ROLLUP: BTC ETF Race Heats Up, zkSync drops the ZK Stack, OP going ZK?

Bankless Weekly Rollup 4th Week of June 2023 ------ 🚀 Unlock $3,000+ in Perks with Bankless Citizenship 🚀 https://bankless.cc/GetThePerks ------ 📣 CYFRIN | Smart Contract Audits & Solidity Course https://bankless.cc/cyfrin ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE https://bankless.cc/MetaMask ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🧠 AMBIRE | SMART CONTRACT WALLET https://bankless.cc/Ambire 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle ------ Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 4:43 MARKETS 7:03 Bitcoin All Time High https://twitter.com/bitcoinnewscom/status/1671826162232729602?s=46 https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1673017749549858818 12:54 The ETH Flippening is here! https://twitter.com/eking0x/status/1673404169300897825?s=20 https://twitter.com/ultrasoundmoney/status/1671778059442167808?s=20 https://twitter.com/ultrasoundmoney/status/1671778059442167808?s=20 https://dune.com/hildobby/eth2-staking 17:18 zkSync Release The ZK Stack https://twitter.com/zksync/status/1673317167628967936?s=20 https://twitter.com/trustlessstate/status/1672326842953474050?s=46 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSHz93lWVM&t=300s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSHz93lWVM&t=300s 23:35 Optimism Going ZK? https://twitter.com/o1_labs/status/1674180590298599424?s=20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tToCWmKBug&t=7s&pp=ygUQT3Agc3RhY2sgY2hhaW5zIA%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tToCWmKBug&t=7s&pp=ygUQT3Agc3RhY2sgY2hhaW5zIA%3D%3D https://twitter.com/optimismFND/status/1672281032962478080 28:01 Bitcoin ETF This Year? https://www.theblock.co/post/236588/fidelity-preparing-to-submit-spot-bitcoin-etf-filing-source https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1674055780058771463?s=20 https://twitter.com/Melt_Dem/status/1673776265629773826?s=20 36:02 Zuzalu! https://www.bankless.com/everything-i-learned-at-zuzalu 41:15 Airdrop Season With Diva DAO 43:32 Azuki Drama https://twitter.com/Azuki/status/1673726920574533634?s=20 https://twitter.com/Tytaninc/status/1673768378958225419?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheEliteCrypto/status/1673953812070158336?s=20 https://twitter.com/jmj/status/1673742765359009794?s=20 48:02 Microstrategy Buys More BTC https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1674025857063571456 https://twitter.com/btc_for_freedom/status/1674027929251065859 https://imgur.com/SsR8aNR https://twitter.com/giancarlomkts/status/1673458492609556480 51:12 Hong Kong Enters The Chat https://www.theblock.co/post/236325/hsbc-hong-kong-bitcoin-ether-crypto-etfs?utm_source=tldr_crypto 53:26 Binance Claps Back https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1671898121528393732?t=J0Fv7ijuPGFz4kIhC0_Xpg&s=19 https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1671898121528393732?t=J0Fv7ijuPGFz4kIhC0_Xpg&s=19 56:21 BlockFi Liquidation https://www.theblock.co/post/236847/blockfi-liquidation 58:24 Bankless Exclusive Perks https://www.bankless.com/tools/perks 59:34 ETH CC Meetup https://partiful.com/e/hvf8yXY1QjnIwV5hYhdw 1:02:41 Questions From The Nation https://discord.com/channels/615592155481767941/1058053004705669211/1123276883472175264 1:08:48 Takes Of The Week https://twitter.com/tbr90/status/1672689604317552640?s=46 https://twitter.com/digitalmustafa/status/1672301952762511361?s=20 https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1673463909024509955?s=20 1:11:49 Ryans Stays At Davids Place https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1673336849668947968 https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1673444396623368192?s=20 1:16:14 What Are We Bullish On? https://youtu.be/BAeMr3Xyb08 1:20:27 Meme Of The Week https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1673753104771325958?s=20 1:21:09 Risks And Disclaimers ---- Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh my God, they're large. 4.2 trillion, trillion with a T, okay? And BlackRock is double that size.

• 0:09David Hoffman?

  Oh my God.

• 0:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like between them.

• 0:12David Hoffman?

  A lot of money.

• 0:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  They got all the assets.

• 0:13David Hoffman?

  They have all the money.

• 0:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  But what does this do for our banks? That's the big question here.

• 0:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, it is the last Friday of June 2023, and it's time for something special, something we release every single Friday. David, what time is it?

• 0:32David Hoffman?

  Oh, it's time for the Friday Bankless Weekly Rollup, Ryan, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless, fully caffeinated. I had a coffee. I also had tea this morning, actually, as well. I had both.

• 0:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, good for you. And I got to enjoy some of your coffee in your apartment, where you live, in person, for all the haters, for all the doubters out there. David, can you confirm for the people that Ryan Sean Adams is a physical, real human being?

• 1:04David Hoffman?

  He, you do have matter. There are, there are atoms. I'm still, there's still like room for you being an AI. But yes, Ryan and I were actually hanging out in person, doing some coworking in the Bankless offices this last week, which was pretty interesting.

• 1:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was fun.

• 1:19David Hoffman?

  The Bankless Nation is going to see some, some side by side, same camera, same microphone podcasts coming out on the YouTube.

• 1:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh man, very, very, very rare stuff. We should put them as NFTs. They should be collectibles. But that's not all. We've got some big topics of the week. Number one, Bitcoin hits a new all time high? Wait, what? Did you rate that?

• 1:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  It didn't hit all time high? What do we mean?

• 1:39David Hoffman?

  Technically, technically it did. It technically.

• 1:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, okay. You'll have to explain that one to me. What else we got?

• 1:44David Hoffman?

  Staking also hits a new all time high and formally passes supply on exchanges. We're going to get into the details around that. The Bitcoin ETF race turns up like two notches. It's getting real, really hot. ZK Sync drops the ZK stack, and there's a new airdrop targeting e-stakers. So check out your eligibility.

• 2:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's me, David.

• 2:04David Hoffman?

  That's you.

• 2:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm an e-staker.

• 2:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you get your tokens?

• 2:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  I hope so. I can't wait for you to tell me what they are, how to do that.

• 2:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  We also have something really cool that we want to share. This is more than friends and sponsors. All right. This is a group. This is a conference that David and I support. This is a Bankless plus Blockworks conference. It's called Permissionless. This is the only conference I go to every single year. That'll be, this will be the next time you and I meet. I think, David, tell us, what is going on at Permissionless? What are the dates? Who's speaking? Why should Bankless listeners be excited about this?

• 2:39David Hoffman?

  I've been heading down, working with the Blockworks team to finalize this agenda. And man, it is, it's really coming together. Okay, so Permissionless, September 11th through 13th in Austin, Texas. While everyone is paper handing the absolute F out of the United States, Permissionless is going to Texas. So we got Eric Voorhees, we got Representative-

• 3:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this even legal? Are we allowed to host a crypto conference in America?

• 3:05David Hoffman?

  Crypto people are allowed to assemble. And so we are fulfilling our patriotic duty by assembling in Texas. We have Tom Emmer and Hester Purce on a panel together. That's going to be pretty sick. Hazu is coming in, Kevin Owaki, Meltem Demir, Jim Bianco. It's going to be one half of a reunion of every single Bankless podcast episode and one half of a reunion of every single Blockworks podcast episode. I'm pretty stoked for this. We have, we're putting Solana, Cosmos, and Ethereum people all on a panel together to talk about, you know, differences.

• 3:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Coming together.

• 3:38David Hoffman?

  And also fighting. Mehalo from Pollygone, Ben Jones from Optimism, Vance Spencer from Framework, Torgel from Scroll, so all the Layer 2s. Everyone who is fighting as a family will all be there at Permissionless. Look at this lineup, dude. Anatoly, Raj, Santiago, Jesse Pollock, Donnie, Michael Anderson, Tarun, Lee Jin, Jim Bianco, I already said his name, but we're saying it twice. Man, there's, it's quite the lineup. It's quite the lineup.

• 4:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very exciting. So what should folks do if they want to get a ticket, David?

• 4:09David Hoffman?

  Oh, if you are a Bankless citizen, you should definitely use your code to get 30% off. You can find that code in the Discord or in the Bankless perks page. There's also a hackathon this year. So for some of doing this hackathon this year for, and there's also a dev track as well because we're really expanding the F out of Permissionless this year. So link in the show notes to get your ticket. If you subscribe to Bankless, you get 30% off, which more than pays for your ticket. So that's what the rational economic agent would do there.

• 4:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hmm, do we have any of those?

• 4:36David Hoffman?

  I don't know if I don't know.

• 4:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll find out.

• 4:39David Hoffman?

  Any of those.

• 4:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll find out. No, I have faith in the bankless nation. David, let's get to markets, though. What's Bitcoin doing? You told me this was all time high. I feel tricked.

• 4:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's not in dollars, but it is an all time high. It is at an all time high.

• 4:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, well, what price are we at this week?

• 4:55David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin started the week at $30,000, ending the week at $30,500. You know, nice, nice and healthy. 3-0. You really got to appreciate that. 3-0.

• 5:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Above 30K, I'm feeling great.

• 5:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, above 30K is I'm just feeling just fine. I'm happy with that.

• 5:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of course, we are watching this on the Kraken charts play out. Kraken Pro, easy enough for me to use it. How about Ether this week? We up, we down?

• 5:20David Hoffman?

  Down a little bit. Ether started the week at 1885, ending the week at 1850, down a percent and a half. So Bitcoin up a percent and Ether down a percent and a half.

• 5:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hanging on the 1800s, huh?

• 5:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  The Victorian age.

• 5:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Civil War era, 1850s, 1860s, you know? I don't know.

• 5:38David Hoffman?

  I, every time, every time Ether goes through the 1900s, I'm like, oh, my birthday.

• 5:44David Hoffman?

  Birthday year.

• 5:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, let's do Bitcoin ETH on the ratio.

• 5:49David Hoffman?

  We don't have to do that one. We can skip.

• 5:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  No?

• 5:51David Hoffman?

  We're, it's, it's down at point 06.

• 5:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Weeks where you want to skip it are the weeks that they're more interesting.

• 5:55David Hoffman?

  Oh, that is a line that goes down and to the right. Yeah.

• 5:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, I'm scrolling out. It's still down.

• 6:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it still goes down.

• 6:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  When does it all, has it gone, ever gone up?

• 6:03David Hoffman?

  Yes, it has gone up.

• 6:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  How about on the year? Let's scroll at least to there. Okay, I'm going to get a.

• 6:08David Hoffman?

  On the year, it's, it's just been flat ever since even like the start of the last bull market. So it's between point 06 and like point 08. But yeah, definitely on the lower side of the ratio.

• 6:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bitcoin gaining some, gaining some steam this week. Maybe that's why you, you told me it was at an all time high and we'll find out more about that, I think. But before we get there, total crypto market cap, is that looking at on the week?

• 6:31David Hoffman?

  We are coming in at 1.2 trillion dollars. So, healthy.

• 6:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, the numbers in my head are Bitcoin over 30K, feeling good. ETH price over 2K, I'm feeling good. It's not there yet, but I'd feel good if that was the case. Crypto market cap over 1 trillion, I'm still feeling good. So overall, I mean. This bear market has been hard, I guess, but I don't know. At $1 trillion market cap, how hard has it actually been?

• 6:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's the topic of discussion, I think. And we'll get into this in further into the market section. First off, Bitcoin, new all-time high, 7.6 million Argentine pesos. So new Bitcoin all-time high for the country of Argentina for the fiat currency of Argentina. Reminder, all fiat currencies go to zero. Some just go faster than others. So yeah,

• 7:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you feel rugged, Bankless Listener? David told us all-time high. Now he's saying it's in Argentinian pesos.

• 7:26David Hoffman?

  Hey, it depends on your frame of reference, my man. Like, not only is that a little bit of an all-time high, that has screamed past the all-time high. This is just a good reminder of inflation in fiat currencies are bad. And the US dollar, the strength of the US dollar is a privilege. And all other fiat currencies are weaker than the dollar. And we shit on the dollar all the time.

• 7:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it is. And the only reason the dollar looks somewhat good at like, you know, 5% to 10% inflation rate is because everything is, like, a lot of other assets are so much worse. A lot of other fiat currencies are so much worse. That's why the dollar looks good sometimes. This is interesting, though. Argentine Congress approves IMF debt deal that would discourage crypto usage. So this is what I worry about. When fiat-based countries, which is all of them, start to feel under threat from crypto, what do they do? When they start to bleed relative to other fiats, of course, but relative to crypto assets, what do they do? We haven't yet seen this kind of reaction in the US because I don't

• 8:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  think we've bled hard enough. But this is interesting. Discouraging crypto use in Argentina, that seems like a big step. What do you think about this?

• 8:42David Hoffman?

  The quote from the article that stands out to me. "To further safeguard financial stability, we are taking important steps to discourage the use of cryptocurrencies with a view to prevent money laundering, informality, and disintermediation." They're trying to prevent disintermediation?

• 8:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  To help you.

• 8:58David Hoffman?

  I would like to encourage disintermediation. That's why I'm here. They're trying to prevent informality. What does that even mean?

• 9:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know. To me, you sound like a money launderer right now. You're talking like a money launderer.

• 9:09David Hoffman?

  I'm also a terrorist.

• 9:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I was gonna clip that out of context. That's gonna be fantastic. Yeah, preventing money laundering, that's the reason they'll give. It has nothing, of course, to do with the inflation of the peso in our country. I just, I look at this and I'm kind of like, yeah, coming to a fiat economy near you. Watch out for this kind of thing, right?

• 9:31David Hoffman?

  It's going to us, yeah.

• 9:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, this is interesting from Charlie. Bitcoin returns since 2010. This is on the yearly, year start, year end. What are we looking at in this table?

• 9:41David Hoffman?

  It's just a nice reminder of what Bitcoin does every single year, which is always, the answer to that is always large. Either red or green. 2010, 9,900%. 2011, 1,400%. 2012, 186%. 2013, 5,500%. And then, 2014, negative 58%. And like, with negative 58%, that cuts all previous numbers, you know, by half, right? And then, 35%, 125%, 1,300%. And then, 2018, negative 73%. So, 2022, we had negative 65%. 2023, year to date, 85% in the green for Bitcoin. And so, it's just like, also the regularity of the red years.

• 10:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at it, David. This is a pat-

• 10:24David Hoffman?

  Are you seeing the pattern here?

• 10:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless listener.

• 10:27David Hoffman?

  Three greens and a red. Three greens and a red. 2010 doesn't count.

• 10:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ignore 2010.

• 10:32David Hoffman?

  Three greens and a red. So, we had red in 2022. Year to date, 2023, strongly in the green. I think we get two more greens and then we get a red. And so, what are the-

• 10:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you serious?

• 10:42David Hoffman?

  24 is green. Perhaps, perhaps very green. 25 is very green. 2026 is in the red. So-

• 10:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this TA, sir? Are we traders now?

• 10:51David Hoffman?

  I look forward to, once again, not selling in 2025 and then having this clipped out. And I said like, "Oh, I was gonna say I should sell in 2025."

• 11:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I totally think this is the base case for how it plays out again.

• 11:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, and what this says is, since Bitcoin has been in existence, it's only been unprofitable, you bought it beginning of the year. Three years, out of like, the 12, 13-plus years it's been in existence. It's three years. It's been a bad, bad deal.

• 11:20David Hoffman?

  Let me tell you, the negative 60%, the 1,300% trump those.

• 11:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'd say so.

• 11:29David Hoffman?

  Over time.

• 11:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Has appreciated.

• 11:30David Hoffman?

  I made this in Photoshop just before we started recording. The red part of this graph, which is this is a Bitcoin chart. That is the only part of the chart that is in the red. That is only the part that's that's a lot of green.

• 11:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, so you're saying if you bought from about 2021

• 11:48David Hoffman?

  To halfway through 2022.

• 11:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  2022, you're in the red. But if you bought anytime before that, you are still in the money.

• 11:55David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 11:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  On your Bitcoin purchase.

• 11:56David Hoffman?

  And also anytime between now and halfway through 2022. So this is what I'm calling Schrödinger's market. So like, where are we in the bull market bear market cycle? Are we just closing the 2022 gap? 2022 was just too bad, too much blood that we just mean reverted? Or are we at the beginning stages of a bull market? So if you go back to like, we can't do this because I didn't include it in the in the screenshot, but like, if you go back and look at the 2017 bull market, it started in 2015. It started like that was when the up only markets began. But in 2015, you felt like you were in a bear market because

• 12:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  It starts the year after the red year.

• 12:33David Hoffman?

  Right, yes. And so right now we're in Schrödinger's market. Are we just recovering from the bear? Or are we at the start of the bull? It's kind of the same thing, but you don't really know where you are. And it feels the same.

• 12:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does feel the same, but I feel like I know where I am. You know what I mean? Like, just like, it's just, it's probably just going to play out the same way it always does.

• 12:53David Hoffman?

  Three greens and a red.

• 12:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is pretty cool. Stake ETH now exceeds ETH on centralized exchanges. We're going bankless fam. What's this chart?

• 13:03David Hoffman?

  This chart, we showed this last week and maybe even the week before, but these lines have touched. What are the lines? One line, the top line, which is now the bottom line, is Ether on centralized exchanges. Loser line. The winner line is the bottom line, which is now the top line, is Ether being staked. So more staked than on exchanges.

• 13:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this the flipping, sir?

• 13:23David Hoffman?

  This is a flipping.

• 13:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, not the flipping.

• 13:25David Hoffman?

  The flipping before the flipping. Of course, I'm still flipping. 20 million Ether is currently staked with a 2.9 million Ether of queued Ether to stake. Wow.

• 13:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a lot of ETH waiting outside the club.

• 13:38David Hoffman?

  15% of all staked Ether is in the queue. That's insane.

• 13:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  It just keeps growing. They just keep staking. When are they going to stop staking, David?

• 13:48David Hoffman?

  When are they going to stop staking?

• 13:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is this from Poopman? This is a, it looks like a fantastic, very credible account here. Poopman, what's he got for us?

• 13:58David Hoffman?

  He's just talking about the growth of ETH staking. It has slowed down in the last 30 days, but that's after the acceleration of post-merge. He says, "I'm very optimistic about the LSD market. He has checked Dune Analytics and found some interesting stats. The fastest-growing Swell network with 58% growth and followed by Figment with 57% growth. And then the largest outflows of Ether is Huobi and Bitstamp, two centralized exchanges." He follows and says, "Swell means to be the staking superstar out of the bear market because its successful pearl incentive campaign, this like the airdrop teasing campaign. Meanwhile, centralized exchanges such as Coinbase and Huobi are getting a downturn likely due to regulatory issues." So this is just talking about some data out of the staking as a service industry.

• 14:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's sad.

• 14:40David Hoffman?

  Swell has a lot of growth, but although it is still very small, so like it's got like 28,000, it's still a sliver of overall ETH stake.

• 14:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like it's one of these tiny slivers over here, isn't it?

• 14:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't even know where it is, but it's certainly not the 30%, 31% of Lido.

• 14:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Or the, still the 9.5%, but it is good. It is great to see that competition entering the market. David, what do we have coming up next?

• 15:09David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, ZK Sync releases the ZK Stack and why it's got me all hot and bothered. Boy, do I love biomimicry systems. The ETF war heats the absolute F up. Fidelity, Ark Invest, VanEck all enter the race, but Ark jumps to first in line with this one simple trick. How did they do it?

• 15:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 15:29David Hoffman?

  How did they do it?

• 15:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  How'd he do it?

• 15:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so all of that and more coming up as soon as we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken, the place that we see all these beautiful charts every time we go through the numbers on the YouTube. If you do not have a Kraken account, consider clicking the link in the show notes while you listen to us talk about it right now. Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Kraken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real-time market data, and lightning Fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs. Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen. With Kraken Pro, you have that power. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out,

• 16:14David Hoffman?

  join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro.kraken.com to get started today. Mantle, formerly known as BitDAO, is the first DAO-led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle Network. A brand-new, high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 built using the OP stack, but uses Eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle Network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle Treasury is one of the biggest DAO-owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub-communities from around Web3 on-boarded,

• 16:56David Hoffman?

  like Game7 for Web3 gaming and Bybit for TVL and liquidity and on-ramps. So if you want to build on the Mantle Network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first DAO-led Layer 2 ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle.xyz and follow them on Twitter at @zeroxmantle. A big release from ZK Sync this week. David, what are we looking at? ZK Sync releases the ZK Stack, a modular framework for building sovereign ZK-powered hyperchains based on ZK Sync's open-source code. So ZK Stack sounds a little bit like OP Stack. If you're using the OP Stack as a frame of reference, you're off to a great start. What's a stack? Why do they call them stacks? It's like a tech stack. It's like a technology stack.

• 17:42David Hoffman?

  And so the ZK Stack is... What does ZK Sync do? ZK Sync does zero-knowledge cryptography, but as a Layer 2. The one thing that they really do is their ZK circuit. What is ZK Sync? They make the ZK circuit. Everything else about ZK Sync is kind of a commodity. They settle to Ethereum. They use Ethereum data. They use other parts, other components that could produce a Layer two, the rest of what that makes up the ZK sync, layer two, ZK sync era is more or less a commodity. They make the ZK circuit. So what is the ZK stack? It is ZK sync's ZK circuit as a framework where you can take in the rest of the components of what makes a layer two and build your own layer two.

• 18:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Build your own chain fam.

• 18:28David Hoffman?

  Build it, build a ZK workshop is what it is. And so the ZK stack allows teams to build their custom hyperchain, which is ZK sync's fractal scaling branding, a fully trustless, cheap asynchronous connectivity to the rest of the hyperchain ecosystem. Now, this is the secret sauce that the ZK element has that the optimistic rollups worlds do not have. ZK circuits, chains that all use a ZK circuits have a crazy amount of composability right out of the gate, because that is the magic of ZK. And so ZK chains, like ZK chain A that uses the same circuit as ZK chain B, have a ton of composability, tailwinds and benefits.

• 19:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Will it be like you have, will it be like you have the asset on the same chain? Will it be that easy to move from a chain to chain? And also, if I can fit two questions in one here.

• 19:16David Hoffman?

  Oh boy.

• 19:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this a layer three? So we're basically talking about here?

• 19:21David Hoffman?

  Both answers are kind of maybe yes. So to take the simple one first, is this a layer three? It can be a layer three. It is a open framework for deploying chains. You want to deploy a layer two, you want to deploy a layer three, you want to deploy a layer N? You want to deploy a chain between chains and fractal hyperscaling, think of it like just a root system of chains. Like it starts to, layer three is a very like number three, like it's not so canonical.

• 19:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's more like a tree branch.

• 19:47David Hoffman?

  Tree branch, exactly. Root system, yeah.

• 19:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Trees.

• 19:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah. What was, what was the first question that you had? I don't know, I can do one question at a time.

• 19:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, the first question was, you know, David, I can't remember.

• 20:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's been one of those weeks, my friend.

• 20:02David Hoffman?

  Yes, it definitely has. Okay, so moving on, maybe I'll think of it. ZK Stack, lightweight sequencer with low latency of sequencing. That's the ZK element. Apps that can interact without the trust assumption of bridges. Also the ZK element.

• 20:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, I know.

• 20:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah?

• 20:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. I was asking you if the experience will be like, I have my assets on the same chain. What the experience is like from going from like one ZK-enabled chain on the ZK stack to another.

• 20:29David Hoffman?

  Right. The answer is like, kind of, it depends. The easy answer is yes. The harder answer is like, yes, and there takes a bunch of additional, like, supporting infrastructure and development and abstraction to get to that point. But the answer is that we are moving there, and this is a very big step towards moving there. There's other things, like, we need EtherScan to allow for, when you like, rather than you don't, you have RBScan and OptiScan, and there's, for every single, like, ecosystem, there's its own version of EtherScan. We need optimizations in scaffolding, like EtherScan, to be able to work with networks of chains. And they can do that, but they need to do that.

• 21:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I don't need a bridge.

• 21:05David Hoffman?

  You do not need a bridge. In the ZK world, you do not need a bridge. Same thing with the Optimism Superchain, but that even has even further challenges because they don't have the ZK element. But there is a part in this rollup that talks about the ZK world of the optimistic chains. Anyways. And, okay. A closed, private chain with connectivity to the ecosystem, that just means, hey, deploy a ZK chain, you're connected to the ZK Sync hyperchains, but it's still your chain with a native way, a way to issue a native token as that token's base. So, that is all of what I am excited about. This is my tweet, "The ZK Stack Shall Inherit the Internet." What do I mean by this? Okay, so, this is why both OP stacks and ZK stacks just, like, get me going. It's because these systems, they're meant to be forked.

• 21:46David Hoffman?

  They're like, both Optimism and ZK Sync are saying, fork the absolute F out of us. Deploy your chains. Deploy more chains, more chains everywhere, just use the same standard, because if you use the same standard, then the network effects around these standards grow. Optimism wants you to use the, their Optimistic Tech Stack standard called the OP Stack. ZK Sync wants you to use their ZK Tech Stack standard called the ZK Stack. And that's what you get, you've got the ZK and the OP, the Optimism. And so... The idea is that they are just optimizing for what they are doing best. And then they're letting the rest of the internet express their modules, their desires for how they want their chain to be expressed. And so this allows the ZK chains or OP stack chains to find corners of the internet because they're so customizable

• 22:31David Hoffman?

  that chain deployers can make them fit into whatever corner of the internet that they want to go. So the whole outline of like the ZK stack shall inherit the internet is saying that like we're going to, this is the scaffolding that's needed in order to propagate chains so that we can take the internet and put it on Ethereum.

• 22:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's an entire episode on this.

• 22:51David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 22:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is there not?

• 22:52David Hoffman?

  Yes. Oh, I did a show, an episode on this with Alex Klockowski and Anthony Rose from ZK Sync talking all about this. And so we talk a lot about the nature of ZK as a technology, just like the principles and the values that ZK tech as a technology embody. And then we go into the ZK stack, which is how those values get scaled out to the scale of the internet.

• 23:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  One thing I would add to all of this is I know we're talking about some releases from ZK Sync and also Optimism Next this week. Polygon, Arbitrum, they have their own versions of this as well. I mean, all of these large layer two ecosystems are moving to a world where it's very easy to spin up your own chain. And they all have slightly different approaches towards getting there. And it's very, very exciting to see. So why don't you tell us about Optimism? What are they doing this week?

• 23:41David Hoffman?

  The cool thing about what this is, Ryan, this week is that this actually is an optimism. This is O of One Labs, who I don't actually know the name of that, but I think they're associated with the Mina protocol, hence this announcement. They say, "O of One Labs is excited to submit a proposal to Optimism for the application of our zero knowledge proof stack to OP stack fraud proofs." This application is built on the groundbreaking MIPS ZK VM we're building as part of the Mina protocol roadmap. Why is this cool? We've created Kimchi, our Plankish proving system, this is cryptography words, to help bring ZKPs to the web three and web two worlds. And so basically, the OP stack is like a bunch of modules. Every chain is a module for the Optimism Superchain.

• 24:24David Hoffman?

  And OP Labs is submitting their version of fault proofs into the world of optimism. And so this is like a path forward for the OP stack to gain a ZK module inside of the OP superchain world.

• 24:40David Hoffman?

  That makes sense?

• 24:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does, I think. So, does this mean an OP chain could potentially be a ZK? EVM OP chain?

• 24:51David Hoffman?

  So, yes, an OP chain can accept a ZK module. And then part of the, this is the cool thing, part of the superchain, all of the hyperchains that makes up the Optimism superchain, most are going to be optimistic rollups. Some can be ZK rollups, and it can all be part of the Optimistic superchain. Technically, this is a very hard thing to parse apart, and the Optimism team knows this, and they all understand, are taking on the challenges of like, how do we make a composable superchain, like, head-on? Ben Jones from Optimism has this thing that he's working on to help, like, define how does the superchain grow. But man, does it feel like the Layer 2 summer, the Layer 2 ecosystem is just on fire right now.

• 25:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's really cool. It looks like Optimism as well has renamed Optimism to OP mainnet, which is sort of interesting. This mainnet area for all of these OP chains, that's pretty cool. I guess one takeaway from all of this is, I feel like this time, the next bull market, we will have all of the block space we need.

• 25:50David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right?

• 25:52David Hoffman?

  We have so much block space, and if we need more, it's easy to get more now.

• 25:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so easy to get more. Now, making that composable, making it private, making the UX good, still some issues, of course, but we got the block space, right? So, low gas fee environments is going to be the case. Now, I feel like we need the apps.

• 26:11David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 26:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  This reminds me a little bit-

• 26:12David Hoffman?

  No one's building apps. Everyone is building chains. No one is building apps.

• 26:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like feast or famine here. Last time, during the bull run, we had all the apps. We didn't have enough block space. Now, we have all the block space, and we don't have enough apps. But, you know-

• 26:26David Hoffman?

  Someone, will someone please build an app?

• 26:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Consume some block space. I mean, but, okay, zoom out. This is kind of what happened with the internet, right?

• 26:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Basically, you had kind of the early internet, and we're like, we need more bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth.

• 26:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Billions and hundreds of billions of dollars went into bandwidth investment, internet infrastructure investment. Then what happened? Dot com bust. All the money kind of evaporated and we're like, now we have all of this bandwidth, but we don't have the apps for the internet, right? Guess what happened? The apps came because there was high bandwidth environment. We got things like YouTube, for instance, video streaming, like Netflix online. We got all of the high bandwidth apps after that. So I think the builders will catch up. They're taking notice. The apps will come, David. Never fear.

• 27:13David Hoffman?

  It is worth just taking a step back and just reflecting, man, like, we do not know what's coming next, but hey, at least we have the bandwidth to support some really, really crazy ideas next bull market. Okay, disclosures, both Ryan and I are advisors to both optimism and ZK Sync. I'm a big fan of tech stacks. I'm a big fan of biomimicry. There's a video, if you want to learn more about just the nature of tech stacks, the OP stack video on YouTube from Bankless, just type in OP stack Bankless. It's the only video on YouTube that talks about the OP stack.

• 27:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really?

• 27:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  You got that market corner, David?

• 27:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the 4,000 people have watched it. Hey, but you can front around the opportunity. Yeah, so advisors to both optimism and ZK Sync. We also talked about swell earlier. We also are angel investors into swell as well. Okay.

• 27:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  We like the staking. We like the layer twos.

• 28:00David Hoffman?

  We like staking. We like layer twos. We like Ethereum.

• 28:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, David, I'm feeling bold. It's the bear market. What do I got to lose, huh? Down bad already. Make a prediction. I think this is the year of the Bitcoin ETF. Spot Bitcoin ETF.

• 28:14David Hoffman?

  Approval.

• 28:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  2023.

• 28:16David Hoffman?

  Approval.

• 28:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 28:17David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 28:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I have, I have, this is just me going out on a limb here, okay? I have no knowledge of this, but just putting some things together. I feel like politically, Gensler has to approve a Bitcoin ETF. This is his kind of backpedaling moment to prove he is a generous god and he's not the unreasonable tyrant that the finance and crypto industry paints him as. So he'll give us this, this gift, the gift of Gensler, and he'll approve an ETF. Also, some of his buddies have been submitting lately. I know you guys mentioned BlackRock. Right? And now, now here we have Fidelity preparing to submit a Bitcoin ETF.

• 28:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fidelity knows what's up and they are doing the BlackRock play as well. What's the, what's the news here?

• 29:04David Hoffman?

  Fidelity is getting ready to submit their own spot Bitcoin ETF. So Fidelity, like, I don't know how big it is, but it's large, joining the queue to get a Bitcoin ETF. Yes, it's real big. This is also not Fidelity's first attempt. They, in 2021, they filed. It was denied by the SEC. And so like, right after BlackRock, Fidelity joins the queue. And then interestingly, Arc, which Arc Invest, Kathy Wood, they also have submitted a Bitcoin ETF request. They haven't gotten theirs denied. Theirs is just sitting in purgatory limbo. But they, what, here's what's interesting and here's how they are getting to the front of the queue.

• 29:42David Hoffman?

  And why, like, Arc might win this thing. At least, like, when this thing is, like, they might get approved first because they're, they had their spot Bitcoin ETF files, paperwork filed first. And they've amended their file work, their 19B slash four, first, whatever that is, for a spot Bitcoin ETF to include a surveillance sharing agreement with the SEC, which is the words that came from the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF.

• 30:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Someone gave them a heads up that they need this verbiage, I think.

• 30:11David Hoffman?

  Well, well, maybe someone gave them a heads up. Maybe they're just saying, hey, BlackRock is going to get approved. And so let's make sure that if they get approved, we also get approved and copy and paste their filing and make it look like our filing. What is a surveillance sharing agreement? It involves the sharing of information about market trading activity, clearing activity and customer identification to protect against the possibility of market manipulation. If this is the thing that forces Gary Gensler's hand to approve the BlackRock ETF, or yeah, ETF, then therefore Arc will get theirs approved, but Arc is still filed. And so Arc will get approved first. And so that's, that's the gambit that Arc is making. Not just Arc, Van Eck has also filed, refiled for a spot Bitcoin ETF last week, which also includes the intent to add the surveillance sharing agreement.

• 30:56David Hoffman?

  So we have three large trad players submitting all of the same spot Bitcoin ETF file paperwork.

• 31:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 31:04David Hoffman?

  And this assumption is like Gary Gensler is either corrupt or going to approve it.

• 31:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, look, uh,

• 31:10David Hoffman?

  He's definitely correct.

• 31:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Van Eck is pretty large, right?

• 31:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  80 billion. You know, of course Kathy Wood, Arc Invest is pretty large. Okay. You, you asked about Fidelity earlier. Guess what they are, David?

• 31:21David Hoffman?

  Uh, large.

• 31:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh my God, they're large. 4.2 trillion, trillion with a T, okay? And BlackRock is double that size. It's like between them.

• 31:34David Hoffman?

  A lot of money.

• 31:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  They got all the assets in the US.

• 31:37David Hoffman?

  They have all the money.

• 31:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? Like, this is a tremendous amount of TradFi, Gary's buddies, pressure that is raining down on him. And you know that Gary's posture has been like, oh yeah, Bitcoin, it's, it's the only commodity there. He hasn't been willing to extend that to any other asset.

• 31:55David Hoffman?

  Oh yeah, I forgot that he doesn't hate Bitcoin.

• 31:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. That, that's what I'm just putting together and that's why I'm making that prediction. But what does this do for our banks? That's the big question here. What does this do for the price? Does, does an ETF matter? Of course, like, I don't get super excited about it because it's not bankless. And yet, and yet, it is a way to onboard retail and increase the liquidity of Bitcoin, the asset. So there are some good things about this. What are we looking at from Meltem?

• 32:24David Hoffman?

  And this is Meltem Demirz, who I think is probably one of the most perfect people to really analyze some of this stuff. So she, the conversation is Bitcoin ETFs all over the place. These are pipes. We need money to actually flow through these pipes. We can build the pipes, but we need money to flow through them in order to materially, immaterially impact the price of Bitcoin. So Meltem just, you know, puts on her analyst hat and asks, where is that money going to come from? And so she goes, so financial institutions are building products and services to access Bitcoin. But where, where will the inflows come from? In my opinion, the biggest untapped market for Bitcoin is taxed advantage retirement accounts. The United States retirement market is $35 trillion and has doubled in the last decade. And so we have two circles here.

• 33:09David Hoffman?

  We have the total US retirement AUM, $35 trillion. And then we have the amount that's allocated to crypto, which is between 500 million and $1 billion. To say that these are two circles doesn't do us justice.

• 33:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  The other is a speck.

• 33:21David Hoffman?

  One, one is taking up half the page and the other one is a period that is in the middle of the page.

• 33:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  It looks like the sun versus the earth.

• 33:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 33:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you've ever seen this, real life size.

• 33:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  So a lot of room for growth here is what that means. And that could be a positive inflow into Bitcoin. Maybe that's why, David, Bitcoin prices have been pumpy a little bit this week.

• 33:42David Hoffman?

  It's pumpy because the traders are buying it because they think this is going to happen, but this is going to take a while. At least that's my hope. Melton, this is a thread, so we are just reading the first tweet of this thread. If you want to read further analysis from Melton, yeah, there's a link in the show notes to go access this tweet. But coming up next, we're going to talk about micro strategy magically discovering hundreds of million dollars and then they turn it into Bitcoin, of course. There's some Izuki drama, which I don't know if you care about, Ryan. I don't really care about it either.

• 34:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, I care deeply.

• 34:09David Hoffman?

  Okay, we're talking about it. Binance claps back versus the SEC and then airdrop season for Ethereum stakers. Man, these are some fun words. All of this and more, but first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, especially MetaMask's brand new Spiffy portfolio feature. We all love MetaMask and now it can tell you everything about all of the things that you have in your MetaMask wallets. We're going to go hear from them right now. MetaMask has something new. Introducing MetaMask Portfolio. MetaMask Portfolio is the best way to view your crypto portfolio from a holistic level. See everything across all the chains all at once. In your portfolio, MetaMask will report the aggregate value of all the assets in your MetaMask wallets and even the other wallets you import too. But MetaMask Portfolio isn't just a passive portfolio

• 34:52David Hoffman?

  viewer, it is a place to do all of the money verbs that make DeFi so powerful. You can buy, swap, bridge and stake your crypto assets. So not only is MetaMask the easiest place to see your wallets in aggregate, but it's also a powerful battle station for all of your DeFi moves. So go check out your MetaMask portfolio because it's waiting for you to open it up. Check it out at portfolio.metaMask.io. You know Uniswap. It's the world's largest decentralized exchange with over 1.4 trillion dollars in trading volume. You know this because we talk about it endlessly on Bakeless. It's Uniswap, but Uniswap is becoming so much more. Uniswap Labs just released the Uniswap Mobile Wallet for iOS, the newest, easiest way to trade tokens on the go. With Uniswap Wallet, you can easily create or import a new wallet, buy crypto on any available exchange with

• 35:36David Hoffman?

  your debit card with extremely low fiat on-ramp fees, and you can seamlessly swap on mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimus. On the Uniswap mobile wallet, you can store and display your beautiful NFTs. And you can also explore Web3 with the in-app search features, market leaderboards and price charts, or use Wallet Connect to connect to any Web3 application. So you can now go directly to DeFi with the Uniswap mobile wallet. Safe, simple custody from the most trusted team in DeFi. Download the Uniswap wallet today on iOS. There is a link in the show notes. David. What's up? What's Zuzalu? Zuzalu is a place of... Did I say it right? Zuzalu, yeah. After weeks, it took me a while to get Zuzalu correct. Well, there's actually, that's up for debate. There's no consensus on how you, Zuzalu or Zuzalu. It's like E versus F?

• 36:21David Hoffman?

  Yes, well, there's no debate on that one. Okay, anymore, there's a shelling point though. What's the shelling point around Zuzalu? Did I say it right? Zuzalu, yeah, or Zuzalu. There's no, it's one of these two shelling points. Yeah, okay.

• 36:35David Hoffman?

  Do you remember when the background of my podcast was not my home in Brooklyn? And it was instead this kind of sterile looking apartment? Boy, do I ever. Internet connections, lots of fun. So I was in Montenegro for two months at this thing called Zuzalu. And if you scroll down, you'll start to get a little bit of a taste of this. It's a blog post on Bankless, right? Yes, so this is a blog post on Bankless. If you want to know and learn about everything I was doing at Zuzalu and what Zuzalu is, this blog post is for you. I like this line that I wrote. Vitalik from Ethereum, Emad from Stable Diffusion and Grimes from Grimes all walk on a stage together. Grimes from Grimes. So Grimes, the artist, also has been previously associated with Elon. Yes, correct. And they all walk on a stage together. And no, this is not a punchline. This was Zuzalu.

• 37:17David Hoffman?

  So this was the AI crypto week at Zuzalu, of which there were eight weeks. There was longevity week, there was synthetic biology week, there was ZK cryptography week, there was public goods week, network states and coordinations. And so this was a social experiment of Zuzalu, like a two-month-long pop-up temporary community where a bunch of frontier technologies came together. Sounds like a cult, David. Yeah, they called us a cult. They called us a cult. Like, we didn't hate that. We thought it was funny.

• 37:49David Hoffman?

  I recorded 18 interviews while I was there. So not only am I telling you about it in this article about what Zuzalu was, but I'm showing you with like 10 plus hours of content and just my

• 37:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this you on a stage, man?

• 38:00David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 38:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I love this posture.

• 38:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's energized, huh? When you're talking in person.

• 38:05David Hoffman?

  Well, so, okay, this was me presenting Web 3 to the Montenegrin government officials. And so I had a 10 minute talk, like 10 minutes, and I was elected to do the Web 3, why Web 3 pitch. And right before my talk, I was like, okay, you no longer have 10 minutes, you have three minutes. And I'm like, nice. And so I just started yelling, dude.

• 38:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  In squat stance.

• 38:25David Hoffman?

  In squat stance, yeah. And so there was some murmuring about what the hell are all these Ethereum people and other industry people all doing at Zuzalu, or this place in Montenegro? There was like this social contract of like, hey, we're going to all be heads down and focus on Zuzalu, and then we'll broadcast about it. Now we're broadcasting about it. And so all of my content, all the talks are now out. You can read about Zuzalu in this blog post, it's at bankless.com. And, yes.

• 38:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, guys, look, let me, let me just tell you the gift that David has just given us. So if you can't go all the way to Montenegro, or you weren't invited, or whatever, it was too, it was too much. David is giving a sneak peek to, I think, some of the best people, best speakers, the best ideas, the best projects that came there. And there's like a series of videos. So in this post alone, David said you recorded 18.

• 39:14David Hoffman?

  18, yeah.

• 39:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  This post alone, there's eight of them, okay? The first one's with Vitalik.

• 39:18David Hoffman?

  No, there's all 18, they're combined into the eight episodes. So 18, so there's eight themes, 18 episodes consolidated into eight episodes. Each one of these is like almost two hours long.

• 39:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a gift.

• 39:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 39:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a gift. So go click the link to show notes if you want some extra bankless content, if you want some frontier tech content, this is the place to get it. I can't wait to dive into these. Is there one, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with the Vitalik one, but what's your, what's your favorite after that?

• 39:43David Hoffman?

  Oh, God, there's a handful. So I have my favorites in each of them. Prima Vera de Felipe and her definition of cordy nations, I thought was really good. Drew Endy, the father of modern biology and synthetic bio, in synthetic biology, he's in that one. I was walking with Drew. He's like this older gentleman Stanford professor and he was like, I've never really done a podcast, but I've always wanted to. This one guy Lex emailed me and I about doing a podcast, but he wanted me to fly out to Austin. So I didn't respond. And I'm like, bro, you didn't respond to Lex Friedman, man. That's hilarious. Anyways, I got him on, on an interview. And so the, so the, the idea here, and this is the Zuzalu pitch. What, how were these technologies selected? All of these technologies are going to fundamentally

• 40:27David Hoffman?

  change the future. They're going to change society. Like longevity is going to happen. People are going to have the choice to live forever. Synthetic biology, we're going to be able to grow our materials organically. That's going to change the world. All of these are technological tidal waves that are going to impact your life, bankless listener. So this, all of this Zuzalu content is for you to front run the opportunity, for you to be ready for that tidal wave that is inevitably coming. I feel like we're in the middle of the AI tidal wave. In the future, synthetic biology will hit us as a society.

• 40:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like one of these, one of these big ones hits like every five years.

• 41:00David Hoffman?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 41:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, and so, so get ready.

• 41:03David Hoffman?

  So this is, this is just about understanding the technological tectonic shifts that are all being built. And so with all of these contents, you will be prepared. You don't have to enjoy every single one. You can pick and choose your flavor. It's a choose your own adventure. But they are at your disposal.

• 41:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, is it airdrop season?

• 41:20David Hoffman?

  It is airdrop.

• 41:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  We teased that a little bit.

• 41:21David Hoffman?

  It's always airdrop.

• 41:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Diva DAO. We're proud to present the Diva DAO, the LDR. The Diva DAO is being formed with an initial distribution to 15,000 unique Ethereum stakers and ecosystem participants. This is an ETH staking protocol, pretty high in the decentralization spectrum. What's going on here?

• 41:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Very strong commitments to Ethereum values, Ethereum, the Ethereum protocol. They want it to be built as a public good. They want it to be built as immutable as possible. One of the things that, that excites me about Diva is their commitment towards the DVT ecosystem, decentralized validator technology, AKA squad staking. And they've been working with people like the Ethereum staker group and others as well. The airdrop has gone to, of course, Diva OG contributors. Ethereum stakers from ETH staker. Rocket pool, SSV, Lido and DAP node, community members from Gnosis, Uniswap, ENS, Ave, Maker, Aragon and other DAOs, and then the Ethereum staking dev and ecosystem contributors.

• 42:18David Hoffman?

  15,000 addresses are eligible. You can track your address at earnify, earni.fi, can go and plug in your address because we've got this Merkel tree built into earnify. So it'll tell you. And if you're already a member subscriber to earnify, you already have your Ethereum address. So you've probably already got an email address saying, hey, you have the new Diva airdrop. And so that is in your inbox. If you are a earnify subscriber, if you're not, you should 100% sign up. There is a link in the show notes. There is, I listened to the Diva Twitter space with SuperFiz this morning. Pretty impressed. Everyone seems to really like what they're doing.

• 42:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, SuperFiz is a notable ETH staker. He says, I'm offering my services a Diva staking delegate. I am encouraged to see Diva soliciting input from the community. I want to contribute my efforts to build another strong staking option. I mean, the whole idea is trying to decentralize staking a little bit more. So I guess SuperFiz is signing up to be a Diva.

• 43:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  We always knew he was a Diva.

• 43:18David Hoffman?

  Did you mean to say that?

• 43:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, isn't that, that's gotta be the meme they're going with, right? What a wasted opportunity if not. Call them the Divas. You want to be a Diva? There you go. Disclosure too, David and I are angel investors in Diva. We think it's a pretty cool statement.

• 43:34David Hoffman?

  I guess we're Divas as well.

• 43:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  NFT stuff, Azuki, David.

• 43:39David Hoffman?

  I'm sure, I'm sure you were, oh, wait, you weren't biting your, you weren't on the edge of your seat following this Azuki drama?

• 43:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, I, I wasn't, but I want you to tell me all about it. So what cool things are happening in the NFT space this week?

• 43:51David Hoffman?

  What cool things are happening? I hate that I had to spend 30 minutes of my morning getting caught up about one.

• 43:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  But you did though, for us. You took that for us. Okay. So I saw some drama from Azuki. There's some sort of drop that, or some sort of mint that got some bad press. What happened?

• 44:05David Hoffman?

  Okay. So Azukis, you know what Azukis like? They're, they're the anime PFP, but like pretty high floor price. It was like 13, 14, 15 ETH before this drop.

• 44:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like definitely a top 10 project.

• 44:17David Hoffman?

  Definitely top 5, I think. Yeah, like very, very strong, very, very strong. So they have been teasing this Azuki Elementals drop, Mint. And so the Elementals was a brand new project. They have sometimes NFT, PFP projects, they do further mints. Because my cynical take is like, we need another idea. Let's do another mint. I don't know. So they do it. So they had their, the Genesis collection, which are the Azukis and then Beans, which are one of these like pets things for Azukis. They're doing Azuki Elementals. And so 20,000 NFTs, 10,000 of them were airdropped to Azuki holders during, so already, so 20,000 new NFTs, 10,000 Azuki, the Genesis ones, 10,000 of the new 20,000 Elementals were airdropped to Azuki holders.

• 45:02David Hoffman?

  The remaining 10,000 Elementals were sold out at 2 ETH each to anyone that owned a Azuki or a Bean. So being on the whitelist means you had to already be in the Azuki community. So $38 million was raised by the Azukis.

• 45:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 45:15David Hoffman?

  From their community, from their community.

• 45:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 45:17David Hoffman?

  Yes, so.

• 45:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a big number.

• 45:19David Hoffman?

  It's a very big number. It's a very big number. Yes.

• 45:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  So they must be valuable.

• 45:23David Hoffman?

  So they were sold for 2 ETH and then they were revealed. And so the metadata.

• 45:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you didn't know what they were.

• 45:29David Hoffman?

  Didn't know what they were. Yes. They were teased. They had, there was like promo graphics. So people kind of knew what they were.

• 45:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, you see this, right?

• 45:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's under wraps?

• 45:36David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 45:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of the graphic. Okay.

• 45:38David Hoffman?

  And so they were released. And so on the left, we have, these are Azukis. These are the Genesis collections. These are the very, very highly priced ones. And then if you swap to the right, these are the Elementals.

• 45:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 45:50David Hoffman?

  Left, here's the Azukis. Here are the Elementals. Let's go back to the Azukis.

• 45:57David Hoffman?

  And back to the Elementals.

• 45:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is, this is Pam from the office. They're the same picture.

• 46:01David Hoffman?

  They're the same picture. They're the same things.

• 46:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It looks very similar.

• 46:04David Hoffman?

  They are the almost identical.

• 46:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are the differences?

• 46:06David Hoffman?

  There's not much. I mean, there's like stylist, there's not even stylistic changes. It's just like marginally different properties.

• 46:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 46:15David Hoffman?

  Go to, go to the next one. Here's, here's the meme that sums this up a bunch. Here's one of the captchas. It's like, select all the images that are elemental. And it's just like, you just don't know.

• 46:26David Hoffman?

  Oh no.

• 46:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, is there some like, I guess there's a social contract that if you're releasing another 20,000, which is what they're releasing, right? PFPs, that there would be an entirely kind of different collection?

• 46:38David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 46:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Rather than a clone of all of the attributes and everything else that you've previously done?

• 46:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 46:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that what everyone expected?

• 46:44David Hoffman?

  It's not a perfect clone. Like, there are differences, but you can't, without deeply knowing, if you're, unless you're an Azuki expert, they just look the fucking same.

• 46:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 46:56David Hoffman?

  And so as a result of this, the Azuki elementals minted at two are now trading below the two ETH mint. The actual Azuki genesis went from 15 ETH or 14th floor down to like 12. And so like market cap was lost.

• 47:11David Hoffman?

  The community is not happy.

• 47:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're not happy. Okay. This is Jeff Morris. I don't know who Jeff is, but he says, "If any e-commerce site sold 38 million of merchandise in a pre-sale, this would be headline news. Let's not forget that these digital products with, these are digital products with incredible margins for creators, but NFTs are dead is the popular narrative." I guess that's the bull case, right?

• 47:31David Hoffman?

  That is the bull case, but it's just like,

• 47:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  38 million in NFTs?

• 47:34David Hoffman?

  Is this what we, as an industry, are gonna beat our chests about? It's like, we made 38 million dollars of selling clones of stuff.

• 47:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can't adults buy what they want, David?

• 47:43David Hoffman?

  Yes, they can. Well, well, yes, they can, but they didn't know what they were, they were like taking it on faith that the Azuki team were going to do something that wasn't dilutive of the genesis.

• 47:57David Hoffman?

  I don't know. Anyways, we are, we are not NFT experts. If you want to listen to, I'm sure Carly Riley has a much more informed take, so listen to overpriced JPEGs.

• 48:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Uh, but we are Bitcoin experts. You can just say that. All right?

• 48:10David Hoffman?

  Are we?

• 48:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, I know that this week, MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 12,333 Bitcoin for a grand total of 347 million dollars at an average price of 28K per Bitcoin. Is Sailor trying to own all the Bitcoins?

• 48:30David Hoffman?

  Where does he get this money from? Is MicroStrategy that profitable?

• 48:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, it's just kind of like, um, It's a, it's a, it used to be a business intelligence technology, like software as a service. He used to be one of the leaders, but it's not quite like market leader these days. I don't know. It's, it's now become a Bitcoin hedge fund, I guess, or just a Bitcoin hold fund, I should say.

• 48:55David Hoffman?

  Okay, we don't have this in the agenda, so this is bitcoin treasuries.net. I'm reading, just reading out some stats. Uh, Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy is in the green. What? They are up 1.03X. They are up 3% on their Bitcoin purchases. Their cost basis is 4.5 billion. Their current value is 4.66 billion.

• 49:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know what's funny is for everyone making fun of him? I've never been one of, like, I think it's fu, I think it's funny that he's just using a publicly traded company to dollar cost average in and buy this thing. I just think that's funny that he buys so consistently, but I've always thought that this would pay off for him.

• 49:34David Hoffman?

  It's gonna work.

• 49:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can I show you why, David?

• 49:36David Hoffman?

  It's gonna work.

• 49:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm gonna show you why.

• 49:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 49:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is why.

• 49:40David Hoffman?

  This is, that's why.

• 49:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Going back to the markets.

• 49:42David Hoffman?

  Two greens and a red, three greens and a red.

• 49:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Saylor has been looking at this table and he's like, okay, if, if I don't time things and I just dollar cost average in, where's it gonna leave me? And I think the answer is he's gonna make money on it.

• 49:56David Hoffman?

  I, I know you just said he, if I don't time things, but man, did he time that poorly. He, he started in the last green before the red, which is not where you want to start buying.

• 50:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, but that's why, you know, you have to buy more. That's the only solution to getting out of, if you have a high, uh, cost basis, you just keep buying until you lower that. Um, anyway, that's, uh, that, that's that for Bitcoin. What do we got here, David?

• 50:22David Hoffman?

  This is the MSTR price. Okay, so this is just to round out this conversation.

• 50:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  MicroStrategy stock price.

• 50:26David Hoffman?

  Yes. Uh, so before all of the Bitcoin exposure, before Michael Saylor engaged in Bitcoin shenanigans with MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy, the asset, the equity was trading at $130. Today it is at, from our all, $330.

• 50:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, okay.

• 50:42David Hoffman?

  So it's like almost 3X. And like, not only that, but it hit over a thousand dollars during the bull market. So like even shareholders, shareholders who are like, MicroSailor, what the hell are you doing to this company? They can't be complaining. MicroStrategy, their equity has almost tripled. No wonder he's getting all this money to buy Bitcoin.

• 50:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It can't be, it can't be the same shareholders. It's a totally different investment profile. You're like, I'm buying a business intelligence software company versus like,

• 51:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, now, yeah.

• 51:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm buying Bitcoin, basically, under a publicly traded symbol.

• 51:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 51:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anyway, uh, kind of fun. David, we said earlier, there's pressure for Gensler to approve an ETF. I think this is some of the reason why. Christian Carlo was the former chair of the CFTC. He says this, greetings from Tokyo, where the headline in Japan Times says exactly what I'm hearing. Here's the headline, crypto tumult in US may be boon for Japan. US's loss is Japan's gain. Japan is moving pretty aggressively in a positive way towards regulating crypto. David, we saw, um, I believe, uh, Brian Armstrong threw this out. Um, last time we talked to Brian Armstrong, actually, he was in Japan, right? So things are happening in Japan. It's not just Japan.

• 51:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, HSBC Hong Kong now lets customers trade Bitcoin and Ether ETFs? What? It's possible to get ETF approved?

• 52:02David Hoffman?

  Nice.

• 52:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  In Hong Kong? We can't have that product in the US. It's too dangerous for retail. Uh, the UK, this just came out before we hit record. Crypto, stablecoin rules receive royal assent, passing into law. Okay. The, the Financial Services and Markets Act of the 2023, this is in the UK, classifies crypto as a regulated financial activity. And, uh, King Charles just gave his approval on that. I guess that's what happens in the UK.

• 52:28David Hoffman?

  Oh, thank God.

• 52:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  You get the final, final blessing from the king. And so the king said, yes. And, uh, what's the US doing in the backdrop of this? Right? These other countries, these other, like other nations, other geographies are competing against the United States for crypto. And so they're rolling out sensible regulatory frameworks. And they're trying to win that business over. What's your take here?

• 52:53David Hoffman?

  Uh, the US is just fumbling. What is the US doing? We're fumbling. I mean, hey, like, US has been in the lead for a long time. Well, I guess it's

• 53:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's innovator's dilemma. This is always what happens, isn't it?

• 53:04David Hoffman?

  Well, I think it's just, you know, it's really nice of us to really just cede first place to the rest of the world.

• 53:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so stupid.

• 53:12David Hoffman?

  So generous of us to help.

• 53:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, I think this is another example of like, I just feel like our, the people who are governing the United States right now are just not making long-term decisions.

• 53:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, this is not, this is not good for the US, um, but good for these other jurisdictions. Meanwhile, Binance is doing some things to push back against the SEC. What is this, David?

• 53:35David Hoffman?

  Binance claps back. So this is a Metta law man who goes and says, Binance has gone on the offensive against the SEC in the federal court case, accusing the SEC of violating court rules by making statements outside of the court that are false, designed to harm Binance US customers and to taint the jury pool. So

• 53:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Taint the jury pool?

• 53:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So after entry of an order agreed to by the parties, Binance argues that the SEC issued a misleading press release claiming that Binance had secured emergency relief, that CZ had, CZ had commingled and diverted customer assets, and three, that the order was essential to protecting investor assets. Uh, and when questioned by the judge repeatedly, SEC attorneys were unable to point to any evidence that CZ had diverted or commingled customer assets. So the Binance is accusing the SEC of saying public statements that are untrue and are tainting the image and branding of Binance that would go against them in court, especially in front of a jury.

• 54:34David Hoffman?

  Uh, and so far, apparently, allegedly, according to Metta Lawman and others, that Binance's side of this are, is looking pretty good.

• 54:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a pretty strong case.

• 54:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, uh huh.

• 54:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, well, that, that, that contributes to some of the pressure I think Gensler is feeling right now and maybe part of the reason he's gonna prove that.

• 54:54David Hoffman?

  Well, think about this, just like the branding of accusations of unethical conduct coming from these lawyers that will like the idea is that that will reverberate in the halls of the SEC and the image of the SEC is like SEC gets in trouble in the United States court for unethical conduct. And then all the crypto people are like, "Hey, Gary Gensler is being unethical and bad and mean to us." All of a sudden, it totally legitimizes the entire crypto industry's takes about Gary Gensler.

• 55:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this is pretty big. Like a regulator cannot lose its credible neutrality, or it loses its legitimacy, right? And so I listened to that. I got caught up on the podcast that you recorded while I was out with, who was it, David?

• 55:35David Hoffman?

  Austin.

• 55:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Austin. Yeah, he's fantastic. And he basically said, "Hey, regulators are kind of serious people. They know they have a reputation, at least most of them, and they can't be seen to pick winners and losers. So if the SEC approves BlackRock's ETF submission because, you know, Gensler goes fishing with Larry Fink or something like that, right? And that comes out and they say no to Van Akk and they say no to the others for just reasons that don't make sense. That is incredibly serious, according to Austin and your episode with him. And it's not a light matter. And this is kind of what Binance is alleging,

• 56:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  that, well, I guess Gary is picking losers and it's the entire crypto industry and targeting Binance is the allegation here. So we'll see what the judge says. We'll see what the jury says in this case.

• 56:27David Hoffman?

  Up next, creditors are seeking BlockFi liquidation and accusing the CEO Zach Prince of fraud and extortion. Damn, those are some big words. Okay, so creditors of BlockFi have filed to liquidate the company's estate, accusing Zach Prince of fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, or gross mismanagement, and delaying bankruptcy proceedings. So the creditors said that it was, it's time to end the extortion tactics and adding that it is time for debtors, unsecured creditors to finally know what BlockFi truly was, who Zach Prince truly is, how much he personally profited from the company, and what he and certain of his colleagues were doing when no one was watching. Oof. And then the context here is that with no revenue coming into the company and with the company having compounding losses, creditors

• 57:12David Hoffman?

  argue that the case should proceed as a liquidation criticizing BlockFi's administrative costs, including the salaries, for over 100 individuals who, quote, "have nothing to do." Have nothing better to do but to work on their golf game. Oof, arguing that the debtors are intentionally burning an average of more than $16 million per month merely to augment defensive positions for historical management. Basically saying, okay, the creditors who are owed BlockFi's money. Saying, hey, BlockFi is burning all this capital to just argue for their retroactive decisions and it's not doing anything for the benefit of people who are owed money. So let's liquidate the damn thing is the TLDR.

• 57:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is, that is dirty.

• 57:55David Hoffman?

  That's rough.

• 57:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  I remember two years, two years ago at this time, BlockFi was one of the, one of crypto's, you know, darlings. Wow, I'm glad they're seeing their day in court.

• 58:05David Hoffman?

  I just, I'm gonna kick someone while, while it's down, so I'm sorry about that. But this is laser eyed Bitcoiners version of DeFi that they just like beat to their drum, like, we don't need DeFi, we have BlockFi. And then like literally the worst example of what a centralized authority can do is what it was.

• 58:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, would have been safer to keep it in smart contracts, I would say. David, we got some big things we're releasing on Bankless this week. What are we looking at here?

• 58:29David Hoffman?

  We now have a team at Bankless whose job it is to go out and find as many cool perks for Bankless citizens as possible. So we have this leaderboard, this tally board of how much value can we can provide to Bankless citizens. We are now up to $1,297 of value for a Bankless citizen membership. So you get a 25% discount to Nason for a month, one month of free usage of QuickNode, 12 months of free access to ZenGo NPC wallet, 15% discount for crypto tax calculator, 30% off of permissionless tickets and more and more and more. And there's only going to be more. This is our job. We're going to make that number, which is again, currently hold us to this, $1,297.

• 59:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  The value.

• 59:06David Hoffman?

  Number go up.

• 59:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Number go up.

• 59:08David Hoffman?

  I want $10,000, baby, one day, one day. So this is all the value that you get as a Bankless citizen. And then our people in the Discord saying, hey, we want this. And then we go send our, our hunters out to go get some of that.

• 59:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, almost $1,300 and it's 1750 a month, right? That's, that's, that's what we call ROI right there. That's what the perks page is set up to do. David, there, there's more going on in the bankless community.

• 59:32David Hoffman?

  We got more perks.

• 59:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is this?

• 59:33David Hoffman?

  Bonjour, bonjour, I do not know French. But I know bonjour. So Tuesday, July 18th, if you are a bankless citizen, we are having our ETH CC meetup. This is meetup number two. Number one was at ETH Denver. It was a raging success. We had free beers because it was Denver and we love beer in Denver. In France, we love cocktails, so it is at a cozy little cocktail bar. So citizens only for a nice event with all of the bankless HQ member, team members who are going to be there Tuesday, July 18th. So if you are a bankless citizen, let us know and we will get you invited.

• 1:00:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so funny story about this picture we're looking at. My wife actually texted me last night while I was on, on the train from, from New York, come back home. And she's like, what is this picture of you? You look, you look like Hitler. I was like, what? This is not.

• 1:00:19David Hoffman?

  Not what Hitler looks like.

• 1:00:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what I told her.

• 1:00:22David Hoffman?

  Hitler doesn't have glasses.

• 1:00:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, doesn't have, and this, the mustache is, is not at all.

• 1:00:27David Hoffman?

  Right, that's not a Hitler stash at all.

• 1:00:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, deeply offended, but you know.

• 1:00:31David Hoffman?

  It is, this is a massive rug though, because you will not be there.

• 1:00:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, David, what's coming up next?

• 1:00:38David Hoffman?

  Coming up next, we got some questions from the nation, followed up by the takes of the week, followed up with David and Ryan Arbola, Sean, and of course, the meme of the week. This one, the meme of the week has me and Ryan in it. So we're going to talk about all of this and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Arbitrum One is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web three landscape. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum One, producing flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. With the recent addition of Arbitrum Nova, gaming and social dApps like Reddit are also now calling Arbitrum home. Both Arbitrum One and Nova leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive. Familiar and fully EVM compatible.

• 1:01:21David Hoffman?

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• 1:02:05David Hoffman?

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• 1:02:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Question this week from Nick, aka Sheeproy Jenkins. What happens to ETH and ETH L2 price if we head towards a future where anyone can make a blockchain quickly and cheaply for themselves or their companies? Interesting question. So we have all of this excess block space. We were just talking about that earlier in the episode. What happens to ETH price? What happens to L2 price when we have all of this additional block space? It becomes incredibly cheap. What do you think, David?

• 1:03:16David Hoffman?

  Do you think in the phrasing of this question, that it's actually the implication is that what how? Why are these things Ether and Ether Layer 2 tokens? Why are these things valuable at all when anyone can make a blockchain quickly and cheaply? Is that the tone of the question? Is in like, what happens when these things are such a commodity? That it's just free and cheap and easy to build a blockchain? That's kind of the nature of the question.

• 1:03:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think, I think that yes. And I think that the wider context of this type of a question is, hey, we're going through a massive paradigm shift of the, the transaction volume and the traffic is going to be on Layer 2s moving forward. We're going to have a lot of Layer 2s and it's going to be abundant. So what, what happens to the price of ETH or even the price of Layer 2 tokens? When no one is actually transacting on Ether, like are they transacting other places? So I do think that's part of the context, yeah.

• 1:04:12David Hoffman?

  Okay, so I understand the intuition of just like, hey, we're going to get 10,000 chains. Gas is going to be free. There's going to be so much block space that we're not going to be able to fill it all. What happens to Ether and Layer 2 prices when fees basically drop to zero? Layer 1 fees won't drop to zero. There will always be a basal level of demand to transact on the Ethereum Layer 1. In fact, I kind of think that like Layer 1 fees are not going, not going down. Like the lowest that we see them is like 20 Guay on average, like 20 to 50 Guay. I think is like the lowest it's going to be. Like induced demand will manifest on the Layer 2s. But man, like at some point in time, like we can talk about the economics of chains all we want. And how about, does that capture value? How much value does that capture?

• 1:04:55David Hoffman?

  If it captures too much value, won't we just spin up new chains? At some point, it's just memetic. If there's 10,000 OP stack chains or 10,000 ZK stack chains, those tokens are going to be valuable. Like just by nature of just the standard being adopted. Like the, we can, we always try and like, here's a formula for understanding like ether. Like, sure, but it's just, it's just so mimetic and temporal and people don't understand these things. They just buy. Uh, and so the, my intuition is just like more chains means number go up. More chains means more economic activity on ether. People are going to associate economic activity on ether with ether price, on Ethereum with ether price.

• 1:05:37David Hoffman?

  And so I think when the idea of what, what happens when anyone can make a blockchain chick quickly and cheaply for themselves and their companies? If, if it's easy, if it's a commodity to build and add your chain to the 10,000 chains that are going on Ethereum in the next five years, the shelling point becomes ether or the layer two tech stack standard that that is built upon. And so just think about the shelling point and think about the adoption of the technology. If the shelling point grows and it's like this one particular standard is the new way we deploy chains, whatever token that is associated that with that is going to go up, not become, not become commoditized. That's my answer.

• 1:06:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think that's a good answer, David. I, you know, I guess I would add a few things. The mental model of what you're investing in, I think, is you're investing in an emerging, growing economy, sort of what you're investing in. I think that ether in a world where there are many layer two chains, ether cements itself even further as a money, a store of value, a unit of account, a medium of exchange for all of the layer twos. So ether, it appears to me is like, is in pretty good shape. One other thing I would add to this is, um, the question was what happens to ether and ether price when we head towards a future and anyone can make a blockchain quickly? Actually, I would say we're already, we've been in that future for a long time.

• 1:06:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anybody can make a blockchain quickly. It's just a side chain. You know what I mean? Like it's, um, it's very easy to spin up a Cosmos chain right now. Like it couldn't be more simple. Um, that doesn't mean the, the side chain is more valuable. So we're entering a world where now anybody can make a blockchain that is secured by Ethereum. That is going to be net additive and net good to the Ethereum ecosystem and to Ether, the asset, even more than, obviously, much more than sidechains ever were. So you've got that working in your favor. I also think that we're probably going to move to a world where a lot of these assets, ETH included, but particularly Layer 2 assets, are valued

• 1:07:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  based on the price people are willing to pay for transaction ordering, right, and MEV. And so that will probably be kind of the non-monetary value basal unit of utility in addition to the, you know, kind of the gas demand and the demand to get your transaction into the block. Remember, MEV is going to be a huge driver of value here. So, all in all, feels pretty good. I guess the last thing I'd say is, I think you're right, David, when you say, "The more users you get, the more attention that comes to your ecosystem and on your asset." So if I'm using the Polygon ecosystem, I'm going to be warming up to Matic, right? And so the next time I see Matic, "Oh, it's Polychain, Polygon,

• 1:08:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  I use Polygon," right? I'm probably be more likely to hit that "Buy" button on Matic. And so that also has, not necessarily a fundamental, kind of, like, doesn't affect the asset price, you know, the asset fundamentals, but it does increase the asset value. More users is good, and it's hard to deny that. So I guess the answer is, number goes up still.

• 1:08:49David Hoffman?

  Number goes up.

• 1:08:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  So there you go, Nick. David, we got some takes of the week. First one from Tyler. What's this look like?

• 1:08:56David Hoffman?

  Oh, man, this one resonated with me. Tyler Reynolds says, "Truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged." Boy, do I wish I had read this tweet in my 20s.

• 1:09:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why?

• 1:09:08David Hoffman?

  Truth does not mind being questioned. Remember when we had the Terra Luna? Is Terra Luna a ticking time bomb thumbnail and episode title? And then every single Terra lunatic came in and was like, "You guys are just a bunch of dumb means from Axie's reeeeee!" in the YouTube comments?

• 1:09:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do remember this, yes.

• 1:09:24David Hoffman?

  It's like, man, I wish I had this as like a mental model to like lean back on. It's like, "Hey, if I'm just like, perhaps voicing a critique and I'm getting a torrent of toxicity my way, it's because truth..."

• 1:09:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a very bad sign.

• 1:09:38David Hoffman?

  It's a very bad sign. It's coming from a place of insecurity. And so I think this is something that's just like, "Hey, if you are giving out legitimate takes and you're getting toxicity in return, hmm, maybe you should look at why those reasons are toxic in the first place."

• 1:09:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I've got a take for you.

• 1:09:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you do.

• 1:09:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think I'm ready to capitulate.

• 1:09:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you are.

• 1:09:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So ETH price about this time last year was just like dipping into three-digit territory. I think it dipped like twice, right? One for like a period of days or something, and then there was another brief leg down around this time. Ever since then, I have been thinking we would get back to triple-digit ETH. And there was a period of time where it was like, you know, trading in 1100s, 1200s. And I was like, "Okay, well, you know what's gonna kick in? The apathy market's gonna kick in, right? And people are gonna be like, "Ah, why? Like, I'm getting restless. I'm gonna sell my Ether and we'll see a dip down to triple-digit ETH."

• 1:10:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  And then you know what we saw? So we saw FTX absolutely explode. And ETH did not dip down

• 1:10:46David Hoffman?

  Didn't even break a thousand.

• 1:10:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  to bring that event into triple-digit ETH territory. And I remember telling you, David, it's like, you're like, "Uh, you know, like you buying big here?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm still waiting for triple-digit ETH, all right?" I'm ready to capitulate on that. I don't think we'll see triple-digit ETH again. I don't think it'll happen.

• 1:11:08David Hoffman?

  Fair markets over.

• 1:11:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Maybe I'm just tempting the crypto gods because if it does hit triple-digit, I'm backing that truck up. But FDX couldn't do it. The bank crisis that we saw in the first quarter of this year couldn't do it.

• 1:11:23David Hoffman?

  Not only could it not do it, I mean, it was bullish.

• 1:11:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Apathy market can't do it. So at this point, I feel ready to capitulate and you might have won that one, David. Is that, is that you? This is David Hoffman replying to my tweet. Man, that's a lot of words just to say David was right.

• 1:11:41David Hoffman?

  I'm so mean to you.

• 1:11:46David Hoffman?

  It's great.

• 1:11:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Now you're nice to me this week. My flight was canceled and I had a place to co-work.

• 1:11:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's true. That was fun.

• 1:11:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do we got here?

• 1:11:54David Hoffman?

  Uh, okay. Uh, so this-

• 1:11:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, that, speaking of which-

• 1:11:57David Hoffman?

  Speaking of which, yeah.

• 1:11:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's you and I.

• 1:11:58David Hoffman?

  So I took this, we took this screenshot because we were about to record a podcast with Raul Paul. And so I was like, this is hilarious. Let me take a screen capture of this and I'll post it. And like, even people in our company was like, that's a doctored photograph. Ryan's, Ryan's faking that photo. He's not actually in David's apartment. And then this is Michael Wong's meme, who's, this is just a deep nostalgic millennial meme of Jimmy Neutron and Timmy Turner from Nickello Cartoon Network. Oh, I'm failing as a millennial. Anyways, it's the crossover episode where, where Timmy Turner and Jimmy Neutron are illustrated like each other. God, I'm butchering this. Anyways, I thought it was funny.

• 1:12:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it was great to appear in the flash. We got three episodes-

• 1:12:46David Hoffman?

  Never, never would I have thought possible.

• 1:12:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, in person, in person. So we did that.

• 1:12:51David Hoffman?

  You, uh, one thing I learned is actually you don't drink as much coffee as I thought that you did.

• 1:12:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, did I disappoint you?

• 1:12:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do when I like, so I make like at least a pot at home. I make a second pot in the afternoon. I'm guzzling all morning. But I didn't want it like, cause I had coffee in the mornings. I was bringing to your place. I could get that. I didn't want like to make you do coffee all day. You make it by the cup, don't you?

• 1:13:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I have a little espresso machine.

• 1:13:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be like,

• 1:13:16David Hoffman?

  People who have espresso machines.

• 1:13:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fetch my coffee all day.

• 1:13:19David Hoffman?

  People who have espresso machines love making espresso. I'll tell you this. There's a little process.

• 1:13:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Would you like to make me more coffee?

• 1:13:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like, yeah, it's like, cause like you want like, oh, this one's kind of acidic. It's like, oh, I need, I need that feedback so I can improve my coffee, coffee making style.

• 1:13:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm not gonna come over to your place and pay out your coffee.

• 1:13:36David Hoffman?

  To be made coffee by David Hoffman, let me tell you.

• 1:13:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's true. I enjoy that privilege. It's fantastic coffee. I'm back to my old like, you know, just drip pot coffee.

• 1:13:44David Hoffman?

  And pour, pour over in a paper filter inside of a Chemex?

• 1:13:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, dude, I don't even do that. I'm just like, turn, push the button.

• 1:13:51David Hoffman?

  Drip coffee?

• 1:13:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I grind my beans, at least I do that, but then I just push the button. Yeah. It's drip. That's how primitive I am.

• 1:13:59David Hoffman?

  So it's pretty primitive, bro. Yeah. So when I'm going to the mountains, this is my last weekly roll up for two weeks, by the way. So you and Anthony are coming up.

• 1:14:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, is this, is this, okay, is this what you're bullish on, by the way? When we get to that? Or like, cause you're climbing three mountains.

• 1:14:13David Hoffman?

  Three, three mountains, two mountains over the next 10 days. But the point why this is connects to coffee is I'm bringing freshly ground coffee in my Aeropress. You know, if, bank location, if you don't know what an Aeropress is, A L R O press, yeah. And so like, I'm gonna have my lovely coffee out at like 12,000 feet up. Yeah.

• 1:14:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's makes great coffee. Like, in fact, I think it's some of the best coffee I've had. Yours notwithstanding, my friend. Actually, can I just pull up this tweet? Cause I saw this, this came up in my feed yesterday. Seven days until Baker's, 12 days until Rayner. Is, did I say that right?

• 1:14:46David Hoffman?

  No, you did not. Rayner, yeah.

• 1:14:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Rayneer. 32 days until Matterhorn. These are the mountains you're climbing?

• 1:14:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's this one?

• 1:14:55David Hoffman?

  That one's Rayneer. That, okay, that one's special because I grew up in Seattle. And so I would, you can see that one from Seattle. And so I would look at that mountain like almost every single day of my life. And now I get to go climb it.

• 1:15:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you're doing that, you're starting that next week, right?

• 1:15:08David Hoffman?

  Yes. Tomorrow I leave for Seattle, gonna go hang out with my nephew and family for five days. Hang out with them for the fourth. And then Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. There's a gear check. Make sure I brought all the right gear so I don't die. And then we go to Baker.

• 1:15:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, David.

• 1:15:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, on behalf of myself.

• 1:15:25David Hoffman?

  I'm actually, like, I go to bed lately and I'm like, I'm kind of stressed.

• 1:15:32David Hoffman?

  I'm sitting in bed, I'm like, oh, man, that's a lot of climbing.

• 1:15:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  The first one looks daunting to me, and then they just get harder.

• 1:15:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, bro, it's so cool.

• 1:15:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at that. What is that?

• 1:15:40David Hoffman?

  That's the Matterhorn. That's not a very good picture of the Matterhorn, but yes. Okay, so Baker and Rainier is nice, because if you like, if you fall, you just get back up. Like, you just fall in snow. On the Matterhorn, you can, no, you can't fall.

• 1:15:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, on behalf of the entire Bankless Nation, just come back, okay?

• 1:15:58David Hoffman?

  I'll come back. Like, just, yeah. I pay money to make, to guides, to make sure I come back. It's somebody's job to make sure I come back, and it's not me.

• 1:16:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, that is somewhat comforting. You're doing some training going into this, too, right?

• 1:16:11David Hoffman?

  Oh, dude, I spent six and a half hours on the treadmill, stair stepper, last weekend. That was my weekend.

• 1:16:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, all right, well, be safe, be safe. What are you bullish on?

• 1:16:22David Hoffman?

  I'm bullish on frontier technologies. And so, throwing it back to Zuzalu content. If you don't watch any, if you only watch one bit of Zuzalu content, make it the intro, and perhaps also the full interview of Vitalik.

• 1:16:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  With this guy?

• 1:16:37David Hoffman?

  So like, yeah, I spend, but I write like, there's like a video essay of me giving you the account of Zuzalu, the significance of it, what it is, and what my biggest takeaways. So if you want to just like, get the quickest TLDR, watch the Vitalik interview, or just the 10 minutes of like, my video essay at the very beginning. And that will give you everything that you need to know. I was listening to it, because I hadn't listened to it in a while, and I was like, okay, yes, this came out the way that I wanted it to. And so, I'm just bullish on frontier technologies. What are frontier technologies? Like, AI, longevity, decentralized science, synthetic biology, you know, public goods, ZK cryptography. And the line that I give is like, Ethereum? Is the eldest, most mature sibling of a bunch of frontier technologies.

• 1:17:21David Hoffman?

  It grew up sooner than the rest of them. AI is now coming of age. These other frontier technologies are still trying to figure out how to stand up. So Ethereum is like the eldest sibling that's like alone in this room, fighting with its parents, like the regulators, the nation states. And it doesn't have any like other frontier technologies to support it because it's alone. But all of those frontier technologies like AI, longevity, synthetic biology, network states, they're not, they're also going to need support from their siblings because the incumbents aren't going to accept them and legitimize them.

• 1:17:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I was reflecting on this too. It's like some of the challenges that we've seen in crypto. I mean, you look at AI right now.

• 1:18:00David Hoffman?

  Same thing.

• 1:18:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Regulators. What are you, what are regulators going to do? What is the right regulatory posture? And then there's also some critiques of, you know, the, the AI companies right now, the big ones engaging in regulatory capture, right? It's a problem crypto has as well. How do we make sure the big centralized service providers or banks don't completely own this thing? Regulatory capture. It's like a similar set of concerns. And yeah, crypto has been on the forefront of that. So AI is, I guess, is going to face them as well.

• 1:18:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So that's what I'm bullish on frontier technologies. Ryan, what do you bullish on?

• 1:18:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Rollups, man. There's been like a roll up explosion. I feel like in terms of infrastructure, we get in cheap block space here. So we had the announcement of ZK syncs, ZK stack, of course. And it just seems like every roll up has a, has a strategy here. So ZK stack, OP stack, Polygon, Arbitrum. I'm just looking forward to a world when we have cheap bandwidth, transaction bandwidth, and anybody can spin up their own chain. This is kind of like the days of the internet where anybody could spin up their own blog or anybody could spin up their own server and host their own website. I think it's going to unleash a massive wave of, of innovation that, again, we still need the apps.

• 1:19:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  We can't, we can't see those yet, but now we have cheap block space. And I think we're going to live in a world of, of many, many chains, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of, of chains. I'm just excited about all of the work that's getting done in, in the build market, as we've called it.

• 1:19:34David Hoffman?

  You know what I'm excited about?

• 1:19:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 1:19:36David Hoffman?

  All of the layer two thesis that we didn't exactly become in as a podcast, as like a media platform, wasn't accepted in 2021 because it was all about the alt layer ones. What is showing strength in the bear market? Layer twos. Layer twos. And that to me is signal. If you can show strength in a bear market, what do you think you can do in a bull market? And so that's what that's what gets me excited.

• 1:20:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so hard to get traction in the bear market is what you're saying. I think the communities that survive will thrive.

• 1:20:08David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 1:20:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  In the next

• 1:20:09David Hoffman?

  That's exactly right.

• 1:20:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bull cycle, which is happening when? Starting now?

• 1:20:13David Hoffman?

  Uh, we are in Schrödinger's market now.

• 1:20:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 1:20:17David Hoffman?

  Next year is the bull market. It's scheduled.

• 1:20:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Good book.

• 1:20:20David Hoffman?

  I scheduled it.

• 1:20:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Full circle.

• 1:20:21David Hoffman?

  It's on my calendar.

• 1:20:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's on your calendar. No mountain climbing next year, David?

• 1:20:25David Hoffman?

  Oh, no, I don't want to hear that.

• 1:20:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Mountain climb during the bear market.

• 1:20:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right. All right. Ready for meme of the week?

• 1:20:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, meme of the week. What are we looking at?

• 1:20:35David Hoffman?

  Here we go. This isn't exactly a meme, but this is funny. I thought it was funny. So, okay, so Ryan was co-working at my place in Brooklyn. And so he was over there just like in my kitchen counter island thing. And instead of like turning around and speaking to me, he would just send me messages in Discord. He like, hey, what do you think about this?

• 1:20:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It look, it has the context, you know, you had your headphones in. I didn't want to disrupt you. That's how we always speak. I'm not used to actually talking to you personally.

• 1:21:04David Hoffman?

  The one time you can just turn around and like speak words, you're like, no Discord, bro.

• 1:21:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thanks for the coffee, though. It was fun. Guys, we'll end with this, of course. Got to let you know, none of this has been financial advice. It never is on bankless. It's not even frontier technology advice, though David got to give us a lot of content from Zuzala this week. Crypto is risky. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.