ROLLUP: RSA Returns! | ETH’s Pivot? | Bitcoin’s Decoupling | Bear or Bull?

This week, the one, the only, Ryan Sean Adams makes his return to the Weekly Rollup and crypto, after a 90-day crypto detox to find a radically changed landscape. Ryan and David break down crypto’s shifting cycle, what Ryan missed, and Bitcoin’s dramatic decoupling from equities as it earns a strategic reserve in the U. S. Treasury. Meanwhile, Ethereum faces an existential pivot as it tries to reclaim lost ground against Bitcoin and Solana. Plus, Zora sparks heated debate with “content coins” amid new regulatory wins—and new fears of political corruption. Did crypto lose its soul chasing mainstream adoption, or is this the messy price of progress? It’s an essential Weekly Rollup you can’t afford to miss. ------ 📣 WALLET CONNECT | ONCHAIN UX ECOSYSTEM https://bankless.cc/WalletConnect ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐SELF | PROVE YOUR SELF https://bankless.cc/Self 🏦INFINEX | THE CRYPTO-EVERYTHING APP https://bankless.cc/Infinex ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 0:47 Are we still in a bull market? 3:01 Ryan’s unplugging 5:35 Ryan’s last 90-days https://x.com/ryansadams/status/1915115437505049055 24:50 Bankless’s choices moving forward https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1914312548897219006 32:58 Markets since Ryan’s break 40:35 Trump’s memecoin 48:31 Bitcoin Strategic Reserve 52:34 $LIBRA memecoin 1:03:29 Contentcoins, Zora, & Jesse 1:16:39 Ethereum pivot & Bitcoin decoupling 1:18:18 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.

• 0:04David Hoffman?

  Welcome Bankless Nation to the Bankless Weekly Roll-Up where we cover everything that's been going on in the Wild West of crypto. Today, I'm joined, once again, by the one and only Ryan Shawn Adams. Ryan, welcome back to Bankless.

• 0:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh my God, what did I miss? Did I miss anything?

• 0:21David Hoffman?

  You missed nothing dude. Nothing happened. Don't worry about it.

• 0:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so my big question going into this episode, I was like trying to figure out after coming back. So for people who don't know, I've been on hiatus for 90, there's probably not

• 0:34David Hoffman?

  I don't know how they don't know.

• 0:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  For 90 days I've been out. Okay, so my big question coming back to this episode and just like getting back into crypto, because I've been on a complete like disconnect from almost everything.

• 0:44David Hoffman?

  Internet detox.

• 0:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I could talk more about that. But my big question, David, is like, okay, are we still in a bull market? Like, what is going on here? Because there's some, I don't even know. This has broken the cycle in my mind. So like, what's the consensus around crypto?

• 1:02David Hoffman?

  I don't think that there is consensus, and I think that is actually a very big signal about what crypto is now. Dispersion, differentiation, there's different sectors of crypto. Crypto is large, there's different corners, and there is no global consensus. There is no one single thing about what crypto is. And I think, my opinion, is that the four-year cycle is broken. And so are we in a bull market? Are we in a bear market? Well, you can look in different sectors of crypto and have different answers to that. So there is no one clear answer.

• 1:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so like traditionally, when we say bull market or bear market, we're talking about those four-year cycles, like as you said. And now it seems like the consensus is, it sounds like it's your opinion, you share this.

• 1:47David Hoffman?

  It's my opinion, yeah.

• 1:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  But is it broadly the consensus in crypto that, okay, we don't get those anymore, there's no four-year cycles, we've kind of, we're at the adoption curve where just like stuff just happens. It's like the regular market in that way, and we're not going to have a repeat of like Bitcoin goes up, you know, like all the alts kind of go up and you know, this, you know, it's either a bull cycle or like a bear market, and we just get that.

• 2:14David Hoffman?

  I don't know if it's consensus, but I think that that is right.

• 2:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ah, alright.

• 2:18David Hoffman?

  Because it's hard to have consensus when there is dispersion, like people's voices are all over the place.

• 2:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, well, that's interesting.

• 2:25David Hoffman?

  The changing of, it's a phase change of crypto. There has been a phase change, I will say that.

• 2:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a lot more I want to get caught up with you about because I think I missed a whole bunch of things. So I hope, would you just indulge me a little bit in this episode? I hope Bankless listeners indulge me, it's like, give me some highlights from the last 90 days as we get into this. And like, get me up to speed because I feel like there's some major things I may have missed. I wasn't in the action at those times.

• 2:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and maybe it's also worth providing the context about like, how like, I'm sure you heard about the Trump meme coin.

• 2:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 2:54David Hoffman?

  But like, you have been on a media content detox. And so it's worth, I think, laying down the impression of, no, Ryan has been unplugged. Maybe you could share, how unplugged have you been?

• 3:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very, so I, like, the Trump meme coin, right? That's something I would have like, heard probably within seconds.

• 3:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right.

• 3:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, I caught wind of that a week later from an in-real-life friend, a week after it launched. And he asked my opinion on it because he like, knows I'm in crypto. What's your opinion? I was like, oh, that happened? Okay. Like, I don't, I'm usually shooting from the hip on an opinion on that, but I do have an opinion on that, actually. But like, I did, that's how disconnected I was.

• 3:34David Hoffman?

  Seven days late to the Trump meme coin is incredibly disconnected.

• 3:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's my latency right now. So yeah, there's a few things you're gonna have to get me up to speed on. Also, like, some things as I'm getting plugged back in on the week. There's some Zora drama, these content coins. Bitcoin is decoupling, like, gold is on a tear, that's all interesting. And also Vitalik had a execution layer plan for the EVM. He's talking about maybe replacing the EVM with Risk Zero. So I definitely want to talk about that with you too.

• 4:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's definitely the tip of the chain. So we're gonna go through, I have the four biggest things that happened in the last 90 days and we're gonna go through those.

• 4:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright.

• 4:14David Hoffman?

  And then we'll also get to the tip of the chain, which is like, some of the events that you just talked about. Before Bankless Nation, we get to all of those things. A message from our friends and sponsors over at Has been used by over 255 million connections from 40 million unique users all across the internet who are simply just connecting their wallet to the applications that they want to use. And Wallet Connect is entering their final form of decentralizing and protocolizing Wallet Connect. And of course, in order to do that, they are releasing the last piece of the puzzle, the Wallet Connect token. Ryan, if you're familiar with like, you know, you know, the story of Visa or Swift messaging networks and how they came to be? And how like, it's not, they weren't like startup companies. How would you explain the creation of those two things?

• 4:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Visa was like a consortium, right?

• 4:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of all of these different kind of like financial payment providers and banks and all of these things. And so they're almost like a collection, a consortium that sort of came together. And they coordinated this consensus layer and they sort of like just formed that way.

• 5:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that is exactly what's happening to the Wallet Connect infrastructure, which I thought was pretty compelling. I had a conversation with Pedro Gomez that's available on Twitter, so we can link that. That's exactly what's happening to the Wallet Connect token and how the Wallet Connect token and infrastructure is being spun out. So if that has you peaked, Bankless Nation, bankless.cc/walletconnect to stay ahead of what's next. I think the first news of the week is this article, Ryan, that you posted called, "How a reboot fixed my burnout and upgraded my mind." This is also your welcome back post to Twitter, so welcome back to Twitter.

• 5:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 5:48David Hoffman?

  Sorry to have you back on that particular medium of the internet. But again, like go and like lay us down on the last like 90 days of Ryan Tron Adams and what you've been thinking about and why you needed to take the break and what it feels like to be back.

• 6:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so I guess like firstly, in the welcome back to Twitter, like I'm going to do things differently this time. I think with respect to how I engage with an app like Twitter and I can kind of get into that. But I just posted that it's sort of a short post and I think it might resonate with people. It's like nothing to do with crypto. Well, it kind of is actually, but it is to do with like life and modern living, I would say, and doing, I think it's a post for what I call like grind addicted overachievers, which was like I think, I don't know, you tell me David, we've worked together for like five years now. It's like, um, that feels like my personality type.

• 6:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like I can get in these grind cycles of just like, I do the same thing and I can like, you like bear the pain to like just get through it. And then I also have this problem in, in that like, the thing that I'm doing, I'm not quite satisfied. Like I get to the place, I'm like, oh, but there's another place further out and like, I should go. There's a higher peak. There's always a higher peak for me. And so I, all of this compounding over time, um, in January. It, I, I would say it like kind of snuck up on me, but like, I kind of knew it was happening. But I, I just hit a moment in January, it was after, um, do you, do you remember our, uh, like the one Solana token? I go like, yeah. And, uh, it was, uh, AICC. Solana.

• 7:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Um, and there was a whole like public pitchforking, uh, you know? Actually, we, we did sort of make a mistake on that, but, but the pitchforking was absolutely crazy. And this was like the, I don't know, the 10th time it had happened. And all of this combined, I just, I didn't have the, the skin thick enough to get through it. And something in my mental operating system just crashed. Like I, I just felt done, I felt exhausted, I felt burnt out. It was this question of like, I wake up in the morning, why am I doing this? Like, why am I doing this? And I think if you're listening and you're asking yourself that question about whatever you're doing in life, whether it's like a relationship, a job, like just anything in life.

• 8:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  And there's this repeated, uh, question of like, why am I still doing this in your mind? Then that might be a sign you're like in burnout territory, you've lost track of yourself. And you need to do what I did, which was take a reboot. So, um, this was really hard for me, David, cause like, and you were the first person I, I talked to about it. But, um, it was really hard for me to come to the realization that I needed to completely disconnect from everything. Like kill all my commitments, like all the pod, we, we play in podcasts, like, you know, six weeks out, right? Cancel all of those, at least for me. Have you, my business partner, like, take on the mantle of like carrying all of the load of bankless,

• 8:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  where I did nothing for 90 days, like, no meetings, no work, nothing. All opportunities that, like, things we could do, possibilities, just let those evaporate. That was the reboot, and that was the decision I had to make, to come to you, talk to you, talk to the team, and just be like, "Hey, I'm going for like 90 days, and by the way, I can't tell you confidently if I'm going to be back or not." All right? And I wish I could say that was like, I rationally came to that conclusion, like, this is all part of, you know, a process of just like upgrading and just like figuring my shit out. But it wasn't like that. It was like capitulation, you know? It was like, I compared it to being margin called, liquidated.

• 9:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, like, it wasn't on my terms.

• 9:39David Hoffman?

  You called it an emotional margin call.

• 9:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was an emotional margin call. And I think that that can happen if you're, you know, grinding a high achiever, that sort of thing can happen to you. It's better, I would just say, it's better for it to happen on your own terms and not be margin called. But regardless, I was margin called, I needed to kind of disconnect and go figure stuff out. Go answer my question of like, "Why am I doing this?"

• 10:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think it's, yeah, worth emphasizing that there was a moment, and it lasted for a while, actually, maybe even a couple of months, where you did not know if you were gonna come back to crypto.

• 10:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 10:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, to crypto, to like to bankless, I just like, I really didn't know. And so I set this time aside for myself to go figure it out. And like, once I disconnected, once I cleared everything, I really had just the space to diagnose what was wrong, right? And so this is where, like, you reboot and you upgrade, right? This is the cycle. And I think for my cycle, you know, life happens in these cycles of progress, right? And what I needed to do, I didn't know I needed to do it, but what I needed to do was sort of like end one cycle in order to begin the next. And that's what the reboot did. Because now the question is like, what's the next?

• 10:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cycle for me and there were a few problems I had with the way I was doing things previously and like crypto media investing this crazy world. Like one was just and some of this is pretty simple. It's like not, it's not rocket science, but you're like that, that, that's the beauty of it. Anyone can kind of do these things and apply them. But for me, number one, I was way too online. I was, I couldn't go 15 minutes without checking something dude. So whether it was like socials, whether it's like price chart, whether it was discord, whether it's telegram. It was dopamine drip dripped right into like my veins and I didn't even realize it. I think you've told me before, when you've gone on like mountain expeditions and stuff, like when you completely disconnect from screens.

• 11:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  You realize how addicted you actually like were to it. And so like I would find myself just kind of like when I disconnected from these things, like I'm talking deleting apps, everything like just complete cold turkey. I would find myself like reaching for my phone. I'd reach for my phone, dude. I'd pick it up. And I look at my like home screen. There's like nothing fun on it anymore. And I'd be like, I put it down and be like, why did I even do that? Right. Uh huh. Why did I pick up my phone? Yeah. Yeah. Why did I pick up my phone? So that was clearly a problem. I just, I got rid of that by just treating myself like a child. So I went into the, you know, settings of my phone. App screen restrictions, screen time limitations, again, like deleting things.

• 12:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it totally, it felt like detoxing from something. How long was that process? Like, were you, were you irritable? How long did that last? The first week I felt like jittery. I mean, it wasn't super irritable, but I felt jittery. Like a little bit like trying to get off caffeine and this only like hard substance. I like, you know, I've lived a pretty clean life, David. So it's been, you know, social media and caffeine for me. Are your, are your vices? Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's pretty, it was kind of like that, but it probably felt, it took like a week. And I got the first round of just like clarity, just quiet in the mind. And then after 30 days, like a lot more of that started to return and I felt like I could focus.

• 13:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I could be present. I combined some of this with like, you know, just like some daily, just quiet time, like meditation type stuff. And I could think again. So that was the first thing I did. The second thing I did was I felt lost. Like, I felt like I didn't, again, answering a question of like, why am I doing this again? You know, like, the reason you and I both got into crypto and started on this bankless journey was like, the word freedom, we keep returning to that, right? Like, freedom. Like, we want to use crypto technology as an escape from all of the systems that try to control us, right? Like, the banks, or, you know, like, the centralized tech companies.

• 13:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  But somewhere along the road, like, I found myself a slave to, like, prices? Okay? I, you know-

• 14:01David Hoffman?

  Crypto prices?

• 14:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Crypto prices, but just kind of the, the, the concept of, like, wealth. Do you know what I mean? Like, okay, so this is, goes back to the Gold Post movie. We've talked about crypto wealth so many different times on Bankless over the years. What I had never done before, never, in my history, is actually defined what, like, enough was. Like, what's the number where, like, that's enough for everything I want to do in life, and my family, like, wants to do, and where I can provide for those that I love, and I don't have to look at the scoreboard anymore?

• 14:42David Hoffman?

  And then maybe to emphasize, this is not coming from a place of greed or greediness. This is coming from a place of, you love the game. You love the game of, like, growing a business and playing that particular game, investing in the right ways, because-

• 14:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Totally.

• 14:57David Hoffman?

  What are you gonna, what are you gonna do with your life? It's a fun game, it's an enjoyable game, and you love the game.

• 15:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so I'm not the type of person, like, to do sort of the flashy status symbol thing of, like, you know, buying the Lambo and whatever, like, that's not-

• 15:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you bought, you bought a used Toyota Highlander, like, four years ago.

• 15:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and like, so, but it wasn't that for me, but it was very much like the high score, like, the arcade game, of like, just like, it was just kind of this endless cycle of, you know, and crypto prices rise or can fall, you, you never know. Like you know, something that starts at like one could turn into a hundred and like you just extrapolate that forward. Anyway, I'd not taken the time to actually define with those in my life, my spouse, like what is enough. Okay, so that was a big piece of it. The other piece I was missing was my definition of wealth was way too narrow. It was like when I thought about wealth, mostly I thought about like net worth, right? Which is definitely a key

• 15:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  part of wealth, but that's also the part that society imposes on us. Like we're sort of taught, like what is success? It's net worth, it's kind of number go up. A key book for me was Sahil Bloom's book, which is kind of ironic because we actually had Sahil, I think he was like booked.

• 16:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we had him booked for a, for just a podcast, to be a podcast, yeah.

• 16:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, just talk about it. Anyway, I received the book in the mail, you know, because he had sent that book as pre-reading material for the podcast. I was like, okay, this is interesting. Well, I'm not doing anything else. I may as well read this. It was fantastic.

• 16:29David Hoffman?

  It was the right book at the right time?

• 16:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right book at the right time. It's called The Five Types of Wealth, and it just expanded my framework. So he talks about like, yeah, financial wealth is one type of wealth, but there's also like time wealth, relationships, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth. And I looked at that and I was like, oh my God, I'm completely over allocated in sort of the the financial side of things. And I'm not like taking care of the other four types of wealth, right? Like I was time poor, I was relationship light, I was like mentally scattered, I was physically like I hadn't worked out in probably a couple of years, like at least not consistently. So I just felt physically like just soft. And I was just focusing on one type

• 17:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  of wealth. I was missing all of the other types. You know, you see, he has just like questions about your relationship wealth and your social wealth. Who are the people that are going to be at the front row of your funeral, right? Are you investing in those relationships? And how are you investing? Are you dollar cost averaging into them? And so that was another key piece for me in sort of Finding my new map is creating a wealth plan that was more than just stacking, you know, Ether, Bitcoin, like crypto wealth, right? And that was broader and it was using money. You know, Naval often says this, money is a tool, right? And so it's like using as money as a tool to also allocate to those other types of wealth.

• 18:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so like I'm working out now, I'm like eating far more nutritiously. I'm like taking time for that. I'm investing in my relationships, both like my family, immediate family relationships. And then just like friendships that I'd sort of let atrophy. And I created a whole plan around this. So it's like one thing to read the book, but like what was pivotal for me is creating like a dashboard, goals, habits, systems, you know, like feedback loops. You know how I work, so it's just like grind it into a discipline.

• 18:31David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah, you turned the other four types of wealth into processes for yourself.

• 18:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:37David Hoffman?

  Which Ryan loves process, let me tell you.

• 18:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, yeah, well, it's, I feel like I just need reminders, right? And so this is like when you have processes and systems, when you drift, you can just get back on course. So that was the second thing. And the third thing was I felt in everything I was doing, I was being, I was stretched too thin. Like I was doing too many things, you know, when you have too many browser windows open and Chrome's like, that's too much, I'm eating all of your system resources, crash, you know? You just had too many browser windows, you know? And so I needed to, like, it was a result of saying yes to all of these things. Oh, that looks interesting, that look, I could do that, I could do that, I could do that. And what I needed to do was like correct the overachievers delusion, which like for me was like three things.

• 19:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was like, I'm the only one who could do this, is what I thought. If I don't do it, it won't get done and being busy is good. Those three things were like delusions, basically. I was feeding into myself and it turned out, and this really impressed upon me like 30 days in, everything was working still. Yeah, I just peeked in, I had a meeting with you and Rachel on our team, I peeked in.

• 19:45David Hoffman?

  Our COO.

• 19:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I was looking at the, the podcast feed, all the episodes shift. Thank you very much, David, I appreciate it. A roll up was not missed.

• 19:54David Hoffman?

  Roll up wasn't missed, we have still never miss a roll up at Bankless.

• 19:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, like ETH price wasn't great, but like the network was still great.

• 20:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's out of our control. Like Bankless Ventures was backing deals. Like, everything was happening. The team was kind of covering the gap. And so I look at the, like, what I used to believe and be like, because I thought, maybe I thought subconsciously that if I left, I don't know, the world would burn. Like, I don't know what would happen.

• 20:20David Hoffman?

  Things would crumble.

• 20:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and this was hard evidence that showed me otherwise. So now I'm doing this thing where I'm just like operating on energy accounting, which is like if a task drains more than it pays, right? It's delegated, it's automated, or it's deleted. And I'm deleting a lot of things right now for my life. And I'm just focusing on core areas of competence, right? The zone of genius, as people call it. Storytelling, so that means doing this podcast with you, telling stories about the frontier of crypto, AI, something I've been rabbit holing recently, like all that stuff, and allocating capital. So that is the upgrade. So there was the reboot, the system was down, had some downtime, you know, just like Solana. Sorry.

• 21:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Had some downtime. No, Solana's doing great. It's really great to see. I can't wait to talk to you more about that. And then also, I just upgraded the software. So that's what RSA2 is. And yeah, I don't know, I don't often share personal things, like, in general. Like, I'm pretty not that way. But I thought this might be helpful for some people, so that's why I published the article.

• 21:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and it's also, it's also just good to hear the story. And good to, good to see that you have invested in the other side of your life. I was very happy to see that you followed through on not a single tweet for nine months. And like, the gray icon.

• 21:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  90 days, 90 days.

• 21:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, 90 days, excuse me. And then also the gray icon next to your name, you know, on, just great, for 90 days. And it was good.

• 21:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I've always, I've always perceived that you've been way, like, better balanced than me. Is that?

• 21:57David Hoffman?

  Yes. So you, you talked about how, you said, you now operate on energy accounting. If a task drains me more than it pays, it's delegated, automated, or deleted. I have operated on that. I think- Maybe as a, not like an admirable quality of me, but just like if it drains me more than it pays, I ignore it, which is, which is something I personally have to deal with because like

• 22:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sometimes you have to grind.

• 22:22David Hoffman?

  Ignoring something is not always the best solution, but it has allowed me to be more sustainable. Like it's a little bit more innate in me of like, if this is not fun, then I am just not doing this. And I'm going to pivot into something that I do find fun and I'm going to apply my energies that way. Now, again, like I said, that has cost me 2021 taxes, let me tell you.

• 22:46David Hoffman?

  But, but this has also made like just my being a little bit more sustainable naturally. I'm not saying it's the optimum strategy, but this is why I think stuff like this, like the Twitter mobbings don't get me in the same way that they get you.

• 23:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I, I, I think you are much more bomb proof than me. It's like just more endurance runner type quality when, when you're that way. And I do think that that's the yin and the yang, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes you need a little bit of the grind and the over, like what could we do? Like the overachieving and sometimes you just need the, you know, like balance, you know, finding energy, actually like loving what you're doing and focusing on those things. So, um, yeah, that's a good stuff. Now you have had some thoughts, I think, about just like bankless.

• 23:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  And, you know, I read your tweet earlier this week as I was logging back in about your thoughts and on like what to really focus on. Tell me about that.

• 23:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Well, so maybe this comes down on the back of like your big realization. You said, you know, 30 days power down proved that, you know, the, the bankless media company would keep on shipping podcasts, bankless ventures would keep on going. And, you know, to be clear, the shoes of Ryan Sean Adams are very large. And there is no, there's no truly filling those shoes, but yet, you know, the, with the void that, that was left, that was created, you know, the Mycelial Network did fill that in and like, we learned to like route around the, the void, like that they get filled in. It's not perfect, but things, things did keep on going and we learned to fill that gap. But also that, like, we also learned.

• 24:20David Hoffman?

  About how to like with that gap there, there was an opportunity for everyone to kind of like step up and put on the new hats that needed to be donned on. And there's been, it's been generative, I would say on the backside of the company. And especially me, because I'm the person who has had to fill that void the most. And it was also a moment for the company to ask like, do we need to do this thing? Like, what are we doing that we actually might not need to do? Do we have to do things this way? And so downstream of that has been some choices. I put this out, this tweet saying there are four things that we're going to do at Bankless. And this is like actually maybe just not completely relevant to what I was just saying of filling in the void. But you know, choices that I think we ought to make moving forward.

• 25:05David Hoffman?

  One, during your last, the last 90 days, AI has just, you know, been as amazing as crypto was in 2021 in terms of hype and attention. And I am AI-pilled. I think you have mentioned that you are AI-pilled. We have a team member who is AI-pilled and then also a Jaws who is crypto and AI-pilled. And so we have actually have found solid podcasting talent that is AI-pilled. And we actually have a lot of podcasting talent that's AI-pilled and not just AI-pilled, but frontier tech-pilled. And we have been making more AI content, which I think many people have enjoyed. And some people have caused like elevated frustration that like, oh, my crypto podcast is now an AI podcast or a frontier tech podcast.

• 25:45David Hoffman?

  And I understand that. So we are creating a new podcast, a frontier tech focused podcast that we are going to incubate. You're still going to see those podcasts, episodes on this feed, but we're also going to incubate this new podcast. We're calling it Limitless. So we have Bankless, Bankless for Crypto, Crypto and Markets, and then Limitless for Frontier Tech. And so we're going to spin up that podcast vertical. So you'll see that as well. All the frontier Texas stuff is going to go over there. Also, the next thing renewed Ethereum focus. And the reason why I think this, this again, has nothing to do with your departure and it actually has everything to do with Ethereum, to me, becoming interesting again. Whereas the last two years of Ethereum have been.

• 26:26David Hoffman?

  Often a direction that hasn't felt aligned with what the universe wants, or what the universe expects out of. And I see Ethereum in the last six months realigning itself to a new future. And, you know, Bankless has always had Ethereum in our DNA. There is no ripping Ethereum out of Bankless DNA. That doesn't make sense. It's our first love, it always will be. And I think there's an opportunity now where Bankless can actually support Ethereum. Because I don't think, there wasn't much to support about Ethereum in like 2023. It needed to, like how you needed to go and realign yourself. Ethereum also needed a reboot. Figure out why, yep.

• 27:07David Hoffman?

  And I think we are slowly watching Ethereum reboot in a way that I think we can support. And so now that that opportunity exists once again, I think I want to take it. I think we should take it. Love it. Thumbnails, this seems small, but our thumbnails also need a reboot. And thumbnails seem like such a small thing, but people judge podcasters, YouTubers by what their thumbnails look like. The more stupid, open mouthed face, like, kind of YouTuber face? We were always pushing against it, but the incentives pointed there. And so we're trying to figure out how to keep on optimizing for click-through rate, which is what you do when you optimize for thumbnails, while also kind of like restoring legitimacy,

• 27:50David Hoffman?

  which we once had, and like the podcast feed does have, but I want to go back into just optimizing for legitimacy. And I think this relates to what you are thinking about with like your energy level and how to not deplete your energy level. And this means like we're going to optimize for what we feel is legitimacy and legitimate conversations and like things that we find interesting, rather than like the dopamine of click-through rate. And then, of course, the last one is Ryan Tronan's returns back this week, so.

• 28:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that's really awesome. I think that the two most exciting technologies in my lifetime, aside from the internet, was just like growing up, whatever, crypto, 2010s into now, right? That's the story. And now AI, 2020s. And so I'd like to be exploring both of those frontiers. It's like a pretty rare opportunity. If you ever need a guest host on Limitless, okay?

• 28:43David Hoffman?

  You're interested?

• 28:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm kinda, I dabble, okay? I've been using, you know, the tools on a daily basis, learning about transformers and just like the way all of these systems are structured. So that'll be really fun.

• 28:58David Hoffman?

  I think you will be, you've been listening to the Josh episodes on Frontier Check and also the AI rollups with Ajaz and Josh. Ajaz and Josh, I'm very bullish on as podcasters. And when I've stepped into that role with the AI rollup, Josh, Ajaz and David, it's actually, I'm just, I just feel like the Jason Calcanis. And I say that in a negative way. And I'll leave that there. But Josh and Ajaz are very smart. And I'm very bullish on them as podcasters. And I think you will definitely enjoy being a part of that conversation because I walk away from those podcasts. Very bullish on AI and very interested in what happens next, which is how I felt about crypto in like 2019.

• 29:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, Bankless listeners, thanks for indulging David and I in a little catch up, a little bit of housekeeping. We appreciate you. After the break, you're gonna have to fade out to sponsors, David, because I don't even know who's sponsoring us anymore. But you gotta update me on some of the big things that happened while I was out because I have so many questions. So let's get to that.

• 29:58David Hoffman?

  Bankless, we're gonna get to the Trump meme coin, the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, and the Libra debacle. But first, a message from some of these fantastic sponsors like Uniswap that make this show possible. Uniswap is your gateway to a more efficient DeFi experience. With Uniswap swapping and bridging across 13 chains, it's simple, fast, and cost effective, helping you move value wherever, whenever. Thanks to deep liquidity on the Uniswap protocol, you'll enjoy a minimal price impact on every trade. And now Uniswap V4 takes it even further. Swappers benefit from gas savings on multi-hop swaps and ETH trading pair. While liquidity providers can create new pools at 99% lower costs. The best part, you don't have to do anything extra. Each trade is automatically routed through Uniswap X, V2, V3, and V4.

• 30:42David Hoffman?

  So you get the most efficient swap without even thinking about it. Whether you're swapping, sending, on-ramping, off-ramping, or bridging, Uniswap's web app and wallet gives you the tools to unlock DeFi's full potential on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Unichain, and more. Use Uniswap's web app and wallet for a more efficient way to use DeFi. You may have already heard about InfineX. InfineX has, in my opinion, the nicest cross-chain swap and bridge feature that you will find anywhere. It is called Swidge, swap and bridge. And we're going to show you what it looks like. First, we're going to log into my InfineX account with a passkey. Now, there's no seed phrases in InfineX. This is just a one-click setup with biometric passkeys. But in addition to that, my InfineX account is fully non-custodial. So bam, I just logged in. It was two clicks and I'm already into my InfineX account. So let's go make a Swidge.

• 31:25David Hoffman?

  I'm going to go Swidge my USDC that is on Base. And I'm going to buy Bara Chain, which is a completely different chain. So we're going to Swidge this. I'm going to press that button. And then InfineX is going to execute this order, this cross-chain order for me. And now it is done. But actually, I'm not really feeling Barish anymore. So I'm going to go from Bara to Penguins. I'm going to buy a Penguin on Solana. So I'm going from the Bara Chain to Solana. See, no transaction signing, no gas to worry about. You just Swidge across whatever chain that you want with InfineX. That was so easy. Go check out InfineX and try your first Swidge today. In the Wild West of DeFi, stability and innovation are everything, which is why you should check out Frax Finance, the protocol revolutionizing stablecoins, DeFi, and Rollouts. The core of Frax Finance is Frax USD, which is backed by BlackRock's Institutional Biddle Fund.

• 32:09David Hoffman?

  Frax designed Frax USD for best-in-class yields across DeFi, T-bills, and carry trade returns all in one. Just head to frax.com, then stake it to earn some of the best yields in DeFi. Want even more? Bridge your Frax USD over to the FraxTal Layer 2 for the same yield plus FraxTal points and explore FraxTal's diverse Layer 2 ecosystem with protocols like Curve, Convex, and more, all rewarding early adopters. Frax isn't just a protocol, it's a digital nation powered by the FXX token and governed by its global community. Acquire FXX through frax.com or your go-to L2 DEX, stake it and help shape Frax Nation's future. Ready to join the forefront of DeFi? Visit frax.com now to start earning with Frax USD and staked Frax USD. And for Bankless listeners, you can use frax.com/r/bankless

• 32:54David Hoffman?

  when bridging to Fraxal for exclusive Fraxal perks and boosted rewards. Before we get into the the three subjects that I teased right before going into the break, Ryan, I just kind of want to talk about some numbers really quick.

• 33:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, okay.

• 33:06David Hoffman?

  Since your, since your departure on January 16th, your 90-day hiatus, ETH USD is down 48% from $3,400 to $1,750.

• 33:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what I remember. I remember it was in the 3000s when I left.

• 33:21David Hoffman?

  3,400, yeah, well, it's 1750. Hopefully you weren't on margin when you left.

• 33:26David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin, Bitcoin USD is down 7% from 100,000 down to $93,000. Solana USD is down 30% from $210 down to $150. And the total crypto market cap is down from 3.6 trillion to 3 trillion. And interestingly, Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin is down versus gold 25%.

• 33:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Interesting.

• 33:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, since your departure. What's your reaction? What's your reflections on on these numbers?

• 33:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, honestly, it looks, okay, so it looks most painful for ETH. It seems like Bitcoin's doing just fine. As of right now, I mean, like, I know it was down, like, I think I was looking at the charts. I think it was down like a lot more when the tariffs got announced, all of that stuff. Solana looks like it's doing pretty well as well. It seems like the, the sort of the, the bear market right now is Ether. I don't know about the other long tail of assets. I've looked at kind of like DeFi tokens and such that I hold. I don't think that they have had a resurgence, L2 as well. So it's like the entire Ethereum ecosystem is kind of, it's down fairly bad relative to Bitcoin and Sol.

• 34:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like Bitcoin relative to gold is pretty interesting, only down 25%.

• 34:45David Hoffman?

  I mean, I see. Only down 25%? 25%? Gold moving 25% is, I think, is a pretty big deal.

• 34:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Gold is crushing, though. Right? And it's all because of, you know, another theme that seemed to have emerged while I was out, which is like,

• 34:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  the end of the dollar, the like end of Pax Americana. You know what I mean? Like the end of Bretton Woods. Is that seriously happening under Trump? It seems like it might be. At least it's the beginning of the end. And so I think like gold is kind of repricing that. That's the way it seems. And, you know, so, so it's definitely been on a tear. Bitcoin seems like it's doing really well, though. But yeah, like it's ETH that's really suffering right now.

• 35:24David Hoffman?

  Mm hmm. Bitcoin. So as, as you know, I did this Bitcoin, Bitcoin versus Ethereum podcast before, Bankless. It was called POV Crypto. It was me, the Ethereum guy and a Bitcoiner co-host. And we were just debating. We just yelled at each other. Since we were college friends, it was fun.

• 35:40David Hoffman?

  A lot of what he said in the early days of that podcast in like the 2018 to 2019 era, is coming true, where the brand and lead that Bitcoin has is actually large and more large than what like Bitcoin detractors say. And that eventually Bitcoin will be purchased by central banks. And we are not seeing, we are not seeing Bitcoin being bought by our central bank. But I would say the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve is like pretty damn close to exactly what that like idea, that concept was, where the Bitcoin brand is so incredibly strong. And the Bitcoin story, story and the immaculate conception, which I like minimized back then.

• 36:20David Hoffman?

  I was like, no, it's actually about like scale and productivity and revenue and innovation and software updates. That's actually the real thing.

• 36:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 36:28David Hoffman?

  I think Bitcoiners have, like old school Bitcoiners that we would debate with back in 2018, 2019, were, had more foresight than I gave credit for back then.

• 36:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep. I, I think that I got a couple of things I would say. I don't think it's. Over for Ether at all. I think right now it's losing the mid-game. And your comments about it, kind of like, I think I read a tweet from you where the Ethereum ship is kind of, it's taking a long time, but it is turning, the big ship to turn, and it is turning. I definitely see that. I know you've got an article coming out that you've been working on, right? About Ethereum and sort of the, you know, like the shift and the signs of life that you're seeing. And like, maybe call it a pivot in some ways, like this emphasis on the L2. I've been ruminating on-

• 37:17David Hoffman?

  The L1.

• 37:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bell 1, excuse me, yes. I've been ruminating on like, another article about what I think the Ethereum community kind of got wrong, and what it needs to do.

• 37:29David Hoffman?

  Interesting.

• 37:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Particularly-

• 37:30David Hoffman?

  Okay, so actually, what the Ethereum community needs to do is actually what I would say my article is about.

• 37:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, and I think you're probably talking about more the Ethereum network, which is important.

• 37:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  I have some thoughts on ETH the asset. Basically, the TLDR from my perspective is, holy shit, ETH just got totally outplayed by the Bitcoin religion. It did not, like, you know, Ethereum talks about building, right? It's like, we're a community of builders. We build, that's what we do, right? That's our advantage. Okay, building on the technical side, but has not built the meme base layer, has not built the cult, has not built the religion. And we are seeing, and it's not something even the Ethereum culture would kind of acknowledge, right? It's like, it doesn't, it doesn't do maximalism-

• 38:14David Hoffman?

  I don't think Ethereum culture has that DNA.

• 38:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's the, that's a problem. And that's, that's where you suffer if you're trying to become a global store of value asset. Anyway, I want to take that angle and kind of explore that a little bit, but-

• 38:28David Hoffman?

  Love it.

• 38:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the other side of why, you know, like Bitcoin's been super successful, because it's gotten to the level of central bankers. But in order to get there, dude, you needed this cult. You needed people like Michael Saylor. You need people like Dave Bailey, who's like rubbing elbows with the politicians, getting to speak at conferences about this asset. Like, you have to work your way up to central bank. And Ethereum hasn't done, hasn't done that on the community side. Anyway, not to say it can't, because it's got all the raw ingredients there. And some, like many, that we've argued are like better attributes for a store of value than Bitcoin. But it has to really work on, on that side of things. So, yeah, that's what I've been thinking about.

• 39:05David Hoffman?

  What's your take on the story of the immaculate conception of Bitcoin, leading to its very strong credible neutrality, like the elimination of Satoshi? So Bitcoin has very strong credible neutrality in that context versus the mere existence of Vitalik Buterin. And it's like, more like the Ethereum Foundation. While Ethereum, we like Ethereum because it's credibly neutral compared to Bitcoin and compared to Bitcoin as a monetary asset. It doesn't have that same story. And so it disqualifies it from central bank inclusion. What's your take on that?

• 39:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  My take on that is just that it's a religious proposition. And it's a fantastic religious proposition for Bitcoin. But there are different types of religions that you can form. And that doesn't have to be the only way a religion takes root. You know, it is one of the strengths of Bitcoin, but that does not preclude Ether from becoming a global monetary asset. Now, it feels bad because it's like not winning that mid game right now. And even, I was thinking compared to like 2021, 2022. I feel like ETH has fallen behind on the global store of value, reserve asset like conversation narrative, right?

• 40:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  And like, I think that that ground needs to be regained if we're going to see material price appreciation in the future for ETH. And it's an open, open story. There's like some probability that happens and there's some probability that it doesn't. And I think part of what we're seeing is the market pricing that in.

• 40:36David Hoffman?

  So Ryan, you had your departure on January 16th. And if you had left three days later, January 19th, the ratio between Sol-ETH would actually have gone down by 10% because that was the day that Donald Trump launched his meme coin. And that was the day that Solana broke all time highs, Sol USD broke all time highs.

• 40:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 40:58David Hoffman?

  I mean, Sol-ETH, the ratio of Solana to ETH has been going up pretty consistently, in a pretty consistent trend since like December of 2023, which, I mean, it violently went up from 2023 into 2024. And then it's been consistently trending up versus Ethereum. And so The recent, both dollar and ETH ratio terms has been marked the top by the Donald Trump meme coin. You said that you didn't see the existence of the Donald Trump meme coin until seven days later. And congratulations for being able to dodge that mess. So let me kind of guide you through some of the conversations that has been happening downstream of this. Of course, Donald Trump launches the meme coin, it's on Solana.

• 41:39David Hoffman?

  All meme coins in that one moment of time on Solana had their liquidity sucked out from them. And I was, I was trading meme coins on Solana at this time. I had like four or five or six meme coins. I dumped all of my meme coins for the Trump coin. All of them.

• 41:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you buy Ivanka or just Trump?

• 41:56David Hoffman?

  I did not buy Ivanka.

• 41:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 41:58David Hoffman?

  When Ivanka, when the, no, not Ivanka, Melania. When the Melania meme coin.

• 42:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Melania, excuse me, okay.

• 42:04David Hoffman?

  How dare you invoke Ivanka's name into here? Yeah, when the Melania meme coin came out, that caused the Trump meme coin to dump. Because it was dilutive, right? Like Trump is the meme.

• 42:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Too many tokens, scarcity, I thought we did, yeah, got it.

• 42:18David Hoffman?

  Apparently, like, we're gonna talk about the Libra debacle.

• 42:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 42:21David Hoffman?

  But apparently, the same guy that launched the Libra coin was involved with launching the Melania coin.

• 42:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, what?

• 42:26David Hoffman?

  Wait, did you not know that?

• 42:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  The, no, and the Libra coin was Javier Malé?

• 42:31David Hoffman?

  Javier Malé. Javier, Javier Malé, but in the backend, there was this one mastermind who was trying to like, find the most clouded people possible, convince them to launch meme coins. And so he got a hold of Melania somehow, and then also got a hold of Javier Malé. But that's jumping forward in this story. When the Melania coin launched, the Trump meme coin lost like 40% of value, 30% of value. Billions of dollars walked out. It was a completely like unforced error because everyone wanted to speculate on this Trump meme coin. Everyone, everyone was like, holding a superposition of, oh my god, this is so bullish for Solana meme coins. Versus, oh no, this is a terrible grift.

• 43:13David Hoffman?

  And we don't know, we don't exactly know what's going to be, no one really knew what was real. And then when the Melania meme coin got launched, the superposition collapsed. And everyone was like, oh no, this is a grift.

• 43:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a bad, it's a grift. It's a grift. Okay, okay. Can I ask you a question? All right, so I know you're talking about this happening last quarter, but it's an ongoing story. So I was reading even catching up this week. Right now, the top 200, 250 holders, something like this, of the Trump token, they're now going to be invited to a private dinner with Donald Trump. Yeah. Okay, the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump, President of the United States, okay? You buy a meme coin to get access to the most powerful man in the world. Like, that's a political thing. That's like lobbying. That's like, Trump's adding utility to his meme coin, David. Isn't that what we always dreamed of? It's Gary Vee. It was Gary Vee strategy. Right. Dinner with Gary Vee. Okay, so my question to you is like,

• 44:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  how is this perceived when it happened and now? Like, is this a good thing for crypto? Because the other thing I was catching up on is like, all of our wildest dreams on the regulatory front are coming true. Do you remember the twisted world we lived in two years ago? Where Gary Gensler was God-king and he was coming with this, you know, Thor hammer to smash everything in crypto? And the whole administration was backing him. And we had like FDIC, we had Operation Choke. The whole apparatus of the government was going after crypto aggressively. Now, all of that's reversed. They're all friendly. We're going to get stablecoin legislation. I was watching a clip from Mark Ueda, who's a commissioner of the SEC and catching up with like on Hester Perst stuff.

• 44:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  He basically said, hey, you know the Gensler regime? That's all gone. Now we're super crypto favorable. And we're doing all of these things to support the industry. It's like Trump literally fulfilled his promise on that front, right? Like, the regulation, regulatory winds have completely shifted in crypto's favor. Treasury Secretary, Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, he's doing stuff with Tether. Now, it feels to me, David, like we no longer are at risk from the government of being squashed. We're at risk from the government of being corrupted. Okay, and so like we've moved to a different vector of... The pendulum has swung. Yes, and so the Trump coin itself, like, is this viewed as like, oh, this is what true adoption looks like,

• 45:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  the president doing this? Or is it viewed as, oh, God, another vector for corruption? And this, like, long term will not go well?

• 45:44David Hoffman?

  It was initially considered the former and it is lately considered the latter. And this was what Vitalik Buterin tweeted out pretty quickly after the launch of the Trump meme coin. He tweeted out this tweet that said, "The risk of politician coins comes from the fact that they are such a perfect bribery vehicle. If a politician issues a coin, you do not need to even send them any coins to give them money. Instead, you just buy and hold the coin and this increases the value of their holdings passively." And then, of course, Donald Trump announces that the top 200 holders gets to have dinner with Donald Trump, which means like if you hold enough of the market cap of Donald Trump, you just get to whisper in his ear directly in this dinner.

• 46:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, how's the Trump token doing on that news? They're spotting the market catalyst?

• 46:30David Hoffman?

  It pumped like 60% with the announcement of that. Yeah, so here's the chart. It was down 89, it was down 90% over 92 days. And then, so there was, there was a three-month lockup. So the Trump team, which owned 80% of the supply of the token, had a three-month lockup. We are now 92 days into the issuance of the Trump coin, so the unlock happened three days ago. And now, just recently, it pumps up, it pumps up 70, 80%, just two days after vesting unlocks.

• 47:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is someone gonna come up with, like some analyst group gonna come up with like the thesis for Trump coin, which is like all the lobbyists in Washington DC will have to bid on this thing in order to get, you know, like influence to curry favor with Trump? Not only, not only all the lobbyists and corporations and such, but other countries? Like you could, you could create a bull case for Trump token

• 47:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  based on its kind of like naked influence with the President of the United States. Like, by the way, society, societally, that sounds like a complete disaster to me. Like further corruption of our political system, but I guess it's not like illegal? I like, I don't know, where do you think, like where do you think this leads? It's not great.

• 47:52David Hoffman?

  To fill you in on what the crypto community has been doing in response to this, like to go back to what you're saying about like the Gary, the Gary Gensler is out and you know, now it's crime season again. That's the, that's the meme in crypto, but people are like actually posting like somewhat satirical, but somewhat serious tweets of like Gary Gensler and be like, I missed this man. I miss Gary Gensler.

• 48:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you, did you see, I think I saw this in passing again. I'm not up to speed yet, but Richard Hart, the case against Richard Hart, SEC case against, was dropped. That happened this week?

• 48:24David Hoffman?

  I haven't tapped into the details of that. I've been waiting for someone to synthesize that.

• 48:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, okay. All right. So that's happening. What else?

• 48:31David Hoffman?

  Okay. So the other one is the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. And so Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

• 48:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 48:40David Hoffman?

  Around this time, there was a ton of just jostling positioning by companies, foundations, corporations to become Trump aligned. And so like Ripple, Brad Garland House started, what was, what's it called? Like proximity posting. And so everyone started posting like the United, like United States pro USA, USA, USA, like tweets on Twitter. Brad Garland House was talking about how great Trump was. Solana released this marketing video that was just like regurgitating the cultural shift from the left to the right about, like the line was in the, in the video, I don't want to invent genders. I want to like innovate on ideas or something. And the crypto community just rejected it because it was so cringe.

• 49:25David Hoffman?

  And the Solana account.

• 49:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not well executed.

• 49:27David Hoffman?

  It was, it was, it was too cringe. It was too cringe. They ended up deleting the video, but there was a bunch of like jostling.

• 49:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did Anatoly apologize? Did he have to?

• 49:35David Hoffman?

  He did. He did. And people, people accepted his response. It was a good response. It was a good response. So yeah, there was just like, like jostling, like of everyone trying to become aligned with being pro United States because everyone wanted to be in the strategic reserve because we didn't know what would constitute being in this strategic reserve. And then Donald Trump on Truth Social.

• 49:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're saying that there was actually other assets that were like, like contemplated for this, like, like.

• 50:00David Hoffman?

  So Donald Trump tweeted out on Truth Social about the existence of a strategic reserve.

• 50:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 50:05David Hoffman?

  And he tweeted out how it's going to be things like Ripple, Cardano.

• 50:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why?

• 50:10David Hoffman?

  Solana, I think.

• 50:13David Hoffman?

  No one knew. No one knew. And then I think one more.

• 50:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Made in the US? Was that, is that?

• 50:16David Hoffman?

  Yes, I think it was like US coins, but it was also just coins that had like, I think successfully jostled their way into position to get the pro tweet from Trump. Then also, there was somebody taking like a margin-long position on something like, uh, I can't remember what it was, uh, one of these, one of the shitcoins like XRP, hours before that Truth Social post.

• 50:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nice, nice. Okay, but, but the, the, the story of the reserve is that it's just a Bitcoin reserve.

• 50:40David Hoffman?

  It's just a Bitcoin reserve. There's also something else that I can't remember what it's called, but like, oh yeah, digital asset stockpile, which is just the assets that the United States already has, and that includes like Tether, Ether.

• 50:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  They have a lot of Ether still, right?

• 50:53David Hoffman?

  They have, they have a decent amount of Ether. And digital, in Bitcoin, in the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve cannot be sold. That is what the Bitcoin Reserve is. In the Digital Asset Stockpile, there is discretion and there is somebody going to be in charge of like a long-term plan for the treasury. So they're treating the Digital Asset Stockpile as a treasury that someone is going to sell and make strategic decisions on. But the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve is not going to be sold, and that's the whole point.

• 51:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. I mean, this kind of stuff is why Bitcoin is so strong right now, right? It's like you were talking about other assets like jostling for kind of power. Like you could argue that, that Bitcoin did that too. The community did that in a decentralized way and actually like won.

• 51:33David Hoffman?

  Started 10 years ago.

• 51:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they started 10 years ago and they won. You know, remember that, uh, David Bailey having Trump at the Bitcoin conference, right? It's like that whole thing, that grassroots effort to sway the Republican Party that Bitcoin was the asset. I mean, that's part of their religious victory here.

• 51:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the reason, I would say the reason why it has the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and everything else has either nothing or a Digital Asset Stockpile is like the Cardano Ripple Solana tried to jostle for position in a top-down way, like leadership made, made decisions to try and get, you know, close to Trump. And the best that they could do was getting in the stockpile, but Bitcoin being a bottom-up movement won itself as a strategic reserve, uh, because it's bottom-up, it's grassroots.

• 52:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they gave them votes too.

• 52:19David Hoffman?

  And gave them votes. Gave them votes and money. Uh, and then also there's Ethereum, which is just like opting out of this whole entire thing.

• 52:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're too good for that.

• 52:26David Hoffman?

  We're too good for that. Yeah, exactly.

• 52:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, okay. That's what's happening. All right, what else? What's it? Libra, you said?

• 52:34David Hoffman?

  The Libra meme coin. Okay, so this is, this, uh, this ended the meta of the meme coin meta. This, this was the blow off top of the meme coin.

• 52:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like ended it permanently for everything? Like all meme coins are down?

• 52:47David Hoffman?

  Because they're still meme coins, but I, I think meme coins will never be as big as they were leading up to that point.

• 52:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 52:53David Hoffman?

  Like, I think the Donald Trump meme coin, it was the top of Solana USD, it was the top of meme coin volumes. And then the launch of Libra was like the jumping of the shark.

• 53:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  So this was like 2017 Katy Perry with her like nails, with all of the crypto assets on her nails. Okay.

• 53:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right. Okay, so February 14th, um, this erupted after the Argentine president Javier Millay launched a meme coin called Libra with a Solana contract. This isn't all in Spanish. He had since deleted the tweet, uh, and that, that launched off this frenzy. And I remember where I was. I was at dinner with a friend and I got my tweet, Twitter blew up. And I was like, oh my God, Javier Millay just launched a meme coin. And this was like after I had been down in Argentina for a month at this like crypto grassroots, uh, just like pop up city.

• 53:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, basically the thing for that, it's like Argentina really gets it. I mean, it's about banking on bank.

• 53:46David Hoffman?

  Argentine crypto, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And Javier Millay just never came. Uh, and I think it was because our reputation as an industry is pretty bad and apparently he's also more.

• 53:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  This helps, this helps, I'm sure.

• 53:57David Hoffman?

  And so, uh, it hits, it hits $4.5 billion market cap.

• 54:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 54:03David Hoffman?

  Like 45 minutes after launch, it hits $4.5 billion.

• 54:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  And he's just running, running the Trump play. This is the Trump play. This is Trump token.

• 54:11David Hoffman?

  So he, I think Javier Millay had very low context about what was happening. He got used. He did not know exactly what he was doing. He was getting directions from people like pulling the strings, puppeteering him.

• 54:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hmm.

• 54:25David Hoffman?

  At the, at the peak of a $4.5 billion market cap, uh, this guy who orchestrated this, Hayden Davis, and many other insiders, uh, cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars. Uh, and the, the price went from $4.5 billion down to less than $1 billion inside of two hours.

• 54:44David Hoffman?

  Which is insanely rapid price movements, like 4.5 billion dollars got created and then 3 billion dollars got destroyed inside of two hours, kind of nuts. And this international uproar, there was an attempt to impeach Javier Malley in Argentina that didn't go through because Javier Malley's party controls like what is equivalently the House and Senate, like he's in control, so he's not getting impeached, he's fine. But it was very embarrassing. And if there's one thing as a politician in Argentina you do not do, you can be corrupt as a politician in Argentina, you cannot be embarrassed as a politician in Argentina. That's the culture down there. That's cultural, okay. And this was embarrassing? This was incredibly embarrassing. Did he have to apologize? What did he do?

• 55:26David Hoffman?

  He deleted his tweets, he said that he, he said that there were people inside that corrupted him and he's gonna like oust the rats that got into his like, you know, in his like sphere. There's this guy Hayden Davis, do I have a picture of him? I need to show you a picture of him. Did you ever see Hayden Davis, the picture of this guy? Who is this? Oh my god. So he's the guy that orchestrated this, this guy. Chief villain? This guy? This is a mastermind? This is the mastermind. Alright, he looks pretty young. Yeah, he's in his little... How did he do this? How did he get in with like, you know, world leaders? I lost the picture.

• 56:04David Hoffman?

  So apparently he found a way to, he found Javier Malley's sister and was texting his sister. Well, that's scrappy. Yes, it was very scrappy. It was very scrappy. I can't get a picture to load, but you can kind of see it, here we go. He texted his sister and this sister was the way that Hayden Davis got his way into convincing Javier Malley to launch a meme coin. And this is what this guy does, he realizes that he can find people with clout, he can convince them to launch a meme coin, and then he can extract the meme coin because he knows the game better than anyone. Except this one last thing happened, Ryan, where this meteor, which is kind of like um...

• 56:46David Hoffman?

  Maybe it's like a Uniswap or Balancer or liquidity launching pool on Solana. Ben Chow is the name. This came downstream of Jupiter. Meteora, which again, the liquidity pool on Solana was working with Hayden Davis to launch these meme coins, but Ben Chow was the one guy who could MEV Hayden Davis. So Hayden Davis was trying to snipe the supply and he was working with Ben Chow, who owns and operates the infrastructure. And Ben Chow was like, "Oh, I'm going to snipe the sniper," which is what he did. Ben Chow realized, and people in the Meteora community realized that this had been going on, that Meteora, Hayden Davis, and like many other

• 57:26David Hoffman?

  people had created this influencer meme coin infrastructure complex, like industrial complex, where they would find influencers, they would pump up meme coins, and then people earlier and earlier and earlier in the stack would snipe the supply and eat and like max extract. And this, with the launch of the Libra token, was everyone realizing that this meme coin influencer infrastructure industrial complex existed, and that's why the game was up. Because everyone saw how exactly corrupt it was. It was not fair at all. And it all collapsed down to the person who was able to snipe the supply quickest and earliest in the stack.

• 58:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I can't help but wonder if like the things that are going on today will cause a backlash among the neutral kind of observer, the kind of the hearts and minds that like we have been trying to get on the crypto train, right? Which is like, now you have major politicians rolling out these meme coins that are, that seem to be a perfect surface area for vectors of corruption, right? And the good, the good news about this whole story is all the regulatory winds are blowing our favor. And maybe we can use that to actually build things that are useful for the world, like a non-sovereign store of value and like stable coins, everything. And all of the like, the good things, the pure things. But I can't

• 58:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  help but wonder if this is like, just going to be super bad for our reputation long term? And that there's going to be a backlash and some hell to pay at some point in time?

• 58:59David Hoffman?

  This was my, and I think our concern about the whole political season and the three months leading up to the election, where you and I were resistant to the idea of throwing unanimous support behind one single party, the Republican Party, because we want crypto to be neutral.

• 59:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 59:14David Hoffman?

  We would like to hedge our bets. We don't want it to just only be partisan. I think that is, what's happening here downstream of that is vindicative of that position. I know you and I both listened to, in respect to Sam Harris. I have listened to Sam Harris mention the corruptibility of the Donald Trump meme coin three or four times.

• 59:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 59:35David Hoffman?

  And...

• 59:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  It seems to be, it's focused.

• 59:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I think, I'll go so far to say that the current brand of crypto, right now, is worse than it was post-FTX collapse.

• 59:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really? You think it's that bad? Among a certain subset, like neutral third parties?

• 59:50David Hoffman?

  Among, among public, public non-crypto sentiment, like outsider sentiment of crypto.

• 59:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, one way I judge this is like, how embarrassed are you to tell people that, like, you love crypto? Or you work in crypto? Or something like that? At like a cocktail party among like normie people?

• 1:00:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  And is that higher?

• 1:00:09David Hoffman?

  I have for the first time, in that context, again...

• 1:00:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  I work in media.

• 1:00:13David Hoffman?

  I said, I run a frontier tech podcast.

• 1:00:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that's where we are right now.

• 1:00:20David Hoffman?

  This is previously, like, post-FTX, I was still beating my chest about like crypto.

• 1:00:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24David Hoffman?

  Like, yeah, FTX is exactly why.

• 1:00:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Freedom tech for the world.

• 1:00:26David Hoffman?

  Freedom tech for the world. The FTX is an example why we need crypto, actually, not that crypto's bad. And now for the, post of all of that, I was like, no, I do frontier tech.

• 1:00:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so, good news is, huge regulatory progress, everything we could have wished, that is actually happening, and that counts for something. Bad news is, we may have chipped away some of our soul. And I wonder if the trade-off's worth it.

• 1:00:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I wonder.

• 1:00:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it might be still, but I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:00:54David Hoffman?

  We will see.

• 1:00:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll have to see.

• 1:00:56David Hoffman?

  This is the frontier, you know. I'm glad you're with us. This is the journey.

• 1:01:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Just last thing. You got to catch me up on the news of the week, but I think we got to break for sponsors first. Yeah?

• 1:01:05David Hoffman?

  OK. Yep, that's right. So, OK, news of the week. Content coins, Jesse Paulak, Base, Zora. You like Zora, so I want to actually get your take on Zora before you left because you were a Zora bull, and I want to get your take about like what you thought about Zora. Because I will update you about what Zora has transformed into as of recently. And then it's all about the Ethereum pivot. And then we're also going to talk about Bitcoin as well. So we're going to talk about those subjects. But first, MSs from some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Imagine verifying yourself without handing over personal data. No hacked databases, no unnecessary personal exposure for airdrops, and no AI bots ruining community governance. Meet SELF, the on-chain identity verification protocol built for privacy and control. SELF protocol uses zero knowledge proofs to confirm your identity safely.

• 1:01:49David Hoffman?

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

• 1:02:31David Hoffman?

  Visit self.xyz and follow SELF Protocol on X. Imagine a world where your day-to-day banking runs on a blockchain. That's exactly what Mantle is building, powered by a $4 billion treasury and poised to become the largest sustainable on-chain financial hub. As part of their 2025 expansion, Mantle is introducing three new core innovation pillars that bridge traditional finance with decentralized technology. First is their Enhanced Index Fund, aiming for $1 billion in AUM by Q1. It provides optimized exposure to Bitcoin, ETH, Solana, and USD, complete with built-in yield opportunities. Next, Mantle Banking promises to revolutionize global value transfer through seamless blockchain-powered banking services, bridging crypto into your daily life.

• 1:03:11David Hoffman?

  Finally, Mantle X blends AI with DeFi to deliver an intelligent, user-friendly experience for everyone. And the best part is that this is all in addition to their already-launched products like Mantle Network, ME, and FBTC. Ready to step into the future of finance? Follow Mantle on X at @mantleofficial and join the on-chain revolution today. Ryan, let me tell you about content coins. Okay. So, content coins are what Jesse Pollock and Jacob from Zora are talking about when they say, you can take a bit of content, you can take a 10-minute short, like, long clip, you can take a JPEG, and you can make an ERC20 token out of it, and generally, you would do this on Zora. And this, to you, might sound like a meme coin.

• 1:03:55David Hoffman?

  And I would say that it structurally is the meme coin, and Jesse's advocating for... It is, it's not, like, different from a meme coin, but it's, where it does differ is the culture and the intent around these things. And so it's where a meme coin is, you know, meant to have a super-high market cap. Content coins are really just meant to be traded more than have a high-market cap. And they're for creators, right? They're for creators, yeah, not for, not, they're not for... Kind of the TikTok crowd, or like, whatever, the influ... Yeah, okay. And so the idea here, this is a friend of mine who you know as well. He posts on Instagram, and he has an Instagram account that has 120,000 followers, and he makes clips that have, like, hundreds, hundreds of thousands of views.

• 1:04:37David Hoffman?

  And so, he tweeted out, "For 3 million views last night, last month, Instagram paid me $3. In the 12 hours since Jacob and Jesse showed my Zora post some love, I have earned 28 in rewards." Not dusting off the yacht catalog, but it's not hard to see the vision, very cool, and feeling thankful Zora isn't just for crypto. So the idea here, and I would also say it's very important to open up the Zora mobile app and scroll through it, because it looks and feels like Instagram and TikTok. Yeah, I have. But there is a market cap associated with a post. And the idea here is, like, you know, meme coins on PumpFun look like 4chan and are optimizing for traders and meme coin speculators, and that's great.

• 1:05:17David Hoffman?

  And then Zora is optimizing for creators, and it's not in trying to have, like, a $500-million banger. It's much more optimizing for, like, quantity and creators to do, like, what early Instagram was doing and TikTok, and just allowing people to speculate on... Whatever the rise of the attention, the virality of the post, which isn't too different from meme coins, but they're trying to make a cultural distinction between content coins and meme coins. What do you think about that?

• 1:05:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, so let me ask you, what's the reaction been to this?

• 1:05:50David Hoffman?

  Very negative.

• 1:05:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that crypto Twitter? Is that all circles?

• 1:05:54David Hoffman?

  Crypto Twitter.

• 1:05:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Which tribes are saying what? Bitcoiners hate it all, but like

• 1:05:58David Hoffman?

  Bitcoiners hate it all, yes.

• 1:05:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I imagine a lot of people hate it because it's like Ethereum ecosystem based, that sort of thing. And then some of the like more purity focused people are like, why is Jesse doing this? Why is Coinbase doing this? It's a meme coin. You shouldn't like pump meme coin prices. Is that kind of the reaction?

• 1:06:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I would say that's a reaction. Yeah. So a lot of people are looking over at the Ethereum camp and they are saying that this is Ethereum doing what it's best at, which is taking stuff that is like Solana figured out and making it highbrow and like putting it in ivory towers. Like these are like just highbrow meme coins.

• 1:06:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30David Hoffman?

  And you know, it's like, it's meme coins. At the end of the day, and the Ethereum community has been shitting on meme coins for years, but now they've made their version of meme coins and they're highbrow and they're holier than thou.

• 1:06:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And now meme, now meme coins are good.

• 1:06:41David Hoffman?

  And now meme coins are good.

• 1:06:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're rebranding it to content coins and you're just like doing the same thing.

• 1:06:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So that's a Solana take. I would say like, I would say more than half of the Ethereum community is not bought in on me, on content coins. It is specifically like the Jesse or Azora base culturalists, I would say, that are convinced by content coins.

• 1:07:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here's what I don't understand. What's wrong with the experiment? It doesn't have to be your thing. I mean, there's tons of things that haven't been my thing in crypto. I mean, NFTs was never really my thing, but I like, I respected that it was, you know, for some people. Like what's, I guess, what's the, what's the harm? What's the, what's the downside in doing this experiment? I guess the, the good side from what I see the Zora, first of all, which I know, we've known Jacob, founder of Zora from, from like the very early days, right? I should disclose, I've also, you know, previously been in, I've been, I'm an investor in Zora and have been since the early days as well. So maybe that that colors my bias, but I'm trying to be super unbiased here and just say, like Jacob has been trying things in the

• 1:07:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Creator economy, ownership economy vision from for the last like, I don't know, six or seven years. He quit Coinbase to do this and he I've watched him kind of like pivot to try different things. Does this work? Does this work? Does this work? Continuing to build and pivot. And he's stayed true to the original vision, which he actually thinks every single bit of content on the internet is mintable. He sees minting as a verb. Okay. And I've watched him try different experiments on this, right? And it's takes so much time in crypto because it's taken up to now to get an actual user interface. It's like comparable to something like Tik Tok. And that's like, because he's been doing it the sort of the right way, you know, with like L twos and making sure that

• 1:08:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  all of the creators have like full ownership of the actual assets, not taking shortcuts. Anyway, this is the most recent pivot of that same vision. It's but it's been the same experiment that he's been playing like trying at since day one. Why not give this a shot? Like, what's the downside? I mean, if you don't want a piece of content, like, don't buy any content. When I, when I see the app, I, I see, oh, cool. It doesn't even feel like crypto. It feels like a, like a mature app to me. I love that they're, they're, they're using L twos, they're using base. It's all quick, fast transaction times. They're actually for, for the ETH heads out there, they're actually pricing everything in the unit of account of Ether. Yeah.

• 1:09:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Which is great for your ETH, like the bags, if you're like an ETH is money type of advocate. Anyway, I see a lot to like about this project and sometimes I just feel like the tribes are a little bit too quick to shoot something down. But again, I'm just getting like up to speed. I don't know, like, you know, what's, was there like a scam here? Is there some impropriety, impropriety here?

• 1:09:36David Hoffman?

  The critique of Zora and the content coins meta is that it has been very top down pushed by Jesse. And Jesse, I trust Jesse. When Jesse says something, I believe him. But the critique is that like it's, it's in addition to that Coinbase Ventures invested in Zora. Zora deployed the Zora app on base and they also have the Zora chain, which is like aligning, you know, Jesse, base and Coinbase Ventures to pump Zora and content coins. Because that's, that's the baseball. And then Jesse says he did not know this. I heard through the, apparently he said that on Twitter somewhere.

• 1:10:18David Hoffman?

  But three, four or five days after Jesse really started pumping Zora, Zora, the token is launched. And so this token got launched yesterday. And inside of that token, it was announced that this token is for fun. It is a fun token. It is a meme coin. And it's also being given to investors, pro rata their investment into Zora, but it's for fun. And that is setting people off the wrong way. And I had, I had a good conversation with Dan from Blockworks on, on Twitter here. So maybe I'll just kind of run through that. Dan says, there's a very real reason to be disappointed about a for fun token with a shortened investing schedule in 2025.

• 1:10:59David Hoffman?

  He, and he says that there are United States based development companies that have, have launched tokens and have DAOs actively discussing doing distributions to tokens inside of the meta context of Donald Trump and his administration. I was pushing back and I was saying that, you know, the SEC still hasn't, you know, delivered regulatory clarity. There's no market structure bill passed. We have a new admin, but no actual new regulation has been passed. So they could still be using that this is a meme coin as cover, as regulatory cover. And he's just declining that and saying like, that is not actually, the meta has shifted. Development companies are issuing tokens that aren't like that. And so that doesn't really hold weight. And so people are frustrated about the launch of the meme coin downstream of, you know, Coinbase Ventures investing,

• 1:11:45David Hoffman?

  Jesse doing this top down pivot, this top down push of, of content coins in Zora. And then the Zora token just happens to go live. So people are throwing, throwing flags at that.

• 1:11:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't feel like, like Jesse and Coinbase are kind of like, you know, They can make money in other ways. They've already like shown that they are long-term players. I think what Jesse is probably looking at at the end of the day is like base, more content, more growth, more users, more activity, more things to do on base. I think that if I had to guess, that's where his true motivation lies. It's less about like the Zora token itself. I guess like the other piece of it, when you just look at Zora itself, it feels like sometimes in crypto, we produce too many assets, like too many tokens, right? It probably makes sense for Zora to, if it even has a token. There's probably an argument for like, why do you have a token, right? Like, why even have a token in the first place?

• 1:12:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  But if it has a token, maybe it's just a fun utility token. Because when I look at Zora, the app itself, I'm like, this is an app that doesn't need a token. Right? The money is ETH. You don't need a utility token there. You're not staking, it's doing everything on base, so you don't need a token to secure. There's no like work token, right? To put a token in there is like pointless. I mean, so maybe all you're left with is either no token or a fun token. And then maybe the argument is like, then why do, why do the meme coin? Why do the fun token? But like, it's a meme coin platform, I don't know.

• 1:13:15David Hoffman?

  Why can't investors be happy with owning equity in Zora? Like, they can make money off of fees and revenue. Why are we unhappy with equity?

• 1:13:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I would say that that is probably where the true value accrues. If Zora takes off and is successful, it's probably just like any other startup with an app. It's like equity in an actual like quote unquote, security.

• 1:13:37David Hoffman?

  But understanding that, I understand why Twitter is pushing back. Like, the majority of Twitter, 85, 90%, is like saying, rejecting the Zora token. Because they think it is just a way to just dump the token on, it was just exit liquidity. Like, all the other, all the other reasons why, like, all the same reasons why people reject tokens in the first place. Now, I put out this one tweet where somebody was basically alluding to that fact. And, you know, like rejecting the token, the Zora token is worth the zero, don't buy it, blah, blah, blah. I tweeted out like this frustration that I have with crypto Twitter, which is that there's this meta of if it's not your bag, destroy it.

• 1:14:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 1:14:20David Hoffman?

  And it's very, it's toxic and it's frustrating. But since putting out this tweet, I have since appreciated the idea that Anatoly replied here saying, survival of the fittest. And what I think he means by that is, yeah, the crypto Twitter meta is so toxic and destructive of other people's bags. If the meta doesn't agree in the validity of the existence of the token, people will fudge your bags. And I do think that it is this very fast rat race, the queen's race, where like if you aren't, if you aren't swimming faster than everyone, you're going to get eaten. And if that is the meta that tokens must find their existence in, you need to be the best token possible, or else you're going to get just chewed up and spit out,

• 1:15:05David Hoffman?

  and people are going to reject you.

• 1:15:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you'll be part of the 99.9% of all tokens that are heading directionally to zero, right? Relative to the dollar, relative to Bitcoin or ETH.

• 1:15:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and so I do think there is this like auto, like white blood cell process that's happening on Twitter, where people are rejecting low quality tokens and telling token issuers to,

• 1:15:26David Hoffman?

  hold yourself to a higher standard with creating a token.

• 1:15:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that's totally fine. You know, what the, the normal response to that would be is just don't buy it then. All you have to do is just not buy it. What, what kind of is a little bit annoying is when you have builders who are, have proven themselves kind of long-term oriented, not pump and dumpers, like, like Jesse and Jacob from Zora, how all of their motives are in question, how they're like put in the same group as, that guy's name, his name Hayden?

• 1:15:52David Hoffman?

  Hayden Davis.

• 1:15:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who is doing the Javier, like the, the, all the politician meme coins. I don't think that based on their reputation, they should just be put in that camp, right? They're clearly doing something different, much more long-term.

• 1:16:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I would also say this whole survival of the fittest is partially contributed to your burnout.

• 1:16:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13David Hoffman?

  Because that is a terrible milieu to be a part of.

• 1:16:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18David Hoffman?

  For five years straight on Twitter.

• 1:16:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. It's like, it's like, yeah, it's, you know, all the turtles, you know, turtles on a beach, they have tons of turtles and they all die, they get picked off by seagulls before they go to the ocean. Like, you're watching that carnage play out and it's emotionally scarring, I guess. So you just zoom out, just zoom out, is one thing I've learned. What else we got?

• 1:16:39David Hoffman?

  There's two more topics to talk about. The Ethereum strategic pivot, which is underfoot. In this episode I put out with Donkrad and Onsgar with my help of Mike Ippolito to discuss what changes are happening at the core of Ethereum. And my takeaway from this episode is that, you know, the Ethereum pivot has been ongoing and happening for the last, like, six months. I think we could talk about this for, like, honestly, an hour. And I also think we're going to do more episodes on this. So I don't necessarily think we need to hash it out here, but like I kind of alluded to in the beginning, I'm pretty stoked about what's happening.

• 1:17:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's more the L1 is just like asserting some strength relative to L2s.

• 1:17:18David Hoffman?

  We are re-prioritizing the layer one. You know, when you're in a plane and the oxygen mass drop down and you're supposed to put it on first.

• 1:17:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:26David Hoffman?

  The L1 is putting itself first. And I think that's great.

• 1:17:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's been interesting. The other thing that was really been happening over the last couple of weeks as the crypto market has started to repair is it looks like Bitcoin is starting to decouple from all of the risk-on assets, all the equities, all of the fangs, everything, you know, inside your stock portfolio. It's acting a bit more like gold. And that is starting to happen, which is very interesting because I think this gold trade is going to, the non-sovereign store of value trade, right? The US dollar, post Bretton Woods kind of era trade is just heating up. We're seeing that in the price of gold and Bitcoin is just catching a bid because it's got that narrative of like new digital gold. So watching that

• 1:18:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  will be obviously very good for crypto and Bitcoin as a store of value.

• 1:18:18David Hoffman?

  I think the Ethereum pivot and Bitcoin's elevation to a non-sovereign store of value is like the two most interesting stories in crypto right now.

• 1:18:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we're going to talk about all of those things, I imagine, David, in the weeks and months to come. So why don't I just take us out? You guys know crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we're 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.