ROLLUP: 1st Week of June (Miami Bitcoin Conference, Arbitrum Layer 2 DeFi Summer, Coinbase Apple)

Download the crypto meta to your brain in this weekly show. 4th Week of May, 2021 ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎖 CLAIM YOUR BADGE: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-2-using-the-bankless-badge ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 🔀 BALANCER | EXCHANGE & POOL ASSETS https://bankless.cc/balancer 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING http://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ 📣 KYBER | Dynamic Market Maker for Liquidity & Exchange https://bankless.cc/kyber ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 1:39 MARKETS 1:50 BTC Price. Death Cross? https://rektcapital.substack.com/p/bitcoin-death-cross-coming-soon 6:55 ETH Price Monthly: https://twitter.com/coinalyzetool/status/1399647743602212866?s=20 Exchanges: https://twitter.com/mskvsk/status/1400379607786962944?s=20 12:37 ETH / BTC Ratio 13:53 DeFi Action DPI Inflows: https://twitter.com/AlphaLemonade/status/1399843969366827010?s=20 19:20 DEX Volume https://twitter.com/DocumentEther/status/1399304548745842688?s=20 20:40 Uniswap Volume Dominance: https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1398757151850573830?s=20 V3 Competition: https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1398757151850573830?s=20 24:25 Flippening Tracker https://twitter.com/lars0x/status/1399734913218355201?s=20 28:15 RELEASES 29:30 Arbitrum Launch https://offchain.medium.com/introducing-arbitrum-one-our-mainet-beta-ed0e9b63b435 34:17 Coinbase, Visa, Apple, Google https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/106825/coinbase-links-its-visa-debit-card-with-apple-pay-google-pay 35:40 Gnosis & Erigon Client https://twitter.com/gnosispm/status/1400092066483421186?s=21 36:45 Argent Uniswap Multicall https://www.argent.xyz/blog/uniswap-multicall/ 38:38 MakerDAO Multi-Chain https://forum.makerdao.com/t/a-multichain-strategy-and-roadmap-for-maker/8380 41:10 NEWS 41:20 Uniswap Makes CCTV! https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1400137814923218944?s=21 42:50 Yuan on Ethereum? https://www.coindesk.com/ex-head-of-chinas-digital-yuan-effort-says-cbdcs-could-operate-on-ethereum 45:40 Goldman Sachs Flippening? https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/ether-high-chance-eclipsing-bitcoin-dominant-store-value-eth-btc-2021-5-1030464237 46:17 MATIC & Bitwise https://twitter.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1399822479795838982?s=20 49:14 Virtual Land on Ethereum https://metaversal.banklesshq.com/p/how-to-get-virtual-land-on-ethereum 52:25 Bitcoin Car https://twitter.com/NBCSportsPR/status/1400109891952549889?s=20 55:07 Bitconnect Charged https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-90 56:20 India Rolling Back Regulations https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1399368671194091520?s=20 57:22 News Quick Bites Beacon Chain: https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1399734788601171972?s=20 Circle Investment: https://cointelegraph.com/news/stablecoin-company-earns-record-level-investment-sum-for-a-crypto-outfit Unicode ETH Character: https://twitter.com/drakefjustin/status/1397930556763955200 1:00:00 TAKES 1:02:00 Crypto Pays to be Online https://twitter.com/cooopahtroopa/status/1398053971718152193?s=21 1:03:55 Long or Short Civilization https://twitter.com/hamandcheese/status/1398370867344781323?s=20 1:07:30 Price Affects Security https://twitter.com/drakefjustin/status/1400137477680209921?s=20 1:09:26 Price Equals Security https://twitter.com/scott_lew_is/status/1400165219364708356?s=20 1:12:03 Decoupling over Eras https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1400334090323206144?s=20 1:14:30 What David’s Excited About 1:18:04 What Ryan’s Excited About 1:21:48 MEME OF THE WEEK https://twitter.com/nanexcool/status/1398260516582211585?s=20 1:22:45 Closing & Disclaimers ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, it is the first week of June. David, what time is it?

• 0:11David Hoffman?

  It is roll up time where we condense an entire week of crypto news, good tweets and interesting opinions all into one single episode, which we are trying to condense a little bit more this week because last week is an hour and 45 minutes. We're trying to keep it under an hour and 15 minutes this week. We will see how well we do.

• 0:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Happy Friday morning to you. We get this to you every Friday, either on YouTube, you can watch it there or on the podcast. We go through markets, releases, news takes, what we're both excited about, and we end with the meme of the week. David, before we get into this program, we got to talk about Kyber, Dynamic Automated Market Maker. That means if you're a liquidity provider or want to be a liquidity provider, you can deposit into Kyber's new Automated Market Maker and receive more fees. Tell us a little bit about that.

• 0:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Kyber is one of the OG's Automated Market Makers in this space. They were in AMM before we called them AMMs, and one of Kyber's really competitive advantage is expressivity. And so they have a bunch of optionality with how fees are collected, how liquidity is provided, and they are opening up their yield farm. KNC rewards for liquidity providers are coming soon, so you can go ahead and front run that opportunity by learning how to be an LP inside of Kyber today and start accruing those KNC fees when those fee rewards get unlocked. So you can go to bankless.cc/kyber and start LP.

• 1:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Check that out. Front run that opportunity, guys. All right, David, you ready to get into the markets?

• 1:41David Hoffman?

  Let's do it.

• 1:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, let's start with Bitcoin. We got to start with Bitcoin because Bitcoin is still number one market cap. Who knows? Look, if that changes, I guess we start with a different asset, huh? But for now, it's Bitcoin.

• 1:51David Hoffman?

  No, we don't start with Bitcoin. We start with whatever's number one. That's the rule.

• 1:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Bitcoin is number one. All right, what's Bitcoin doing? Pricewise, tell us.

• 1:59David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin, $38,500 at the time of recording. There is a theme throughout all crypto markets, all crypto assets where we had that low on the 30th. 5th of May and we have been in a six day uptrend ever since then. So six days of green, which is starting to get people pretty excited. But Bitcoin is still kind of lagging behind the rest of the crypto assets, really trying to claim that $40,000 level. Because you know, the $30,000 range is, I don't think is satisfying anyone right now. People are really looking for 40,000 and above. And so we'll see if Bitcoin can get back up there.

• 2:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I don't do much TA, but I got this email this morning from somebody, a newsletter I like, called Rec Capital, and they talked about this thing called the death cross. And they said that Bitcoin might be going through the death cross if it just hangs out at its current price as early as June. So I'm not into TA. I think a lot of it is horoscopes. But this was sort of interesting to me, because this has happened multiple times before. In November 2013, in December 2017, in June 2019. And the death cross is bad, apparently, because once it happens...

• 3:11David Hoffman?

  Sounds bad.

• 3:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, like, so to get to a death cross, there's usually like a 50 to 70% off all time high. But once the death cross happens, you lose an additional 50 to 70%. So if this happens in June, right, and it plays out the way it has historically, then we could see another 50% off of Bitcoin, back down to 20K prices? Anyway, explain what a death cross even is for folks, because I'm not sure I totally understand what's going on here.

• 3:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so a golden cross is when the 50-week exponential moving average, and a moving average, for those that aren't deep into charts, is a way to kind of take out the local noise in price actions and kind of do a lagging indicator over time. And so it's kind of easier, it's a number, a lagging number that follows Bitcoin price at various levels of resolution, right? And so the 50-week moving average is, you know, lags behind Bitcoin by just, you know, an average over the last 50 weeks, 200-week moving average lags behind Bitcoin, or any asset by 200 weeks. And a bullish golden cross happens when the 50-week, the short-term price action crosses the 200-week, the long-term price action. That's a golden cross. Death cross is the opposite where the 50 week crosses below the 200 week,

• 4:24David Hoffman?

  which means that the short-term price action has been bearish versus the long-term price action. And so it's historically in crypto markets, the death cross has predicted, as you said, like a very strong just like deletion of market cap. And what Rex Capital is saying is that the 50-week moving exponential moving average is on a collision course with the 200-week moving average. And so if it crosses below it, if history repeats itself, then we lose this pretty decent amount of market cap over the next weeks and months following that.

• 4:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So what's your take on this? Is this like certain that it plays out? Because as I said, I think sometimes TA is horoscopes. But again, I'm not a trader. I'm like, I'm thinking about long-term fundamentals of these crypto assets and long-term, of course, the right position has been bullish. I think that's the right position now. But could this mean something bad in the short term for Bitcoin, particularly if that death cross happens?

• 5:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's hard to ignore precedent, right? And everyone has different opinions as to technical analysis and how legitimate it is, how much it actually works. To some degree, like, I don't really believe in technical analysis, Ryan. I know you don't really believe in technical analysis, and a lot of other people that I talk to also don't believe in technical analysis, yet we are all looking at the charts, doing technical analysis regardless.

• 5:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're talking about it right now.

• 5:42David Hoffman?

  We're talking about it right now, right? And like, I got, I have my charts up and I like to draw lines on it, even though I don't know what I'm doing. But to some degree, like, if everyone's drawing the same lines and coming to the same conclusions, it can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Like, that's kind of, that's kind of the gut take for, you know, does

• 5:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  So then it does work.

• 5:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, if math psychology, you know, the layer zero, if everyone believes it works, it kind of works. We are bringing on Ledger from the Ledger Cast Podcast and the Up Only Podcast on the State of the Nation on Tuesday, who is much more informed about these things, both with technical analysis and also fundamentals of this space. And so I'm really excited to get his opinion on it. Ledger, Ledger has been just growing it more and more into an Ethereum bro. And so I'm super happy to bring him on the State of the Nation for, I think, our first ever, like, charting and TA themed episode. We've never done one of those on a bankless State of the Nation. And so we are going to ask Ledger all of these questions in a much more informed capacity next Tuesday, starting two hours earlier than normal. So 9:00 AM Pacific Time,

• 6:41David Hoffman?

  12:00 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday for the week, that week's State of the Nation. So stay tuned for that.

• 6:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I think I'm gonna ask him the exact same question, like about the death cross.

• 6:51David Hoffman?

  You're probably gonna get a much better answer.

• 6:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, we'll see. Alright, let's go to ETH really quick. So that's Bitcoin's story. What's ETH doing to us?

• 6:59David Hoffman?

  ETH is right below $2,800. Spent a decent amount of time above $2,800 yesterday, dipped right below it as of the time of recording. We are hovering at $2,796. And just like Bitcoin, ever since last, the 24th of May, like six plus days of pretty decent uptrend ever since then. And there is, there is a decent level which we established on like the 20th and 21st at $2,800. Then we hit $2,850 again on like the 27th, and now we are right below $2,850-ish again. But there's this triangle that's forming. Again, here's me doing

• 7:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's trying.

• 7:37David Hoffman?

  We got a triangle, we got a triangle, and it's trying to break out of it. So we'll see if it breaks out of the triangle and see, you know, triangles, yay. But like, the sentiment on crypto Twitter, and especially Ethereum Twitter, has really picked up steam again. I tweeted earlier this week, "It turns out the cap wasn't even dead." I think if there was a dead cat bounce, it would have dumped again by now, but we are almost on our seventh day of green- greenness. And so I'm putting, as if I ever took it off, but I'm putting my bullish cap back on.

• 8:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Short-term bull cap back on. What is, what are we looking at here? This is a lot of interesting bars. Some are red, many recently are green. What are we looking at, David?

• 8:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is the monthly candle. So every candle in this chart is one a month. This is the ETHUSD monthly candle chart going all the way back until like February of 2017. This is linear. Sometimes, when you look at these timeframes, it's actually kind of best to look in log terms. But really, the story here is the monthly candle that Ether just printed. It's called a Doji candle, which has a massive wick to the top, a massive wick to the bottom, but it closed, opened and closed roughly at the same price, right? And so the body of the candle is very small, the wicks are huge. And so, basically, it's just telling you there's a lot of volatility, but it's just a funny-looking candle. And we're gonna be looking at this candle for basically the rest

• 8:56David Hoffman?

  of time, right? Because monthly candles are a big deal. There's only like, you know, five times 12 of, so 60 monthly candles. And so one of them is this massive Doji candle, which went from like $4,300 down to $1,700, and then back up to its close at right around $2,700.

• 9:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what's funny is I look at this and I go back in time. If you like zoom in, there's like a couple of places in 2017, 2018 where this happened. One is, you know, July, June, July,

• 9:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  2017, right? And like if you zoomed in on that, it would probably look similar-ish, but also 2018, February, where kind of the market just fell off. That looks like a similar candle, like the highs and sort of the lows. So that's sort of the question, right? Is like, are we just at the midway point of the bull market about to spring forward higher? Or is this the end?

• 9:51David Hoffman?

  No, no, it's, we're halfway point, halfway point.

• 9:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  We know the answer to that. We think we know the answer to that. Look, here's a chart that I'm really excited about from a fundamentals perspective to David, and this is the percent of ETH supply on exchanges. It's getting lower. That means there's less ETH on crypto banks, as we call them, on exchanges. More ETH in DeFi, more ETH serving its purpose as a self-sovereign money store of value collateral asset. This is the bankless chart, my friend. This means that the world is going more bankless as this, as this ratio goes down. So super exciting to see that. It means DeFi is thriving. It means ETH is not custodied in third parties.

• 10:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I don't know, it's super exciting. I hope we continue to see it hover around there or maybe go lower. I'm wondering what custodial staking solutions might do to this ratio. There might be a period of time where staking in like places like Coinbase or Binance becomes very attractive before we have decentralized staking solutions in place. But we're going to be monitoring this. It's hugely bullish for me to see, and I think hugely gratifying to see that as part of the bankless movement.

• 11:06David Hoffman?

  Right, if we were seeing this thing go up and to the right, especially, which it would be bad, because that means there's more ether on exchanges. And if we saw that during a bull market, that would be like really bearishness for like banklessness as like concept, right? But we had this massive choppy like last two weeks, right? And you can see that chop in both the inflows and outflows. There's just a lot of volatility with people putting ether into exchanges, pulling ether out of exchanges. But one of the reasons why I'm pretty convicted that we are just in the second half, we have just entered the second half of the bull market is because that downtrend is still following the trend that it was following before the big sell-off, right? And so ether largely, price action and price discovery of crypto assets largely happens on centralized exchanges, because that's just the way that it goes.

• 11:48David Hoffman?

  Ether is unique because it can also come to price discovery on, in DeFi. But DeFi kind of has been following C-Fi, like in centralized exchange, you know, price discovery, because like when institutions come in, they're not buying ether on Uniswap, right? They're not buying it on Sushi Swap or any of the DEXs. They go to Coinbase. They go to Gemini. Like they buy and discover and ether comes to price discovery from new buyers on centralized exchanges. And so when we are only at 11% of ether supply on exchanges and falling, that means ether price can move really, really quickly when there are big buyers coming in. And DeFi tends to follow C-Fi valuations. And so what is really, the TLDR is that ether

• 12:29David Hoffman?

  is primed for price discovery. As soon as any meaningful buyer steps in, it's going up and to the right.

• 12:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Up and to the right. Let's talk about ETH to Bitcoin.

• 12:39David Hoffman?

  Speaking of other things that's going up and to the right.

• 12:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not quite up and to the right, you know, but like going up, right? Since recent. So talk to us about this, because this is not quite a local high, but it's certainly recovered from its lows a couple of weeks ago. So again, the ETH Bitcoin ratio is a determiner of the strength of ETH versus the price strength of Bitcoin. What's happening here?

• 13:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so when there was like basically Ethereum flipping week or weeks where everyone was talking about the flipping, we hit that high just above 0.08 ETH per BTC.

• 13:16David Hoffman?

  Three hours capital, right, like every, like all the Ethereum people were gloating, like guilty. And then we had that big, that big sell off and Ether fell all the way back down to point, like point zero five seven ish per BTC. And ever since then, we have kind of resumed the trend that has been established since like April, which is, you know, we kind of went up too fast. We corrected a little bit, but we are resuming the trend. And that's why it's not a dead cat bounce. That's why we are in the second half of a very long bull market. And that's why your boy is bullish.

• 13:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Some strength on that ratio. Absolutely. It's, it's actually really good to see that. Let's talk about the strength of DeFi. That's our next section. Total locked value in DeFi is recovered some. It's, it's highs were around 88 billion total locked in DeFi. That's in US dollar terms, of course. Now it's back up to 70 billion, not doing too bad.

• 14:10David Hoffman?

  69 billion. Nice. Locked in DeFi. And it kind of looks like the same chart as both the ETH, ETH USD chart, the ETH BTC chart, and now the TVL and DeFi chart. Went up, it was long, long trend up into the right, went really, really fast in May, corrected in, in late May, early June, and now is resuming an up into the right trend. All these charts kind of look the same.

• 14:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's, let's talk about the, the DPI index. So this is a good indices measure of how well DeFi tokens are doing. This is looking kind of, I've got the three month pulled up. It's sort of flat on the three month, but if you look at it on the weekly, it's also flat on the weekly. What's this, what's this showing us?

• 14:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, DeFi tokens have really lagged behind the bigger crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ether. They have also recovered from their capitulation lows during the sell off and then the, the almost again sell off that happened on the 30th of May. 30th of May had dropped all the way down to 320, but now we are up to $407 per DPI token. And recovering, but not recovering as fast as Ether or Bitcoin.

• 15:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what? I really think that DeFi tokens are in sort of the buy zone. Like, there's some deals out there. I mean, we talked last week about the YFI token. Its price to earnings ratio for May was like 12. You know, like, DeFi tokens are not getting the love maybe that they should be. And I'm wondering what Layer 2 actually unlocks for them as far as fees, transaction volume, revenue. Remember, these are capital assets. So if they were priced based on fundamentals, they would respond quite strongly to that. Of course, the market is all about, crypto market is all about narratives, though. And right now, DeFi tokens are not the dominant narrative.

• 15:53David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 15:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  But that might mean there's some buying opportunities out there.

• 15:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and if we think, we'll talk about this later in the rollup, but if we think that we are on the cusp of a DeFi summer Layer 2 addition, you want DeFi assets because your people are going to be needing to buy assets to farm with them as they did in DeFi summer round 1. And so like, if you think that yield farming on Layer 2s is around the corner, you need to start allocating to DeFi tokens because that's how you're going to farm. If history repeats itself.

• 16:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you want to allocate to the right ones, too. Like, which ones have great Layer 2 strategies?

• 16:25David Hoffman?

  Oh, I have opinions on that. I have opinions on that.

• 16:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  We should talk about that later. Let's talk about it later. All right, first, let's get to this because inflows have been really interesting into the DPI. DPI, of course, is an index of itself of many of the top DeFi token assets led by the Index Co-op, which is a DAO. But this is Lemonade Alpha saying DPI inflows are going crazy, mostly led by whales. He's got some charts here. What are we looking at?

• 16:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we are looking at the increased unit supply of DPI, right? And so DPI price goes up if the underlying assets go up in price. But DPI supply goes up when people have demand for DPI, right? And so people buying DPI doesn't make the DPI price go up. It makes the unit supply go up. And the unit supply going up, it's having it's one of its largest growth periods in its history right now. And what he's saying is, what Lemonade Alpha is saying, who's part of the Index Co-op team, is that it's primarily led by people that are buying more than 250 DPI units. Right? And so if DPI is at $417 and they're buying more than 250 units that people are allocating

• 17:33David Hoffman?

  $100,000 lots at a time. And that's more than 50% of the people who are buying DPI.

• 17:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  David just did that math in his head.

• 17:39David Hoffman?

  I know I didn't. I literally just.

• 17:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  No calculator.

• 17:41David Hoffman?

  No, I was.

• 17:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, come on.

• 17:43David Hoffman?

  Did you not see that? Did that make it to the, that did not make it to the camera? Yeah, no, that was.

• 17:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, this is, this is for the podcast people. I was, you know, I was gonna, you know.

• 17:50David Hoffman?

  I'll cut it out of the podcast. Uh, but yeah, 50% and above are people buying $100,000 units of DPI. And so whales are accumulating DeFi tokens.

• 18:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. That's the story here. All right. But what's the story with the DPI to ETH index? That's another one we've been tracking. This is sort of an indicator of how hot DeFi tokens are relative to ETH. And that's staying flat.

• 18:16David Hoffman?

  It's staying flat. It's right above the, the, the line that I called the, the low at, which was 0.13. That's where I called the, the bottom of the DPI versus ETH chart. We are still above it. We are still above it, but not by a healthy margin. Uh, and so we are currently at 0.146 DPI per ETH per DPI. Yes, ETH per DPI. Uh, and it's still in like this kind of long-term downtrend channel-ish since April, has not yet broken out of a very long, steep like downtrend. It's going to at some point. Uh, it,

• 18:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at this. Look at this. This is DeFi summer-ish. The end of DeFi summer.

• 18:54David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 18:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look how much higher it was.

• 18:56David Hoffman?

  Right. And, and that's the bull case for DeFi tokens is a returning to DeFi summer levels, which is basically a two to three X versus Ether, uh, not, not versus dollars, but versus Ether. Uh, and like, I think it's, it, there's, it, there's a ticking time bomb until that happens, in my opinion.

• 19:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Versus Ether is interesting. I mean, if they both go up together, David, then this ratio doesn't move. So we'll have to see how that plays out. Um, well, let's talk about something that is playing out in a big way. That is DeFi exchange volume, Dex volume, uh, just shooting right up, like absolutely massive. If you include things like PancakeSwap, then the volume was over 300 billion last month. I don't know if I, I would include PancakeSwap.

• 19:38David Hoffman?

  I'll put an asterisk next to it.

• 19:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's an asterisk there, but DeFi exchange volume is growing. Of course, during the recent downtrend, DeFi exchanges were the only ones left standing for a brief period of time. They consumed all of the volume. They performed pretty spectacularly, I would say, with a 60 to 70% drop and just like seeing some super impressive volumes that are absolutely dwarfing anything we saw in 2020 and he takes here.

• 20:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, liquidity providers during the last two weeks got absolutely paid. And so if you have been learning about Uniswap V3, congrats, I bet you got a decent amount of fees in the last couple of weeks. Since March, so for the last two, two months or three months, we have 2X DEX volumes consistently. So March was just below 100 billion, April was just below 200 billion, and now we are just above 300 billion monthly DEX volume. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

• 20:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this, this is another cool way to look at DEX volume, which is the dominance of DEX volume for ETH or ERC20 pairs. And this is particularly Uniswap volume versus Coinbase volume. Look at this, David. Uniswap is absolutely killing Coinbase in terms of USDT to ETH. 784 million volume on Uniswap versus 59 million volume on Coinbase. Like absolutely, what was that? I mean, like 15X or something, something close to that. ETH to Bitcoin, Uniswap's doing more volume than Coinbase on ETH to Bitcoin. This is of course wrapped Bitcoin, but same,

• 21:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  same. ETH to USDT, Uniswap is even, even beating Coinbase on that. It's like, these numbers blow me away, dude. Like, I would not have imagined this as possible in 2020 for Uniswap to just like start dominating Coinbase in terms of exchange volume. And we're in the middle of a bull run, right? Like, so how does this happen? What's going on?

• 21:38David Hoffman?

  It's the protocol sync thesis playing out. Uniswap is easier to use. DeFi is easier to use than C-Fi. And if you're a newcomer, that, that statement might seem foreign to you, but as you become more and more used, like used to how DeFi works, all of a sudden, like these DeFi apps are just like the shelling point as to where to go. Liquidity is straight up better in DeFi and usability is straight up better. And so like, yeah, the, the protocol sync thesis predicted this.

• 22:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And guess who wins when that happens? Hayden Adams with another tweet here. Hyper efficient stablecoin trading on Uniswap V3 has already resulted in, one Coinbase Pro reducing their fees by 100% their maker fees and their taker fees by 98% and Curve increasing the efficiency amplification across its pools as well. So when a new, better, more capital efficient DeFi protocol machine, we talked about these things being like money robots, like everyone's, all of these money robots are at war with each other for liquidity. Who benefits? DeFi users benefit. It's fantastic. Crypto natives benefit.

• 22:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, keep these wars going, man, because we're just getting better, more capital efficient markets. And this is why, by the way, David, these markets are going to eat the rest of the traditional financial world. Because they're in this like, yeah, like they're in this like kind of Darwinian jungle here. And like they're at war and they're like leveling up and getting better. And it's complete survival of the fittest. Traditional finance is outside of the jungle somewhere else. But once these organisms adapt, right? And once they break out of the jungle that they're in, they will start eating NASDAQ, eating York Stock Exchange, eating the rest of the traditional financial world. And the banks won't know what hits them.

• 23:28David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 23:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the DeFi bull case.

• 23:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the takeaway that I have from this is that like Coinbase and another DeFi protocol had to forego capturing fees because of the competition that Uniswap V3 put on the table. Right? It's like, oh, like their only reason why Coinbase was able to capture those fees was because there wasn't really a viable alternative. Therefore, they had the best product and they would charge fees for it. They no longer have the best product. And now they had to basically eliminate their stablecoin trading fees because of what Uniswap V3 brought to the table.

• 23:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what's kind of cool? A byproduct of this, David, is now that Coinbase is a publicly traded company, the Wall Street analysts are going to be like, looking into Coinbase's revenue and be like, "Oh, why did we have to reduce maker fees by 100%?" "Oh, it's because a DeFi protocol, Uniswap? Like, what is this thing?"

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  Which has a token that we can buy?

• 24:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh my god. Wow. That's how they learn about Uniswap and DeFi and the token. Like, it's all going to play out that way, I think.

• 24:25David Hoffman?

  Totally.

• 24:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, let's talk about flipping metrics. Here are a few. Should we just read these out? Why don't you start?

• 24:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah, let's burn through these. There's eight total metrics with graphs to go on the screen. ETH flipped BTC in several metrics in May. Many metrics are now measured in the trillions or are close to it. First metric is total adjusted on-chain volume increased by 35% to a new all-time high of $1 trillion, combined with Bitcoin and Ether. And Ether is the majority of that volume. Like, 60-40-ish.

• 24:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Not other stablecoins, it's Ether, huh?

• 24:57David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 24:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not other year C20s. Alright, this is the second. Adjusted on-chain volume of stablecoins increased by 52% to a new all-time high of $766 billion.

• 25:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Pretty impressive.

• 25:11David Hoffman?

  Very impressive.

• 25:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do we got next?

• 25:13David Hoffman?

  Uh, next up. While BTC miner revenue continued to decrease by 15% to $1.5 billion, Ether miner revenue increased by 42% to a new all-time high of $2.35 billion. Uh, this is the first time since June 2017 that Ether miner revenue exceeded Bitcoin miner revenue. And miner revenue is blockchain security, and security is basically the fundamental reason why this whole industry works. Uh, and so Ethereum miners are being compensated better than Bitcoin miners in this current month.

• 25:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, Ethereum the more economically secure network now?

• 25:44David Hoffman?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 25:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Last month, the woods?

• 25:46David Hoffman?

  For this month, for this month.

• 25:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, month of May. Legitimate centralized exchange spot volume increased by 38% to a new all-time high.

• 25:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Pretty impressive.

• 25:57David Hoffman?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Making it the fourth time this has ever happened. Wait, like, oh, this is on-chain volume of ETH as an asset. Is that what we're talking about here?

• 26:08David Hoffman?

  Uh, no, legitimate centralized exchange spot volume increased by 40%. Um, uh, and so this is just a, this is just all the exchanges out there are experiencing more volume. So kind of just a bull market indicator. It's just the volume on centralized exchanges going up and to the right.

• 26:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ah, that's not related to you flipping at all.

• 26:25David Hoffman?

  These are flippings in general.

• 26:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ah, I see. I see. Okay. So it's not ETH to Bitcoin flipping. It's just flippings in general. Okay. Daily average volume of GBDC stabilized at 419 million.

• 26:38David Hoffman?

  That's, that's really good because the GBTC, uh, uh, lack of premium, the whatever.

• 26:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's dying.

• 26:43David Hoffman?

  Premium, it has been dying, but now it's starting, it hit a floor so far and starting to resume parity, which is kind of like people are breathing a sigh of relief on that one.

• 26:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thought that would happen. I'm glad it is. Uh, what's this next one?

• 26:56David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin future volumes increased by 30% to a new all time high of $2.5 trillion in the month of May. Binance alone traded a trillion dollars in Bitcoin futures.

• 27:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Geez, I mean, these crypto banks are just crushing it in terms of fees. Um, as for ETH futures, volume increased sharply by a hundred percent, almost a hundred percent, 94% to a new all time high of 1.7 trillion. Ether as well, becoming financialized as a reserve crypto asset. What's the last one?

• 27:26David Hoffman?

  However, the real story is on the derivatives front continues to be ETH options. The trade volume of Bitcoin and Ethereum options in a monthly has increased up to 60%. Uh, and so Ether, Ether, um, uh, futures, uh, volume going really strong up into the right and is now consumed, is 60% as large as Bitcoin volume, uh, future volume trading. So pretty cool.

• 27:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, David, I, I saw that, um, Ether went from like basically nothing relative to, uh, Bitcoin in futures volume on Deribit in, uh, 2019, 2020 to, to now getting closer to parity and maybe actually flipping Deribit if the trend continues, uh, flipping on Deribit volume. Anyway, lots of good stuff going on. David, we're going to get to releases in just a minute, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this roll up possible.

• 28:16David Hoffman?

  Synthetix is Ethereum's decentralized derivatives liquidity protocol. What does that mean? Synthetix is a platform for creating and trading synthetic assets, which are assets that are priced via an oracle rather than bids or asks. Traders can use the Quanta exchange, which hosts and trades all of the synthetic assets created by Synthetix. Traders on Quanta can trade synthetic tokens like SVTC, S Oil, or S DeFi. Because Quanta is powered by Synthetix, traders experience zero slippage on their trades. No, I didn't mean low slippage. I meant no slippage because that is the power of the Synthetix platform. No slippage on your trades. You can also easily short assets with iSynths,

• 28:59David Hoffman?

  which are synthetic assets that move inversely to their target asset. Synthetix isn't just for traders. Developers can build on Synthetix to access the infinite liquidity offered by synthetic assets. Or investors can stake collateral to the protocol and earn fees that the protocol collects. If you're a trader and you're looking for a trading platform and not found in the legacy world, check out quanta.io. If you're a developer or you just want to earn yield on your collateral, go to www.synthetix.io, where you can stake your SNX or ETH and earn fees from Synthetix.

• 29:35David Hoffman?

  Aave is a borrowing and lending protocol on Ethereum and just recently released Aave version 2, which has a ton of cool new features that makes using Aave even more powerful. With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can deposit in order to gain yield, and all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have deposited collateral. Here you can see me getting a 200 USDC loan against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens and ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option, but I could choose the stable interest rate option

• 30:18David Hoffman?

  if I wanted to lock that interest rate in permanently. One of Aave's V2 features is the ability to swap collateral without having to withdraw your assets, trade them on Uniswap, and then deposit them back into Aave. Aave does all of this for you, all in one seamless transaction, so you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com.

• 30:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright guys, we are back with the hot releases. David, we gotta start here. Arbitrum. Man, Arbitrum is everything I thought it would be. After our conversation with them on State of the Nation on Tuesday, I'm super excited about this project, about rollups in general. They just launched their developer mainnet beta. Can you describe what's included in that launch?

• 31:06David Hoffman?

  Right, so Arbitrum has like, you know, cut the red tape and allowed the developers to enter this new land, the new Arbitrum real estate, the new suburb of Ethereum. And on this suburb of Ethereum, things go really, really fast for really, really cheap. And as far as a user experience goes, like I haven't, we haven't experienced this ourselves because right now it's developers only. But basically, this is like, if you've used a Polygon Bridge, much like that, but I think even faster as a bridge. But you just go into MetaMask and then once your, when your money is over on Arbitrum, you just go and pick the Arbitrum network and then all of a sudden you're in like the super fast highway that is Arbitrum. And so Arbitrum has already had like a number of projects. I think they said over 250 projects expressed interest in building on Arbitrum.

• 31:47David Hoffman?

  There are some projects that have already released the fact that they have finished building and now are ready, almost ready to open up to users. Sushi Swap, Uniswap, Dodo Decks, Alchemy, MC Decks. All of these teams are building on Arbitrum, building out the rides for all the users to come on, right? And so, right, right now it's developers only because developers have to go build the things for the users to use. But users are coming like, I think to Arbitrum maybe as early as next week. I bet, I bet you the first thing that's gonna happen is Sushi Swap is gonna, gonna release because they are just known for moving really, really fast. Ryan, we were talking earlier about which particular DeFi tokens are going to be well suited to a DeFi Summer Layer 2 Edition.

• 32:28David Hoffman?

  And I think Sushi Swap is at the top of that list just because they are known to just pound out integrations and new products. And I, so I'm, I kinda think that Sushi Swap is gonna be the first thing that is available on Arbitrum. But so many other projects are coming right on the heels of Sushi Swap. And so, congrats to Arbitrum, congrats to all the teams building on Arbitrum. And congrats to all the users who really have just felt sidelined by high gas fees on Ethereum. Congratulations, Arbitrum may be your new home.

• 32:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and this is happening fast. Like David said, the builders are building out the rides, but the reality is what they can actually do is just port the rides that they had from another area of the theme park into Arbitrum. When we asked the Arbitrum folks how long it takes to move smart contracts from mainnet into Arbitrum, they're like, um, a few hours? Yeah, like a couple of days? Like, you gotta test it, of course, but this is EVM compatible, which means you can sort of hot swap some of these contracts. And there are some small changes, but not a lot. So, super optimistic that this is coming soon. David said next week, maybe. Might take a little bit longer, but this is definitely a summertime thing. This is definitely a June, July thing. You know, I, so, super exciting. Anyway, this

• 33:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  is great. Great stuff. We're gonna talk more about that toward the end.

• 33:43David Hoffman?

  I said, I said this last week, but the, this changes everything about Ethereum. Like, L2s and specifically this type of construction of L2s has been like, you know, anticipated since even before the first block of Ethereum was mined. And so, like, this is a big deal.

• 34:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, we just talked to Vance Spencer. That's coming out on Monday, guys. Monday podcast, tune into that. Vance Spencer is a VC at Framework Ventures. We talked extensively about Layer 2 and what it means. It is a major step change. So, make sure you tune into that episode too, for more. Okay, Coinbase links its Visa debit card with Apple Pay and Google Pay. So, now, I'm just questioning like, why we need traditional banks? Like, I mean, like, if I could, if I could just use Coinbase and DeFi, or Gemini and DeFi, that's all I need, man. I don't need Wells Fargo. I can pay my bills. Like, I don't think the banks realize what is coming for them.

• 34:40David Hoffman?

  Right. They don't think of Coinbase as a bank. They think of it as a crypto exchange, and that's their fault. That's going to be their downfall. I would much rather have my, like, gusto direct deposit go straight to Coinbase. That would be fine. I can choose, at Coinbase, I can choose, like, do I send it out to, like, the real world to buy my coffee, or do I send it out to Ethereum to yield farm?

• 35:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let me ask you, what's, what's stopping you? I know you legit have a Wells Fargo account, okay? So do I, legit.

• 35:05David Hoffman?

  Don't dox me like that.

• 35:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sorry, I doxed you, bro. Okay, so, I know you have one. What's stopping you?

• 35:12David Hoffman?

  Is that a threat?

• 35:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I know. I know it exists. I've seen you at Wells Fargo. I know where those checks go, those paper checks. Um, okay, but like, what's stopping you from shutting that thing down, man? I know it's not the savings rates.

• 35:27David Hoffman?

  That's very true, because I gotta pay, I gotta pay rent and I gotta pay my credit cards. But after that, like, nothing stays in my bank account.

• 35:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. It's over. It's over, guys. They don't know yet, but it's over. Anyway, rip banks. Let's go. Gnosis. What's Gnosis doing?

• 35:42David Hoffman?

  Uh, Gnosis partnering with, uh, the Open Ethereum client to make a new Ethereum 1 client called Arigon, spelled E-R-I-G-O-N. Uh, and so this has kind of been an evolution of a longstanding Ethereum client. Uh, a fork of Geth turned into TurboGeth, turned into Open Ethereum, which is now Arigon. Uh, and so we have a brand new Ethereum 1 client that is, uh, being maintained by Gnosis. Uh, and we have heard some really rave reviews from some developers in this space. Here's Bantag out of the Urn team said, "Arigon is so, with three O's, good. Can you imagine scanning, uh, traces from the entire history of Ethereum in under five seconds?

• 36:21David Hoffman?

  It can do that." Uh, and so even Ethereum 1 innovation, still, still moving forward at a, at a solid tick rate.

• 36:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm glad. And this actually means, so, um, Gnosis is sort of an ecosystem contributor, the public good, which is the Ethereum protocol. They took over the old parity client. They're shutting that codebase down in favor of this TurboGeth codebase because I think it's just better. So, um, really excited about that. Let's, let's talk about what Argent is doing. Argent, one of our favorite smart contract wallets, now has a more secure and convenient way to provide liquidity to Uniswap V3, one button. Argent user interface is just immaculate. I feel like, David, the thing that has held Argent back to this point is not being on Layer 2. But like, once they're on Layer 2, they have integrations like this, where it's one click into Uniswap.

• 37:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's, it's over. It's gonna be just a really exciting, uh, user experience in DeFi. Any takes here?

• 37:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the other innovation is that there's actually multiple transactions being bundled all into one. Uh, and so that's also really the through line here. So you have, uh, when you LP for Uniswap, you have to approve two tokens and then deposit, right? So one approval, second approval, and then a depositing transaction. Argent has this bundled all into one single transaction. And this is also a story of Ethereum block space being consumed more efficiently. Rather than three separate transactions, we're bundling it into one. It's more, less time for the user. It's less block space demand by the consumers. And so, you know, people often forget that a very, very real way to scale Ethereum is to do the same things while finding innovative ways to consume less block space. And that's what's going on here.

• 38:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, like, cussing your private keys, that sort of thing with Ledger and MetaMask? It's still clunky today, right? People are asking about like, what's, when's that Venmo experience coming? Argent, any sort of smart contract wallet like Argent, plus Layer 2, plus these DeFi protocols, right? Give it a year, it's going to be better than Venmo.

• 38:19David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 38:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, it's going to be way better than, give it two years, it's going to be 5X better, 10X better.

• 38:25David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 38:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, this is happening so fast, I'm super excited about it. Vitalik predicted this too, when we had him on the podcast in December. Smart contract, Layer 2, native wallets. Okay, let's talk about this. This is Maker's multi-chain strategy. This is directly from their governance forums. I think it's interesting because Maker, of course, is one of the oldest DeFi protocols. They've stayed primarily on Ethereum to date, but now they're looking at a multi-chain future. The question for them is, how will DeFi grow and where will the liquidity go? That's how DeFi protocols make these decisions. What's, uh, what's the story here?

• 39:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Maker is actually newly a, completely a DAO because the foundation has basically sunsetted. Uh, there are a few people working for the foundation left, really just to wrap things up. But Maker is now completely a non-centralized entity that is DAO-only. And the DAO is saying, hey, let's capture more fees. Uh, and so Maker has started to have conversations about putting Maker DAO on different chains, putting DAI on different chains, right? So not only Ethereum, and not only Ethereum L2, like Polygon and X DAI, but also non-Ethereum chains like Polkadot, Cosmos and Solana. Uh, and so this is, this is just a good, you know, business-first move. If there are fees out there to capture, you should go capture it. Because if you don't, someone's going to capture them for you.

• 39:47David Hoffman?

  With their clone of your project. So you better just get there first. And so Maker Dow, I don't know to what degree are they actually putting a Maker Dow facility on Solana or on Polygon or on Polkadot. But at the very least, they are putting DAI there and DAI demand on Polygon, DAI demand on Solana ultimately feeds back to MKR value capture on Ethereum. And so Maker Dow really pushing the fold.

• 40:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's funny because their preferences for EVM compatibility, right? Because they've invested so much and also for permissionless decentralized decentralized change. That's kind of their preference. But they're open to other layer ones at all. And what I would say is if you want to truly understand where this industry is going, look where the builders are going, right? Like that, that's your map. I mean, at some level, like what David and I say, or what some other like what a venture capitalist who's pitching the Solana layer one, they really want you to buy soul tokens. What they say doesn't really matter. It's about what where the builders go and what they believe because like builders are making a huge investment. Like where are we going to spend our precious

• 40:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  developer resources next? Is it on an Ethereum layer two? Is it on another, you know, competing layer one? We'll see. So read this post. It'll give you great insight. I think there's some alpha leaks there if you're paying attention. David, let's get directly to the news, my friend. Uniswap just made CCTV. That's China, Chinese TV, China Central Television, talking about Uniswap. That's what that is. Okay, so they're talking about it in the context of how to avoid scams. But here's what's so hilarious to me is actually they're showing you how to use Uniswap on TV,

• 41:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  broadcast to like, I'm not sure how many millions of people in China. And Hayden's tweet is kind of funny on this. Step one, China blocks Uniswap interface. I guess maybe they have already. Step two, China demos Uniswap interface on CCTV. Step three, question mark, what happens? I mean, like, isn't this just playing into, isn't this the nation state?

• 41:57David Hoffman?

  Somebody fucked up. Excuse me, excuse me.

• 42:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  You think so?

• 42:01David Hoffman?

  I think, I think somebody had a, had an oopsies. Somebody did not think about, because like the, the Uniswap, um, the Uniswap, uh, if you look on the, on the screen, it says the decentralized exchange. What is more antithetical to China than something that is decentralized? Uh, and so I don't think somebody didn't, wasn't informed enough to put two and two together about how this technology is extremely subverses to the state. And specifically China, which wants to have total totalitarian control. Something like Uniswap is exactly what they don't want. And they are accidentally like broadcasting this on their internal like closed circuit television channels.

• 42:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's hilarious. It's like the more they say, don't look at this, don't talk about this, don't use this, the more people are going to get interested in it. So they are propagating the narrative. That is the value of decentralization. But there is a little bit of like, I guess, double speak going on in China, I feel like. Because here is a, a story that broke about China's digital yuan effort. And this is a spokesperson for the central bank digital currency that, uh, China is building and talking about it potentially being available on Ethereum too. And I totally understand that because if you're a central bank digital currency, you want to invade all of the other economies of the world.

• 43:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  And by invade, I just mean like you want your currency to be represented and to accrue value and to be used as a unit of exchange, medium, uh, unit of account, medium of exchange, store of value in those economies. What is Ethereum? Ethereum is just another economy. But this story is interesting because I do see that's an inevitability of central bank digital currencies. They will absolutely want to be on smart contract networks like Ethereum. And it looks like the nation state is, is paying attention to these developments. They see the power of smart contracts and DeFi and programmable money. And they're looking to kind of marshal that as well.

• 43:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, China definitely wants its yuan to be as close to the world's reserve currency as possible. They are very jealous that that's what the dollar is. And so naturally they want to claim DeFi real estate as like the future of economies, right? If the future economic, you know, activity of the world is on DeFi, then the, the digital yuan needs to be. There. I'm reminded of our Josh Rosenthal episode where to some degree like it's a lose lose for China either way, right? Because like, are they really going to become the world's reserve currency by invading DeFi? Not really. The only people like, not even the Chinese want the digital yuan. It's forced upon them. And so i- if they want to claim that real estate, they have to put the digital yuan there. But then that means that they give on ramps and off ramps to people who are using the digital yuan, who want something else. Like dollars or ether or Bitcoin, right?

• 44:35David Hoffman?

  And so they are giving an exit opportunity to people that use the yuan. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

• 44:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you know what? Long term, I think the authoritarian states play is whatever state it is, whether the US goes in that direction or whether it's China continues. It's like, I feel like it's a, it's a state controlled Binance chain, essentially. So you get the programmable money, but you also have the state surveillance and the control over the entire economic system, right? They're not there yet. That might, but like, that is the threat for how, I don't think at this point, nation states ever turn off cryptocurrency because they can't and they know they can't. And they know to your point, it just plays right into their hands, but they will try to co-opt it. And I feel like the Binance chain gives like sort of early roadmap indication of how that might be co-opted.

• 45:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  You just make it super useful, easy for everybody, like integrated in your life. But oops, we have all of the buttons to stop transactions, censor transactions, cut you out of the world's economic system.

• 45:36David Hoffman?

  Make you disappear on-chain and then off-chain.

• 45:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Scary. Okay. Ether has a high chance of eclipsing Bitcoin as crypto's dominant store of value. Wow, it sounds like something Bankless might say, but it's not Bankless.

• 45:50David Hoffman?

  This is banked.

• 45:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Goldman Sachs saying it. Look, man, I don't know.

• 45:54David Hoffman?

  Let's not, let's not provide any legitimacy to Goldman Sachs and their opinions as to what they say about crypto.

• 45:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Who cares what they think about crypto?

• 46:00David Hoffman?

  But.

• 46:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  They must have a position though.

• 46:02David Hoffman?

  It's a headline that a lot of people are reading. That's the through line here is like Goldman Sachs. A lot of people listen to Goldman Sachs, even though we don't listen to Goldman Sachs, they are making this headline available to the world. So that's like the takeaway here.

• 46:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  They, they must have a position too, in order to say that.

• 46:15David Hoffman?

  That's usually what Goldman Sachs is up to.

• 46:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, here's something interesting that happened bitwise. So this is sort of an institutionally friendly way to get access to all sorts of crypto assets, but in particular in this case, DeFi tokens, bitwise. Actually, no, this is not their DeFi, this is their large cap crypto index. Okay, excuse me.

• 46:35David Hoffman?

  I don't think Matic counts as a DeFi token, just because it's on Ethereum too.

• 46:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right on. So, so bitwise has a whole bunch of more centralized, institutionally friendly indices where you can get exposure to crypto assets. I've long, like, hated kind of their large cap crypto index, not because it's a bad index, it's a good index.

• 46:53David Hoffman?

  No fault of their own, they just don't have good selection.

• 46:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just so much garbage in there. And there's Ben garbage from the get go, like, like, things like, you know, XRP, things that don't have a chance to succeed as a store of value. But anyway, Polygon has entered the bitwise 10 large cap crypto index for the first time. And I think that's super interesting. This is the first, number one, I guess it's the first of two things. Number one, it's the first layer, layer two, or sidechain, I should say, from Ethereum to be like ported into the, the top 10. The other thing is, the interesting part of this is the, the asset that it kicked out is from Cosmos, their,

• 47:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  their asset, Atom. And, you know, Cosmos talked for a very long time about becoming the Internet of Chains by creating sort of a, a parallel universe to Ethereum. So there's some irony here, which is like, Matic is taking a similar playbook and design.

• 47:52David Hoffman?

  It's the same value prop.

• 47:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Same value prop, but it's making sort of Ethereum as a settlement layer, it's Internet of Chains. And there's some irony in it just booted Atom from the top 10 slot that he takes here.

• 48:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, my, my take here is that this is something that we've talked about, interesting in the Ethereum ecosystem for years now. There is a bunch of absolute crap in the top 10 of crypto assets. You know, I don't think Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash is there anymore, but they used to be in the top 10. And then there were very legitimate, very real DeFi tokens that just were in like 50 and below. And so a big narrative in 2020. 2018 and 2019 and even 2020 was that like eventually there's going to be a repricing repricing a repricing between between just the crap like EOS and Litecoin with actual real DeFi tokens with with cash flows and and this is what we are seeing here is we are seeing Ethereum native infrastructure being repriced into large cap top 10 DeFi tokens.

• 48:51David Hoffman?

  To be honest, I kind of wish it hadn't pushed out Cosmos because of all the things in the top 10 Cosmos isn't is actually kind of a nice asset.

• 48:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cosmos has some traction.

• 49:00David Hoffman?

  Right. Yeah. I wish it had pushed out things like Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, but like the comparison between Cosmos getting pushed out by something that is basically the same value prop, but Ethereum specific is interesting.

• 49:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's very interesting. David, NFT world, there's always stuff going on in NFT space, but I picked this one out. This was an article written by our own William Peaster in Metaverse, which if you're not subscribed to Metaverse, this is a great place to get updates on what's going on in the NFT space. But he wrote an article about how to get virtual land on Ethereum, right? Like in the metaverse, actually buying digital property, buying digital real estate, right? So I've long thought about this, like, okay, own cryptocurrencies. When is the right time to start buying digital parcels of land? And like you can do that on something called Sandbox, Decentraland, which has been a long time VR type project on Ethereum, CryptoVoxels, which listeners may be familiar with.

• 49:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  I've not heard much about.

• 50:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  How do you even say this? Somnium, Somnium space. Anyway, like I started thinking about when there will come a point in time when it is the right time to buy virtual land, right? I haven't fallen in love with a VR digital environment yet where I'm like, oh, this is so awesome. I can't not have property here. But like there will come a time when I anticipate jumping into the space here. What's your take on this? Do you own any virtual land?

• 50:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I do not own any virtual land. I feel like it's the same kind of game as to just NFT speculation, right? Like to some degree, like if you own a crypto. Crypto punk that kind of feels similar as to owning like a little bit of like internet real estate because of the way that crypto punks are kind of treated as DeFi users, right? It's like, I have a claim on a crypto punk, kind of feels the same. It's very, very speculative because we don't know if any of these virtual land real estates comes the canonical real estate. Like, the reason why real estate in the real world is so, such an easy investment is because like, there's not seven versions of real estate, like different dimensions of real estate. There's just actual real, real estate.

• 51:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it can't just be like forked or created like this.

• 51:08David Hoffman?

  Exactly, right. So like, virtual real estate, which we, virtual estate, virtual estate, uh, is, there isn't one, there isn't one virtual estate. There are many, many, many virtual estates. So if you buy virtual estate, then you are speculating that that virtual estate comes, becomes like the kind of shelling point of virtual estate. Uh, so, uh, I'm not ready to start speculating in that world yet. Um, but it's definitely going to be a thing. Virtual estate will absolutely be a real thing, for sure.

• 51:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gonna be Ready Player One, right? Like, it's totally, we're, we're moving to that world. Like, uh, I, I'm, so I'm waiting, I'm looking at this, I think there are some pioneers who are much earlier, maybe these are good deals, maybe they're not, I have no idea. But, I'm sort of waiting myself, David, for that, like, I, I enter this world and like, I immediately fall in love with it. Like, oh, this is it, I would use this, I want to come back here, I want to set up shop here, and I haven't seen that yet.

• 51:59David Hoffman?

  I can see myself retiring here.

• 52:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh my god, this is so weird.

• 52:05David Hoffman?

  Dystopian future, though, is something where somebody like some big company like, you know, Facebook or, or, or Steam or Valve makes virtual real estate, uh, and, and that becomes like, you know, it's theirs, like, that, I could see that happening as well.

• 52:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm not buying in those worlds, so, good luck, guys.

• 52:23David Hoffman?

  I don't think they'll sell them to you, is the thing.

• 52:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, let's talk about this, this is the Bitcoin news, I think we're kind of struggling to find something on Bitcoin this week, actually, there's generally a lot, but this week was kind of a quiet week on Bitcoin, but, the Bitcoin car is making headlines, what's happening here? What is the Bitcoin car?

• 52:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like, a bunch of Bitcoiners crowdfunded sponsorship of like, an Indy 500 car, uh, and, and, funny, funnily enough, uh, NBC Sports. Twitter account reported that the Indy 500 averaged a, I don't know what TAD is, but 5.5 million viewers making it the most watched Indy 500 in five years. Because there was a goddamn Bitcoin car. Like, all the Bitcoiners all of a sudden start caring about Indy 500 because there's a Bitcoin car. And then Jack Mallers, who was on the DeFi panel with me at CoinDesk consensus event, I don't know why he was there. He represents a little crypto bank. He goes, hmm, I wonder why the most popular car at the most watched Indy 500 in the last five years arrives at the Bitcoin conference tomorrow in Miami.

• 53:23David Hoffman?

  To donate to Bitcoin open source development, open networks wins, Bitcoins wins. And so like, I guess, congratulations to Bitcoiners. Here's like the coolest news that's happened in Bitcoin in the last seven days is a Bitcoin car in Indy 500. And it'll be at Miami. Like, congrats, I guess.

• 53:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, like, so this feels like just a poor man's version of Gitcoin, to be honest. Because like, I'm really excited. Like, I'm really excited that this goes to open source development, right? And that the community is coming around and like, doing something good for a public good, which is Bitcoin protocol development, which is a public good, absolutely. But like, I don't know, it feels so weak sauce after you, after you know about like, Gitcoin and quadratic like funding. And what's going on in that economy to create self-sustainable public goods. It just feels weak sauce.

• 54:15David Hoffman?

  Right. This is, this is why we say it feels like Bitcoin, but at least Bitcoin Macties have kind of lost the plot, right? Because why are you so incredibly excited about a Bitcoin sponsored Indy 500 car? When there is everything going on in DeFi, like happening next door, and you are purposely not paying attention to that. Like, you lost the plot, guys.

• 54:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, like, it's from 2015, dude. Like, that would have been exciting in 2015.

• 54:38David Hoffman?

  That's what Dogecoin did it in 2014. Like, Doge already did this.

• 54:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh Bitcoiners.

• 54:45David Hoffman?

  They're behind Doge.

• 54:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're having Preston Pishon on Wednesday.

• 54:51David Hoffman?

  That's gonna be fun.

• 54:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gonna be a good, it's gonna be a good episode. I think that hopefully it's gonna be open-minded and we'll, we'll talk about these types of things. I won't mention the Bitcoin card though, if you don't.

• 55:02David Hoffman?

  I might.

• 55:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Make sure you don't.

• 55:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  No promises from David. Alright, regulation. Bitconnect, remember Bitconnect?

• 55:11David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin it! Hey, hey, hey!

• 55:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, the SEC charged the promoters of Bitconnect, which includes a YouTuber, a few YouTubers. I was not watching like crypto scams in YouTube in 2017, but like there were a lot of promoters of Bitconnect. I guess the interesting thing here is they're finally being charged by the SEC.

• 55:34David Hoffman?

  One bull market later.

• 55:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like January 2017, that's four years ago. It was more than four years ago. I think that the take here is that regulators move slow.

• 55:46David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 55:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm glad that they're targeting a complete scam in this case. This is actually protecting consumers. This is within the SEC's mandate. Good job, SEC. Like, seriously.

• 55:59David Hoffman?

  You got that.

• 56:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I legitimately mean that. But like, four years.

• 56:03David Hoffman?

  Right, right.

• 56:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Takes regulators a long time to react to what's going on.

• 56:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and, and like, should've gone to jail. Should've gone to jail. $2 billion that's beside the point. They wrecked people's lives. They should've gone to jail.

• 56:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, but we got some memes out of it.

• 56:19David Hoffman?

  We did get some good memes.

• 56:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Public good. Alright, some good news from Balaji, our friend. So, there've been some disturbing news going on in India about kind of central bank government crackdown on cryptocurrency, but this is some good news. The Reserve Bank of India is directing Indian banks to stop deplatforming crypto customers. That's what was happening. So if you're in India and you're using your bank account to do something in crypto, they would just deplatform you. Sorry, send you a Dear John letter. Like, sorry, you have no account here anymore. You've been disbanded. Here's a letter where like, the Royal Bank of India is saying, we need to, the Reserve Bank of India, excuse me, is saying, we need to stop doing that. So, some good news there.

• 57:02David Hoffman?

  And people predicted this. I think Nick Carter really predicted this. It's like, oh yeah, you banned Bitcoin, you're just gonna roll that back in a couple, couple weeks or a month or so. And that's exactly what happened. When you ban Bitcoin, you actually just ban your citizens from engaging with Bitcoin. You don't actually ban Bitcoin.

• 57:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also, there's money to be made for these banks, right? Like, are they reading the Coinbase SEC filings? I hope so. All right, some quick drive-bys. As of today, this is from Anthony Sisano. The ETH2 beacon chain has been live for six months. Probably six months.

• 57:30David Hoffman?

  Cool, six months of Lindy under the belt and getting closer and closer to the merge, maybe in five or six months later.

• 57:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, no major events there. It's gone fairly smoothly. All right, let's talk about this. So, stablecoin company earning record levels of investment. This is Circle. What's happening here?

• 57:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Circle raised $440 million from investors. Private investments from an array of private equity institutional and strategic investors. That's a large number. And this is just indicative of the tailwinds behind crypto dollars in DeFi. Why? Why is crypto dollars in DeFi such an awesome opportunity? It's because you're getting yields, consistent yields above like 8%. And like, I'm getting yields as high as 20% on my crypto dollars, thanks to like Alchemix and Urn, right? And so, where are you getting 20% yields in dollar terms in the legacy world? Like, you aren't. And so, this is a massive opportunity for people who don't really care or want to own crypto assets,

• 58:31David Hoffman?

  but they want to have dollar-denominated yields, which is a large part of the world. This is what Circle's capturing right now.

• 58:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  USCC is a great product, fantastic product. It's still banked, but it's a great product. All right, Justin Drake has a call-out for us. He needs some help. What does he need help with, David?

• 58:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, he says that all of these different Ether logos, Ether characters that people use on Twitter, the Greek symbol Z, the diamonds, he said they're all hacks. He goes, ETH deserves a Unicode character. In 2015, I helped get the Bitcoin Unicode character for BTC. Justin Drake asks you, the listener, I need help for a leader to take up the reins and follow the template. He already has the template. He wants you to fill it out and make your argument as to why Ether needs a Unicode character. If you want to take the reins on this and do something for Ethereum, which I, maybe it's just a Unicode character, but like, we would all use it. That can be you. So, if you are interested in taking up those reins, go to this tweet in the show notes and file that form.

• 59:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, Justin Drake helped get Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Unicode character. That's a shocking news to me.

• 59:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, fun fact.

• 59:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Go, Justin.

• 59:36David Hoffman?

  Write that down for trivia.

• 59:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  He doesn't get thanked for that. All right, we're gonna get back, we're gonna be back with the takes in just a moment, but before we do, we want to tell you about the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 59:49David Hoffman?

  Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum, which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswap ecosystem is the Uniswap Grants Program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again. DAOs have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswap DAO, apply for a grant to Uniswap.

• 1:00:33David Hoffman?

  Just look at the size of the Uniswap treasury. It's almost $3 billion. This mountain of capital is looking for labor. Do you have something of value to contribute to the Uniswap DAO? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a UniGrant at unigrants.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Bankless and you can do the same for your project. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Bankless. Gemini is the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange. I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got into crypto in 2017 and it's been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and in over 50 countries worldwide

• 1:01:16David Hoffman?

  and on Gemini there are markets for over 30 various different crypto assets, including many of the hot DeFi tokens. And it's one of the few exchanges that has liquid DAI markets. Gemini just launched their Earn Program where you can earn up to 7.4% interest on 26 various crypto assets. If you're tired of paying fees in DeFi or you don't want to worry about DeFi exploits, but you still Want to earn interest on your crypto assets Gemini earn is the product for you. Another product I'm stoked to get my hands on is the Gemini crypto back credit card, which gives you 3% cash back on all of your purchases, but paid to you in your preferred crypto asset. When I get my Gemini credit card, I'm going to make sure that I get my cash back in ETH. So whenever I buy something, I get a little bit of ETH bonus back to me at the same time.

• 1:02:02David Hoffman?

  You can open up a free account in under three minutes at Gemini.com/goBanklist. And if you trade more than a hundred dollars within the first 30 days after signup, you'll be gifted a free $15 Bitcoin bonus. Check them out at Gemini.com/goBanklist.

• 1:02:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back with the hot takes of the week. Let's start with this one from Koopa Troopa. He says this crypto literally pays to always be online, literally getting paid to be online. What does he mean, David?

• 1:02:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the world of crypto and the world of DeFi has really turned the web two model of extraction on its head, right? And so the way that DeFi apps compete is by rewarding users. And so to some degree, the more you have used DeFi apps, the more you have been rewarded. The average DeFi participant who came in at least in 2020, got at least three airdrops currently worth at least like $40,000 in Uniswap, One Inch, Tornado Cash, Ampleforth, like the list goes on. And so, and that's not the only thing, like you, there are a more instantiated versions of getting rewards. Basically, the more you use DeFi, the more you get rewarded. That's the new paradigm we are in. Web two apps, they take from you, DeFi apps, they give to you.

• 1:03:14David Hoffman?

  You just have to use them. And I actually used this tweet in the Bankless article that came out yesterday, Thursday, because I talked about DAOs and the future of work. And one of the missions of DAOs is to lower the threshold for what viable, good participation and contributions into DAOs are. Good DAOs will make that really, really easy for workers to contribute. And it's going, and the bulk case for DAO is that you just stumble into rewards. You just stumble into work and labor. And that is the future of web three work. And Koopa has this summed up in a tweet nicely. Crypto literally pays you to always be online. The more you are in crypto, the more you get paid.

• 1:03:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Good takes there. All right, let's do this next one. Long or short civilization? That's the take. Long ETH is long civilization. Long Bitcoin is short civilization. Let me try to parse that out. I think what this is saying is-

• 1:04:07David Hoffman?

  That's spicy. That's a spicy take.

• 1:04:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of spicy, right? So like, if you are optimistic about the future of humanity, your asset is ETH. Progress, like coordination, civilization, societal growth, community improvement. If you are long Bitcoin, it's like being short civilization.

• 1:04:29David Hoffman?

  Right. Short collaboration.

• 1:04:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Doomsday, dollar disappears, nation states die, we go back to an era of less coordination, collaboration, where we need this gold-like asset. What do you think of that take?

• 1:04:46David Hoffman?

  No, that's exactly right. Yeah, so people who are coming from the legacy world will feel weird saying this, but, or hearing this, but Bitcoin is the risk-off asset. Bitcoin is specifically risk-off. Everything-

• 1:05:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like gold?

• 1:05:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like gold, exactly, right? Like, no one can take it away from you. You are completely independent, completely self-sovereign. You don't need to trust anyone. You don't have dependencies on anyone else. And that's also true for DeFi, but DeFi is much more. It's much more collaborative. It's like, when we come together, even though we have self-sovereign money and I have my private keys, my private keys are mine and no one can take it away from me, we can still create more via collaboration, right? Amin Soleimani has this quote that's stuck with me, where he goes, "Bitcoin in times of war, but Ethereum in times of peace." Right? In peace times, we can collaborate and build, but like, if people are in a deflationary spiral, or just like, times of mistrust, that's where Bitcoin as an asset, the narratives

• 1:05:43David Hoffman?

  and political alignment behind Bitcoin really, really shines. Bitcoin is the "I don't need you" asset, and Ether and DeFi is the "let's collaborate" ecosystem.

• 1:05:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that last part resonated with me probably the most of anything that was said, and even this tweet, because I also, I also do feel like Ethereum is like a network that developers, researchers have said is designed to try to survive World War III, right? It is designed to be a collaboration toolset and a money system when all of the other money systems fail, when the nation state fails even. So it does have elements of like an Ethereum kind of like citadel that's built apart from the requirements of the nation state, does live outside of it. And yet, what you said is also super true, which is like, the theme of Ethereum is all about coordination. How can we pool capital together and do more

• 1:06:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  together? Yes, there's lots of competition, but it's not as individualistic, which is interesting to me. So I guess I see both, both sides of it. I also think that Bitcoin is in a weird way also a bet on technology, because it's certainly a bet on cryptography. So maybe not entirely short civilization.

• 1:06:57David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin is like, Bitcoin is a coordination system, but it's a coordination system, so you don't have to coordinate with anyone else. It coordinates for you. Ethereum is a coordination system that allows and propagates further coordination. And that's really the big difference, is like, the long tail of Bitcoin, after, after it coordinates for you, is that you are done coordinating, because Bitcoin did it for you. Ethereum is like, let me create platforms and software and applications that allow for further coordination, right? The coordination extends out into the nth degree.

• 1:07:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think it's a really interesting take for sure. Here's another one. Justin Drake, again, making the recap, the roll up twice. Price affects security, he says. I think that's the thrust of the argument. Now, he's got a flowchart. I would have died for a flowchart like this in 2018, 2019. We're making the argument that price of ETH is so fundamental to the economic security of the Ethereum network, and that was falling on deaf ears. But what is this flowchart showing us?

• 1:07:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's showing us all the different ways that if Ether price goes up, Ethereum benefits, right? And so he has, there's Four main factors that he has, one of the, I'll get to that part later. Legitimacy by performance, as in if Ether goes up and it continues to go up, there's some amount of legitimacy about that, which attracts builders, which attracts on-chain activity, which attracts more fee burn and more staking rewards, which makes Ether money more sound, which makes, you know, staking inflows even better, which increase the cost of attack, which increases Ethereum security. Then there's more economic bandwidth, same path. Like, then there's, you know, ETH stake appreciation and also the EF treasury, like if, just go look at the chart.

• 1:08:39David Hoffman?

  I'm not going to try and explain all of it, but go look at the chart. And it's a very concise way, very developer-focused way of like illustrating the connection between ETH price go-up and bullishness on humanity, which is Ethereum security.

• 1:08:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, the level-two analysis here is, again, I strongly believe that the winning, the most economically secure money system, it's the core asset of that system has to be a store of value, a reserve asset, because you get so much of this for free. If your asset is priced in the Justin Drake episode, we called it like the magic meme property, where it gets some of this reserve currency monetary premium for free. So we're starting to see that with ETH. We've definitely seen it with Bitcoin. Let's do the Scott Lewis tweet. What's this saying?

• 1:09:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so Scott Lewis is illustrating the connection between the security of a consensus layer and how much you should pay for transactions, right? So he kind of makes up some numbers, but he goes Ethereum may net $50 for a transaction. Ethereum roll-up, $2 for a transaction. That's like something like Arbitrum or Optimism. And then he goes Ethereum side-chain, $2.002 for one transaction. If you're on a side-chain, that's like Matic, right? And he goes, different price points for different levels of security. And that's really what you're paying. When you pay your transaction fees, you are paying for security. And it's a good rule of thumb to understand that when you are paying a transaction fee on Matic versus Arbitrum.

• 1:10:12David Hoffman?

  Versus wherever that that is the amount of fee you are paying is functionally an extrapolation as to the security of how secure that transaction is. And so the actual, the real take here that he finished off with is that, you know, different price points for different levels of this security. But he says complementary options will make all of Ethereum work better. And so he's alluding to this symbiosis between all of these things, offering different options for the markets. Like maybe a $2 transaction on roll up is actually too expensive for your, you know, super high throughput microtransaction app. And so therefore you need to go to a sidechain. But more economic activity is bestows more economic activity, right? And so having optionality

• 1:10:56David Hoffman?

  with its security levels is allows people to choose what they want and what it works best for them, both as users and as DeFi apps.

• 1:11:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's all great. And like, that's the thing. It's not, it's not rollups versus sidechains. It's like, or it's not mainnet versus rollups. We're doing them all. And they're all going to not compete against one another, but they're all going to be synergistic, right? I'm starting to think of Ethereum less as just like one mainchain and more of like this ecosystem of chains, like an entire economy.

• 1:11:29David Hoffman?

  Antonio Cusano calls it a nexus.

• 1:11:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, he calls it an economic nexus. And that's exactly what it is. But when you say, what is Ethereum? Now, what is Ethereum has to extend to all of the ERC 20s on crypto exchanges, has to extend to Arbitrum and Optimism, all of the rollups that they create, has to extend to all of the sidechains. Maybe at some level, it also extends into like things like Binance Chain, that is less economically linked, it still uses the EVM. So what is Ethereum? All of these things. It's like this internet of chains. I guess we're stealing another Cosmos meme, but.

• 1:12:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. All right. What's this? What's this take from Suzu?

• 1:12:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Suzu talking about the nature of decoupling. He wrote, he writes, "Those who doubt decoupling needs to read more history. 99.5% of coins from the previous era are worthless and the 0.5% that are worth something are up 10,000x since then." Turns out decoupling, it actually has an Investopedia page. That's news to me. And so what Suzu is saying is that, you know, decoupling, not a crypto term. I thought that was like a decoupling-

• 1:12:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  What does it mean to you?

• 1:12:36David Hoffman?

  So like Ether and Bitcoin have largely had similar price action throughout its history and to this day. But we are seeing some, some decoupling and that's why we were paying attention to the ETH BTC ratio, right? Like ETH BTC hovered between like 0.18 and 0.3 for years. And now we're up to 0.72, 0.072, right? That's a decoupling.

• 1:12:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's when one, one asset takes off and the other either stays stagnant or like dies.

• 1:12:59David Hoffman?

  Uncorrelated, right? Uncorrelated assets.

• 1:13:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  From a price perspective.

• 1:13:03David Hoffman?

  Right. And Suzu is saying that the fundamentals is why things decouple and perhaps that's what's happening.

• 1:13:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think that's such a good take and it's something to remember because this doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't even happen in like the months timeline. This happens over years. It almost happens every kind of narrative cycle. But when we see things that have survived, like Bitcoin, Satoshi's vision and something like, how is that still around? Or like even like Litecoin to some extent? How is that still around? Right? I think what it is, is it's survivorship bias because we forget the thousands of other cryptocurrencies-

• 1:13:42David Hoffman?

  Peercoin?

• 1:13:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  That-

• 1:13:43David Hoffman?

  Feathercoin?

• 1:13:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, like exactly. All of these colored coins, like all of these things died-

• 1:13:47David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin diamond.

• 1:13:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  We don't even remember them, but they were a thing. They had their moment, right? But they died. They were part of that 99.5% of coins that did not survive. You had the previous era. The, do you remember Dragon Chain?

• 1:14:02David Hoffman?

  Dragon Chain, yeah.

• 1:14:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I put out this tweet last week, 2017, like, "What's the most embarrassing thing you invested in?" Right? And I got all these answers. R-Chain, Dragon Chain.

• 1:14:10David Hoffman?

  Dragon Chain.

• 1:14:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  There was this theme of like, "Oh my God, did you really?"

• 1:14:15David Hoffman?

  Somebody said Disney was about it. And I was like, "Oh, I'm in."

• 1:14:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dragon Chain gang. Yeah. So like, anyway, these are all the coins that died last cycle and these- Fundamentals do matter. They do matter. This is what Suzu is saying. So make sure you're tracking fundamentals, not just the trade. Okay, David, you are getting ready to board a flight. What are you excited about, man?

• 1:14:34David Hoffman?

  Going to Miami for the world's largest Ethereum meetup event ever, thrown by Bitcoin Conference 2021.

• 1:14:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you wearing that shirt?

• 1:14:43David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah. Shalom. This is the shirt I got when I did my ETH triple point asset talk in Tel Aviv. Unrelated, but I got my BAP shirt in the bag. So the BAP shirt's coming out.

• 1:14:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, man.

• 1:14:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And so it's really funny. I got these. I think I got the right numbers from CK, who works at Bitcoin BTC Media, which is throwing the Bitcoin 21 and 2021 conference. He said that there are 8,000 people attending the conference and 30,000 people going to Miami. And so there are, if you extrapolate and kind of think that like, maybe there's more Ethereum's going to Miami who aren't actually going to the conference. They're just going to the Miami as a shelling point because everyone else is going to Miami.

• 1:15:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're gonna go to the conference, though, right?

• 1:15:24David Hoffman?

  I, if it's convenient.

• 1:15:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are you gonna be doing the whole time?

• 1:15:30David Hoffman?

  Well, I'm hanging out with my friends. Like, it's, we're all, everyone's going to Miami. So I'm going there, too. Like, that's, that's what happened here. So there is like the D-Yacht Party, which is thrown by a bunch of DeFi teams, like Slingshot, Upshot, like a bunch of other teams have a yacht party. So I'm going to that, going to the Diplo concert with a bunch of, like, I'm gonna meet Koopa for the first time. Lucas, I'm gonna meet Lucas for the first time. And so, and Luke. And so there's actually gonna be three Bankless LLC employees at Miami. And Ryan, we won't see you there, though.

• 1:16:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, no, no, no. I do not, I do not like to travel as much. I'm the, like, the team calls me the Bankless Boomer. It's like, I'm just, you know, happy at home. Like, you guys have fun.

• 1:16:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Screen share me in or something. Let me know how it goes. But like, I'm, okay, so I had heard that you cannot actually talk about other chains while you're attending the conference.

• 1:16:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so.

• 1:16:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that true? Like, can you wear apparel from other chains?

• 1:16:32David Hoffman?

  I'll let you know.

• 1:16:34David Hoffman?

  So yeah, BTC Media put out this email that said, please, if you are attending the conference, please keep your conversations on Bitcoin themed conversations because this is a Bitcoin only conference. And so it's one thing to like make a Bitcoin only conference. That's great.

• 1:16:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess.

• 1:16:51David Hoffman?

  Requesting the attendees to keep their conversations focused to Bitcoin, a little bit controversial, a little bit controversial.

• 1:16:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, we'll see what happens to you, David, when you wear that shirt.

• 1:17:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So that's the other experiment. And so like Bitcoiners, like while they're kind of nasty on Twitter, they're a very loving like group of people, but it's kind of amongst themselves, right? Bitcoiners love other Bitcoiners. And like I've been, I've been-

• 1:17:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  You are a Bitcoiner, though, aren't you?

• 1:17:16David Hoffman?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:17:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Or you say you're not a Bitcoiner?

• 1:17:17David Hoffman?

  Depends on who you ask, right? And I've definitely worn my Ethereum shirt inside of a bunch of, like, inside of a Bitcoiner event where there was like literally 50 Bitcoiners around and I was the one Ethereum people and people knew who I was, like Bitcoin was pretty big at that time. But that was when the ETH Bitcoin ratio was like at point zero two. Now it's at point zero seven. And so like, I'm gonna test the waters to see like, are they all that loving as they say that they are? Like, we'll find out.

• 1:17:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, you know what Vance Spencer said on the podcast? Guys, listen to that one Monday. It's great. The flipping of ETH over Bitcoin is actually good for Bitcoin.

• 1:17:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm gonna bring that one out. I'll let you know how that goes.

• 1:17:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really? You're gonna try that?

• 1:17:58David Hoffman?

  I tweeted it out.

• 1:18:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let me know how it goes.

• 1:18:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, social experiments.

• 1:18:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'll be interested here, left and right.

• 1:18:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very fun.

• 1:18:04David Hoffman?

  Ryan, what are you excited about?

• 1:18:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm, I'm excited about Arbitrum, man. I'm excited about rollups in general. Like, Layer 2 is finally here. I was worried that when we had Arbitrum on on Tuesday, that they were gonna say something like, yeah, we released a main net, but you know, it's gonna be another six months before the DeFi apps are up and like, you know, some complexity here. We've just been disappointed so many times-

• 1:18:26David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:18:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  -with Layer 2 and with rollups, but-

• 1:18:29David Hoffman?

  No longer.

• 1:18:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  No longer. It's like really here and I'm excited about that. The second thing I'm excited about, I sort of picked up in that conversation too, is Arbitrum's launching with just one, one chain right now. But they could launch with a dozen chains. Like they could launch with 30 chains, 40 chains. You could have a DeFi chain, an NFT chain. You could have so many chains, as many chains as you want and all at the same time. So, and, and we, we talked about this with the Polygon SDK. They, they can produce a whole bunch of different versions of, of side chains, right? So like, now we have all of this additional real estate. We have all of this block space and I, I've, you know, we talked about

• 1:19:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Layer 2 hitting crypto like a tidal wave. Like I, I literally, I, this is going to be a wave of new apps that weren't previously possible on main chain. That's going to be part of the tidal wave and a wave of new users. We're going to start talking about monthly active users a lot more rather than total locked value and that's going to be exciting. So more people onboard through Layer 2. This is really important for crypto and I couldn't be more excited. We'll have to have optimism on too. I think they're launching in, in July. But I'm just really excited about Layer 2 Summer, baby. Still excited about it.

• 1:19:48David Hoffman?

  And this is what Vitala called, um, uh, expressivity, escape velocity, right? Like just make a li- the base chain a little bit more expressive and all of a sudden you have an infinite number of options that you can build on top of it. Uh, and that's what we are hopefully on the cusp of. A Cambrian explosion of available trustless block space and new possible economic activities. Like I said earlier, like all of a sudden, like microtransactions are back on the table. Like microtransactions used to be a thing, like real, realty, when I used to work at realty, we used to send daily rent out every single day.

• 1:20:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Got expensive, didn't it?

• 1:20:21David Hoffman?

  Base layer Ethereum, right? Back when, back when Gue was one, gas was one Gue. That got immediately pushed out, but like now we can kind of return to some of those crazy use cases that we hypothesized about, but never actually got to. Ryan, earlier in the show, I talked about, uh, the tokens that I think are particularly well suited towards a Layer 2, uh, a DeFi Summer, Layer 2 addition.

• 1:20:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  What you got?

• 1:20:43David Hoffman?

  I talked about Sushi Swap, right? A team that integrates really, really fast and aggressively and moves really, really quickly was also born in DeFi summer itself. And so is a DeFi summer like asset, you know, born and bred in DeFi summer. The other thing that I have my eye on is AVE. Again, moves really fast, integrates really, really quickly. It's already integrated on Polygon, so already knows what's up with at Layer 2. And so I've got my sights on AVE, YFI. If there is a bunch of yield to be had on Ethereum, Urn is supposed to be able to capture it. Again, another DeFi summer token. So like Sushi, Sushi, AVE and YFI, that's kind of where I have my eyes on as for tokens that are going to be particularly well-suited to capture a DeFi summer Layer 2 addition.

• 1:21:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  So the theme here is blue chips going to Layer 2, right? Blue chip DeFi projects with great teams, the good Layer 2 strategies, right? I'm also curious to see what new things we will see that are actually born in Layer 2.

• 1:21:41David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:21:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like new creations, new protocols will be born, not on the main chain, but inside of these Layer 2s. That kind of brings me to the meme of the week, David. Talking about birth.

• 1:21:51David Hoffman?

  Let's do it.

• 1:21:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Want to get to the meme of the week? Are we ready?

• 1:21:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think we're ready for the meme of the week.

• 1:21:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, I'm sharing screen. Here's the meme of the week by our friend Mariano Conti. What are we looking at?

• 1:22:00David Hoffman?

  For a panel comic, first is a like a CGI render of a pregnant lady with a baby inside of her and the baby is crossing its fingers saying, "God, please Ethereum, please Ethereum, please Ethereum." And then next picture is a baby, it looks like it just got born and the baby says, "Hello, sir, where am I?" And then the next panel is Binance Smart Chain. And then the fourth panel is the baby, just like, just the look of just like death, just like, "Oh, no."

• 1:22:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Swoop in on the baby's face.

• 1:22:27David Hoffman?

  "Oh, no, I'm born in Binance Smart Chain. Oh, no."

• 1:22:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, look, a lot of these new applications, new protocols, probably the next gen ones, will actually be born into Layer 2s. So hopefully they get a good Layer 2 and not a bad one. That's the meme of the week, folks. David, enjoy Miami.

• 1:22:47David Hoffman?

  I will.

• 1:22:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Have fun.

• 1:22:48David Hoffman?

  I will. Shilling bankless left and right.

• 1:22:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless listeners, David's gonna be in Miami. We're still gonna do the recordings, so regular schedule next week. Maybe some different scenery. Thanks for hanging with us. This has been another roll up. I gotta end with the disclaimers as usual. Bitcoin and ETH are risky, so is DeFi. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:23:18David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast and community as a Bankless Premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks and exclusive content and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless Premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other

• 1:24:03David Hoffman?

  fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.