ROLLUP: 3rd Week of January

🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: http://bankless.substack.com/ ✊ STARTING GUIDE BANKLESS: https://bit.ly/37Q17uI ❤️ JOIN PRIVATE DISCORD: https://bit.ly/2UVI10O 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 👕 BUY BANKLESS TEE: https://merch.banklesshq.com/ ----- GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS: ⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMP https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith 📱 DHARMA | MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharma ------ MARKET BTC Price https://messari.io/chart $31,500 ETH Price https://messari.io/chart $1440 https://twitter.com/defipulse/status/1351520589039738880 $DPI Peaked at $240 Now at $195 NEW ATH!! TVL in DeFi https://defipulse.com/ Peaked at $25B locked! BTC secret to success = HODL for at least 3.5 years https://blockworks.co/pantera-follow-up-this-rally-looks-different-than-2017/ Just HODL Just self custody. https://thedefiant.io/btc-eth-massively-outperform-crypto-hedge-funds-in-2020/ 2 and 20% fees for holding BTC up 425% and ETH up 360% ETH Fundamentals thread from spencer https://twitter.com/spencernoon/status/1351559233699983366?s=20 Fundstrat says 10k ETH https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-20/fundstrat-sees-digital-coin-ether-surging-sevenfold-to-10-500 RELEASES mStable mUSD Save v2 https://medium.com/mstable/mstable-launches-new-composable-version-of-musd-save-982a814e17d0 High-yield savings Saddle Finance https://www.coindesk.com/saddle-raises-4-3m-for-slippage-free-defi-trading Curve clone? Loopring on Google Play https://twitter.com/loopringorg/status/1351971724842184704?s=21 State of ETH 2, Danny Ryan https://twitter.com/dannyryan/status/1351930308770185217 Optimism soft launch! https://medium.com/ethereum-optimism/mainnet-soft-launch-7cacc0143cd5 Coinbase compartmentalizing infrastructure to help reduce outages https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-redoing-infrastructure-to-prevent-outages-during-peak-times Yearn proposes 22% YFI mint https://www.coindesk.com/lets-not-be-bitcoin-yearn-considers-minting-200m-in-new-yfi-tokens https://gov.yearn.finance/t/proposal-funding-yearns-future/9319 Bankless Reply to Lyn Alden https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/open-reply-to-lyn-alden-and-ethereum NEWS Goldman Sachs entering crypto with a custody play https://www.coindesk.com/goldman-sachs-to-enter-crypto-market-soon-with-custody-play-source Blackrock positioning to buy BTC via futures? https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/91867/blackrock-sec-filings-bitcoin-futures Massive news. BlackRock—the multi-trillion dollar asset manager—opens door to possible bitcoin futures allocation for certain funds it manages, according to recent filing. Money Printer go BRRR https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/18/yellen-says-us-must-act-big-on-next-coronavirus-relief-package.html MMT is officially in https://www.coindesk.com/janet-yellen-says-cryptocurrencies-are-a-concern-in-terrorist-financing Also Yellen Crypto is for terrorist financing Mike Dudas response to Yellen https://twitter.com/mdudas/status/1351596351897874432?s=20 Coinbase acquires Bison Trails https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-to-acquire-leading-blockchain-infrastructure-platform-bison-trails-f879654421d6 Soulja Boy looking into NFTs https://twitter.com/souljaboy/status/1351690439905013760?s=20 PAX Gold - first Gold token over $100M MC https://www.paxos.com/pax-gold-the-first-gold-token-with-more-than-100-million-in-market-cap/ Pornhub payments via some random crypto tokens and USDC https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/91817/pornhub-adds-xrp-bnb-usdc-doge-crypto-payment-options TAKES Ethereum is a bet that the future is going to be different https://twitter.com/trustlessstate/status/1351726365620355076?s=21 DeFi developers are now called Money Mechanics https://twitter.com/ETHGlobal/status/1349053987874615303?s=20 Valuing ETH is impossible https://twitter.com/spencernoon/status/1351635677847445505?s=20 Year in Ethereum 2020 from Josh Stark and Evan Van Ness https://twitter.com/0xstark/status/1351922041599873026?s=20 Uniswap is doing 2% of NYSE as the new normal https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1351646322173091840?s=20 Have we earned it? https://twitter.com/n2ckchong/status/1350328538646212608?s=20 ------ Don't stop at the video! Subscribe to the Bankless newsletter program http://bankless.substack.com/ Visit the official Bankless website http://banklesshq.com/ Follow Bankless on Twitter https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ Follow Ryan on Twitter https://twitter.com/ryansadams Follow David on Twitter https://twitter.com/TrustlessState ----- 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 we may add links in this channel to products we use. We may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. We'll always disclose when this is the case

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

• 0:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, what time is it?

• 0:08David Hoffman?

  It is roll up time. Ryan, what are we doing?

• 0:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  We are rolling up the week in crypto. This is the fastest way to get your week in crypto news. What do we cover, David?

• 0:18David Hoffman?

  We cover the market. What is the market saying? It's saying a lot this week, by the way. Then we go into releases. What got released in the last week? Then we go into the news. What's happened in the last seven days of news? Then we share some takes from friends in the ecosystem that we think is interesting. And then lastly, we finish up with what David and Ryan are excited about.

• 0:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome, man. So this comes out every Friday morning with your morning coffee. So please enjoy on YouTube or on the podcast feed. David, you ready?

• 0:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, let's do it. There's so much to cover this week. It's the first week of the year and there's just the most amount of news we have ever had on a weekly roll up. So it's going to be jam packed this episode.

• 1:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right.

• 1:01David Hoffman?

  Gemini is the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange. I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got back into crypto back in 2017, and it has been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and over 50 countries worldwide. And on Gemini, there are markets for over 30 various crypto assets, including many of the hot DeFi tokens like Wi-Fi, Aave, Uni. And also, they are one of the few exchanges that has liquid DAI markets. Having both the option of logging into the Gemini.com website or instead opening the Gemini mobile app has allowed me to be able to access any and all exchange and on or off ramp services that I've needed to on a moment's notice. With instant deposits and fast withdrawals,

• 1:46David Hoffman?

  I'm able to make my money do the things I want it to when I want it to. You can buy crypto safely and securely on Gemini with the peace of mind of knowing that your investments are insured and protected with industry leading cybersecurity. You can open up a free account in under three minutes at Gemini.com/goBankless. And if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after signup, you'll be gifted a free $15 bonus. Check them out, Gemini.com/goBankless.

• 2:18David 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 SBTC, 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,

• 3:01David 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.

• 3:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Happy 2021 to everyone. Let's start with Bitcoin, dude. It just hit 40K as we're recording this.

• 3:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like 20 minutes before I recorded and then it actually like $3,000 right afterwards. But it's still up there, still pretty close to 40K, which is pretty insane. Bitcoin has doubled its market cap in the last like three weeks. That is crazy. That has never happened before, ever.

• 4:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, that is like absolutely, we are in the bull market. And if you look at all of 2020, this was an interesting headline this week. Bitcoin actually closed 2020 as the best performing asset of the year. No, of the decade. Wow.

• 4:20David Hoffman?

  Incredible. So there is, I feel like at this point, there is, I don't know what the line is, but like you never get Fired for investing in IBM. This is the point where like Bitcoin people like won't get fired for investing in Bitcoin. I feel like we're crossing that bridge. The best performing asset of a decade is unignorable asset managers, money managers, like there's now like stronger deniability with investing in Bitcoin at this point, which I think is just really strong tailwinds.

• 4:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's definitely on the radar for institutions everywhere, even JP Morgan. So JP Morgan set a long-term price target at Bitcoin, a Bitcoin. Just this week for a hundred and forty-six K. David, you think that's bullish or bearish coming from JP Morgan?

• 5:03David Hoffman?

  My price target is higher than that, but JP Morgan, a bank that used to be bearish Bitcoin now saying that Bitcoin is going to reach almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I don't know how they came to such an accurate number, a hundred and forty-six thousand dollars. That's very specific. I haven't read the article. Maybe I should have read that before we got into this. But still like banks setting extremely high price targets for Bitcoin. I think the coolest thing about this is that. Banks are understanding or legacy institutions are understanding that this industry moves in exponentials. It's not that Bitcoin is at forty thousand and then next year it's going to be fifty-five thousand. They understand that Bitcoin is going to, you know, put on five times or something. It's market cap.

• 5:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. Okay. Speaking of exponentials, Ether, the price of Ether has been on a tear lately. Wow. What did we do for the last seven days?

• 5:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we, over the last seven days, we have climbed from just seven hundred and fifty dollars to just under thirteen hundred dollars. Mind you, the all-time high price for Ether is fourteen thousand twenty dollars. We still have a little bit to go. This kind of feels like when Bitcoin was hovering around the nine thousand mark, really flirting with all-time highs, but you know, making sure it really melts. You know, crypto Twitter and all of our attention out of it, saying like, when's it going to break all-time high? When's it going to break all-time high? Now Ether is doing that same thing, just dancing right under all-time highs. That's going to be really, a really fun day when it finally breaks.

• 6:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ether's just teasing us, guys, but it did break something. It broke its market cap all-time high, of course, which. Hundred and fifty, uh, hundred and forty-five billion or so. And of course, market cap all time high is different than price all time high because over the last couple of years, Ether supply has increased at a rate of about four percent or so per year. So we've already broken that number, David. The only thing left is that ma- magic number of fourteen twenty. So guys, fourteen twenty is the all time high number to beat. And as you talked about on State of the Nation, uh, last week, David, do you remember twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen bears when everyone was saying Ether would never hit its all time high again. It was just a flash in the pan,

• 7:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  a brief moment in time with the ICO search. And now here we are, David, right on the cusp. Pretty exciting. And I feel vindicated, at least because we've been talking about this for the last two years, right?

• 7:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah. You know what I was doing when Ether was like a hundred dollars and people were saying that Ether is going to go to zero. You know what I was doing that time, Ryan?

• 7:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Were you crying, David? Or were you like?

• 7:35David Hoffman?

  No, I was pulling out my calculator and I'm calculating how much ETH I had and how what, how much money I would have if Ether made it back to its all time high. That was two years ago and now we're almost at that point that I envisioned when I was pulling out that calculator.

• 7:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  For sure. It's, uh, it's, it's pretty exciting times for all of crypto and especially for those ETH bulls who, who've been hanging in the trenches over the last two years. Also for the DeFi bulls. So the DeFi pulse index just hit a hundred and eighty. That's an all time high as well, right?

• 8:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah. DeFi tokens are, are, are heating up, right? They still really haven't had their day. Today, actually, YFI, one of my favorite assets, uh, finally broke through. It's like twenty-four thousand mark to jump all the way to thirty-five thousand. Aave is at an all time high of a hundred and twenty plus dollars. Uni is moving up to six and a half dollars. So DeFi tokens really strong, but still haven't stolen the show yet. And that is something that we'll talk about later in this weekly roll up. Uh, I think that that is coming.

• 8:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know what's interesting about the Uniswap market cap is right is like somewhat people are going to start benchmarking that with a Coinbase IPO market cap because like Uniswap at brief moments last year surpassed Coinbase as far as exchange volume. So you have to wonder what's a better buy at these prices. Is it the Uniswap token? Or is it the Coinbase IPO? I guess we'll see.

• 8:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there is such an easy comparison between Coinbase, which is going public on a stock market, which with Uniswap, that's already public in DeFi, right? And doing comparable amounts of volume. If you are trying to get into and gain exposure to the DeFi ecosystem to leverage all the principles that DeFi offers. Uniswap is a perfect asset for that with a legacy comparison and that legacy comparison is theoretically going to go public at $50 billion where Uniswap is under $2 billion in market cap. There is an alpha there.

• 9:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  There is possibly some alpha. Now there, you know, some critics of that sentiment would say, hey, it's a governance token. It doesn't have the cash flow guarantees that something like Coinbase would have and fair enough. But as we've talked about before, these are emerging as DeFi capital assets. So we think that comes into play soon. You know, the other thing, when we talk about bull markets and how it's face melting, this is the kind of thing we're talking about. Like, I didn't even know. We hit 22, over 22 billion in total locked value in DeFi and I didn't even notice. David, it seems like only yesterday we were celebrating 1 billion total locked in DeFi. Here we are at 22. Just last week, it was like 15. What's going on, dude? My face is getting melted.

• 10:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, for listeners who listened to last week's weekly roll up, we were at 14.4 billion locked in DeFi. Today, we're at 22.8 billion locked in DeFi. And I remember making a tweet, something along the lines of in 2019 that, hey, like we locked value locked in DeFi just hit $10 billion and that was last week and no one noticed. And like the same thing's happening with 22 billion. No one's really seems to be surprised. I think the next stop is really going to be $100 billion. Just like there's a conversation we're going to have later in the episode, but things move in exponentials.

• 10:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm just feeling nostalgic, right? It's like the only only time we celebrate this stuff going to be like from one, we celebrated that in 100 billion, maybe we'll have to see if that's the case. The another thing to celebrate, I suppose, is it this almost passed me by to you. We have 1 trillion market cap. If you look at all crypto asset market caps in total, so this includes ether, this includes Bitcoin, this includes all the DeFi assets, some other things to thrown in 1 trillion market cap. The world's got to be paying attention to an asset class that has grown from zero 11 years ago to $1 trillion, don't they?

• 11:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and 1 trillion is a big number. Nothing more to say about that.

• 11:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, we've got a few other things that we could talk about. One is 2020 asset returns summary. If you look at just like 2020, the standout assets were Bitcoin and Ether. So Bitcoin was up 300% over the year. Ether was up 469%. The NASDAQ had quite a good year, but that was 44%, right? So again.

• 11:51David Hoffman?

  Low numbers.

• 11:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Low numbers. Gold had a good year at 25%, but we're in crypto and we're like, oh, you know, 460%, that's a pretty good year, man. It's funny to see the comparison.

• 12:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, anything below 50% is bearish in my mind. That's because I'm spoiled and I'm in crypto.

• 12:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. We also have Ether, like just chewing up gas fees, like all time, all time high in terms of transaction revenue. We'll talk about that more a bit later, but like one day fees for a day last week, it's driving 20 million in transaction fees, right? So like, give me EIP 1559, so we can burn some of that Ether and make Ether a better store of value. Another interesting thing, I think, in the context of like number go up, price go up, number go up is good for security, right, David?

• 12:41David Hoffman?

  Number go up is Ethereum's security mechanism. That's exactly right. According to this tweet, if you are watching on the YouTube, it costs over $1 billion to obtain a 66% stake, which is how you, if you want to be at the helm of Ethereum, that's how much it will cost you. And then you also have to be willing to burn that money. And again, as Ether price goes up, that number just goes even higher Ethereum. As as number goes up, Ethereum becomes more secure. What a great safety mechanism.

• 13:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep, becomes more secure, more healthy, also more trustless economic bandwidth as we talked about before. Okay, that's market. Let's get to you releases. This is an interesting one. What's going on with Shapeshift?

• 13:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Shapeshift's run by Eric Voorhees, a pretty prominent libertarian. Shapeshift used to be this platform where you could set up a trade where like you want to send Shapeshift, you know, one asset and then Shapeshift will send you back a different asset. Very much like, like a centralized exchange. It is a centralized exchange, except the cool thing about it is it doesn't never ever holds on to your funds. So it's relatively atomic. So like if you want to trade your Bitcoin, they would give you a Bitcoin address and then you would also put your Ether address. And you would receive Ether from the exchange. So you never actually had to deposit anything. And because they weren't storing users' funds, they didn't take KYC. The SEC didn't like that. And so they made Shapeshift take KYC, which kind of was, kind of killed their business model.

• 14:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  By the way, was it the SEC or was it more FinCEN? I don't know where it came at us.

• 14:12David Hoffman?

  Listeners, double check me on that. Anyways, top-down regulators said you must do KYC. Eric Voorhees, a famous libertarian, didn't like that, but complied regardless. And so now they are pivoting to something different that allows them to remove KYC. Once again, they are going from an exchange, a typical exchange, into a DEX aggregator, which doesn't, which doesn't require KYC. And so Shapeshift, once again, not a KYC exchange.

• 14:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Cool. Yeah. And what's neat about this is like they're, they're basically going to be a DEX aggregator like a one-inch, right? And this is another example of, of protocol sync thesis, right? So now that these DeFi protocols are available, exchanges are deciding to build on top of them. And in the case of Shapeshift, they're like, we're getting rid of what we did before and completely switching out our architecture. So pretty exciting. We're going to have Voorhees on actually next week, right, David?

• 15:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Voorhees is coming on the Tuesday State of the Nation. We're going to talk about this transition from a exchange to a DEX aggregator. And then we're also going to talk about regulation because I know Eric has very strong opinions about that.

• 15:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Another interesting thing that's going that's happening is Van Eck just proposed an ETF, a Bitcoin ETF. Once again, if you'll recall, many of these Bitcoin ETFs in the past have been have been shot down by the SEC in one form or another. But now, what's different? We have a new SEC chairperson. So taking the helm and and also a number of these more nefarious, I would I would or these gray sort of exchanges have been actually shut down by by the SEC, right? So BitMEX comes to mind, of course. So, you know, this might be the timing, I guess, is what I would say. And wouldn't it be ironic, David, if this bull market ended with

• 16:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  a Bitcoin ETF just in sight, right? That was like, close to the top. I don't know. It's possible. What do you think?

• 16:11David Hoffman?

  I think the so. So you're you're exactly right. One of the biggest reasons why we haven't had a Bitcoin ETF yet is was cited because so much of price discovery happens in offshore exchanges. That was the explicit statement of the regulators as to why they are not approving a Bitcoin ETF. But that was statements made before BitMEX was shut down. And I don't know if you've noticed, but ever since BitMEX has been shut down, there have been very few BARTs. The market has been very, very stable.

• 16:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, wait, wait. Tell someone what a BART is.

• 16:42David Hoffman?

  A BART is when like Bitcoin or Ether just jumps like $3,000 up or down. What what the sent the speculation as to what was happening is that people would use BitMEX, very large, wealthy individuals, whales would manipulate the market. They would go what's called sniping for leveraged longs or leveraged shorts. If there were too many people leveraged long, they would take their Bitcoin, they would dump it, they would collect the liquidation penalties of people on BitMEX, and then they would just buy it back, right? And so they would pocket themselves, you know, 5%, 10% on their Bitcoin. Extremely shady stuff, extremely non desirable to for retail and extremely undesirable for an ETF. That ended when BitMEX went away. We haven't seen any Bart activity since BitMEX went away.

• 17:27David Hoffman?

  The market, the price discovery is happening more and more inside of US regulated exchanges. That makes things like FinCEN and the SEC and CFTC much more secure in a decision around the ETF. So this is the first ETF that's been proposed since that has happened. That is a big difference here with that, and I'm optimistic that this is going to happen.

• 17:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dave, the SEC's got to do something, right? Because there's no way for retail to get in on this market if they have like funds.

• 17:55David Hoffman?

  This is a retail protection story.

• 17:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  It is, because if you look at the price of like the the trust products from Grayscale, which you talked about before, right? They're completely out of whack.

• 18:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Did you notice the the grayscale Ether price in the last week?

• 18:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, I did. It's crazy. It went down while ETH price went up, which is absolutely insane.

• 18:15David Hoffman?

  Price almost doubled, yet the ETH asset, the trust out of grayscale went down in price.

• 18:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  So if I know. So like due to the SEC's inaction, retail is getting ripped off because we don't have good Ether and Bitcoin ETFs, right? It's it's absolutely crazy. Guys, you guys can avoid this, of course. We we recommend that if you have like an IRA or something that you like, use a self-directed IRA, something like Rocket Dollar could help you. You could try that. But for most of mainstream, like they're buying these crappy products because the SEC is forcing them to buy them.

• 18:47David Hoffman?

  Right. They're buying they're buying a product with 150% premium, which means they're paying $101.50 to access $1 worth of Ether. And like this is no fault of grayscale. This is just normal market activity because there isn't an ETF. So come on, regulators, let's let's start protecting retail here.

• 19:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, please, guys. Okay, Future Swap, V2 Beta. So this is more options, more futures on Ethereum. This is a product that came out of the summer due to overwhelming interest. They actually shut it down and they wanted to make sure that they had security intake. And and they're launching, David, you think this is the year for options and futures products on Ether, like DeFi native ones?

• 19:30David Hoffman?

  On-chain Futures on-chain options. That's exactly right. A little known story that I think is underappreciated. FutureSwap opened up their alpha on-chain and they also had this, the, one of the very first yield farms before it was called yield farming, before comp was even issued. The FutureSwap was the initiation of yield farming and it was a very dampened story and the reason why it was so dampened is because so many degenerates ape in like $10 million, which they, which FutureSwap was not ready for. And so they prematurely shut it down because people wanted the FutureSwap governance token. Again, this was before comp was even issued. And so because people Yolo'd into all their money into FutureSwap in order to farm the

• 20:14David Hoffman?

  FutureSwap governance token, it received like a crazy amount of success. And then they said like, no, no more. This is crazy. We don't want this much money. These contracts are unaudited. They shut it down. And that was before DeFi summer. Now they are finally releasing their product on-chain with FutureSwap fee two. Again, part of the story of 2021, I think, is that on-chain futures and on-chain options is going to be a thing. And this is that story unfolding.

• 20:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Also kudos to them for shutting things down and doing something that is more responsible, right? A little bit of self-regulation there, I suppose.

• 20:46David Hoffman?

  Capping the degeneracy, yeah.

• 20:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. Okay, YAM is a food token, speaking of degeneracy, a food token that has now pivoted into a fully-fledged DAO. And it's pretty exciting because they're actually releasing products. Here's one of them. Anything else you want to say? Umbrella is one of them. It's an insurance product, sort of similar to Nexus Mutual, I suppose. Anything else you want to say about the YAM DAO story, David?

• 21:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I actually haven't researched this product too well, but the people that I trust have. And they say that this is an insurance product that is uniquely different from Nexus Mutual, a viable competitor. And I do agree with you. The interesting story about this is not only that there is a new viable competitor for insurance in DeFi, but that it is a new protocol that is owned by another protocol. That is pretty cool.

• 21:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. Let's talk about this too. This is a transaction builder that someone came out with, which I think really illustrates, right? So like, David, you were responsible for coming up with the Money Legos meme, right? Like, a little known fact, guys, David doesn't like to brag about that, but like, he came up with the Money Legos meme, and now we see it everywhere.

• 21:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's an open source meme.

• 21:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's an open, as all memes are, and this is a, an example of somebody actually building a product on the many Money Lego meme. It's called DeFi Legos. And what does it allow people to do?

• 22:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, I think the UI is a little bit simple, and I think it's going to get built out. But basically, I think the long-term vision of this is like drag and drop transaction ordering and transaction creation. And so it has a number of different options, right? You can deposit from Aave, withdraw from Aze, flash loan from, from InceDapp, and do a bunch of other things, trade on Uniswap. And it allows you to construct a transaction all at once. So if you want to execute these things all in one transaction, it allows you to do that. And that used to be a, a ability that only the solidity experts were able to do. And now this is a UI for people to recreate a complex transaction just by filling in some fields. I think that this is a really cool, really underappreciated possibility.

• 22:50David Hoffman?

  I think there's going to take some time to really refine how this works. Austin Griffith has another product that's kind of similar to like this, that's literally like, kind of like Microsoft Paint, and then you'd like drag and drop in different like features and options, saying like, well, I want this to connect to this, and then I want this to happen. If this happens, kind of like an if this, then that builder. I'm really bullish on like drag and drop Money Lego transaction builders, and that seems to be what this is.

• 23:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Super cool. Programmable money, guys, is super cool. Speaking of programmable money, this was an interesting post that came out from Coinbase about some programmable functionality that they added to USDC. They did this, actually, I believe in like August or September, but this article sort of talked about how they did it, how they made it upgradable. What do you think the takeaway is here, David?

• 23:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, the really cool thing about contracts on Ethereum is that they are upgradable. And as we come to understand what What we can do in Ethereum, what Solidity is able to do in the code. We come up with new and better things that we want to be able to execute on, which means our old contracts become outdated. However, whoever deployed the contract at USDC, deployed an upgradable contract and they actually finally used that upgradable contract to add in some new features. And so literally the US dollar on Ethereum got a software update. There are now like larger and more diverse buildable surface areas on USDC.

• 24:16David Hoffman?

  And so I think that's something that is uniquely compelling about Ethereum is that assets can get software updates and still be the same asset. That's pretty cool.

• 24:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, think of an update. So like the, the technology that we use for paper money is, is basically paper, right? It wasn't always the case. There was a time where we used coins, but like when we switched to paper, that was sort of a, a software. I guess a, a real world.

• 24:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Update of some.

• 24:41David Hoffman?

  That's a hardware update.

• 24:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  A hardware update. This is kind of like, like similar in that we can change the medium around. We can add features to our stablecoins and to our money on the software layer. Super cool stuff.

• 24:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, all right, David, let's talk releases, my friend. Actually, never mind, scratch that. We just did that. Let's talk news. So the big news of the week is this OCC news. So this is the, um, the Office of Comptroller of Currency. So this is like a big banking regulator in the US that Brian Brooks, uh, now runs. The big news of the week is that federally chartered banks, so these are all US banks right now. The OCC clarified that these federally chartered banks can now facilitate stablecoin transactions, payments on their own, using public networks like Ethereum. Translate this for us, David. What does it mean?

• 25:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this just means that banks can use USDC to settle payments between each other. I think that's going to be just a boon to efficiency and money transmitter services. I think it's just the logical conclusion of this industry. This is the entire thesis of this crypto economy is that we can use blockchains to do our old things better as well as new things. I have a prediction coming out in the bankless newsletter, which everyone should tune into. It's coming out tomorrow, 21, 2021 predictions. I think plenty of banks will adopt this service in order to facilitate payments between each other. But my spicy part of this prediction is that none of those, none of the efficiency and none of that value captured.

• 26:22David Hoffman?

  The value, the increased value of being able to do this is actually going to be passed on to the end user. I still think we're going to be taking one to three days to pass money between each other. And there's still going to be limits. And that's just going to be a boon for retail adoption of this industry. That's my prediction.

• 26:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you think banks are going to continue to be rent seekers even as they deploy stable coins? And not just use USDC, of course, they can deploy any stable coin they want on these banking networks. The regulator clarified it for them. I think what's happening here, David, is that like our prediction, our bankless prediction of banks becoming Ethereum sidechains like ledgers off of Ethereum is starting to come true, using Ethereum as a settlement layer for this sort of stablecoin transaction. So super exciting, possibly the most bullish news. I'll say of the year, right? Because this is short year, it's definitely the most bullish news of the year. Bullish stablecoins, bullish Ethereum as a settlement layer for them, pretty exciting, I think, overall.

• 27:22David Hoffman?

  When will banks, when will a bank ledger turn into an optimistic roll up? Now that is an interesting question.

• 27:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and who will be the first? I can guarantee you it won't be JP Morgan in France.

• 27:33David Hoffman?

  It's not going to be Wells Fargo either.

• 27:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. Speaking, we were speaking earlier about grayscale. You know, like at some level, the products that they have, I'm glad that they are available to retail because it's better than nothing. But Barry Silbert, you know, grayscale's kind of founder, talked about the growth that they've seen in 2020 from 2 billion to over 20 billion in assets under management. And the cool, the interesting thing about this is he expects another 10x this year. 200 billion in AUM.

• 28:10David Hoffman?

  Wow, wow, that's a big prediction and I'm with it. I think that's an accurate prediction. Yeah, we had Michael Sunshine, CEO of Grayscale on the podcast. If you want to learn more about that. And yeah, again, to no fault of their own for grayscale, like it's kind of ripping off retail, but that's a result of market dynamics and it's specifically a result of the extreme demand. The, the fact that like if you buy a one, you need to buy $1.50 worth of the ETH E trust to get $1 worth of ether. That's not because of grayscale. That's because ether, the ETH E trust is in such high demand. That's just how that works. And so it's kind of market forces that's ripping off retail. So again, no fault to their own for grayscale. Congratulations for getting $20, $20 billion.

• 28:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Pretty good business. Yeah. Well done, Barry. Pretty good business to be running right now. All right, let's talk about the, the Biden administration. So we've been talking a lot on Bankless about this proposed rule that was coming out of FinCEN. Mnuchin was behind that, of course, Secretary of Treasury, who is not very fond of crypto. But if like, what could happen is that this entire proposed rule could be like just paused indefinitely.

• 29:26David Hoffman?

  Dead, killed.

• 29:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  And why? This is just new administration stuff? Is that, is that kind of why?

• 29:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So any, any, any proposal or rules that have not been formally integrated into law, by the time the Biden administration comes into office in January 20th, Biden says, none of them are going to happen. And I don't think Biden specifically cares about the law or regulation that we care about, the FinCEN rule. However, it just falls into the category that if it's not finalized by the time Biden gets in, he's cutting it just because he doesn't, doesn't agree with Donald Trump's decision-making or any of his friends, Steve, like Steve Mnuchin. Fine, that's a, that's a win. I'll take it.

• 30:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so that means Mnuchin has to get this in before the 20th, or it's not going in, or it's dead in the water. But if he does get it in, I'm a little bit concerned that it stays in, maybe, David?

• 30:19David Hoffman?

  However, there are over 6,000 comments that they by law have to review before they can get this in. So there's a lot of time that they need to spend to review all those comments. So I'm optimistic it doesn't go in.

• 30:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  The crypto industry maybe spam attacked them and that's how to lay it. Well done, guys. We did it. We'll see. Also, not, it's not good news again, and kind of like the crypto banking side of things. A crypto bank called Bitrex, which is an exchange, just delisted their privacy coins. Monero, Dash, and Zcash. I'm not sure if they were getting pressure from regulators against privacy coins, or is this was just like, just in case our lawyers advise us to delist. But this is not good, David.

• 31:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Bitrex isn't the biggest exchange, so I'm kind of curious as to why they decided to become first to delist privacy coins. I actually don't know if, I know Zcash is on Gemini. I'm pretty sure it's on Coinbase. I'm pretty sure Monero is not on Gemini or Coinbase. Dash, we don't have to talk about Dash. I don't have a strong opinion about Dash. But yeah, it seems weird that Bitrex is kind of going first with trying to delist these things. I feel like you are right. There is a story behind the scenes that we don't know. But overall, I don't like that. I don't like that this industry is taking action to protect themselves against regulators. That also removes choice from users.

• 31:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is why we need DeFi, guys, because guess what? Uniswap cannot, does not have the power to delist your coin. It's permissionless. Anyone can list anything. They can't shut it down. That's why we need these solutions to preserve our freedom. Of course, Jake Trivinsky, our favorite crypto lawyer, reminds us that in the US, actually, privacy is a constitutional right. So we do have some of these freedoms baked into the constitution. It just remains to be seen whether these exchanges, which are private Businesses will will follow them or not. It's it's definitely disappointing if centralized exchanges start to mass delist these privacy coins. But do you know what's interesting is is the workaround, once again, is DeFi, right?

• 32:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ethereum, for example, is developing a privacy layer, some technologies like Aztec, for example. They can be used to to like make a transaction, a die transaction private. So we we don't have privacy on the base layer of Ethereum, but we do have protocols that can add that privacy back in. And that might be a nice back door to preserve this this monetary freedom that large governments are seemingly trying to take away. Maybe exchanges are trying to take away as well.

• 33:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I've never really been compelled by the need for privacy to be integrated into one specific asset like we are seeing with Zcash or Monero. I've always thought that privacy is a service, not a not a not an asset, right? And I would rather have the ability to have my my Ether or my die go through tornado cash or Aztec if I wanted privacy. So then I can keep my exposure to Ether or my exposure to the US dollar and have that be private. To me, that just makes more sense. I don't understand why I need my own L1 to have privacy. But again, that's a different conversation than what's going on here.

• 33:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. It's a good conversation, though. Speaking of DeFi, Uniswap had an incredible year. I mean, if you were to name one breakout DeFi protocol that was just like

• 33:47David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 33:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  amazing, it's gotta be Uniswap. They did just did everything right. Liquidity on Uniswap just passed a 3.1 billion. That is approaching an all time high. The cool thing here is now they're doing it, David, without these these uni liquidity mining incentives, right? So like a lot of DeFi summer was different protocols, turning on the juice by providing governance tokens. Uniswap's not doing that, and they're still approaching their all time high. Pretty incredible story.

• 34:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I wrote a article that a very short article in Coin Dust recently that was all about how you yield is only almost basically only existent in Ethereum. A 30 year treasury note is below 0.9% APY. AAA corporate bonds are below 2% APY. Except if you are interested in digital assets, a hybrid 50 50 ETH USDC position netted you a 35% APY over the year of 2020. If you are providing liquidity in Uniswap, that's why they don't need uni incentives is because they're still getting 35% on their USDC ether position. That is a lot of APY.

• 34:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, it's embarrassing is that that banks still call them savings accounts. Right? Like savings accounts? What are you talking about? I'm I'm making like 0.1%. It's not a savings account.

• 35:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, numbers stay the same account.

• 35:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  No one's saving their money in those things. Not seriously. All right, David, Iran is closing down some mining operations. Why does that matter? What's the story here?

• 35:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we've previously talked about Iran on the weekly rollups. Previously, they were forcing mining operations to sell the Iranian government their BTC. So the Iranian government wanted a monopoly on the ability to purchase BTC from from mining operations. And they thought there is that, you know, BTC is permissionless. Iran is not able to use the US dollar or global payment networks due to sanctions. And so they need the they need the Bitcoin. And the only way that they can really get their hands on Bitcoin is through their own miners. I'm going to go ahead and guess that the illegal mining operations are ones that were not following this rule. I think the the country of Iran is just go, they probably claim these for themselves.

• 36:02David Hoffman?

  This is probably now, at this point, the Iran, the Iranian government is straight up mining Bitcoin so that they can fund their own balance sheet because they don't have any other way. I think that's what the story is here.

• 36:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  So do you know what else is interesting too? It goes back to our conversation that we we had, we put out a podcast just this this Monday with Vitalik, right? And he talked about one difference between proof of work and proof of stake is actually proof of stake can be more. More censorship resistant. Why? It doesn't have this massive energy profile. At the end of the day, who controls the electricity grid? Like, the nation state has a role in that. We can, we can see that you are like, you, you have a, a grow up, right? Or we can see that you are mining like massive amounts of BTC. You're, you, you don't have a, a light profile there, right? Whereas with proof of stake, we can run it on a consumer laptop, right? So I do think that is a hidden benefit possibly of proof of stake versus proof of work.

• 36:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's bearing out here, like if a nation state has mining that's going on that it wants to control, it can identify who the miners are and shut them down if it wishes.

• 37:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Proof of stake does not have a real world footprint. That's the takeaway.

• 37:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is the takeaway. All right, let's get into some.

• 37:18David Hoffman?

  If you want to live a bankless life, you need to get a Monolith DeFi Visa card. Monolith is a one-two punch of both an Ethereum smart contract wallet and an accompanying Visa card that lets you spend the money that you have in your Ethereum wallet everywhere where Visa is accepted. When you swipe your Monolith Visa card at the grocery store or at a restaurant, it actually makes a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain that spends some of the money you hold in your Monolith wallet. It's insanely cool and it's one of the best tools out there for living a bankless, but still normal life. Monolith also offers on-ramp services for getting your fiat money into the world of DeFi. So it's trivial to top up your Monolith card if you ever need to

• 38:00David Hoffman?

  and your deposited money goes straight into your non-custodial wallet. So your money is never held by a centralized intermediary. Because Monolith is native Ethereum infrastructure, the money you hold in your Monolith wallet still has the power of DeFi behind it. Swapping assets on Uniswap or earning yield in DeFi is at your fingertips. Go to monolith.xyz and sign up to get your Monolith Visa card today.

• 38:26David 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, MoneyLegos, 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

• 39:09David 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 Aave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com.

• 39:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, let's get into some takes. This is a first, this is a strong Ethereum. I don't know if you'd call him an Ethereum maximalist. If he is, he's like one of the few Ethereum maximalists I know. But what is this take from Antipro?

• 39:48David Hoffman?

  Antipro, yeah, says, "Ask 10 different people which blockchain they think is second to Ethereum, and you'll get 10 different answers." That right there is why Ethereum has already won. I haven't heard this take before, and I really, really like it. What Ante is saying is that there is no consensus on a second place to Ethereum. Therefore, whoever would be included is probably like a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth. There is no runner-up to Ethereum. Ethereum has the lead, and it's probably going to keep it, because there's no other viable competitor.

• 40:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, speaking of ETH bull takes, this is the week for ETH bull takes. Let's do an ETH bull take from our friend Raul Paul. What's he saying here?

• 40:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Raul Paul is comparing Ether this cycle to Bitcoin last cycle, saying that the prices are really similar, and he thinks that as a result of that, Ether is going to follow Bitcoin in price, leading up to Bitcoin, perhaps, or Ether almost touching 20K, I think is the takeaway here. Really interesting to see Raul Paul being specifically really bullish Ether. He has a huge following, and a lot of people listen to what he says.

• 40:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely, and he's been particularly harsh on Bitcoin maximalists lately who are who are basically saying, hey, Bitcoin is the only asset that will ever appreciate in value. And Raul Paul is just looking at it more objectively and he's saying, um, that's not what's happening. That's not what's happened historically. That's not what the price charts are saying. That's not what sort of the, uh, he even looks at like active addresses versus ETH price. And he shows like a similar correlation, actually like a, um, a higher growth rate of Ether versus Bitcoin. So his conclusion is basically more objective. He doesn't have a religious preference on this. He isn't even like bankless. He doesn't even care about being bankless, right?

• 41:34David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 41:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, he, he told us that on the podcast. He's just looking at it and, and being like, oh, ETH to me looks a lot like Bitcoin in 2017. Sorry, maximalists.

• 41:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your religious beliefs about crypto are. The fundamentals behind Ethereum speak for themselves and that's what Raul is tapping into here.

• 41:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. Here's another take from a DC investor, and I really like this take. He's comparing Ether market cap today to a bank market cap. What's, what's he say here?

• 42:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, he says Ether at one for $140 billion market cap, just past Citigroup's market cap at $135 billion. Just one bank. Ethereum is a permissionless protocol that will eat all banks. Ether, the market cap of Ether equalling one single bank in the United States means that to me, that the market cap of Ether is extremely undervalued to this day. Uh, I expect Ether to be worth more than one bank in the future.

• 42:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's kind of an interesting conversation of like how you define the total addressable market size of a thing, right? There, there was a time where we thought like the total addressable market size of Uber was like maybe all taxis, all taxi fares in the world. But it turns out it's, it's far beyond that.

• 42:53David Hoffman?

  It's a multiple of that.

• 42:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  It is a multiple of that and and the reason is because like people can start using Uber more than they ever used taxis, right? Like I'm gonna get rid of my car and just use Uber. So it turns out that at lower cost. So this is also what DC is saying, I think, that like, hey, the way we think about the market cap of of these things, the total addressable market cap for Ethereum is obviously many multiples of a bank. It's not even valued at a bank stop a stock right now. So so he's making the case that it is under under valued for sure. You made an interesting case this week too, in the opening note on Monday in Bankless,

• 43:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  where like you you talked about, and this is probably from your experience living through 2017, right? Well, you talked about the Rex reflexivity. This is a term from George Soros, I believe, that really resonates, I think, with what what what goes on in crypto markets. Can you tell us what reflexivity is and like what's just happened?

• 43:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, reflexivity is people reacting and making decisions based off of other people's reactions and decisions, right? And so it it this is when the crypto markets, this is why crypto markets generate like these hype cycles and bubbles that ultimately do burst, right? It's because people are basing their decisions on other people's decisions and not about fundamentals. And what that's what happens when Bitcoin blasts through $20,000. We lose the ability to like chart and do technical analysis if that's what your deal is. We lose the ability to measure fundamentals. People price in future growth extremely aggressively. And we just kind of lose ground with reality, right? In in to maybe to use the moon metaphor, we are perhaps launching into space.

• 44:40David Hoffman?

  But in space, you have no foundation, you have no footing, you are kind of floating. You don't know how to evaluate these things because no one else knows how to evaluate these things. So everyone's kind of just using their best guesswork. And because things are disconnected from reality, fundamentals are irrelevant and reflexivity takes over. And that's actually partly why something can go and become really, really bullish. Because we've lost reality with the fundamentals and because there's almost nothing stopping ether from doing something insanely. I'm gonna say stupid and going to 10K because like I'm I'm I'm gonna tell you ether is not worth 10K.

• 45:18David Hoffman?

  But that doesn't mean it's not going to go there. It's just I don't think the fundamentals back it up, but it's still going. It's still probably going to go there because reflexivity is in and fundamentals are out.

• 45:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Interesting and crypto market cycles, of course, are reflexive up. There are also reflexive down. If you live through 2018 and you saw 2019 and you saw an ether price decline of 95%, you can attest to that. They are reflexive. They go way under what they should be priced at as well. So you're saying we're gonna see that and we've already entered maybe the early stage of this reflexive market. So what what what people tend to do in the early stages of a bull market, I think, are they actually like undersize how big this thing could get. And that's what you're saying here, like wait for it to get stupid because it has every other market. That's what reflexive markets do. They get really stupid.

• 46:08David Hoffman?

  Yep.

• 46:10David Hoffman?

  That's exactly right.

• 46:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, David, let's go to what what you're excited about. So what are you excited about this week?

• 46:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, what am I excited about? I'm excited about alt season. I'm gonna say it. The the cycle to me, and this is not something that people should plan on, but if we want to be extremely rough, the cycle goes Bitcoin goes up, then ether goes up, then tokens go up, and then then then maybe there's a correction. I think we are about to enter the phase where tokens go up and that's and that's the other half of this take is that the crypto market cap just passed $1 trillion. And when people see that, their reflexes will tell them, wow, FOMO, I want to get in. And when and people, I think, have a hard time understanding exponentials in this world. We tend to think in linear growth, you know,

• 46:56David Hoffman?

  the S and P grows at 7% a year. Well, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum, they are average 1 to 2% per day so on on some of their years, which is pretty insane. That reflexivity, I think, is going to kick in. Now that we just passed $1 trillion in market cap, the next stop isn't Two trillion. The next stop is ten trillion dollars. This industry grows in exponentials and part of the way that that implies a ten X growth in the assets across the board, right? I don't think Bitcoin is going to do a ten X that would put Bitcoin at four hundred thousand dollars. I don't think Bitcoin's going that high. And I think the way that we get from a one trillion dollar market cap to a ten trillion dollar market cap is growth in altcoins in low market,

• 47:41David Hoffman?

  low market cap coins that go from something like ten million dollars and then they grow to like two hundred million dollars. That's where I think the bulk of this market cap growth is going to come from and how we get to a market cap growth of ten trillion dollars. It's alt season. I think alt season is coming. That's gonna be pretty fun to watch. Also, hold on to your pants.

• 48:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  I agree with a lot of what you said, David, but I've got to say I hate the term alt season.

• 48:08David Hoffman?

  I know.

• 48:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do. You know, I do like. So my question is like, is ETH an alt to you?

• 48:13David Hoffman?

  No, ETH is not an alt to me. To me, alts are.

• 48:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do we have to use this term anymore? Like?

• 48:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think we do.

• 48:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why?

• 48:23David Hoffman?

  Because they all tend to move as a group, right? And they is like the the assets and coins that maybe maybe the category is like certain market cap. So maybe it's like, and I wouldn't say like uni is an alt or YFI is an alt. Like, I think we could be more strategic and precise about how we categorize them. But if they all start moving at the same time and they're distinct from Ether and Bitcoin, then we need to categorize them at some point in time. And I know you like to categorize them and I totally agree with you as like capital assets or store of value assets. But the capital assets or store or whatever assets, those type of categories don't categorize the the kinds of tokens that all tend to pump together.

• 49:06David Hoffman?

  And it's usually just if I don't know how else to categorize it other than alternative to Bitcoin and Ether.

• 49:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  I get so I get what you're saying there from like a trader's perspective, right? If you're saying, hey, like, I'm looking at cycles and then this happens generally and then this pattern happens and then that happens, right? So like there's there's some seasonality in. And cycles. So I guess I see it from that perspective where I think it's misleading and where I think particularly like maximalist overuse the term alt is they tend to think of anything that's not Bitcoin is an alt. Right. And what they mean is like, kind of like a fake Bitcoin, something that is like scammy and won't accrue value long term. And the other mistake they make is like, so ether is not an alt of Bitcoin. Like alt was a term that came in like 2013, 2014,

• 49:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  where you had like Litecoin and all of these Bitcoin forks, right? And I think that's still a good term for Bitcoin forks, but it's not a good term for ether. Ether has an entire economy behind it. It's also not a good term for DeFi tokens. DeFi tokens are like capital assets, as you were saying, right? So it's like, it's not even competing with Bitcoin as a money. It's more competing against like, like stocks, right? So that's why I hate the term alt, but I understand using it for like the the seasonality cycles. As long as people like, understand that there are these distinctions there, I'm good with it.

• 50:29David Hoffman?

  Calling uni or calling wifi or comp or whatever, calling them an altcoin definitely does not do them justice. And it definitely doesn't do anybody who's trying to learn about this ecosystem any justice at all. There's a much bigger picture behind the scenes, but again, at some point in time, when the bull market comes, those fundamentals don't matter because reflexivity kicks in and reflexivity is going to kick into lower cap market cap coins. And I guess we just call them alts.

• 50:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I got you. I hear you on that.

• 50:58David Hoffman?

  Okay, Ron, what are you excited about?

• 51:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm excited about like, right now, it's hard not to be excited about price, right? Like ether, Bitcoin exceeding all time highs, people said it was dead, would never happen. Ether on the cusp of exceeding all time highs, right? People said it was dead. People said it would never happen. That's what's really exciting right now in the market, but it might not always be the case. So like, I guess some, some thoughts as we're entering a bull market. I know you've given some, some good advice on this recently, which is like, have some sell targets too. Okay. So like what David just said about market cap going up to Ten trillion is not a certainty. It's not a for sure thing, right? Like, we don't know.

• 51:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  So don't put all your eggs in that basket. Don't do stupid things like get in over leveraged or like, you know, get into kind of margin positions that you're not comfortable with. Have some sell targets and stick to it. But one of the most important things, I think, that you could do this bull market is be comfortable holding through some temporary pullbacks as well, right? So what can happen in a bull market is you can get like a few weeks or a month and you could get like forty percent, even fifty percent pullbacks, right? That doesn't necessarily mark micro bear markets. That doesn't necessarily end the

• 52:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  entire bull market, but it does shake out a lot of the people who are there like that just kind of fomod in and now they think the bull market's over, so they're gone. So if you want to participate in this entire cycle, you've got to be comfortable as well, holding through a forty percent drop. Don't sell just because you see something to that effect. So this is kind of a mixed message here of like, you got to keep to your sell plan, make sure you have a number and stick to it, but also be ready. Expect forty percent pullbacks. Doesn't mean we are knocked out of a bull market yet. That's what I would say to kind of end this. David, anything else?

• 53:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, definitely. In 2021, all the listeners here, if they plan on sticking through crypto through 2021, you will experience pain. Your portfolio is going to go down multiple times. We are experiencing perhaps a version of euphoria right now with Bitcoin at forty K and Ether just below all time high. It feels great. We are going to feel the inverse of that. You need to know that that is coming. It's naive to think that it's not. So be prepared for it. Pain always comes and you can definitely get out over your skis if you are not ready for that. So make sure that you know exactly what you're doing and you are prepared for pullbacks.

• 53:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. All right, guys. So of course, we say these things, but none of it is financial advice. It's just kind of based on our experience. Bitcoin, Ether, DeFi assets are risky, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. This has been our weekly roll up. Thanks a lot.