ROLLUP: Standing with Ukraine & All Those Affected | Macro Analyses & More

4th Week of February 2022 ------ 📣 NOTIONAL FINANCE | DeFi's Leading Fixed Rate Yield https://bankless.cc/Notional ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 POLYGON | LAYER 2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask 💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger 🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 3:42 Ledger Waiting List https://cl-cards.com/waiting-list/?utm_source=Bankless&utm_medium=Content&utm_campaign=22-02-Card_Waitlist-ALL-Marketing-Partnership&utm_content=msg_Join_The_Waitlist__others_Media_Blitz_1 https://cl-cards.com/waiting-list/?utm_source=Bankless&utm_medium=Content&utm_campaign=22-02-Card_Waitlist-ALL-Marketing-Partnership&utm_content=msg_Join_The_Waitlist__others_Media_Blitz_1 4:16 MARKETS 4:29 BTC Price 5:03 BTC Down Due to War https://decrypt.co/93690/bitcoin-price-nosedives-after-putin-declares-war-ukraine 5:12 $242M Liquidations 6:00 ETH Price 6:38 $500M of Liquidations Below $2100 7:46 SPY 9:04 Markets & War Events 10:10 More War Data https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/930417020548288553/945715197425901578/20220220_130230.jpg 11:52 RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE 11:55 40 People Reported Dead 14:42 The Donbas Region 15:25 Putin Attacking All of Ukraine https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1496777729274003457?s=20&t=JhHqAeaWRpH6UPZ7wxC6BA https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1496777729274003457?s=20&t=JhHqAeaWRpH6UPZ7wxC6BA 16:17 Kiev’s Smoke https://twitter.com/TreyYingst/status/1496793744590389249?s=20&t=JhHqAeaWRpH6UPZ7wxC6BA https://twitter.com/TreyYingst/status/1496793744590389249?s=20&t=JhHqAeaWRpH6UPZ7wxC6BA https://imgur.com/SibvZDN 16:45 Thread Showing Warfare https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1496752076335947778?s=20&t=VBkT8sFiKw4vP8LzB0AaDA https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1496752076335947778?s=20&t=VBkT8sFiKw4vP8LzB0AaDA 17:09 Is Ukraine Just the Start? https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1496099209975681025?s=20&t=uDfJH89CSPmtjMr780NHpw https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1496099209975681025?s=20&t=uDfJH89CSPmtjMr780NHpw 18:50 Propaganda & Disinformation Campaigns https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1496513006657839108 21:35 Anti-War Russian Citizens https://twitter.com/MehrajMir_/status/1496900291676938254?s=20&t=iiqLK-Gar6LoA6zpz1KbHQ https://twitter.com/MehrajMir_/status/1496900291676938254?s=20&t=iiqLK-Gar6LoA6zpz1KbHQ 23:08 What Happens Next 28:05 David & Ryan’s Takes 32:40 China Eyeing Taiwan https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-nine-chinese-aircraft-its-air-defence-zone-2022-02-24/ 34:43 End of Pax Americana https://twitter.com/LosMapMaker/status/1496702639417040897?s=20&t=IiTgk6uHXeJQfXEmi-I8yg https://twitter.com/LosMapMaker/status/1496702639417040897?s=20&t=IiTgk6uHXeJQfXEmi-I8yg 38:45 MARKETS CONT. 39:56 1.4% of all BTC on Ethereum (wBTC) https://coinmetrics.substack.com/p/state-of-the-network-issue-143 40:37 UNI 80% of Dex Market Share (+30%) https://members.delphidigital.io/reports/uni-market-share-shines-stablecoins-wars-fresh-farms/ 41:12 Rocketpool at 1% https://twitter.com/Rocket_Pool/status/1495571529819901954 41:59 Yield Bad https://coinstack.substack.com/p/a-solution-for-yield-investors-crypto 43:18 Notional Finance https://bankless.cc/Notional 44:30 RELEASES 44:33 1st EVM-Compatiable ZK Rollup https://twitter.com/zksync/status/1496128244038660102 46:46 Opera Integrates Ethereum L2 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/opera-integrates-ethereum-layer-2-130000011.html 48:20 Yearn on Arbitrum https://twitter.com/iearnfinance/status/1496577884802060288 48:30 Apps on Arbitrum https://twitter.com/litocoen/status/1496472127012286464 48:52 Hop on Lyra https://twitter.com/lyrafinance/status/1496216877084905476 50:00 Etherscan Product Updates https://twitter.com/richerd/status/1494033167136690178 51:09 DuelDAO https://twitter.com/itstimconnors/status/1495834620092465156 53:50 RAISES 53:51 Sequoia Crypto Fund https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/134578/sequoia-capital-new-crypto-fund-tokens 54:20 Multis $7M https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/partnering-with-multis-the-financial-backbone-for-web3%EF%BF%BC/ 55:00 JOBS https://pallet.xyz/list/bankless/jobs 56:02 NEWS 56:14 DAO Hacker 56:20 Hacker Identity Reveal - $11B Stolen https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/1496087239037698048?s=20&t=IjEiV0Y8aEe706Kor6zMBw https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/1496087239037698048?s=20&t=IjEiV0Y8aEe706Kor6zMBw 58:05 How the Hacker Did It https://twitter.com/avsa/status/1496109516445954055 59:55 The Mystery May Be Unsolved? https://decrypt.co/93547/crypto-ceo-denies-11-billion-ethereum-dao-hack 1:01:27 OpenSea Hack/Phishing 1:02:11 Email https://twitter.com/pluggedinn/status/1495246939838840840?s=20&t=Yln_7KwqoY2nF3kvqgPJRw https://twitter.com/pluggedinn/status/1495246939838840840?s=20&t=Yln_7KwqoY2nF3kvqgPJRw https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/02/21/opensea-says-phishing-attack-impacted-17-users/ https://twitter.com/opensea/status/1495625768713469954?s=20&t=Pja4mfxLfgsrN9yFKiPPkg https://twitter.com/opensea/status/1495625768713469954?s=20&t=Pja4mfxLfgsrN9yFKiPPkg 1:04:03 Canada Update https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/canada-ngmi?utm_source=url 1:05:30 Authorities Don’t Understand Wallets https://twitter.com/apompliano/status/1495038292773019655?s=21 1:07:37 Ontario Warning https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/02/22/canadas-osc-warns-crypto-exchanges-not-to-promote-self-custodial-wallets-report/ 1:09:27 Be Ready https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1496478003622301699?s=20&t=YNKAU0JecgGPVUHGTWL8Bw https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1496478003622301699?s=20&t=YNKAU0JecgGPVUHGTWL8Bw 1:10:50 Vitalik on Canada https://twitter.com/CoinDesk/status/1494831247205580805?s=20&t=bVhe5WdwpMcX4yAbaiSX4g https://twitter.com/CoinDesk/status/1494831247205580805?s=20&t=bVhe5WdwpMcX4yAbaiSX4g 1:12:40 This Isn’t Okay https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1495780516175433739?s=20&t=OVkrUM-R02NPSMFIl6_QNQ https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1495780516175433739?s=20&t=OVkrUM-R02NPSMFIl6_QNQ 1:13:38 Freedom to Transact https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1494444624630403083?s=20&t=aCVjL6qeHXeSa_1P13s1Lg https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1494444624630403083?s=20&t=aCVjL6qeHXeSa_1P13s1Lg 1:16:20 NFTs 1:16:25 Sotheby’s 104 Punk Rug https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/135257/sothebys-withdrew-a-lot-of-104-cryptopunks-before-its-auction-was-set-to-begin 1:17:14 “Nvm, decided to hodl” https://twitter.com/0x650d/status/1496646517003800578 1:17:34 Invisible Friends NFT https://thedefiant.io/invisible-friends-nfts/ https://opensea.io/collection/invisiblefriends 1:19:40 REGULATION 1:19:50 China Tareting Secret Miners https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/23/chinas-zhejiang-province-implements-punitive-electricity-prices-for-crypto-mining/ 1:20:10 China Jailing People For Raising Crypto Funds https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/135286/china-crypto-jail-people-if-funds-raised-public 1:23:35 TAKES 1:24:15 Neutrality https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1496695587495981056 1:24:55 Old vs. New World Model https://twitter.com/markbeylin/status/1369461574986039303?s=21 1:25:30 FunkoPop https://twitter.com/icebergy_/status/1496338749789200384?s=20&t=2JLMa26SedDop45eIATbzw https://twitter.com/icebergy_/status/1496338749789200384?s=20&t=2JLMa26SedDop45eIATbzw https://www.funko.com/ 1:27:13 Crypto Puck is Moving Fast https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1496257364407767045?s=20&t=P-oyh7NAZy5rok9oz3sa7A https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1496257364407767045?s=20&t=P-oyh7NAZy5rok9oz3sa7A 1:29:18 Crypto is here to Set Us Free https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/crypto-is-here-to-set-us-free?utm_source=url 1:31:26 What David’s Excited About Elden Ring 1:32:11 What Ryan’s Excited About https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-was-wrong-we-need-crypto-587ccb03 1:35:20 MEME of the Week https://twitter.com/DnlKlr/status/1496637172199264258?s=20&t=2JLMa26SedDop45eIATbzw https://twitter.com/DnlKlr/status/1496637172199264258?s=20&t=2JLMa26SedDop45eIATbzw https://twitter.com/arjunbhuptani/status/1496265036775530496?s=20&t=2JLMa26SedDop45eIATbzw https://twitter.com/arjunbhuptani/status/1496265036775530496?s=20&t=2JLMa26SedDop45eIATbzw 1:37:00 Disclaimers ​ ----- Not financial or tax advice. Do your own research. See our investment disclosures here: 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.

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're really thinking about the people of Ukraine. From the Bankless community, our heart goes out to everyone impacted by what's going on.

• 0:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, Bankless Nation. This is the fourth week of February. It's time for the weekly roll up. David, I feel like we've got a bit of a somber episode today. Not a lot of good news right now. And I'm not talking about the markets. I'm talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And I think at the top of this episode, David, we should just spare a moment and think about our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, our friends, those in the crypto space, those outside it, because they're going through a really difficult time, to say the least. And I feel heartbroken at the situation. I know you do as well. And a lot of us are looking at our screens and the images that are coming across, and

• 0:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  we're just feeling helpless at this moment. We're going to talk about the Ukraine invasion and some of the issues around that and how it affects markets, how it's affecting crypto, how it's affecting the world. But I want to start the episode and just, you know, set the tone. We're really thinking about the people of Ukraine. From the Bankless community, our heart goes out to everyone impacted by what's going on.

• 1:21David Hoffman?

  There's one thing that I learned during COVID is that during big times of crises, the distances and connections between humans just collapse. And like, that's kind of the cool thing of the internet these days is that we actually get to see what's going on everywhere, for good, but for better or for worse. So there's a lot of shit out there. And we have this one rogue guy who's not really aligned with the rest of us, taking his ego across borders. And now we are going to talk about it.

• 1:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  It very much does feel like it's happening in our backyard because the world is so much smaller and the internet has brought us together. When I see Reddit users and Twitter, people on Twitter that I know posting things from the Ukraine, I don't see like, you know, another nationality. I see someone like in my neighborhood, on my block, you know, and a part of my community. And so I do think maybe that is, hopefully, part of the bright side of all of this is the world is a lot smaller. We have instant communication. The borders, the national borders, aren't as strong and the world is, you know, in the best of times, one big family. So this feels like it's happening to our friends and family

• 2:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  members right now. We're going to talk about markets. We're going to talk about all of the regular things we do talk about. But, you know, obviously, with the undertone that even when we're talking about prices, you know, there are things, people are losing lives right now. You know, like, when price goes down, you're losing money, but people are actually like losing their life right now. And that is far more serious, obviously. So going into this episode with a lot of gravity on that, but we are going to talk about these things. We're also going to talk about Canada freezing bank accounts and where that leads. We started the story last week. We're going to continue that story. We also, crypto found out who the DAO hacker is. Allegedly. That's a story that's emerging. Question mark.

• 3:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  DAO hacker, all the way from 2017. Also, there's some good news mixed in, all right? So, you know, between the heavy issues, there's some good news for crypto, some other things that we're going to be talking about. I guess one piece of good news, a little bit of good news, is we have a new way to go bankless with the Ledger wallet. This is an announcement from our friends at Ledger. It feels like we need bankless money systems now more than ever. They are issuing a Crypto Life debit card. All right? So you can load this up directly from your Ledger wallet, your bankless Ledger wallet. You can join the waitlist. I'm on the waitlist. I think you should be too. If you don't have a Ledger...

• 4:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hardware wallet, you probably should have one of those as we enter the 2020s. And connect this debit card to it and it becomes much more powerful. So go ahead and check that out, get on the waitlist. I'm going to be on the waitlist, can't wait for this to come out. David, let's get to the markets, man, markets. We're going to talk about price, as I said. Price is not the most important thing that's going on in the world today, but it is something that we have to talk about because it is Market Monday. And prices are down a bit. Why don't you talk about Bitcoin for us today?

• 4:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Bitcoin started the week at about $42,000 and it hit a low last night, Wednesday night, Thursday morning at 34,500. So really just plummeted through that $40,000 level. Since the low it hit last night as a result of the news that indeed Russia has begun the bombing of Ukraine, we've resurged from the bottom of 34.5 up to 37.2. So a little bounce off the bottom there, but overall down about 15% on the week.

• 5:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  As you would expect, and of course, all of this is driven by the Putin war on Ukraine that's going on right now. A lot of liquidations, of course, coming in too. So this is a headline, crypto sees 242 million in liquidations within hours amid Russia-Ukraine crisis. Whenever we see a sharp price drop like this, we always see liquidations. So this is somewhat to be expected. You have any thoughts on this in particular, David?

• 5:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it wasn't just generalized. I think this is talking about centralized finance liquidations, but there's also DeFi liquidations as well. Broader, broadly, the markets are kind of in this weird spot where there's been so much selling. We've had three months of selling, not just in crypto, but also with traditional stock markets as well. So like, damn, when does the selling stop?

• 5:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right, and of course, the uncertainty of what's going on right now certainly compounds to that, to compounds to the market jitters and the down, the down plunges. What are we seeing with ETHs? More of the same?

• 6:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Ether started the week at $3,000, hit a low last night of 2,350, which is marginally higher, a little bit higher than like the lows it printed about a month, a month or so ago, a little bit more than a month. And then like Bitcoin, it has actually resurged since I actually wrote my notes. I wrote the notes about an hour ago, it was at 2,450, but now we're at 2,560. So down again about 15% on the week. Again, bouncing off of the liquidation lows that happened just last night.

• 6:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Lot of liquidations as well below 2,100. We could see this in DeFi markets as well. Here's a headline, ETH market faces $500 million worth of liquidations if the price drops below 2,100. How can we see that? Where are these numbers coming from, David?

• 6:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I believe this is triggered by a very significant Maker Vault, which will be the impetus for, in theory, in the current state, if no, if no positions get covered, that if we dropped below $2,100, there would be 50, $500 million worth of Ether that would go up for auction and, you know, could potentially cause a cascading liquidations. And so, that's bad. The beautiful thing about DeFi and transparency is that we can see that. And so as we get closer and closer to that 2,100 price, if we do end up going there, things will need to be covered, or else we will see a significant amount of Ether sold on the markets to cover the, cover the liquidations.

• 7:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  This reminds me of chasing some of those liquidations back in, in March of 2020, when we first heard about sort of the pandemic news and when the markets were grappling with all of that, something similar going on here. What about the S and P 500? We don't usually talk about the traditional finance market, but they're so correlated these days. Bitcoin is at an all-time high correlation with the S and P 500, and of course, so is Ether, so are many of the crypto askers. They're, they're all in the risk-on category. So what's happening with that? The S and P right now.

• 8:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think if you zoom out and go back for three months, we've had three months of down prices. At the start of the year, but right around January 1st or 2nd was the high for the S and P at 480 on this index. I'm not sure of how standard this index is that we're looking at, but this is a tracker of the S and P. 480 was where we are. We hit a low of 410, which is, I think, down about 15%, which is a big move for the S and P. This is the aggregate stock market, like basically all equities when we lost 15% of value inside of three months. And like if you zoom out, Ryan, go out to like the five year or something, you can see like it's the biggest down move since COVID, basically.

• 8:48David Hoffman?

  Since COVID, it's just been up and to the right. And now we're back a little bit about almost a year in prices, back to like April and May of 2021 to where we were at these prices. So yeah, this is the first first down move since the March liquidations of 2000. What year was that? 2020.

• 9:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I saw this this graph too. So this is a chart of major market shock events. Many of these are wars or, you know, violent actions of some kind. So one is September 11th, so 9/11/2001. The S and P drawdown in the one day was about 5% for that. And the total drawdown was about 11.6%. That took 11 days to bottom and 31 days to recover. Another example, I suppose, is Pearl Harbor attack was one day down 3.8%. Total drawdown of about 20%. It took 143 days to bottom. Of course, that was a much more protracted war.

• 9:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that was a bigger war.

• 9:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that was a very big deal. And then it took 307 days to recover and there are all sorts of other events. You can see how these market shocks really impact. Some of them bounce back faster than others and it just depends really what happens from here on out, which we're going to try to analyze a little bit. Here are some other wars, Dave. Why don't you talk about this one?

• 10:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is a graph of six, five different wars, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, Iraq and the Crimean War, except for the case of the Afghanistan War, even, but even in the Afghanistan War, basically, it's lining up when the invasion actually happened, and then what the markets did afterwards. And every single war, it was up afterwards. Afghanistan, it was up for a little bit, but then it was down a year or two later, or no, a couple, yeah, a year or two later. But every single other market, it's showing that like, well, when the invasion happens, like, markets go down because they don't like uncertainty. But generally, it's been up and to the right. At least, I don't know, maybe these are cherry picked. I did not pick these. I just saw these on Twitter. But

• 10:58David Hoffman?

  the thing is saying is like, well, the invasion itself is usually around the bottom.

• 11:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think the market tends to overshoot things is obviously one of the lessons, and people are definitely panicking as they grapple and try to figure out what to do from here.

• 11:13David Hoffman?

  Right. So if you are panicking right now, like, take into account that the market might have already made the move, or at least, at least a healthy chunk of it already.

• 11:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  At least the events that have played out so far.

• 11:25David Hoffman?

  With the events that we know so far, yes.

• 11:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  At this point, been priced in, right? So now it's a matter of forecasting what happens in the future here. And David, I know we were going to save this for news originally, but we may as well include it. Before we get to the rest of the market items, let's talk about the Russian invading Ukraine incident, because this is going to affect not only crypto for a while, it's going to affect the entire world. And it's hard to talk about crypto without this, without having some context here. So I feel like today, we really woke up in a different world. Like, things have changed. Okay, this is a, this is a, it's almost a time to readjust, but we also have to recalibrate and figure out what the hell is going on. So as we get into this, I would just say to Bankless

• 12:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  listeners, neither David nor myself are geopolitical experts, all right?

• 12:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  We could talk about crypto politics and crypto systems all day long and are happy to do that. Now we're getting into a space where we are synthesizing things and trying

• 12:25David Hoffman?

  Which I think we're good at.

• 12:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  to distill them, which we definitely have some strength at. So we may not get everything 100% correct and we don't view us as experts in the space. We're trying to give you enough information to be dangerous and to understand how that affects the world, your life and crypto writ large. So let's talk about this, David. What's just happened? The news?

• 12:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, a significant amount of our sources with regards to this comes to Kyla Scanlon and Twitter. If you guys listened to our episode with Kyla, she did a great breakdown of so many different things. A lot of it had to do with the European energy crisis and Putin's amassing of troops at the border around Ukraine. And that was like three-ish weeks ago, Ryan, that we released that episode. So like definitely if you want some recap, some, I guess, already outdated recap, still helpful though.

• 13:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  I would just tune into her latest things too. She's gonna put out some content around that. So we'll include some links to her blog.

• 13:23David Hoffman?

  So last night, we got word that Russia had indeed begun bombing Ukraine and actually crossing over the border. We wake up this morning to an advisor to Ukraine's president saying about 40 people had been killed so far in the Russian attack on the country. Actually, when I woke up and saw that number, I was like, wow, that is a lot lower than I expected it to be. The other issue is, and we'll talk about this, the other issue is that actually we just don't, there's a massive fog of war going on with Ukraine. We actually just don't know what's going on inside of Ukraine. And that is strategic, that is specifically caused by Russia's disinformation and obfuscation campaign. But bombs, artilleries, missiles have all been reported. Videos are being shared on Twitter about this. Airports

• 14:07David Hoffman?

  have been bombed and now seized by the Russian military. And really, the impetus for this, the playbook comes right out of World War II, where in Poland and Germany, Germany invaded Poland on the

• 14:23David Hoffman?

  As a result of Poland allegedly attacking a German radio tower. It turns out it was completely fabricated by the Germans as an excuse to go into Poland. This is the exact same playbook that Putin is using with Russia where there's this Donbass region, which is a small region in eastern Ukraine that's right next to the Russian border, and it has probably the most amount of pro-Russia support in all of Ukraine. And all of Ukraine is very much, they all want it to be independent from Russia. So Ukraine as a country wants independence from Russia, but there's this very small region right next to Russia that has pro-Russia separatists. And Putin has been making the claim that these separatists are being oppressed by Ukraine,

• 15:08David Hoffman?

  that there's a Holocaust going on. He talked about how the Jewish president of Ukraine is a Nazi because he's oppressing these pro-Russia separatists in Donbass, basically as an excuse to invade. The thing is, the Donbass region is very, very small, and it's just, yeah, right there, just to the right, very, very, and that's not even all of the Donbass region is pro-Russia, just like the corners of it that are very close to Russia. And so Russia has invaded Ukraine on the precipice of, or on the presumption of freeing these people. But the thing is, Putin has bombed all of Ukraine. Like, I think if...

• 15:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're straight to Kiev already, right?

• 15:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the Russian forces have, you can see these little red indication marks as where they've been reported as bombs. It's universally around all of Ukraine. So while the verbiage, the wordage out of Putin and Russia is that they want to free the pro-Russia separatists, they have actually straight up bombed the entire country in strategic points, airports, subway stations, and they are now actually surrounding the capital of Kiev. This is a picture of the capital of Kiev, which has smoke pouring out of it. There's a number of these photos all around.

• 16:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you see this one, David?

• 16:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  I saw this from Reddit earlier this morning. This is from Kiev.

• 16:31David Hoffman?

  A fleet of military helicopters flying over, yeah.

• 16:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Looks like it's taken from someone's balcony and gives you kind of the citizen view of what's going on.

• 16:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's a thread that has all of these types of videos that were able to actually get out into the internet sphere from Ukraine. That we'll put a link to that in the show notes. There's literally just too many of them to share. But their collection of missiles, destroyed helicopters, tanks, convoys, basically everything that you would expect to see in a war.

• 17:02David Hoffman?

  So there's a link, yeah, lots of destruction. So that's sick.

• 17:09David Hoffman?

  Okay, so moving into, so yeah, so the worry here is, is Russia just claiming parts of Ukraine and then eventually just kind of folding it into all of Ukraine? Or this is a text from Alexei Navalny, who says, "Should we perhaps replace Ukraine with, in Putin's speeches, with Kazakhstan, with Belarus, with Baltic countries, with Azerbaijan, with Uzbekistan, maybe Finland?" He proposes this as a thought experiment. Well, we'll get into like why Putin feels like he can do this at the moment. But basically, people are worried that like first Ukraine, then the rest of the fractured parts of Europe that are all small countries.

• 17:48David Hoffman?

  Because no one really seems to be physically stopping Putin from doing what he wants. And so will that just continue beyond Ukraine?

• 17:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It seems like one of his goals, the question of like, why is Putin doing this? And that's complicated and probably no one really knows aside from Putin, but it looks like it's an attempt at reunifying the USSR, basically. And, you know, maybe in his world, returning it to its former glory. And that's what we're doing here. And I do think that this is important to emphasize that this is really the first major conventional warfare Europe has seen of this type since World War.

• 18:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Two.

• 18:29David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 18:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so, this is why this is so concerning, not for the entire world, obviously for the people of Ukraine who are suffering in this moment, but also for Europeans, for Americans, for citizens in Asia. The entire world needs to be looking at this and trying to figure out what happens next. Let's talk a little bit about some of the disinformation campaign and the propaganda that we've seen. I think we've seen some of this on social media already, but what's happening with the disinformation campaigns?

• 19:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's been a consistent theme of reporters and people that are showing the attacks from Russia into Ukraine, videos, and these accounts, and the news reporters that are in Ukraine and others have been consistently blocked and banned from Twitter. So this is a tweet from one of these individuals that says, "I am back again after having been locked out twice in the last 24 hours. First time for a post debunking the foiled sabotaged gas attack, and the second time for a post debunking the Ukrainian attack on Russia." Twitter needs to do something against these locks now. I'm not sure what the content was that got them blocked, but it's my opinion, and my take on this, is it's not, obviously not Twitter blocking these people.

• 19:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's bots.

• 19:48David Hoffman?

  It's bots, blanket reporting, blanket, like, you can ban anyone on Twitter if you get enough people to report that person fast enough.

• 19:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is an aspect of social media cyber warfare, right?

• 19:58David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 19:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're seeing kind of how it plays out, where all you have to do is block some of the images and videos and voices getting out for some period of time.

• 20:09David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 20:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  In order to kind of increase the fog of war. And you could do that very easily if you have a bot army that just reports on various tweets and says, you know, and then the Twitter algorithms-

• 20:18David Hoffman?

  It's automated.

• 20:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  -will flag it. It's completely automated, and that's what's going on right now, too.

• 20:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and with stuff like this- Putin and Russia's strategy has really been to distort time. So they are making recordings, we'll talk about this later. They're making recordings that they say are at specific times, but they actually made them like hours and hours prior. There's just a great fantastic effort of psyops and internet cyber warfare going on. And it's just obfuscating our data and our information about what's actually going on inside of Ukraine. So like this, this report about only 40 people have been reported dead. Who knows? Who knows?

• 20:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I know the, at least the US intelligence agency expects to see tens of thousands of lives lost as a result. I think I saw an estimate from the Biden administration saying 50,000. It is interesting that Western

• 21:09David Hoffman?

  How many?

• 21:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  50,000?

• 21:11David Hoffman?

  Lives lost?

• 21:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not now, not now, projected.

• 21:14David Hoffman?

  Oh, God.

• 21:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Projected. And I think that I, you know, one thing that's been interesting is that, that Western intelligence sources have been actually pretty spot on about predicting this so far, which, you know, was difficult to foresee. So, so maybe that's a source of signal so far. It's very difficult to tell. But I think a larger point, because we've been, we've been talking about, you know, Russia and Putin and don't want people to get the sense that these two things are, you know, going hand in hand, because the Russian people largely, I think, from, from what, what we could tell, what many can tell, they don't want this to happen either. Okay?

• 21:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is, there's an element of this is Putin and Putin's government war, not necessarily a war inflicted by the Russian people. And what are we looking at here, David?

• 22:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is a protest in Moscow, which is a brave place to protest of people protesting against the war in Ukraine. It's hard to quantify the number of people in this protest, but it looks like a lot. They're all wearing masks, maybe because of COVID, but maybe also strategically. Interesting time that we're having this with simultaneously with masks being abundant. Apparently, I saw a tweet that said, anything from the Russia TV is, is talking about the constant assurances that Russia is only doing this to protect and that Ukraine is provoking them again, like trying to fight that disinformation. Basically, what they're doing is they're trying to silence all the information coming out of Ukraine so they can kind of fill the void with their own narratives.

• 22:49David Hoffman?

  I mean, where everyone's calling him out for it, but like sometimes it just works anyways.

• 22:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  There are, there's like graffiti, no war graffiti being spotted all around Moscow from Russian citizens. And, you know, keep in mind how dangerous these sorts of acts of protest actually are in Russia right now. Obviously, you know, jail sentences and far worse can happen in people who do this. Can we talk about what happens next? Because I feel like this is all emerging as we're recording this on a Thursday. The big question is, what is the world's response going to be? I think there's some context here that we should go over is the world largely still needs things from Russia, particularly Europe, but also America is very dependent on Russia for resources.

• 23:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here's a list of resources, palladium, platinum, gold, oil, gas, nickel, wheat.

• 23:43David Hoffman?

  Oil and gas being the big one.

• 23:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and 30 to 40% of Europe's natural gas supply is actually coming from Russia right now. 30 to 40%. So sanctions against Russia hurt the rest of the world as well. And this is, this is something to, you know, weigh as well. I mean, we've had inflation recently, it's been going up and oil prices and gas prices continuing to increase for average, everyday citizens around the world. And now we have this sort of supply shock. If, if the EU and the US stops purchasing Russian supplies, what does that do to a barrel of oil or energy costs in a place like Germany?

• 24:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's, there's the conversation, that Germany has a plan, plans to create a pipeline between them and Russia, which are now being canceled, I believe.

• 24:37David Hoffman?

  Meanwhile, Russia or most of Europe is going through a pretty I don't know how big to call it, but an energy crisis. The winter in Europe is mild at the moment. Thank God for that because if it wasn't mild, we would have even more demand for Russia's oil and it would have an even stronger stranglehold. So it's one of those things while we're watching Russia invade Ukraine, we're also buying oil from them because Europe needs to stay warm. And so, but also like Russia needs money too. So like it works both ways. These supply chains are codependent. So it's we have these very like important relationships for resources and while we just watch Russia invade Ukraine. So kind of very delicate situation.

• 25:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  And on the economic sanctions list, of course, you can start sanctioning various commodities and supplies coming from Russia. You can also, if you are the US or it's Western powers, try to lock Russia out of the existing SWIFT financial system. So you can try to freeze assets in bank accounts. You can try to cut off Russia as a whole towards SWIFT. And I think on SWIFT, which are sort of the the payment and settlement rails that the world generally uses outside of crypto. And I think that the US and European countries will probably explore these sorts of things. As of now, I don't really know what's happening, David, because this is all emerging so quickly. What the US's response is going to be as far as, you know, sanctions, what Europe's

• 26:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  response is going to be as far as sanctions. And it's hard to know what exactly to do in this case. I mean, do you, do you go extreme and sanction very hard? Or do you sort of not sanction and appear weak, appear that you don't care, but you're getting the resources that that your citizens in your country needs from Russia? It's, there's no clear decision in these types of situations.

• 26:31David Hoffman?

  We, right before we started recording, we were coming off the heels of Biden's first speech and he talked about making very strong economic sanctions against Russia, the strongest version, the strongest economic sanctions, including SWIFT sanctions as an answer to like why we aren't actually, why won't we be using military force? And Biden says, well, because we're going to sanction this shit out of them. Basically, the thing is, and again, unreported, just saw a tweet about this. I'm just just reporting what I see is that swift sanctions, cutting off Russia from the SWIFT network is actually not something that NATO has full alignment with. So when Biden says that we are going to sanction them via SWIFT, that's not something that that all NATO nations are in approval of.

• 27:16David Hoffman?

  And like, that's how I'm pretty sure that's how energy is being bought from Russia.

• 27:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 27:21David Hoffman?

  And so like, there's cracks in like, the coherence of the of the UN or NATO right now. And so.

• 27:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I'm sure Russia, Russia has already game theoretically, like, working this out.

• 27:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, plan this out and they're kind of calling the West bluff. Like, now, you need our resources too much. Or if you do sanction, then we know workarounds or routearounds. I think they're definitely Putin is calling, calling the West bluff on this.

• 27:49David Hoffman?

  Russia always has a very strong ally, maybe isn't the right word, but like, China will buy all of Russia's oil off of them if they need to. So they have like a backup buyer of their resources if Russia needs, needs that to happen. Like, China's pretty damn close to Russia.

• 28:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and that's a whole nother thing to talk about, which maybe we will. So but those are, those are the facts as we know them right now. That's what's going on. David, do you have any takes on this?

• 28:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So my.

• 28:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Armchair takes, right?

• 28:18David Hoffman?

  Armchair takes, yeah. My interpretations are like, well, the question we want to ask is like, why is this happening right now? Because this is an unprovoked, just impromptu invasion of another sovereign nation. Like, why is this happening? And I think understanding a little bit of the context might be good to do as we go forth into this. Again, I think we've been saying this on Bangladeshi since we started this. 2020s are going to be chaotic and they're only getting more and more chaotic. And this isn't another example of that. So why is this happening right now? Like, well, America itself is politically divided. Like, we just had the most contentious presidency of all time, followed up by what is another contentious presidency, more or less. And so there's a war at home. Like, we're distracted and meanwhile, we just got embarrassed by.

• 29:01David Hoffman?

  Afghanistan. And so America's influence abroad has not shown to be either of interest by its own constituency, or are we, we, we're not even competent to have outside influence abroad. So there's that. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is in a critical position in the UK. Trudeau is dealing with crisis in Canada. Merkel, Angela Merkel out of Germany is recently gone. Macron is facing strong opposition at home. So we have all these other world leaders that are busy, that are dealing with their own messes. And so like, and also at the same time, like Russia has a defense of, they got nuclear, nuclear bombs. It's like, well, we're all dealing with our own internal crises. Russia with their big swing and whatever comes in, it's like, oh, we

• 29:45David Hoffman?

  could probably take Ukraine because they're all like in their own conflicts. They don't have a spine to stand on. And so Putin's like, well, now's the opportunity. And Putin, from his perspective, if you listen to his speech, like he talks about like how you, the ethnic purity of the Ukrainian people and how they are truly a people of Russia. And this is, this is straight up as like, in my opinion, Putin is like the last big imperialist that owns, that controls a country. He is an imperialist. He is a barbarian, I guess. He's somebody who wants power in a world that has moved on from that, except since he's the only one that is aggressive enough to

• 30:27David Hoffman?

  actually fight with weapons and violence. No one else wants to fight with weapons and violence these days. So Putin's like, well, I'll be the one that does that because no one's going to stop me. He's, he actually truly wants like the ethnic purity of Russian people to be coherent again. And so he's using military to do that. And no, like we, as a society, as a global population, we've all moved on from that. We stopped that in after end of World War II, but apparently not Putin. And so like, no, there's no one with like a taste for violence these days that's willing to go up and fight him. So that's my, that's my take on that.

• 31:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I guess my take on that is like, yeah, I somewhat agree. I think that's worth also zooming out a minute, a bit. So Naval wrote this tweet and he said, this is the end of Pax Americana, right? The peace of the American empire. I'm reading a fantastic book right now called Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, Ray Dalio, which he basically zooms out and looks at these things in cycles. And his general, like, his overall thesis is that the US as an empire from a power perspective, and you can measure that by a number of different metrics, and he does, is on the decline.

• 31:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  And there are other empires, so-called, that are on the rise. And so this is other opponents, other adversaries, kind of testing US power. And I guess the bear case for all of this, or the sad case, and the reason for a tumultuous, you know, 2020s, is the world tends to go in these kinds of cycles, right? You know, we go from a period of peacetime, and that traditionally happens after some major event, after a war, let's say, and a new world order is established with an undisputed winner. And we have this, this period of peace for a time until that power diminishes and leaves a vacuum for others to come take in.

• 32:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  One thing that I think is important for us all to be watching is how China reacts. China, of course, more so than Russia, is the emerging power. And just one bit of info maybe to get in, it seems like there could be some Chinese aircraft in the air defense zone over Taiwan right now. Hard to know if that's, that's normal or if that's new. I've also heard some reports of ships, Chinese ships, crossing Taiwan borders. So the question of, what does, what does China do? Do they try to pull a Ukraine and go the route that Putin is going and forcibly take Taiwan is, is the next question.

• 33:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this, this alliance, or so-called kind of quiet alliance between Russia and China is, is very concerning, but they all, they all seem like tests on the West power.

• 33:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's one of these things where like the United States, how can we justify going and putting our resources to defend Taiwan while we didn't do that for Ukraine? Like, maybe before Putin invaded Ukraine, like we, before that happened, if China had invaded Taiwan, we would have just like sailed our ships right over and gotten them out of there. But now that this Ukraine mess is happening, China's like, well, like, I guess we're doing this. I guess we're taking over the local land areas that we've always wanted to. And since they're not doing anything, I guess like the we're just in a context of sitting on our hands. So I guess I'll just go and take Taiwan. Like, you can see how the ball can start to roll here.

• 34:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is what this could be building up towards. It doesn't have to. And I think Ray Dalio in his book, you know, also makes the point that some of these transitions of power could be peaceful. They don't always have to be contentious. They don't always have to result in war. There's some reason for optimism. We have things like the internet. So we sort of see the human side of the story far quicker. We're all in communication. You know, we have fewer borders. So there's definitely some hope here. But yeah, it's something we're all going to have to watch. And I think it's the reason why this is a, this is a pretty major event, not just for Europe, but, but for the world. And we'll have to see what happens next. Any other thoughts on this, David?

• 34:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this is coming off of your tweet that you referenced about Naval, who said Pax, end of Pax Americana. This is that 80-year cycle in a different words, where this is the, we've talked about the fourth turning a few times on Bankless before. But apparently every 80 years, there's a grand reorganizing of how society works. And this is that theory distilled. It's too much to go into, but there's a link in the show notes where, and also a fantastic book called The Fourth Turning. And this is just on par with when we say the 20s is going to be a chaotic decade. It's because if this model of how the world works, these 80-year cycles works this way, well, we're at the end of one. And so we're currently going through what this green infographic labels a millennial crisis. So that's us.

• 35:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it feels like it's that time for humanity, you know?

• 35:34David Hoffman?

  Time for something new.

• 35:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Time for something new.

• 35:37David Hoffman?

  This is why crypto people always talk about like yo, get on the ark, get on crypto because like institutions are going to break down and we need to build up new ones and crypto is that new institution. And we talked about going, being your own bank and having your own private keys. We don't know what the crisis is, but at least you have your control over your own money. Like having your own money and your own private keys gives you optionality on the future. When we do not know what the future is, having the strongest ownership over your money and assets possible allows you to weather storms. That's what going bankless means.

• 36:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't, I don't like to get dark, but even when it comes to if you're, you're talking like a period of time like the 1930s, the 1940s of fleeing a country with, with your assets.

• 36:19David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 36:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  How do you do that?

• 36:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah. When your, when your assets are cash and gold, which are physical assets.

• 36:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can't. Crypto provides a way to do that. Things are getting dark. We've got some, some other news we have to get to. Talk a bit more about the markets and of course the releases of the week. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 36:41David Hoffman?

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• 37:22David Hoffman?

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• 38:07David Hoffman?

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• 38:49David Hoffman?

  all with different design choices in order to be optimized for all possible crypto use cases. If you're a developer who wants to build on the Polygon ecosystem, go to the link in the show notes to check out their fantastic documentation. And if you're a user who just wants to experience fast and cheap DeFi, you can bridge over your ETH or other tokens and start playing around with any of the thousands of applications that are available on Polygon.

• 39:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey guys, we are back. Still on the theme of markets, we took a quick detour there because we had to talk about the Russia stuff. But David, as we're recording this and while we went to break, ETH price just shot up, which is interesting.

• 39:25David Hoffman?

  This is absolutely crazy. Just like 12 hours ago, we were at 2,450, coming off the lows. And right now, we're basically at 2,700. Same with BTC is at $39,000. So some very strong bounces back to almost before pre-invasion levels.

• 39:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, look at this.

• 39:42David Hoffman?

  That's crazy. That's crazy. That's nuts.

• 39:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  I haven't seen one of these bars in a very long time.

• 39:47David Hoffman?

  That is vertical. That's vertical. I'm looking for news. But I'm not finding anything.

• 39:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll have to see how this develops. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about some other things while we're talking about markets. This is something we haven't looked at in a while. It was worth looking at. You know, the wrapped Bitcoin supply on Ethereum is at an all time high. 1.4% of all Bitcoin is actually in tokenized form on Ethereum in wrapped BTC. This is somewhat banked, so you know, I don't love it because it's custodied with BitGo, I believe. But it's really interesting to see Bitcoin as a monetary unit being used on the Ethereum network.

• 40:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we've always said that Ethereum is a settlement network for all types of assets. And if people want those assets on Ethereum to be useful, then that number is going to go up. I'm expecting this number to go up further.

• 40:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, same here. Let's also talk about a number that's gone up is the Uniswap market share. I didn't realize Uniswap now has 80% of the decentralized exchange market share on Ethereum. And that's up 30%, I believe, 30% this year, maybe over the last year or so. So not only are they growing, they're also eating up market share in the DEX space. Any thoughts on this?

• 41:04David Hoffman?

  No, no thought, no thought. Nice job, Uniswap.

• 41:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Uniswap just crushing it with their V2 release, also decreasing fees, which I think helps with that. Rocketpool is crushing it as well. Now they have 1% of Ethereum validators. That's been over a three month time period when they launched. So great to see some progress on that. Rocketpool, of course, is a much more decentralized staking as a service provider, which we always support at Bankless. Any takes on this?

• 41:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, 1% is a fantastic number, especially for such a young protocol. And there's been some Ethereum client diversity issues, as in too much stake is happening on the same clients, which has some negative repercussions if bad events happen. But Rocketpool has been a force to help balance that out. And so more and more stake inside of Rocketpool helps Ethereum become more and more decentralized. So we like that.

• 41:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, doing the right thing for the network. Absolutely. Let's talk about this too. So I think everyone is looking for yields these days, David, especially in this high inflation environment. And I saw this from the CoinStack blog newsletter, which I read. If you look at yield, where can you get yield? Your bank savings account, mine pays 0.01%, okay? At best, you might be getting half a percent. I don't know anyone who's getting half a percent.

• 42:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a crazy high number.

• 42:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. If you want to get into treasuries, they're paying out 9%. This is nominal yield. Municipal bonds, 1.6%, corporate bonds, 3.3%. You go into something super high risk, like high-yield debt, big risk of default, that pays out 5.6%, okay? That's all nominal yield. That's not adjusted for inflation. Now, factor in a 7.5% annual inflation here. And these so-called savings accounts look terrible. Bank savings account, you're making negative 7% per year. Negative 6.4% on treasuries. The safe asset doesn't look so safe. Municipal bonds, negative 5.9%. Corporate bonds, negative 4.2%. Your real return on these products actually sucks.

• 43:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  So where do investors go to get returns? In this CoinStack article, he talks about DeFi. And I think that's actually a great place to talk about Notional, who wanted us to get this message out anyway this week. But they are offering a fixed APY interest account effectively in DeFi. So you can do it all without a bank and you can get 7.8% fixed APY on your USDC. I think it's upwards of 9% on DAI. And these aren't variable, so they don't change by the day. But you could just lock that in. Not only Notional, there are some other fantastic DeFi products, of course, that offer these types of returns. But I think this is why people are going to come to DeFi. They're going to come to crypto for the returns,

• 43:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  for things that they can't get inside of their bank account. So it's pretty cool. Of course, we'll include a link in the show notes to Notional, so you can go check that out. They also have ETH and Bitcoin. If you want to stake some of your tokenized Bitcoin as well.

• 44:12David Hoffman?

  How ironic is it that you can actually beat inflation on dollar yields? But the only place that you can do that is in DeFi. That's so awesome.

• 44:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's awesome and also silly and terrible at the same time. I don't know what to say.

• 44:26David Hoffman?

  So is this decade, Ryan.

• 44:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. It's exactly best of times, worst of times kind of decade. Yes, humanity's seen those before. Let's get to the releases of the week. All right. So this is a big one. ZK rollups on Ethereum. ZK Sync has just released an EVM compatible ZK rollup. For people who don't understand anything that I just said, David, what is this? And why is it significant?

• 44:50David Hoffman?

  So people generally think that ZK EVMs will be the end state of Ethereum. Just because ZK is like a compression algorithm. Rollups, another compression algorithm. So super, super compressed data, which means super, super cheap and fast transactions. And out of Matter Labs, out of ZK Sync, they have made their first ever ZK EVM public testnet that's live. So we can start to actually build out Ethereum DeFi apps on layer twos. But layer twos that are like another order of magnitude faster than the layer twos that we previously are used to, like the traditional optimistic rollups like Arbitrum or Optimism.

• 45:32David Hoffman?

  There's definitely, ZK EVMs are definitely a hard mode. Building out tooling, building out infrastructure, building out composability is an order of magnitude more difficult. So while we're getting more, an order of magnitude more speed, it's also an order of magnitude more difficult. But if there's one thing I've learned is you do not bet against the Ethereum ecosystem on innovating and being able to solve hard problems. And this is the first step, the actual building out the foundation for experimenting and iterating and improving ZK apps, ZK DeFi. So really congratulations to the Matter Labs team. ZK Sync 2.0 public testnet is live. And so the developers of the world can go and start building out the super fast. Okay, this, you know, you know, the meme about Vitalik saying the internet of money

• 46:17David Hoffman?

  needs to be less than five cents? This is that. This is that solution. This is what that is.

• 46:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And we're gonna have Alex from the ZK Sync, the Matter Labs team on the podcast, hopefully next week, to talk about this and what it all includes. Because I think the big story here, David, is people thought this would be years away. Now, here it is. We're in February, and we already have something on testnet for this. So it seems to be happening quicker than we thought. We'll have to ask Alex about that when he comes on. This is pretty big, too. Opera has about, yeah, it has millions of users. So it is a popular web browser. They are integrating Layer 2, Ethereum's Layer 2, through Diversify, which is also a ZK-powered technology, this time by Starkware. But the cool thing about this is it's all behind the scenes. So where do you see it?

• 47:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, it's integrated into Opera's Android wallet, their Android crypto wallet. Behind the scenes, it's connecting to liquidity. If you want to trade something from Diversify, which is a Layer 2 technology built on Starkware, right? So users don't really, they're not gonna hear about Starkware or ZK or any of this thing. They'll just click on a transaction. It'll be completely sensor-resistant, trust-minimized, and bankless. And they're able to make it happen with minimal to no gas fees. That's the future here, and that's getting integrated in the app layer by a pop, like, not a super-popular browser, but a browser nonetheless. You know, Opera has millions of users at this point in time, so it's super exciting to see.

• 47:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, if anyone wants the world where you click your buttons and the crypto things happen, and it's cheap and free and instant, and it obviously is also obfuscated away from you, that's what we're talking about. That's what Opera's doing right now. And that's also the power of ZK rollups, ZK EVMs. Just like, you press the button and then the thing happens, and that's the only thing that you think about. This is the UI and UX that consumers expect these days. And so ZK stuff being built into browsers directly is like, probably the gold, the Holy Grail of just like, DeFi UI, UX.

• 48:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. Arbitrum continuing to punch a fourth, of course. That's another roll-up solution. And Urn has just, Wiren has just launched on Arbitrum, which is cool to see. In fact, I think we should include a list of all sorts of... sorts of cool new apps that have been developed on Arbitrum in the show notes for you guys.

• 48:38David Hoffman?

  We don't have time to go into it, but there's a really long list. Somebody, who is this? Oh, this is Lido Cohen from HOP Protocol. Just put a list together of everything that you can do on Optimism or on Arbitrum. And it's literally too long for us to read in the weekly rollup. So go ahead and just check it out in the show notes.

• 48:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  So much more. Also, this is on Layer 2 as well. This is a HOP-Lira integration. Talk about that. What are we looking at here, David?

• 49:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so this is the first of its kind integration that I've ever seen. This is HOP Protocol, which is a bridge that allows you to move assets from Layer 1 to Layer 2 and Layer 2 to Layer 2. But also an app, Lyra, which is an options trading protocol on Optimism. And so HOP is integrated directly into the Lyra app. Or is it Lyra? Is it Lyra?

• 49:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. Lyra-Lyra.

• 49:24David Hoffman?

  Lyra-Lyra. And so you can go, and again, this is a conversation of UX. How just, how many, how many problems can we just remove away from the users' lives? And if you don't have money on Optimism, you need to get money on Optimism so you can use Lyra. But also, you don't care about Optimism. You just want to use Lyra. And so you can use HOP to go straight into Lyra inside of the Lyra UI UX. And so inside of Lyra, you have the ability to get your money into the app that you needed to because HOP is integrated directly. And so this is just how we start solving some of these UX issues that make people frustrated about Layer 2s.

• 49:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, another example of how seamless this is going to be, how the UX problems will be abstracted in the future. This is super cool too. Whenever EtherScan launches something, I just, I just love it because I use EtherScan on a daily basis. And they just launched this. So this is an NFT viewer on EtherScan. And I think there's a, there's a button. So you can see your NFTs. And this commenter says, "It feels like the chat with owner button is going to be a popular feature." So I think a few rollups ago, we talked about this. Messenger type app that EtherScan was building where you could message from one ETH address to another. It looks like they're integrating that here too. So you could actually message the owner of this particular NFT, which you're seeing on EtherScan.

• 50:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Block explorers are becoming incredibly useful, incredibly neat in the future. I mean, I don't know if these are the like the future Googles, but they're certainly indexing the chain and doing all sorts of useful things on-chain for users. And this is a really cool feature to see.

• 50:59David Hoffman?

  I think a lot of haggling will be going down in this feature. I feel like that's what that chat with owner, basically just replace chat with owner with just haggle. That's what that's going to be.

• 51:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Haggle now.

• 51:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, what's this, David? So this is a chess app on Ethereum, I think we're about to see.

• 51:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is DAO versus DAO chess, which is a really interesting concept. Chess on a blockchain, never mind. Games will never be on layer one, so don't think about that. Games will only be on layer twos. But also, there's a problem with like games like chess to have like a smart contract competition. Because chess is such like a computer dominated world these days. You can't have humans to humans playing, trustlessly playing chess, because one of them could just have a computer engine to the side. But this thing is completely different and solves that problem. This is DAO to DAO chess, where one DAO is black and one DAO is white. And if you guys remember Twitch Plays Pokémon, where there's just like, you know, 10,000 people all pressing inputs

• 52:00David Hoffman?

  and like the collective intelligence of all of them try to coordinate on the right move. So DAOs like will come together and they will use snapshot voting to vote on what move to make. And then that move will be made on-chain, I think on Arbitrum. And so we can have DAO versus DAO chess matches, where it's just wisdom of the crowd versus wisdom of the crowd, which is insanely cool.

• 52:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  But why are we doing this? It's insanely cool, but like it seems like the world's slowest game of chess ever be played.

• 52:27David Hoffman?

  I think it's, well, I don't know how, remember Twitch Plays Pokémon, Ryan? That game lasted a week because of how chaotic it was. And like it had tens of thousands of people tuning in to either participate or watch. And it's not necessarily about chess, although I think this chess use case will take off because crypto people love chess for some reason. But it's more about just like DAO collective hive mind intelligences becoming instantiated into games. So like, this is one, this is one part of game, one part proof of concept as to what could be.

• 52:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's super cool. Yeah, I see it when you put it like that.

• 53:00David Hoffman?

  Wait, before you go on, before you go on, because the thing about this is like, since DAOs are open in permission lists, like, the game of who wins the game of chess actually can move off-chain and into discords, where like, if you're on Team White and you need, and you want Team, the Black side to make bad moves, you can go into the Black side DAO and start psyopsing them. It's like, whoa, guys, I think we should sacrifice our queen. I think that'd be a good move. Like, and so like, the internet warfare, like, is just, this is a friendly kind of internet warfare, other than the ugly kind we saw earlier. But just like, the psyops of DAO versus DAO chess, I think it's gonna be really fun, because it's gonna put the game elsewhere, other than the board.

• 53:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do think this is a really interesting primitive, that of course, you can only have, once you have super-fast transaction execution layers, like, ZK rollups that we were talking about earlier. Let's get to races, though. Sequoia Capital, they've been a little bit late coming, big VC firm, but late coming crypto. Now they are launching a 500 to 6 million, 100 million dollar crypto fund to invest in tokens.

• 54:04David Hoffman?

  What a title, what a title.

• 54:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  2018, no one wanted to invest in tokens. Now we got big VCs launching 100 million dollar funds, 500 million dollar funds to do it. And they've, they've done some there first. The first is a company called Multis, which is building a crypto wallet that's based on the Nosis MultiSig, completely bankless, really cool product, if you haven't checked it out. Multis been a, been a fan of that product for a while, and Sequoia just funded them, as an example. I bet more exciting things in the future, but, I don't know, high level, it's great to see all of this capital flowing into crypto projects. These are very important projects for the world.

• 54:46David Hoffman?

  If anyone from Sequoia is listening, let me know if you want some advices to which tokens to buy, because it's gonna be mine.

• 54:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  You gonna sell them, you sell them your bags?

• 54:54David Hoffman?

  No, I'm not gonna sell them my bags, I'm just gonna ask them to buy my bags.

• 54:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Buy my bags, buy David's bags.

• 54:59David Hoffman?

  We've got some good token suggestions for you.

• 55:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, speaking of great suggestions, we have some great job suggestions for you, of course, and our biggest suggestion every week is get a job in crypto. That's a suggestion. It's not an imperative. It's just something we strongly recommend you to do. It's a really exciting time to join the space and get hired, and there's lots of companies hiring. I'm going to read out a few of these. The first is a senior product manager at SuperRare, senior product engineer at Moment Ranks, a bunch from DYDX, you got to check out, community manager DYDX, governance growth lead, a business operations and finance associate, a marketing associate, all from DYDX, an accountant at Smart DeFi, a web three engineer, solidity in react at Goldfinch, a senior go rust engineer at Syndica, a bunch of maker

• 55:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  roles, a bunch of deep Dow roles, a bunch of other things on the jobs board. You can find that out at banklist.pallet.com/jobs. Just sign up for it and email will automatically remind you when new listings are listed. Get a job in crypto. What more can we say?

• 56:03David Hoffman?

  Are you ready for this one, Ryan?

• 56:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 56:05David Hoffman?

  This is going to be a mess.

• 56:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  News?

• 56:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, what's coming up next?

• 56:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what's coming up next?

• 56:10David Hoffman?

  Aren't we about to find out who the Dow hacker is? Oh, I think we are. Oh, yes, that's what's...

• 56:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dow hacker. Actually, I already knew this. This is not a surprise because it's in our show notes, David, but you can act surprised?

• 56:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'll act surprised. Okay, so this is Laura Shin, who has, I think, started actually the first significant crypto podcast with Unchained, and she recently, she's been writing her book, The Cryptopians, which I have right here. It's kind of a gargantuan book, actually.

• 56:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It looks heavy.

• 56:37David Hoffman?

  It's thick. It's a thick boy.

• 56:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 56:39David Hoffman?

  And she allegedly has discovered the identity of the Dow hacker, the 2016 Dow hacker that is the thing that resulted in the chain split between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic and caused a bunch of drama. And apparently, we know who that person is now, according to Laura Shin.

• 56:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  I feel like the Dow hack is like probably the second biggest crypto hack crypto event in the history of this industry. Maybe the first is probably Mt. Gox, just because it happened a little earlier. But this is like a massive, a massive event and somewhat of a mystery. Like, everyone's always been wondering who the Dow hacker actually is. Why did they do this? What were this person's intent? So Laura's figured it out for us.

• 57:21David Hoffman?

  Laurishin says in this Forbes article, "Who hacked the DAO? My exclusive investigation, built on the reporting for my new book, The Cryptopians, appears to point to Toby Honischk, a 36-year-old programmer who grew up in Austria and was living in Singapore at the time of the hack. Until now, he has been best known for his role as co-founder and CEO of 10X, which raised $80 million in a 2017 ICO, which is, by the way, now valued at like $5 million. An effort that failed, excuse me, now sells at $11 million. After being at a valuation of $535 million with that one, but anyways, that's beside the point. He did an ICO, as scammers and hackers might do. And apparently, through, well, how she discovered this is way too much for this weekly roll-up,

• 58:06David Hoffman?

  but people are generally looking at the evidence that she has put forth and kind of giving it a soft thumbs ups, like, okay, that looks legitimate. I think we're still going to be unpacking this thing. So far, no one has really raised a red flag, saying that's not right, except for Toby himself, again, of what you would expect. But apparently, we found out who the DAO hacker was this week. That's a big deal.

• 58:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  So if it was Toby, the way it might have happened is the hacker, maybe Toby, allegedly used Shapeshift to convert Ethereum Classic to Bitcoin, and then used Wasabi, which is a coin join privacy technique on Bitcoin, a wallet specifically for this.

• 58:45David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin Tumblr. Kind of like tornado cash.

• 58:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, to mix the Bitcoin, then withdrew it to four different central exchanges, then withdrew it to another blockchain called Grin, which is a privacy-focused blockchain for added privacy. And how was this determined? Through chain analysis. Chainalysis. You know, the actual company were the ones who uncovered this. And so, this also brings to mind, is anything that was mixed through Wasabi, through coin join techniques on Bitcoin, is that all suspect? Does chainalysis have a way to crack that and determine who the identities of any individuals are who have used this in the past? Or did the hacker...

• 59:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Toby messed this up at some point in the process and leave some clues that he shouldn't have otherwise. So it's calling that into question as well. The privacy techniques used by this particular wallet.

• 59:39David Hoffman?

  I think the answer is all of the above. It was both a combination of, you know, filling in the Sudoku puzzles of the on internet IP address traces that this guy left. Apparently, he had a connection that blabbed and then also wasabi was not a perfect mixer. But this is not how he hacked the Dow. This is how he got how he laundered the funds. But I mean, he guy managed to stay a secret for a really long time. So.

• 1:00:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  We should say, we should say that, you know, obviously, this is not certain. I don't know. Where does this go next? Does this go to court? Do people press charges?

• 1:00:13David Hoffman?

  And who presses charges?

• 1:00:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15David Hoffman?

  Who's the victim here?

• 1:00:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, you know, anyone who lost money in the Dow hack.

• 1:00:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but they didn't because they did the contention or they did the state transition that undid it. So like, who really lost here, actually?

• 1:00:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. I suppose the hacker might say, you know, code is law. And if they were to defend this in court, that I was just exercising.

• 1:00:37David Hoffman?

  My ability to write code.

• 1:00:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Provided to me and the code itself. I don't know if that's a legal defense. I don't know where this goes from here, but it might be a story that resurfaces and we talk about it again. If if indeed this this moves to the next step in the process. I feel okay. I remember when this happened. I got some Ethereum classic at the time.

• 1:00:55David Hoffman?

  Oh, you were in the Dow? I didn't know you were in the Dow.

• 1:00:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I wasn't in the Dow, but I got.

• 1:01:00David Hoffman?

  But you had ETH on chain.

• 1:01:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  I had ETH and so I got the Ethereum classic fork. And I decided, what am I, what is this thing? And I was just learning at the times, like, what is this mysterious coin? Do I keep it? A bunch of people are saying it's it's the next Ethereum. It's like, you know, the real Ethereum, the true Ethereum. I just market sold it eventually.

• 1:01:19David Hoffman?

  Proud of you.

• 1:01:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I didn't feel impacted or hurt by this incident, other than the price of Ether tanked, of course.

• 1:01:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but it does that every now and then.

• 1:01:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does that. It has tended to do that. What else happened this week? Another hack or phishing scam that was pretty big deal over last weekend. I think this was an OpenSea NFT related issue. What happened here?

• 1:01:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this news rocked the NFT world before people realized that it actually wasn't that big of a deal. People, people thought that basically somebody hacked OpenSea, hacked the OpenSea contract and was therefore able to access everyone's NFTs. That was not the case, but that was people's first impressions when they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on. As it turns out, there was a very well crafted phishing email from OpenSea that got people to approve their NFTs as a request because they said, "You have until 2:00 PM." Oh, I do remember getting this email.

• 1:02:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  I got this.

• 1:02:18David Hoffman?

  I remember getting this email.

• 1:02:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was too busy to even look at it.

• 1:02:20David Hoffman?

  I was like, "Oh, that's, that's, there's something I, OpenSea tells me I have to go do something."

• 1:02:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  It looks legit.

• 1:02:25David Hoffman?

  "I'm going to go to my Discord and see if my friends are doing things." And I went to my Discord and my friends weren't doing things. And I was like, "Oh, well, I'm not doing anything either." This is how, this is how I maintain security is like I check to see if my other friends are doing stuff. The email says, "You have until 2:00 PM Eastern on Friday, February 25th to migrate your listings. After that time, any listings you haven't migrated will expire. All existing offers will expire at that time." So basically like a slight, slight fear inducing email saying, "Hey, you gotta go and you gotta migrate your listings." Hit some buttons.

• 1:02:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  On your wallet.

• 1:02:54David Hoffman?

  So some people did that and they went in there, hit their buttons. And what they were actually doing was they were giving approval to the hacker to access their NFTs. So this ended up 17 people ended up falling for this. And I think that's basically about it. I think $1.7 million worth of NFTs were stolen aboard Ape, a couple of Azukis and a few others. Ultimately ended up being just not as big as a deal as people were making it out to be when they first heard about it. But I'm sorry, my heart goes out for the 17 people that lost their NFTs.

• 1:03:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was scary at first.

• 1:03:29David Hoffman?

  Actual OpenSea contracts.

• 1:03:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was scary at first. People thought it was like some general issue with OpenSea NFTs. So there was some freak out and you know, the communities I was involved in, which are like, yo, go check your wallets, see if any, any NFTs are missing. So at first people didn't know how broadly this, this issue was being. There was just reported of NFT wallets being drained of their NFTs, which of course is scary.

• 1:03:52David Hoffman?

  Very scary, very scary headline. I did go to OpenSea and make sure that all my NFTs were there. I was like, oh, did he get mine?

• 1:03:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm fine.

• 1:03:59David Hoffman?

  Not my MFers.

• 1:04:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Go back to sleep. Yeah. David, let's talk, let's continue the story from, from last week about Canada. So we started the story last week, you know, Canada had a trucker protest, of course. And we talked about Canada implementing an emergency provision that would allow them to freeze protesters' bank accounts. Well, they did implement that, wrote an article on Friday about that called, "Canada Needs Crypto." And it was a really historic event, you know, first in Canadian history that this particular emergency act was, was put in place. And the concerning thing, you know, from bankless perspectives, you know, it's not political at all. It's not like pro-trucker or anti-trucker.

• 1:04:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just anti the ability of a large government to freeze your life savings. It feels like that should not be a power that governments have over their citizens. And I think that's been a consistent message from bankers from day one. It's the separation of money and state is a good idea for reasons like this. So anyway, I guess moving the story forward over the weekend, Canada implemented this emergency act provision, started freezing a bunch of people's bank accounts. And this stranded people's money, canceled their credit cards, stopped their mortgage application, no due process. There was no judge involved. It was just sort of, you're on a list, we think you're involved in this, in this protest.

• 1:05:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  We don't have to give you the reasons why. We're going to send a message to your bank to cancel your accounts and kick you out of the financial economic system. So that happened. And then there was some back and forth. So why don't you read this Ontario Superior Court of justice who is asked to ask the self custody wallet provider to disclose user information and freeze users bitcoin. They actually wanted to freeze your crypto assets on a self custody wallet, on a bankless wallet. And this was the team's response.

• 1:05:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this response is so great. Their response, this is the wallet provider, says that, Dear the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Nunchuck, which is a company in question, is a self custodial collaborative multi-sig bitcoin wallet, basically a bitcoin wallet multi-sig. We are a software provider, not a custodial financial intermediary. Our software is free to use. It allows people to eliminate single points of failure and store bitcoin in the safest way possible while preserving privacy. We do not collect any user identification information beyond email addresses. We also do not hold any keys. Therefore, we cannot freeze our users assets. We cannot prevent them from being moved. We do not have knowledge of the existence, nature, value, and location of users assets.

• 1:06:38David Hoffman?

  This is by design. Please look up, I love this, please look up how self custody and private keys work. When the Canadian dollar becomes worthless, we will be here to serve you too. Sincerely, the Nunchuck team. This is, this is an example in my mind of crypto values becoming instantiated in the companies that serve them. There's a reason why companies did not take home addresses, names, they took the minimum viable thing, which is an email address, which is not a good proxy for identity. And that's the only thing they took. And that, and as a result of the exhibiting the values that are in our crypto systems, they get to draft this awesome email to a top down government who's requesting them to be ridiculous about how they manage with their clients. And they say, no, we literally

• 1:07:23David Hoffman?

  cannot do that by design. And you know what enables us to do that? Crypto, bitcoin. Bitcoin enables us to give you the middle finger. Here's an email explaining that to you.

• 1:07:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Go learn how private keys work because you clearly don't if you're even asking this question, right? So that was some of the crypto community's response, but I found this particularly unnerving. So apparently during the freezes and as a result of this information, the CEO of Kraken, crypto exchange, and also Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, started tweeting things like, "Hey, just so you know, if the Canadian government, the regulators, ask us to freeze accounts when they're in Kraken or when they're in Coinbase, we have to do it and we can do it. If you don't want that to happen, you should go check out a custodial wallet. Go look at those solutions.

• 1:08:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  We encourage you to evaluate them, use them if that's what you want to do." Well, apparently, it seems like a totally reasonable position for anyone in the crypto industry to take. It's like, what's the solution to not having your accounts being frozen by a bank without your permission? You take custody of your own keys. You take ownership of them, right? Well, apparently what happened as a result of this is the Ontario Securities Commission sent the tweets to the police.

• 1:08:39David Hoffman?

  Ridiculous.

• 1:08:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because I believe that the crypto executives were offering advice on how to not store your own private keys, but evade the sanctions on funds, according to the report. Absolutely ludicrous.

• 1:08:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ludicrous.

• 1:08:55David Hoffman?

  They just don't get crypto. They don't understand how it works.

• 1:08:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  They don't understand how it works and to think that they could pressure, and this is what's concerning, is this is a regulator saying this to organizations, to companies that they regulate. "Hey, Brian Armstrong, hey, Jesse Powell, Kraken, you don't tell people about self-custodial crypto wallets."

• 1:09:21David Hoffman?

  Don't tell them crypto exists.

• 1:09:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Don't tell them about this. Very concerning. And actually, it's like, for me, it was kind of off-putting. Because, so I tweeted this out. Brian Armstrong, Jesse Powell tweeted, "Support of self-custodial wallets." Ontario regulator tweets to the police for offering advice on evading sanctions. There may come a time when writing a bankless article or recording a podcast becomes illegal to these people. We have to be ready for that.

• 1:09:50David Hoffman?

  Half of our previous podcasts are already illegal.

• 1:09:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  The whole thing. How do you go bankless?

• 1:09:56David Hoffman?

  Like, we would-

• 1:09:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Step one.

• 1:09:57David Hoffman?

  Something we would totally put into the bankless newsletter is how to get your crypto assets off of a centralized exchange and on to your ledger. We talk about that almost every other roll-up. And this is the-

• 1:10:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  We encourage it.

• 1:10:08David Hoffman?

  This is the conversation-

• 1:10:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's the entire point of the podcast and everything we do.

• 1:10:13David Hoffman?

  One day, Ryan, we're gonna be running an illegal podcast.

• 1:10:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  I can't believe that.

• 1:10:17David Hoffman?

  It's insane.

• 1:10:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's absolutely insane. And, you know, I think we've talked about this abstractly in the past. What happens if governments really crack down on going bankless or the ability to own your own private keys? Like, what do we do in these cases? And it's surreal and scary to see it starting to happen, maybe, in the West. We're not talking about China here. We're not talking about Russia. We're talking about Canada. My god. I guess some other follow-ups on this. Vitalik Buterin, what did he say about this?

• 1:10:53David Hoffman?

  "It's dangerous," he says on Canada Blacklisting Protesters Crypto Wallets. "I do think that having decentralized alternatives to intermediaries is a good way to limit the damage." He said this at East Denver during a CoinDesk interview. But also since then, Trudeau has revoked the Emergencies Act, saying existing laws are enough to deal with the protesters. So, maybe this is a self-admission that they went too far. But still, the fact that they went there at all and didn't think twice about that is insane.

• 1:11:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so what are the learnings or takes coming out of this?

• 1:11:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so my take, and there's a bunch of people, I put this tweet further on in the take, so we'll come across it later. But I made a take about how people that are anti-trucker convoy are on this side of anti-trucker convoy people. Apparently, that's like actually a lot of Canada. Apparently, the trucker convoy was very, very-

• 1:11:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a majority, for sure.

• 1:11:45David Hoffman?

  It's a majority of Canadians did not like the truckers and were kind of in approval of those people getting removed. And like, I could totally see myself like very frustrated by, I don't know, how the truckers are messing up the supply chains and messing up the roads and like preventing me from doing anything. I could see myself getting mad at them. You are allowed, you are totally allowed to be mad at the truckers and also be very concerned that we froze their bank accounts. Those are two different opinions that you are allowed to hold at the same time. Those are not mutually exclusive. And that is where, I don't really have an opinion on the truckers. They didn't impact my life. I'm generally pro-compliance when it comes to COVID and whatever, like other stuff.

• 1:12:24David Hoffman?

  But I'm also down for freedom of expression, and I'm also down for freedom of money from state. And again, you can separate your opinions about who these truckers are and also still think that government should not be freezing bank accounts.

• 1:12:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I agree with that. And I was actually disturbed by some of the people who, like some of the pushback on that. Some people who don't seem to understand that you can have those opinions at the same time. And I tweeted this out, "I'm really disturbed by the amount of people justifying a Western democracy using its banking system as a weapon against the people to stifle dissent. What Canada did is not okay." Also, this is a better advertisement for crypto than a thousand Super Bowl ads.

• 1:13:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I really think that this message was heard around the world to people who otherwise wouldn't have heard it. And actually, I have a take about that coming up later. But it's, I mean, this is what can happen. This is what- Governments have the ability to do, they can freeze the banking system, your bank account, your money at a whim. Do you really have property rights if they can take it away from you with a keystroke and a mouse click? That's the question. But this, I thought, was a tweet that just summed it up far better than than I ever could have. And this is from an account on Twitter, 6529.

• 1:13:46David Hoffman?

  Punk6529, he's famous.

• 1:13:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Punk6529, let's get into this. So where does he start this this thread?

• 1:13:53David Hoffman?

  He basically makes the claim that there are no other constitutional rights in substance without the freedom to transact, making the claim that the freedom to transact is like the meta right. And then he makes a tweet thread about this. So skipping into number two, Punk6529 makes the assumption that we are in agreement that constitutional democracies are a good form of government, or at least better than all the other ones that we've been had before. And he says, he's making the following assumptions, that people, all listeners, believe, readers, believe that people have the fundamental rights of speech, assembly, religion, and so on. People are innocent until proven guilty. The state cannot punish people without due process. And then he goes, and he says, if you disagree with those principles, we diverge there, so you can stop reading. But if you do agree with those principles,

• 1:14:37David Hoffman?

  he makes the claim that freedom of speech might require such activities like a website, a pamphlet, an advertisement, paying a graphic designer, traveling to a different location, all of which costs money. Freedom of assembly might require such activities like taking a train to Washington DC, booking a hotel room, hiring a taxi, buying a hot dog while you assemble, which costs money. Freedom of religion might require activities like renting a space or facilities, paying the salaries of religious officials, buying food and consumables, all of which costs money. So basically, he's saying that you cannot have any of the rights that Western liberal democracies offer you if they're also freezing your bank accounts. Because if they're freezing your bank accounts, they are silencing your ability to express

• 1:15:21David Hoffman?

  your values upon the world. Money is a tool of expression of value. If I give you money for some reason, it's because I valued something that you did for me, and that is speech. I'm speaking to the world that I value this and punk six five two nine says that if you can't transact you don't have speech which is a great take.

• 1:15:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's so right without the freedom to transact you have no other constitutional rights. I think he's right on about that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, they all depend on that. And some people might say, okay, well then, if that's true, why weren't these things written in the constitution? It's because like the framers of the constitution, they didn't have the concept of custodial digital money, the way that we have it now. They had no concept of a nation state's ability to freeze funds, all the citizens, all the populace's funds, with the click of a button. So it didn't need to be protected at that, at that time. It seems like it does now. And I think the example of Canada shows us why it needs to be protected exactly.

• 1:16:21David Hoffman?

  Speaking of, yeah, I'm going to transition. You ready to transition?

• 1:16:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's it. Let's transition. Let's get out of this stuff. Let's get into NFTs.

• 1:16:27David Hoffman?

  Speaking of punks, that's the only transition that we have here. There was a massive 104 CryptoPunks sale going through Sotheby's, but it got rugged by the owner. So 104 CryptoPunks were about to be auctioned. It became a very big deal. A lot of people, including some of the people that I know, actually went to Sotheby's to watch this 104 CryptoPunks get auctioned. And then the, the person selling the CryptoPunks, he just tweeted out, never mind, decided to hodl.

• 1:16:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh dude, was it all a prank from the beginning? Was this all a rug pull, planned rug pull?

• 1:17:02David Hoffman?

  Maybe, but the punk floor right now is kind of low at like 65 ETH. So maybe he's like saying, I'm going to sell at a different time.

• 1:17:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's got cold feet?

• 1:17:08David Hoffman?

  Maybe he got cold feet. He's like, well, this isn't worth it.

• 1:17:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a pretty big batch.

• 1:17:11David Hoffman?

  That's a, that's a big batch of CryptoPunks. So like, you know, 104 times the 65 floor.

• 1:17:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  There it is. Nevermind.

• 1:17:18David Hoffman?

  6,700 Ether. And maybe you round up a little bit higher, maybe it would have gone for 10,000 if you assume some rares are in there. But yeah, the guy, the guy just goes, never mind, decided to hodl. It just runs all of Sotheby's.

• 1:17:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's how things can change.

• 1:17:33David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:17:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about this. This is a, a new NFT on the scene? Invisible Friends?

• 1:17:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Invisible Friends. They're minting, minting went live. Not too long ago, or as of very recently, they have not revealed them. So people just have like their tokens without it being revealed. They were minted, the mint price was a quarter of an ETH, which is insanely high versus other mint prices. Typical mint prices are somewhere between like point two to point eight ish. This one's coming at a quarter of an ETH. The floor on these things immediately rocketed to 12, which is nuts. And there was also a specific golden custom invisible friends. That's actually pretty cool as far as NFTs goes. I'm not sure if they're 12 ETH cool. I'm pretty sure they're not cool as 12 ETH, but they're all just like characters that don't have bodies, but only have clothes.

• 1:18:22David Hoffman?

  Kind of, kind of interesting about the metaverse, right? Because like you can pick your clothes, but you can't pick your bodies. You can put your head in there. I don't know. Anyways, if you keep on scrolling down, there's like this all golden invisible friend that sold for 1.3 million dollars going to charity. Forty, 496.69 Ether in good fashion and that that finished up yesterday. So that's all being donated to charity. Very big drop, very big mint drop. Invisible friends like went from minting to blue chip NFT like, like that. We'll see, we'll see if the price, if the floor holds.

• 1:18:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Was there some controversy about this in the NFT community? I think I saw some people upset about this. Was there a lot of marketing that went into this?

• 1:19:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So there's, there was this grueling whitelist that was happening where like people were just grinding in the Discord. And so apparently the meta for these NFTs drops these days is you have to become a really like ecosystem participant in the Discord. So you gotta like send chats and engage with others and like level up in the Discord and it's super, in order to get on the whitelist. And so people are like spending time out of their day to just be active Discord members, like getting like fake pseudo engagement in Discord, just so they could climb the whitelist.

• 1:19:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're just trying to game the system, right?

• 1:19:30David Hoffman?

  Well, well, yeah, but that's everyone's doing it, right? They're all just like, hey, man, like I'm in the Discord too. How's your day going? Like I'm an active community member. Like we're all here because we're all friends. Right? Sounds awful.

• 1:19:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Well, speaking of sounds awful, what's going on in China with respect to you cryptocurrency crackdowns is continuing. So one of China's private provinces just implemented punitive electricity prices for crypto mining. So they already made it illegal. There's still some crypto mining going on in some provinces in China. Now they're cracking down on it more. This also caught my attention, David. So this is in China. China is now sending people to jail, at least the threat of jail, if you raise funds using crypto.

• 1:20:15David Hoffman?

  Sick.

• 1:20:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  ICO, fundraise, issue a token, raise funds of any kind, you could go to jail, according to China's legal system. It's like small amounts here. We're not talking about raising millions of dollars. We're talking about raising over $80,000, raising over $16,000.

• 1:20:35David Hoffman?

  We would go to jail for selling our shirts, Ryan.

• 1:20:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  You go directly to jail. What?

• 1:20:41David Hoffman?

  Sweet.

• 1:20:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is happening, right?

• 1:20:43David Hoffman?

  At this point, I'm just used to it. Just lock me up now. Just take me away. It's coming.

• 1:20:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, man, this is happening so fast. Like, it's just a whirlwind. And of course, sometimes when it's in China, we can kind of ignore it. But then when it blends in and we have events like Canada and then...

• 1:21:02David Hoffman?

  Remember, Ryan, when I got pepper sprayed for protesting in the Black Lives Matter riots this last summer? And then when I went back home and I got the pepper spray off of me, I was like, oh, snap, I just got pepper sprayed by nation-state police. I'm also a very, very pro crypto person. Those are two things that are anti-nation-state. Uh-oh. Every single time. It's like, oh, it's getting a little closer to home.

• 1:21:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. 2020s are going to be interesting, guys. We will be back with the takes and of course, what we're excited about. It can be hard, hard to find something to be excited about, but I got something. I got something. We'll do that right after we talk about the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 1:21:40David Hoffman?

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• 1:23:08David Hoffman?

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• 1:24:05Speaker 03

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• 1:24:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright guys, we are back with the takes of the week. This first one from Vitalik. What's Vitalik saying here, David?

• 1:24:18David Hoffman?

  Reminder: Ethereum is neutral, but I am not. Vitalik is a person with opinions. Ethereum responds to the world around it. These are different things. Basically, this is coming off, I'm pretty sure this is in reference to Ukraine, although it also could have been Canada. Oh, it's definitely Ukraine. Yeah, basically saying that Vitalik has opinions about things.

• 1:24:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is his opinion on Ukraine and Russia? You click translate, and he is very upset by Putin's decision to abandon the possibility of a peaceful solution. That is his personal opinion, but of course Ethereum is neutral to all of that. Good separation there, and a good principle, I think. What's this one?

• 1:24:56David Hoffman?

  This take is completely, completely different from anything. Mark Balin says, "Old world model: Never mix business and friendships. New world model: Make money online with your friends." I like the new world way better. It's way more fun like that. It's like that Zelda meme, like, "It's dangerous to go alone. Take this." This being a friend.

• 1:25:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do think this is a complete contrast from the old world. That would have been good traditional advice, say, 20, 30 years from now, but you're right. It's way more fun making money with your friends, and that's exactly what crypto allows you to do. What's this next take?

• 1:25:32David Hoffman?

  Okay, so is this the Line Goes Up guy?

• 1:25:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35David Hoffman?

  Okay, so this is the Line Goes Up guy.

• 1:25:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Picture of the Line Goes Up guy we're looking at.

• 1:25:38David Hoffman?

  So Iceberggy looked at the-

• 1:25:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  By the way, Line Goes Up, for people who don't know, it's a very anti-NFT, you know, hour and 30 minutes show. Basically focusing on the most pessimistic takes you can think of of NFTs. Some accurate, but also very one-sided, in that the lens was just, "Everything bad I can think of about NFTs."

• 1:25:59David Hoffman?

  Yes, right. And it got like 4 million views on YouTube, and so all of the anti-NFT hater energy got directed into this video to like promote us, like, "This is why I'm mad." Okay, here's the tweet, here's the take. The anti-NFT YouTube guy, the Line Goes Up guy, has Funko Pops on his shelf during an interview. For those that don't know, Ryan, we might have to go find- Just like Google Funko Pops.

• 1:26:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so I didn't know what they were, so I pulled this up. So I had no idea what a Funko Pop is, but it looks like it's some kind of like collectible. I think I've seen these.

• 1:26:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's these little like cute little figurine collectibles for all the

• 1:26:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Physical collectibles.

• 1:26:33David Hoffman?

  Physical collectibles. They're basically Beanie Babies. They're basically, they have no variability of scarcity. They just like they're making for Star Wars. Here's one for Squid Games.

• 1:26:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are they expensive like that too?

• 1:26:44David Hoffman?

  I think so. I don't know how much. I think maybe the rare ones go for hundreds of dollars. They're literally just non, not digital NFTs. And the guy that's had the $4 million video about how NFTs are bad has Funko Pops, no utility. Like, do they have, are they really all that cute? He's got one on his shelf during an interview. It's like, the irony is just off the charts.

• 1:27:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love it. My collectible is good, your collectible is bad, is basically what it comes down to.

• 1:27:11David Hoffman?

  It's the same thing. I bet he doesn't even, he can't even audit the supply of how many of those of his collectibles exist.

• 1:27:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we can. We just, you know, right click and go figure it out on EtherScan. But this, this take is related. This is your take. I'm gonna read, I'll read it out and then you explain it. Crypto haters only see where the puck currently is. You go on to see, to say, NFT haters don't see the culture it's going to create. Crypto gamer haters, crypto gaming haters don't see how real it's going to make our games. Canadian convoy haters don't see how it's going to be them next. If there's one thing we know, it's that experimentation iteration is extremely rapid in this industry. The puck is moving so fast, the entire crypto industry facepalms when we have to engage with people that don't see it.

• 1:27:58David Hoffman?

  The people in the crypto industry all have an imagination for what the future could be. We are not in crypto for what it is right now. We are in crypto because we think it can be better and we all want to be stewards of that future. And so when people come and say, look, crypto is just a bunch of pump and dump and scams. And we're like, yeah, but like, it's not, it's not what the kernel of it is, it's not what the core of it is. It's just what the manifestation is of it is at this current point. People in crypto have imaginations. People that hate on crypto can't figure out how to imagine. What it could be or what a future better world. So that's a dividing line that I've noticed.

• 1:28:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  I totally agree. It's all about vision and a lot of the the arguments are arguments of of timeline. It's like, I'll be the first to admit crypto kind of sucks now.

• 1:28:43David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  In lots of, in lots of ways. It sucks. Crypto sucks now, but it sucked worse last year. And two years ago, it was even worse.

• 1:28:50David Hoffman?

  Way harder.

• 1:28:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  And like, it's just getting better and better is the point. So go extrapolate extrapolate that 10 years and look at the values embodied in the system. Look at the end state, what it's going to deliver. And that's where you start to see the potential. But I think people who don't look at it closely just get stuck in the here and now. It's like this NF, NFTs are all scams. We're back in 2017. All ICOs, all tokens are scams. Remember? Now we got Sequoia pouring 500, 600 million dollars in a token fund. This last one, this is from an article you wrote, crypto is here to set us free. Why is it here to set us free, David?

• 1:29:24David Hoffman?

  Okay, so this is taking the longest time horizon possible about crypto and trying to instill the vision of what these whole web three things are. So yeah, this is a great graphic to start where I make the claim that web two and TradFi suck value inwards towards the center. Where web three and DeFi push value out towards the periphery, towards the margins. The reason why those they have the ability to do that in the first place is because we have private keys. As in, we actually have a location and address to actually send money to. And when our protocols like Twitter, Facebook, they can't send us money because they don't, they're not crypto protocols. They're just normal protocols. They're platforms, but crypto protocols have the ability to granularly issue money and assets to the individual users. And that makes, that's the new vector that our web three DeFi protocols have to compete on.

• 1:30:09David Hoffman?

  Like this is, this is the new threshold. This is the new.

• 1:30:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like, how many people get your airdrop? That's a competitive advantage.

• 1:30:15David Hoffman?

  How, how many people love your protocol? And how do you buy, how, how best and most sustainably can we buy people's love? And so I make the claim that like, you know, one, once upon a time we domesticated plants and we went from the era of accidentally picking a poisonous mushroom to the agricultural revolution where the, where the population exploded. Also, like, I make the line, I say the line, like, we once domesticated wolves to become dogs and. So too will we domesticate our protocols to treat us with love and affection. And so this is, this is the take here. It's a longer article I've read. It's on the Bankless Newsletter. It's also available on the YouTube. And if you want, if you, somebody that has imagination and want to see what my imagination looks like

• 1:30:57David Hoffman?

  when crypto comes to its end game, it's, it's that crypto is not here to make you rich. It's not here to support pump and dumps and scams. It's here to set you free.

• 1:31:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a, that's a great line. And you also talk about how crypto is a multi-stage rocket. We're still in phase one, which is it's all about financial incentives. And that's the negative that people see. It's like, it's all kind of scams and pump and dumps. And it's just people talking about number go up. But phase two is more sovereignty, more freedom. And that's what you mean, I think. That's really cool. All right, David, can you find something this week to be excited about? I know it's a little more challenging than usual, but what are you excited about this week?

• 1:31:33David Hoffman?

  Tomorrow, or actually it might be today, actually. It might be tomorrow. Elden Ring comes out, Ryan, which is part of the Dark Souls video game series. And if there's one video game that I really, really like, it's the Dark Souls series. So Elden Ring comes out tomorrow and it's going to be like, it's a perfect timing. I need some escapism and there ain't no crypto in it. So I get to ignore that too.

• 1:31:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  No NFTs have invaded?

• 1:31:57David Hoffman?

  That's exactly right. Ain't no NFTs yet in Elden Ring. And so I'm going to be playing Elden Ring a lot this, this coming weekend for sure.

• 1:32:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome. Yeah. You gotta get your mind off things sometimes. Gotta have some relaxation for sure.

• 1:32:11David Hoffman?

  What are you excited about, Ryan?

• 1:32:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm, I'm really excited about a post I saw written by a guy that I've been following for a while. David Hanameyer Hansen. If you're in the developer space, you might know him as the creator of Ruby on Rails. Anyway, he wrote this post. He's been, he's been very vocally skeptical about crypto. I might say a crypto critic or crypto hater. He wrote this post earlier this week called, "I was wrong. We need crypto." Okay. And the reason he was skeptical about crypto, he changed his mind on that. But the reason he was skeptical, I think a lot of people can relate to outside of crypto. He didn't vibe with the culture, you know, the whole laser eyes thing. That wasn't. That wasn't his vibe. The energy consumption around Bitcoin, right? Again, didn't feel sustainable, not his vibe.

• 1:32:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Transaction fees, the pump and dumps, the obvious frauds, some of the fake decentralization, right? There's a whole list of things you could be mad about in crypto. And that's why he stayed away from it. He didn't find out it was worth exploring. But he changed his mind. And the reason he changed his mind was the Canadian, the Canadian actions of the Canadian government to freeze bank accounts of protesters. Now, he said this, "Beyond all these very real problems and challenges, my bigger beef was actually fueled by a lack of imagination." He didn't think that in the Western world, anyway, where we weren't under authoritarian regimes, that we would actually need a free monetary system.

• 1:33:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Kind of like, the banking system works good enough. Where's the 5X improvement? Where's the 10X improvement? But the protests in Canada and the bank freezing completely changed his mind. Which is, I don't want to say that's cool to see, because it's unfortunate that this is what it takes to change people's minds. But I do think, back to that statement, that this is like 1,000 Super Bowl ads. When you actually see, when funds are actually taken away from you in your country, I mean, the people of Argentina, for instance, they don't have to be convinced about crypto or DeFi. Like, they've lived through eras of banks confiscating their funds. Now, we're starting to see this in Western countries, and people are getting it that way. Anyway, exciting for me to kind of read this post

• 1:34:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  and to see someone who was initially resistant to it start to understand why we've been talking about the things we've been talking to. And also exciting, because I just shot him an email a couple of days ago, and I was like, "Hey, DHH, want to come on Bankless and talk about this?" And again, he's someone who's writing. I followed for a while. He's written some books that I've read as well. And he's like, "Yeah, sure, let's talk about it." So he's coming on the podcast next week. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about hearing the story of a crypto critic change his mind and what went into the thought process there.

• 1:34:54David Hoffman?

  We started off that podcast with "I told you so," right?

• 1:34:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  No. I want him to tell himself so, which is what he did in this post.

• 1:35:02David Hoffman?

  This is the same exact thing that we were talking about with like, people who have imaginations get it. Like, it's easy for them to imagine, oh, maybe the United States might turn authoritarian one day. Like, that might be a possibility. This is the exact same energy.

• 1:35:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. I totally agree. All right, David, let's close this out. Meme of the week. What are we looking at?

• 1:35:23David Hoffman?

  This is not a funny one, but it is a little bit funny. Okay, so this is the unofficial ETH Denver Po app, which is a positive COVID test.

• 1:35:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, God. Is that what happened in ETH Denver? A lot of people got COVID?

• 1:35:36David Hoffman?

  So Arjun Bhupthani of Connect, he made a poll, said, "Did you get COVID at ETH Denver?" 13% said yes, 20% said no, the rest were results. So, I don't know, what's that ratio? 13 to 20 is like, you know, very roughly almost half, like, less than half, but almost half of people got COVID at ETH Denver. Like, I've taken two COVID tests now and both came back negative, but I have COVID symptoms. At this point, it's just a fucking common cold, excuse my language. But also at the same time, like, everyone kind of knew-

• 1:36:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Especially because you've been vaccinated multiple times and you've already had it.

• 1:36:09David Hoffman?

  Twice, yeah. But also, at the same time, we recently had a Super Bowl that had like 100,000 people in the stadium without masks. Then we had ETH Denver with 15,000 people who all know COVID exists. And so like, I'm kind of in the pro camp of just like, is this over yet or what? Because like, if you look at the behaviors of people, they are going to ETH Denver kind of knowing that they're gonna get COVID, and then they're coming out with it. Like, no, there's no news stories about this. Remember in Bitcoin Miami 2021, there was like a massive news cycle story about like how it's a super-spreader event?

• 1:36:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Different time, yeah.

• 1:36:43David Hoffman?

  Well, this had way more people getting COVID, but no one cares about it anymore. And so like, can we call this thing, like, can we wrap this thing up, in my opinion?

• 1:36:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do think things are changing. Hey, meme of the weeks are supposed to be funny, though, not all serious, David.

• 1:36:55David Hoffman?

  It is pretty funny, sorry.

• 1:36:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anyway, guys, thanks for hanging with us. Of course, none of this has been financial advice. Bitcoin is risky. Or geopolitics advice. It's definitely not geopolitics advice. All of these things are risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:37:18David 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, podcast, 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,

• 1:37:59David Hoffman?

  Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless nation.