Is It All Over? What The Markets Are Saying For 2026

Summary

Bankless: Is It All Over? What The Markets Are Saying For 2026

Date: November 21, 2025
Hosts: Ryan & David
Episode Summary:
In this episode, the Bankless crew dives deep into the atmosphere of “extreme fear” currently gripping the crypto markets. They analyze whether this marks the start of a bear market, unpack macroeconomic triggers, review influential investor perspectives, and explore insights on the future of Ethereum from DevConnect in Buenos Aires. Key updates on Bankless Summit, the new AAVE app, Aztec’s privacy L2, the coming Kraken IPO, and more round out the discussion.

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Episode Theme & Purpose

This episode is a comprehensive pulse check on the state of crypto as 2025 closes. The hosts dissect market turmoil, investor sentiment, and Ethereum’s technical and cultural trajectory, while also reviewing major product launches and industry news. They balance raw market realism ("it feels like a bear market") with on-the-ground excitement from the Ethereum community, providing both investor and builder outlooks.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Market Turmoil & The “Bear” Feeling

• Bitcoin down 13% on the week, 23% on the month ([05:17])
  "We are currently clocking in at just a smidge over $87." – David
• ETH mirrors the pain: $2,800, down 14% on the week, 30% on the month ([05:59])
• Total crypto market cap at $3.1T (from $4T ATH)
• Bear Market Debate:
  Both hosts agree current sentiment and price action feel like a bear market, but stress it hasn’t lasted long enough for technical confirmation.
  • “You check the prices and they’re down and you just repeat that process… it feels like a bear market.” – David ([06:53])
  • “The only part that’s missing… is months of that feeling playing out…” – Ryan ([07:27])
• Fear & Greed Index at ‘Extreme Fear’ ([12:56])
• Death Cross:
  Bitcoin’s 50-day SMA crossing below 200-day triggered concern, but historical precedents are mixed:
  “Sometimes you get a 666% return one year later and other times you get a negative 50%.” – Ryan ([15:17])

2. Macro & Market Catalysts ([07:36–12:18])

• Fed Rate Cut Uncertainty: Repricing of expectations triggered market selling.
• AI Bubble Fears:
  • Peter Thiel and Softbank sold large Nvidia stakes, sparking AI correction fears.
  • Nvidia’s Jensen soothes markets: “He saved the market. He saved AI. That’s what people are saying.” – Ryan ([11:02])
• Liquidity Concerns:
  Prediction markets like Polymarket see $130M+ volume trading Fed outcome ([09:00]).
  AI’s fate became a “bellwether” for overall tech/crypto confidence.

3. Investor Perspectives: Is the Cycle Over or Extended? ([16:48–22:36])

Three takes:

• Raoul Pal – The Extended Cycle Bull:
  “The cycle’s not over. Don’t F it up.” ([17:23])
• Arthur Hayes – Trade the Dip, Prepare for 2026:
  • Called for short-term pain (BTC down to $80k, equities down 10–20%), then raging 2026 bull market fueled by liquidity and China QE.
  • “Arthur Hayes always loves to back into QE is happening… and then we’re going to rip.” – David ([19:27])
• Michael Nadeau – Pragmatic Analyst:
  • “The cycle’s probably over.”
  • Pointed out Bitcoin closing below 50-week moving average ("if we close below… it’s been over").
  • Hope remains if BTC can reclaim this level ([21:37]).
• Nick Carter’s ‘Forgotten Child’ Thesis:
  • "Now, crypto is a forgotten child... Crypto is trending down based on no catalyst, just exhaustion and a lack of attention and buyers." ([22:36])

4. Cultural & Comparative Context ([22:36–25:31])

• 2025 compared to 2022:
  Markets are struggling more because attention and narratives have shifted to AI and “Mag 7” stocks, while crypto is out of the limelight ([22:36]).
• Cycle Analysis:
  Compared to past cycles, this one lacks both euphoric peaks and likely won’t have the corresponding despair troughs:
  • “If we are in the bear market, this will be a slow apathy-type grind, bleed out over time, not despair. And I don’t think we’ll get poor—just bored." – Ryan ([25:35])

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DevConnect & Ethereum Updates ([28:42–41:00])

5. On-the-Ground at DevConnect, Buenos Aires ([28:42–31:50])

• 7,000–11,000 attendees, high energy, strong “crypto culture” vibes ([01:13–01:26]).
• Argentina’s cryptonative energy discussed: “The city is saturated… vibes are pretty good.” – David ([01:13])

6. L1 Scaling is (Finally) Back in Focus ([29:40–34:37])

• Vitalik’s Keynote:
  • “In 2026 we will have a series of EIPs that will enable the Ethereum network to safely handle larger scales while maintaining decentralization…” – Vitalik (paraphrased by Ryan, [29:40])
• Execution Path:
  • On track for both 3x gas limit increase and ultimately 1000x scaling (“Lean Ethereum”).
  • “If we saw it coming up, that’s going to raise the gas limit from 45 to 60 million, which is a step in that direction.” – Ryan ([31:50])
• New at DevConnect:
  • Shipping of the Ethereum interoperability layer, aiming to unify UX across fragmented L2s ([32:01–34:31]).

7. Other Key Themes at DevConnect

• Privacy:
  • “Institutions aren’t looking for massive cypherpunk levels of privacy… just can’t see it publicly on Etherscan.” – Stephen Goldfeder (paraphrased by David, [36:31])
• ZK Proofs are Productized:
  • Deep research into ZK technology now surfacing at the application layer (Brevis, Succinct, etc.).
  • “The fruits of these investments are born and it’s now up to apps to pick them.” – David ([36:31])
• Ethereum’s ‘Reality Check’:
  • A shift from abstract/future idealism to actionable product-market fit.
  • “If you can’t explain what your job is in crypto, then you should be concerned.” – Ansgar (shared by David, [37:49])
• Stablecoins/Neobanks as ‘the New Wave’:
  • “Ethereum is the banking layer and you don’t need banks anymore.” – David ([38:26])
• Future Tension:
  • Ethereum still reaffirms its cypherpunk, anti-dystopia ideals ([39:44]).

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Product & Ecosystem Launches

8. AAVE’s New Consumer App ([42:16–44:54])

• Consumer-facing savings app; users deposit fiat, it’s converted to stables and earns 6–9% yield.
• “All good products in crypto are front run by two to four years of a scam that came before it… Now we have some actual polished professionals.” – David ([44:26])
• Up to $1M deposit insurance.
• Focus: “You don’t see blockchains if you’re a new user.” – David ([42:48])

9. Aztec L2: A Private Ethereum? ([45:32–48:42])

• First fully decentralized L2 sequencer set, aiming for a Zcash-like privacy experience on Ethereum.
• “The most cypherpunk thing to have launched in so long.” – David ([48:13])
• Mainnet expected post-audit by February 2026.
• Public token sale announced.

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Major Market/Industry News

10. Kraken IPO ([52:15–54:29])

• $800M raise, aiming for Q1 2026 IPO with ~$20B valuation.
• Expanding into equities, tokenized assets, and more—joining major US-centric public exchanges.

11. Coinbase Leak: Stocks & Prediction Markets? ([54:29–55:47])

• Public code hints at plans to support stock and prediction market trading in-app (“Kalshi integration”), perhaps dropping December 17.

12. Mainstream and Political Backlash

• 60 Minutes segment links Trump, ‘pardon’ culture, Binance/CZ, and stablecoin growth with corruption and financial risk ([56:03–59:25]).
• The Atlantic's David Frum writes “How Crypto Could Trigger the Next Financial Crisis” (dismisses stablecoin payment utility outright, sparking hosts’ pushback).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Market Pain:
  "It feels like you're just getting punched in the gut repeatedly and you just don't sell because like, I'm not going to sell now. Like it already happened, but then it happens again." — David ([07:17])
• On Investor Roles:
  “Everyone in crypto tends to play their character class, right? Raoul Paul’s going to be forever bullish... Arthur Hayes, he’s a trader... Michael Nadeau... I have not identified a bit with.” – Ryan ([20:14])
• On Ethereum’s Direction:
  “If you can't explain what your job is in crypto, then you should be concerned.” – Ansgar ([37:49])
• On Cultural Shift:
  “Ethereum is a bit more grounded, a less, less infinite garden vibey and more like defi.” – Ryan ([40:32])

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Timed Segment Highlights

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:17–07:17 | Market drawdown, sentiment check—bear market or not? | | 08:20–09:00 | Fed uncertainty, macro catalysts for crypto crash | | 11:02–12:05 | Nvidia earnings, AI bubble “saved” (?) | | 16:48–22:36 | Three investor macro takes: Raoul Pal, Arthur Hayes, Nadeau | | 28:42–34:31 | DevConnect: L1 scaling & Ethereum’s technical roadmap | | 36:31–39:44 | ZK privacy advance, TradFi/Defi productization | | 42:16–44:54 | AAVE launches consumer-facing “neobank” app | | 45:32–48:42 | Aztec L2: decentralizing privacy for Ethereum | | 52:15–54:29 | Kraken’s $800M raise and IPO details | | 54:29–55:47 | Coinbase leaks: stocks and prediction markets coming | | 56:03–59:25 | Mainstream backlash: 60 Minutes, The Atlantic, stablecoins|

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Overall Tone

• Raw, often self-deprecating and honest about market pain ("just getting punched in the gut"), balanced with technical curiosity, builder optimism, and meta humor about crypto culture and cycles.
• Both skeptical and hopeful: cautious calls for cycle “end,” but genuine bullishness on Ethereum’s actual development and product market fit.

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Summary:

If you’re feeling the sting of recent red candles, this episode offers both therapeutic commiseration and an informed lens on why it’s happening, what the major investors and builders think, and where to look for signs of real progress. Whether this is “all over” or just another apathy-driven market lull, the message is clear: it pays to stay informed and grounded – and Ethereum’s cultural and technical shifts may set the stage for a new kind of sustainable growth.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Station. It is the third week of November 2025. It is time for the bankless weekly roll up. We've got extreme fear in the crypto markets. Is it time to call this a bear market? David?

[A]

Ryan, what did you do while I was gone? I am significantly more poor versus the last time I was here, man, I.

[B]

Was trying to hold down the Ford, but it wasn't going well. But I thought you were supposed to do some damage to some of the evildoers in the mountains, you know, I did my part. You did. So where you been? You. You're in Argentina right now, right?

[A]

I'm in Buenos Aires, yes.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

The last two weeks I was hiking around and climbing around the Patagonia. Just got a little bit of a jump start of Argentina explorations ahead of DevConnect. So still waiting on the final tally of number of people that actually came to Buenos Aires. I don't think we'll ever really get the true number, but estimations are somewhere between like 7 and 11,000 people in Buenos Aires. When you take an Uber around, it takes a while for you to get one. And then when you get in an Uber, the Uber is blowing up. Like the driver, he's blowing up with next Uber requests.

[C]

And so like you can.

[A]

You can just see like crypto people just like requesting Uber after Uber and that's how you kind of know that this city is saturated. But vibes are pretty good. It's been a great place to be. People love Buenos Aires and the energy is pretty high here.

[B]

Are you in Argentinian yet? Have you, you got your citizenship? Are you? I.

[A]

According to Fede from land of class, I am culture. I. I checked the box of being culturally Argentine. Look, I actually want to shout out morpho and this brand new piece of swag that I want to show off. I'm.

[B]

Go get it real.

[A]

One sec.

[B]

Let's see it.

[A]

I got this custom mate cup. I don't think you know what mate is, Ryan, but it's a very, very polished mate cup with a very cool spoon.

[B]

It's probably.

[A]

This is probably an all time piece of swag for me. Mate is a very culturally Argentine. It's like a. It's kind of like a tea, if tea was ten times stronger. It's. Everyone in Argentina drinks mate and I have a cool branded mate cup from Morphos.

[B]

Did you put milk in that? You just drink it black?

[A]

Blasphemy.

[B]

Blasphemous. Okay.

[A]

No, you put a bunch of herbs in it and you've you know how you have like a little herbal bag for your tea?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, no, no, no. You dump herbs in. So the cup is full.

[B]

Wow. So you. It's kind of got a. Not a liquid texture, not like solely liquid. It's got some herb kind of floating your mouth and your teeth.

[A]

The spoon, the spoon has a filter. Ah, yeah, yeah. So you don't, you don't drink the herbs, but it's just extremely herby and it's extremely cabinet. It's yerba mate. It's yerba mate. This is the original Argentine version.

[B]

I want to get more of your takes on Argentina, but Also, of course, DevConnect. Is Ethereum back on track? That's what I saw. But I want to get your. Your on the ground. The vibes. You also got to give me some updates on the Bankless Summit.

[A]

And Back to the Bankless Summit was awesome.

[B]

Yeah. Back to the extreme fear we are all feeling right now. I've got three takes from crypto investors for you on the bear market, plus some of our own. I want to get your takes too. And. And what else are we covering today?

[A]

The AAVE app. That's definitely a topic that's been buzzing around the streets of Buenos Aires. AAVE released a new consumer friendly app to deposit stables. Well, actually for consumers to deposit money. It gets transferred to stables in the background and can collect somewhere between a 6 and 9% yield. So a very consumer friendly app which is part of one of the themes of DevConnect is consumer friendly blockchain hiding applications. And then also inside of the Ethereum Layer two space, we're talking about Layer twos again, but this one's uniquely different. Ethereum's answer to zcash. We have a ZK Layer two launching that has launched this last week out of nowhere, even though we've known about it for a while. And then also we're going to talk about the Kraken IPO and the valuation of that. And then also lastly, Coinbase announced December 17th as a date. So they did an announcement of an announcement and then we get the leaks the next day. So we're going to talk about that as well.

[B]

Bankless has a Black Friday sale going on right now. I know it's not quite Black Friday. This means something if you're an American. Just means everything goes on sale. Bankless Citizenship is now on sale. The Black Friday deal. So this is 40% off. You get all sorts of things. Extra Bankless episodes that we release on the premium podcast. This is a live on in my Spotify. David, this is the bankless premium feed. Okay. This is where I listen to any of our podcasts, the ones that you do listen. It is fantastic. No ads, extra episodes.

[A]

I think all of the bankless Bankless summit talks will be going on the premium feed early as well.

[B]

That's right. That's right.

[A]

So you get the bonus content. Yeah, there's actually episodes like the episode I recently recorded with Guard. Like that one's on there too.

[B]

Yeah, I enjoyed that. Listened to that last weekend sometime. That was fun.

[A]

Funny guy.

[B]

Okay, so you can get 40% off bankless premium. Bankless subscription. The citizenship. There's a link in the show notes to go check that out. Okay. I am advertising something that people can pay for, but they're feeling pretty poor because on the week bitcoin is down. Give us the damage.

[A]

Yeah, we got to rip this band aid off. Bitcoin is down 13% on the week. It's down 23% on the month. We are currently clocking in at just a smidge over $87. It's one of those. I. I think I. All crypto people that have been around long enough just know this kind of.

[B]

Feeling where this feels like the bear.

[A]

You, you, you wake up in the morning, you check the prices and they're down and you just repeat that process for like a couple weeks or so. It's been feeling like it's been like that ether telling a very similar story. $2800 for a single ether. Down 14% on the week, 30% on the one month. But you know, Ryan, if you just zoom out and you go back to April, we're up a good 2x2x from April. So you know, just zoom out.

[B]

2X for eth. Right? That's how, that's how down bad eth holders were in April of this year. I think. I think we like wicked down to like 1400 or something. Yeah, that was 1700. It was actually 1400 in April.

[C]

Was that the tariff bottom?

[A]

Was that what that was? Yes, that was the tariff bottom.

[B]

So still up from there. But none of this feels very good. Of course. Total crypto market cap, we are at 3.1 trillion.

[A]

3.1. That is a low number. We were at. What were we at?

[B]

4.

[A]

4 was the all time high.

[B]

Yikes. Yeah. Are you ready to call this? Is this, is this a bear market in your mind?

[A]

I mean, at some point as bear market becomes like a technical definition and if you're just like down for two quarters in a row, then that's like a bear market. It, the sentiment, that's like a recession.

[B]

I don't know, I feel like crypto is a different definition.

[A]

No, but the recession is the economy. A bear market is part of the market. It, the like I said, the indicator to me is like there is downward momentum right now. If I can wake up and be like, I'm going to check my phone and I know the prices are lower. And that's true. And that happens on a reoccurring basis. Like I've been there before and that's like all of the bare market years.

[B]

Sure. So give me your feelings.

[A]

2020. Yeah, the feeling is it's, it feels like a bear market.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It feels like you're just getting punched in the gut repeatedly and you just don't sell because like I'm not going to sell now. Like it already happens, but then it happens again.

[B]

The only part that's missing from that, I think is months of that feeling playing out. And then it's like after months you're like, oh, bear market confirmed. Right? Yeah.

[A]

It's too late to sell.

[B]

Yeah. We haven't been there for months yet, but I will say so the drawdown on Bitcoin, right Now it's about 31% below all time high. Yep. From the top. And eth is about 43% off. Okay. So if this is, this is not a bear market, this is quite the bear trap that is being set right now. There was a breaking event that happened last Friday when crypto took a tumble down and so did stocks. There's two reasons that markets broke downwards last Friday, David. One was there's now some Fed rate cut uncertainty. Okay. So if you go to poly market, Fed decision in December. Look at this, look at this change.

[A]

Yeah, that has flipped. Yeah, we flipped from a 25 bips decrease, which was almost a sure thing according to Polymarket, a few like a month ago. And now we are flipped to no change. No change, clocking in at 63% chance with a 25 bips decrease at a 35% chance when those things used to be inverted.

[B]

That's right. So investors are just repricing in the odds of a December rate cut and that, you know, the odds have gone down. So they're pricing that in and you're seeing that in Polymarkets. Fed presidents are saying that they are concerned about persistent inflation, indicating that policy is likely to remain restrictive. All right, that kind of hit the markets last Friday.

[A]

Can we talk about how there's $130 million of volume on this market. That is a lot. That's a crazy amount. I mean, if you are a macro trader and you closely follow the Fed, you finally have a tool to directly trade on something that so many people pay attention to. So this particular market has got to be one of the highest product market fits of all prediction markets.

[B]

Well, it's also something that you can use to hedge some of your other positions. Right. When you get this level of volume. All right, so that was the first thing. That was the first thing. Also, it seems like over the last week, maybe starting last Friday, we are getting more AI bubble fears. And this has always been in the air. You know, tech and AI stocks weakening. So there was a sell off in the NASDAQ last week. Actually this was news earlier in the week. I think it was maybe Sunday. I saw this break. Peter Thiel sells his entire Nvidia stack.

[A]

Dude, his market sold Nvidia, mm, $100 million worth.

[B]

Yep. This was 40%. One of his funds of one of his funds portfolio and Softbank sold as well. I'm not sure if this is sort of you're looking at prices and then you're, you're looking for explanations to determine the price. But this felt like a amplifier effect on the perception of an AI bubble. And I'm seeing this everywhere in mainstream media. AI in a bubble is AI in a bubble. You know, it seems like it's in the air.

[A]

It's one of those things where if there were more bullish news or if people were just less sketched out, then no one would care about this. But the fact that it coincides with downside price movements with the fed funds thing, once people are bearish, bearishness can get more contagious. And we wouldn't care if this happened under different contexts.

[B]

That's right. But I will say, David, Peter Thiel may have time this wrong. So he may have sold too early because Yesterday, Jensen, the CEO of Nvidia.

[A]

Came out the man who can't miss.

[B]

Yeah, he saved the market. He saved AI. That's what people are saying. So this is Jensen. And so he comes out the first thing Jensen says on the earnings report call. The context of all investors are looking for Nvidia earnings as a bellwether for where the AI market is going to. And keep in mind, you know, Nvidia is 8% of the S&P right now.

[A]

8%.

[B]

8%. Okay, that's nuts. So it matters a lot. Very first thing Jensen says in the earnings call is he addresses the bubble. He Says there's been a lot of talk about the AI bubble. Here's what we're seeing at Nvidia. And then he goes in and he just nails all earnings expectations. So it comes in had revenue comes in, head profit, just absolutely blows it out of the water and we get a nice green candle in after hours.

[A]

That is 187 to 195, $200 billion of market cap in a single move. That's a third of Ethereum.

[B]

Yeah, a third of Ethereum in a single move. Right. So Jensen's basically saying, hey, you've heard a lot of talk about the AI bubble. That's not what we're seeing. Here's the numbers to prove it. And by the way, we have forecasts of demand.

[A]

So aren't they selling the picks and shovels to the perceived bubble so they would make money whether it's a bubble or whether it's not a bubble?

[B]

Either way, well, they'll stop making money when demand slows. And part of the, a more recent AI narrative bubble is, you know, demand is starting to slow. Okay. Where we're over provisioned, we can't get the energy and electricity we need to actually power these data centers. So the chips are left sitting idle. They can't even be plugged into this apparatus. I mean, there's lots of different stories around this, of course. So anyway, all of those bad vibes last Friday, they were amplified in crypto. And David, we're at the point on the fear and greed index of extreme fear in crypto right now. All right.

[A]

It feels like in the trad market there are both bears and bulls and they're at least like kind of counterbalancing each other. Like there's fear and there's greed in the trad market. And in crypto it's just fear.

[B]

It's just fear.

[A]

It's just like we don't, we don't get any of the good stuff, we only have the bad stuff.

[B]

Yep, extreme fear. The last time we felt this, this cycle was in April and that was on the tariff here.

[A]

That was the bottom.

[B]

Yeah, that was the bottom.

[A]

That's right, that was the bottom.

[B]

That's right, the bottom. But not the end of the cycle. Correct. Key milestone though is bitcoin had a death cross. Are you familiar with your ta, David? Do you know what a death cross is?

[A]

Yeah, it's like when the simple moving average crosses over some other line. It's just like two trends that cross. It's like the local trend crosses down below the long Term trend. Which means.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

We're just not able to sustain a high enough price. And actually we have gone down a little bit and so it's like a TA indicator to say like oh once. It's just, it's a momentum thing. It's just like yeah, enough momentum to the downside. But when we asked about ledger about this and you. Or actually it was actually maybe Ben Cowan as well, like once. So the death cross happens, you know, either you think that it's going to be more momentum to the downside. Kind of what I was talking about with like you know, week after week and month after month of just like negative prices or the negative prices have already been expressed and like it's already tracking the last two to three months of negative price action.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And that's why the death cross happened. So how useful is this metric? I don't really know. It does tell you trends.

[B]

Yeah. Or maybe it doesn't tell you anything at all to your point.

[A]

And even on this chart you can see the last death cross that happened in like June of 2025 and then the one that happened before that which was maybe October 2024 and the one that happened before that which is somewhere around October 2023. And all of the thing, the thing that happened next was that it just rocketed up.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this, this is the death cross is the 50 day simple moving average crossing below the 200 day. And like you said, sometimes it tells us it's over, sometimes it doesn't. Right. And so we've already had what, you know, 1, 2, 3, 3 death crosses already this cycle.

[A]

And if you look at this, they were bullish. They were. The next thing that happened was it went up.

[B]

Sure. So you can have bullish death crosses where it's good to buy the dip and you can have bearish ones. Right. This is one year later. All the death crosses we've seen for bitcoin in history. Okay. And sometimes you get a 666% return one year later and other times you get a negative 50% return one year later.

[A]

So you're telling me that there's no information here?

[B]

Maybe not, but it does feel bad that bitcoin is below 90 the first time in seven months where actually we've erased all of our 2025 gains. Look at the yearly candles here.

[A]

It's just everything in 2025.

[B]

What happened? Dats aren't looking good either. Ethereum.

[C]

Dats are looking bad.

[A]

Dad.

[B]

Solana. Dad. Even the king dat. Right. Which is Michael Saylor's strategy is looking kind of bad. MNAV is. I don't know if it's below one right now. I probably should have looked at that. But it's really close. If it's not below one, it's just hanging in above one. But the good news is, David, Michael Saylor says he is still buying. This is Michael Saylor.

[A]

Michael, given where Bitcoin's trading right now, are you buying? We are buying. We're buying quite a lot, actually. And we'll, we'll actually report our next buys on Monday morning. I think people will be pleasantly surprised. In fact, we've been accelerating our purchases.

[B]

Are you ever not buying, Michael?

[A]

No, we're always buying.

[B]

There you go. Michael Saylor. He's never not buying.

[A]

No, we are always buying. Michael Saylor, just carrying the torch.

[B]

Let me give you three perspectives that I've been reading on where we are in the market from different investors. And I think each of these like crypto investors and each of these have a slightly different take on things. The first is Raoul Paul. All right, Raoul Paul has been an extended cycle bull. He basically thinks it's not over, it will go into 2026. And he's maintaining this even after kind of the recent pullback. And he wanted to remind everyone, so he put out this tweet. I wanted to put the current sell off in perspective. Bitcoin, correct. Corrected in 2024, negative 32%. In 2025, negative 32%. And right now is around 28%. We just updated that. It's about 31%. You've lived it before. We've already seen this. This cycle. Okay, then he gives the numbers for Solana and Sui. We've already seen this. He says technicals are flamboyantly oversold. Sentiment is in the shitter too. Worst I've seen this cycle and his underlying messages. The cycle's not over. Don't F it up. It's probably not over is where Raoul Paul leans. Arthur Hayes, he believes in the extended cycle as well. But rather than sort of hold through these 30% corrections, you know, he's a traitor. So he put out this post called Snow Forecast.

[A]

He has the best title.

[B]

I know he does. It's great. Always great narrative around this and, you know, great intros. But he's basically saying, saying his indicators. He's seeing some liquidity tightening and this aligns while you're out. David. I had a conversation with Michael Howell. He's the guy that basically invented this metric, the global liquidity index. That episode comes out on Monday. And you can see, see this at the end, this tip here where global liquidity is kind of cresting. And now it's going down. It's going down a little bit. Well.

[A]

Well, a little bit. It doesn't really look like it's going.

[B]

Down well, but it's marginal. Right? And so this marginal little bit liquidity dip, there's all sorts of reasons why TGA accounts and all of this that we don't have time to get into, but we're, we're seeing a liquidity dip. And, and so Arthur Hayes says this is impacting markets. And his basic take is that we're going to go down. Bitcoin can dump as low as 80k stocks down 10 to 20%. And then what's going to happen is the Fed and Trump and treasury are going to have to react and restart the markets. And so he expects things to go down. But then in 2026, it's up only and all what we're going to do first is we're going to retrace all of the gains since April and then we're going to go back to up only once the money printer turns on again. So he's calling for a raging 2026 bull market fueled by this money printing and also China QE too.

[A]

Okay. The reason why I didn't have a comment after Raoul Paul, because I also wanted, I wanted to hear Audrey Hayes. But both of these two individuals who I respect and who know more than me tend to always think these things. Arthur, Arthur Hayes always loves to back into QE is happening and this is why the government is going to have to do qe and then we're going to rip. That is like the conclusion of like most Arthur Hayes's articles.

[B]

And I'd also add, he's also trading it. Right? So he sold a bunch of crypto too. I should, I should say that he, he's selling it. He sold a whole bunch of. For this dip. And then he's going to buy back lower. That's his plan. It's funny how everyone in crypto tends to play their character class, right? Raoul Paul's going to be forever bullish. Bullish on the cycle. Always bullish.

[A]

Forever bullish.

[B]

Arthur Hayes, he's a trader. So what is he doing? He's long term bullish, but he's trading these dips. Trading this cycle. There's a third take I want to throw in here, which is, I would argue, actually he's been the most accurate so far. Which is our own friend of the show, Michael NATO from the Defi Report. Okay.

[A]

I have not known Michael Naito to have a bit, whereas Raoul Paul and Arthur Hayes both have bits. I don't know. I haven't had enough data from Michael Nadeau, but I have not identified a bit with Michael Nadeau, which makes me trust him a little bit more.

[B]

Yeah, his bit is probably like on chain financials and making sure to kind of like fundamentals, I should say, and making sure to kind of trade these things.

[A]

Anyway, that's not a bit, that's just being an analyst.

[B]

Well, what he's saying is. So his bit is being an analyst and, you know, I don't know. Uh, he's not trying to sell a, A Twitter Persona, let's say. Yes, in the way that some of these others are. All right, so he says basically the cycle's probably over. May not be. I'll give you the silver line in a second. The reason is because bitcoin has dropped below the 50 week moving average. Talked about this in the last two roll ups of this being important. Um, if we close below the 50 week moving average, every time we've done that in a fourth year, it's been over, David. And we are below that. See this blue line here? That's the 50 week moving average. It's about 103k, something like that. And we are well below 103k.

[A]

We are well below it.

[B]

Two closes in a row. That's always indicated at the end of the market. And he's still a cycle believer. And the reason he's a cycle believer is a little bit different than Raoul Paul and Arthur Hayes. It's basically he thinks these cycles are driven by holder activity, long term holders selling. The story is long term holders have been selling and you can see this in the. On chain data, they've primarily sold over a hundred K. And it takes a while for the market to kind of reprice this. But this is why cycles effectively end. The only silver lining here for him is if bitcoin can reclaim that 50 week moving average hold as support, the bull market can stay intact. He said if price is rejected at this level, it will reinforce the view that market structure is broken and we've got a longer, more durable bear market beginning. So the three takes there. I guess you can pick which one you like from all of those. Nick Carter had to take on vibes though, because that's another element of this.

[A]

I think Nick Carter is just kind of diagnosing the malaise that crypto feels because there is a lot of wealth being made outside the crypto markets. The Mag 7 AI, any sort of AI saw core, weave, Nvidia, you know, pick any Microsoft, pick any AI stock and you've made a lot of money in the traditional stock market. And that has not been the case in crypto except for a few idiosyncrasyncrasies. Why is that? And so nick Carter says 2025 is unironically worse because in 2022 bad things were happening. But crypto was a center of action and the star of the show. So even despite despite three hours capital, despite Sam Bankman fried, despite Terra Luna, despite crypto was nonetheless in the limelight. We were still the cool new thing. And so you could, he says, you could ascribe negative price action to catalysts that you knew we were going to work through. We were going to work through FTX and Terra Luna and all that stuff. He continues and says now crypto is a forgotten child. And with AI and the Mag 7 starring retail is focused on data centers, quantum and rare earth stocks. Crypto is trending down based on no catalyst, just exhaustion and a lack of attention and buyers and the long D hangover. Does this mean it's over? No, just a four year cycle and alt season are obsolete concepts. To make money you actually actually have to deliver value, which is a grim prospect to many. I think this is like indicative of kind of the maturing of crypto. Like the vaporware infra meme coin tokens that have been like the casino of a lot of crypto behavior is what he's saying is like the energy there is just gone, gone. And so you actually have to invest in correctly, you have to allocate capital correctly. And that's actually way harder than the crypto market has ever presented the average investor in its entire time. And because we just don't have the limelight whenever there's because like the stock market is also suffering because of the the Federal Reserve potentially not cutting bips. But this crypto market is suffering way worse because we're their forgotten child. Were the child under the staircase.

[B]

I think that's a decent explainer for sure. I also think David, there's still some possibility that there's a dead body in the water from 10:10 and somebody liquidated really bad and we just haven't seen that yet. Maybe that's a conspiracy take. But all this to say if this is the end of the cycle, this is a super weird cycle and we never reached the bull market euphoria of cycles past. And that was which was never guaranteed. Was never guaranteed. But that also makes me think during the bear market, we're not going to reach the despair that we felt in previous bear markets. All right, this might be totally pattern recognition, but it's usually if you have peak euphoria, then you get, you know, troughs of despair. And if we haven't had peaks, peak euphoria, I think this will, if we are in the bear market, this will be like a slow apathy type grind, bleed out over time, not despair. And I don't think we'll get poor.

[A]

We just will get bored.

[B]

It's a good way to sum it up. All right, coming up Next, we got DevConnect. What are the main themes we're talking about? Ethereum. Getting back to the layer one privacy. There's a Vitalik keynote. David, you gotta update me on the Bankless summit. Also aave the app. We'll talk about that. And is Aztec the zcash of Ethereum? All this and more. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible, including our friends over at Uniswap with a mobile wallet, a browser wallet, best place to do defi, a whole revamped.

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[A]

So as we chatted about in the beginning, I am reporting live from the streets of Buenos aires where around 10,000 people are here to visit DevConnect. DevConnect and DevCon are the two events that the Ethereum foundation throws about once a year. DevConnect is kind of supposed to be this inside out event where they just kind of pick a place and they say hey, we're going here at this time everyone make your events happen. In addition to that they are also doing the devcon model as well where there is a central conference venue as which is where Vitalik gave his keynote speech along with a few others. Tamash, the co executive director of the ef gave a talk, Sha Wei gave a talk and a few others kind of just giving a state of the nation, a state of the ecosystem, a state of Ethereum. Now Ryan, I've got my takes about people's excitement and chatter and buzz about what people are excited about and focused here on the streets of BA Buenos Aires. But I would love to know what it looks like from the Internet side of things where you are native to.

[B]

I can't speak for the full Internet, but maybe I can speak from my perspective. So I caught up with some of the videos and some of the slides. You know, Vitalik's keynote, Onskar presentation, number of things. Tamash's presentation. Something I was really looking for was the L1 scaling plan. Because a few months ago this had been a big TBD for me. Like I understand kind of the three pillar pros, you know, focus of the Ethereum Foundation. One of Those is scale L1. But I didn't know what the plan actually was, what the execution plan actually was. And what I saw from afar was an emphasis on scaling the L1. It was almost like back to L1 scaling. So from Vitalik's keynote he talked about L1 scaling in 2026. In 2026 he said we will have a series of EIPs that will enable the Ethereum network to safely handle larger scales while maintaining decentralization, the ability to run regular nodes. He's talking about the roadmap here. And then that was followed up by Onskar who gave this presentation at the Bankless Summit. And he talked about the plan to go from 10x to 100x to a thousandx. Right. And concretely, what this means and his take, his personal goal is that we can do a 10x in the next two years. So this keeps us on track for the 3x gas increases for the layer one in 2026. And really the calendar year is like this kind of started in 2025, mid 2025. So by mid 2026 we'll have our first 3X. He thinks that we can maintain that and then eventually to get to the a thousand x you have to go to Lean Ethereum and Justin Drake's roadmap. Anyway, that combination, maybe I'm sort of seeing what I want to in this, But Vitalik's keynote onscar Tamash, there does seem to be a focus on L1 scaling again and more of a concrete plan. Of course, for me, it's always like, all right, believe it when we see the execution, but if we saw it coming up, that's going to raise the gas limit from 45 to 60 million, which is a step in that direction. Right. Step towards the 3x. So we're starting to see it and it's starting to become more real for me and make more sense. So that was my big takeaway, but it was also the primary thing I was looking for.

[A]

Yeah, I think the market really wants to look for that Ethereum Layer one scaling plan. And if you were watching all of the talks that opened up DevConnect, you definitely could have found that stuff. The last DevCon was in Bangkok about a year ago, and at that time the theme was something along the lines of we need to get Layer twos to stage two. I think if I teleported back in time, that would have been like the major focus in the morning talks. The talks that we're referencing, there was definitely a slide from Vitalik that was like, the Ethereum layer 2 rollup centric map is working. Base has significantly scaled. We even have lighter now, which is massively scaled. And so the whole thesis of Layer two scaling is working. And there was a dedicated slide for that. If you just counted the number of times that we talked about in the opening slides, the opening talks, layer twos versus scaling the layer one. Scaling the layer one would have been a 10x number of instances versus the discussions around layer twos. And so if we take this as an indication of the EF's focus, we are currently shifting emphasis to talking about the scaling plan. You're totally right. Granted, We've talked about layer 2s plenty over the last three or four years. The one thing you're missing, Ryan, that I will add was the Ethereum interop layer was introduced at this DevConnect. And that is a key feature of the Ethereum's third track, which is Improve UX, which is an attempt to make Ethereum feel like one seamless experience rather than a bunch of fragmented Layer twos. I have not had the time to go in and do my homework on the technical details of the Ethereum interrupt layer. But that is Basically Ethereum's, the EF's coordination around these standards that it needs to take to allow layer 2s to be a seamless experience. And that was actually shipped at this conference. And so that's. That was pretty cool. I would definitely add that to some of your takeaways. And then in addition to that there is a large amount of talk about what the scaling plan is. And so I think that is becoming culturally absorbed, incepted into the Ethereum enthusiast audience, which is the people who go to DevConnect. And so there's a lot of education about what this looks like. And I am now looking for, let me see what it actually looks like to take steps down that path. So I'm, I'm still in a little bit of a prove, don't tell, but there is certainly a lot of telling which is the first step to prove it. So I would agree with that and those details as well.

[B]

Yeah, I'm really looking for like a 3x gas increase in the next 12 months. And that's kind of the, the show Me type thing.

[A]

Apologies to the presenter who I'm forgetting the name of. But there was also about maybe 10 to 12 minutes of time on the main stage in front of everyone talking about what it looks like to reduce block times in Ethereum, like what happens, why, why that's a technical challenge and how we need to get there. And so getting down to six seconds as a, as a medium, near to medium term goal was also given a lot of airtime at the main event, which was very nice to see.

[B]

That was my big takeaway. I know another thing that surfaced was a lot of talk about privacy. I think there was a separate event dedicated towards privacy that Vitalik spoke at. But what else was interesting to you? Like what are your on the ground takeaways?

[A]

My big themes were kind of like what I said. Scaling the layer one has been said ten times more than just talk about around layer twos, which is not to say that layer twos are forgotten. It's just like we're starting to approach, you know, mission accomplished with the layer twos, especially with the introduction of the interoperable layer. Like you said, privacy being discussed with increased emphasis. Danny Ryan's talk on the main stage talked about the fact that product, there's massive product market fit between decentralization and institutions and Ethereum has that. But what Ethereum does not have is privacy and how institutions need privacy. So there's a lot of chatter around privacy. I did a panel with Steven from Arbitrum, Anton from One Inch and then also Stani from aave and we kind of talked about what's next for Defi and a lot of them, basically the theme was they are all bending their products to fit within Tradfi's needs. And Stephen Goldfetter gave a really interesting take on privacy, which is that institutions aren't looking for massive cipher, cipher punk levels of privacy. They are looking for a level of privacy that you would expect to have from your fintech or bank, which is you don't have any privacy with the company that is giving you the product. Like they just know what your account balances are and that's fine.

[B]

You just can't see it publicly on Etherscan.

[A]

Yes, you just can't see what your friend's account balances are. And so that kind of privacy is something that it seems like Arbitrum is working on with institutions to help develop or something along those lines. That's what the institutions are looking for from Arbitrum. I would also say that one big takeaway that I had coming out of the Bankless Summit and a few other places as well is some of Ethereum's deep research is turning into app layer enhancements and this kind of now app applications responsibility to learn how to leverage them. This is talking about real time ZK proving. Ethereum has invested in ZK proving as a vertical for years and that has now hit Mainnet. Brevis has products online, Succinct has products online. These can all enhance a lot of what we do on Defi and we have these tools now. Like the. The fruits of these investments are born and it's now up to apps to pick them. So that was a big takeaway kind of going back to the mainstage stuff. One big sentiment that that was hammered into the audience, which is again crypto Ethereum enthusiasts, is that this notion of we need to be real. One line from I think Ansgar's talk was if you can't explain what your job is in crypto, then you should be concerned. You should be able to explain to your mom what your job is.

[B]

Oh shit. Does podcaster count or no? Yes. Okay.

[C]

I think that's pretty easy.

[B]

It doesn't seem like a real job though.

[A]

It's really interesting being this emphasis on a shift from future idealism to the here and now in Ethereum culture is yeah, we love talking about the future, but also today is the day to go get product market fit because product market fit is out there and we need to go get it. Stablecoins and Neobanks, I think everyone understands are this looming tidal wave that people know is coming but not everyone knows to do with it yet. Like this is a frontier that Etherfi is pushing, that FRAX is pushing and so understanding that Ethereum is the banking layer and you don't need banks anymore. You just need neo banks to provide consumer endpoints. That was a big topic of conversation and that's kind of inclusive of this like general pivot to fintech theme that I'll identify that some people will identify, which is also related to like how some infra tokens don't have their token generation event at a valuation nearly as high as they used to. So this is a tweet from Richard Chen, who's down here. Um, and one last cultural thing. Even though I just said that Ethereum is now reemphasizing its cultural idealism from the future to the now, in Tomash's talk and as well as in a few others, he opened up with, yo, the future is here, AI is here, robots are here. There is the dystopian side of these technologies. In addition to all the value that we're getting, there are these dystopian side of these future technologies that arriving here and now. And we need to remember how Ethereum is and has always tried to be a bulwark against future dystopian realities. So it's a combination of product market fit today, but also remember why we built Ethereum to be this like cypherpunk price of sovereignty to protect against future dystopia. And so it was a nice reminder.

[B]

Okay, so overall, did you. Are you. I know it's not done yet, but are you walking away bullish or neutral or bearish?

[A]

I would like some more time on that answer. We have two more days of devconnect. And one further note about devconnect is it's pretty fragmented by design. Devconnect is always meant to be like a bottom up conference and so everyone's kind of all over the place. So I would like to get a little bit more time and hear other people's takeaways. It's nice to hear all the talk about scaling the layer one I would like to see that show up in EIPs that reduce latency and increase gas either or. And so I would like to actually, maybe I'll turn that into an article, Ryan, that I will write about my takeaways from DevConnect because I need to go kind of collect some more data on that one.

[B]

Okay. My feeling from afar was overall, overall bullish. And the reason is because there seems to be this pivot towards the L1, which Ethereum definitely needed to do. And there seems to be an actionable, executable plan towards that. And then also the vibes that you just gave feels like Ethereum is a bit more grounded, a less, less infinite garden vibey and more like defi.

[A]

And I didn't hear any words infinite garden at all during this conference.

[B]

Very good. And I know the Bankless summit went well. We probably don't have to get into all the details, but we've got a lot of sessions that are going to be on the Bankless Premium feed next week and I know, I can't wait to hear this one. This is one on X402. Brevis, you said gave a fantastic talk. Any other highlights from that that people can expect on the Bankless premium feed?

[A]

Yeah, so that's going to come out starting at the end of this week and next week. Danny Ryan also told the story of him getting served at Thanksgiving.

[B]

God. Oh my God.

[A]

That was a rough, rough story.

[B]

At Thanksgiving.

[A]

Yeah. At Thanksgiving.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This was like by the SEC. That's right. Yeah. And then Luca from M0 gave, you know, Ryan, you and I like to talk about the theory and thesis of money. He gave it a talk about money like the bare bones about what makes a money a money from like a network standpoint. And I think you're really going to like that one. M0 was our partner for the banquet summit and they really just did a killer job and so just shout out to M0. So those I think are some of my favorites. Lucas x402 Brevis's Shay from Flashbots always does a killer job with a talk. That one was highly enjoyable and yeah, so those are going to start to trickle out on the Bankless Premium feedback shortly.

[B]

That's a lot to catch up on for your Thanksgiving holiday.

[A]

12 episodes. 12 episodes, 20 minutes each.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

Speaking of, speaking of what Ryan? Speaking of the AAVE app. AAVE has introduced the AAVE app, which is. Call it a Neobank. You download the AAVE app, I believe it's on iOS and Android. You can join the waitlist today and is a very polished, very sexy place to deposit money and get yield on your stables. So up to 6.5% APY, you just wire money in with plaid.

[B]

You don't see blockchains if you recognize doing this. Very cool.

[A]

Yes. If you, you recognize the USCC and the tether logos and you understand that those are stable coins but no facet of a token or a blockchain is ever presented to you, which is just great interest compounded every second which I think is very necessary in the era of very short term attention spans and the needs for instant gratification. And then Some like kind of like back end engineering, like the auto saver from AAVE moves money from a linked bank account to the AAVE app automatically and then kind of rebalances.

[B]

Oh, one last thing we got to say on this. A balance protection. Okay.

[A]

Up to potentially a million dollars of insurance on deposits.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Wow. Wow. So this is something like, okay, remember Anchor protocol? The thing that blew up Terra Luna and got so much adoption.

[B]

Why are you referring to that right now?

[A]

Because it was the same. It was the same thing. All good products in crypto are front run by two to four years of a scam that came before it.

[B]

You're saying Anchor promised these things, did not deliver these things or something? Yeah, Anchor did not have insurance. Those people got wrecked.

[A]

That's exactly my point. They were like, Anchor was like to come deposit your. Your money, will transfer it into stablecoins and will get you yield. And AAVE is saying the same thing. The difference is Anchor was paying out 20%, totally unsustainable yield. And it blew up. And AAVE is like, okay, $1 million insurance yields dictated by the market, which are high, by the way, at 6.5%. And so this is finally the. And the point I'm trying to make is that Anchor did a fantastic job getting a lot of money of onboarding retail, onboarding people into a scam.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Now we have some actual Polish professionals who have been here and they're fulfilling that same promise of yo come save in crypto. Saving crypto. And we're doing it with $1 million of insurance. We don't have the details of how the insurance works.

[B]

I know, I definitely want to see what the details are.

[A]

I want to see what the details are. But that's nonetheless probably a very important hurdle to like opening up the TAM for deposits into into aave. So congratulations.

[B]

It certainly is for me before referring friends, because when you defi hacks and that kind of thing and like if you go send this to a friend and you know, one day they wake up and they're like, hey, David, all my money's gone. Where did it go?

[A]

All the money that you told me to put into Anchor is gone.

[B]

Exactly. Not Anchor, but you know, I would never do that.

[A]

I think this is just the foot in the door for aave because you can't really do that much. You put your stables in and you can get some yield. It has. This product has to evolve from here to really be market competitive. It's a fantastic foot in the door. I'm sure they have phase two Phase three, phase four, lined up at some point in the future.

[B]

Sure. But even now, 6% yield, you know, 6.56. Yeah. What bank account can compete with that? David? We also have another release. Aztec takes a big step towards mainnet. This is the tweet Aztec just shipped the ignition chain. The first fully decentralized L2 on Ethereum. Aztec has been around forever. Okay. And they've always.

[A]

Forever.

[B]

Yeah. They've been promised a private layer two, essentially. And they've been building this over the years. Kind of watching them now. They're finally getting closer to launching towards mainnet. I kind of think that this is Ethereum's answer to zcash, actually, because it's.

[A]

I don't know if Ethereum needs an answer to zcash.

[B]

It needs an answer for privacy. Right. There's. There's clear. There's clear product market fit to have private block space and a private store of value on that block space, which is essentially what zcash is. And if you can take your eth store of value and you can bridge that to Aztec and then you have the entire smart contract landscape of Defi and everything else on Aztec and your store of value, then you're accomplishing in the Ethereum ecosystem the exact same thing as zcash, except you don't have to. This is how Amin Soleimani put it, you don't have to buy the zcash Ponzi scheme. What he means is you don't have to buy a separate store of value asset. Basically, zcash.

[A]

Amin uses the term Ponzi schema, I think endearingly he will also call Bitcoin.

[B]

I mean Bitcoin, Ether. They're all Bitcoin.

[A]

All store of values are. We use these terms way too lightly, Ryan. What we mean is, in the same way, gold is confidence. They're confident. Confidence assets.

[B]

Yeah, yes, whatever.

[A]

Confidence assets.

[B]

People understand, but I hope they do, maybe they don't. Anyway, okay, this is a step towards mainnet. So they're not mainnet yet. This is what was.

[A]

Blocks are being produced.

[B]

Blocks are being produced. This is like their beacon chain. You remember when Ethereum launched beacon chain, and you could validate on it, but you couldn't, like, actually use it. This is what they're doing. But when I say validating, what they mean, What I mean is actually you could stake in the network. You're a sequencer, all right, because the consensus layer happens all on Ethereum, because this is layer two. But they have completely decentralized their sequencer, which is a first for an L2. All right. Which is incredible. They've got 500 sequencers out there. And so that's what I think.

[A]

It's very important for Aztec, a privacy chain to have shipped with a decentralized sequencer set on day one.

[B]

Of course, that's why they're doing it. And so when you're in there, it's defi. It's smart contracts. It's all of the things now that.

[A]

This is the most cypherpunk thing to have launched in so long.

[B]

It's really cool. It's really cool. Now. Okay. Mainnet doesn't happen until a projected date of audits being complete by February 2026. So we get Beacon chain. You could be a sequencer if you want. There's also they're. They're doing a public coin offering as well. So you could buy some Aztec tokens, I believe.

[A]

Token sale meta. I love the token sale. That feels like we are at the end game of token distribution mechanism.

[B]

That's right. And they sale. Yes. And then he can use the chain in February 2026. So a long time coming, but it looks like it's here. David. Coming up next, Coinbase leaks a screenshot. What has that shown us? Maybe in early Christmas.

[A]

Well, they don't leak the screenshot.

[B]

No, they did. Somebody figured this out. Kraken ipo. What's the valuation? Also cz. The CZ case was on. Pardon? Case Trump Pardon. Remember that was on 60 Minutes. And El Salvador is buying the bitcoin dip. All that and more. But before we do, want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including you were just talking about them. David. Our friends over at frax, the decentralized central bank, a fantastic stablecoin. Go check it out.

[C]

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Clicking the link in the show notes $800 million raised by Kraken to advance their strategic roadmap. This is probably the last big step that they are going through in order to go public. This round was led by investors from Jane Street, Oppenheimer Alternative Investment Management. Wow, that is a name. And also Tribe Capital and then Citadel securities, interestingly, joined as a strategic investor with a 200 million in dollar investment. The goals of this race is so that they can expand into regions like Latin America, the Asia Pacific and emea. I don't know what the EMEA is. What is that? I don't know. And also they want to expand their product offerings so including equity trading, tokenized assets and new payment solutions. So everyone kind of going into a super app of securities tokenization and payment rails. I think we can see many different corners of crypto all kind of moving there at the same time. They file for an IPO inside the United States, so they have confidentially filed for a US ipo. What does it mean to be a confidential filing? It means that they don't have to disclose all their inner workings. It doesn't mean that they're secretly filing. It means they just don't have to disclose stuff. And so it doesn't specify the share count, offering size or the timing. But we do know some things. Kraken had $1.5 billion of revenue in 2024. It has diversified some of its offerings through acquisitions. Ninja Trader Small Exchange, which were Kraken acquisitions in 2024, have helped Kraken expand into tradfi and derivatives. And then most people. Most reports are suggesting that Kraken aims for a public listing in Q1 2026. Hopefully the IPO window is still open by then. I hope so.

[B]

The rumor is about 20 billion for the IPO. So it's kind of interesting if you think about us primarily US based exchanges, crypto exchanges. Now you gotta, you gotta put Robinhood in the mix there. Now Coinbase and then Kraken would be a strong number three here. And I don't know if you compare the valuations. Who knows what Robinhood is right now.

[A]

90 billion. Coinbase is 90 billion.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, Robinhood I think is somewhere like 120 or 130 or something.

[B]

Okay, okay. So this would be well under those amounts. And maybe this could be a reasonable IPO price for Kraken. Speaking of Coinbase, David, maybe an early Christmas gift that Coinbase is going to offer. So you mentioned in the intro this unveiling Coinbase's promise for the 17th. Well, there are some Screenshots. I use the term leaked, but these actually haven't been leaked. So somebody was sleuthing Coinbase public code and they reverse engineered the public code and came up with these screenshots. All right, so this is Jane Wong here.

[A]

This is a. But it's a, it's a slip. Is that what this is?

[B]

Well, the code kind of leaked, right? And then somebody, you know, you put the screen together and put some screenshot. Anyway, the screenshot shows stocks in the Coinbase interface. So you could trade stocks, right? You know, they have the trading button for all your crypto assets and then also stocks and also prediction market.

[A]

So Kalshi integration, no surprise whatsoever. It's lovely to see them do this. But yeah, Coinbase is doing prediction markets. They have to do that.

[B]

And they're not officially doing all of this yet, but that is could be the release that they're going to be dropping on December 17th. So be a one stop shop for everything in crypto.

[A]

I think a lot of people are, are who are paying attention to like the call sheet poly market wars are going to notice the call sheet integration. You're going to be like, why isn't Polymarket. Polymarket is the crypto native version. Why aren't we doing the crypto native stuff? It's because Kalshi has the United States regulations, which Polymarket does not.

[B]

60 Minutes. So Trump's pardon was a feature in TV show 60 Minutes. Do you ever watch 60 Minutes? Do your parents watch this growing up or anything?

[A]

No. No.

[B]

All right. Comes on every Sunday. It's very old school journalism. Right. Anyway, they did a whole 13 to 15 minute segment on CZ's pardon in talking linking that to Trump corruption. So they reported that President Trump's pardon of CZ was highly controversial. There were conflicts of interest. Basically they were talking about his stablecoin and let's see, Binance's stablecoin injection into World Liberty Finance and basically saying that this is all an example of corruption. It was funny as I was watching this, I just wanted to get caught up on the clip. And up pops Austin Campbell.

[A]

Oh, so he was featured.

[B]

Yeah. So he gets.

[A]

Austin's hair always looks crazy and he has clearly done an effort to comb his hair and make it look less crazy. And it still looks very crazy.

[B]

Yeah. Anyway, this is some of the mainstream narrative that's been coming out and I also combine this with, because I've been watching basically the political reaction to crypto and I think we're in store for somewhat of a backlash coming Soon. Right. We've made tremendous progress in crypto, but feels like a backlash could be coming. I read this essay in the Atlantic. It's entitled How Crypto Could Trigger the Next Financial Crisis. Nick Carter actually tweeted this out. Okay. Yeah. So let me see if you recognize the person that wrote this. His name is David From. I know you listened to the Sam Harris podcast. He's been a guest on Sam Harris.

[A]

Oh, has he?

[B]

Yeah. So he's. He has a show. He had Sam Harris on the rise of techno fascists. That's kind of a theme for David. David. David Fromm. Right. So he's covering this. He's a journalist, a political commentator, and he's kind of linking Trump corruption basically to crypto and techno fascism. Okay. And that's his entire take. So he wrote this take.

[A]

Oh, what do you mean? That was his entire take? What's the actual mechanism for how crypto crashes the market?

[B]

Okay. He was railing against stablecoins. He said the promise of stablecoins is false. They're too dangerous to be used as a medium of exchange. No one uses stablecoins for payment.

[A]

Both of those statements are terrible.

[B]

Yep. The only use of stables is for offshore funds to hold USD without submitting to kyc.

[A]

That's obviously not true.

[B]

Tether is inventing a new coin that will be anti. Kyc Dexes mean that foreign non genius regulated stablecoins can enter the US Freely. What?

[A]

Sure, I. I guess. Sure.

[B]

Only bad actors will want to buy stablecoins. Stablecoins aren't backed by FDIC insurance. They're better than that because they're just treasuries. It's going to cost.

[C]

They don't need to be backed by.

[A]

FDIC insurance because they're backed one to one.

[B]

Yes. And this is the thing. Congress only passed genius because of Trump's corruption or because they all collectively lost their minds. That's the only explanation. And so this is basically an example of something that is happening more and more, which is the. Basically the political theory of. And I think David Frum is doing this. Trump is bad. Trump likes stablecoins, therefore stablecoins are bad. And I'm going to rationalize all of the above with a set of one dimensional arguments that's not actually looking at stablecoins from first principles. That's the political backlash that I think is happening here.

[A]

I bet Elizabeth Warren loved this tweet.

[B]

Yeah. I'm not sure she's reading up on Nick hard, but I'm sure she reads the Atlantic.

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The article I Guess yes, that's in store for us.

[B]

I think sometime. David, there are some people, some entities buying the bitcoin dip. One of those is Harvard. Harvard has tripled down on its bitcoin bet. It is buying so much of IBIT, that's the Bitcoin BlackRock ETF, that they are the 16th largest holder. Okay, so yeah, IBIT is actually their largest equity position. I believe Harvard's the Harvard endowment. And so Eric Balciuna says this is a big deal. I just checked in and yeah, IBIT is now Harvard's largest position and its biggest position increase in Q3. It's super rare to get an endowment to bite on an etf, especially Harvard or Yale. It's as good a validation as an ETF can get. So they're buying the dip.

[A]

Not only Harvard, further countries. Well, just the same country, actually. El Salvador has made its largest single day bitcoin purchase. It bought a thousand bitcoins when bitcoin fell to below $90,000. So it increased the country's total Bitcoin holdings to 7,500 bitcoins, roughly valued just shy of $700 million. I remember Ryan, last time we talked about El Salvador, there was a conflict with El Salvador in the IMF because they, they want funds from the imf. And the IMF is like, okay, the only way that you get funds is if you just shut down your bitcoin operations. You don't have to sell, but you can't do it anymore. You just gotta stop. And I mean, they just bought a thousand bitcoins. They bought $100 million of bitcoins. It actually prohibits El Salvador, the IMF prohibits El Salvador from acquiring BTC. I don't know what they have to enforce it other than their 1.4 billion dollar loan program. But we will see. There's a difference between the IMF and Bukele.

[B]

It's funny, Bukele just can't resist. He's just like. Because the IMF even. There was an IMF report in July, I believe, and IMF said, oh, we, you know, we've get, we've given El Salvador some loans. They're not buying new bitcoin anymore since our $1.4 billion loan program. And here's Bukele like sneakily just buying.

[A]

I mean, like maybe not with the same funds. I don't understand it because. Well, what do you mean not with the same funds? If you get like a hundred 1.4 billion billion dollar loan from the IMF and then you go and spend that on the, with other money, David, then you just imagine show up with, with $100 million to buy Bitcoin.

[B]

Yeah. So I don't know what the IMF's.

[A]

Reaction is, but I do enjoy the audacity.

[B]

David, some few things to round out this week. BlackRock filed for the staked Ethereum trust. So I think it's finally going to happen. We're going to have staked Ethereum. Well, this is an Ethereum trust, but we're going to get an ETF at some point, I'm sure. So that's happening.

[A]

It's, it's where we're, we're closing in on it. We're closing in on it.

[B]

I want to ask you this because this was something that was interesting this week. ETH is now exceeding as a percentage of network supply Bitcoin in Treasury companies. All right. And this is totally unexpected if like this is probably one of the most unexpected things starting 2025. I would have never predicted this. If you told me in 2025 that at the end of the year the total amount of ETH supply in, in ETH treasury companies would exceed the total amount of Bitcoin and Bitcoin treasury companies. I would have never believed you. So that's kind of incredible. And yet, and yet price is down. Okay. This is Hasu's take. Interestingly, unlike Bitcoin, ETH is nowhere near all time high. It feels like a crypt. It feels like crypto. Native investors are largely abandoning ETH as an investment, though not necessarily for building or using, while institutions and trad retail are filling the gap. What do you think of this thing? You think that's what's going on?

[A]

This chart has a lot of story in it. You in this chart which is a chart of like Bitcoin slowly grinding up to wherever it is. Like a 3.5% of total Bitcoin inside of DAS. And then Ether just rockets up to 4.5% very quickly. You see the different ages of the network in this chart. It's easier for Ether to get to a higher number because it's got a lower market cap. Part of that story of that lower market cap is that Ethereum is a younger blockchain. And so you like synonymously. You also just see the lower market cap here. You also see the price malaise of ETH as well because it's easier to accumulate a bunch of ETH when it's a lower price. And so there's a bunch of things baked into this graph. I don't know what signal what story? It says that Ether has more ETH in DAS as a percentage of its total supply than Bitcoin. I don't really know what to make of that.

[B]

Don't focus on that though. What about this take, that Hosu's take, which is basically like, hey, it seems like institutional investors in Tradfi kind of like eth, right? ETF flows, DAT flows, that sort of thing. But crypto native investors have somewhat abandoned it this cycle.

[A]

Yeah, I think, well that's been the theme of the last like two years is Ethereum fragmentation is rough. The Ethereum layer 1 is not a good place to do a lot of the crypto native stuff that's happened over the last year, which is meme coins. And so people have either gone up the stack to Bitcoin or down the stack to more risk on speculative casino type behavior. And so Ethereum has been in this tough spot. I think this is kind of just emblematic of some of the malaise that Ethereum has felt over the last two years.

[B]

I agree. I think we'll get some of the crypto native investors back, but I don't know that we'll get them back this cycle. This might take some time to play out. Gotta wrap it there guys. This has been the weekly roll up. Of course, you know crypto is risky. I'm sure you feel that on weeks like this you could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. It.