Launchcoin & Believe | ETH's 50% Candle | Coinbase Listed on S&P 500 | Jon, Bread, & Andy8052

In this episode of the Bankless Roundtable, host David Hoffman is joined by crypto enthusiasts Zero X Bread Guy, John Charbonneau, and Andy8052 to discuss the recent surge in Ethereum's price, which skyrocketed nearly 50% this week. The panel analyzes the impact of the Believe app and Launchcoin on internet capital markets, Coinbase's entry into the S&P 500, and Robinhood's new Layer 2 solution. They explore the implications of these developments for investor confidence and market liquidity, alongside the rising interest in meme-based tokens. The conversation wraps up with thoughts on Ethereum vs. Solana and the importance of community engagement in the evolving crypto landscape. Jon Charbonneau: https://x.com/jon_charb Bread: https://x.com/0xBreadguy Andy8052: https://x.com/andy8052 —- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐SELF | PROVE YOUR SELF https://bankless.cc/Self 🟠HEMI | BTC & ETH, ONE NETWORK https://bankless.cc/hemi --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 ETH vs SOL vs BTC 5:40 Internet Capital Markets https://x.com/gabrielhaines/status/1922293923420000346 https://dexscreener.com/solana/yrrustgpugdp8bbfosqdefssen6sa75zs1qjvgnhtmy https://www.believescreener.com/ https://x.com/believeapp 22:19 Memecoin Launchpads https://x.com/believeapp/status/1922075588115775489 https://x.com/zhusu/status/1922178773375418733 30:32 Ethereum Up 50% https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum 46:25 Coinbase Listed https://x.com/coinbase/status/1922046840528113880 53:47 Robinhood Acquires Wonderfi https://x.com/hanni_abu/status/1922341347844841611 --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:04David Hoffman?

  Welcome back to the Bankless Roundtable. Back with me here today, the man with gluttonous glutes, ZeroX, bread guy. Good to see you, my man.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Hey, friends.

• 0:12David Hoffman?

  Crypto's chief lowercase r researcher, John Charbonneau. Welcome back.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  Yo, how's it going?

• 0:17David Hoffman?

  And at least, and last but not least, the world's most zen DJ, Andy8052. It's good to see you.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Good to see you, too.

• 0:25David Hoffman?

  Pretty, last week, we were talking about how, you know, we started these episodes. It got pretty quiet. This week was not one of those weeks. We have quite a lot to talk about, so we're going to move pretty fast here. We got ETH almost at 50% up on the 7-day, 50% weekly candle, and then some post-Petro conversation as well. There's this thing going around that people are memeing about internet capital markets, this Believe app, this Launchcoin. People are making consumer apps and slapping tokens onto them. We're going to talk about that. Coinbase has joined the S&P 500. It's also acquired Derabit. And then Robinhood is CTO-ing a layer two. Apparently, they've got a ZK sync layer two now. That news just came out just before we started recording. And then if we have time, which we probably won't, maybe we can squeeze in some Stripe and stablecoin conversations.

• 1:09David Hoffman?

  But before we kick off this episode, I would like to throw it to John. In order to get this episode started, John, I'm going to need you to say one nice thing about Ethereum.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Do I get something nice from you about Bitcoin or Solana after?

• 1:21David Hoffman?

  Sure, yeah, I'm happy to play this game.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  You can take your pick of the two.

• 1:25David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  What I'll go with for Ethereum is still the most reliable chain. If you told me I got to put some money on a chain, so I'll go with USDC because like neutral can be on a bunch of different chains. And I got to leave my money there for 10 years, and I got to go get it back in 10 years and throw away the keys in between and go get it done. I'm picking Ethereum still.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Okay. I promise some people on the timeline that I have to like defend or be the counterfactual to a lot of your debates.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  We agree too much.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so like, well, yeah, our delivery is the difference, which I respect the game. You catch a lot of heat. I think we have the same general positions. They, I saw some people on the time that are like, oh, I'm not even going to listen because John's there and like, I can't stand it. And I was like, well, if you're, if you listen in, you'll know that like, as David has alluded to, it's probably going to be like a Bitcoin L2 fight for, between he and I for the vast majority of this stuff. So if you guys hate some of the things, his stances, like you're probably going to see some back and forth.

• 2:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think I've caught some flak at John from the ETH diehards.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  The inner circle?

• 2:35David Hoffman?

  The ETH inner circle, yeah. And the way I say this is like, John is something, somebody representative of somebody that Ethereum needs to convince, and he, as a rational investor, is open to being convinced. And as soon as we, as the Ethereum community, convinces John that ETH is a good buy, that, to me, is good signal.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Chaotic good. That's how I would qualify you as chaotic good. I'll happily take that. That's the goal.

• 3:04David Hoffman?

  Okay. All right, my nice thing, I'll do both Bitcoin and Solana. Can I do two things?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 3:11David Hoffman?

  My first nice thing about Bitcoin and Bitcoiners is that their vision for the Bitcoin asset, which many of them articulated back in, as far back as I can remember, in 2017, 2018, that has played out to a T. They're like, we're going to meme Bitcoin into the central banks of governments. And back in 2018, I'm like, you guys are fucking crazy. Like, there was no way that that's happening.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Did you see Jack Muller's little recent interview where he was like, in his closet that was totally, totally empty?

• 3:40David Hoffman?

  His closet's always empty. Why is it always empty?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a cathedral of a closet. And it was bare bones. And yeah, he was just talking about like, Bitcoin is not even, it's not a fix, it's not a hedge against inflation, it is the solution. Like, it's like, just like the max of the maxies. It's respectable that you've held it for this long in your willed new existence.

• 4:02David Hoffman?

  So that's my nice thing about Bitcoiners. And then my nice thing about the Solana camp, I'll say, I'm writing an article, I think a handful of you guys have read it, that comes out, it'll come out tomorrow. And it's about like, oh, the strategy shifts that Ethereum should do and what we should, what we should think about and how we should execute this, like, pivot for Ethereum. And I'm like, yeah, a lot of this is just taking leaves out of Solana's playbook. Just like, integrate the layer twos, bring them closer to the layer one, talk about the layer one, push everything onto the layer one. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, this sounds like, I've heard these words before.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, although like I would say that's not even a design intention from Solana. So I would say like, yes, it is, it looks like where Solana has ended up, but that was not like the design goal, right? Solana is just like, we're going to make Solana big, we're going to make Solana valuable, we're going to make Solana fast, we're going to make Solana whatever. And then everyone else tacked on to Solana, the ecosystem and just like, all right, well, you know, if they're going to not cede any ground on that, we have to come in elsewhere. We have to like be a network extension is obviously the meme that that was formulated. And it's like, okay, we have to cover ground that they're not going to give to us that we can actually like expand the pie on. So like the same end goal, which like we're all building the same thing. I know that's been a meme for a long time. It's just like the path to get there is a little different.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think part of it too is just like, there was a level of open mindedness there of like what that meant of, of like expanding Solana that I think was like pretty cool, where it's really grown and changed over time and kind of built its own little, not little anymore, like niche and community of apps and things that, you know, when tried on Ethel twos or things, haven't really worked, but worked on Solana.

• 5:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah. Maybe apps that are working on Solana that can bring us to our first subject of the day. Now that we're wrapping up crypto Twitter drama, internet capital markets is this meme that's going around crypto Twitter. I don't really know where it came from, but you know, the crypto Twitter's best content producer said it best. That's Gabriel Haynes of you build a consumer app, you launch a token, you slap them together, and now you have internet capital markets. This is all downstream of this one token called Launchcoin, which has done 1,000% in the last 24 hours and even more than that, going back just a few days, a cool 15,000% over two days, 1500% over two days. This Believe App, Believe Screener, it's like the new Pump Fun, but it's different. And Andy

• 6:23David Hoffman?

  has been tracking this meta for a while now. So maybe Andy, you can kind of just explain to us like what's going on and how this has crescendoed all the way up to crypto Twitter.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it actually like kind of started back in more like January of this year, but it was very small. So if you remember Jelly Jelly. I do. Has had some other funny stories with it now with like the hyper liquid trade stuff and all of that. But that was kind of the, one of the first iterations of this. And the idea was basically to, you have like a startup and you make a meme coin of the startup with, there's no promise of equity. There's no anything else. It is just a meme coin of the startup. And like, what is that worth? And in the case of Jelly Jelly, it went to like 200 million in like a day and then down a lot.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  But I think, and then from that, people, yeah, as crypto does.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  And I think people are kind of just were like, oh, that was silly. That was stupid. And in a lot of ways, it was silly and stupid. But it also obviously got some people thinking about things slightly differently. And so what we've kind of seen come out now with Launchcoin, which was previously Clout, if people remember that, it was clout.me was the domain, the name of the app. And it was like a social fi token app. Okay. And so they pivoted to Launchcoin, or it's called, that app's called Believe and Launchcoin is like their token. But you tweet at it to make coins. And the idea is that you are making coins for like products or, you know, apps and things like that. And what's unique about it compared to like a Pump Fun is there's no way to like snipe your coin, really.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  You can after, if you, I'm sure there will be tools soon enough where you can, or maybe they're already are, people don't know about. But for the most part, you like just tweet at a bot and your coin comes out. And the big kind of selling point is that there is a higher trading fee. It's like a 1% trading fee. And the half of the fees from that go to the creator. And so the idea is that if you have attention and interest, you can start funding your app just from this meme coin and, you know, add utility in different ways if you want to or not, whatever. And I think it's very like, it's still very unknown. It's, most of these are. Not legitimate or rugs or things from apps like things from

• 8:48Speaker 01

  It's mostly vibe coded stuff, right?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of vibe coded stuff. A lot of the jokes like, oh, people failed at raising their seed round and so they made a launch coin instead.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  In web two specifically. Yeah, it's like they're it's getting these like young vibrant like viral marketing style builders that are just like creating these things. I think was it the giggles? I think is another one where it's just like

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Trying to take over TikTok or whatever is, you know, it's this type of stuff. A young founder that has like 3,000 followers on Twitter, but has a couple of posts that hit like 200,000 impressions because they sent some some viral stuff. And then they also now have an app associated to their thing. And yeah, this is a way to bootstrap some capital, right?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. And we've seen, but now I think what's kind of come of it is we've seen a few apps that I would like consider pretty legitimate make coins. The biggest one is dupe. Um, dupe is pretty cool. And I had seen it prior to, I was familiar with no relation to crypto. I had just like seen it on TikTok, watching TikTok with my wife. Um, but the idea is that you like, it's like an AI app and you give it an item you want and it will find like dupes of it for you to save money. Um, and so this was, this is like by far the largest market cap coin other than launch coin that's come out.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  But again, it's just associated to it, right? Like the, like there is no equity. There is no claim to anything. It's like, what if I own dupe the coin? What does that do for me?

• 10:13Speaker 03

  So it's interesting because we're starting to see kind of like in real time, the creator of dupe, try to figure out what that means. Whether it's like get fees back in dupe coin from the fees that they generate or all these different things. Yeah, there is no explicit value related to it. It's a lot of trading attention.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  So what's the difference between launching a token on pump fun and launching a token on believe? How does believe know that there's a, they can app there? Like where, what's the association between the actual product, the website, dupe.com and the token?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think this is, well, this was actually a big part of why I was excited about it is like. There isn't, but the difference is, the difference is the, one, the way that the fees are generated. I think there's like, people seem to like it for some reason. This, this idea that like, the dev's not going to dump on you. They're just going to like, earn fees from the trading fees.

• 11:08David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  I'm not sure.

• 11:09David Hoffman?

  That's been the narrative for all launchers, right? Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  That also means there's just zero incentive alignment too. Like, they're just incentivized to generate trading. They're not incentivized to like, keep the token up.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  But I think, I, I think the actual answer is that, um, the creators of this app are significantly more web two. Um, I think the reason it took so long for it to kind of catch on is because they're not really plugged into the crypto world. Um, and people like Nikita have been sharing it a lot and is obviously very invested. And so I think that they just have a network of people who are not the traditional people who would launch a coin on pump fund. The, like, the people who are doing this, I don't think there is ever a world where they were launching a coin on pump fund. And so it's just a new game of different people, different apps that just like, feels different. And so people are having fun with it and like it.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm with Brett shaking his head a lot on this one. It's, it's the same thing in like, a different wrapper to me. This, this is, like, I, I really do like, I mean, I, I love the end vision of fundamentally, the thing that crypto is amazing at. It's capital formation and you should be able to go raise money for an incredible idea that you have. Um, but this is just meme coins slapped on a different wrapper. I mean, we can call them idea, idea coins or founder coins or whatever you want, instead of like, content coins or meme coins. But like, it's, it's the same thing, just a different group of people. Like, this is Zora to pump. Um, it's, it's the same kind of ideas. I, I don't think that there really is a meaningful unlock. I, I really like the end goal. I think that the reality of this is just, I mean, this is just regulatory hampered right now.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Is you just, I mean, you go to their website and it's all the disclaimers everywhere of, hey, make sure, you know, you are not promising utility, you're not promising people that this tokens go up, but you know, but hey, if you talk about it, maybe the community does really well. It's this very hand wavy, hey, we can't launch a security on chain and you don't own any of it. We need to get this to a point where, I mean, you're basically just launching a tokenized equity. A founder actually shows up and says, hey, I own 100% of the tokens. I'm selling 10% and these are the token holder rights. You could buy it or not, like here's the price or run an auction for it.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I've talked to a couple of the investors in, in Believe. I haven't talked to the team that much about it. But I think that that, the way that they kind of view it is like, that is the end goal. Just like they literally can't do it right now. And so this is just like, what do you do in between? And I do think the, I had something, oh, I think the other thing that's like pretty funny about this is so now it's been, you know, 72 hours of people trading these things with like any amount of attention. And the largest, the second largest coin behind Dupe on there now is a meme coin called Goon Coin.

• 13:46David Hoffman?

  Naturally, $50 million market cap, not bad.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It is just, it's purely a meme coin. It's not even related to a product. I, I don't want to get your show censored, David. You guys can look it up in your free time. But it's, there's, and I just think it's like a funny way that things go where all of a sudden there's immediately the second largest one is just, just a meme coin. People think it's funny.

• 14:13David Hoffman?

  There's no, with, with this particular coin, Goon Coin, there's no actual app here. It's actually just straight, we're just back to memes.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I believe it's a, it's a guy who works at OpenAI, potentially. We don't really know. And his last name is Goon, just made Goon Coin.

• 14:28David Hoffman?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  And the rest is history.

• 14:33David Hoffman?

  All right, all right.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  It's in a tease all over again.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, if it feels like basically what all of these different flavors of token launch pads, whether we have Pump, this, Zora, Boop, all of these things that are starting to compete with each other. If the end game is for everyone to get to, we generally agree. Yeah, you want to be, be able to basically launch these tokenized equities on chain and do this in a very clean, coherent manner. And the question to your point of what you're saying is, the question is, you know, what do you do along the way? If this is very quickly going to devolve into. The supposed utility tokens for a real thing are really just LARPing and people are realizing that very quickly. And then very quickly, we're just falling back into, hey, the biggest things on here are meme coins. It feels like we're back at Pump is probably the best position to this again.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Because they are just leaning into and focused on, hey, this is the killer market today. And I don't know, but my expectation is they will also want to move into more serious markets of capital formation and launching serious, more serious equity tokens as it's available.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Didn't it? It already caught a wave like this too, right? There was an initial wave of like, teams launching on Pump with like, projects inside of Web 3. Like, it was the same, like, was it something that went through the AI agent wave? Like, people were going there like, oh, we can do a fair launch again. And like, we did this already. It's just with Web 3 people instead of Web 2 people, like, six months ago.

• 15:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And there was a lot of those projects, those AI projects, AI16Z being the big one, but another other projects, a number of projects all kind of did this thing where they launched the meme coin. And then they were like, oh, the meme coins went up to 100, 200, 300 million dollar market cap. And they were like, oh, there's enough like economics sustainability for us to really invest in this project. Let's turn AI16Z from a meme to a real project. And so then they tried that, and that worked when the token was going up in price. But when the token started going down in price, all of the team realized that they did not have enough of the tokens to be really materially incentivized to work on this as a project. And so it's one thing to launch a meme coin, but if we're trying

• 16:33David Hoffman?

  to launch pseudo equity, which I think we all want, right? Like, meme coins, backing meme coins into pseudo equity is like a good thing to do. But if we're going to do that, we need to do, we need to do like, capital structuring. We need to do org chart structuring. There needs to be incentive alignment. The team needs to have tokens. Investors need to have tokens. We need to go back to like, traditional C corp, which is a tried and true science, like, way of incentivizing upside here. And you can't do that by launching a meme coin. You have to launch it with, you know, team owned percentages off the bat. And then you can't just launch a meme coin, because then the snipers are going to get the early bid, and the community is not going to necessarily have that same exposure. And

• 17:14David Hoffman?

  so there's a meme coin pseudo equity gap here that needs to be crossed, and it's not being fixed by a token launcher.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so I think, so here's my general counter to why I still think it's kind of cool, even if it's silly and probably stupid, is like,

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Generally, yes, I would agree, but what this does do is like, there is now very real, somewhat evidence that like crypto people are more than happy to ape into your, into your like pseudo equity thing that isn't even really equity in your company. And so what, what does it look like when that, when that is real and it is equity? And so I think it all of a sudden just is like a really, really strong selling point to builders and founders that like, hey, this, it's not a dumb thing. Like it's like the, the end goal here is not stupid and it's real. And there's like money that is interested in investing in your things and getting exposure to your things. And like, there'll be scams along the way and a lot of dumb things along the way. But I think like shining a light

• 18:17Speaker 03

  to a group of people who otherwise haven't totally seen that before, uh, through something that has a bit of a different lens can be valuable if like they execute well down the line.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Is that new? Like that's, we thought in 2017, ICOs, like, like this was like, it's never been a lack of appetite to develop the thing, to do, to do this thing, to create capital structure online, uh, through in our industry so that people can get exposure and have equity. It's just regulatory, like you literally can't do it. So it's like the desire, yes, is maybe going to be influenced by this a little bit more, but the desire has always been there. It's just like, you just literally cannot do the thing, which has always been.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think it's just like a better framing, better marketing for it than.

• 18:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah. The whole like internet capital markets meme, uh, that's been the whole narrative of crypto from the get go. That is what crypto is. It's internet capital markets. There's nothing like necessarily new here. I do enjoy the idea of like long tail projects, being able to like issue a financial asset permissionlessly because that's, that's what we're doing here in crypto. Like, yeah, please launch a token, ignore nation state regulations, you know, not legal advice. Uh, but also let's open up the long tail of capital markets towards projects. And I think that's pretty cool. Uh, but we're not, still not there yet. Still haven't figured that out. Imagine verifying yourself without handing over personal data. No hacked databases, no unnecessary personal exposure for airdrops, and no AI bots ruining community governance.

• 19:43David Hoffman?

  Meet SELF, the on-chain identity verification protocol built for privacy and control. SELF protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs to confirm your identity safely. Users prove key details like age or citizenship without revealing sensitive personal information. SELF never stores your data. It only generates cryptographic proofs. Here's how it works in three steps. First, register and verify. Use the SELF app to scan your biometric passport's RFID chip. SELF verifies authenticity with zero-knowledge proofs. Each passport creates one unique identity. Second, you can share proofs privately. Third-party apps request identity proofs, like confirming you're over 18. You can also link proofs securely to public wallets for airdrops or governance participation. And then last, secure verification.

• 20:26David Hoffman?

  Apps validate your proofs instantly on-chain, like on Cello, or off-chain. Audited by ZK Security, the SELF app is live on iOS and Play Store. Visit self.xyz and follow SELF Protocol on X. Uniswap is your gateway to a more efficient DeFi experience. With Uniswap swapping and bridging across 13 chains, it's simple, fast, and cost-effective, helping you move value wherever, whenever. Thanks to deep liquidity on the Uniswap protocol, you'll enjoy a minimal price impact on every trade. And now, Uniswap V4 takes it even further. Swappers benefit from gas savings on multi-hop swaps and ETH trading pairs, while liquidity providers can create new pools at 99% lower costs. The best part: you don't have to do anything extra. Each trade is automatically routed through Uniswap X, V2, V3, and V4,

• 21:10David Hoffman?

  so you get the most efficient swap without even thinking about it. Whether you're swapping, sending, on-ramping, off-ramping, or bridging, Uniswap's web app and wallet gives you the tools to unlock DeFi's full potential on Ethereum, base, Arbitrum, Unichain, and more. Use Uniswap's web app and wallet for a more efficient way to use DeFi. Imagine a world where your day-to-day banking runs on a blockchain. That's exactly what Mantle is building, powered by a $4 billion treasury and poised to become the largest sustainable on-chain financial hub. As part of their 2025 expansion, Mantle is introducing three new core innovation pillars that bridge traditional finance with decentralized technology. First is their Enhanced indexed fund aiming for $1 billion in AUM by Q1. It provides optimized exposure to Bitcoin, ETH, Solana, and USC, complete with built-in yield opportunities.

• 21:53David Hoffman?

  Next, Mantle Banking promises to revolutionize global value transfer through seamless blockchain-powered banking services, bridging crypto into your daily life. Finally, Mantle X blends AI with DeFi to deliver an intelligent, user-friendly experience for everyone. And the best part is that this is all in addition to their already-launched products like Mantle Network, ME, and FBTC. Ready to step into the future of finance? Follow Mantle on X, at Mantle underscore official, and join the on-chain revolution today. One of the games that people are playing that I actually did play, so there's actually some utility here, is noodle.gg. Andy, have you played this game?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  I actually haven't played it. I've only seen people play it. I haven't played it personally.

• 22:32David Hoffman?

  It's basically like Worm. You know the Worm game? You go like, go around and eat apples and your worm gets longer, except everyone's playing Worm at the same time. And then you try and like encircle other people's worms, and then you make them run into you, and then you get their money. And so you have to pay 0.1 Sol, 0.25 Sol to start off your Worm. And if you pay more Sol, you start off with a larger Worm. But everyone's in this like massive arena trying to like gobble each other up. And I played for about 45 seconds, I lost about $20. And I was like, okay, I'm not good at this game.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  That's fun. Yeah. But actually, yeah, that does sound fun, though.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it really has something to do with, you know, internet capital markets as much as it's a meme coin around like a pretty fun game that someone made.

• 23:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  But I think that's kind of the fun stuff, is you just get these like weird experiments of things that like don't totally necessarily make sense. And this like 100% could have launched on Pump Fun, but like this guy, I don't think he would have ever found his way to Pump Fun.

• 23:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  At least not anytime soon. And so it ended up on Launchcoin.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  But it is pretty cool, it's fun. I have a lot of friends who have been playing it and having fun with it.

• 23:40David Hoffman?

  So last week, we were talking about Boop Fun. Now we're talking about Launch Coin. It seems to be that we're just rotating through Pump.Fun, like.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  We didn't even mention Bonk. There's another one that I'm seeing people bull post now. Bonk, Bonk.Fun.

• 23:55David Hoffman?

  Bonk Fun?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:56David Hoffman?

  Were we talking about Bonk Fun last week?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Bonk is the meme coin. I don't think we talked about their specific Launchpad. And that like Launchpad has been, as of the last, like, I had a dashboard spun up. As of the last few days, has actually been taking up some meaningful market share from Pump Fun.

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  Really?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, there's a little bit of love there, but like, you know, it's hard to tell how much of that is a game and how much of that is like authentic. Like, the whole industry is, the whole sector is industrialized. So like, how much is just people incentivized to pump bags, pumping bags with automated stuff?

• 24:31Speaker 02

  They had launched on top of the Radium Launch Lab thing, right? Is that right?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. That I would say is the kind of interesting part of this is, you basically see all these different teams, they're competing at the same thing, just going for different directions. A pump started with the Launchpad. And then, you know, eventually decided, hey, let's kick out Radium. Why are we graduating all the coins to them? Launch Pump Swap. And so then, right after that, Radium goes in the other direction of, all right, we got the AMM already that has a bunch of liquidity. Let's go launch the Launchpad, I guess Launchpad Launcher. Where they allow people like Bonk to go launch their own Launchpads on top of them.

• 25:04David Hoffman?

  They're a Launchpad Launcher. So we're not even just doing token launches. We are a Launchpad for Launchpads.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. They basically allow you to launch your branded Launchpad if you have some good brand on top of them. Because I think that they realize-

• 25:17David Hoffman?

  That's kind of genius, I guess.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  And so that's what Bonk did.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because Bonk has the existing brand, but is not, I assume, you know, they don't want to go build out a Launchpad slash don't have the expertise to do it. So Radium provides the info to do that and says, hey, go launch your branded one on top of this.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So both Boop and Bonk are on top of that. Looking at the numbers, it's actually, so Launch Lab compared to Pump Fun is actually about the same. It's 860,024 hour fees for Launch Lab versus 1 million in fees for Pump Fun. Because I know Pump Fun has given something up. So like, it's actually one for one, basically, right now. And then you have the AMM of Radium versus Pump Swap. And Radium doubles Pump Swap. So like, the strategy actually, like, right now, early returns, is actually playing out in Radium's favor.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think that bonk.fun in particular, it has an interesting kind of, kind of in the same vein as like a bloop or something, but they're, they're committing basically all the fees to buying back bonk. Maybe not all of that, might be wrong, but the majority of the fees are buying back bonkcoin. And so I think that there's also a bit of kind of a narrative at play here of the D gens being like, hey, Pump Fun has sent $700 million of, you know, made $700 million that has not gone back into the ecosystem. If that had all gone to buying bonkcoin or, you know, insert whatever meme coin, like that's at least money that's staying within the ecosystem.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  And so I think that, you know, like in some of my chats, people over the last couple of days, a bit prior to, a bit prior to all the launch coin mania were like, I'm not buying things that end in pump. I'm just buying stuff that ends in bonk because it's like, you know, more aligned with, with what I want. You know, how, how long that would have stuck around for? Who knows? But it was an interesting thing to see.

• 27:06David Hoffman?

  You guys know where on this chart I'm showing for the listeners who aren't watching, I'm showing the Solana Bitcoin chart. Do you guys know where Pump Fun launched on this chart?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  It's gotta be those green candles, right?

• 27:18David Hoffman?

  Like right here.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 27:20David Hoffman?

  Right here.

• 27:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, December, like late, late 2023, right?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 27:25David Hoffman?

  So this is a Ben Cowan tweet that I thought was pretty interesting is like when Pump Fun launched and meme coins on Solana really took off. The Solana Bitcoin ratio stopped going up so aggressively.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Meme coins had taken off on Solana before Pump launched though.

• 27:39David Hoffman?

  Yes, but Pump, but Pump like, like turned it into a structure.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, they definitely professionalized it.

• 27:44David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes. And so like Ben, Ben Cowan's claim was that with the emergence of Solana meme coins, it's, there stopped being so much value accrual into Sol because like the capital just dispersed across the meme coins, which is actually the same effect that I think happened with Ethereum in its layer twos. Because if you go look at the Bitcoin Ether ratio, it also stopped going up around the emergence of layer twos. And so capital stopped being concentrated in ETH, it got dispersed into its layer twos. And that same phenomenon is happening in Solana with its meme coins.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely still think meme coins are not good for Solana, like very, very easily.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yes, definitely.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  I've heard people try to argue that Pumpfund is actually, and meme coins have been actively bad to Sol for this reason. I mean, you do very literally get a bunch of Sol sell pressure of, you know, people are paying these fees and they're selling it and they're not buying Sol instead. But yeah, I mean, not, not, it's still, it's still one.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I've not seen the Pumpfund is parasitic argument yet.

• 28:40David Hoffman?

  Oh, I've definitely seen that argument.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:42David Hoffman?

  Really?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:42David Hoffman?

  I've definitely seen that argument.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think we're starting to see the whole supply chain basically play out of, early on, Sol was probably the most extractive, if you want to call that, of just net profitability was going strictly to Sol, a lot of it in the beginning. And then you saw that progression has moved to Pumpfund is making just a ton of money over the past year. And so, you know, margins on something like Sol go down. And now I think we're seeing that next step of finally Pump is being like squeezed a lot by all these different launchpads now. And so all of that is going to start shifting towards just more users surplus at the end of the day, which is good. They're going to be pushed to, I mean, they rolled out there, I think they're creator revenue sharing or whatever. In the past few days too, the market's just going to need to keep getting more efficient, passing it back to users.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the original open source crypto thesis of all the fees getting forked out didn't exactly happen like that, didn't get forked out, but they are just straight compressing to zero across the board.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's just because it takes time to do stuff, right?

• 29:39David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  I think we discussed that in previous episodes where it's like, they probably will get forked out at some point, like, like they will compress to near zero. It's just that humans are slow and inefficient and disorganized and like, it's going to take time for that stuff to materialize. There's a lot of social things that come with it.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  I don't think that they will get compressed to near zero. They should definitely get compressed, but this is a just wildly chaotic and inefficient market in particular, where I would imagine there's some degree of sustainability on, like, as long as the market sustains itself, you should be able to clip some pretty good fees going forward.

• 30:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like Pump has some sort of like moat around the brand and volume around it, and it will always have that. And that justifies some sort of fee. Like, there's not going to be a Pump competitor that goes after Pumps like five bits of fees, for example, if it does ever get compressed that low, which I don't think it will. Let's turn to the candle that you can see from space, which is Ethereum's 43% candle, 48% seven-day candle. ETH has rocketed from the low, low price of about $1,550 to where it is now at $2,600. So probably one of the most aggressive green candles in Ethereum's history. And I don't really think anyone knows why. I think there's a bunch of reasons

• 30:59David Hoffman?

  you could say. One reason I think is like, you know, well, ETH is actually pretty solid exposure to stablecoins because there's $150 billion of stablecoins on the network and everyone's looking for stablecoin exposure. One could say, well, the ETH BCC ratio is just super oversold. I don't know if anyone really knows why. John, I'll throw this one to you. What's your take?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  The part of it that's at least the most interesting to me, I would say, is you probably would have expected seeing just the absolute sheer size of this move. Some pretty strong ETF inflows over the past week. ETF, the ETH ETFs have been, I believe, still outflows over the past week, which is kind of crazy for just the magnitude of move that we're talking about here. Like ETH has increased by about $100 billion probably in market cap over the past week. And the ETH ETFs, I mean, you wouldn't know it from looking at them.

• 31:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they are pretty flat.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is very just interesting and somewhat surprising. So, I mean, that gives you at least some information about who the buyer base is, is this is probably not gigantic money managers, tradFi types that are stepping up to the plate as much. And this is probably led more by, I would say, crypto native type circles of people like us who are, you know, finally at the point of, hey, I think that ETH has bottomed. I think that this is a sentiment change. I think that there is real change. So I think there's almost a positive spin on it that is really not the ETF buyers, that it is possibly more of a crypto native bid that has decided that, hey, I think we might have reached a bottom here. People who are paying closer attention to the kind of shift and pivot in Ethereum over the past few months of, things are actually going in the right direction. It was super oversold. I mean, just structurally, you had a lot of people who are using ETH as

• 32:36Speaker 02

  The short leg of just delta neutral trades of either just going long solely ETH or shorting ETH and then long BTC, stuff like that. So you stick that all together and you're pretty primed for a good, strong, short-term move. We'll see how it goes from here, but yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  I had some bids in here to catch this bottom accidentally. There was, I think it was probably about a month, month and a half ago. There was a liquidation concerns on, I forget which exchange it was, but I was like, okay. It was something around like 1800 ETH, 2000 ETH. And I was like, if this thing's going to spike down, I want to catch some of those wicks. So I put in some stink bids from like 1700 down to like 1500. And after like three days, I ended up pulling them because I was like, well, if this thing bleeds down to those levels, I don't want them. But if it spikes down, I want them. I pulled them, it bled down to those levels and then that would have been the bottom, bottom, bottom. And I pulled all of my bids for all that stuff.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  So you didn't hit any of them?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  I didn't hit any of them. I would have just scooped them up easily over the course of like, I was like two weeks too early, I think is what it was. So that sucks. But also like another fun consideration this has done for us, like for mega specifically. Remember we did a NFT mint and we denominated it in one ETH, right? So whenever we did that for the first half, it was when ETH was like 2600. So as we approached this next leg, we're like, look, guys, like we're getting into a pickle now because like the price of ETH is changing. Like we have a smart contract with one ETH pricing on it and all this other stuff. And we're like, now it's kind of tough to like, have to like do a second mint with the same NFTs and the same contract on the same price, but the price is actually like half of what it was when we did it the first time.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Thankfully, we're now basically back to the same price and those problems are gone. So I need Ethereum to keep up with what it's doing and then remove some of our concerns because we haven't, we've been in ETH this whole time. So like we've had to weather that storm.

• 34:25David Hoffman?

  I think that is the kind of the billion dollar question here is, is this just like a mean reversion back to some fair value and it was oversold and now it's done now? Or is there like material momentum in the chart? And like today with ETH, you know, at $2,630 at the time of recording, I think it's pointing towards this is, there's going to be continuation here, there's going to be momentum here. And I think definitely there's some chest dumping in the Ethereum community, which is about, you know, $2,000 too soon, in my opinion. But I don't know if anyone has an opinion about whether this is like a one-time blip or is if this is a return of momentum into the ETH category. Andy, how do you feel about this?

• 35:05Speaker 03

  Well, I think like the hard part that you just don't really know yet is like,

• 35:15Speaker 03

  at least for me, nothing is meaningfully changed as far as where I'm transacting daily, like where things are happening on chain in the world that I'm participating in, which is like mostly still Solana and every once in a while base. And so I think like I'm skeptical to feel like there's going to be a major shift in like the general CT sentiment until things like that start to happen. But you know, price going up is the best way to change sentiment or narrative that exists. And so there's like a very real chance where just if there ends up being enough flow to have the price keep going up, then all of a sudden people's, the way that they're acting and trading and where they're doing things will change.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Cause I feel like it's always been this funny thing of like the developers are still there, but it feels like a lot of users are like, I don't really want to transact on these chains or do these things. But if there's money to be made, there's money to be made.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  I hate that I've blackpilled myself. I don't know if it's like bear market moves that is like, I've like just been in that mindset so long that I now convince myself. Again, I've been posting the last week and a half of just like all these things are overpriced. I guess maybe Charb is in my fucking head now, but like, you know, you see this move and just like what Andy just said, like, okay, we just had the update of the Pectra upgrade. And like, it's going to take time for that stuff to materialize, right? The 7702s, like that's still probably going to be messy, which walls are even adopting it. So like all of these things that we were excited about here in this last week or so, I guess it's just going to take a few months for this stuff to play out, which means that's when sentiment comes in, that's when like actual behavioral changes come. Like that's just going to take a while, right? And then you think about the actual move here, a couple of the jokes on the timeline of like,

• 36:57Speaker 01

  oh, you know, Ethereum just added one Solana to the market cap. And you can look at that and you can go, oh, man, it's just, it's worth so much more. Or you can go, oh, man, everyone's still transacting on Solana. And it's still like, it shows how relatively cheap Solana is relative to this other thing. Like if we think the activity and the usage and the execution is the thing that is value. Andy is still on Solana, right? Hyperliquid is the one that's accruing all the fees and activity. It's, you know, you can add 10 hyperliquids inside of that so that for me, my mindset goes like, okay, if I do still think that these things all maybe are a little overpriced relative to the actual fees, activities that they're doing, and we're not seeing moneyness actually like accumulate for this thing, I see this and I go, okay, that tells me there's more

• 37:39Speaker 01

  upside in these other tokens versus there's continued upside in the Ethereum of the world. I would love to be proven wrong as I have still have a big bag of Ethereum. I just consolidated all my stuff this past week, but that's where my mind is going right now.

• 37:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, I think the Andy archetype, the Andy cohort, which is like the meme coin traders, the trenches, the people who just like live in the telegrams and love it for the fun of the game, is, you know, definitely a very strong representation of like the more median person in crypto Twitter today, but we have to remember that that is not exactly what the current meta in crypto as a whole is right now. Like, there's a huge like institution, TradFi, Wall Street, attention on the crypto industry. And I think Ethereum does have have very strong tailwinds for that. And, you know, one of the metas that we've talked about over the last two episodes is like, how do we get exposure to stable coins? Like, you can buy Athena, I guess, but like, how do you get exposure to Circle? It's not public yet, and it's even just going to launch on the TradFi markets at some multi-billion dollar valuation.

• 38:39David Hoffman?

  You don't want to buy Coinbase to get stablecoin exposure. Everyone's bullish on stablecoins. Well, Ethereum has $150 billion of stablecoins. And, you know, maybe, maybe it's not perfect exposure, but nonetheless, like, it is exposure. And we all know that, you know, BlackRock and many other tokenizing institutions are all going to tokenize their assets on Ethereum first. Like, all tokenized assets will go to Ethereum first. And that is a huge tailwind that like, you know, the meme coin traders, the trenches are just like indifferent to, it's just like two separate conversations. And so in addition to just the mean reversion, ETH being priced too low, it is, I think, a pretty valid take to say that like, oh, yeah, people like Wall Street is going to come in, they're going to land on Ethereum first, they're going to put their tokenized assets on Ethereum first.

• 39:23David Hoffman?

  That's the logical place for them to go, and then ETH needs to re-rate according to that effect accordingly. I think that's a pretty fair take.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  I think that's definitely the the hope. I'm more on Andy's and Brett's side, probably unsurprisingly. Of I this makes sense as a short term move. I have no strong opinion on what happens in the short term because I don't think anyone actually knows what where prices go in the short term. Medium to long term, I haven't structurally changed my views on wanting to own ETH and relative attractiveness versus something like Sol and BTC.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  It is still just a tough spot. The thing that I think will need to change for that medium to longer term real rerating is changing that answer that Andy gave basically of. It's not just, ah, people are saying the right things like that gets you some rerating. You know, there's a little bit of a sentiment change. It's no, our user behaviors are actually changing and we're seeing that in user patterns on chain. It is, I am using Ethereum. Or I see this gigantic shift and yeah, all of these institutions are coming on chain and they're all clearly using Ethereum. They're not using Solana. To the extent that that happens, then you can get actually a structural medium to longer term repricing. In absence of that, I think that stuff like this along the way is probably the best that you can hope for.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  We bottomed out, you can get some little runs that are good, but I don't see gigantic outperformance and absence of just real structural on chain changes, which I think are going to be tough. The other tough part with the stablecoins is I agree that the main strength that Ethereum has right now of if you're going to win on chain activity is getting these big institutions, you know, stuff like Bittl on chain, people keep their big treasuries. Stablecoins, stuff like that on chain. The question ends up being how much kind of value does that end up accruing to ETH? And in the eyes of who? Who ends up buying that? You know, is that attractive to retail traders? Who are seeing, oh, all this stuff is going on chain and I want to buy ETH because of that.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Because the other side of that is just because BlackRock is putting, you know, Bittl and whatever, I mean, they're putting it on a bunch of chains. But even if you have this big institutional investor who is saying, oh, yeah, I want to, I'm going to buy the treasury funds on Ethereum, that doesn't mean they're also going to buy ETH. Those can just be completely separate things. And I mean, at least in the past week. And just as a general trend, the ETH ETFs, I would say, have been a relative underperformer relative to a lot of people, what a lot of people would have expected and how well the BTC ETF has done. So the question of how much that translates into the ETH. Price is going to be the question because you do have this kind of fundamental difference. And the types of activity that Sol is getting and the types of activity that Ethereum is getting is the types of stuff that Ethereum is going to be is good at.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  And is likely to be able to press its lead in if it's able to is a more kind of just stock based model. And Solana is really dominating the flows. The flows business is where you tend to make more money is you have a lot of people trading on chain. You're generating a lot of MEV. There's a lot of transactions, a lot of trading. You get a lot of MEV and REV that's going to Sol as a token versus Circle could have a trillion dollars of stablecoins. USDC sitting on Ethereum or a giant treasury fund, you know, they're not paying AUM fees. Over to Ethereum, you're not generating the same level of cash flows. So it ends up being a more difficult question of can you win back flows base activity? Or is the former enough to get you a rerating anyway of maybe it's not generating a bunch of fees, but you know, we see all the cool stuff is happening there.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  So Ethereum is is interesting again, that ends up being reflected on the price. That that ends up being kind of the difference in the business models and we'll see how it gets reflected.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Did you see the Coinbase ETH strategic reserve stuff that they're they're bull posting? Things like 300,000 ETH or something that they were they were accumulating.

• 42:54David Hoffman?

  Coinbase was tweeting?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  I don't know if it was the people from the base ecosystem or just that it was on the books for Coinbase. And they were like touting it as like, we're actually trying to accumulate ETH. I can go back and try to find that tweet, but I think it was like 300, 300,000 ETH ish.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Was it basically keeping the sequencer fees from base or something like that? I think low confidence on that.

• 43:16David Hoffman?

  My understanding of it was that Coinbase, their what is it? Their quarterly report went out, their earnings, earnings went out. And on their balance sheet, their Bitcoin holdings went from like 6,000 or 60,000 to 90,000 or maybe 6,000 to 9,000. And then their ETH holdings went from like a quarter, a quarter million to like 310,000. But they didn't say how it got there and they didn't say that we have a strategic mandate to accumulate. It just showed that they went up.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  From like Coinbase proper, I think it was just like the people pounding their chest saying like a base is good for for ETH.

• 43:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't think there was any material association between Coinbase and ETH there. They have more Bitcoin and Ether on their balance sheet in Bitcoin and Ether terms than they had last quarter. So they are buying crypto, which is good, great. I was supportive of that. They should buy more crypto, specifically my bags.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  My guess is for the ETH in particular, that they're probably just keeping base sequence and profits.

• 44:14David Hoffman?

  Yes, right. They're earning revenue in ETH. They're holding ETH. They're just not dumping it, which is great.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, also good.

• 44:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Have you ever imagined Bitcoin and Ethereum truly working as one, unlocking the full potential of Bitcoin, DeFi, and more? Meet Hemi, a groundbreaking modular network designed precisely for that vision. Co-founded by early Bitcoin core dev Jeff Garzik. Unlike other Layer 2s that treat Bitcoin and Ethereum as separate silos, Hemi connects these giants into a single, powerful super network. With Hemi, users gain unprecedented asset portability and possibilities, combining Bitcoin security and value with Ethereum's versatility. Hemi's unique innovation, the Hemi virtual machine, integrates a fully indexed Bitcoin node directly into an EVM, enabling dApps that seamlessly interact with both networks. And with Hemi's proof of proof, or POP consensus, users benefit from truly decentralized, censorship-resistant Bitcoin-level security.

• 45:02David Hoffman?

  Since its recent mainnet launch, Hemi has rapidly ascended the ranks as one of the top Bitcoin chains. With a thriving global community and robust ecosystem support, Hemi isn't just building a network, it's shaping the future of Web3, DeFi, and beyond. Visit hemi.xyz slash banklist to learn more, discover ways to interact, participate in the leaderboard program, and be part of the community that's uniting Bitcoin and Ethereum. In the Wild West of DeFi, stability and innovation are everything, which is why you should check out Frax Finance. The protocol revolutionizing stablecoins, DeFi, and Rollouts. The core of Frax Finance is Frax USD, which is backed by BlackRock's institutional Bittl Fund. Frax designed Frax USD for best-in-class yields across DeFi, T-bills, and carry trade returns all in one. Just head to frax.com, then stake it to earn some of the best yields in DeFi. Want even more?

• 45:47David Hoffman?

  Bridge your Frax USD over to the Frax still Layer 2 for the same yield plus Frax still points and explore Frax's diverse Layer 2 ecosystem with protocols like Curve, Convex, and more, all rewarding early adopters. Frax isn't just a protocol, it's a Digital nation powered by the F X S token and governed by its global community. Acquire F X S through frax.com or your go to Dex stake it and help shape Frax nation's future. Ready to join the forefront of DeFi? Visit frax.com now to start earning with Frax USD and staked Frax USD. And for bankless listeners, you can use frax.com slash R slash bankless. When bridging to Fraxl for exclusive Fraxl perks and boosted rewards. Since we're talking about Coinbase, you might as well just bring up the fact that S and P. The Coinbase got added to the S and P 500.

• 46:31David Hoffman?

  So this is their new pinned tweet. The tweet says, as the saying goes, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you and then they fight you. And then they add you to the S and P 500 or something like that. And then the Coinbase stock, if you just look at coin, it's up an incredible amount. I'll go pull it up right now. It's up something like 30% over the last two days. And so my, my, my equities bags are doing pretty good. Yeah, look at that green. That's just nuts. Yeah. So going from, yeah, 25% over the last two days, which is pretty damn crazy.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  As someone with options expiring at the end of this year, I am euphoric.

• 47:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 47:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, coin, coin has been a kind of flat performer on a yearly basis, but it's nice to recoup some losses. Andy, what's your take?

• 47:16Speaker 03

  I think it's cool. I, I don't really buy stocks. It's not, not what I do.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  You're in zero stocks? Alto enough for, for a land boy.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  I have like a very small 401K.

• 47:27David Hoffman?

  Hmm. Okay, sure.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  No, my, my retirement portfolio is Bitcoin.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  The, the simplest answer of why it's good is because do you own index funds though?

• 47:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 47:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So that, that is part of why it goes up is just the, it's auto bid now for, yeah. I previously didn't own coin either because I don't do single name stocks, but I have index funds. So we are, we are now coin holders.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Cause when it gets out. I mean, I think it's a sick, like, it's just cool for the industry in general. You know, when I got into crypto in like early 2017 is just like feels like it was such a different world to, to that. And so like, whether or not I own it, I think like. You know, whatever people's feelings are about Coinbase, like it has to be a cool thing for you if you're spending a lot of time in this space that this is what's happening.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's legitimizing it, right? That like, one, we're thankful for that. But for me, I'm happy because Coinbase has kind of been getting rocked a little bit. And like some of the bull case you could have for it, right? Robin Hood's starting to step in and they're starting to take over some of the retail, like US flow. Like they did just buy Derbit, which is awesome. So they're trying to create a complete like trading package, which is, I enjoy. And you know that Coinbase is the custodian for basically all of the ETFs. So that's good. If you think, you know, just that bid is going to go to the ETFs, that some of that splashes on to Coinbase, obviously they have Circle, big, big, I think it's like 47% ownership there. So if you think stable coins are going to be the thing that grows, like awesome exposure. But it's been

• 48:56Speaker 01

  a little shaky. As David said, I was expecting a lot more when they had that regulatory moat over the last like year and a half. It's just, they never really materialized into anything. And then, yeah, the base stuff, like when you do it relative to the, all of its other earnings, it's not really that high. So base's revenues, even though they are big for our space, is not relatively big for the rest of its business. So it's like, that's just a nice cherry on top.

• 49:18David Hoffman?

  The last thing I want to talk about on these podcasts is politics, but it is worth noting that the entire Trump tariff dump has almost completely gone from the market. Depending on where you measure it, we are actually green. The S and P 500 is actually green on the year. There's still like some, like, we need four more percent in the S and P to actually turn to all time highs, but like, we are within all time highs on the S and P 500, which is pretty crazy.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  I also, I will say, I saw something on the timeline, I think it was yesterday, from like the Coinbase VIP account, that they're going to be like totally reworking their whole like VIP setup and like, all of that. And I think that that's interesting as well, is seeing them potentially trying to lean more into like, how do we attract?

• 50:05Speaker 03

  You know, potentially like crypto Twitter influencer people or like this, the whole world of like, how do you make this a really just like enticing full suite product where we're building community and doing these other things, which I feel like Coinbase has generally struggled with, other than with Base, I would say, over the time that I've been around in the crypto space.

• 50:25David Hoffman?

  This kind of just feels like a American Express, like you get all these perks for having the card. It feels like a very similar product line to that, where if you're part of this advanced VIP program, you get a bunch of extra stuff, including NBA games and exclusive dinners.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Give me a lounge in an airport and we'll talk.

• 50:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 50:46David Hoffman?

  Did you guys see Coinbase announced or launched their new wallet, which includes what basically looks like a Twitter clone? And I think everyone's kind of confused about that because, you know, it's one thing to have a more, you know, I have a better relationship with Coinbase than I have with my bank. It doesn't mean that I want to go to Coinbase for my like my social media needs. And yeah, when I looked at it, it's like, if there's likes, there's retweets and there's embedded texts and pictures, this is Twitter. This is a Twitter clone. And I'm not sure what Coinbase is trying to do, just copying and pasting Twitter and like establishing a social network. I don't know. What's your guys' takes?

• 51:22Speaker 01

  I thought it was like a Warp Cast embed or something, or something from Farcaster. I didn't realize it was like a totally separate product because even the comment in there is like, see you at Farcan, which is obviously the Farcaster thing.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  It is using Farcaster. It's built on Farcaster. But it's basically, it's essentially another Farcaster client that they're integrating more socials and stuff with like Zora and things like that.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  So it's a Warp Cast competitor, if you want to call it that or whatever. That's what it basically is. Okay. That makes sense.

• 51:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  It's a little run.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  I don't care about.

• 51:55David Hoffman?

  I guess that makes sense. They don't have to bootstrap.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think that's, I think it's more bullish for Farcaster than it is for Coinbase Wallet. So I think that's kind of Farcaster's whole sales pitch is that you're building the social graph where you can build a social app without having to bootstrap the network effects of that social app.

• 52:16David Hoffman?

  It does make a little bit more sense, understanding Jesse's push for like on-chain social and coined content, because you can imagine coined content being embedded right inside of the Coinbase app. TBD on whether that's consumer behavior that consumers will ever engage in, but you can see like why there was like a concerted push by Jesse and the base team here.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm generally skeptical on anyone going after incumbents, whether it's Pump Fun or Twitter or whatever, like especially with this stuff. Whenever you're trying to change user behavior to try to find PMF, it's just like, it's so, so, so, so, so tough. So.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  It feels a little bit. Yeah. It feels a little bit like when Coinbase rolled out, what was it, their NFT platform three, four years ago, something like that, like basically an OpenSea competitor, and that just very quietly completely disappeared.

• 53:05David Hoffman?

  Everyone had one of those. Kraken had one of those. Coinbase had one of those.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  It was a little like that.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  FTX had one of those.

• 53:12David Hoffman?

  FTX had an NFT platform?

• 53:14Speaker 01

  I remember.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, they had an NFT platform.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  SBF minted it, uh, his, like, he was the very first mint on it or whatever, right? It was like a handwritten note was the first one.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  They bought a bunch of board apes on auction, uh, from like Sotheby's or something so they could list them for sale on FTX.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  It didn't go well.

• 53:34David Hoffman?

  I could imagine. No, I mean, of course, that was customer funds. I could only imagine you're using.

• 53:41David Hoffman?

  All right. Any other topics before we round this thing out?

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Do we talk about, oh, so the, we were talking about Coinbase, Robinhood was a thing. Do we, do we mention the Robinhood L2, Mr. Wonderful?

• 53:52David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah, the Robinhood layer two. Uh, you're the one who, I saw this on your feed, Brad, maybe walk us through this.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there were murmurs, you know, about a week ago of like, Robinhood wants to explore blockchain. Are they going to launch on Solana or they're in conversations with Arbitrum? So like everyone was speculated on where that was actually going to come from or where they're going to land. And today, or I guess it was actually yesterday was when it released, they announced that they had acquired a company called WonderFi, which is, has an L2 associated to them already. Apparently it is a testnet L2 on, on, in the ZK sync bubble stack. Again, testnet, no, nothing really there. They talk about gas abstraction and trying to do like a freemium model to like, try to get some consumer stuff there. So then the speculation becomes, one, is this the L2 that they were looking to acquire?

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Meaning they did not do anything with Arbitrum and they're not going to go do anything with Solana? And if so, whether it's Arbitrum or this, is that going to be value accretive to Ethereum the token? Like what, how does that play out? What does that look like? But it's interesting being inspected on. I, I would assume that they would just like pick all this stuff up and keep it there. I wouldn't imagine they would try to like migrate or anything, but there's also no switching costs because it's a dead L2. I looked at it. There's no, there's nothing being done there. It's just like infrastructure. So like, losing it is not a big thing and it was a part of the overall package of WonderFi, which has a bunch of other financial services. It's not just the L2. You see there's a wallet there. There's a few other things.

• 55:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. WonderFi Chain, WonderFi Wallet. On the website it says a global leader in centralized and decentralized crypto projects, products with a ticker for their Canadian stock exchange listing, which apparently is now being acquired by Robinhood.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  So do we know how much they bought them for? I think we did.

• 55:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think it just said in the, what was it, Brad?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  It's 250 Canadian, but it's, that's 178 million US I checked.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  So like,

• 55:50Speaker 03

  I, I never understand this. I've never heard of WonderFi. No disrespect to their team, whatever. Robinhood couldn't take 180 million dollars and build a better version of WonderFi without having to like go through all of this? I know that there's more business things at hand that I don't care about.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Like they're, they're a Canadian company. They have other financial services. I'm sure they're acquiring whatever, whatever backend stuff in our processes and or customer lists and or whatever on the backend. And then they get a few things, like a few products that they just spin up faster, right? Instead of having to go from day zero, scope it out, build the thing, do the, like the investigations, whatever, over the next six to 12 months. They're like, all right, well, they've done a lot of the DD hopefully. Now it lets us go to market over the next three months instead of having to wait too, too long.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  I know very little about this deal.

• 56:38David Hoffman?

  Behind this too, that they are acquiring the team too.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  I know very little about this deal, but another common reason to acquire just various platforms, particularly in crypto, is just for regulatory and licensing reasons. If they already have the applicable licenses in different jurisdictions that you want, and that will take you a multi-year process to get, just going and buying someone and then folding them in is often a cleaner way to do it. It's like buying a bar for the liquor license. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're basically just buying the license. I mean, that does happen sometimes. I don't know the details of this deal, but that is another common reason to go buy someone.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Thinking about this stuff, like M and A has been crazy the last two, three weeks, right? We're seeing all kinds of acquisitions. I was, I was listening to, I forget which podcast it was on, one of the, one of the Belker ones, our Blockworks ones, and you, you think about how this actually works out with inflow and capital into the space, right? Like this is, this is an instance where now we have Robin, Robin Hood money in bulk coming into a bunch of people who are presumably crypto native. Like I would say these guys are less crypto native than some of the other businesses that are inside of the industry. But if you have outside web two capital at this level coming in and buying out all of this stuff, you have to imagine a lot of these people that are being acquired are going to take a lot of the

• 57:55Speaker 01

  money that they made from this stuff and probably inject it into our ecosystem in some capacity, because, well, it worked out for the first time, double down and make some more money in the thing that you're familiar with. So even if it isn't like a, something that's great for us, we don't really care about, like I think long-term it is kind of a liquidity injection into the industry, which is good.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  The founders are gonna go market buy you.

• 58:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right. Well, with the Deripet acquisition, it was like something like $700 million in cash, but then the rest of like $2.3 billion in Coinbase stock, coin stock. And so that, that not necessarily, not necessarily will be going back into the crypto ecosystem, because they have to first dump coin first, and that will come out of coin stock, which is, you know, that's one of us.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  That's bad for us.

• 58:37David Hoffman?

  That's bad for us.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Me and you specifically.

• 58:39David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the other big acquisition too was, I mean, ahead of them rolling out new products this week, but also from Web2 was Stripe acquiring Bridge a few months ago for that was 1.1 bill, which they immediately took advantage of in the past week, launching stable financial accounts. But yeah, the bigger impact of it to me is less about rolling that money directly in from founders. It's also just helpful for the funding market. I mean, just from a VC perspective, but for anyone investing in these markets, this makes it much easier to underwrite equities to the extent that you have a healthy M&A market. I mean, this has been a big problem in traditional tech VC as well over the past few years is that so many acquisitions, we're just getting shot down and it makes it really hard to

• 59:26Speaker 02

  underwrite opportunities if you think that, you know, anything successful, well, we can't be acquired and people don't want to go public. So it's harder to get an outcome. Showing here that you can get multi-billion dollar equity outcomes and having real big buyers here is very valuable for being able to underwrite equity investments and also just making teams probably feel a little less pressured on the margin of, well, we need to go launch a token because there's this big token premium and there's no value in the equity and no one's going to buy it because there's no big buyers of this. Just showing a really healthy, large funding market is super, super healthy, which is great for crypto.

• 59:59David Hoffman?

  Gentlemen, it's been another week. Andy, Brad, John, I really appreciate you guys coming on and doing this roundtable with me. Thanks for having us, buddy.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was fun. It was nice to have more things to talk about.

• 1:00:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm sure the token launchpad saga will just be continued next week. We'll talk about whatever the next launchpad is for the next meta that happens in seven days and I will see you guys then. Bankless Nation, you guys know the deal. Crypto is risky, you can lose what you put in, but nonetheless, we are headed west. This is Frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.