ROLLUP: Kamala Crypto Pivot? | USDC iPhone Tap-to-Pay | WBTC Drama? | Superchain Soon?

This week in crypto, speculation swirled around a potential Kamala Harris pivot to crypto—could it be too late? Polymarket gives her a 10% chance against Trump. Jeremy Allaire hinted at Tap to Pay with USDC on iPhones—coming soon? BitGo’s wrapped Bitcoin drama might open doors for Coinbase. Optimism revealed plans to address fragmentation, while Eric Trump dives into digital real estate. Plus, the list of crypto's political prisoners grows—how can we support them? ------ 🐡 PUFFER | CHECK OUT PUFFER UNIFY https://bankless.cc/PufferUnifi ------ 📣 SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐 OBOL | STAKE ON DVs, SCALE ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/obol 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT https://bankless.cc/toku ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/49 ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 1:26 Argentina https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1823437363898392792 https://x.com/smpalladino/status/1823476661473698063 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1823401536145514959 6:55 Markets https://dune.com/hildobby/btc-etfs https://dune.com/hildobby/eth-etfs https://farside.;0co.uk/?p=1518 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1823265107310219469 https://apnews.com/article/inflation-prices-interest-rates-economy-federal-reserve-f8de2672173407d3a126cc13493fed85 https://x.com/kellyjgreer/status/1823871991490675137 14:25 Memecoin Metrics https://x.com/Adam_Tehc/status/1822411899843047651 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1822649650706563180 https://x.com/econoar/status/1822652061353468169 https://x.com/cobie/status/1822685974822027770 23:12 Can Crypto Get Kamala to Pivot? https://x.com/Polymarket/status/1823801428416270455 https://polymarket.com/elections https://www.theblock.co/post/310344/crypto-executives-meet-white-house-officials-to-discuss-policy-grievances-during-virtual-roundtable https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/crypto-executives-clash-democratic-leaders-heated-zoom-meeting https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1821710798911054029 https://x.com/RoKhanna/status/1823109754706682135 https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/08/15/us-crypto-bill-can-happen-this-year-senates-schumer-tells-crypto-backers-of-harris/ https://x.com/jbrukh/status/1823904565101580776 35:19 Is it too late for Dem to win crypto votes? https://x.com/Crypto4Harris https://www.standwithcrypto.org/politicians/person/tim---walz https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/11669100139586 https://home.treasury.gov/about/general-information/officials/Wally-Adeyemo https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/1823338614618550382 https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1823343463464677558 https://x.com/CampbellJAustin/status/1823362155984388226 46:27 Does crypto votes even matter to Dems? https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1823338739910758898 https://policy.paradigm.xyz/writing/Dem-polling https://x.com/RadarHits/status/1823051375174967378 https://x.com/mikulaja/status/1821563686495862905 https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1821567272432836943 55:37 Ethereum L2 Updates https://x.com/cronos_chain/status/1823966639622324468 https://x.com/nebrazkp/status/1824098013880443013 59:48 Wrapped Bitcoin Drama https://forum.makerdao.com/t/wbtc-changes-and-risk-mitigation-10-august-2024/24844/4 https://x.com/mikebelshe/status/1822318651996877224 https://x.com/justinsuntron/status/1822370692014485937 https://x.com/coinbase/status/1823501582006411614 https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1823515062658830681 1:03:47 Superchain will become one chain! https://x.com/Optimism/status/1823073114366050695 1:06:41 Eric Trump reveals "Trump Project" focuses on digital real estate https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/eric-trump-previews-major-trump-org-move-into-crypto-as-he-charts-the-family-companys-future/ 1:08:22 USDC is integrating with Tap-to-pay on iPhones! https://x.com/jerallaire/status/1823772497969602981 https://x.com/jerallaire/status/1823822639036604914?s=46 1:10:53 MEME of the Week https://imgur.com/2Wgxr1P 1:12:18 Moment of Burden (Anti-Zen): https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1823788207336526153 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1823418719634141594 https://x.com/alex_pertsev/status/1822184616620339397 1:14:30 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠

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

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I think there's two questions that people are really asking right now is, number one, can crypto get Kamala Harris to pivot? Can crypto advocacy be bipartisan? And number two, if she hasn't pivoted yet, is it too late? I mean, we are less than 90 days from the next election. Bankless Nations, the third week of August, it is time for the Bankless Weekly Rollup. David, what do we have?

• 0:26David Hoffman?

  The Kamala pivot to crypto, or lack thereof, could it happen? Or is it too late? It might be a little bit more important these days as Kamala has hit 10% likelihood of winning above Donald Trump, 55% to 45%. So the Kamala pivot becoming more important than ever. Are we getting any closer to it? We're gonna, we're gonna talk about that.

• 0:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, sometime soon, could you be using Tap to Pay, using stablecoins, maybe USDC on your iPhone? Jeremy LaRae says yes, we'll talk about that. There's some drama going on too, in the tokenized Bitcoin space. So BitGo has this wrapped Bitcoin product, it's called Wrapped Bitcoin, Wrapped BTC, and it's going through some growing phases, some transformation here. Actually, David, you gotta update me on this, but maybe it has opened the door for Coinbase? They are looking at rolling out a tokenized Bitcoin product, we'll talk about that.

• 1:14David Hoffman?

  Optimism is super chain is about to be real and not just a meme. Eric, Trump's digital real estate project, and crypto's growing list of political prisoners, splattering of topics that we're gonna get through all of this and more. But first, I wanna talk about where I am, cuz I am back in Argentina.

• 1:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, you are.

• 1:32David Hoffman?

  There is a pop-up city here in Buenos Aires called Elif, part of the crecimiento movement, which is, crecimiento is the Spanish word for growth, focusing on sponsoring, supporting, growing the crypto movement here in Buenos Aires. And so it's like this meeting point of crypto startups, Argentine crypto startups with Argentine crypto founders, regulators, government officials, many part of Millet's administration, perhaps Millet himself, and then a bunch of just like capitalists, venture capitalists, trying to support the crypto movement.

• 2:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who's putting that on? Like, who's organizing it?

• 2:07David Hoffman?

  It's a large part of just like a grassroots, bottom-up effort by the local Argentine community. And then a lot of support from the Protocol Labs team, the Filecoin people. So like Juan Benet is leading this, just a few other like shakers and movers who are just like relentless at making things happen. And it was just like, so there's this coworking spot with a bunch of Argentine startups where like if you were an Argentine startup, you would apply to join ALEF and become part of the community, get like some of the support, the network. It's kind of like an accelerator as well.

• 2:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is you, this is you at the coworking place.

• 2:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm just, I'm just there like being an imposter, like I'm not in the startup. I'm just hanging, hanging out at the coworking spot and just like talking to the Argentine founders and the problems that they're working on and the things that they are focusing on. It's such a breath of fresh air from what I'm like kind of previously surrounded by, which is like, you know, North America, United States, European crypto Twitter, talking about like, you know, the 17th like re-stakes roll up alt VM that is like getting deployed or like the bajillionth meme coin. These like Argentine crypto founders, like it's not like speculative fun and games for them. They have like, Argentina has a very urgent and pressing need to like build real products in crypto. And you know what I've learned while like spending here?

• 3:25David Hoffman?

  There's like three Argentine, there's probably more. There's three Argentine crypto products, projects that I'm going to talk to on a podcast. I'm going to bring them all on a podcast that each have millions of users, like millions of local Argentine users.

• 3:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome.

• 3:39David Hoffman?

  And like, we don't talk about them on like crypto Twitter.

• 3:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're saying crypto users, they're actually using crypto to like do things, like do real world quote unquote things.

• 3:49David Hoffman?

  They are, they are like normal, well-adjusted adults who like go to a nine to five job. And they are also users of like Lemonpay, Bello, Biennbit, like some sort of crypto startup in Argentina. I wouldn't even call it a startup now, it's like a legitimate business. And they're just using crypto to like facilitate their daily lives.

• 4:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  I for one, speaking as on behalf of a Bankless listeners, I am a Bankless listener. I would love an episode on that. I would also love an episode if you can get them with Malay.

• 4:20David Hoffman?

  Javier Malay?

• 4:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, do you think that could happen on Bankless?

• 4:23David Hoffman?

  Okay, I think there is like somewhere around a 10 to 15% chance that I can get Javier Malay here on the episode, on the show.

• 4:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Should we fire up a polymarket then? Make our own odds here?

• 4:38David Hoffman?

  I would actually just rather people spend their effort like trying to help me on this because I'm like kind of kind of close. And it's because Javier's Malay's administration has a lot of crypto presence. And so there is just literally some like logistics things. He's not in Argentina at this moment. He is in like, I think Korea for some reason, but he'll be back. And when he comes to Argentina, like we like there's, there's people who are in his administration who are also here at ALEF, who are like knocking on Malay's doors like, hey, by the way, like there's like crypto things happening and you should pay attention. So we're like not far away from like, there's also just a big regulatory day on the 22nd or 23rd of August that I'm pretty stoked for. That's like, kind of the big day where

• 5:20David Hoffman?

  like, can we get Javier Malay here in like this crypto like startup incubator thing?

• 5:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  My impression, this is a super vanilla, I know nothing impression, but that is, he is, he is expressed crypto openness to crypto sentiment and even positive crypto sentiment, but has not yet had the time or like, for whatever reason, it hasn't been on the top priority list to here's what I'm doing in crypto and here's the policy. Is that about right?

• 5:42David Hoffman?

  That's right. His pro crypto policies are more about like removing restrictive regulation than and instigating like positive crypto regulation. And that's one of the big goals here of ALEF is to get like startups, the assurances, like long 20 year long assurances that their crypto business is going to be like sound and stable and not like rugged away from like future administrations. Yeah. And like, he's a, he's a big libertarian. So like crypto ideals are like a part of him. But you're right. He just hasn't had like the time or energy to be able to like really narrow down on crypto.

• 6:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  A step one, Democrats take note. The first step is to fire all your Gary Genslers. Okay. That comes first. So hopefully.

• 6:19David Hoffman?

  Which he did do that. He did do that.

• 6:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, before we get in, we got a message from our friends over at Puffer. They got something cool going on. What is it?

• 6:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they are introducing Puffer Unify, which is a base rollup that addresses Ethereum's fragmentation issues and benefits user experience with 100-second preconfirmation. So that's 100-second perceived transaction times, along with synchronous composability and unified liquidity with the Ethereum Layer 1. Unify comes from being unified with the Ethereum Layer 1. They want you, as a builder, to fill out a form that is in the show notes, or if you're just a user, you can also go check it out. There is also a link in the show notes for you as well.

• 6:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about the numbers for the week. Bitcoin, where are we at, up or down?

• 6:59David Hoffman?

  We are flat. Bitcoin, start of the week, 59,400, ending the week, 59,600, up like 0.3% on the week. ETH, up 6% on the week.

• 7:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, what?

• 7:09David Hoffman?

  Not sucking eggs this week. Yeah, like, start of the week at $2,590, currently at $2,670. Nice job, ETH. You didn't, you didn't blow it this week. Well done.

• 7:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  We just need another, you know, I guess, 10 weeks of that, and then we'll be back to something that feels more normal.

• 7:27David Hoffman?

  We got one.

• 7:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, shall we check in on our ETF inflows? This is Bitcoin right now. Just, I guess, by way of recap, this is all at Dune Analytics board that we're looking at. There is now 4.7% of all Bitcoin supply contained in these things called Bitcoin ETFs. And that is since January, all of that has happened. So it's been a supply sink for 4.7% of Bitcoin supply. Right now, for Ethereum, if you're keeping track, you're looking at the two horses, two horses in the ETF race. Ethereum ETFs have 2.3% of ETH supply. Yeah, what do you make of that? We got some catch up there, too.

• 8:07David Hoffman?

  Definitely. The ETH outflows is currently in, like, its deepest trough. We are starting to climb out of the hole that the grayscale ETH has put us in. Like, the very expected hole, but like, still, like, kind of big nonetheless. There are, like, a total net outflows of something like $350, $360 million of ETH out of the grayscale ETFs, out of all of the ETFs. There's been plenty of inflows into, like, BlackRock Fidelity Bitwise, but we're still in the hole. But the grayscale ETH flows have stopped. They've been, like, basically flat, or just overwhelmed by inflows to other ETFs for the last, like, three days. We've had three days of positive flows. I would like 30 more, please.

• 8:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we could do another 10 weeks of that, too. Just positive flows, that's all we want. I mean, we're chipping away at that number. You're right, it's 366 net outflows. So we're still in the negative territory on that income statement. But chipping away at it, week by week. I mean, a couple of weeks ago, David, this was closer to 400 million. And now we're at 366. So that's, that's progress, right?

• 9:12David Hoffman?

  I guess that's progress.

• 9:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anthony Sisano calling out, there was, there was actually one day last week that the Ether E, the grayscale, had no outflows. So we were like, maybe that's starting to slow down. It should be healthy.

• 9:24David Hoffman?

  That's something.

• 9:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Global crypto market cap, where are we?

• 9:27David Hoffman?

  Total crypto market cap, 2.2 trillion, right on the dot. Slight incline from last week as we are pulling out of a hole that the yen trade unwind put us in. Lots of holes that we're climbing out of.

• 9:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, digging our way into holes and then trying to climb back out of them, I guess. Let's talk about a hole that Jerome Powell has found himself in. That's this inflation hole. He's been working his way out. He's been trying to dig out. That's what, that's why all the rate hikes were happening over the last couple of years. So we're above 5%. We're at 5.25 to 5.5%. Some good news, if you are a central banker named Jerome Powell, annual inflation

• 10:05David Hoffman?

  If you're listening.

• 10:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  To three-year lows. So that's good news.

• 10:10David Hoffman?

  Wow, three-year lows?

• 10:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Three-year lows. It rose just, we got the numbers in. It rose just 0.2% from June to July. So that means year-over-year prices are 2.9%. And that's down, down from 3%.

• 10:23David Hoffman?

  The year-over-year prices have, starts with a 2. The target is 2. We are at 2.9. We're in the twos.

• 10:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. So all of this may mean Jerome Powell gets to go make a victory lap. And the, the way that affects markets is Jerome Powell can say, hey, I did the thing I said I would do, which is break the back of inflation through these rate hikes. And now we're done that. That phase is over. That movie has concluded. And now I'm going to go be a hero in this other area. And I'm going to go hit the unemployment numbers. Cause Those spiked up a little bit. Remember the the numbers in August that caused some of maybe the early August sell off were due to recession fears and unemployment fears. And so in September, likely this all tees up him putting in another rate cut.

• 11:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Whether it's a 0.5% rate cut or is something lower, we don't know yet. But I think that the market is basically saying that's what it's expecting is Powell to cut rates in September.

• 11:26David Hoffman?

  My question, I think everyone, the right questions to ask are, is the Fed going to try and like front run the timing on this like they did not do during COVID where they hiked rates way too late? And they had to do it really fast because they were so late. Now are they going to try and like be a little bit more, have a little bit more foresight? And lower the rates ahead of any like, you know, overshooting of having too high rates for too long. I think it would like, that's a big question. And also I'm guessing that they're not just going to like, they're not going to send these rates to zero like overnight. Like they are slowly incrementally going to lower these rates over a very long period of time. I think, I think they learned their lesson from the whiplash of like going up 5.5% inside of a year.

• 12:11David Hoffman?

  They're not going to go down 5.5% in a year. I bet you like, we have like positive interest rates. We're not going to zero. Maybe we go to zero, but if we do, it's going to take years to get there.

• 12:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I think Kamala, if you're Kamala Harris, you'd certainly appreciate a Jerome Powell rate cut in September. Maybe a big juicy one going into the November election season. Dave, there's, there's another thing we've been looking at.

• 12:33David Hoffman?

  There's another hole that we've been in. This is a more recent hole.

• 12:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is crypto is not going up as much as stocks, man. You know, the S and P, the NASDAQ hitting all time highs in crypto were just kind of lagging behind. What's, what's the take here?

• 12:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is Kelly Greer from Galaxy who put out a tweet analysis that I thoroughly enjoyed. And she's just calling out the four recent horsemen of just dumpage into the Bitcoin markets. And therefore the rest of crypto, Germany, Mt. Gox, Genesis, and the United States government. Wow, all, all four G's. Wow. Almost 50,000 Bitcoins between June 19th and July 30th. So like almost a straight month of dumpage. The Genesis bankruptcy put $33,000 of Bitcoin into the market. Mt. Gox distributed 110,000 Bitcoins in July into the market. And then the US government has ongoing transfers into Coinbase. We can only assume that that's actually currently hitting the market. 4K was transferred on June 26th.

• 13:33David Hoffman?

  10K Bitcoins were transferred transferred on August 16th. And so like we're just like having some like idiosyncratic, large G-named Bitcoin dumpers. That all happened all at once. And so like while stocks, stocks had the big pullback of the Mt. Gox, of the Japanese carry trade. That's already over, like climbing out of that hole. Like they're almost done because you know, it's stock season. But like crypto has this like idiosyncratic sell pressure that like hopefully people just like also bet on there being a reversion to the mean and we actually are due for a pump.

• 14:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 14:08David Hoffman?

  That's an analysis.

• 14:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a good quality analysis. And I wouldn't dismiss this as as cope because like many, most of these things are all just like one-time events, aren't they? And so you're right, they are idiosyncratic. Like they should, we won't get Germany selling more Bitcoin like later because they're all out. They sold it all. It's all gone.

• 14:25David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 14:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, there's another story in crypto, I think, which is meme coins. They've been a darling of the cycle. In fact, some have pointed to like they are the breakout crypto use case, which kind of makes me sad.

• 14:38David Hoffman?

  Yikes, yikes.

• 14:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  But what's the

• 14:40David Hoffman?

  Let's not call it a use case. Let's call it, let's call it the most breakout crypto like casino, casino, new casino game on the floor.

• 14:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Casino use case. So, so give me some meme coin metrics. How do these, how do these puppies perform?

• 14:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So this is Adam who put out some, some numbers here. And just in the 24 hours that he put out this tweet, Adam Tech on Twitter, 16,357 tokens were launched. In 24 hours is insane. That's crazy. 175 of these graduated, made it to radium, which is a different Solana Dex. When a meme coin on Solana Sufficient liquidity when they hit a market cap. This is all built into Pumped Out Fund. When it hits a market cap of $69,000, then some of that liquidity gets put onto radium, which is like a more generalized Solana Dex. They call it graduating. Of the 175 that make it to radium,

• 15:35David Hoffman?

  19 of those remain above the 69,000 market cap threshold to like stay there. And so from the 16,357 tokens that were launched.

• 15:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  70,000 market cap? I mean, that's that.

• 15:50David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 15:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is penny tokens here. This is really small territory.

• 15:53David Hoffman?

  For sure. Well, that that tells you how many like meme coins are like on the absolute floor. Just like never go anywhere.

• 16:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 16:01David Hoffman?

  That's so if you were curious of the 24 hours in which Adam was taking these metrics, these numbers of the 16,357 tokens that were launched, 0.12% of them remain above the $69,000 market cap. That allows it to be on radium.

• 16:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  He calls it the Pumped Out Fund slaughterhouse is because it's so easy on Pumped Out Fund to launch one of these things. Like you just, what do you need? What are the basics? You have an idea and you just like kind of have a crypto wallet. That's basically all you need. It's that simple. So no wonder people are doing it.

• 16:34David Hoffman?

  And so below, if that's another pretty similar analysis from Rudy, who talks about like these five stages of a meme coin. One is getting launched on Pumped Out Fund. One is the bonds, the liquidity goes over to radium. Another is makes it onto CoinGecko and therefore is like relevant. The next one is maintains a $1 million market cap for multiple weeks. And then the next one is maintains a $10 million market cap for multiple weeks. $10 million is still very low. But if you are like the launcher or like the first through 10th buyer of a meme coin, making it to $10 million means you you might have like up to a million dollars. So to get to even just get on to CoinGecko of the 100 and of the 1.7 million tokens

• 17:19David Hoffman?

  that are on the the metrics that Rudy put together, only 0.0008%, which is 141 of them, make it onto CoinGecko. Only 15. Of them maintain a $10 million market cap. I think if you're in the meme coin trenches, like you actually sell far before you get to like the $1 million market cap. You know, the euthanasia roller coaster?

• 17:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:40David Hoffman?

  Like, it used to be like, okay, like, I only buy meme coins sub $100 million. And then it moved to like, okay, I only buy meme coins sub $10 million. I only buy meme coins sub $1 million. And now when we have how many 16,000 meme coins being minted in 24 hours? People are like, okay, I just bought a meme coin that made it to like the $20,000 market cap level. I'm going back and finding another one.

• 18:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 18:03David Hoffman?

  And so like meme coins can't like penetrate like this, like very low market cap threshold, because there's just so many goddamn many of them.

• 18:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of ticket odds here. So do you have an explanation for all of this?

• 18:17David Hoffman?

  So I put out a tweet asking that same question, like, why? Why is this the meta? If these odds are so terrible, how did this be? How did meme coins become the meta? And the responses were overwhelmingly about like influencers who have large accounts who set the meta and the narrative, pump the coins. And they're actually the ones that just like have the just like structural advantage here. They are the ones making all the wins.

• 18:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right?

• 18:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And then Eric Connor says, like, everyone else who is stuck thinking that they are next are in fact the ones that are just next in the meat grinder. There's like, this was the most common answer to this. I actually thought Kobe's answer to this was also pretty interesting, which is like, okay, he understands metas. He's wrote this great blog post about metas. The answer as to why this is the meta is because any other meta has like 0% odds of like gaining traction. Because we have, his answer is like, there is no other meta. Like, we're not doing DeFi yield farming. We're not doing NFT mints. We're not doing whatever. There are no other metas. So this is the meta that we're stuck with.

• 19:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  So as bad as these odds are, it's still better than all of the other narrative investment odds that are out there?

• 19:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what he's saying?

• 19:28David Hoffman?

  That's what he's saying.

• 19:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so it's the best of the worst? I guess if you're a narrative meta trader, it's the best of the worst.

• 19:33David Hoffman?

  I mean, like, the D gens of crypto are always playing some game. And I think Kobe is saying, this is the only game in town.

• 19:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  I would like to play some new games in crypto, but meme coins aren't going anywhere. I just want other things.

• 19:49David Hoffman?

  Want a different game?

• 19:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got more to talk about. The politics game, that's another type of game. So we've got Kamala, she's now taking the lead. And the question is, is she going to pivot to crypto? Have we, do we have a shred of evidence that she might be considering it?

• 20:06David Hoffman?

  Is there a chance?

• 20:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is there a chance? And also, there's this group called Crypto for Harris that are trying to advocate for that. How's that going? We'll check in on that. All this and more, but before we get there, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our recommended exchange for 2024. That's Kraken. Go create an account.

• 20:24David Hoffman?

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• 21:09David Hoffman?

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• 21:51David Hoffman?

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• 22:33David Hoffman?

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• 23:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I think there's two questions that people are really asking right now is number one, can crypto get Kamala Harris to pivot? Can this can crypto advocacy be bipartisan? And number two, if she hasn't pivoted yet, is it too late? I mean, we are less than 90 days from the next election. So I think we'll try, attempt to answer those questions or at least present some evidence to let listeners decide on what's going on themselves. But before we get there, I think we need to check in on how the election is going. So what are we looking at here?

• 23:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the odds of Kamala, according to Polymarket, the odds of Kamala beating Donald Trump are up to 10%. This screenshot shows 9% and this screenshot's 24 hours old. We're actually at 10% where Kamala's at 55% and Donald Trump's at 45%. This is a very firm lead, I would say. I know this is, these are odds. And so this technically isn't like meaningfully different from a coin flip. But I've always been used to just like, if somebody is predicted to win the election by 55%, like I kind of consider that a very far lead.

• 24:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, we talked to, we had Nate Silver on the podcast, who's kind of the guru around elections. And he has indicated that Kamala does have a lead, but he's still sort of with his margin of error, considers it somewhat of a coin flip. I mean, that's his take. But I think the noticeable thing is, these numbers have reversed on polymarket prediction markets. David, it was not like a month ago, it's just like shortly after the assassination attempt. And Trump was at 65. Now, it was Biden.

• 24:41David Hoffman?

  I think he hit 73. He hit 73 right after the assassination attempt.

• 24:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like, absolutely incredible. And that was probably a temporary spike. I mean, really hard to sustain those types of odds. But I think the big story here is how much this has changed. So it seems like the momentum has really shifted here.

• 24:56David Hoffman?

  And it's, it's, it's the trend as well. Like Kamala has been in a straight line up ever since she took the candidacy. And Donald Trump has been in a straight line down ever since his assassination attempt. So like, while we're at 10%, like, it's a 10% and trending even greater to Kamala. I've been listening to some political podcasts, just because that's the season that we're in. One, Pirate Wires, the much more right-leaning pro Donald Trump.

• 25:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Was that with Mike Solana?

• 25:24David Hoffman?

  Mike Solana, yeah.

• 25:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, yeah. Does he host that?

• 25:26David Hoffman?

  And then also, he hosts that. Yeah, he's on that. And then the other one I listened to is Pod Save America, which is like, very lib. So it's like, a tale, tale of two podcasts. Like, you're getting both perspectives. And like, the Mike Solana one, I hate it when people use this word, applied to me. So I apologize to Mike for using on him. But just like, the words that were in my head was like, this is cope. Like, it's just like, he was running through like, all the reasons as to like, why this like, how this is so crazy that Kamala is the Democratic candidate. And to me, I was like, yeah, like, this is like, high Kamala percentage cope going on. And then I go over to like, the Pod Save America one, which is like, very pro Kamala, anti-Trump. And they are just taking victory laps. Yeah. And so like, sentiment, this is a sentiment like, across the political

• 26:11David Hoffman?

  spectrum right now.

• 26:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And you, you and I are ETH holders, okay? We know what cope feels like and what it sounds like.

• 26:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's a little bit like cope to me. It's funny, on the other hand, it was a few weeks ago and it seemed like the Democrats on kind of like the Democrat side, there was immense amount of cope. They could not handle that, you know, Trump was taking the lead. And so, look, momentum shifts can happen. I'm sure this could happen back and forth a few more times. But it leads to a question that is still unanswered. There's this opportunity that people have seen. Obviously Biden, Biden White House, he let the anti crypto army kind of like run roughshod over his administration, administrative policy. But Kamala's trying to get elected. Is this a chance for her to reset? Is this a chance for the Democrats, the White House, Kamala Harris to pivot on crypto? That was the question.

• 27:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we've got a few data points on that. The first was this, this is in the block. This happened last Thursday, so August 8th. Crypto executives meet White House officials to discuss policy grievances during virtual roundtable. So they got on Zoom. What was this meeting? Who are the participants? Set the landscape for us.

• 27:21David Hoffman?

  Kind of a who's who amongst like this topic. From the White House side, US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Ademo, a very important character, National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed, Directory of Legislative Affairs for Vice President Kamala Harris, Christine Lucius, and then others. And then from the crypto side, some names that y'all are definitely going to recognize, Hayden Adams from Uniswap.

• 27:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, no.

• 27:48David Hoffman?

  David Ripley from Kraken, Jeremy La La from Circle, Chris Dixon from A16Z, Paul Graywall from Coinbase. Wow, these are all people that we've had on the podcast. Brad Carlinghouse and Chris Larson from Ripple, haven't had them. Mark Cuban, and then also Anthony Scaramucci. So like a kind of pretty good lineup of like force movers, both in Capitol Hill and in crypto. How did the meeting go? How did it go? This went well, right? How, why wouldn't, why wouldn't this go well? How'd it go, man?

• 28:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's talk about the bad side.

• 28:20David Hoffman?

  I'm assuming this went totally fine.

• 28:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this is a, this is a article title from Fox News. So it says crypto executives clash with Democrat leaders in heated Zoom meeting, heated Zoom meeting, crypto executives clash. Again, so this is Fox News saying this, but their quote is, "Executives didn't hold back on telling the administration reps how much damage they've done to the crypto industry and to Democratic Party with their actions against digital assets." Apparently, at one point, a White House official said that, "Hey, the banks and regulators, they're not really coming after the crypto industry. Like, this is kind of fake news. It's not what's happening." And in response, an executive, so one of those names probably that you mentioned, a crypto executive, asked for a show of hands.

• 29:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who among the crypto crowd here has ever been denied banking services because of White House policy? And nearly all of the industry representatives, all of the crypto people, raised their hands. Okay? Yikes.

• 29:18David Hoffman?

  That's a big, that's a big row.

• 29:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can you imagine this?

• 29:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so this is Nick Carter, of course, weighing in.

• 29:26David Hoffman?

  For the record, if we had been on that call, our hands would have also been raised.

• 29:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bank of America sent us a dear John letter. We're at a little credit union who just like, you know, I guess we've squeaked by their complaints.

• 29:37David Hoffman?

  I love our Virginia credit union, dude. They're cute.

• 29:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  You've never been there. You don't know Alan, the bank teller.

• 29:43David Hoffman?

  I've never been, I've never been to Virginia.

• 29:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I faced to face with Alan, and I've gone, and he's like, "Bankless? What? Oh, bankless?"

• 29:49David Hoffman?

  Sup?

• 29:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anyway, so that's the bad side of it, which feels kind of bad. The good side of it, I suppose, this is a quote from The Block, saying that this was actually notable. This is a source in The Block. "The big difference compared to a previous meeting was who was attended. You had people like Wally, you had Lyle, who are the most senior-level representatives overseeing crypto policy in the Biden administration in terms of non-regulators." So this is very much seen as moving the ball forward, given those who attended. I'll note Kamala Harris did not attend, but you had some senior-

• 30:23David Hoffman?

  The important person was not there.

• 30:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. Ro Khanna hosted the meeting, who's a notable Democrat, who is in support of crypto, and he's been running quarterback to try to rally the troops amongst the Democrats to support crypto policy. We're actually having him on the podcast. And he said it was a spirited conversation, positive dialogue. There's much frustration in the industry. So at least he acknowledged that. And he says, I'm hopeful that as a consequence of these meetings, the administration will issue a positive statement in the coming weeks. So he's trying within his own party to apply some pressure, maybe some mild pressure. I'm not sure. He's doing great work. I think it's just like, is there any evidence? So what do the crypto people say in the aftermath of this?

• 31:05David Hoffman?

  Scaramucci, who's actually somehow adjacently close to crypto, says, it's encouraging that these high level officials took the time to show up and listen. My colleagues in the crypto space understandably want action now, but that's not how things work in Washington. I think we're making steady progress. Paul Graywall, the chief legal officer for Coinbase, says, any conversation on moving beyond this administration's unproductive record on crypto is positive. It's not too late, but time is running short. The White House should publicly back the Senate's efforts to pass a bipartisan market structure bill as the House has done and sign it into law. And so mixed reactions from that. It's very concerning to me that like the leading advisor to the Harris campaign, Adamino, is like denying the fact that they

• 31:50David Hoffman?

  have been like operating choke point 2.0 on crypto. Like the fact that they don't think that that's real is like very concerning. It's a big bummer that Kamala Harris wasn't there. Like, you know, just show up, please. I know. I know. She's a busy lady, but just like, come on.

• 32:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just a first meeting, David.

• 32:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just a first meeting.

• 32:09David Hoffman?

  The meetings like this in the political sphere, you need like six of them. And like the optimistic case is that each one becomes like bigger and more important. And this is the first one. That's the optimistic case.

• 32:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I would echo Paul, though. Time is running out. So the good news is, I suppose, they did have a second. So there is this Twitter account that sprung up. This is sort of a, you know, an initiative. I'm not sure who's behind it called Crypto for Harris. And they hosted another meeting. And this time, the big guns came out. Senator Chuck Schumer was actually there. So how did that meeting go?

• 32:40David Hoffman?

  Better, better. Chuck Schumer, while at the on the meeting says, we all believe in the future of crypto. Congress has a Responsibility to provide common sense and sound regulation on crypto. And we need your support to make sure that any proposal is bipartisan.

• 32:56David Hoffman?

  And then, and so that was like Chuck Schumer, like beating the drum, like great, glad to have you on the team. Thanks, Chuck, for being there. Jake Bruckman, who was there, this is a crypto VC, definitely one of us, gave probably the most comprehensive like analysis of the meeting that I thought. And gave it like, kind of a thumbs down of a review. So like, in one way, kind of glad it happened. Thank you, Chuck. But overall, here's what kind of Jake said about it. I thought a town hall was for hearing people's opinions. Instead, we got a few lectures of the participants' views of crypto and where it should go politically. I didn't see anyone resembling crypto company founders. Investors and founders are the bread and butter of any industry. In short, it satisfied the Harris prong, but not the crypto prong in the crypto for Harris name, as far as I see it.

• 33:41David Hoffman?

  No one really mentioned the SEC policy, the Bidens veto, or the lack of clarity. It seems like we'll just move forward and happily make this a bipartisan issue, even though Harris-backed policies made it partisan in the first place. So I'm going to say that summarize Jake's take as like a pretty firm thumbs down on the effort behind this particular meeting.

• 34:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and someone that wasn't there, as you mentioned, was Kamala Harris, yet it's like missing action, not there, not even her VP was there. So I think it's safe to conclude at this point, we have not seen a pivot from Kamala Harris. Like, there's no evidence of anything like that happening.

• 34:20David Hoffman?

  If you want some amount of hopium, because I've been listening to these political podcasts, the Harris administration is not giving out any policy indications about anything at all. They are like her, the strategy right now for the Harris administration, the Harris campaign, is to just have Harris be generic Democrat. Yeah. Because, because the generic Democrat is actually working in her favor. And like, they're not giving Donald Trump's like campaign any sort of like surface area to latch on to. So like, she's kind of just like being very defensive and being generic Democrat. So like, no policy is coming out of the Harris camp. And now, maybe that's the reason as to like, why she hasn't decided to make a move on crypto.

• 35:01David Hoffman?

  Maybe that's hopium. That's probably hopium, but like, you know, I think that's a valid line of reasoning.

• 35:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think at this point, like, silence is basically an admission that there's going to be no real change in the White House. At least that's how I'm interpreting it. But some people think it's not too late for the Democrats to win crypto votes, including that account we mentioned, this group that's trying to advocate for Harris called Crypto for Harris on Twitter that's organizing some of this. I think the thing we have to look at to see if there's any evidence of any change on crypto policy in a Kamala Harris White House as opposed to the anti-crypto policy that Biden had is who she surrounds herself with. So let's talk about that. Who is she surrounding herself with? Who is the administrative state

• 35:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  that's kind of like helping her? I think the first place to look is her campaign. So let's talk about her VP, her Vice President. So her nominee for Vice President is Tim Walz. Is he pro crypto? Is the question. Part of the answer is we don't know for sure, but I think most people are saying it's unlikely that he would be a friend of crypto. He hasn't spoken about crypto yet, but during his term of governor, he supported legislation to bolster regulation of cryptocurrency kiosks as the one of the main like a issue, a crypto issue in Minnesota, and he came down on the anti-crypto policy side of it. He wanted to limit daily transactions to 2K. In general, it doesn't seem like it's going to be a core part of his campaign to be like for crypto or anti-crypto necessarily.

• 36:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just kind of like generic, but certainly doesn't look like pro crypto. How about her campaign advisors?

• 36:42David Hoffman?

  Okay, so there's two people in her campaign advisors that are relevant here, and one is good, very good. One is very bad. Starting with a bad one, Brian Nelson, Treasury Department under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence during his previous tenure. This was the tenure that where the Treasury sanctioned tornado cash and other on-chain privacy tools, also brought in enforcement action against Binance. He was part of the Treasury. Organization, whether this was him or not, undetermined, but he was part of that that organization. So that's a bad one. The good one, David Ploof, a former advisor to Barack Obama and former member of the Binance Global Advisory Board.

• 37:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh.

• 37:27David Hoffman?

  Binance, that's our Binance. And so Binance has an article saying that in September of 2022, Ploof joined Binance's Global Advisory Board chaired by former US Senator and Ambassador to China, Max Baucus. And so there is a very firm overlap between advisor to Binance and advisor to the Harris campaign, which like, kind of, that's our, I think that's like the best indicator that we have. It's not like a large one, but like, it's something.

• 37:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's there. There's a little like

• 37:56David Hoffman?

  There's something there.

• 37:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Some light peeking through the clouds.

• 37:58David Hoffman?

  It's something there.

• 37:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe, but now I'm going to quash that light out. You ready for this, David?

• 38:02David Hoffman?

  Okay, sure.

• 38:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  The bigger question is like, also, that's her campaign, but what would her administration look like? What would the Harris administration look like? The one thing that I feel like I've learned in just like politics and crypto over the years that I didn't know before we got the crash course in terms of how to influence things and how things get done in DC is basically the Cabinet selections, the administration selections, who you pick to surround yourself with matters most of all, because that's like the entire executive branch. When we talk about the administrative state, that's kind of what we're talking about. And

• 38:34David Hoffman?

  Right. The president will delegate to their executive leaders. And so it's really a matter of who they delegate to.

• 38:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who they are, right? And it's not just the the president who plays a hand in kind of like filling this position. I mean, like quite infamously, Senator Warren, Elizabeth Warren, had a huge hand in picking many of the crypto touching positions in Biden's cabinet. So the question is, who's going to lead Treasury in a in a Harris tenure? Wally Etayama is one name. She's got two options, but Wally is one of them. This would be kind of bad news for crypto if he takes the helm. Now, he was someone on that that call that we mentioned earlier, but he supported Warren in warning that terrorist groups will increase their use of crypto unless Regulatory tools, remember that? It turned out to be kind of like fake news.

• 39:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're not looking at the way banks use, you know, the banking system to fund terrorist groups, like isolating and targeting crypto. And you know, Warren was leading that. And then also her economic advisors. This is another set of positions in her administration. So there's rumor from Alex Thorne, he put this out, that some of those would be pretty negative. And there's two names here among potential Kamala Harris economic advisors. One is Brian Dees and the other is Bharat Ramamurthy. Okay? And these are two anti crypto officials from the Biden administration. That rumor is they will carry over into the Harris administration. So just to get a sense of one of them, we'll talk about Bharat Ramamurthy.

• 40:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nick Carter says if Bharat Ramamurthy is part of the Harris administration, it's over because this was one of the guys, there he is here, one of the architects of Choke Point 2.0. At least according to Nick Carter.

• 40:23David Hoffman?

  He is Choke Point 2.0.

• 40:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, he's, he played a key role. He was anti crypto. Let's see, Fortune described him, this is not a crypto publication. Fortune described him as the White House's top crypto critic. He played a role in the White House's effort to block stablecoin legislation. Remember that's something we tried to make happen, blocking that. Let's hear from Caitlin Long on the subject. So just some context. Caitlin Long, longtime crypto bull, Long, sorry, I didn't mean to say that.

• 40:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  So some context on Caitlin Long, she's been in the crypto space forever. You might say a long.

• 41:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Background on Caitlin Long, she's been in crypto forever. And she was trying to get an application for a state chartered, fully reserved bank with the Fed. Okay. And this was denied by none other than Bharat Ramamurthy. And she has some context on how he plays the, the politics game in Washington. Let's hear the clip on Laura Shin's podcast.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  We were told by a whistleblower who approached me that weekend after the custodial denial. Who had done it at the White House? A guy named Bharat Ramamurthy. I'd never met Bharat Ramamurthy. How were we on his radar screen? Well, I looked him up. Lo and behold, he ran economic policy for Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign in 2020. And it is now, there've been a lot written subsequently. It is now acknowledged that he, Gary Gensler, and Marty Grunberg, and Michael Barr, were locking arms and going after the banks in Operation Choke Point 2.0, as well as all the crypto companies through the SEC, and going as aggressively as possible. And I asked-

• 42:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  She goes on, I'll just cut it there, but she goes on. But that's kind of a taste of how he was likely involved in Operation Choke Point, David.

• 42:12David Hoffman?

  I mean, that's about as damning as it gets, right?

• 42:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 42:15David Hoffman?

  Like, we can't, it's pretty incompatible to have him on your advisor board and also have a pro crypto campaign like that. You can't have both of those things, right?

• 42:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. This is Austin Campbell, who says it this way. He's a Democrat, by the way. We've had Austin on the podcast before. If the Harris administration is going to continue Operation Choke Point 2.0, it's impossible to support them from an ethical standpoint. And I say that as a Democrat is the take here. It might not, like, this administration that's lining up seems like it could very possibly be more of the same, which would be, quite honestly, a disaster for crypto policy in the US.

• 42:56David Hoffman?

  So I put out a tweet this morning, Ryan, which is a screenshot of the plus 10% Kamala-Harris polymarket odds. And I say, maybe we should reconsider our lobbying efforts. We have Donald Trump. He is the pro crypto president. And now, like, I'm saying, I'm suggesting, let's focus all of our industry's attention and energy on the Harris campaign, because those are the people that are getting out to get us. And there is, anytime I tweet anything like this, which is like, crypto is bipartisan, let's make sure we win both parties, I just get attacked by like, all of the crypto right, who are like, why are you supporting Kamala? Why are you trying to, why are you trying to throw your support to Kamala? Which I am not trying to do.

• 43:38David Hoffman?

  I am trying to throw my support behind the reform of Kamala's campaign.

• 43:44David Hoffman?

  And like, I think it makes the most sense to go after and lobby the party who is attacking you. And I would just like to say that that is like strategically the correct move to do. Like, we should invest in reforming the Democratic Party because they are the ones going after us.

• 44:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think, I think, so I agree with you in broad strokes. And yet, there's also kind of the counter. Like, I think open door policy is valid, but it gets in the details of how do you reconsider your lobbying efforts? Because, you know, we had David Bailey on the podcast, that episode goes public Monday, but if you're a bankless citizen, you already got it.

• 44:21David Hoffman?

  You already got it.

• 44:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  He makes the case that the way you actually reform the Democrat Party on crypto is you defeat them. You absolutely trounce Harris. You are super loud about it. You say you lost because of crypto and like come around next time and that they will only listen when they lose and when it hurts them and when it costs. And politics is a zero sum game and somebody's got to win and somebody has got to lose. And so this is actually how you trigger reform in the Democratic Party. They're not going to come to you until they're licking their wounds and they're, you know, beat up and sore.

• 44:53David Hoffman?

  I think that is very correct and would be a lot stronger of an argument if Donald Trump was plus 10% rather than minus 10%. But right now, right now, the Kamala campaign is the likely winner according to $600 million on Polymarket.

• 45:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 45:12David Hoffman?

  And so like, like if we, if we were just ready to like smack, like squash the Democratic Party's face into the ground so hard because, because Donald Trump was the pro crypto president, if we were like 50 50, we would have a much better case for that to be true. But all of a sudden Kamala is like in the lead by 10%, which is not a small amount. And all of a sudden, like betting the entire horse on Donald Trump's campaign doesn't seem to be like the positive EV move to make.

• 45:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I, you know, like I see that case too. I, I think the bottom line, at least for me at this point in time is there's been no evidence of a Kamala pivot. And if Kamala Harris does populate her administration with anti crypto people like Bharat Ramamurthy, then her administration is going to be anti crypto, like full stop. It's, it's kind of that simple. And that's super disappointing because we want crypto to be bipartisan, but it's not at this point. And so if you're a single issue voter and your one issue was crypto, okay, I'm not advocating for single issue voters out there. I think that, you know, there's pros and cons being a single issue voter, but if you are a crypto, single issue voter, Trump is the ticket for you. Like it is.

• 46:22David Hoffman?

  It's not even close.

• 46:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not even, it's not even close at this point.

• 46:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 46:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, the question is, does crypto even matter to the Democrats? So some people are saying, yeah, it's just like, it doesn't even matter to the Democrats. Why are you crypto people even talking about this? Like, no one cares. It's not a national election issue. I think there's evidence countering that and pretty substantial evidence. It's not just Trump's reception in the crypto community and like the Bitcoin 2024 conference and roaring crowds, whatever he talks about firing Gary Gensler. Here's a survey that came out of Paradigm last week. As of right now, there are between 1 and 2% of Democrats who might actually vote Trump because the Biden administration has let Elizabeth Warren run their crypto policy. So there's Democrats out there. This is a recent poll. This is like, um, post Kamala

• 47:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Harris, uh, being elevated to nominee. 804 self-identified Democrats who said 1 to 2% of those might switch. And that margin can make a difference in a swing state with that's like, this is going to be a close election, no matter how you cut it. And then there are some wins for Democratic voters here. It's like, they care about privacy, right? They're 80% of them, David, were worried that if Trump gets elected, that the Trump administration would somehow cut off their family's access to financial services, right? When my adversaries are in power, it's kind of like, you know, just some fear, right? If my adversaries are in power and they have the strings to control the financial system, what might they do if I decide to?

• 47:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, you know, protest. There's actually huge support for crypto among like people of color. So more so even than like among black Democrats, 22% own crypto, 25% of Hispanic Democrats own crypto. Whereas 18% of all Democrats own crypto. So there's like votes to win here. It's pretty clear. So I don't buy the message that there's like no wins for Democrats in pivoting to pro crypto. They just don't seem to see it.

• 48:20David Hoffman?

  Okay. So remember when you, right before the ETH ETF got surprise approved and you gave the case, the hail Mary case for the Ethereum getting ETF getting approved and you said it was something like one to 5% odds?

• 48:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 48:33David Hoffman?

  I've got, I've got one of those.

• 48:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. Okay. You got your hail Mary?

• 48:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I've got my hail Mary. So like I've said, the Kamala administration has strategically not released any sort of policy about anything because the strategy between her and Trump right now is Kamala is like the generic Democrat. They plan, the Kamala administration campaign plans to release either her whole policy or her economic policy, policy at the Democratic National Convention on August 19th through the 22nd. I think Kamala is speaking on the last day, the 22nd. And so this is when we will hear some of her policy agendas. We will actually hear it for the first time. I do not think she will say anything about crypto. I think it's much more likely that she will say things about tech because she is a San Francisco

• 49:20David Hoffman?

  tech adjacent prosecutor out of California. She is familiar with Silicon Valley. And if, in my opinion, if I was a political advisor, of which I'm not, just being a normal centrist is going to win the camp, like the presidency for either candidate, whoever is the normal centrist, in my opinion, wins. And I think Kamala, if she positions herself as a normal centrist and that's pro tech, they can start to get back a lot of the Silicon Valley like power, like the, you remember the Marc Andreessen episode that A16Z did about being pro Trump because the Biden administration was like all hammering their entire industry? If she can win back those votes by being a pro tech centrist

• 50:02David Hoffman?

  and that it gets announced at the Democratic National Convention, I think that is a bellwether canary for also being pro crypto is being the pro tech centrist.

• 50:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  So what's, what's your hail Mary there? Because that feels like that could definitely happen.

• 50:14David Hoffman?

  She is a pro-tech centrist and then that opens the door like tech is also synonymous with crypto in this sense. I don't think any of the Democrats want her to say crypto during this convention, but she's but like tech and crypto are kind of the same thing.

• 50:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  See, that last part, that the last part is the the part that is just so dumb and I just can't understand is like, why is it the default? Why is it not the default position in the Democrat Party, among the Democrats to just be like neutral to crypto or like pro crypto? I just can't wrap my head around that. Like, why she like the center's position is basically that, or at least being neutral to crypto, right? You don't have to go invest in or put Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Anyway, it's hard to see. Let's get Vivek Ramaswamy's take, because I actually saw this clip on CNBC and it was great. Let's hear what he has to say about the prospects of a Kamala pivot.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  There are those who argue, who think if you're a single voter on crypto, that this could lose her the election if she doesn't come out and embrace it. Look, Trump was all for the not taxing tips. Now she's all for. Do you think she will ultimately embrace crypto as an industry?

• 51:20Speaker 04

  I predict her verbiage will. And I do think that that part of the reason why is you see Trump's speech at the Bitcoin conference, it's just a matter of competing for votes that she's going to adopt a thoughtful position. Now, speaking as an American, not from a partisan perspective, I think that's a good thing. I think we should want great debate in the marketplace of ideas. Even if she offers a thoughtful digital assets framework or policy, even if I don't agree with all of it, I think that'll be a good thing for the country. But what I challenge Kamala Harris to do is not just cite the pieties and the words. Go into detail. Say what you actually believe about self custody of assets. Say what you actually believe about whether you think Gary Gensler should continue as a leader of the SEC. So I think those specifics are going to matter a lot, Kelly.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  For sure. But is what you're saying is just a general position of openness is probably all the industry really is looking for. This idea that it's not a partisan issue, that Republicans are for it and Democrats are against it.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  It should not be a partisan issue. Now, what I think you are seeing is this tendency to really embrace whatever wins her the most votes. But when you're looking at your question, Andrew, of how do you assess the seriousness of that? The metric to use is how specific she actually gets on this policy proposal.

• 52:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  100%. 100%. I think if she just if Kamala Harris came out and said, I and I like crypto. Crypto is fun.

• 52:31David Hoffman?

  Everyone in the crypto industry is gonna just smell bullshit. Our smell bullshit senses are really high. We're really good at that. She's gonna have to say the words like self custody and among other things. I'm firing Gary Gensler would be a great start. I'm firing Gary Gensler, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, that's enough politics for this week. We'll be back, I'm sure, next week with even more. But further on in this episode, Coinbase rolling out their Bitcoin on base as BitGo's WBTC takes a tumble. We're gonna talk about that. Optimism teasing the delivery of the superchain and all the details around that. Kronos, a Layer 1, becomes a ZK EVM as a Layer 2 on Ethereum. And maybe Tap to Pay with USDC coming straight out of your iPhone. USDC in your iPhone to the point of sale wherever you are. We're gonna talk about all of this and more.

• 53:15David Hoffman?

  But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Mantle, a Layer 2, which you're about to hear from right now. New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming on to the Mantle Layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in DeFi and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion Mantle Treasury in the Mantle Reward Station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto,

• 54:00David Hoffman?

  or you're a user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's DeFi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle. Launching a token? Don't let complex legal and tax issues slow you down. Toku provides specialized support to optimize your launch and ensure that you as a founder and your team and your investors get the most tax-efficient outcomes. The Toku team understands the crypto space inside and out and will ensure your token launch is fully compliant while maximizing tax efficiency. Toku can connect you with the best attorneys if you need them to make sure that you have the best advice. And Toku can help to optimize your taxes so you pay the least possible amount of taxes while still maintaining legal compliance. With Toku's guidance, you can concentrate on building your company while Toku handles the logistics. Token launches don't have to be complicated. Talk to Toku today to get a free initial token valuation.

• 54:43David Hoffman?

  Arbitrum is the leading Ethereum scaling solution that is home to hundreds of decentralized applications. Arbitrum's technology allows you to interact with Ethereum at scale with low fees and faster transactions. Arbitrum has the leading DeFi ecosystem, strong infrastructure options, flourishing NFTs, and is quickly becoming the web3 gaming hub. Explore the ecosystem at portal.arbitrum.io. Are you looking to permissionlessly launch your own Arbitrum Orbit chain? Arbitrum Orbit allows anyone to utilize Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own Orbit chain, giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you're a developer, an enterprise, or a user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum.

• 55:27David Hoffman?

  Experience web3 development the way it was always meant to be: secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. Visit arbitrum.io and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum communities. And we're back with some Layer 2 updates, brought to you by Mantle, a Layer 2 that we enjoy. Two things I think caught our eye this week. First, Kronos, which was previously a Cosmos chain, has deployed its first ZK Layer 2 EVM using the ZK Sync stack. Kronos, if you're not familiar, is like the Crypto.com chain. Binance has BNB, Coinbase has Base, Crypto.com has Kronos, and Kronos has now migrated to become a ZK stack, ZK Sync chain, and has just launched their Alpha mainnet. Pretty cool, especially if you're a believer in the Ethereum rollup-centric roadmap thesis.

• 56:12David Hoffman?

  Just one more exchange chain coming into the fold. Pretty cool.

• 56:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you remember when Crypto.com hired Matt Damon to talk about Crypto.com?

• 56:22David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 56:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I remember, like, I was watching a movie, I forget what movie this was, with just like my family, and then up pops Matt Damon, and he's shilling like Crypto.com. I want Matt Damon to start shilling ZK EVMs with Layer 2s.

• 56:35David Hoffman?

  The ZK stack Kronos.

• 56:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that'd be great. All right, so that was one update. The second is something called Nebre launched on mainnet, and I think this is interesting. It sounds super geeky, but it's actually kind of cool. This is a...

• 56:48David Hoffman?

  It is also super geeky, but...

• 56:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very bullish. Yeah, this is a proof aggregator. Okay, so a ZK proof. I love proof aggregators. So if you're a ZK EVM, like the Kronos chain via ZK Sync, you have to pay Ethereum Layer 1 some fees for ZK settlement proofs, basically. And there's a cost associated with this. So ZK EVMs. It's not low. They've paid, ZK EVMs have paid to Layer 1's $60 million, David, through the course of this. And so what Nebre does is it basically aggregates all of these proofs together and makes them cheaper. It's like, kind of like a batch purchasing, batch processing, batch compression makes it cheaper. So. Wholesale block space for Ethereum proofs.

• 57:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, just selling it, selling it wholesale. And they claim that they can make these proofs 90% cheaper. All of that's kind of cool, because what that means is ZK Layer 2s, the transaction fees will continue to drop. And I think there's kind of a story here around Ether, the asset, with respect to Layer 2 transaction fees. David, not to spoil things too far in advance, but you and I had Kyle Samani on the podcast earlier this week. We did what? Yes. And we had him, we were just like, kind of, Kyle, tell us all the ways we went wrong. And he was very happy to do that.

• 58:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Particularly with respect to Ethereum, because he thinks that Layer 2s, ZK EVMs, some of which we just mentioned, will be parasitic to the price of Ether. And so we had a conversation. This is a bad business model for the Layer 1. Basically. You know, because he sees these things, the cost of settling to Layer 1 to Ethereum is dropping to zero through innovation like Nebre, and he's not wrong about that. I think there's a counter that Ether is earning more credible neutrality, earning its moat for a place for Layer 2s to kind of settle and provide data availability, and will be a money inside of these ecosystems, and that's a bigger value proposition. He was having none of it, of course. So, anyway, that episode is coming at you soon. But it's all associated, these types of innovations all factor into

• 58:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  whether you're long ETH or long some other ecosystem, and you know, Layer 2s and the roadmap and how they're going, it's all kind of tied together.

• 58:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, part of his big claim was that like the marginal cost of software approaches zero. And this is actually like Nebre, this what Nebre is bringing to the table is exactly in line with that. We're just like, oh, do you have as a ZK layer two or other like proofs that you need to use Ethereum for? And they're expensive. Well, like, we can aggregate them and we can get those 90% closer to zero than previously. And so if you want that podcast episode, it's probably in your podcast player right now, or its early access will be soon to him.

• 59:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're gonna put early access out soon, right?

• 59:30David Hoffman?

  It's early access, I think will come out like Tuesday of next week, and then the actual episode will drop like a week or two later.

• 59:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  So how do people get that?

• 59:37David Hoffman?

  There's a link in the show notes to sign up to become a Bankless Citizen, or if you already are a Bankless Citizen, I hope you have the premium feed. If you don't, there is a perks page on your, once you are logged into bankless.com, you can go get it.

• 59:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, tell me about wrapped Bitcoin and the drama that's going on.

• 59:51David Hoffman?

  Okay, so Bitco, once upon a time, like 2018, 2019, launched wrapped Bitcoin, WBTC. Bitco is a custodian provider and among a consortium of other signers, created this product wrapped Bitcoin so it could come onto Ethereum. I think my memory is hazy on this, but just like overall, this has turned into like, kind of just like, a business model that hasn't generated too much cash and is overall has kind of turned into a burden on Bitco. That's, I think, the rumor on the rumor mill. I'm fuzzy on the details. But overall, they announced plans to transfer control over WBTC to a joint venture made up of itself, a Hong Kong-based investment manager, Bit Global, and the Tron ecosystem with Justin Sun.

• 1:00:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Justin Sun, hello.

• 1:00:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it says it plans to diversify its custodial locations and jurisdictions for the underlying Bitcoin to include Hong Kong and Singapore. DeFi, the number one consumer of wrapped Bitcoin, which is going to be MakerDAO and Aave. DeFi was not happy about it because of the lack of clarity on who these new signers are, perhaps especially with Justin Sun's involvement. Even though Justin Sun says like, I'm not going to be the signer, like my, your ecosystem's not going to be the signer. But somehow, Justin Sun is involved here, and no one trusts Justin. And sun.

• 1:01:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so just to clarify the use case for like wrapped Bitcoin. It's a tokenized version of Bitcoin on Ethereum, right? So you can sort of hold Bitcoin.

• 1:01:18David Hoffman?

  It's an IOU for Bitcoin.

• 1:01:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and then you could use it in AVE, you could use it in Maker, that kind of thing. But it's all custodied by a third party. So it's definitely not like trustless, bankless, decentralized.

• 1:01:29David Hoffman?

  That's right, that's right. And like the two dominant like use cases of WPTC are using Bitcoin as collateral in AVE and Maker DAO. And make both of these organizations like a pretty decent amount in fees. Like, I don't know like what else people are using like wrapped Bitcoin for. It's mainly just to be a collateral asset in DeFi. As a result, Maker DAO has a forum post to suggest to offboard WBTC, which would mean freezing all any inbound wrapped Bitcoin vaults and sunsetting that as a project. So any current wrapped Bitcoin vault would be untouched. So if you're using wrapped Bitcoin, you'd be fine. But like no new wrapped Bitcoin vaults. And AVE's governance forums, I think, kind of said something similar.

• 1:02:12David Hoffman?

  Just because of the lack of transparency and clarity there is around who is signing this, like who is these new signers on the wrapped Bitcoin?

• 1:02:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Some added risk.

• 1:02:21David Hoffman?

  Some added risk, exactly. And like these organizations are very sensitive to risk. So that's the drama. Like the BitGo like founder, CEO, or some representative like went into like the Maker DAO governance forums. And it's like, you guys are like blowing this all too much. It's not that bad, don't panic, blah, blah, blah. But nonetheless, Coinbase just tweets out CB BTC, implying that like, okay, Coinbase is going to step in into this market and provide like an alternative version for this backed by Coinbase, which is an interesting move. I think it makes sense. I'm kind of skeptical as to how much demand there is for wrapped Bitcoin, generally speaking.

• 1:03:05David Hoffman?

  I mean, we've seen how much demand there is for wrapped Bitcoin, and it's like kind of hit its limit two years ago. It's been just for like, like I said, Bitcoin collateral in AVE and Maker. But nonetheless, Jesse Pollak is pretty excited. He says, "To say it out loud, I love Bitcoin and I'm so grateful for its role in Kickstarter and crypto. And we're going to build a massive Bitcoin economy on Base." And so it kind of makes sense, like Coinbase has all of this Bitcoin. They have a chain that they want to encourage DeFi to grow on. So why they maybe just they're going to put their Bitcoin on their chain. You're already trusting Coinbase. You're trusting them a little bit less with Base, and you're trusting them just as much with your Bitcoins. So maybe just have your Bitcoins on Base and like get some yield. The business model makes sense.

• 1:03:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is another release that's related to, not quite a release, but kind of an announcement of the future. So Base, of course, runs on the Optimism stack, right? And Optimism has its own Layer 2. Many of the Layer 2s, and kind of like the top Layer 2s, are optimistic rollups and optimism framework Layer 2s. The question is, can we smush all these things together? There's like a fragmentation problem across all of these Layer 2s. And Optimism has long talked about the superchain. And the holy grail there is, can you at least have some level of composability between all of these chains? So if you go to Base and you have assets on the Optimism mainnet, it all feels like one. It's one user experience.

• 1:04:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  So they actually rolled out a plan to do this. What's the plan, David?

• 1:04:36David Hoffman?

  It's been in the works for a long time. And this is what we call the superchain. And the plan, currently in devnet, soon to be in testnet, and therefore mainnet, is to meld all these things together. How the details, the technical details, I don't think are totally released yet. I think if you probably went searching on optimism forums and docs, you probably get a pretty clean sense. But it's some amount of like, some common sequencer between all of these 29 OP stacked chains, including Base, Zora, Mode, Network. And they have 36% of all Ethereum Layer 2 activity. So 30% of all Layer 2s are about to become perceived to be the same chain by the users. This has been like, that's very, very cool. I would like to see what kind of like emergent properties come out of this

• 1:05:21David Hoffman?

  when you do meld 36 chains together into one. This doesn't perfectly solve Ethereum's composability problems because you still have like the Arbitrum ecosystem. And the Arbitrum ecosystem is going to do the same strategy, except it's going to be over there. And then ZK Sync is actually already like this. And they already have their like, like big chains that they have spun up. But like, it does take like, what is like 80 or 90 chains and consolidate it down to like... Five ecosystems and optimism is just the first to do this.

• 1:05:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  They did also, once they do that, once they unite their, their own kind of chains across the superchain, the question is, how do you connect one superchain to, you know, ZK sync's version of a superchain, let's say. And for that, they're looking to ERC 7683. That is an interoperability standard between superchains and the rest of Ethereum layer twos. I feel like I need a deep dive into that ERC and see how much of this, like, it really supports and how composable these assets need, will be in this type of a world. But I'm like, I'm pretty certain this is part of Vitalik's tweet when he's like, hey, we don't need full shared sequencing, like, based rollups.

• 1:06:27David Hoffman?

  We don't need perfect synchronous composability.

• 1:06:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. All we need is the adoption of a set of ERCs. And I think this was maybe one of the ERC standards that he mentioned.

• 1:06:35David Hoffman?

  For sure. Yeah, can't wait till that come out. Like, the superchain is like one of my most anticipated upgrades, the optimism ecosystem. Ryan, I know you have been just totally waiting in anticipation for Eric Trump's DeFi project.

• 1:06:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:06:50David Hoffman?

  Are you ready for what it is?

• 1:06:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 1:06:53David Hoffman?

  You ready for it?

• 1:06:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm ready.

• 1:06:55David Hoffman?

  Hold your breath. Digital real estate.

• 1:07:01David Hoffman?

  That's all, that's all the details that we have. That's kind of all we got. And so in an interview with New York Post about this project.

• 1:07:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Famous crypto publication.

• 1:07:11David Hoffman?

  Famous crypto publication. He said, quote the line, "It has something to do with digital real estate."

• 1:07:20David Hoffman?

  And that's all we've got.

• 1:07:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's all I need to know. I'm in. Where can I buy?

• 1:07:23David Hoffman?

  Now, Ryan and I, before we were going through and doing this recording, I was like, digital real estate, does he mean tokenized real estate?

• 1:07:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31David Hoffman?

  Because there is an allusion to having access to like borrowing and lending services for people who own real estate.

• 1:07:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're talking about tokenized real world real estate, like.

• 1:07:40David Hoffman?

  Real, real estate tokenized on the blockchain is one interpretation of what this is.

• 1:07:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  It is. That's digital.

• 1:07:46David Hoffman?

  Or it's digital real estate, as in like

• 1:07:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Metaverse?

• 1:07:49David Hoffman?

  Trump NFT cards.

• 1:07:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51David Hoffman?

  That aren't actually real. It's fake real estate that's digitized as like tokens. It's real fake real estate.

• 1:07:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Buy your Trump tower in the metaverse. It could be that too. And we just don't know. Or maybe David.

• 1:08:04David Hoffman?

  We just don't know.

• 1:08:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe it's both. Wouldn't that be perfect?

• 1:08:07David Hoffman?

  I don't even know how that would work. Anyways, there was like this allusion to like providing equitable access to capital. And then some combination of digital real estate. We don't really know what's going on.

• 1:08:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, some interesting quotes in this article. We'll have to wait to hear more and to start getting our hands on the digital real estate. David, are stable coins coming to Tap to Pay on iPhones? This was the rumor this week.

• 1:08:28David Hoffman?

  I think it's a little bit early to say that they are, but this rumor got sparked when Jeremy LaR, a guy who would know a thing or two, says, Tap to Pay using USDC on iPhones incoming soon. Wallet devs, start your engines. And he is tweeting out an article from Bloomberg about how Apple has opened up the use of its NFC chips and its secure element to third-party app developers, which I didn't even know was closed. If you have ever used Tap to Pay on your iPhone, which I use as often as I possibly can, I love it. It's great. If I forget my wallet, it doesn't matter because it's on my phone. Just like scan my face, tap it on the point of sale and I've got my thingy. Apple is opening up that service along with its secure element to third-party application developers, which means

• 1:09:11David Hoffman?

  the secure element, which can securely hold a private key pretty damn well, can hold a private key, which is for a wallet, which could be in theory embedded in Tap to Pay, which could be a smart contract wallet that has USDC in it, which is what Jeremy LaR is alluding to, which I think is super sick, where you have a private key on your phone, natively on your iPhone, which scans your face if you use Face ID, and then it's the USDC that you have on your iPhone can pay for stuff.

• 1:09:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's like cash.

• 1:09:42David Hoffman?

  That is sick.

• 1:09:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a bear-

• 1:09:45David Hoffman?

  It's cash tokens on your phone.

• 1:09:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's almost like a bearer instrument, like cash in your actual wallet. And what's also cool is, this leads me to believe, I mean, Jeremy's talking about USDC, and that's certainly one use case, but if the vendor accepts Ether, if the vendor accepts, like, Dog with Hat.

• 1:10:00David Hoffman?

  Dog with Hat, like, whatever. On any blockchain, it could be any blockchain.

• 1:10:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and, you know, like, that's really cool, to have the user experience of an, like, Apple iPhone, because, I mean, just like, younger generations do not, like, want credit cards. I mean, just, they want to pay with their phone, and have crypto be that accessible, I think is the future, so, awesome stuff.

• 1:10:21David Hoffman?

  This applies to just like, tokens and payments, as anyone would expect, but just like, you can also apply it to any, like, a ticket, like, I also, like, go to concerts, and I board airplanes with tickets that are in my Apple Wallet. And, whenever the hell, we figure out how to, like, do, like, NFT tickets, which has been talked about since the inception of blockchains, as soon as we disrupt Ticketmaster, you can have that as a bearer asset on your phone, which is like, the future, which I think is pretty sick.

• 1:10:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's very cool. Alright, let's wrap this up. Me of the week, what are we looking at?

• 1:10:55David Hoffman?

  I think this is a new meme format that is just coming out now. I don't know where this came from.

• 1:11:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gonna be hard to describe.

• 1:11:02David Hoffman?

  You have to see it, you have to see it. I'll do my best to explain it. I'm, I'm, I don't know what the origins of this meme format is, so I'm just gonna make it up what I think it is. And so, I'm, I'm thinking that I am seeing a rom-com movie of a couple who's like, falling in love for the first time, and I'm guessing this is a montage, and they are on, like, what do you call these things?

• 1:11:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Carousel.

• 1:11:23David Hoffman?

  Like, carousel, yeah, carousel with the horses, and they're having a good time, and they're being cute, and the guy is labeled "me", and the girl is labeled "the S&P 500", and they're having a fantastic time, and then in front of them is like, the horse carousel ride that they are not on. It's just like, it's just in, it's in the foreground, it just happens to be there. I'm assuming this is just like a cut frame, and this horse-

• 1:11:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's just crypto.

• 1:11:49David Hoffman?

  I don't know how to explain it, dude.

• 1:11:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't think we can. It's just And this horse is in the foreground and it just looks so dumb. You're the week. That's how I feel. And it's labeled crypto. Importantly, it's labeled crypto. Thank you. Well, you got that out. Wow. Oh, my God. Wow. Let's actually wrap this up. Okay, let's let's switch to something more serious, shall we? It's gonna be hard after crazy ass horse. We just saw that.

• 1:12:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, instead of a moment of zen, we have a, I guess, a moment of responsibility for you, like a moment of A moment of burden is how I've called it. Don't want to burden your conscience, you know, too much, but it is a fact that crypto now has a growing list of like political prisoners, actually. And I think the latest couple have been most egregious. And one of them, which was in the agenda, we will go through this full story some other time. David, no more crazy horse, dude. Tigren, jailed in Nigeria, no trial. He's a he's a Binance executive, no evidence of wrongdoing, literally being kept in conditions that might render him permanently handicapped. Okay, these are the reports coming out of this.

• 1:13:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you haven't followed that story, there'll be a link in the show notes. Another one, though. Alexei Pertsef, he was a tornado cash developer, open source, privacy technology. We've talked about this many times. He was sentenced to jail in the Netherlands, like five and a half years, something like this. So he's now serving time in jail. We're about to play you a clip from jail where he is asking for funds to help him appeal this case and get out of jail. Of course, it's David and my position that he was unrightfully jailed, that this is a failure of liberal, Western liberal democracies actually put him in that place. There's someone else who's associated with Alexei Pertsef. His name's Roman Storm.

• 1:13:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  He's actually has an upcoming trial in the US that will happen in the later part of this year. All eyes on that. It's an incredibly important trial for US precedent. Anyway, some of these folks need our help and they're raising legal defense funds to help them actually fight this and appeal. So Roman Storm has raised Some funds before he'll probably need more at some point in the future. Alexei Pertsev right now is raising funds to help them appeal this. So we've supported this at Bankless. We're sending him some funds. We'll include a link in the show notes where you can join that effort as well. Super important stuff. So that's what we will play in the moment of Zen for you in a second. David, you want to say anything before I get to risks?

• 1:14:25David Hoffman?

  Nope, moment of anti Zen.

• 1:14:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, anti Zen, not Zen. I misspoke there. All right, guys, crypto is risky. You know, you could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:14:40Speaker 05

  Hi, my name is Alex Pertsev. Five years ago, I helped to invent a privacy solution for Ethereum blockchain called Tornado Cash. In August 2022, I was arrested in Amsterdam and put in jail for eight and a half months under suspicion of money laundering. In May of this year, the Dutch court sentenced me to five years and four months jail. The judge has ruled that Tornado Cash disguises and conceals the origin of criminal proceeds, and I am, as a developer, responsible for that.

• 1:15:16Speaker 05

  Even though it's somebody else who is misusing the tool, even though I could do nothing to prevent it, it's still me who has to give up five years of my life. I disagree with this decision, and I will fight it in appeal. As a result of the court's verdict, I was put in jail again.

• 1:15:37Speaker 05

  And that being stressful for me and for my family on its own, it limits me to contribute to my legal defense. While at the same time, we are working against the whole Department of Financial Police and Amendments, there is no precedent for this case, and its outcome is crucial for blockchain industry. Even more broadly, it raises a question. When the developers can be held responsible for their invention if misused by third parties, where is that line that you cannot cross? I have extended my legal team and we are eager to disprove the verdict and provide clarity

• 1:16:19Speaker 05

  to this issue. It will be of huge importance for the future of our industry. Dear listeners, I need your help. Please contribute to my legal defense. You can do so by donating through JusBox and Justice Now. I am profoundly grateful for any contribution, small or large. Thank you.