoffman?

  I have an infinity money treasury.

• 20:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. How much Bitcoin do you have? How much ETH do you have? How much stablecoins do you have? That is your treasury, if you're a DAO. And I think we're learning that lesson. Real money. David, what is this? This is a kind of the Lido liquid staking balance as compared to all of the other liquid ETH tokens out there, liquid ETH staking tokens out there. And what are we seeing here?

• 21:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the concern of Lido centralization has been pretty big for a while. And you can see it's showing up here in the numbers. 4.1 million Ether is staked with Lido, which of the liquid staking services, the people that have like a liquid staking derivative, like Lido has staked ETH, Rocketpool has R ETH, Lido's got 90.6% of that share. And so like the centralization of Lido is like an increasingly large concern. Some people call it like the biggest systemic risk to Ethereum since the DAO itself, just because like network effects, we get network effects, like staked ETH is super liquid, it has the most integrations, like staked ETH is the most useful of staking derivatives. So there's a lot of centralization power that a lot of people are worried about.

• 21:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I guess my take on this is, yes, I'm concerned, but it's not like, it's not like code red. Well, you know, yellow, orange, like, I'm concerned, but I also think it's still very early. My other take here is something we've been saying a lot is, the key to changing this is better competition, really. Right? We can't put other limitations on Lido. It's, home staking has to get better. Other liquid staking providers have to get way better. And then lastly, I'll say, I don't think any of this is, is like, permanent.

• 22:12David Hoffman?

  No.

• 22:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, we don't even have withdrawals yet, so it's still too early to see, but it is something to pay attention to, and it's important. I do think it's become very obvious. And David, I feel like this was obvious two years ago, when, or three years ago, when we read that piece from Dan Elitzer on Superfluid Collateral, that the killer app is Liquid ETH staking. Once you stake your ETH, there's an asset that's produced on the other side of that. People want to do things with that asset in DeFi. That is the marvel of tokenization. So that is a killer app, and all the competitors need to figure out how to compete with Lido on that level in order to eat some of the market share and take that away from them. David, what do we have next?

• 22:51David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, the big stories of the week, of course. Celsius files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Three O's Capital leaks the Starknet token. Starknet then later launches their token, not launches their token, announces their token. So we're going to get into all those details, and of course, the rest of the news, right after we get through some of these fantastic sponsors that help you go bankrupt. Rocketpool is your friendly decentralized Ethereum staking protocol. You can stake your ETH with Rocketpool and get our ETH in return, allowing you to stake your ETH and use it in DeFi at the same time. You can get 4% on your ETH by staking it with Rocketpool, but you can get even more by running a node. Rocketpool is the only staking provider that allows anyone to permissionlessly join their network of validating nodes. Running a Rocketpool node is easier to set up than running a solo node, and you only need 16 ETH to get started.

• 23:34David Hoffman?

  Why would you do this? You get an extra 15% staking commission on the pooled ETH, so your APY is boosted. So if you're bullish ETH staking, you can increase your APY and get some extra tokens by adding your node to the decentralized Rocketpool network, which currently has over 1,000 independent validators. It's yield farming, but with Ethereum nodes. You can get started at rocketpool.net, and also join the Rocketpool community in their Discord. You can find me hanging out there sometimes in the chat, so I'll see you there. MakerDAO is the OG DeFi protocol. The first DeFi protocol to ever exist, even before we called it DeFi. MakerDAO produces DAI, the industry's most battle-tested and resilient stablecoin. Using Maker, you don't need to sell your collateral if you need liquidity. Instead, you can spin up a Maker Vault and use your collateral to mint DAI directly. With Maker, the power to mint new money is in your hands.

• 24:18David Hoffman?

  And there's something new in the MakerDAO ecosystem. Every time a new MakerDAO is opened, the owner can claim a PoW, which contributes funds to One Tree Planted, an organization with ongoing global reforestation efforts, creating a world where digital participation and the health of our environment can live side by side. Soon, Maker will be present on all chains in Layer 2s, bringing the biggest and best DeFi credit facility to everywhere there is DeFi. So follow Maker on Twitter, @MakerDAO, and learn from the oldest and most resilient DAO in existence.

• 24:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back talking about Celsius. They have finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I know we've been talking about C-Fi lenders a lot, and we can't seem to get away from them because new news develops every single week. What is this, David? Is this kind of the nail in the coffin? Celsius is finally saying, "We can't find an acquirer. There's no other way out, so legally, we have to go bankrupt."

• 25:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, remember, a number of people, I think Nexo took a look at, or maybe it was FTX, took a look at Celsius' balance sheets and interested in acquiring. Yeah, probably both of them, and interested in acquiring the thing. And then they were like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no." So as a result of that, the only option left you have is bankruptcy. So, reading from the article here, "Today's filing follows the difficult but necessary decision by Celsius last month to pause withdrawals, swaps, and transfers on its platform to stabilize its business and protect its customers. Without a pause, the acceleration of withdrawals would have allowed certain customers, those who were first to act, to be paid in full, while leaving others to wait for Celsius to harvest value from illiquid or longer-term asset deployment activities while they receive a recovery." Celsius says it has $160 million cash on hand,

• 25:53David Hoffman?

  enough to support certain operations during the restructuring process. After paying off all of their DeFi loans in Compound, Celsius announced that they had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy early Thursday morning. Paying off their DeFi loans. And so, so the users of this centralized app all have to sit on their hands while they wait for the dust to settle. And they're going to probably going to take a haircut, including you, Ryan. All of the users of Compound or AVE or Maker Dow or all the, all the DeFi apps that Celsius use are being paid back in full because of the protections of the DeFi app protocol itself. That is my takeaway. What's your, what are your thoughts?

• 26:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that's, I think that is the takeaway and that's what we've seen this, this week before they actually formally announced chapter 11, they paid off more than 800 million in debt to DeFi apps, uh, which is really cool. And they even unlocked their STE, they paid off their debt to, to AVE as well.

• 26:52David Hoffman?

  DeFi apps paid in full.

• 26:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, man, the take is this, I tweeted this out, notice that DeFi loans are the only ones insolvent C5 companies are paying back right now. The code is forcing them to pay back their loans, not laws, not attorneys, not courts, code. And it's almost like DeFi works better, David.

• 27:11David Hoffman?

  Weird.

• 27:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the take.

• 27:12David Hoffman?

  Why are we even here?

• 27:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  They couldn't, they had no alternative. They didn't have to go to court because they couldn't go to court because the rules of the collateral are written in code, basically.

• 27:22David Hoffman?

  EDM is the court.

• 27:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. Unless you pay back AVE, they're going to take all of your collateral. And that's, it's worth it to you to pay off. So you have to, like, it's incredible to me how well DeFi lending worked through this process. And I can't say enough, this is, this is the bright spot of everything that's gone on over the last, you know, two to three months, and certainly everything that's gone on with centralized lending, uh, protocols.

• 27:49David Hoffman?

  Right. Uh, there's also another part of this story. Uh, there's this account 0xb1 that's famously part of the Celsius story. No one really knew who this account was. They just knew that they were doing stuff in DeFi, making a ton of money and associated with Celsius. Uh, and now this, this, uh, account tweeted out and revealed who they, who they are. So this account says, hi, I'm Jason Stone. From August 2020 to April 2021, I led a group of talented individuals who managed the 0X B1 address. After discussions with Celsius. In mid 2020, Celsius began an acquisition of Keyfi, a company that this individual had founded. And thereafter, Keyfi pivoted to staking and deploying DeFi strategies for Celsius. In August of 2020, ZeroX B1 was created and with other addresses,

• 28:34David Hoffman?

  Celsius would send customer deposits to us to manage. Shortly after, Celsius shared private keys to the address with us. Over the ensuing months, transferred hundreds of millions of dollars of customer deposits for us to invest. By the time Celsius and Keyfi parted ways, we were managing nearly 2 billion of assets. Celsius's risk management platform monitored our investment strategies and performance using HedgeGuard and D-Bank. So basically, ZeroX B1 would go and like yield farm, do strategies, make a bunch of money, and then Celsius would like see what they're up to with these apps. With 2 billion in assets, by the way, depositor assets. Celsius promised the ZeroX B1 team members that they assured us that as a part of this monitoring, their trading teams were adequately hedging any potential impermanent loss from our activities in liquidity pools.

• 29:19David Hoffman?

  They assured me that they had risk management and hedging in place to account for fluctuations in token prices. But in late 2021, we discovered Celsius had lied to us. They had not been hedging our activities, nor had they been hedging the fluctuations in crypto asset prices. The entire company's portfolio had naked exposure to the market. So like, if you're taking customer deposits, you're not supposed to take those, like if they're USD deposits, right? You're not supposed to take those USD deposits and then buy Ether with it in the hopes that Ether goes up. That's opinionated. What you're supposed to be doing is you're supposed to be doing delta neutral stuff, that it doesn't matter what the prices of things do, you still get yield either way. They were taking opinionated stances on the market with customers' deposits, which puts them in a position of potentially not making that money back. So, ZeroX B1 continues, "After seeing these and other major problems in how the company operated,

• 30:04David Hoffman?

  we informed Celsius that we wish to terminate our relationship." That was in March 2021. We told Celsius that we would work with them to unwind our various positions over the following months. By April of 2021, however, because I mean bullish, bullish year, bullish part of that year, the value of assets under management had increased by another $800 million. But when we unwound the DeFi positions, Celsius suffered impermanent loss. At first, they believed the impermanent loss was evidence of KiFi stealing and accused me of being a thief. They later to accept the impermanent loss for what it was, but we claimed I was responsible for it and completely ignored the fact that they had full visibility into all trading strategies deployed by KiFi and promised to hedge that exact risk. I have tried for over a year to quietly settle this dispute with Celsius pursuant to the contracts Celsius signed with KiFi.

• 30:49David Hoffman?

  They owe KiFi a significant sum of money. We have been more than reasonable in attempting to resolve this with them. Basically, it continues to say that they have filed, they are suing Celsius, trying to get some money. But yes, that's what Celsius did with your money.

• 31:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's crazy how irresponsible that was, just that story of like, they found someone who could manage money in DeFi protocols fairly well, gave him $2 billion, when that fund and that individual said, this stuff I'm doing is kind of risky. Are you sure about this? They're like, no, we're hedging the risk in other areas of the business.

• 31:24David Hoffman?

  Which is totally fine. If they were doing that, that would have been like a risky but okay business. Like, they weren't doing that.

• 31:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe. And then they come to find out they weren't even doing it. So it's just all of the shady stuff behind the scenes. And it's so interesting because the user experience you have as a retail user is like, deposit your funds here, get 8% back. And the money comes in each month and you're like, oh, this sounds great. Well, on the backside of this, I'm not going to say it was running like a Ponzi scheme, but risk management was woefully inadequate.

• 31:58David Hoffman?

  Absent. It was absent.

• 32:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absent, completely absent. The question, I think, for people, including myself, who have deposited money into Celsius is, are we ever going to get our money back, David? What do you think the answer to that question is?

• 32:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, not all of it. I think you will get in the ballpark of a 30, 50% haircut.

• 32:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  You think so?

• 32:20David Hoffman?

  You'll get 50-ish percent of your money back.

• 32:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I asked this question from Twitter and the truth is, no one knows. It's going to chapter 11 and a bunch of the people were like, yeah, no way. Sorry, kiss it goodbye. Some people are being snarky. Yeah, you're definitely going to get it all, Ryan. You will get something back. You're just forced to holding or some of the answers. So it seems like the sentiment is this is kind of a Mt. Gox type situation. And it's not looking good for getting your funds back. Maybe some portion of it.

• 32:48David Hoffman?

  At an unknown amount of time.

• 32:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Months, years down the line. Yeah.

• 32:51David Hoffman?

  After the court's aside.

• 32:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really unfortunate. Yeah, absolutely. David, what do we got next? Starkware token, what is this?

• 32:58David Hoffman?

  Well, no, this is first off, we got to start with Three Ours Capital. So like Suzu breaks his silence on Twitter. And so he tweets out, sadly, our good faith to cooperate with the liquidators was met with baiting. Hopefully they did exercise good faith with regard to Starkware token warrants. Basically, the lawyers never exercised Starkware token warrants. I'm not, this is like legal stuff that I'm not totally familiar with, but you have to like do a thing in order to get the tokens after you invest in Starkware. You gotta do a thing, but the lawyers didn't do that thing. And maybe, maybe you know more about why they would have not have done this, either out of negligence or...

• 33:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Probably negligence. They probably just missed it. It's kind of a technicality and they didn't, they didn't check the box, right?

• 33:41David Hoffman?

  Right. Anyways, this was released to Twitter and which was like the first news of a Starkware token, even though you, everything's going to have a token. So you know, everything's going to have a token. But this is like the first formal indication that we've seen of Starkware having a token.

• 33:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's also Suzu's first tweet in like forever, right?

• 34:01David Hoffman?

  First tweet since.

• 34:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cause he's been on the land.

• 34:03David Hoffman?

  First tweet since that one that you can see right there is since June 14th, saying, we are in process of communicating with all relevant parties and intend to pay them fully back in full. Also not necessarily true, evidenced by the fact that no one knows, Ryan, where Three Ours Capital founders are. So where in the, where in the world are the Three Ours Capital founders? People kind of assume Dubai, but no one actually knows. Dubai being a convenient place to not have an extradition treaty with basically the rest of the world. But Suzu, Three Ours Capital, Kyle Davies, missing.

• 34:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so I guess things like this. On Friday, Lawyers for Three Ours Capital creditors, the people who want their money back, claimed that Suzu and Davies have not yet begun to cooperate in any meaningful manner, adding that the two kept their camera and audio off at an initial Zoom meeting. So you have the Zoom meeting and they're keeping their camera and audio off, like it's kind of a classroom during COVID and it's a virtual school or something. They're just not like locking in. So who knows where these guys are and what's going to happen next. But that, I guess, is the big alpha that we now have a starkware token.

• 35:11David Hoffman?

  Suzu is selling his house in Singapore, but he's only, he's looking for a buyer to wire him money to his Dubai bank account, which, you know, you can't see his money in a Dubai bank account. That's kind of the whole point. So he's got like this $40 million home that he's trying to liquidate. I don't know if he's liquidated or not.

• 35:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why isn't he using crypto? It's not very crypto native of him. He's using the Dubai banking system.

• 35:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, maybe. Well, yeah. Anyways, here's a picture of the Three Ours Capital office in Singapore with some uncollected mail. There it is.

• 35:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Doesn't look very good. This is what it looks like when a major hedge fund completely folds. NFT collection? We talked about that last week. This is still has to be liquidated, huh?

• 35:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this is the Starry Night Threes Capital's like NFT fund, which, I mean, they bought the top of the NFT mania, absolutely. But good taste, good taste. People think that this is a really, really good collection. Those are kid punks.

• 36:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, kid punks, sorry.

• 36:10David Hoffman?

  I don't know about that one. That one's not necessarily good taste. But yeah, there's a bunch of really cool stuff in here, which it's all going to be liquidated. So if you are an NFT collector with a bunch of cash on hand, you might have a field day soon.

• 36:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Do they, do they still exist? NFT collectors with cash on hand, David? Are there any left?

• 36:27David Hoffman?

  Oh, with cash on hand? I don't know about that one.

• 36:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, Starkware tokens. So what is the news then? It was like pre-released by Three Ours Capital and then more formally released by Starkware just days later.

• 36:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, one day later. Yeah, exactly. So Starkware tweets out, "Starknet Alpha was launched on the Ethereum mainnet November 2021. Now is a time to advance its decentralization as demanded of an L2 on Ethereum. Here is our decentralization proposal, introducing the Starknet token and the Starknet Foundation." Pretty much like playbook for decentralizing your Layer 2. And so they released three blog posts, part one, part two, part three. We're only going to read out parts of one and three. But the key points of blog post number one says, "Starknet's decentralization involves a native token and a new foundation." Again, par for the course. "The Starknet token is used for governance and as the network's payment and staking asset." So that's actually, I mean, not a crazy choice, but like demanding your own token

• 37:24David Hoffman?

  to be the payment token for that particular Layer 2, that's an interesting choice to consider. Like that's not, that's like Arbitrum optimism. Those don't, they don't do that. They take Ether as the gas for the Layer 2 rather than the network's native token. So the take here is that like, well, if this Starkware's token is the new gas for the Starkware Layer 2, they're like really more aligned with the Starkware Layer 2 than they are with the Ethereum Layer 1. So it gets started to make its own like self-sovereign ecosystem. So there's that. "10 billion tokens have been minted and the allocation has begun. The Starkware Foundation now being set up will have a mission to maintain Starknet as a public good." We do like that "public good" word. So here are the details. 10 billion tokens. We'll pull up a pie chart here in a second.

• 38:09David Hoffman?

  17% going to Starkware investors, Three Ours Capital, which that's going to get liquidated and distributed, which, I mean, I'm kind of a fan of that because of decentralization. They had like a lot of it. And then 32.9% of two core contributors. That is the Starkware team. If you add those two numbers up, I believe you get 49.9%. And then on the other side of things, 12% to grants, 10% to the foundation, 8.1% is unallocated to be determined, 2% donations, 9% community rebates, and 9% community provisions. So you have 49.9% on one side, that's like the centralized team and investors, and you have 51, 50.1% on the other side, which is various forms of the community, the foundation,

• 38:54David Hoffman?

  like long-term Starkware development. Ryan, what's your take on this distribution?

• 38:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's not bad. I mean, it seems kind of par for the course. 50% is maybe a bit on the high side from an investor and kind of core contributor perspective.

• 39:07David Hoffman?

  49.9% actually.

• 39:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sorry, yes, not quite 50%. But I don't know, I just, you know, some of it's semantics, you know, 10% here, 10% there. I'm not really sure. The big question to me is like, how are they actually going to distribute the tokens to their users in the community? How does that work? Do we have any details on that or a timeline here, David?

• 39:27David Hoffman?

  I don't think we do. I don't think we do, no.

• 39:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so this is still, this is still an announcement to launch a token, and you kind of wonder if they just did it a day after the SUZU news came out, and they kind of rushed it as a result. And so that might be part of the reason they don't have dates? Not sure.

• 39:44David Hoffman?

  They had all these, they had three blog posts, and it came out 24 hours after the SUZU announcement. That would be, I think they had this ready to fire.

• 39:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, maybe. So yeah, so that's, that's what's going on in Starkware world. How many more Layer 2s are we waiting for now?

• 39:59David Hoffman?

  ZK Sync.

• 40:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  ZK Sync. There are a couple others in the works, too.

• 40:04David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, see, oh, there's a ton. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 40:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Has AsTec released their token yet?

• 40:08David Hoffman?

  AsTec has a token, there's Scroll that's still in development.

• 40:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Scroll, that's right.

• 40:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's, there's a ton of Layer 2s left. But they're like, these are between Starkware, Stark, between Starkware, ZK Sync, Optimism, and Arbitrum. Arbitrum also needs to release a token. Those are like the big ones, I'd say.

• 40:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's right. And they're probably all going to release their token during the bear market. So I guess we will see what happens there.

• 40:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, coming up next, the story of Vitalik writing a book. I just found this out last week. What is he writing? We'll talk a bit about that. Also, Ave launching a stablecoin. Is this going to be a die competitor? Are they doing something else? And then finally, Disney and Polygon are teaming up. We'll talk a little bit about that. Before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 40:48David Hoffman?

  Arbitrum is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution that is going to completely change how we use DeFi and NFTs. Some of the coolest new NFT collections have chosen Arbitrum as their home while DeFi protocols continue to see increased liquidity and usage. You can now bridge straight into Arbitrum for more than 10 different exchanges, including Binance, FTX, Huobi, and Crypto.com. Once on Arbitrum, you'll enjoy fast transactions with cheap fees, allowing you to explore new frontiers of the crypto universe. New to Arbitrum, for a limited time, you can get Arbitrum NFTs designed by the famous artists Ratwell and Sugoi for joining the Arbitrum Odyssey. The Odyssey is an eight-week-long event where you complete on-chain activities and receive a free NFT as a reward. Find out more by visiting the Discord at discord.gg/Arbitrum.

• 41:29David Hoffman?

  You can also bridge your assets to Arbitrum at bridge.arbitrum.io and access all of Arbitrum's apps at portal.arbitrum-one in order to experience DeFi and NFTs the way it was always meant to be: fast, cheap, secure, and fiction-free. There is a brand-new staking feature in the Ledger Live app today. We all like staking the assets that we're bullish on, and now you can stake seven different coins inside the Ledger Live app: Cosmos, Polkadot, Tron, Algorian, Tezos, Solana, and of course Ethereum. With Ledger Live, you can take money from your bank account, buy your most bullish crypto asset, and stake that asset to its network, all inside the Ledger Live app. Through a partnership with Figment, Ledger also lets you choose which validator you want to stake your assets with, and Ledger is running its own validating nodes, offering

• 42:13David Hoffman?

  a convenient way to participate in network validation, and it even comes with slashing insurance. Ledger Live is truly becoming the battle station for the bankless world, so go download Ledger Live. If you have a Ledger already, you probably already have it, and get started securely staking your crypto assets.

• 42:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we're back. David, did you know that Vitalik is writing a book? Like, I know you know now, but did you know before last week? Uh, no, I knew it this week. You knew it this week? Yes. Oh, you found it. Okay, so I just learned this last week, and I was like surprised because I follow what that man does. Like, I read his research posts, all right? I stalk Vitalik Buterin in a way. Notifications are on. Yeah, notifications are on and dialed up. But yeah, just learned, he's coming out with a book. This book is set to release on September 13th, I believe. It is now for sale on Amazon. It's called "Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains."

• 43:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  So he's co-writing this, not just Vitalik, but there's another author, Nathan Schneider, who I believe is-- He's an editor, okay. He's an academic of some sort and he actually jumped in the thread and was commenting. I was asking questions back and forth. I'm anxious to read this. The author or the editor says it's about making block giving crypto and blockchains a philosophical underpinning and kind of separating it from the scams. It is a good thing for the world if you're a serious person and individual and here's why. Vitalik is making the case to a different crowd than probably the crowd that listens to Bankless or that is the attempt. It seems like that's what the editor is saying anyway.

• 43:51David Hoffman?

  Beautiful. I cannot wait to read that. That is exactly the type of content that I'm looking for. I heard a funny joke somewhere that was like, I'm starting to think this whole Ethereum merge thing is really just a point to sell Vitalik's book.

• 44:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, well, the dates, okay. Let me say, September 13th. Is that also going to be the release date of the merge?

• 44:11David Hoffman?

  It's a reasonable merge date. It's a reasonable merge date.

• 44:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not crazy, right? I'm just saying, it's not crazy.

• 44:16David Hoffman?

  Vitalik is trying to sell his books. The Bitcoiners are right. I knew he's a scammer.

• 44:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was all about this book. This is the reason for starting Ethereum. Just the long con, Vitalik. Good job, man. All right, AVE. They're doing a stablecoin. I'm pretty excited about it. What are we talking about? AVE bucks? Is that what it is?

• 44:36David Hoffman?

  AVE bucks, yeah. No, AVE bucks, stablecoin fears with a proposed new token. So AVE Companies, the centralized team that stewards the AVE protocol, proposed a new dollar peg stablecoin to the protocol's DAO on July 7th. The GHO for ghosts, that's the AVE icon, mascot, will be minted by borrowing against assets locked as collateral on AVE. Borrowers will still earn yield on their deposited assets while also racking up interest on their borrowed GHO, according to AVE Company's proposal. Interest payments will go directly to the DAO treasury, of course, and can be considered revenue. Welcome. A welcome word in the bear market. This is the power of DeFi that GHO allows for more liquidity for decentralized stablecoins

• 45:21David Hoffman?

  in the market, more fees for AVE, more volume and fees for Curve, more stability for other stablecoins, and more attractiveness of DeFi in general compared to C-Fi, wrote Mark Zeller, who works at AVE. So basically, it's like MakerDAO, but with a money market attached. So if you slammed MakerDAO and Compound together, like boom, you would have the AVE stablecoin, which is great.

• 45:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's smart. Makes a lot of sense. It's all collateral-backed, it's collateralized. This is not like the Terra Luna fiasco at all. So it's using the strengths of the Maker model and the strengths of AVE, which is the money market piece. So is the thing going to be called Ghost?

• 45:57David Hoffman?

  Ghost, yeah. That's going to be the Go stablecoin.

• 46:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  GHO, so it's going to be called Go.

• 46:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I think, I mean, I am not the arbiter of the pronunciations. I think it's worth exploring and unpacking the differences of MakerDAO DAI versus AVE Go. So MakerDAO, extremely risk averse, extremely hardened, going after real-world assets and like real-world integrations, where AVE is a little bit more DeFi crypto-native, going after maybe a little bit more of the long tail of risk, not totally, not totally down the long tail, but like opening up more total assets to mint Go than you can put into MakerDAO to mint DAI. So like, we're starting to see some separation. MakerDAO, like, real-world assets, extremely risk averse, extremely conservative. AVE, not super, not totally super-conservative, still very risk averse.

• 46:46David Hoffman?

  AVE's never been hacked in any way, but also accepting a little bit more liberal on the long tail of crypto-native tokens. So you can start to see some divisions in like the decentralized stablecoin. I'm actually just so happy we have a second decentralized stablecoin. I think that's so great.

• 46:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so great. Missed opportunity to call it AVE Bucks. Maybe that's still on the table, guys, but if you're hearing me, not a bad name. But you know what's cool?

• 47:08David Hoffman?

  Ryan, we should...

• 47:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  We could call it AVE Bucks. We start that name.

• 47:12David Hoffman?

  I was gonna say, you're leaking the bankless stablecoin strategy of bankless bucks that we have in the background.

• 47:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that coming? Bankless bucks? But that's gonna be, what is gonna be the collateral that backs that, David?

• 47:21David Hoffman?

  Oh, well, TBD.

• 47:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, okay, alright. David's making stablecoins on the fly. But do you know what's funny to me is how much, as you were describing it, how much things have changed for me? I used to think of AVE as, oh, that's pretty risky.

• 47:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? It's like, oh, I prefer Maker Dow.

• 47:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  If I'm taking margin out or taking a loan out of my ETH, I'll do Maker Dow rather than AVE. AVEs just seem so blue chip and so risk-off now. And I think part of that is like, they've done a great job. And Lindy effect, they've been here for a couple of years and it's worked very well. The other part of that is the Overton window has completely shifted.

• 48:01David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 48:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  So now, we went in this bull cycle way out on the risk spectrum. We saw things like Luna and UST and that whole implosion, all these algorithmic stablecoins. And like, what's happened with SeFi lending, right? Like, the safe places like BlockFi and Celsius to deposit your funds have completely exploded. Now I'm like, AVE is just, it just seems so safe. It seems so blue chip. It seems so grammar-ready. And that's totally changed for me in the last couple of years.

• 48:32David Hoffman?

  Totally. All the things that are still alive right now. I mean, we still have to make it to the other side of the bull market. But it seems like the most of the downside volatility has happened already. So like, if it's going to break at a protocol level, it would have broken by now. So like, all the stablecoins that exist today, I feel like you can definitely start to endorse these things pretty well. You could have always endorsed that, like, AVE, the stablecoin. I don't think it really adds any new risk to the AVE protocol. It's a new product, not necessarily a new, like, risk vector, I'd say. And then also, Frax, like, killed it, this bear market, in a good way, in a good way. Like, killed it to the upside.

• 49:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're doing well. They didn't die.

• 49:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 49:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  They survived.

• 49:12David Hoffman?

  Like, UST, goodbye. Wonderland, you know, Mim, I'm pretty sure that's gone. For the most part, it is. Anyways, I wouldn't trust it personally. But now we have like, three really awesome decentralized stablecoins, optimizing for three different things. So, you know, spare market, build market.

• 49:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. It's absolutely great. A big week for Matic as well this week and Polygon. So the first bit of news is Robinhood just started allowing deposits and withdrawal support for Matic and for Polygon. So that's another fiat bridge, fiat gateway. And Robinhood, of course, I don't know, 20, 25 million users, something like this, now have a way to get directly onto Polygon. Also, some breaking news from Polygon. They are excited to be the only blockchain chosen to be part of the Disney Accelerator Program. What is this, David?

• 50:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so six companies selected to be a part of the Disney's 2022 Accelerator Program, I didn't know this existed, but now I do, is a business and development program designed to spur the growth of innovative companies around the world. This program, which starts in a week, so like next week, is looking to develop technologies with augmented augmented reality, non-fungible tokens, and artificial intelligence. I mean, you can kind of just guess and see, imagine for yourself how those things fit into a Disney product, right? Like, I don't think it takes that much imagination to put those things together. During the course of the program, each participating company will receive guidance from Disney's senior leadership team, as well as a dedicated executive mentor. And like Ryan said, Polygon is the only blockchain native platform selected in the six-company lineup.

• 50:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cool. Yeah, good for them. A good business development, of course. You know, always waiting for Disney is the giant of IP in the world to start doing things with the Marvel Universe, the Star Wars Universe, or like Mickey Mouse and Friends in NFTs. And maybe this is a way to explore that as well a bit more. David?

• 51:05David Hoffman?

  Oh, this is really, really cool.

• 51:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, man.

• 51:06David Hoffman?

  So this is

• 51:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's happening?

• 51:08David Hoffman?

  This is the the ENS markets. ENS markets, I always like to say, there's always a bull market somewhere. Even in the midst of this bear market, somebody's still making money. And right now, it is the ENS domain name holders, and specifically, certain clubs of holders. These clubs have have come out of like the Ether. So you have like the 999 Club, which is anyone who owns numbers 000 through 999 dot ETH, you are in the 999 Club. Then there's also the 10K Club, which, you know, add another digit. I'm in the 10K Club, thank you. What number do you have? I actually don't know. It starts with 68. 6842, I think? I don't know. But then there's also other clubs, right? There's like Arabic number clubs, like a bunch of clubs are being established.

• 51:53David Hoffman?

  And it's basically like this like bottom up, like non-ERC 20 token DAO, right? So it's like there's these clubs. And so there's this tweet thread that has a bunch of these metrics that I'll read out here. "With a current floor price of 25 ETH, the 999 Club has quickly become the most expensive of all the ENS clubs and now is considered an icon of ENS domains. To look into the 999 Club, we've pulled addresses of all 506 different holders of the 1,999 ENS names. The first thing we noticed is the lowest amount of paper hands that we've ever seen, 2.4%. I'm pretty sure what that means is only 2.4% of total holders has sold. I think that's like four, five, six people.

• 52:36David Hoffman?

  This is the highest of the category classified by this particular algorithm. And 168 of these holders of the 506 have their ENS domain as their primary ENS name record. And so like their number is actually like registered to their Ethereum address. So like 33% of these holders are using these digits as their ENS identity. And so next up is the 10K Club, which is like 1,000 through 9,999 dot ETH. A larger amount of supply and a 1.6 ETH floor, the 10K Club has a unsurprisingly higher ratio of paper hands. But to put things in perspective, the ratio is still higher than things like Azukies or Doodles. The 10K Club is made up of 4,368 wallets.

• 53:21David Hoffman?

  218 of them also own a 999 Club ENS. That means almost half of the 999 Club also owns a four-digit ENS name. This time, 668 holders have defined their address as an ENS primary domain. Ratio is lower than the 999 Club, but the network effect is still greater with four times as many people flexing their four-digit numbers. And this is just the numbers club. There, like I said, there are other number, the clubs, ENS clubs. In the ENS game, you can check them out at ens dot vision.

• 53:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is with this? Why is this happening? So first of all, let me say.

• 53:56David Hoffman?

  Humans like tribes, Ryan.

• 53:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but like, first of all, like, dot ETHs are, I think, the perfect bear market NFT to start trading. I don't know, it just feels so essential, so close to the metal, so foundational. Like, so I get that aspect of it after fashion, but like, why now? ENS has been around forever. Why are we suddenly now, in July of 2022, and also June and May? Why are we now getting this degenerates bull market on ENSs? Can you explain this to me?

• 54:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I actually do have an answer for that. Well, some part is just like, you know, ghosts in the machine. Like, some people just like to trade things. But also, I'll say that, you know, a lot of new NFT speculators that came in bought Ether at higher prices, much higher prices than they are now. And so like, ENS names are a great tax-loss harvesting NFT to purchase after you bought your 4,000K Ether and now it's under $1,000. So you can buy an ENS name because it's still, if you're buying an ENS name, you're still long in Ethereum mostly. So you get to tax-loss harvest all that Ether that you bought. But you can also buy an NFT that you know is not going anywhere. Unlike like all the other like JPEG NFTs that are opinionated, like, do you like the cats? Do you like the punks? Do you like the apes?

• 55:11David Hoffman?

  Like, it doesn't matter. Like, everyone plays in the ENS game. Like, you, Ryan, have an ENS name. I've got an ENS name. We're considered like DeFi people more than we are NFT people. But even us have ENS names, right? And so that, I think, and also just like, there's historical relevancy. Like, the DNS don't world has made people bajillions of dollars. And so like, we're just repeating history again.

• 55:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I get it. I get it. I get all these arguments. And nice pro tax tip, by the way, David. I'm proud of you, man. That was good. That was good. Tax-loss harvesting is awesome. But, okay, but like, all of that stuff was true before now. Like, why?

• 55:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but now people have, like, JPEGs just leave a bad taste in people's mouths now.

• 55:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ah, that might be it. So people are like anti-image, anti-JPEG. And they're like, I want something real.

• 55:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, give me something, it's a proxy for Ethereum.

• 55:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, and dot ETHs are like, it's a proxy for Ethereum, but it's also like, it's tangible, it's real, it has utility. What can you do with a dot ETH? Anything, like you can, it's, it's a human readable name for any Ethereum address or any, I guess, address in general on the internet. And that has utility and maybe that's where the market's going for NFTs.

• 56:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, I think CryptoPunks are cool, but like, that doesn't necessarily, that's not a universally held opinion, right? Like, some people think CryptoPunks are cringe, even though those people are wrong. But like, if you are walking to a club, a metaverse club, and you have 000.ETH as your name, everyone thinks you're cool.

• 56:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really?

• 56:37David Hoffman?

  It's a universal signal.

• 56:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that's it, man. I think the explanation is exactly what you said. JPGs are out. JPGs are out.

• 56:44David Hoffman?

  Well, JPGs aren't universally out, but like, again, it's, they're more opinionated.

• 56:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  I've read so many takes this week about like, just in mainstream media about like, NFTs being a scam and like, just, it's endless, man. JPGs are just not, JPGs aren't appearing on Jimmy Kimmel these days. That's for damn sure, right? It's like totally out of mainstream culture, except Bill Murray being countercultural. He went and he bought a cool cat this week, so.

• 57:08David Hoffman?

  Nice cat, nice cat, Bill Murray. It actually, that's the cool cat that I would expect Bill Murray to purchase.

• 57:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know he's buying the dip here?

• 57:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, wow, yeah, good for him.

• 57:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 57:17David Hoffman?

  One more thing on the ENS names before we move on. I think this needs to be like, uh, seconded, but I think this whole thing got started when people noticed like, a bunch of, uh, people in like, Arab countries buying number, number ENS names and like, the, the license plate, low-digit license plates in like, places like the United Arab Emirates are like, similarly status symbols. So like, people will pay big numbers for like, low-digit license plate numbers. And so, ENS, it's like, even bigger market. And so, I think this got triggered in the East and now like, the West is like, oh, we also want to play this game. And now the game's on.

• 57:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Have you ever, have you ever had a personal license plate, David?

• 57:55David Hoffman?

  No, I haven't. Yeah. Bankless. Bankless is sadly eight letters. I actually did.

• 57:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, no, no. B-N-K-L-E-S-S. We could do that. I could get mine in Virginia.

• 58:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, okay.

• 58:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't have a car. You don't have a car?

• 58:08David Hoffman?

  I don't have a car anymore.

• 58:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're out? Okay. I have a minivan. A confession.

• 58:13David Hoffman?

  Do you have a minivan?

• 58:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not putting that on. Yeah, dude, you know I have kids and everything. I will take a picture of my minivan and show it to you.

• 58:21David Hoffman?

  I don't think, well, don't put your license plate online, though. So don't do that.

• 58:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah, good call. Thank you. Thank you. Off sec lesson for you as well. GameStop finally launched their NFT marketplace as well. What is this thing looking like, David?

• 58:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is Matt Feinstone. Used to be at Loopring, now at GameStop. And he goes, "GM, everyone, GameStop NFT is live in beta, non-custodial Ethereum Layer 2 marketplace, where the community can truly own the digital assets that they love. You can check it out at nft.gamestop.com." And so now this is the verge. "GameStop's NFT marketplace has arrived just in time for a crypto market crash." God, they just can't give us a break, man.

• 58:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can't let it be funny. Come on, Virg.

• 59:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Anyways, buy, sell, create NFTs on the GameStop NFT marketplace. Over 200 collections are on there with more than 53,000 NFTs listed. And you can connect the newly launched GameStop Wallet, which we talked about a few weeks ago, to your digital assets. You can also use options like Wallet Connect and MetaMask. Right now, not everyone can create an NFT. Only certain creators can apply it, but I'm sure they're going to open up in the future. But also, of course, GameStop, it's got the word "game" in the name, Ryan. They're about, they're a gaming company. They have bigger plans than just a marketplace down the line. They said in a press release that it plans to expand functionality into areas like Web3 gaming. On the NFT marketplace, GameStop is already teasing support for Immutable X,

• 59:43David Hoffman?

  a platform on Ethereum that's used by some NFT games is coming soon. Also, previously, we've talked about the $100 million grant program between GameStop and Immutable to help build out the world of Web3 gaming. So you could just imagine, it's like, oh, I'm playing my game. I found my super awesome, like, long Sword of Flame. It's worth $10,000. I'm going to take it to the GameStop marketplace and sell it. Like, you could totally see that world. At least I do.

• 1:00:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is pretty cool. I like it. And what is this built on? So I know it's a Layer 2. Do you know what the marketplace is built on? Is it Immutable? Is it Loopring? Is it some combo of both? That is a good question. I do not know. It's one of those two things. It's one of those two things. Immutable X coming soon. Yeah, well, that's what I talked about. They're teasing it. So like, what is it currently based on? I mean, I bet you, I bet you it's, if it's not both now, it will be later. That's a question for Matt. We'll go find out, guys, and let you know. But it is on layer two, and that's pretty cool. I would guess it's either immutable or loop ring or some combo of both. David, let's get to some Bitcoin stuff. I guess this isn't Bitcoin stuff. It's maybe Bitcoin tribe stuff. Michael Saylor this week quoted as saying Ethereum is obviously a security, obviously, David.

• 1:00:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think Ethereum is a security, he says. I think it's pretty obvious. It was issued by an ICO. There's a management team. There was a premine. There was a hard fork. There's continual hard forks. There's a difficulty bomb that keeps pushing back. And then he says, I think all proof of stake networks are securities, all of them, and they're all very risky. It's above my pay grade. The regulators will decide whether or not they will allow them to continue or not. Only good take he had. The regulators will allow? I don't know that the regulators get to decide whether the networks continue, but I guess they get to establish some sort of stamp of legitimacy on them. David, do you think that this is just some insecurity here about ETH being a security or ETH not being a security?

• 1:01:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think that Bitcoiners, Bitcoin maximalists, let me say, are threatened by Ethereum? I mean, we've had... They've always, they always happen. The CFTC has clearly stated multiple times that Ether is a commodity. We've had senior members of the SEC say that as well. Ether is a commodity, along with Bitcoin. Grip it in here. We've had a long period of time since the initial ICO, the continuing acceptance, more decentralization of Ethereum over the years. There haven't been strong indications that any senior officials in the US actually are targeting Ethereum as a security. So...

• 1:02:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Regardless of whether you think it's a security or not, under the definition of a security, it doesn't seem to be that's the direction the regulators are trying to proceed and pursue. What do you think about this?

• 1:02:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is the classic old man yells at cloud meme. Bitcoiners, for people that have been on crypto Twitter for longer than like this bull market, this is like just a classic talking point of Bitcoin maxis about Ethereum. Like, oh, there was a pre-mine. Oh, Vitalik controls everything. Meanwhile, Vitalik holds the record for the most ignored and unemerged EIP addresses, or EIPs to Ethereum. Fun fact. Like, no control over the monetary supply, like, blah, blah, blah. Like, all these like talking points, Ether is a security, you know, Vitalik's a scammer. Anyone who thinks that Vitalik's a scammer, like, that's a legitimate take that people have on crypto Twitter. Like, Vitalik is a scammer, he's building a scam, he's the biggest scammer of all time. Like, that's just ridiculous.

• 1:03:06David Hoffman?

  And so like this whole like Ether is a security thing, it's really just like, there's like this very strong do not break ranks culture in Bitcoin, in the Bitcoin camp. And this is like one of those talking points that they say. It's like, no, only buy Bitcoin because everything else is a security.

• 1:03:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It has got to be the least cypherpunk take I've ever heard from Bitcoin maximalists, which is like, hey, nation-state, like, come help make Ether a security, please.

• 1:03:34David Hoffman?

  You know it's just in the interests of their bags.

• 1:03:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't understand. I mean, I would think that like hardcore Bitcoiners, hardcore Bitcoin maximalists, aren't they like, don't they skew libertarian? Aren't we trying to get away from kind of like nation-state control of our monetary system and that the entire point? So let assets compete. Why not let assets compete? I don't understand the appeal to Papa Gensler to come take a look at Ethereum and get them in trouble.

• 1:04:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's libertarianism when it's about Bitcoin, but if it's about anything else, is they're like super statists. Like, the Bitcoin maximalist is like a state, and if you go against the will of the state, they come at you with their cyber hornet army.

• 1:04:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you a Bitcoin maximalist? Come at David and I and tell us why we're wrong about this.

• 1:04:22David Hoffman?

  I've heard it all.

• 1:04:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think Bitcoin maximalists listen to Bankless anymore, David?

• 1:04:27David Hoffman?

  Probably not. Well, no, because you're not allowed to consume anything that's like, it's literally like one of these extremist religions. Like, you are not allowed to receive education outside of the Bitcoin state. You are not allowed to flirt with the enemy. You are not allowed to go on other people's podcasts. You have to stay inside of the Bitcoin cult, and if you go outside of the cult, you'll be exiled. Like, look what happened to Nick Carter. The same just extreme tribalism exists beyond Bitcoin maximalism, and it's a part of Bitcoin maximalism.

• 1:04:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're a Bitcoin maximalist. Don't you dare flirt with Bankless. Turn this episode off right now. Do not dare. You know, even Dan Held and some prominent Bitcoiners actually rejected the take of Ethereum being a security and agreed with our takes here. Anyway, let's get to some releases, some good news here. What is this? PseudoAMM?

• 1:05:22David Hoffman?

  PseudoAMM from PseudoSwap. This is NFT liquidity infrastructure. So, some quick tidbits about what this actually is. It's an AMM for NFTs, but you've got to get a little bit more creative because it's not that simple. But three things you can really do. You can create pools that gradually buy or sell NFTs along price curves. You can provide liquidity to pools to buy and sell those NFTs to earn fees, and you can directly list all of your NFTs at fixed prices. Liquidity providers have full control over their pools' pricing. They can address it at any time. There's endless possibilities for new pricing models. Basically, there is more infrastructure for liquidity on NFTs. Like, NFT financialization really needs to improve. There's so much left to do.

• 1:06:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you bullish on this category?

• 1:06:04David Hoffman?

  Oh, big time. NFT DeFi integration. Like, NFTs are super illiquid, and they need to be more liquid in order to be more adopted and just useful. And so, we have things like collateralized NFT infrastructure. Like, this is also another one. Just like, things that provide liquidity to NFTs, I'm pretty bullish on.

• 1:06:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think this is alpha, guys. I think a lot of NFT5 building is going to happen during the bear market and you're going to see the fruits of that in the next bull cycle. Also, this, LensTube. What is this? An open source Web3 video sharing social media platform built on top of Lens protocol and live on Polygon.

• 1:06:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah, so there's two protocols in the backend here. One is LivePier, which has been around for a while, just like decentralized video transcoding and streaming, and then Arweave for the data. So the data's all on Arweave. LivePier does all the video transcoding, and then LensTube is the frontend. So they're connecting all the dots for you. Here's my friend Gabriel Haynes. Crypto Twitter will recognize him. So yeah, there's now a more decentralized alternative for YouTube.

• 1:07:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, we gotta do this. Look at Gabriel. He's got some subscribers here. We gotta set up our LensTube account on Bankless. Guys, some big raises this week. The first Lightspeed raised $7 billion across four funds and launched a new crypto-native team. That is absolutely colossal raise. $7 billion during the bear market.

• 1:07:27David Hoffman?

  Who's got $7 billion these days? Apparently Lightspeed.

• 1:07:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Apparently, now they do. Also, MultiCoin Capital launched a $430 million venture fund. I think the theme here is it's a good time to deploy capital in the bear market. I think smart funds have raised or have gotten the commitments to raise in the bull market or using their reputation in order to keep raising and are planning to deploy a lot during the bear market. This is why, this feels much different than 2018, David, when no one was, like, you wouldn't see any of these, this level of raises. Like, everything completely dried up. Now people are still investing.

• 1:08:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, I think VCs are just licking their lips. Like, the time, the power had shifted back into the camp of VCs, where in 2021, the power was in the hands of founders and builders. Like, if you had a product, you could raise Infinite amount of money and infinite valuation and like VCs were having to push out other VCs to get into deals. Now it's the inverse. Now the VCs are like, ha, power is back in our side now. Like we've got all the money and you've got none of it.

• 1:08:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  We set the terms now, not you.

• 1:08:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we set the terms. So yeah, VC, financialized capitalized VCs are in a good spot.

• 1:08:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's good because private valuations were getting nutty, absolutely insane compared to public as well. This is Lifi. They just raised 5.5 million in a strategic ecosystem round. This is a bridging aggregator technology. Pretty cool.

• 1:08:53David Hoffman?

  Not just a bridge aggregator, a bridge and dex aggregator aggregator. And so it gets you from chain A to chain B while simultaneously getting you from asset one to asset two at the same time. I mean, you can just imagine in a blossoming of blockchains, both alternative layer ones and many, many layer twos and also assets. You can just like teleport from chain to chain while also swapping assets at the same time. And it just routes your order through the best possible way to make sure you preserve all your capital while you go through that.

• 1:09:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Chain teleportation. That's better than chain bridging, David.

• 1:09:28David Hoffman?

  And asset teleportation.

• 1:09:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  David and I are investors in this one too. Just a small portion, angel investors. Also, Chris Dixon, he just funded Farcaster. And what's cool about this is I don't use Farcaster, but it seems kind of cool. And I could imagine myself using this years ago. This is basically like RSS plus. And I remember one of Chris's initial theses like 10 years ago, an A16C more broadly, was that RSS would kind of take off as an open protocol, right? And that world didn't really happen. Instead, we got kind of the, the social media closed ecosystems of like, you know, Twitter and, you know, Facebook and other social networks and like even the sub stacks of the world.

• 1:10:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think his thesis is, the reason it didn't work is because RSS as a protocol did not have value capture, did not have a token, did not have money, did not have payments. And now, I think this is another attempt at that, to revitalize this protocol, which is RSS, and to add a business layer on top of it. I haven't looked at the details, but you know, I recall that being one of Chris's talking points and theses.

• 1:10:41David Hoffman?

  Cool, cool. I'm a big fan. Yeah.

• 1:10:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:43David Hoffman?

  I mean, this is, this is web three, like reinvigorating web one. And there are a lot of cool things about web one, not that I was there for it.

• 1:10:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Totally. Gnosis Safe, they just raised $100 million led by 1KX. Gnosis, I mean, Gnosis is just a great tool for storing, storing funds in a multi-sig type way. $100 million, apparently. I bet they raised some of that during the bull run and are announcing it now. And he takes on this.

• 1:11:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I mean, everyone uses this product, right? Like, everyone has, not everyone, a lot of people have multi-sigs. I have a personal multi-sig that I use. Ryan and I have the bankless multi-sig. Like, basically every single DAO's treasury is inside of the Gnosis multi-sig. They're also rebranding it. This is also a rebrand to Safe. So, take off the Gnosis and just add Safe. And so, it basically is, it's, of all contracts in Ethereum, here's a good bit of trivia. Gnosis Safe, now called Safe, has stored and secured the most value across Ethereum over time. So like, it has the biggest like TVL of assets locked. That's because of just how simple, stupid the contracts are. And it's just like a basic multi-sig.

• 1:11:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's just battle tested, man. Right? Like, there's $40 billion in there. I didn't know NFTs were in here, too. 13% of all CryptoPunks are in Safe right now. Pretty cool.

• 1:12:03David Hoffman?

  I need to put mine in there.

• 1:12:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Good to see them continuing to invest there. And of course, with all of this investment money, that means there are jobs available for you. What do we tell you every single week? Get a job in crypto, if you can. And I'm here to tell you, you can, because there are some companies that are hiring. There is a jobs board that is ready to feed you those jobs. Let me read a few. Software engineer Steakfish backend full stack software engineer Steakfish blockchain marketer Steakfish

• 1:12:30David Hoffman?

  It's on technical

• 1:12:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Front end engineer software engineer Steakfish DevOps engineer Steakfish They want a lot of engineering talent. Looks like Alliance Dow looking for a CTO Also a software engineer, also a senior software engineer, also an executive assistant

• 1:12:44David Hoffman?

  It's on technical

• 1:12:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Otter Space wants a solidity engineer Uniswap is hiring, Are You Generous is hiring Chainlink is hiring, Argent is hiring, Tally is hiring. I could go on, but I won't. You can see all of these job positions, the bankless.pallet.com/jobs. Go check those out. All right, David, what are we on to next, my friend?

• 1:13:05David Hoffman?

  Sponsors, Ron's a sponsor. Taking a quick break to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors That make this show possible. But then we're going to come back and talk about questions from the nation Takes of the week and what David and Ryan are bullish on, and of course, the meme of the week. The Layer 2 era is upon us. Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem is growing every day And we need Layer 2 bridges to be fast and efficient in order to live a Layer 2 life. Across is the fastest, cheapest, and most secure cross-chain bridge. With Across, you don't have to worry about high fees or long wait times. Assets are bridged and available for use almost instantaneously. Across's bridges are powered by Uma's Optimistic Oracle to securely transfer tokens between Layer 2s and Ethereum. Across is critical ecosystem infrastructure and Across V2 has just launched. Their new version focuses on higher capital efficiency, Layer 2 to Layer 2 transfers,

• 1:13:50David Hoffman?

  And a brand new chain with Polygon, all while prioritizing high security and low fees. You can be a part of Across's story by joining their Discord and using Across for all of your Layer 2 transferring needs. So go to across.to to quickly and securely bridge your assets between Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, or Boba Networks. The Brave Browser is the user-first browser for the Web3 internet with over 60 million monthly active users. And inside the Brave Browser, you'll find the Brave Wallet, the secure, multi-trained crypto wallet built right into the browser. Web3 is freedom from big tech and Wall Street. More control and better privacy. But there's a weak point in Web3: your crypto wallet. And most crypto wallets are browser extensions, which can easily be spoofed. But the Brave Wallet is different. No extensions are required, which gives Brave Browser an extra level of security.

• 1:14:33David Hoffman?

  Versus other wallets. Brave Wallet is your secure passport for the possibilities of Web 3 and supports multiple chains, including Ethereum and Solana. You can even buy crypto directly inside the wallet with Ramp. And of course, you can store, send, and swap your crypto assets, manage your NFTs, and connect to other wallets and DeFi apps. So whether you're new to crypto or you're a seasoned pro, it's time to ditch those risky extensions and it's time to switch to the Brave Wallet. Download Brave at brave.com/bankless and click the wallet icon to get started.

• 1:14:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back. If you have a question for David and I on the weekly rollup, we will answer your question. The way to do that is look for this tweet. Come into the Bankless HQ Twitter account, ask you questions. Here's the first question I'm going to ask you. I think it's the difference between proof of stake and proof of work. This is from Jeremy Meth- uh, Meth?

• 1:15:22David Hoffman?

  Methard.

• 1:15:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Methard.

• 1:15:23David Hoffman?

  It's not that hard, Brian.

• 1:15:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  I overcomplicated your name, Jeremy. "I haven't heard a POS," that's proof of stake, "proponent, "address this point from proof of work people very well. Proof of stake leads to the rich getting richer within that system. Drake's answer to Alden was unsurprisingly, uh, was surprisingly unsatisfactory." That's Justin Drake, a Bankless podcast episode he's referring to. "Is this just a trade-off that is lived with due to other benefits proof of stake brings?" So what of this idea that proof of stake is just the rich getting richer, David?

• 1:15:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, also, on the topic of talking points that Bitcoin maximalists talk about all the time, this is one of those things, like proof of stake is just like the rich get richer paradigm. A lot of, they also call it like this is a fiat paradigm. It's like the people with the bigger stake have the bigger say. That's all totally, completely wrong. It's just, it's like such a swing and a miss. And so I'll do my best to like summarize it here. To the question of what, which one has higher returns on capital? The cool thing about proof of stake is we know exactly how big the returns on capital are. And right now, I think the stake rate is 4.2%. Post-merge, it'll jump up to seven and then it'll come back down. It'll be some sort of equilibrium between like 5%, 5%, 6%, 4% to 6%. We don't really know until it happens, but like 4% to 6% ballpark year-over-year returns on Ether.

• 1:16:42David Hoffman?

  So like that, that is how much. Capital begets capital in the world of proof of stake. In proof of work, people don't associate with like capital begetting capital. Because like there's this work word, you have to do work in order to like mine the blockchain. But like you're not really doing work, you're just racing to consume as much electricity as possible. The cool thing about proof of stake is that it cuts out so many middlemen that preserve the ability for individuals to actually participate in this game. In the world of proof of stake, there are so many middlemen that separate one dollar from turning into one dollars worth of security. And this is really the thing you need to optimize for is if you have one dollar of capital, how do you produce one dollar worth of security? And proof of stake is going to like directly like a coupling those things directly.

• 1:17:27David Hoffman?

  Proof of work has so many middlemen that separate one dollar worth of capital from one dollar of security. So you have like the mining facility, you have to buy all of the hardware. You have to house the hardware in a big facility. You have to cool the facility. You need a ton of electricity. So like a lot of Bitcoin mining facilities build their own power plant at this, at this point. You need to have supply chains with ASIC manufacturers. That starts to be having like political connections. Do you have actual like political connections to the manufacturers? So you need to invest in all of these things that aren't hash rate. And everything that you have to invest in is a, is a place where economies of scale can be expressed. So like the difference is, is like if you put in a thousand dollars into Ether and you get 6% on your Ether year over year.

• 1:18:11David Hoffman?

  Or if you put in a billion dollars or a million dollars, like pick your number of digits. Everyone gets the exact same amount of interest rate on their Ether year over year. In proof of work, if you cannot start a proof of work farm with a thousand dollars or $10,000 or $100,000, you'll be completely uncompetitive. So in order to play the game of proof of work like mining, you have to invest tens of millions of dollars into a proof of work mining operation to be viable. Because the economies of scale are so incredibly large. And the crazy thing is, is like if you put in $10 million, you will get some amount of hash rate. But if you put in $100 million, you are going to get far more than 10

• 1:18:53David Hoffman?

  Times the amount of hash rate because it returns, it favors capital. And so like the returns on proof of work on capital investments into proof of work mining are far greater than 6%. It's something like 50 to 100 to 150% depending on how professional your mining operation is. So compare the proof of this 6 to 7% yield on proof of stake to like the 50 to 150% yield on a Bitcoin proof of work mining operation. That is the rich get richer model. And so like the only reason why people think that's proof of stake is because it's actually formally a part of the actual system is like, yes, you get compound interest. And people are like, oh, compound interest, like that's the rich get richer. No, like, I'm sorry, who is cutting 100 million?

• 1:19:38David Hoffman?

  Like, are you cutting $100 million or $10 million like PPM, private placement memorandum for your Bitcoin mining operation? Like, no, you're not. Only the rich are doing that. End rant.

• 1:19:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, so I agree with all of that. And here's, I guess, one way to think of it. So first of all, it's important to acknowledge both systems are the rich get richer.

• 1:19:59David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:20:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, a capital system is the rich get richer. But proof of work is like 10 times worse than proof of stake.

• 1:20:07David Hoffman?

  I would say larger than that.

• 1:20:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe larger, but like proof of stake is actually an improvement on the rich get richer. It's not as bad.

• 1:20:14David Hoffman?

  It's the minimi-, it's literally the minimization of rich get richer. Because again, if you have 32 ETH or 3200 ETH or 32,000 ETH, you get the same amount of yield no matter what.

• 1:20:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of like the rich get richer in the same way that investing in, like in an ideal world, treasuries or sovereign bonds are the rich get richer. Sort of like that. That's one important part. And then the other important part to understand is proof of work is just proof of stake with extra steps, right? And so here's what we mean, here's what you're saying here is like, in both cases, it requires capital.

• 1:20:49David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:20:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay? And like, what are these ASIC machines that you're using? They're tokens.

• 1:20:55David Hoffman?

  They're forced alignment to the protocol.

• 1:20:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, except these tokens are much harder to get. And I'm talking about the ASICs, you wouldn't think of them as, you think of them Hardware, computer hardware in the real world, where they're like tokens, they're units of capital to charge. And so if you think of them as physical tokens, essentially, the difference between buying an ASIC and putting it in a massive data center, like the supply chain, the you have to have connections, like energy consumption. You have to be a company and a very sophisticated company with business development team, with like location, with physical space in order to do that. Versus with Ethereum and any staking network, you can buy your token on freaking Uniswap.

• 1:21:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's your unit of capital. How much more accessible is that? I think that is another important difference to understand.

• 1:21:46David Hoffman?

  And so like, I think the counter argument will be like, oh yeah, like Bitcoin miners, they have to expend all this extra money. You have to buy, you have to expend your rewards to buy the ASICs. You have to expend your rewards to pay for the mining operations. You have to expend the rewards to pay for energy. Like that is, that is risk and that is baked into the returns. And so actually, the more risk that there is, the more expenses there are. The only reason why people are going to do that are because the returns are literally higher as a result of that risk.

• 1:22:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, I think we've talked about that for, we, we get excited talking about this.

• 1:22:19David Hoffman?

  I wrote an article covering this called four misconceptions between proof of work, proof of stake that like, in my mind, I think is the clearest articulation into these arguments. So if you want to explore that more, go read that article.

• 1:22:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm going to make a big mistake and ask you another question that you're probably equally passionate about, which is my question for the bank, for you, David. What does David have against carbs? Ryan Sean Adams asked this question for the roll up. What do you have against carbs, man?

• 1:22:44David Hoffman?

  Okay, so people not, not on crypto Twitter, I just randomly decided to like pick up this anti-carb campaign. And like, it actually caught a lot of my followers by surprise, like, oh, David read like a magazine on keto and now he's like a keto maximalist. People don't actually know that I actually studied this in college and consulted on it for a couple of years after school. So like, I have actually, I have this in my background.

• 1:23:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're really against carbs.

• 1:23:06David Hoffman?

  No, no, okay, no, that's mostly a meme. Okay, so like the typical American diet is something like 70% carbs, 20% fats and 10% proteins. When like the optimum balanced diet is something like 50 to 60% fats, like 20%.

• 1:23:22David Hoffman?

  Like 40 to 50 to 60% fats, like 20-ish% protein and like 20% carbs. Like that is actually a true balanced diet, like heavily weighted in fats and like not nearly as much weighted in carbs. And so like, and so like the crazy thing is like, in the same way that like the government controls the price of the dollar, they're also controlling the price of corn. The reason why there's literally high fructose corn syrup in everything is because corn, making high fructose corn syrup is basically free. And there's nothing worse for you than goddamn high fructose corn syrup. It's literally everywhere. It's completely, so it's like, it's sugar, it's a big filler, it's also highly addictive. You know what's a great business model, Ryan? Carbs. Everyone's addicted to them.

• 1:24:07David Hoffman?

  They show up, you know, carbs show up in the brain, they fire the brain, the parts of the areas of the brain at the same place that cocaine and heroin do, and like just as much sugar does, like absolutely crazy. So like, it's a crazy business model. Like we're suing these, that one family for like getting everyone addicted to painkillers. Like the big food industry is doing the same thing with carbs. You're just addicted to carbs.

• 1:24:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Carbs, carbs are the opioids that no one notices, David?

• 1:24:34David Hoffman?

  Yes, that's exactly right.

• 1:24:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, I don't want to get you started on this, okay? Cause it's a long, I can tell you've got a lot to say. Bankless Nation, who would enjoy an episode on Bankless? Maybe some side stream or something with David on nutrition? Cause I would actually like to school up with you.

• 1:24:49David Hoffman?

  I've already got, I've already got in the works.

• 1:24:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's already happening.

• 1:24:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there's this guy who I listen to, Anthony Gustain, Gustain, he would do the Perfect Keto Podcast, which is now rebranded into something else. Anyways, the way that this, this is not just like David going rogue and doing a nutrition podcast. There's like, the world of agriculture and sustainable agriculture is very much tied to decentralization, whereas we have like highly centralized production of corn and factory farmed meats, which are terrible, both for like your health and for the animal. And everything is super centralized and like, oh, we can't live on this planet that way. Like it can't work that way, we're gonna kill the planet. What does make us work on this planet is sustainable agriculture, which is inherently tied into

• 1:25:32David Hoffman?

  The concept of decentralization, like robust, anti-fragile, like harmony with nature farms that are distributed all across the world in a very decentralized manner that is in harmony with nature, that is robust, that has longevity, and especially as like global supply chains break down and like we can't cooperate with Europe or China or anything. Like, we need local, at home, decentralized, sustainable agriculture food production, which, Ryan, is veggies and meat. Veggies and meat. I have opinions on this thing.

• 1:26:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. David doing a nutrition podcast is just about the most bear market thing I could think of, right?

• 1:26:09David Hoffman?

  I'm gonna personally end the bear market with this podcast.

• 1:26:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  I am somehow intrigued by it, and I want to learn more. Last thing here is, there was some talk of David doing a dance. So Anthony Sisano, he's supposed to do a dance at a certain point when ETH hit a price point. And I think that price point was hit. What was that? Was that like a thousand ETH or something?

• 1:26:29David Hoffman?

  It was all-time high by the end of 2020.

• 1:26:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  And we hit that.

• 1:26:34David Hoffman?

  2020. And we hit it in December.

• 1:26:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  He didn't pay his debt. He didn't do the dance. So this is David.

• 1:26:38David Hoffman?

  He owes crypto Twitter a dance.

• 1:26:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is David Hoffman, my co-host here, okay? Not just a nutrition podcast, not just a crypto expert, but apparently you know how to do the Napoleon Dynamite Dance?

• 1:26:48David Hoffman?

  Oh, I do not know how to do the Napoleon Dynamite.

• 1:26:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, so you have to learn first? David says this, "If ETH hits all-time high by end of 2023," not 2022, huh? 2023, 18 months here, "I'll do the Napoleon Dynamite Dance to clear Anthony Sisano's debts to crypto Twitter. Crypto Twitter must agree to these terms." I wholeheartedly agree, sir. That's getting a retweet. I agree to these terms. I'm writing it down. This means you are doing this, David.

• 1:27:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, get ready, man.

• 1:27:20David Hoffman?

  Anthony has said that he's okay with this, but also like, this is a debt to crypto Twitter. So like Anthony owes this to crypto Twitter. I'm saying I will pay back Anthony's debts, but crypto Twitter has to agree. I don't really know how to get consensus by crypto Twitter. So maybe you do what Ryan did and go to this tweet and say like, I agree to these terms, or I do not agree to these terms.

• 1:27:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Consensus, everyone wants this, David.

• 1:27:41David Hoffman?

  I've only heard of like three people that have said that they agree.

• 1:27:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, what's the threshold for crypto Twitter agreeing to these terms?

• 1:27:48David Hoffman?

  50 comments.

• 1:27:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  50 comments?

• 1:27:51David Hoffman?

  50 comments saying, I agree. And it has to be like a 90 to 10 ratio of yes to no's.

• 1:27:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, I'm going to tweet this out. 50 comments, you heard it on the roll up. So make sure we want to see David do this dance. We will broadcast this on the roll up clip as well. All right, take it to the week.

• 1:28:05David Hoffman?

  It's a good thing that Ether is not going to hit an all time high by 2023.

• 1:28:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really? That's also the most bear market thing I've heard David say.

• 1:28:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Spicy Vitalik is the best Vitalik. All right, what is he saying here? He's pushing back on the whole Ethereum is a security talk that was going around here. I'll read his first tweet and you read the second. It's amazing how some proof of work proponents just keep repeating the unmitigated bare faced lie that proof of stake includes voting on protocol parameters. That's one of the arguments for why Ethereum should be a security. It's you can use ETH to vote and you actually can't. False. It doesn't, just like proof of work doesn't. And this so often just goes unchallenged. Nodes reject invalid blocks in proof of stake and in proof of work. It's not hard. And he follows this up as he is quote tweeting someone who says, the fact that you can vote on something to change its properties is proof that it's a security.

• 1:28:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Love Bitcoin. Vitalik says, a small grammar nuance in English. When talking about things like proof of stake, we don't say it's a security. We say it's secure. I know these suffixes are hard though, so I forgive the air. Nice play on words there.

• 1:29:14David Hoffman?

  That's the spicy take, which is saying like, hey, you Bitcoiners who think that Ether is a security because of proof of stake. No, it's extra secure, unlike the proof of work hard cap model, which is destined to run out of security budget. This was, I was going back earlier where like people think that like people associate proof of stake with governance because like your stake determines the next block. But no, like you're. 32 Ether is an ASIC. What determines the rules and the update to the rules are people that download and update their nodes. Just like in Bitcoin, it's node operators. You do not need to stake to update your nodes or determine the future direction of the blockchain. Node operators do this.

• 1:29:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  You don't have to have money. You don't have to have any, well, all you have to do is be able to run a node on a machine. And then you are essentially validating.

• 1:29:58David Hoffman?

  Yes. So here's, here's the last take that we, that I'll, that we'll give. I think that's the last take. No, we got one more. This is me and I say, how to become a millionaire. This is it. This is gonna work. Everyone who's listening to this, who follows this can become a millionaire. Hopefully 50% chance. Number one, stick around and pay attention during the bear market. Number two, that's it. That's all, that's all you do. That's all you do. So yeah, I mean, the whole idea is that alpha is generated in the bear market. The people that stuck around during the, the 2018 to 2020 bear market, like they got to participate in DeFi summer, which was like, I don't know about, about you Ryan, but like DeFi summer was way more like lucrative than 2021. Like there was just like money being printed everywhere. It was super fun.

• 1:30:43David Hoffman?

  Like the vibes were really good. And, and then also people who participated in DeFi summer, they knew the bull market was on like a whole 12 months before, like other people that had left during the bear market or people who didn't know about crypto. So like, we knew that the 2021 bull market was gonna happen in like April of 2020. And so we had like six months, nine months, like front run everyone else.

• 1:31:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, totally. You gotta stick around in order to do that. I have a third way to become a millionaire though, David. 10% inflation for the next decade. Everyone gets to be a millionaire. Like the US dollar is eroding that fast. Exactly.

• 1:31:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Final take for you. This is a whole letter from Pantera. We can't read the letter in this take, of course, but I think the synopsis is the title. DeFi worked great. All of C5 was failing all around us. DeFi worked great. Dan from Pantera Capital pushes back against the idea that has become a narrative somehow, that Celsius and BlockFi, all of these were like DeFi. And here's an article he's pointing to. DeFi has an existential problem. No, DeFi worked incredibly well during this downturn. And he pushes back on all of that. So I'll read, I'll, I'll leave that for your homework. While I ask David the question, we end these episodes with, what are you bullish on this week, my friend?

• 1:32:01David Hoffman?

  Uh, am I allowed to like leak some alpha?

• 1:32:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, certainly. Yeah.

• 1:32:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  You mean the alpha? Is it, is it something I've heard?

• 1:32:09David Hoffman?

  Uh, yeah, you know all about it.

• 1:32:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know about this?

• 1:32:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you know about the alpha.

• 1:32:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Leak away then. Yeah.

• 1:32:12David Hoffman?

  For the, for the first time ever, there is more being built at Bankless behind the scenes than, than out in public. Like usually almost everything we do is completely in public. Like 95% of Bankless is out in public. It's just like the discord and coordination, the 5% of coordination that's like in private. Uh, for the first time ever, there's like more stuff being built in private that we've got in secret than it was in public.

• 1:32:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel, I feel teased, sir.

• 1:32:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, do you feel teased?

• 1:32:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you teasing me?

• 1:32:36David Hoffman?

  I'm teasing.

• 1:32:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're teasing the Bankless nation?

• 1:32:39David Hoffman?

  Is it working?

• 1:32:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I know what's going on, so it's not working on me, but uh, yeah, that would pique my interest.

• 1:32:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. When am I going to find out more, David?

• 1:32:48David Hoffman?

  Uh, well, there's, well, there's a number of different things. There's this one thing that is happening, and then there's this other thing that's happening. And then there's the third thing, which is the Bankless studio, uh, which most people know about, but they don't know to the degree of how awesome it's going to be. So there's there. I teased one of the three things.

• 1:33:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Oh, we got some stuff coming, is what David's saying in the pipeline.

• 1:33:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Ryan, what are you excited about?

• 1:33:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, I'm excited about the universe, David.

• 1:33:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I mean this literally this time, so you can't like, uh, you talk about like, my deep thoughts are, are weird. The James Webb Telescope, okay? This has been a project that's been like over a decade long, and it launched last December. I've been following this. This is the only thing I might be more excited about than the Ethereum merge. Okay, might be. Probably not though.

• 1:33:34David Hoffman?

  I've got nutrition, you've got deep space.

• 1:33:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, deep freaking space, yes. And the James Webb Telescope. And so, uh, you guys probably saw this. The pictures were all over the place. Pictures came back from, the first pictures from the James Webb Telescope, and they are absolutely phenomenal, okay? What we're looking at here is like, some of these stars, David, are just 500 million years old. Okay, we are looking back deeper in space than we ever have. That's like 95%. Through the timeline of the universe. That's how far back we are looking here. And it just blows my mind. You know, there's, there's tons of stuff you can find like, you know, r slash space is full of these images. If you want to get super geeky. But I think I have a crypto take here, too. Which is like, this is a 2020, 22 thing that I think the world needed. And I think we needed.

• 1:34:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because first of all, what is the James Webb Telescope? Well, it's a, it's a public good. This is open source knowledge that we can now share across the internet. And it's kind of like some of the things that we're building in crypto. And that's amazing in and of itself. It's also a massive engineering undertaking, right? That has taken over a decade. This project was far more complicated than anything humanity has ever launched into space. Just the level of, of detail and planning and everything had to go right in order for the mirrors to unfold. It's just an incredible story. And that we were able to do this as a species is absolutely phenomenal. We have a giant eyeball apparatus in space now. And that's cool. Also, this is like science, scientific discovery.

• 1:35:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  And as we know, it's like science, technology, that is the way we actually progress, right? The, these inflation cycles, these monetary policy things, that's not actually doing anything for progressing and improving humanity and quality of life for humans in the short run. The way we improve quality of life is through technology. That's the thing that always works. And we need science in order to do that. And then this gives me like a new perspective. It gives people a new perspective on the universe. And it's a time where like, I mean, there's wars happening. There's conflict everywhere. No one can get along. And this is something that we coordinated on to launch into space. I don't know, it's just a breath of fresh air in the 2020s. And I feel like we really needed that. That's, that's my take on the telescope and why it's important.

• 1:35:53David Hoffman?

  I love it. I love it. One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is that like, while there's like so much short term bearishness and like, because of like the recession. That is about to happen to us and all of our assets are down bad. Everyone's like focused on the next like one to two years. Like, how do I make sure I get to one of these two years? And then there's like even greater stuff like that, like global geopolitical things are totally going to shift. The world's going to look super different in five years. The dollar is about to collapse, like all this short term, short term in the grand scheme of things like bearish stuff that like, damn, we're gonna have to like, the whole fourth turning thing, like there's this big world transition that we're about to go through. But on the other side of that, there's like this space race that's about to trigger. There's like this metaverse that's about to develop. There's like bio hacking and gene editing that is like on the cusp of exploding.

• 1:36:35David Hoffman?

  There are so many cool things ahead of us and like they're all positioned to be like the thing that pulls us out of this just like crazy, terrible, like global reshuffling that we're about to go through.

• 1:36:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I totally agree. I think, I mean bullish humanity over the long run.

• 1:36:49David Hoffman?

  Always.

• 1:36:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? Bullish humanity. Meme of the week, David, what do we look at this week?

• 1:36:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56David Hoffman?

  This is Mike three, at enjoyor on Twitter. Says, "Basecar been working on a day playlist and the playlist is titled three A, three arrows capital, three A C. And it's song one, can I borrow a dollar? Song two, I need some money. Song three, give me yo money. Song four, money, that's what I want. Chuck Brown, song five, we need some money. Song six, can I borrow a dollar again? Song seven, spare some change. Eight, can I borrow a dollar? Nine, can I get some money? Yeah, three arrows capital down bad. Oh, it keeps on going. It keeps on going. I need money, can I borrow a dollar? I need money again, I need money, give me money, money, money, money, money. Oops.

• 1:37:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's it. That's the three arrows capital playlist. If you're, if you're into that kind of listening, then we'll include a link where you can find that on, on Spotify. Guys, as always, none of this has been financial advice. Crypto is risky, ETH is risky, so is Bitcoin. 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 on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:37:56David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcasts, and community as a Bankless Premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless Premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other

• 1:38:41David Hoffman?

  fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.