ROLLUP: 4th Week of October

🚀 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: 🌐 UNSTOPPABLE DOMAINS - HUMAN READABLE ETHEREUM & CRYPTO ADDRESSES https://bankless.cc/unstoppable 🌈 ZAPPER - ULTIMATE HUB FOR DEFI - ZAP INTO DEFI http://bankless.cc/zapper 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith 🤖YEARN - YIELD-SEEKING MONEY ROBOT THAT FARMS DEFI FOR YOU http://bankless.cc/yearn ------ ROLLUP: 4th Week of October MARKET: What’s the Market saying? BTC Price - More or less ATH. Less than 5 weeks of time spent above 13k! ETH Price - YFI, UNI, DeFi tokens down - Anthony Sassano's Daily Gwei piece on the swinging pendulum https://thedailygwei.substack.com/p/the-sentiment-pendulum-the-daily - $2B BTC on Ethereum https://btconethereum.com/ RELEASES: What got released? Aave Admin Key Handover https://medium.com/aave/aave-admin-key-handover-3e09e603d348 Coinbase Debit cards https://decrypt.co/46507/coinbase-expands-crypto-debit-card-to-us-customers?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=auto https://decrypt.co/46507/coinbase-expands-crypto-debit-card-to-us-customers?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=auto JPM Coin https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/jpmorgan-creates-new-unit-for-blockchain-projects-as-it-says-the-technology-is-close-to-making-money.html JPM on the market for a custody provider https://twitter.com/TheBlock__/status/1321195503367970820 The largest bank in Singapore just launched a crypto exchange DBS! Audius on mainnet; airdrop to 10k most popular artists FTX Launches BTC-Equity trading pairs https://www.coindesk.com/ftx-launches-bitcoin-pairs-against-amazon-apple-tokenized-stocks Traders in the U. S. and FTX’s other restricted jurisdictions will not be eligible to trade the products. Did he not learn from BitMEX?? NEWS What’s in the news? Avanti is now a Crypto-Bank https://decrypt.co/46561/avanti-becomes-second-crypto-bank-us Formalization of bank = Crypto integration ‘Crypto-Bank’ was more of a meme, now its a reality Microstrategy has made more from purchasing Bitcoin than it has in 3.5 years of revenue https://coinfomania.com/microstrategys-bitcoin-gains-exceeds-3yr-earnings/ Iran enabled BTC for import payments https://www.coindesk.com/iran-amends-law-to-allow-imports-to-be-funded-with-cryptocurrency Implication that Iran is stockpiling BTC? Cryptocurrency allows you to go around regulations Flash Loans making governance decisions https://twitter.com/votewithtally/status/1321509824312455170?s=21 Consensys helps French Bank with CBDC pilot program https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-developer-consensys-to-assist-french-bank-with-cbdc-pilot Consensys helps Bank of Thailand for CBDC project https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/consensys-selected-as-technology-partner-by-the-bank-of-thailand-for-cbdc-project TAKES What’s on your mind? (David) BTC + Ethereum OR BTC or Ethereum https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1321632145673121792?s=20 $2B BTC on Ethereum (Ryan) Everytime I use a bank I get more bullish ETH https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1321870051859976193?s=20 Infrastructure upgrade!! (Ryan) Dirty secret of ETH killers--the VCs own them! https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1321131634142388228?s=20 If you think the tokens of ETH killers are the same as ETH, you don't understand Ethereum. https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1320714858229321728?s=20 What are you excited about? ( (David) Balancer Smart Pools https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1321622734120525824?s=20) (David) Getting this election over with. Market turmoil ahead! COVID 3rd wave lockdowns (Ryan) All bank ledgers are Ethereum sidechains https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1321067583983046656?s=20 ------ Don't stop at the video! Subscribe to the Bankless newsletter program http://bankless.substack.com/ Visit the official Bankless website for resources 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 Follow DeFi Dad on Twitter https://twitter.com/DeFi_Dad ----- 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.

• 0:08David Hoffman?

  This episode of Bankless is brought to you by Y earn. Y earn is a yield farming money robot to do the yield farming in DeFi. So you don't have to. Y earn has various products like vaults or earn where in vaults you can deposit your preferred DeFi token and DeFi experts have written strategies for this token that you deposit to go and find the yield automatically in DeFi. Earn is that same thing, but with stable coins where this, the earn system will move your stable coins around from protocol to protocol to seek yield from whatever DeFi protocol is offering the most amount of yield at that particular time. Check them out at yearn.finance. A fantastic tool to help you live a bankless life comes from Monolith.

• 0:53David Hoffman?

  Monolith is a smart contract wallet on Ethereum, but it comes linked with a Visa crypto card that links right into the die in your smart contract wallet. So it's really spanning both worlds using a smart contract wallets on Ethereum and also a Visa card to purchase groceries or live your life. And so it's a great way to live a bankless life without having to, you know, give up all the normal things that you would need to purchase to live that life. Check them out at monolith.xyz and get your Monolith Visa card sent to you today. Zapper is a tool I've been using to help me track my portfolio and all of my wallets across DeFi. You can plug in your addresses into the zapper.fi dashboard and Zapper will give you a report

• 1:37David Hoffman?

  as to all of the assets that you own and where you've placed them in DeFi. You can also invest right through the Zapper portal. So if you just don't want to go to all the different URLs for all of your favorite preferred DeFi protocols in order to stick your assets inside of them, you can just go to zapper.fi and click on where you want your assets to go. You can also add multiple wallets in case you use multiple wallets and you can add them all into one seamless portfolio view by adding multiple wallets in Zapper. Check them out at zapper.fi.

• 2:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Unstoppable Domains is where we get human readable blockchain domain names that are also completely censorship resistant. One of the really important features about unstoppable domains is that you can set up a website that has a domain that any nation state cannot take down. Really important for being a self sovereign individual in this world. Additionally, what's also insanely cool about unstoppable domains is that Bitcoiners or any other blockchain can use unstoppable domains to make their Bitcoin address human readable, right? So no longer is this just technology built on Ethereum. Now unstoppable domains brings this to all other blockchains. So you can tell your Bitcoiner friend to send you money

• 2:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  to davidhoffman.eth or your name here dot crypto. Check them out at unstoppabledomains.com.

• 2:55David Hoffman?

  Okay, here we go. We are recording. Whenever you're ready.

• 3:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Welcome everyone to the weekly roll up. This is our second weekly roll up. David, I'm super excited. This is the third roll up of October. Happy Friday morning to you guys who are looking on YouTube, watching us on YouTube and also on the live stream. David, how are you doing this morning?

• 3:18David Hoffman?

  Absolutely fantastic. Ready to run through some of the news that's happened in the last week, injecting it straight into your brain in a nice little package all rolled up for you.

• 3:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Perfect. Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing in this segment. Comes out Friday morning hot. And what we do is we dedicate five minutes to five topics. We cover the market, number one, releases, news, takes, and then we end with what we are excited about and what's happening in general. So five topics, five minutes each. We get it in your head in 25 minutes. The schedule is every Friday. So every Friday morning, both on YouTube, where you can see the visuals that accompany this, and also the podcast. David, you ready to get started, man?

• 4:00David Hoffman?

  Round them up. We're rolling it up.

• 4:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right.

• 4:03David Hoffman?

  We're doing it.

• 4:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Round them up and roll them up. We are starting with the market. What is the market saying? I feel like it might be good things, David. Shall we start with Bitcoin? We have five minutes.

• 4:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the market is saying we're going up and to the right. At the time of speaking, Bitcoin is thirteen hundred to thirteen thousand two hundred dollars, which, you know, is a higher number than what it was last week. And this has just been on the heels of a bunch of bullish news, some of which we will talk about, and some of which is just like a lot of people in the legacy world really seem to be figuring out Bitcoin, right? This is a hammer I've been beating or a drum I've been beating for a while. People are learning how to resonate with Bitcoin's value proposition and understanding Bitcoin as a whole is bullish for Bitcoin.

• 4:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is a move that is actually highest year to date as well. So we're highest year to date for Bitcoin. Pretty impressive. And it felt like, you know, sometimes people ask about price move, like, why? Why did it happen? And often when I'm asked that, I'm just like, I have no idea. It's crypto. It's sort of a random rock, but well, random walk. But this felt like it was maybe precipitated by some news, particularly the PayPal news, which I know we're going to get to in a moment. Is that your take as well?

• 5:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it is, but also no. PayPal is the news of the week, but Bitcoin's bullish for for news other than that, right? There's plenty of other reasons to be bullish. And I think that PayPal is, you know, is there's a lot of attention in the media. It's extremely validating and it's definitely relevant. But, you know, we were going to get to this point, you know, at some point sooner or later. It's just PayPal. The PayPal news just made that happen sooner.

• 5:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, got it. Okay, let's talk of ETH chart too. So ETH is also having a fairly good week. We're at four seventeen. What's your take on ETH price?

• 5:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the Twitter and market commentaries from people have been really interesting as DeFi assets and yield farming has kind of deflated. The narrative was that, you know, DeFi assets are rotating into Bitcoin. And as DeFi assets went down, Bitcoin was going up. And this and this recent move by Ether. From like just 390 to 417 where it is today is a really strong return punch to Bitcoin. If we are thinking about things in an adversarial way, which we don't necessarily have to. However, when it comes to leading the market, it looks like people were getting ready for Bitcoin to lead the market. But Ether is hot on its heels, if not keeping up or and even going faster.

• 6:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So 417, of course, this is as of Thursday, things could change by Friday morning when you are listening to this a little bit. But let's talk about some other metrics that are a bit more, I guess, constant, less fleeting. And that is Ethereum is actually seeing an all time high in active addresses. So we've talked about before, David, each active address roughly corresponds to not necessarily user, but to like a bank account. And if addresses, you know, similar to a bank account, so it could represent a large, a large number of users, large number of capital pools. What does this mean? Total active addresses at all time high for Ethereum, higher than 2017?

• 7:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is a really timely piece of news to come out right on the heels of MetaMask's 1 million monthly active users that they, that they registered. Check out the state of the nation that we did with Jacob Cantel earlier this week for more news on that. But it just seems to be that like people are learning to use Ethereum. There are reasons to get on to Ethereum. And you know, like, like you said, one act, one active address is not necessarily like, you know, it could be the same owner as another active address, but it does, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Like all time high in active addresses is all time high in active addresses. When we look at Ethereum and when we look at its fundamentals, we look at its economic activity and active addresses are economic activity.

• 7:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Another indicator of economic activity is the amount of value that the network settles. So these are financial networks. Bitcoin is a financial network. It primarily just settles Bitcoins, a value denominated Bitcoin. Ethereum can settle value denominated in Ether, but also value denominated in other assets as well. And if you convert all the settlement value to dollars, what you get is a pretty impressive pace for Ethereum. So Ethereum is on pace to settle over $1 trillion worth of value in 2020. That's pretty phenomenal and it's overtaken Bitcoin in this by a lot.

• 8:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  So like its run rate is beating Bitcoin. What does that mean?

• 8:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's exactly what Ethereum is supposed to do. It's supposed to be a host of generalized economic activity. Where Bitcoin is really good at settling Bitcoins, Ethereum is really good at settling everything else. And I'm not really sure that like, you know, there's a lot of news about crypto, but it's mainly Bitcoin in mainstream. I'm not sure that like people are learning about Ethereum's capabilities quite yet. And when that that wave of people comes, when PayPal leverages stablecoins or crypto dollars, not just Bitcoin and ETH on their platforms, as like remittance payments and Cash App also integrate stablecoins. Like we, there's so much more adoption to be had with like leveraging Ethereum's economic activity as a platform.

• 9:23David Hoffman?

  That and the fact that we're already ahead of Bitcoin is insane. I can't imagine where we're going to be when all these companies integrate stablecoins.

• 9:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Bitcoin is in second place in terms of the value it settles on its network. Pretty impressive for Ethereum. Total value locked, we'll just look at this briefly because we've got to move on. It's up 12.4 billion locked in DeFi protocols. The amount of ETH locked is a little bit down, but still we're tracking at about 9 million Ether supply locked in DeFi. So super impressive. David, let's jump to releases.

• 9:57David Hoffman?

  Section two.

• 9:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, section two. So we've got five minutes for this. What got released last week?

• 10:03David Hoffman?

  Well, obviously the big news is that PayPal is now open to cryptocurrencies, which there's a, there's a lot of takes to be had here. First off, there's a very obvious take that this is awesome and bullish and yay adoption. And that's exactly what the markets are saying. You can now, if you are a merchant that uses PayPal, your customers can pay you in Bitcoin or in Ether, right? We just had a comment from a Bankless Nation member in the Bankless Discord that talked about how grateful he was that he was able to purchase like the Bankless newsletter with crypto, right? Because if he didn't have that option, he wouldn't have any other option to purchase it, right? And what PayPal is doing with crypto is it's allowing, you know, unbanked people to use their Ethereum bank account,

• 10:47David Hoffman?

  to use their Bitcoin bank account to pay for things inside of the PayPal network, which is, I mean, that's just really exciting. And it's also extremely legitimizing of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large.

• 10:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think you're about to give maybe a downside take as well because that exists as well. So we get adoption, that's a plus. Also, I saw 2021, they're talking about rolling it out in Venmo. Everybody I knew, I know, at least in my area, they like, they use Venmo all of the time. So this is definitely adoption of, it's not just Bitcoin, it's Bitcoin, Ether and some other crypto assets as well. Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, who cares? But that's pretty bullish, but there is a flip side to this in that, what? It's not bankless, right?

• 11:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's a walled garden, right? And so there's also a philosophical question to have here because like you, you can't purchase Bitcoin or Ether with PayPal yet. But like, even if they can, they don't let you send your received crypto as a merchant or as a customer. They don't let you send your received crypto to your own external wallet, right? And this is exactly what Jake Shervinsky was talking about forever ago when he was on the Bankless State of the Nation. Is that what he is worried about is that regulation is going to put up walled gardens around these entities that can leverage crypto, leverage Bitcoin, leverage Ethereum in their own like centralized way, right? And so they have their own internal ledgers, just like Coinbase has their own internal ledgers.

• 12:12David Hoffman?

  But think about Coinbase, except it doesn't let you withdraw your crypto, right? And so you can only send Bitcoin to other PayPal accounts, which is just like the same system that we already have, right? And so, you know, tip of the hat for PayPal for getting this out the door. And I hope they continue to break down those wall gardens. I know that they need to be careful when they put their foot, their foot out into some, into the unknown with something like this. But if we want to do to like enable a bankless world, we need them to break down those world gardens and allow us to send Bitcoin and Ether out of their platform.

• 12:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, well, I have a spicy take on this, but we'll save that for later. Let's talk about other releases. The next is Barnbridge. So what is Barnbridge?

• 12:54David Hoffman?

  Barnbridge is a really interesting protocol that is allowing the stratification of risk across different tranches, right? And so the way this basically works is that there are two or more parties that have different claims on yield from DeFi protocols, specifically with stablecoins, right? And so very, very simply, the way that this works is you can buy into the senior tranche and get locked in at like 5% interest rate. And then you can get into the junior tranche, which is, is the tranche that fluctuates, right? So maybe the interest rate in a DeFi protocol fluctuates from 4% all the way to 9%. Well, if that, if that interest rate fluctuation goes up to 9%, the senior tranche gets the,

• 13:36David Hoffman?

  the bottom 5% and then the junior tranche gets like what's left, right? But it also pays in, in the instance where the interest rate got under, under the senior tranche rate at 5%, maybe averaged out at 4%. The junior tranche rate actually pays 1% interest rate to the senior tranche. Important point is, is that it stratifies risk and it tokenizes it and separates it. And this is a very legacy money Lego that we now have available on Ethereum.

• 14:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Very cool. And I know DeFi Dad has a tactic, a tutorial you can use on Bankless YouTube to try that out. So check that out if you're looking to learn more. David, we're running a little short on time on releases, but I want to get to the Circle UBI concept. So what is that? That launched this week as well, actually last, late last week. And people have been going crazy, at least in the DeFi sector, lots of DMs like, "Verify me on Circle." UBI, universal basic income is of course what UBI stands for. What is that?

• 14:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so it's a combination of a decentralized identity system like a bright ID and a token that has credit, is a credit system as well. I'm actually less familiar with the tokenomics, but it, it starts off as a, a decentralized identity system, which is why you saw people on Twitter saying, "Hey, will you verify me? Hey, will you verify me?" Because the only way that decentralized identity works is by a network of interrelated people that can vouch for each other. And then you get, when you get your three people to To vouch for you, you get your first initial distribution of Circlecoin. But it's not like these things aren't fungible because your circles are different from other people's circles. And I don't know much more about it other than that, but your circles are valued dependent on your network of people.

• 15:18David Hoffman?

  And they're not exactly the same value as what other people's circles are.

• 15:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know the coin itself inflates at about a 7% issuance rate per year too. So the idea is to have some sort of community-based money. The cool thing about this is it was launched on X-Di, not on the main chain, which I hope we'll get back to. David, we could also talk about Yield Protocol, which had a cool launch this week. MetaMask swaps, of course, we'll include links to those in the show notes. Lots of cool releases to keep up with, but let's get to the news. What's happening in the news this week? Do you want to start with FinCEN?

• 15:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, FinCEN went after a Bitcoin mixing service. This was a centralized mixing service that allowed people to mix up their Bitcoins for privacy, right? This is very similar to Tornado Cash, except for the fact that it was done by a centralized company, not a protocol, right? And so this is exactly the same reason why BitMEX was such a big deal, right? The same charge of violating the Bank Secrecy Act, like allowing and enabling a centralized entity, enabling people to launder money. This is what the regulators really don't want. And this is also why we DeFi, because this is exactly what Tornado Cash does. But Tornado Cash is a protocol that you can't stop.

• 16:31David Hoffman?

  And Coin Ninja, or whoever these people are that got snagged, you know, were a centralized company.

• 16:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so it's a $60 million penalty against the developer and owner of Coin Ninja, Larry Dean Harmon. But I have to wonder, like, are they going to be coming? Are they, if they're going to be coming after the protocol devs of something like Tornado soon? Or do you think we're immune from that? I suppose that requires somebody like Jake to weigh in. It is concerning, though. It does feel like the nation state, the final boss, as we call it, is kind of peering its eye over to what's happening in crypto. I guess we'll have to see how that emerges. Maybe let's jump to something good on the privacy front, which is shielded Zcash transactions.

• 17:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  That hit a high recently, right?

• 17:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah, an all-time high, and that's really Important for privacy on Zcash because if you if you have the way the Zcash works is there are two types of transactions. One is just a simple send, just like a Bitcoin transaction, and one is a shielded transaction, which has certain components of the transaction hidden. And privacy with the way Zcash works is these private transactions only work when there are other private transactions to hide amongst, right? You need to hide inside of a crowd of transactions. And what we are seeing with this all time high in shielded Zcash transactions is we are seeing high liquidity of privacy on Zcash. So Zcash is finally getting to the point where its product is maturing in a way that allows people to use it in a private manner.

• 18:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I love Zcash. God bless Zcash. It does feel at some level that they're sort of a a testnet for tech that could be built in Ethereum and even Bitcoin at some level like I feel like this on a side chain or this incorporated into Aztec could be super bullish on the Ethereum main chain or in a layer two. Either way, really cool that people are valuing shielded transactions. Let's talk about central bank digital currencies too. Raul Paul for Real Vision put out a really important thread on this and really essential thread on this. Basically saying, if you don't think central digital currencies are coming, you're totally missing the boat here. They are coming. They're maybe starting in China. What's your take on this news?

• 18:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this thread came hot on the heels of the IMF calling for a second Bretton Woods moment, which maybe just signals kind of what kind of situation the world economic status is in when we are calling for a revisitation of Bretton Woods. And for those that don't know Bretton Woods was when the world got together and decided to reorganize the entire monetary and financial system. So like, big words.

• 19:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  And they basically in that in that meeting made US dollars king.

• 19:18David Hoffman?

  That's where that's where US dollar became king, right? Exactly. That's exactly right. And so what Raul Paul is saying is is that, you know, what's going on behind the scenes with the world macro environment? Whatever it is, it's pointing towards central bank digital currencies. And, you know, there there there's an important nuance where, you know, central bank digital currencies are not crypto. They're not cryptocurrencies. They are a centralized ledger on a with a digital format. Maybe it's a blockchain, but it's not a cryptocurrency. But what it does is it opens up people's acceptance and understanding of the real thing, right? It's a gateway drug.

• 19:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so it's kind of like the PayPal case, a little bit good and a little bit bad. Maybe a little bit good for usage. Raul Paul makes the point where in the end, this could cost the US dollar, not in the short run. He's very bullish on that, but it could cost the US dollar to reserve currency status. David, we're getting close on time for news. Do you want to maybe end with the Coinbase report on what we're talking about the nation state? Coinbase released a transparency report that actually made made clear which government agencies have been asking for further information about individuals or about transactions. And what were some of your takeaways from that transparency report?

• 20:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, first and foremost, I would say that this is, while this is in the news cycle, this happened last week. This isn't that big of a deal. It's just something I think that people should keep an eye on. Like, this is a thing that is a reality. Coinbase is a centralized company inside the US. And if they need to give up information to authorities, they will do that, right? And so tip of the hat for Coinbase for being transparent about it and telling us what information requests are coming in. So, you know, just as a user, if you use Coinbase, just know that these requests happen. And it's one of those, it's definitely one of those things that, you know, if you're not doing anything wrong, then this really isn't relevant to you. But just know that your information could be requested.

• 21:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  58% of all requests coming from the US, the majority of those from the FBI. The FBI is definitely watching what goes on in Coinbase. All right, David, that's been the news. Thanks. What's on your mind?

• 21:28David Hoffman?

  And if people have been following me on Twitter and on the on the Bank of the Show, they they've know, they know what's been on my mind. The domino for crypto and Bitcoin specifically have been falling faster and faster and faster. And this PayPal domino, the most recent one, is is just the most recent one. And I bet you this is going to, I don't know what's going to happen next week, but I bet you it's going to be something. We have the election debate tonight. Maybe we're going to talk about relief. There's a stimulus coming along the way. It just seems like, and what the thing that's on my mind is that there's, there always seems to be like this elegant relationship between like the price chart of an asset. The the market, the the news and summary around that and just the overall sentiment and all these things kind of just resonate with each other.

• 22:13David Hoffman?

  And to me, what I'm seeing is a complete resonance between the narrative behind Bitcoin, the news behind Bitcoin, and the fundamentals behind Bitcoin. All these things really seem to be resonating, and that's why we're going up into the right.

• 22:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. So what I've been thinking about, right, so on on on County Takes is maybe dovetails with what you're saying. I totally get what you're saying with Bitcoin, and that is super bullish on the space and on Bitcoin, particularly in the short term. But I want to give maybe a spicy take here, and people who, you know, know, I guess, my Twitter account too, this shouldn't come as a surprise, but I think that Bitcoin is really preparing the way for Ethereum, and specifically Ether, the asset that we talked about earlier, second place in settlement fees. That's now, that's now Bitcoin. It's already second place in transaction fees.

• 23:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  That means Ethereum is is doing more in transaction fees than Bitcoin, and it's second place now in transaction volume as well. So like, there's a trend here, second place, second place, second place, second place. But Bitcoin is far and away first place in market cap. I don't think that'll last long term. And when I say long term, I'm not saying, hey, David, flipping is imminent, right? It's happening 12 months, you know, 24 months. I'm not sure the time range on this. I think it'll take ETH to the ship. I think it'll take realization as to what Ethereum's monetary policy actually is, and realization of ETH, the asset. But my spicy take here is that Bitcoin is doing awesome,

• 23:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  and I'm super excited about Bitcoin, but it's really just like a prophet preparing the way for the Messiah.

• 23:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's really preparing the way for for Ether. I guess another take like that that is sort of a side quest on that is I hear so much misinformation from Bitcoiners and like not understanding what I would Say is like the rest of crypto. So even this term that is constantly used that's sort of embedded in crypto psyche, this term of altcoin, right? So there's Bitcoin and then there's altcoins, implying there's like Bitcoin and shitcoins. But like, I don't think there's any such thing as an altcoin. That was like a paradigm from 2015.

• 24:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  That I feel like is no longer relevant. What we have now are asset superclasses, like at, just like traditional finance.

• 24:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  As we've known, as we've talked about.

• 24:44David Hoffman?

  For hundreds of years.

• 24:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  For hundreds of years, and those asset superclasses in crypto are capital assets. We've crypto capital assets, crypto commodities, crypto monies. These are not altcoins. These are entirely different than altcoins. It's like saying like, Apple stock is an altcoin of US dollars. Like, it's an altcoin of gold. No, it's a stock. It's a capital asset. You're comparing a money to a capital asset. It's just such a backward way of thinking. And I feel like those with the wrong paradigm and wrong mentality are gonna get left behind in the next bull cycle.

• 25:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a spicy take.

• 25:17David Hoffman?

  That, that is a spicy take. And the altcoin perspective was extremely appropriate when Bitcoin was getting forked with like menial changes, like change up the block speed and like, sure, that's, that's an alt.

• 25:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Litecoin.

• 25:31David Hoffman?

  That's an alt. Litecoin, like Bitcoin, like diamond, whatever. That's an alt. If, if it's, if it's an alternative to Bitcoin, yes, but Ethereum and tokens on Ethereum are not alternatives to Bitcoin. So kind of going back to what you were saying about, you know, second place in transaction fees, Bitcoin is second place in transaction volume, Bitcoin's second place in settlement value. It is worthwhile to note that like, the whole point about Bitcoin though, is being first place in market cap.

• 25:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's true.

• 26:00David Hoffman?

  That is its job, which it is currently in first place. And I think it is, it's going to, it's gonna be a story for the ages. Whether or not Ethereum as the leader in all the other categories, literally every other category other than market cap. Does that mean that if the ether becomes number one in market cap? Or does Bitcoin fulfill its job as, all it needs to do is be number one in market cap?

• 26:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bitcoin wins.

• 26:24David Hoffman?

  Fun story to win.

• 26:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, if Bitcoin wins that two horse race, it'll be because of the strength of its scarcity meme. We will, we will be sure. To be clear, we are bullish on both of these assets. David, let's get to the last portion. What are you excited about, man? So, third week of October, year of our Lord 2020.

• 26:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is exciting crypto right now?

• 26:47David Hoffman?

  Well, we just came out of the AMA with Danny Ryan where we got some of the questions about ETH2 that we really wanted to hear out of the way. Go listen to that AMA. It was fantastic, but it just made me really excited about the deposit contract. Every time I pull up Twitter and I hit refresh, I'm like, is it here?

• 27:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the staking contract, right? Same guess.

• 27:06David Hoffman?

  Same, yeah. This is where phase one goes live. This is where ETH staking is a thing, where staking becomes one of the core pillars of Ether value accrual. And every time I check my email, my Twitter, whatever, I'm like, I'm waiting for that announcement, like deposit contract announced.

• 27:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, what's your gut? Like, given we talked to Danny this week, who's like, he knows, right, more than anybody. And Vitalik this week, what's your gut on when staking contract ships, we'll be able to stake?

• 27:35David Hoffman?

  I'm going to be very specific, and I'm going to say a week from Monday.

• 27:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  A week from Monday? Wait, what date is that?

• 27:44David Hoffman?

  That is going to be November 2nd.

• 27:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  You think November 2nd?

• 27:50David Hoffman?

  Announced, and it'll be announced.

• 27:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Announced, okay, perfect.

• 27:53David Hoffman?

  The day will be announced on November 2nd.

• 27:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you think the actual, like, date that it happens still this year, November, December?

• 28:00David Hoffman?

  It'll be in November, yeah.

• 28:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, I'm gonna guess before Christmas, early December is my guess. Both pretty bullish guesses.

• 28:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Two weeks different. I guess I'm the bear now. You two will never ship.

• 28:16David Hoffman?

  Not until Christmas.

• 28:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Christmas 2020, to be clear, not 2021, guys.

• 28:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, cool. Well, all right, so here's kind of what I'm excited about, and maybe this dovetails with another sort of Ethereum thing, but what I started seeing this week for the first time is projects launching directly not on Ethereum mainnet, but on Ethereum Layer 2. Like, so generally, throughout the history of Ethereum, the place you launch a DeFi project or some new initiative is definitely going to be mainchain, right? That's where you launch. But we saw three different projects this Week, launch on XDi, which is actually like a side chain of Ethereum. So it's proof of authority. So it's not quite an optimistic roll up. We don't, it's not based on the security of Ethereum altogether,

• 29:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  but it's similar. It runs the EVM. It's like a copy of mainnet and we saw HoneySwap launch there. So if you haven't heard of HoneySwap, I barely heard of it either, but it is a Uniswap clone, right? So they just launched a Uniswap, they forked a Uniswap and they put it on XDi and it's a new project that's launching not on mainnet, but on the side chain, CircleUBI, the project we were talking about earlier, David, that launched directly on XDi. Also, the POAP, the Pope tokens, these are the bankless, Bankless uses this as well. Now, when you mint a POAP, it's an NFT token, you mint that on XDi and then you can bridge it over to mainnet. I think this is the future scalability for Ethereum.

• 29:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you don't need mainnet, you just launch on a layer two. That's some sort of a roll up. That's some sort of an XDi-like side chain. And then to the extent you need layer two, or if it gets popular, or if you're a user and you want to migrate to, back to the main chain, you can at any time. So that to me is how Ethereum scales and that's kind of bullish. And it goes off maybe what we were talking about in the podcast with Vitalik in terms of how Ethereum is going to take shape in the future. There's going to be a main chain and there's going to be all of these layer twos where you might, you might not touch main chain, right? For like months or years, you might do all of your activity in a, in a roll up, a few roll ups maybe in the future. So excited about that. It's coming to fruition.

• 30:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Feels like Ethereum has a scalability strategy that is not just pie in the sky. It's actually starting to happen.

• 30:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Anthony Cisano illustrates it as Ethereum as a nexus, right? Where it's just like traffic controlling, you know, value from different roll ups, right? And you know, this is part of Ethereum's value proposition where Ethereum, you like, people don't even know, need to know what Ethereum is or understand it as a protocol. In the same ways that we don't really need to know what TCP IP or SMS or those protocols, like we just use them, right? And they're just in the background. And you know, Ethereum being the L1 and L2s being the place that people actually engage in, you have activity in, is just high putting Ethereum in the background and letting it do its job.

• 31:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. Very cool. David, we kept our commitment. This is about 25 minutes. We got through five topics, five minutes each. We talked about market. We talked about releases, news, some hot takes, and what we're excited about. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hopefully, it was a good end to your week. From David and Ryan, enjoy your weekend, and thanks a lot for joining us.