ROLLUP: Crypto Bullish Again? | OpenUSD vs USDC | Robinhood Chain | Trump’s $1.4B Haul

Summary

Bankless Podcast Rollup — July 3, 2026

Crypto Bullish Again? | OpenUSD vs USDC | Robinhood Chain | Trump’s $1.4B Haul

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Episode Overview

This week, the Bankless crew dives into a jam-packed news cycle for early July 2026, analyzing why crypto markets are suddenly bullish again amid big headlines. The flagship topics include the groundbreaking launch of OpenUSD (an institutional stablecoin rivaling USDC and Tether), the arrival of Robinhood Chain—with tokenized stocks and DeFi integrations—and Trump’s staggering $1.4B crypto haul. Side explorations include crypto market cycles, the Michael Saylor saga, meme coins’ resurgence, and new industry DAOs and spinouts.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Crypto Market Cycle: Is This the Bottom? [02:57]

• Market Recap: Bitcoin started the week at $61K, hit a low of $57,800, and rebounded to $62K. Ethereum mirrored the move, dipping below $1,700 but rebounding above it.
• Bullish Probability:
  • David: “40 to 50% probability that that was the bottom.” [03:22]
  • Ryan: “I’m probably pretty close…But that, you know, leaves 50% probability a coin flip that it wasn’t and that we’re actually going to go lower.” [03:44]
• Bear Market Patterns: Historical drawdowns and durations discussed. Questioned if crypto cycles are shortening or repeating recognizable patterns.
• Risks to a Bottom:
  • Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy cash runway (now 20 months) is critical.
  • Macro risks: If equity markets (S&P, Nasdaq) reverse, crypto likely follows.

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2. Michael Saylor / MicroStrategy’s “Three Body Problem” [08:45]

• David: “He released the digital Credit Capital Framework, which is just strategy speak for we’re a hedge fund now.” [08:57]
• Actions Taken:
  • Increased USD reserves to $2.55B (17.5 months dividend coverage) and formal authorization to sell $1.25B in Bitcoin.
  • Stretch dividend yield increased to 12%. Stretch and MSTR prices rebounded in response.
  • Emphasized three “social contracts”: pay Stretch holders, don’t dilute MSTR excessively, don’t sell BTC (except in dire need).
• Ryan: “He has been doing that over the past four years and it breaks that social construct.” [13:16]
• Discussion frames Saylor as both a stabilizer and a potential risk if forced to sell BTC one day.

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3. Robinhood Chain Launch [16:42]

• Key Features:
  • Tokenized Stocks: “Tokenized Robinhood tokenized stocks…24/7, 365 marketplaces.” [16:44]
  • DeFi Integration: Lighter (ZK L2) deployed on Robinhood Chain (Arbitrum Orbit), enabling perpetuals and high DeFi yields.
  • Stablecoin: USDG issued by Paxos; Robinhood gives users 7% APY (Morpho-powered).
  • App Expansion: Improved Robinhood Wallet (self-custodial), multi-country launch (stock/tokenized asset trading not enabled for US users yet).
• Notable Quotes:
  • Ryan: “This is the Coinbase and Base tech stack…but with tokenized stocks.” [21:24]
  • David: “Arbitrum is very clearly a winner here…Uniswap wins…Chainlink wins…Morpho wins…Lighter wins. Hood itself was up 8%.” [22:34]
• Regulatory Limits: US residents largely excluded (“Can we blame Gensler for this?” [18:57])
• Bigger Picture: Signals institutional and normie entrance into onchain finance.

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4. Venice Raises $65M, Token/Equtiy Alignment Debates [26:10]

• Venice (AI x Privacy Project):
  • Raised $65M Series A led by Dragonfly—valuation now $1B.
  • Eric Voorhees (CEO): “We are going to use this capital to uphold the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution as they relate to mankind’s interaction with AI.” [27:10]
• Token-Equity Debate:
  • Venice sold both equity and tokens, sparking discussion over long-term alignment and governance.
  • Ryan (on tokens): “Shareholders get Delaware law, token holders get a pinky promise.” [30:39]
  • David: “If there was going to be one man to brute force alignment… it’s Eric.” [31:52]
• Conclusion: Alignment exists now, but long-term tension between token and equity remains unresolved.

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5. OpenUSD Launches: Institutional Stablecoin Consortium [35:04]

• What is OpenUSD?
  • Stablecoin launched by “Open Standard,” a Stripe-led giant consortium (Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, BlackRock, Google, Coinbase, etc.).
  • Ryan: “It’s just a wall of logos!” [35:24]
  • Fee-free mint/redemptions, revenue shared with distribution partners.
• Governance:
  • DAO/consortium vibes—no single owner, stakeholders “share the upside.”
• Reactions:
  • David: “This is a flop. Has no motivated party. If you have 5,000 board members, you have zero board members.” [42:41]
  • Jeremy Allaire (Circle CEO): Argues USDC maintains network effects, regulatory clarity, and profit to reinvest.
  • Tether founder: “Welcome OUSD. Player two has entered the game.” [42:23]
  • Coinbase joins OpenUSD, possibly for leverage in renegotiations with Circle.
  • Circle stock down ~17% on the news.
• Bottom line: This is the first real institutional “USDC killer” attempt, but panelists are skeptical about consortium-led innovation.

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6. Ethereum Institutional Spinout [45:31]

• Announcement: Ethereum Institutional launches as an independent nonprofit to increase institutional adoption, spinning out from ETH Foundation.
  • David: “This is, this is a, a solid second place to what would have been just like one single competent markets driven foundation. But again, that’s not what Vitalik wants.” [48:33]
• Funded by: Bitmine, Sharplink, Joe Lubin.
• Goal: Give TradFi players a contact point for using/adopting Ethereum.

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7. Trump’s $1.43 Billion Crypto Haul [49:07]

• Mother of all Grifts:
  • Trump reported $1.43B in crypto-related income on his 2025 disclosure.
  • $635M from celebrity coins (incl. Trump meme coin), $500M+ from token sales, and >$100M in BTC and ETH holdings.
  • Ryan: “He might be one of the most successful crypto entrepreneurs of all time.” [49:55]
• Public Perception:
  • Criticism focuses on “coin-operated presidency”/absurd grift (“…he’s getting a vig for everything he does as president.” [52:09]).
  • No serious defense even from Trump-friendly circles; concern that crypto’s mainstream image now is tied to Trumpian grift.
  • David: “It is an extra big slap to the face that Trump made $1.5 billion when Bitcoin went down…” [52:20]

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8. Meme Coins Return: Solana “Stimmy Checks” [54:32]

• Solana Meme Coin Surge:
  • “Ansem” token launches, quickly rockets to $180M FDV; creator airdrops huge sums to Solana users to revive meme trading.
  • David: “When a meme coin gets to $180 million, when we haven’t seen anything like that in over a year, that’s news.” [57:23]
• Market Impact: Solana up 15% vs 2-3% BTC/ETH. Surge in new meme coins and speculation, driven partly by “stimmy checks” (airdrops).
• Speculation about Motivations: Some suggest money laundering, others see it as pure casino/gambling culture.

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9. Cloudflare Brings X402 & Stablecoin Payments to APIs [59:25]

• Announcement: Cloudflare integrates stablecoin micropyaments (OUSD, USDC) for API/data access, pushing a new “pay per use” internet model vital for the AI era.
• Market Impact: 25% of internet traffic can now run on stablecoin rails, a real precedent for crypto’s infrastructure adoption.
• David: “Every time I see structural intertwining between AI and crypto and stablecoins or and just on the Internet, I’m like, OK, I don’t know how that turns into a catalyst for crypto, but that is just real good underbrush to be laying down that will one day spark.” [61:25]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I think that could have been the bottom [for BTC and ETH].” — David, [02:59]
• “If you have 5,000 board members, you have zero board members.” — David (re: OpenUSD), [42:45]
• “It’s just a logo wall!” — Ryan, [35:24]
• “He might be one of the most successful crypto entrepreneurs of all time.” — Ryan (re: Trump), [49:55]
• “Crypto is bullish again.” — David, [24:02]
• “We are going to use this capital to uphold the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution as they relate to mankind’s interaction with AI.” — Eric Voorhees (via David), [27:10]
• “Shareholders get Delaware law, token holders get a pinky promise… tokens are junior equity.” — Ryan (re: token/equity split), [30:39]
• “Coin-operated presidency.” — Host, [51:00]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:57] — Crypto market bottom & bear cycle analysis
• [08:45] — MicroStrategy/Michael Saylor update
• [16:42] — Robinhood Chain launch and DeFi integrations
• [26:10] — Venice $1B raise & token/equity discussion
• [35:04] — OpenUSD stablecoin consortium vs USDC/Tether
• [45:31] — Ethereum Institutional launches as new nonprofit
• [49:07] — Trump’s crypto grift: $1.43B 2025 haul
• [54:32] — Solana meme coin resurgence (“stimmy checks”)
• [59:25] — Cloudflare brings stablecoin payments to APIs

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The Bankless Tone

True to its name, the banter is informed, opinionated, occasionally irreverent, and always in favor of more decentralization and experimentation—even if that means calling out “grifts” and “flops” or poking at regulatory bottlenecks. The hosts keep a quick cadence and aren’t afraid to criticize projects or hype up wins (“bullish again!”) when the data supports it.

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In Summary

This episode marks a pivotal moment in crypto’s summer 2026 narrative: markets feel bottomed, institutional rails are firing up (Robinhood Chain, OpenUSD), and even if Trump is raking in meme money, the major blockchains and DeFi are seeing new kinds of adoption and product launches. The team projects skeptical optimism—with bullish signals for Ethereum, Arbitrum, Solana, and the intersection of crypto and AI—while remaining wary of old-world governance weaknesses infecting emerging digital standards.

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Crypto’s frontier is wild, risky, and as this week proved, bullish again.

Transcript

[Host]

Foreign

[David]

station. It's the first week of July and we have a huge week of news this week. The world's largest financial institutions just launched a brand new Stablecoin co op to compete with Circle and Tether calling it open USD from open standard. Names like Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, BlackRock, Google, Coinbase. 60 plus names. Circle dropped 17% on the news. Is this the first USD killer to come on the scene in a while or just the world's biggest letter of intent?

[Ryan]

We also have a continuation of the Michael Saylor story. Is that whole thing going to unwind? Possibly a bookend, Maybe a bookend, maybe a book point. He deferred it even longer. They just raised, I don't know, one to two billion more. We'll talk about how that happened and whether that can get them out of this current predicament.

[David]

There's also Robinhood chain. There was an event from Robinhood in London where they announced and launched Robinhood chain. So many things to talk about. Tokenized stocks trading on Uniswap 7% stablecoin yield perps via lighter. Really just the rise of Robinhood chain and also the rise of Ethereum Institutional. That's another thing that launched this week. The second org to roll out of the EF in two weeks. Specialization or talent Sprawl.

[Ryan]

Nice. I like what you did there, David. Yeah. We also have Venice we're going to talk about and I want you to get me to fill me in on Trump. All the money Trump made and we get to see just we get to quantify how much was possibly grifted from the crypto industry.

[David]

Big story there. Who would you rather be? All of crypto companies or Donald Trump who made more money? Yeah, we're going to get to all this and more but before we do, we got to talk about OkX, the Internet Continental Exchange. This is a hot week to talk about this. Which is the parent company of the New York Stock exchange. They backed OkX and $25 billion valuation to launch tokenized New York Stock Exchange stocks and derivatives later this year on OkX. That's TradFi and Defi all in the same place. The Defi mullet on all on one head. Trusted by over 120 million users globally, OkX is bringing products to the US market that Wall street has been dreaming of for years. And OKX is finally delivering them through their new Money app. If you are not yet on OK X you can get a 6% deposit match using the link in the show notes. Unless you are from Texas or New York So if you're from Texas or New York, don't do that. Not investment advice. Let's go ahead and get right into it. Okay, Ryan. Bitcoin started the week $61,000, dropped to a new low. It broke through new lows of 57,800. Right now at the time of recording is actually higher than it started the week at 62,000. Same story for ETH. ETH is up 2% on the week. It started the week just below 1700. It hit a new low. New low in, like, years of 1500 and is ending the week at just above 17. I think there's a decent probability that that was the bottom for both. For crypto, for the. For the blue chips. I think that could have been the bottom.

[Ryan]

What probability? I agree that's a decent probability. But I'm curious what probability you'd assign versus what I would assign.

[David]

40 to 50% probability that that was the bottom. That that was the bottom.

[Ryan]

Oh, interesting. Okay. That's lower than I thought you'd be because you sounded a bit more bullish. I would assign it.

[David]

That's pretty bullish. That's pretty bullish, really.

[Ryan]

Okay. I thought from the sound of your voice, I was like, oh, David's like 80%, 90% that this is the bottom.

[David]

You can never be that high. You can never be that high.

[Ryan]

I'm probably pretty close 40 to 50% that that was the bottom. But that, you know, leaves 50% probability a coin flip that it wasn't and that we're actually going to go lower. I want to. Does this sound right? Bitcoin went down in 2018, 84% from the high in 2022, 76% with this new low, 20, 26, it would be 54%. Doesn't it feel like if you want these numbers to kind of line up symmetrically and the time range to line up as well, 12 months of a bear in each of these that we hit the lows. 12 months of a bear, we hit the lows. We're not yet 12 months. We're nine months. And doesn't it look like this instead of 54%, just like squint, look at this. Doesn't it look like it should be in the 60s, 62, 63, maybe 65% from the high of the previous cycle. Like, look at.

[David]

Depends on whether you're a cycle maxi and you don't care about anything.

[Ryan]

There is no other choice. Historically, if you are not a cycle maxi, then you have been washed out of these markets because you've over leveraged yourself or you've been disappointed and you just like quit these markets. Most people still remaining are cycle maxis, or at least they should be if they're on their, like, third or fourth cycle. Like, this is happening, guys. What do you think it means? Do you think it means it could happen again? Yes, I do.

[David]

Clearly I'm talking to a cycle maxi here. Look, Saylor, we're going to talk about this in a second. Saylor bought himself like almost 20 months of cash USD Runway for dividend payments.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[David]

And so the only other bottom I could see is like, when we start to. When that starts to like evaporate and we get down to like eight months of cash, Runway. And then the market starts to really care about what Saylor does. But we got 12 months before we get to that point. Now bear markets last about 12 months. So maybe we hit another bottom at the tail end of the bear market and that's the bottom. And then we rocket upwards because Sailor Saylor was forced to cough up bitcoin. What I the. I would give the recent bottom a higher probability of being the bottom if Saylor coughed up bitcoin. But he didn't. He just dumped mstr. And so I will give you that. That, like Sailor didn't cough up bitcoin. And so, you know, he hasn't eaten his humble pie. He's still thinking that he can hold on to every single satoshi that he ever bought. And that is what worries me. But ryan, he's got 20 months of Runway. That's a long time.

[Host]

A.

[Ryan]

Okay, but this isn't just about Saylor. Right. There's other things that are bigger than Saylor. Okay, including bitcoin, of course, but including macro. And there is a question as to what the Fed does next. People think that it will be maybe a in the middle type Fed. Not overly dovish, not overly hawkish.

[David]

You mean a Fed that's just balanced and responsible and does their job kind

[Ryan]

of is not just doing what Trump wants and just slashing rates, but is like thinking whether we should raise them or not, that's still in the water. If it turns out that wash is a bit more hawkish than the market expects, that could turn things on a dime and that could cause equities to go down. If equities go down, let's say David AI Nasdaq went down 20 to 25%. You think Bitcoin remains, you know, like 60K?

[David]

No, no, there's lots.

[Ryan]

There's chum in the water for those types of Things to be catalysts for us to hit the final capitulation zone and the final bottom. And I think that's, that's remaining. In fact, I think we're up a little bit.

[David]

The stock market is quite high and has a lot to fall. If it does, if it does decide to fall.

[Ryan]

There you go, There you go. And I do think we're up a little bit at least on the day

[David]

because we're up on the week. The spy, The S&P 500 is up 2.5% this week. Nasdaq up 2% this week. Oil prices continue their decline. They are WTI and Brent down 3.5%. WTI traded below $70 this week.

[Ryan]

Yeah, and we had some, we had some, I guess good news recently on the week for markets at least. Fed chair Wash had a meeting at the ecb. It was just a forum and he said expectations of inflation have actually come down. You can see that in oil prices that you mentioned earlier. Inflation risks have come down which if, if they're coming down then the Fed doesn't have to raise rates. Certainly could leave them where they are. Could, could think about decreasing them in the future. And I think the markets got some bullish catalyst on that. There was also a pretty good jobs report. The Polymarket on the next Fed decision, which happens at the end of July, peaked up a little bit. Like the probability of no change went from something like 75% to something like 90%. So the market is anticipating that Wash is not going to do anything in the next meeting, either up or down. But let's get back to Saylor. Okay, so where we left things last week was he had this three body problem. He has MSTR holders, he has the SDRC holders and then he has Bitcoin and they're all kind of orbiting one another and you know, which course will he take? They're all, they're all pulling on one another. So what's he going to do? So what did he do on the

[David]

week he released the digital Credit Capital Framework, which is just strategy speak for we're a hedge fund now.

[Ryan]

Hey, what do you mean, what do

[David]

you mean with Saylor and strategy? They are such a force and they need to keep their cards close to their chest to preserve maximum optionality that they are starting to look like the Fed when it comes to Bitcoin. And so there's like, you know, Fed speak versus like real language. I'm going to do my best to put everything into real language.

[Ryan]

Yeah, what was the language?

[David]

At least we're A hedge fund. Now we're a hedge fund.

[Ryan]

They didn't say that. They didn't say that.

[David]

No, they said. They said they released a digital credit capital framework. I'm saying that what they are saying, we should interpret this as they are just a hedge fund. And so here's some of the. Just the core measures that they did. They increased their USD reserves to $2.55 billion. That's 17 and a half months of dividend coverage.

[Ryan]

That was up from last week. We added 1.4.

[David]

Yeah. They added a little bit more than $1 billion. So they more than doubled their time that they have to pay for Stretch.

[Ryan]

And was that MSTR ATM sales?

[David]

That I can only imagine.

[Ryan]

He did not sell bitcoin.

[David]

He did not sell bitcoin.

[Ryan]

So.

[David]

But, Ryan, they gave themselves a formal authorization to sell $1.25 billion of Bitcoin.

[Ryan]

Wait, they gave themselves permission to sell?

[David]

This was always allowed. This is kind of my issue with this is like they were always allowed

[Ryan]

to sell bitcoin for guidance, right?

[David]

Yes, yes, exactly.

[Ryan]

Guidance to everybody who.

[David]

But they're not going to sell more than $1.25 billion of Bitcoin. So if you are worried, if you're a bitcoin holder and you're worried that they're going to sell more than 1.25 billions of dollars. Believed.

[Ryan]

Well, unless they give themselves permission to.

[David]

Yeah, right. Okay. So the fun, the funky math that they get to do with this is that you get to add $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin to their dividend coverage. So now their math is you add these things together, they have $3.8 billion of reserves. If you add the funny money, $1.25 billion funny money.

[Ryan]

That's real money.

[David]

A bitcoin they haven't sold yet.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

But this gives them 26 months of dividend coverage. So because of their authorization, they are authorized to add on a fake nine months of dividend coverage because they've authorized it.

[Ryan]

Well, it was always real. They just are acknowledging that it's an option, I suppose. But yes, I get your point. 26 months is a long time, though.

[David]

Is a long time. Yeah. And then they increased this Stretch dividend yield from 11.5% to 12%. What this does is that informs the market that they are going to try and keep their capital market window open to them by trying to get Stretch back up to $100 so that they can issue more Stretch to buy more bitcoin.

[Ryan]

They want STRC holders to be Happy.

[David]

They want sgrc. Yeah. Also they're kind of backed up against the wall because of all of the promotion and marketing that Saylor has done around Stretch. And so they really want Stretch holders to not be unhappy in case they get sued.

[Ryan]

Sure.

[David]

Yeah. And then they also have a, a buyback program for Stretch and convertible notes or mst. Like, hey, if we want to, we can buy these things back. Which once again was always allowed.

[Ryan]

More punishing, I can imagine, to the MSTR holders on the week. Right. With some additional inflation of mstr. The biggest.

[David]

Yeah, but it was, it was above MNAV anyways. And So I mean, MSTR, it bottomed out at $82 yesterday. It got up to $104.

[Ryan]

Oh, wow.

[David]

It's now at $99. Okay. So it has recovered. And also so has Stretch. So stretch is at $88. You know, it bottomed around 70 to $73. So it's, it's walking its way closer.

[Ryan]

It was a buying opportunity last week then, at least. Right. I mean, that would have been a good one to lock in for sure. If you, if you like this. Because this was very likely what Michael Saylor was going to do. He was going to run the ATM as hot as he could.

[David]

Yes.

[Ryan]

And then give some indication that, hey, like, if you like, well, we're willing to sell Bitcoin too. The thing about selling bitcoin though is it does. I think you made the point last week that there's this social contract that Saylor has established. I never sell, like mortgage a second home, mortgage a third home.

[David]

Like sell a kidney.

[Ryan]

Yeah. Like we do whatever you have to to hold bitcoin. And so he has been doing that over the past four years and it breaks that social construct.

[David]

He has three social contracts. Pay Stretch dividend holders their money, have it treated a hundred, don't dilute MSCR holders below 1 of MNAV and don't sell bitcoin. And he hasn't broken any of those social contracts. Other selling the 32 Bitcoin, which I don't think counts because it was so small.

[Ryan]

Yeah. Just to know about the three body problem. Like all three bodies do orbit one another. It's just the orbits are unpredictable. So there's not.

[David]

But there are, there are like solutions to the three body problem. There's like 20 or 30 and like, you know, you have three in a circle there. It's perfectly balanced solution.

[Ryan]

You can't. That's the whole thing with three body problem.

[David]

You can't predict in a vacuum, in a mathematical Vacuum you. There are constructions of the three body

[Ryan]

problems that a lot about this after that.

[David]

Go for it. I mean, there's a graphic I can. I can send you, but it's like one of those things where it's like such a perfect mathematical vacuum that it's actually impossible.

[Ryan]

I see. So it's theoretically possible. Not possible.

[David]

Yes.

[Ryan]

Anyway, aside from that, this is not the death spiral. This is not the three bodies spinning out of control. And like, it doesn't look like that's the case. And that's more confirmation this week. That's right. Should we talk about Robinhood chain or should we wait for the Dude, Big

[David]

news of the week. Let's see how far we're in.

[Ryan]

I think we need time. I think we need more time.

[David]

We need more time.

[Ryan]

Air time.

[David]

So next we got to talk about on chain tokenized stocks 24 7, 365 markets, 7% APY deposits, AI agents to trade. It's pretty big uniswap on Robinhood chain. Arbitrum is a big winner here. Lighter is.

[Ryan]

Well, you're already talking about it, let's say.

[David]

Okay, we'll be right back.

[Ryan]

Talking about Robinhood, talking about Venice. Also, the new stablecoin that just jumped on the USD. Yeah, ousd, all that. But before we do, we got to thank the sponsors that made this possible.

[David]

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[Ryan]

I got tokenized stocks. I knew that was coming on chain.

[David]

Tokenized Robinhood tokenized stocks.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

Which enables them to do 24 7, 365 marketplaces.

[Ryan]

And these are real stock. Like what? These aren't. These aren't the weird synthetics that don't have any backing. Like are these actual stocks?

[David]

I would like more details about how Robinhood actually tokenized stocks gotta be stock.

[Ryan]

Right?

[David]

But they are a brokerage.

[Ryan]

Yeah. So if they're a brokerage, they just,

[David]

they're piped right in.

[Ryan]

We're going to say it is. We're going to say this is real deal stocks.

[David]

Real deal stocks, yeah. So they have bitstamp, which they purchased. Right. Which has perpetual futures and the exchange. And so they get to use some of Bitstamp to do 24 7, 365 markets. But they also lighter. The ZK L2 on Ethereum lighter built a brand new instance of lighter on the Robinhood chain, on which is an Arbitrum orbit chain. And so there's now, now two lighters. And so a lot of the Robinhood tokenized stocks will go onto their chain and get perp Access directly through LiDR, right on the exchange.

[Ryan]

What's the explanation for why. I know why lighter would be warming up to Robinhood. Why would Robinhood be warming up to Lightr? Is it. Is. Is there anything like, whoa, we're all part of the Ethereum community. Like why not hyper liquidity?

[David]

Robinhood invested in LIDAR at their last round.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

And so they are. They are lidar investors. The lighter engineering team is like straight up cracked. They have a lot of forward deployed engineers which buil this lighter instance on the Robinhood chain. Why does Robinhood want that on the Robinhood chain? Just tons of block space consumption from.

[Ryan]

They're kind of making a decision. Hey, this is our favorite among the defi perps. Winners.

[David]

What other perp exchange would be able to build a new instance directly on the Robinhood change?

[Ryan]

I'm sure Hyper Liquid could if you asked.

[David]

I don't think they would. I don't think they would do that. They want everything to go on the hyperliquid platform.

[Ryan]

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I see.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So big win for Lighter. And then also they have just part of the announcement is like just region and jurisdiction expansion. So they're in 160 countries. A lot of stuff not in the United States. Ryan. A lot of stuff is excluded from the United States.

[Ryan]

Oh, all the tokenized stock stuff is excluded?

[David]

Yes, the stock tokens, the perp futures, and then also non crypto perps. Non crypto perps were announced.

[Ryan]

So can we blame Gensler for this? Why is, why can't we have tokenized stocks in 2026?

[David]

Because we just don't have clarity. And I think Mike Selig from the CFTC is like trying to get us clarity.

[Ryan]

Clarity, the literal act. Are you saying the clarity?

[David]

No, just more. More clarity from the cftc, from regulators. Yeah. So I don't expect that to be a long standing issue in the grand scheme of things by the end of the year.

[Ryan]

Do you think maybe we'll be clear

[David]

to trade here by 2027? In 2027.

[Ryan]

Okay. Geez.

[David]

Vlad. Vlad from Lighter. So we have Vlad from Robin Hood. Vlad ten of the CEO of Robin Hood.

[Ryan]

That's why they're together. They're both Vlad.

[David]

They're both named Vlad. Vlad from Leiter. He is on like the CFTC advisory board and so he talks to like Mike Selig and so like he's in the loop and like Leiter is explicitly going for a U.S. license. And so that's why Robinhood chose them is like they, they can work with them to be compliant. Okay, so that's that a lot of this was both the. The launch of the Robinhood chain, but also the glowing up of the Robinhood wallet. The first time we ever talked to Vlad Ryan was at Permissionless number one, where they launched. Where Robinhood launched Robinhood Wallet. Remember that?

[Ryan]

And that was a self custodial defi type wallet. Almost like a Metamask competitor, but mobile first. And we are very excited about their ability to bring the Robinhood level UX to crypto and defi.

[David]

Exactly. Still the case. It's been pretty vanilla so far. It's just like a vanilla. A very sexy vanilla self custodial wallet they are doing. Let me just like tell you a bunch of things and see if it reminds you of anything. So first we have Robinhood Wallet. Now we have Robinhood chain self custodial thing. The self custodial.

[Ryan]

We're not talking about Robinhood.

[David]

No. New new app. New brand new app. Wow. Self custodial wallet on the Robinhood chain.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

7% depositors for the Robinhood stablecoin, which is USD G issued by Paxos, not USDC. Yeah, not USDT or USDC. So Robinhood gets the yield for all of the stablecoins on the Robinhood chain. And they are giving 7% more than 6% more than issued by a competitor who rhymes with schmoinmace. And they're giving 7% using Morpho. So Morpho is hooked into the backend here.

[Ryan]

So they're making Paxos their usdc like,

[David]

because Paxos will pass back the yield. Because that's how it works. That's how it works.

[Ryan]

Okay. Okay, go on.

[David]

Does that just remind you of any other tech stack? Maybe a blue coated tech stack?

[Ryan]

And this is the coin. This is the Coinbase and Base tech stack. So we have Base and the Coinbase wallet. And then we have usdc, which is the Coinbase Stablecoin equivalent. And we have an equivalent stack on the Robinhood side. But with tokenized stocks.

[David]

Yeah, with tokenized stocks in the EU. And so you can get up to 10%, 10x leverage on gold, QQQ, the Euro USD pair, ETFs, and foreign exchange if you're in the EU. And then that all gets served to you on lighter. There's also an 11 million lite token incentive program. So if you go and trade perps in the Robinhood wallet, you get some lighter tokens.

[Ryan]

This is exciting. I'm excited about this.

[David]

So I think the big question is, like, who are the big winners here? So there's a bunch of different partners. Arbitrum is literally the chain provider. There's like murmurs of just like, will the Robinhood chain be Robinhood's like, 14th $100 million revenue yearly product that they have? Will Robinhood should be the 14th one of those?

[Ryan]

Sure.

[David]

Well, if it is like, Arbitrum gets 10% of that. So Arbitrum is very clearly a winner here. Let me pull open Coingeck ARB token

[Ryan]

up 3% on the news.

[David]

Oh, that was yesterday. Let me, let me, let me look at it today. Let me look at it today. 3%. 3%. Okay, what about Uniswap? So Uniswap is deployed and that's pretty Cool, because that is got. There's tokenized stocks on Uniswap on Robinhood chain. That's pretty cool. That's Uniswap.

[Ryan]

I just like to note. Okay, so this is a whole thread about the total value locked that the Robinhood chain launched with. There's a dune board for this and it launched with some pretty big numbers like 100 million in stablecoins already. That was day one launch. 4.4 million in DEX liquidity. That was from Uniswap. Right. Morpho. It's like these defi blue chips in the Ethereum economy that are benefiting from this big launch.

[David]

Yeah, Uniswap. When I put in my notes, yesterday was only up two and a half percent but today it is up 12%. So maybe some delayed price action.

[Ryan]

That's what I'm talking about. Double digit. Thank you.

[David]

Chainlink is a big Oracle provider. Chainlink up 5% in the last day here. Morpho, which is the yield supplier for that 7% of the stablecoin and among other things, up 3%. Up 3%. Respectable. And then lighter, which is the perp. Dex supplier got a huge boost. Up 17%. That's 17%.

[Ryan]

And I saw. I see in the notes Hood itself was up 8% on the news.

[David]

Was up 8% on the notes.

[Ryan]

Crypto is bullish again.

[David]

Crypto is bullish again. Yeah, this was a big deal. This was a very. I don't think too many people saw this coming. Even though like Robinhood has been like telegraphing this for forever.

[Ryan]

So this compares to base. It's kind of a lot of equivalencies. But just with tokenized stocks I might say. Are there other like it's the arbitrum stack rather than.

[David]

Rather than arbitrum stack rather than op stack.

[Ryan]

Yeah. I did see that they are actually using Ethereum for data availability too. Just in case you're an L2 beat

[David]

nut, there's some, some like Ethereum is winning here as well.

[Ryan]

Well, it's. And you could clearly see Ethereum winning da whatever aside. Right. That's some net benefit for the Ethereum ecosystem. They're believing the LT roadmap. This is a partial. This is a. This is a victory for the L2 roadmap. We don't talk about victories in this day and age for the L2 roadmap.

[David]

The way that this is a big victory for Ethereum in eth specifically is if Robinhood tokenized stocks can migrate off the chain and onto the layer one.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[David]

And that, that is a Question I have when I record with Johan, the VP of crypto of Robinhood, in like three hours.

[Ryan]

Oh cool. Three hours. Okay. I'm looking forward to that episode then. Okay. So not just that though, it's that but it's very clearly a boon to Ethereum Defi.

[David]

I would, I would say. Which does benefit, especially if the stocks can come off the chain.

[Ryan]

But even if not, if it is successful, Uniswap wins, Morpho wins, like Ethereum Blue Chip wins. And then also I would say I think Ethereum has a new wallet on the scene that. I mean Robinhood has been there but like now they're incented to make improvements in it. And you know, Phantom has been a fantastic competitor in the, in the Solana ecosystem. Good to have another wallet on the seat.

[David]

That's right, that's right. And also, I think you just have to also give a tip of the hat to Paxos. Paxos doesn't trade. But like they, they won Robinhood with a stablecoin deal. Yeah, like sleepy gets a dub here.

[Ryan]

Sleeper.

[David]

Overall, like everyone was just pretty thrilled. Like no one really had any, no one had things, no, no one had anything bad to say about anything. The hyper liquid people are coping a little bit about lighter, but that's okay.

[Ryan]

Yeah, they don't like to lose, do they? Let's talk about the another story this week which is Venice. I became a unicorn. So valuation of Venice now north of $1 billion.

[David]

And this was at 1. $1 billion.

[Ryan]

Okay, at 1 billion. This was on the back of a raise that was announced. So what happened here?

[David]

$65 million raise, Series A led by Dragonfly, along with North Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Morgan Greek for, for Venice. And so this was, this was a hybrid equity token. There's a token warrant here, but this is also an equity deal. Eric Voorhees, the founder CEO of Venice, of course just tweeted out some actual bangers. The a line that he wrote in his article about like the motivations for Venice and the importance of privacy in the world of AI is we are going to use this capital to uphold the first and fourth amendments to the constitution as they relate to mankind's interaction with AI.

[Ryan]

Who.

[David]

I just got shivers.

[Ryan]

Unrestricted intelligence. Right. Self sovereign AI. This is part of the story of Venice and it's not completely self sovereign AI, but it gets us a big step closer, I would say. I, I somewhat wonder if Voorhees is at some point in time going to find himself in Venice in regulator crosshairs.

[David]

Once again going toe to toe with the state. I think like Eric is like, I know what to like.

[Ryan]

Well, they had a problem with self sovereign money. You think they're going to have a problem with self sovereign intelligence? I mean like, yeah, I mean the US government.

[David]

I hope he does go toe to toe. That's, that's what I'm rooting for. It's very Voorhees versus the state again. Let's fucking go.

[Ryan]

Yeah, it's going to be. And it's like you can already see the state cracking down on delaying like Mythos restricting that, delaying the newest chat GPT model. Anyway, go on. So that's his mission. That's what Venice is all about. That's what they're doing. So what else does he say?

[David]

Yeah, they got an article in TechCrunch which is what pumped the token a little bit. So the raise was announced. And like the VVV token pumps like 14%. It's retraced because this has spawned a whole conversation about equity token misalignment, which is a story that we have seen before. Eric knows this and he kind of got ahead of it when he did the raise announcement in a tweet thread. He said to raise Such capital, this $65 million, we could have either sold some of Venice's treasury of VVV directly to the market or sold equity. We chose the latter. Despite the VVP token equity, not VVV, correct? Yes. Despite VVV being up 700% year to date, we don't want to sell a token. Venice, the company remains the largest holder of VVV, owning more than 30 million out of today's 80 million supply. The company and team each hold more today than at Genesis. The company has not sold any today. So the the details of the capital raise, Series A investors, they with the 65 million that they raised, they bought 9% of the company and a vesting grant of 1.5 million VVV token. So part equity, part token. And they also bought a right to buy 5 million more VVV over the next eight years in order.

[Ryan]

So they did buy some token too. It wasn't just equity.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. It was, it was hybrid. It was both they sold equity and tokens and also a right to buy future tokens. And so I think Eric knows the equity token misalignment problem. His solution seems to be a the company holds a lot of tokens and also doesn't want to sell tokens which like if the company wants to not Sell tokens. That's bullish. That's bullish in my mind, because they value their tokens, they consider their tokens precious. So they'd rather sell equity than tokens. That's. That's a bullish token interpretation. And so the fact that he's like lumping everything together and he's preserving alignment by keeping a large supply of the tokens inside of the equity does align incentives more than if they were completely dislocated.

[Ryan]

But the problem is that's a fixed, you know, point in time. Sure, they're aligned now, but they're two separate instruments and they don't have to stay in that exact configuration, do they?

[David]

Yeah, yeah. So I take Eric's point that he's making, which is if the equity owns the token, there's alignment, which I think is correct, and that's more alignment than there's been.

[Ryan]

But then also, if the equity owns the token, why have a token? Right?

[David]

So this is what, this is the conversation that has spawned. Mike at Polito just tweeted out, dual token equity structures do not work. Two owners, one pie. Shareholders get Delaware law. Token holders get a pinky promise. You know, tokens are junior equity.

[Ryan]

That's a hot line because the problem with tokens to date has been lack of shareholders rights that Delaware C Corps have. The problem with Delaware C Corps is they're not digitally native, crypto native, and they're kind of shitty for smart contracts and all sorts of things. And they're walled inside. So it's a worse Rails, but it's better in terms of shareholder governance. A lot better, in fact. In fact, name me a token project that has succeeded with the split ownership structure and some of them have partially succeeded. Maybe you could point to an AAVE or uniswap. A lot of them have failed colossally.

[David]

BNB is an example of Binance the company and BNB the token. But what did Binance do? They burned a crap ton of BNB and CZ owns a ton of bnb. There's one example. And like Venice, Venice wants to burn a bunch of vvv, but it's still

[Ryan]

like up to C. Like, it's up to cz, up to equity holders in terms of how much.

[David]

It's up to Eric Voorhees and who, if there was going to be one man, to just like brute force alignment without any sort of elegant solution. I agree that there's no elegant solution to solving the token and equity misalignment problem.

[Ryan]

Are you sure about that? Just have a token well, yeah, but that's.

[David]

Yes, that is the solution.

[Ryan]

Don't have two instruments.

[David]

Yes.

[Ryan]

Just kind of like force the Delaware structure into the token.

[David]

I think the most important thing that you said, and I agree with, is that the equity alignment problem is like pseudo solved in this moment of time. But this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue, especially if Venice raises more. Like, as time goes on, this is going to be a larger and larger problem.

[Ryan]

It's also. It's being kind of. It's launched in this lemon market by lemon, I mean, like, you know, like a lemon car, which is just like, you know, all the kind of the used cars with all the problems, those are the ones that get kind of left over. They become the lemons in the market that no one wants to buy. I mean, tokens are kind of the lemons of assets right now.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

It's because even if Voorhees and Venice does the right thing and keeps this thing aligned somehow by just brute force and kind of will and just pushing it, the rest of the tokens in the market of other assets are all lemons. And so you're going to be grouped in with them too. That's another problem.

[David]

Plus, at some point, fiduciary duty takes over and the fiduciary duty belongs to the shareholders and not to the token holders. So I think Eric is going to do his best. But there's something fundamental and existential about having two vehicles.

[Ryan]

Well, isn't it trust in Eric then here, which is kind of anti what Eric actually wants. As a strong libertarian, you shouldn't have to trust me. You know, you should trust in protocol, you should trust in incentives. But you're saying if one man can make it work, it's Eric that's kind

[David]

of anti principality and make it work for the short and medium term. For the long term, I think there needs to be a structural change.

[Ryan]

I know you're bullish. You have been bullish on vvv and certainly it's a great product. How do you feel as an owner? Would you rather have the token or equity or both? And are you disgruntled that you just have the token?

[David]

I mean, with a token I get liquidity and so that's a perk that I have.

[Ryan]

So you could change your mind later?

[David]

Yeah, I don't know if I would want to flip to equity.

[Ryan]

Well, you don't want to. I don't want illiquid equity. Do you? You don't want.

[David]

I definitely don't want illiquid equity.

[Ryan]

But Wouldn't you like to have an option like get whatever the equity, equity owners also get?

[David]

Yeah. I don't know man. There's something about tokens that I really, really like. And the fact that Eric is like very loudly defending the structure. I don't know if he's is. It is a good sign. He's like fighting. I do think it's a little bit. I would like to hear him like agree that there is misalignment in the structure of equity versus token and say that over the long term there needs to be a better solution. That would make me feel better. I don't know man. But I like the token.

[Ryan]

All right.

[David]

I still like tokens.

[Ryan]

I know you do. Disappointed many times, but still like them. Still keep coming back. Let's talk about Open USD from Open Standard. This new stablecoin with like every logo. My God, I could read a few Visa, Stripe, MasterCard.

[David]

Scroll down to the section in this announcement where they just have all of the logos listed here.

[Ryan]

Oh my God. It's just a logo.

[David]

It's a wall of text.

[Ryan]

They have Jack. Who's Jack? Henry?

[David]

I have no idea.

[Ryan]

They have clouds, they have big banks, BlackRock, BNB. This is not alphabetical.

[David]

I guess it's BNY, not BNB. They have Google.

[Ryan]

Okay, so they have all the big

[David]

payment companies, all The DoorDash, Samsung, IBM, all the big banks, Shopify, Mercado Libre, all the big tech companies, Coinbase, Tempo, Bybit, American Express. They got everyone. They got everyone.

[Ryan]

So what is it?

[David]

Okay, it is basically a dao. This is a dao.

[Ryan]

You're talking about the governance. I want it. What is the actual thing? It's just a stablecoin. No different.

[David]

It's ousd, is a stable coin and

[Ryan]

this is a genius compliant stablecoin.

[David]

Genius compliant stablecoin. Stripe is at the gravitational center here. So the CEO of Open Standard is Zach Abrams.

[Ryan]

The CEO of Bridge.

[David]

Yeah. Who you interviewed when. When he got acquired by Stripe. So Stripe has something to do with this? Stripe says that it's making OUSD the default stablecoin for businesses transacting on Stripe.

[Ryan]

So they're saying we're putting our talents

[David]

like oh, USD is our stablecoin and we are using it, we're adopting it.

[Ryan]

Okay, but to your point, this was launched in a, an institution, a non profit standards body. JoinOpenStandard.com is the blog post we're reading.

[David]

Oh, is, is it a non profit?

[Ryan]

Well, whatever it is, it's not.

[David]

I think, I don't think it's a non profit.

[Ryan]

I don't know what it. But like it's not a. Well what is it, what is it then?

[David]

You know, I think it's a, it's a, it's a four. It's a consortium.

[Ryan]

Consortium.

[David]

It's a, it's a consortium. I don't know if it's like an officially a consortium but it was just like their strategy was to list every single partner name under the sun and like just come out swinging with like look how legitimate this is, look at all the launch partners that we have. But so is there any equity owned

[Ryan]

by these people or is there no equity? Is it just a kind of like a shell type of, you know like protocol structure thing that makes no money and passes off all the revenue to all of the like revenue and profits to all of the stakeholders that we just mentioned based on their level of prediction.

[David]

The legal entity, a tbd. I would like, I would like to know that answer. But the latter thing that you said, like the economics of Open USD is exactly what you just say. So businesses can mint and redeem open USD at no cost and no limits. That is like a, that's different from the Tether and Circle model where there are mint and redeem fees. OUSD is designed to return most revenue generated from its reserves minus a small management fee to participants who adopt and distribute it. Exactly like Robinhood and Paxos that I just talked about. So Robinhood issues Paxos global dollar. Robinhood gets all the yield. Paxos gets a little bit. And, and so the, the board of Open standard is made up of a board of open USD partners ensuring decisions are made for the collective interest. Not a single entity. So this is just dowie socialist vibes. We're like oh, we're all going to share in the upside and like everyone who mints gets their act, their share of the yield and like we don't have to pay for Circle or Tethers.

[Ryan]

Like you're saying the governance feels dowy and the governance is very vibes of like well it has the tragedy of the commons, like who's actually responsible, who's going to push this thing forward, that sort of problem. But it does achieve what I think I talked to Zach Abrams a year ago about which is he's like hey, Tether and Circle are stealing all the revenue from the apps and companies that are actually using them. And look at Tether's margins, right? Was like 9 to 12 billion a year with 150 people, something like that. And they're Just taking that for just being tether. And that should be passed to apps and end users and the participants. And so that is a market force. He's just passing this to the creators of value rather than having rent collectors kind of take it. That would be the argument. And I remember my comment to that was like, oh, really Zach? You think there'll be a world of like thousands of different stablecoins? And at the time he said yes. Now it looks like he's looking for network effect with one particular stablecoin that.

[David]

Thousands of different partners.

[Ryan]

Yeah, one stablecoin, one stablecoin. And maybe that's for network effect reasons. Yeah, yeah.

[David]

So all the attention around OUSD evoked a response from Jeremy Allaire, who put out a pretty lengthy tweet. Well, also the first thing you notice about this tweet is how long it

[Ryan]

is, but also because Circle was down, right?

[David]

Oh yeah. Circle dropped like 17% on the news.

[Ryan]

Was it just this news or do you also think it was the Paxos Robinhood news too?

[David]

I think it was just this news.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

I think it was just so. So Jeremy Allaire, summarizing his response, his very long response, is that why he's like arguing why USCC's position is defensible? Network effects, like thousands of apps already integrate uscc, Circle's own infrastructure, Stack, cctp, blah blah blah. Liquidity network effects. USCC is the top three most liquid digital assets in after Bitcoin and tether, competitors are 10 times smaller. Regulatory entrenchment. It's just regulatory like Clear. And then he rebuts O USD's three main selling points, the free mint and Burn. He calls naive fee. Free redemption makes you an off ramp for every competitor. Stable Coin because you can just swap USCC to OUSC and use their off ramp for free. And then it's actually just, he says is that's going to benefit my network effects. Like my network effects win. Here I see everyone shares in the revenue. Circle already shares most of its income with distribution partners. I think we are well aware of that with Coinbase.

[Ryan]

Yep.

[David]

But giving away all of it starves infrastructure investment and guarantees a limited platform. Feels it's like very capitalist versus socialist to me. Like, well, we're the capitalists, we're making the money and we are going to grow the business. A consortium where everyone has a voice, he says has a dismal track record. Misaligned incentives, poorly funded. Circle tried this in the early years at UST and it failed at a small scale. He says members will Publicly kiss the ring, but their operating units will still partner with a market leader.

[Ryan]

Oh, you might be right about that.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan]

I mean, consortiums have worked a few times, right?

[David]

Visa is a consortium.

[Ryan]

Visa is a consortium.

[David]

Or what was. Now it's a company.

[Ryan]

Zell, I believe, from like, the banking app. I don't know. You're. I know you're a big Wells Fargo guy. I know you love Wells Fargos Fargo guy. Well, Zelle, that's a consortium banking type of protocol app standard that's been somewhat successful. So there are examples that mean that consortiums can sometimes work. They deployed on. Is it Tempo first as far as the chain?

[David]

No, they're deploying everywhere. They're on Solana, they're on Ethereum, they're on Tempo. They're just not picking winners.

[Ryan]

Okay, so they're not picking winners, but except for the participants in this. So what do you think happens with this? Do you think this will had this tweet? Do you see this? From CEO of. Founder of Tether. Welcome ousd. Player two has entered the game.

[David]

That is so dirty.

[Ryan]

Obviously, Player two is uscc. Uscc, yeah, he's.

[David]

He's the same. I've never had any competition before. I don't even. I just don't. I think this is a flop.

[Host]

Flop.

[David]

I think this is a flop.

[Ryan]

You calling this a flop already?

[David]

I'm calling. I'm calling this a flop.

[Ryan]

Why? Because it has no owner. No.

[David]

Has no motivated party. If you. If you have 5,000 board members, you have zero board members. There's like, who. Who is going to get the upside of, like, really winning this here?

[Ryan]

There's. It's just your problem with Dallas, Basically, it's a dow.

[David]

This is. This is a trad dao.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[David]

Again, it's like maybe if there was. Maybe if literally there was only Tether or Circle one over the other and. But there are literally two competitors that they have to fight. Like Paxos.

[Ryan]

There's Paxos too.

[David]

We already have Paxos doing the same model, and they had to do this model because they're a third.

[Ryan]

Well, the second question then is, do you think that the 17%, 20% price drop on circle is justified? Does this lower their moats? I'll just point out I don't even

[David]

know why circle is still as high as it is. And so, like, I think the 17% price drop on circle is justified anyways.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

Like, if you look at the circle chart, it's been trending down for forever now.

[Ryan]

Right. Well, I will point out that I think this is the year that they have to renegotiate their every three years with Coinbase and that deal structure. And Coinbase is named as a participant in this, in this OUSD consortium.

[David]

Coinbase signed on with ousd. That's so funny.

[Ryan]

Well, I mean, for Coinbase's perspective, just use it for negotiation, leverage. Even if you're not going to do

[David]

anything with OSD again, it's free to sign up.

[Ryan]

It's got to compress.

[David]

Bankless is a partner of ousd. We'll put our logo on the board too.

[Ryan]

All right, what do we have coming up?

[David]

Coming up next, we're going to talk about Ethereum Institutional, another unbundling of the EF to spin out into its own different org. And also we have the exact numbers of how much money Donald Trump made from all of his cryptographs. And Ryan, I know you are, you are just baiting your breath to talk about this, but we have the first Stablecoin in like years to break a hundred million dollar market cap. Stablecoin, excuse me, meme coins.

[Ryan]

Oh, those are very different.

[David]

Those are very different. Those are very, very different. Yes, we have a meme coin to talk about. And so we're going to get to all of that and more. But first we have to talk to these sponsors that make this show possible.

[Ryan]

Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Naito. He runs the Defi Report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 10:10 price drop happened. His cycle analysis, analysis has been absolutely on point. I've been following him for years and this year we started recording weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether. And where we are in the cycle, there's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes, they're short, they're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So let's do it together. Go subscribe to this podcast, search the Defi Report. Wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find a link in the show notes. There's a new episode waiting for you now.

[David]

Hey, Bankless nation, it's David. If you're hearing this, that's because you are listening to the free Bankless podcast feed. Did you know that there is a premium Bankless RSS feed. The premium feed has extra interviews that I do for my own personal research and just deeper questions that I want answered about the crypto industry. Questions that I want to answer so I can be more informed as an investor, both at Bankless Ventures and also just in my own personal portfolio too. Also, there are no ads, which means if you listen to the premium feed instead of the free feed, you'll get about 20 hours of your life back every year because you choose to support Bankless directly. So if you're interested in getting extra content all while skipping the ads, or you just appreciate what we do here and want us to keep doing it, we'd appreciate it if you signed up for Bankless Premium and there is a link in the show notes to get started. Cheers to a good 2026. Ethereum institutional launches as an independent nonprofit to accelerate the institutional adoption of Ethereum. There was announcement this week. Who's the team? David Walsh, Marius Smith and Matthew Dawson. Funded by same exact setup as the ETH Labs announcement that we talked about last week. Bit mine. Sharplink Joe Lubin. This is just another spin out of the EF. These most of this team used to be at the ef. Now they're in their own independent org and they're funded by the DATS and Joseph Lubin because there was like a

[Ryan]

institutional part of the EF org that had kind of just started over the past couple of years and you could

[David]

imagine that Vitalik's like, yeah, you guys, I'm not going to fund you guys anymore.

[Ryan]

Yeah, that's not very cropsy.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

So they spun out and now they're being. And rather than looking for work elsewhere, they are now forming another nonprofit institution similarly structured as ETH Labs and also similarly funded, but with a different mission. What's the mission of this group dedicated

[David]

to accelerating the institutional adoption of Ethereum, its layer twos application and ecosystem overall.

[Ryan]

This means like, I think like part of their case is if a large bank wants to use Ethereum, like they just can. But like who do they talk to about that? They need.

[David]

They need to talk to someone, they need to do cya, they need to do cover your ass. And so they have to like meet with someone and have a handshake and like have a call.

[Ryan]

Do you think that's true? I mean if somebody wants to use Linux, they don't have to do that. They don't have to do any of that. They don't need like Linux Evangelist.

[David]

Yeah, but they don't put. They don't deposit money Onto Linux.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I, I. Have you ever talked to these people or this group with like.

[David]

I have not these individuals.

[Ryan]

Is that on your quest list of things to do?

[David]

Talk to them?

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[David]

Are you gonna wait to talk to them?

[Ryan]

I mean it wouldn't hurt to just talk to them.

[Host]

All right.

[Ryan]

Me, like I don't know if it's worth a podcast at this point but like you could. Yeah, wouldn't hurt to talk to them, I guess. See what's up.

[Host]

Up.

[Ryan]

I mean do you think this will move the dial, I guess is another question.

[David]

Yeah, maybe phrase differently is like is this bullish or not? Yeah, yeah. Like it's more bull. It's more bullish than had they been at the ef. But like the most bullish thing was that the EF just did all of this and was good at it in the first place.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[David]

Like this is, this is a, a solid second place to what would have been just like one single competent markets driven foundation. But again, that's not what Vitalik wants. And so in lieu of that, this is bullish. This is a bullish reaction to that.

[Ryan]

Well, it's interesting. Another option could have been for bitmine or Sharplink to just pick up this team and push them forward, but this is another separate.

[David]

That is what they're doing. They're just not doing it internally, I guess.

[Ryan]

So then they have the option rather than to perpetually fund it internally. Yeah. Okay. That's probably good news. Probably good news. We'll see what they do too.

[Host]

Yeah.

[David]

Okay. Are you ready to talk about Donald Trump?

[Ryan]

Always.

[David]

Okay.

[Ryan]

What?

[David]

Okay, so June 30, 2026, the U.S. government Office of Ethics, which I wouldn't. We have doge for that. Whatever.

[Ryan]

I'm glad, I'm glad it's there.

[David]

They released President Donald Trump's annual financial disclosure report for 2025. A 200 and 927 page filing. Are you ready for the amount of money that Trump reported in crypto related income in 2025? Just. Just fiscal year 2025 he reported $1.43 billion of income.

[Ryan]

Income.

[David]

Income.

[Ryan]

That's not in 2025 assets. That's not net worth.

[David]

That's how much. That's how much his income. His net worth went up by from crypto related.

[Ryan]

He might be one of the most successful crypto entrepreneurs of all time.

[David]

I think that's right. $635 million in celebrity coins. Slash CIC Digital, which is the issuer of Trump Meme coin and over $500 million from World Liberty Financial token sale and income from World Liberty Financial. The filing also showed Ryan, that's the grifty part, maybe this is the bullish part, is that he owns at least $100 million in Bitcoin and Ether.

[Ryan]

That's it. 100 million versus 1.4 in income.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

Yeah, man. I guess he's keeping that money in fiat rather than recycling it back into his bitcoin and ether positions. Yeah. What do you think about this? I'll give you actually a clip. This is how it's being reported in places like cnn, Karen.

[David]

I mean, obviously we know the President has been raking in a lot of money. It's amazing to see the details. Even those bibles he's been hawking have brought in like $200,000 plus.

[Host]

Yeah, he's doing very well. The President, President's been very. Presidency has been very good for his bottom line. And you know, as I've always said, this is a coin operated presidency really. And you just put money in and to give to him and then he gives you other things. And this is exactly what's happening with the crypto stuff, which is he, he's getting a fee no matter what, even though the, the price, the value of the crypto has gone down, I don't know, 83%. So everybody else loses. So he's taking from the people who buy it. And at the same time, this deal with the UAE is just astonishing. They're getting what they need for what is essentially. I mean, they just, they're paying him in order to get something else and so he can do this all day long. They're doing it in Kazakhstan. The New York Times had a great piece about that. They're doing it.

[David]

We reported on that.

[Host]

They are.

[Ryan]

Yeah, right.

[David]

That's another deal that they're making in Kazakhstan that the Trump sons are involved with a whole bunch of other businesses. Relax.

[Host]

Related to it. Well, everywhere. I mean, what they do is they go in advance of Trump showing up and do some kind of deal with whatever country. It doesn't matter to go around from country to country shaking people down. This is, you know, this is very, it's a vig is what's happening here. And if you know where that term comes from, that's exactly what's happening here. He's getting a vig for everything he does as president.

[David]

Yeah, it's a loan sharking term or mafia term.

[Ryan]

Too unfair. What do you think? Is this, is this, is that pretty much what's going on? Coin operated presidency.

[David]

It is an extra big Slap to the face that Trump made $1.5 billion when Bitcoin went down, like 60% or something like 50%.

[Ryan]

I think at the same time, I mean, I think this is pretty hard to defend, like, obviously, like, but like, I don't. Is anyone defending it? No, I guess I don't think any. Even, even. No one is defending position on kind of in the Trump camp is just. No, I, I've heard no one defending this.

[David]

And yeah, I think maybe like, a lack of criticism is kind of equivalent to defending it is like, we could be more critical of Trump. The Democrats are plenty critical of Trump, but they're critical about Trump about everything. And so just add this to the list. I would like to see the Republicans more critical of Donald Trump.

[Ryan]

We had said for a long time that in order to get Trump on your side, you have to pay the grif tax, Right?

[David]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

And turn down the grid tax is

[David]

$1.5 billion just this year.

[Ryan]

Right. It's like, yeah, just. It didn't have to be like that, but with Trump, it is like that. I mean, he has moved, like, in positive directions in terms of like, what the US's position on crypto actually should be, but for the wrong reasons. Right.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

And the only time it's interesting, the only time I hear crypto mentioned in mainstream media now is talking about Trump's crypto corruption, Trump's crypto schemes.

[David]

That's right.

[Ryan]

And, and so, I mean, that's like, that's a narrative that's going to, to take some time to, to resolve and, and to get over. So, yeah, I feel like during the Trump presidency, we've constantly been asking ourselves, like, net good or net bad.

[David]

And like, we're not going to be able to answer that question until after we have a Democratic, a Democrat presidency. And we see their reaction, like, hopefully they just kind of like, forget about us.

[Ryan]

Forget about going anti crypto completely. But, like, they could prosecute corruption or. I mean, this should not be the way our government works. Can we just say that this is insane, that this is how things. Very true.

[David]

Yes. And there's going to be some amount of blowback as a result of this, and hopefully it's not too bad upon us and it's only bad upon criminals.

[Ryan]

Well, speaking of which, you wanted to talk about meme coins, David. So what's the hottest meme coin and why are they bad?

[David]

Okay, so this was this. Something has been brewing in Solana Land. There's just a few accounts out there that are like, kind of emphasizing Solana has bottomed and we need to like, pump it back.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

So like, you know, Ansom, like famous crypto Twitter trader kind of spawned the whole like celebrity meme coins of last cycle. The meme is like, they are ctoing Seoul.

[Ryan]

What's CTO mean?

[David]

I mean, it's. It's chief technical officer, but when you CTO a meme coin, it's like an a meme coin has been abandoned.

[Ryan]

Become an ambassador of it.

[David]

You, you buy a lot of the supply and you like revitalize it. It wasn't yours, but you. If you cto. So there's trying to CTO Solana and the part of it is just because they think Solana is oversold, Sol eth is at a particular ratio that they think is bullish. They think Salon is bullish. They think Salon is going to have a revitalization. And. And so they're trying to get people back into the meme coin trenches. Like the other meme that they're saying is like, you know, return to memes, like get back into the meme coin trenches. Somebody minted a token with ticker anson, which is the name of an. The Black Bull. That's the name of it, sent a very large amount of the supply to anom and ansem claimed it and then now he gets the trading fees and he has endorsed it it and this meme coin is now up to like $160 million market cap, which is pretty crazy in the depth of a bear market. $180 million fully diluted valuation. Now he's taking a very significant amount of the supply that he has and he's just airdropping it. So he's airdropped, like coming up on like $10 million of this token to people in the Solana ecosystem. And the ripple effects. The reason why this is news is a. When a meme coin gets to $180 million, when we haven't seen anything like that in over a year, that's news. Another reason why this is news is that if you go to the pump dashboards, you'll see that there are tokens graduating from pump fun at a three to four times higher rate than they were prior. And so this is like a re. A literal resurgence of meme coins growing in market cap. And downstream of all of this, Solana sole price is up like 15% versus the 2 and 3% of Bitcoin and ether. And so there's just. All I'm saying is like, there's activity happening over there and it's all down from, like, Anom and his crew, like, pumping the hell out of this meme coin and then airdropping. They're trying to give you, like, people in the trenches. Dimmy check is the meme. And so they're dishing out all these stimmy checks so people can go back to the casino and go gambling again.

[Ryan]

I want to not give any kind of like, like, take on this of whether it's good or bad or like any kind of moral case. I feel like we've said things like this.

[David]

I still don't understand meme coins.

[Ryan]

Well, I guess maybe my biggest question is, do you think that this can be sustained just from a buyer perspective? You look at all the meme coins of the past, they are down. They have kind of like failed expectations in all sorts of ways. Attention is back. Will this be a sustained thing or is this just a short burst of activity? And, you know, we won't be talking about this in a couple of weeks.

[David]

Probably. Probably the. Well, I don't know about a couple weeks. I'm maybe a little bit more longer term bullish than that. But, like, meme coins fundamentally are not sustainable. That's kind of the whole bit. But I don't think that stops anyone because everyone, everyone, if you're still in the trenches on Solana doing meme coins, that's your. I play video games.

[Ryan]

Have you ever. Have you ever. Have you ever read a report from Michael NATO on. On TDR about Pomp? Actually? Do you know he's a big pump bull?

[David]

I think I did know that. Yeah. Because. Yeah, I did know that.

[Ryan]

And it's just like, just be neutrally objective on kind of the casino, whether it's good or bad or whatever. Pump is still like printing money significantly.

[David]

Have you heard of the conspiracy as to why that's the case?

[Ryan]

No.

[David]

Because it's money laundering.

[Ryan]

Okay. Of course.

[David]

Because not that the pump team is doing that, but somebody who needs to launder a bunch of money, they will make a meme coin. They will pump their meme coin, they'll sell their meme coin to themselves, and money will change hands. But it looks completely innocuous otherwise.

[Ryan]

Interesting. It does generate a lot of revenue

[David]

then, which generates a ton of revenue for pump.

[Ryan]

Hmm. Okay. More to look into. But it could also be money laundering aside, I don't have the data to make an assessment on that. It could just be people, like, playing with memes and they like. It's their form of video games and gambling.

[David]

It's their form of Video games and gambling. Yeah.

[Ryan]

Let's talk about something I saw this week, David, as we draw this to a close, which is Cloudflare on the Cloudflare blog. You remember the episode we did a couple weeks ago, months ago now, with Matthew Prince?

[David]

Months? That was already months ago.

[Ryan]

I don't know, feels like months. It could have been just six weeks or something. So he's the founder of Cloudflare and this is a major initiative. This is essentially Cloudflare doing executing on the roadmap that Matt laid out in his post, which is they are now putting x402 stablecoin payments. They're integrating this everywhere inside of if you have an API, if you have a webpage, if you have a data set, if you have any tool that you want to expose to an agent or anybody else and have kind of a pay per use structure, they will now, they now allow that with stablecoins they mentioned they name check OUSD actually and USDC as settlement assets for this. So there's no sign up, no API key, nothing you really need. The payment itself is like the settlement of. I just consumed some API resources. Here you go. And it's cool how they split this up. Right? So like, like you'd see behind the scenes if you have different API like objectives like put or get or delete, you can charge different monetary units for this. So this is just Matthew and the Cloudflare team executing on something massive. Remember, his core thing was like AI is strip mining the web content providers. It's destroying the eyeball centric business model

[David]

that we've had, destroying the user generated content side of the Internet.

[Ryan]

We'll lose all the content unless and we will inevitably adopt a pay per use, pay per crawl. Yeah, Pay per consume, x402 type model. So this is something that's happening. I think it's pretty bullish. Cloudflare, I think it's like very bullish. 25% of the Internet people don't know this and they're just like adopting stablecoins and agenc payments and X402 and they really are incented to make it work.

[David]

Yeah. Every time I see structural intertwining between AI and crypto and stablecoins or and just on the Internet I'm like, okay, I don't know how that turns into a catalyst for crypto, but that is just real good underbrush to be laying down that will one day spark.

[Ryan]

I mean Matthew was very bullish on it. He was so bullish, in fact, he's like, you know when we turn this thing on, no blockchain in existence can handle the type of scale we're going to need from it.

[David]

Yeah, my DMs blew up from people being like, please connect me to Matthew Prince. I can solve his problems.

[Ryan]

That's why you ignore all dms like I do.

[David]

I connected them. The Mega E Team. I connected them to starkware. I connected them. We'll see.

[Ryan]

You are a wonderful person. Then you got a meme at the end of this episode.

[David]

Okay, so, Ryan, yesterday in New York, did you see these two people who climbed the Empire State Building?

[Ryan]

My family showed me this. It sent links to me, but it's

[David]

not on my radar. But, yes, two stunt performers, people just doing a public publicity stunt. They climbed the Empire State Building with a fly.

[Ryan]

You didn't see them, did you?

[David]

Yeah, I mean, I guess I can't. I can't. Actually, I can see it. It's too far away. I'm in Brooklyn. And so go to. Go to the video. There's a video of a helicopter circling them, and they had. They had a flag, and the flag was like, you know, love, love, love.

[Ryan]

When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace.

[David]

Wow.

[Ryan]

It's great.

[David]

Yeah. So it's just a big sign. It's a guy and a girl, and he proposes a couple. Yeah, he proposes to her on top of the Empire State Building. They got down, they got arrested. A judge just let them go free.

[Ryan]

Are you about to tell me there's a meme coin involved associated with this?

[David]

There's probably a meme coin, but that is not what I have to associate. So, people, the Internet is now obsessed with these two people, these two sun performers. And so they were crawling through the lady's history. And if you go to the. The meme of the week, right? She was in a year's past wearing a Board 8 Yacht Club tank top.

[Ryan]

This is her.

[David]

This is her.

[Ryan]

This is her.

[David]

And I just think it's hilarious.

[Ryan]

One of us.

[David]

I don't know, dude. I didn't expect bored apes to become relevant. Dom, downstream of this story.

[Ryan]

Oh, my gosh, it's all attention economy. Like, all the way down from NFTs to stunts to meme coins. Let's end with this. David, I almost gave the sign off, but it's you. You sign off.

[David]

Yeah, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, we are headed west as a frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot, Sam.