ROLLUP: False Strength? | ETH Crisis | Altcoin ATHs | Satoshi’s Coins

Summary

Bankless Weekly Rollup: "False Strength? | ETH Crisis | Altcoin ATHs | Satoshi’s Coins"

Episode Date: May 29, 2026
Hosts: Ryan Sean Adams & David Hoffman

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Overview

This turbulent episode of the Bankless Rollup dives headfirst into a critical week for crypto. Sentiment around Ethereum (ETH) hits historic lows, major assets are bleeding, and even crypto supporters like Mark Cuban and industry veterans are reconsidering their positions. Meanwhile, selected altcoins are rallying, institutional attention is focused on explosive new products, and strange legal antics are afoot with claims for Satoshi's lost bitcoins. The hosts navigate these contradictions, reflecting on market cycles, personal decisions, bullish and bearish theses, and shifting narratives.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. ETH Sentiment & the "Why I Sold My ETH" Article (32:29 - 49:00)

• David Hoffman discusses his viral article explaining why he sold his long-term ETH position.
  • Main themes: The "ETH as money" thesis has faded, strong crypto ideals appear to have lost ground to weak, TradFi-aligned crypto, and Ethereum's cultural/technological leadership is under threat.
  • Hoffman's quote:
    "Strong crypto has never felt weaker to me now in 2026, because weak crypto, which is just like a backend efficiency upgrade for the world's biggest financial institutions, seems to be the meta." [34:24]
  • Ryan counters: The fundamentals for ETH as decentralized, censorship-resistant money are still strong; it may simply be too early to call the ultimate winner.
  • Debate: Whether ETH’s value must come from “revenue” (fees, L1 economics) vs. a purely monetary premium; whether ETH’s bear market is a crisis of faith or an existential threat.

2. Market Overview: Majors Bleed, Alts Soar (04:16 – 21:51)

• Bitcoin & ETH both down over 5% for the week, with major ETF outflows and large whale selling.
  • “Largest single sell event of IBIT ever.” [07:04]
  • ETH drops below $2,000, with jokes that when “ETH price is someone’s birth year, it’s not good.” [07:20]
  • Notable market outflows are attributed to macro concerns and flagging confidence in the majors.
• Altcoin Outliers:
  • A handful of coins (Hyper Liquid/Hype, Venice, Near, Zcash) hit all-time highs even as majors falter.
  • Chris Burniske tweet cited: There's no new paradigm—alts won't break away from majors for long. [04:16]
  • Discussion of a trader making money long equities, shorting all crypto—used as a signal for broader market malaise.

3. Mark Cuban Critiques Crypto (09:31 – 13:11)

• Mark Cuban, hot on crypto in 2021, is now disappointed:
  • Quote:
    “Crypto is disappointed because it hasn't come up with an application for Grandma... Bitcoin has lost the plot... I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up… Bitcoin dropped.” [11:02]
• Cuban claims he's sold most of his bitcoin, argues that crypto hasn't delivered on its potential as a store of value or mass-market utility.

4. Trump’s Crypto Posturing (01:49 – 03:14)

• Donald Trump’s “pro-crypto” social media posts are lampooned.
  • Hosts note the absurdity & performative nature of these posts, unlikely to reflect real innovation or understanding.
  • David: “You think he knows what a perpetual is?” — “No, he doesn’t.” [02:10]

5. Altcoin “Consensus Coins” & ETF Attention (19:32 – 22:49)

• “Consensus coins” (Hype, VVV, Near, Zcash) rally even as majors suffer.
  • David: “There has been just like a morale vibe shift in crypto because people are making money.” [19:44]
  • Institutional ETFs for Hyper Liquid tokens find early traction; $101M+ in flows since launch. [21:03]

6. Macro Environment: War, Oil, and AI Mania (23:18 – 29:24)

• Peace negotiations with Iran are progressing, but key nuclear issues are deferred.
  • “Importantly, the nuclear issue… details... will be hashed out within a 60 day window after this MOU.” [24:05]
• Oil prices at “wartime lows”; yet bond yields are up, suggesting persistent macro risks.
• AI stocks (e.g., Micron) go parabolic—hosts compare the phenomenon to crypto’s wildest times.
  • “If you had a thousand dollars of Micron stock a year ago, you would now have $100,000.” [28:17]

7. Ethereum Foundation & Culture Refocusing (49:33 – 51:24)

• Vitalik Buterin signals a shift at the Ethereum Foundation: focus is back on “crops”: censorship resistance, open-source, privacy, security, and most importantly, ETH the asset.
  • “Nearly 90% of my net worth is in ETH… The most high value product of the Ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is ETH the asset.” [51:03]

8. DeFi Security, AI Risk & Open Zeppelin's Warning (51:24 – 53:02)

• Open Zeppelin founder advises friends/family to exit DeFi, citing superhuman AI agents able to find exploits.
  • Mixed response from community & DeFi leaders—claims most recent losses are not code-based, but acknowledge AI as a threat.
  • “Defi infra today is materially more resilient than in prior cycles.” – Stani, Aave [52:36]

9. New Institutional & Technical Developments (55:28 – 60:17)

• Nick Carter joins Andrew Kang’s Robo Strategy, aiming to repeat MicroStrategy’s playbook for AI/robotics stocks.
• Near Protocol launches confidential transactions (TEE-based, not zero-knowledge), enabling private ETH transfers via Near for other chains.
  • “The fact that it's in production and working I think is notable… this has actually seen adoption and has led to a bunch of near revenue.” [57:10]
• SoFi launches the first U.S. national bank-issued stablecoin (SoFi USD) to 15M+ users, mainly on Ethereum.
  • Solana marketing called out for touting $26K in usage, dwarfed by Ethereum's $100M. [59:08]
• Cash App adds USDC support, with easy bridging to major chains.

10. Wild Legal Gambit for Satoshi's Coins (60:17 – End)

• An anonymous plaintiff files in New York to claim Satoshi’s dormant coins (18% of all bitcoin ever!) using “finders keepers” laws.
  • The suit is predicated on the idea that unmoved coins are “abandoned property.”
  • Hosts are deeply skeptical but amused by the lengths taken.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ETH Sentiment:
  “It’s crisis of faith. Who else is left to sell, though, if one of the original Bankless guys has sold?” — Ryan [45:22]
• On Alts Rally vs Majors:
  “If Bitcoin drops $10,000, nothing is safe.” — David [19:31]
• On DeFi & Security:
  “AI coming to make DeFi risky is not new. But when the founder of OpenZeppelin says it, it kind of takes on a new meaning.” — David [51:24]
• On Satoshi Claim:
  “He used a block explorer to find them… I found it. This is abandoned property.” — Ryan [61:18]
• On Macro Risks:
  “We could settle this whole Iran war thing… and nonetheless, the impact on the global economy… would still show up in inflation, would still show up in yields which still show up in economic strife domestically. The stagflation word comes to mind.” — David [26:07]

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Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Start Time | Details | |------------------------------- | --------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Intro & Headlines | 00:00 | Majors down, Trump tweets, Cuban FUD, Satoshi lawsuit preview | | Bearish Market Overview | 04:16 | ETF outflows, whale selling, technical breakdown, shorting majors | | Cuban Turns Bearish | 09:31 | Cuban’s disappointment in “crypto for grandma” and Bitcoin’s store-of-value failure | | Altcoin Strength vs Majors | 19:32 | Hype/Near/Venice/Zcash narrative, “consensus coins,” ETF inflows | | Macro Recap: War, Oil, AI | 23:18 | Iran/US deal, oil & yields, S&P & Micron breakout, AI investing | | “Why I Sold My ETH” and ETH Crisis | 32:29 | David’s thesis, Ryan’s rebuttal, strong/weak crypto debate | | Vitalik Refocuses Foundation | 49:33 | Shift to “crops,” admission of ETH as core product | | DeFi Security/AI Concerns | 51:24 | OpenZeppelin’s warning, DeFi leaders’ response | | New Industry News | 55:28 | RoboStrategy, Near private txns, SoFi stablecoin, Cash App USDC | | Satoshi Coins Lawsuit | 60:17 | Finders keepers claim—humorous deep-dive | | Closing Thoughts | 63:00 | Sentiment, resilience, broader reflections |

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Tone & Language

• The hosts are frank, self-effacing, occasionally sardonic, but intellectually rigorous.
• There’s palpable disappointment from the “ETH forever” camp, met by realism and debate.
• Moments of levity punctuate the gravity—calling out the absurdity of a “finders keepers” claim on Satoshi’s coins; joking about Trump’s social media illiteracy.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Show

This episode captures an inflection point for the crypto industry: doubt, bear market stress, and infighting among true believers juxtaposed with pockets of exuberance and significant real-world advancements. The ongoing debate about Ethereum’s destiny versus the ghostly promise of “strong crypto,” the distractions of the AI boom, and the headlines that strain credulity (from Cuban’s capitulation to courtroom bitcoin drama) make this a must-hear episode for anyone tracking the evolving ethos and market structure of the decentralized future.

Transcript

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Foreign.

[David Hoffman]

Nation. Welcome to the last week of May. It's time for the bankless weekly roll up. We got some very hot topics of the week. ETH sentiment perhaps as bad as it's ever been. Somebody wrote a post this week titled why I sold my eth.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That was you, David.

[David Hoffman]

You did not really help with the sentiment. But there are some other things to be optimistic about. Standard charter says Ethereum is Amazon in 2021. That that is a good thing. And then in the rest of the crypto world we Got Bitcoin below $73,000. Largest ETF outflows since January. But but still a handful of coins hit all time highs this week. I think the big question, Ryan is can these coins that have momentum, sustain momentum even if some of the majors break down, which I think they are threatening to do so this very moment.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I think that's a no. That's a no.

[David Hoffman]

You have the answer.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I have the answer. The answer is probably not. It's maybe verging on no. Mark Cuban also quit bitcoin this week. Says it's worse than gold. We'll talk about that. Former Defi security firm founder was. What firm was this?

[David Hoffman]

Open Zeppelin.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Open Zeppelin, that's right. He's advising friends and family to exit Defi. We'll talk about whether he's right or not. And also he. David, somebody is suing to claim finders keepers laws that they actually in fact own all of Satoshi's 3.7 million bitcoin. This is in a New York court case. So apparently you could just do that and just claim.

[David Hoffman]

Claim that Satoshi lost his wallets and he's claimed. They're claiming finders keepers.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yep. The property's old. Finders keepers. It's like finding a wallet in a subway. David.

[David Hoffman]

Same. The same thing.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Same rules apply. Same rules apply. We'll talk about the validity of that case as well.

[David Hoffman]

Even though the majors don't look so good. Rya, the thing that we got going for us right now is the president of the United States is pumping our bags on truth social. Donald Trump tweeted out yesterday Gary Gensler and the anti crypto army nearly destroyed the American crypto industry by driving bitcoin crypto perpetuals.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

You think he knows what a perpetual is?

[David Hoffman]

No, he doesn't. And innovation offshore. But Trump saved it. America is now the crypto capital of of the world and builders and entrepreneurs are coming back to the United States where they belong. Crypto prices fell 4% and not uncorrelated. Uncorrelated to this tweet. But this tweet did nothing to do anything to the crypto industry.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Did you find it to do something?

[David Hoffman]

I find the juxtaposition worth highlighting that, like, bitcoin is down, ether is down, and then we have Donald Trump, you know, beating his chest about crypto.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I guess we're getting used to this. But how absurd is it or how strange is it, you know, like, if you were to tell me five, five years ago that the President of the United States would basically on a weekly monthly basis be tweeting about crypto, I would have been like, oh, look, ma, we made it. It's like, this is fantastic news. And now it happens. And I just, like, roll my eyes. I read maybe the first sentence of this and I just, like, couldn't read the rest. Yeah, that's kind of my reaction to

[David Hoffman]

maybe still haven't read the rest. I stopped. That was me actually reading that tweet for the first time.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I'm going to force myself to read the rest here. The.

[David Hoffman]

The.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Here it is, the last sentence. The new frontier of finance is being built in America, and Trump will never let crypto down. President Donald J. Trump. Why does he put his name in quotes?

[David Hoffman]

I don't. I don't know. Trump's choice of when to capitalize words, sometimes in all caps. I've never seen that anywhere before. He has this very interesting capitalization strategy that I think is actually very intentional.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

This is him anymore, or do you think somebody's like, just like, whoever runs his social accounts?

[David Hoffman]

No one can copy this dude. So you think no one can make.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

But we know he doesn't know what a crypto perpetual is, right?

[David Hoffman]

Sure. But yeah, he's got like, Baron Trump looking over his shoulder, telling him, like, dad. Right?

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Right.

[David Hoffman]

Crypto, crypto perps.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

You think so? You think that's how it works?

[David Hoffman]

Something like that. Some. Somebody's whispering in his ear, but he's writing it, dude, he's the thumbs on the phone.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

How are we feeling about bitcoin and eth price on the week?

[David Hoffman]

Well, I can tell you how Chris Berniski feels. He is feeling bearish. I thought this was a pretty interesting tweet, maybe just to kind of zoom out all time highs on the week for a handful of crypto coins that have a lot of momentum. Yesterday the market really turned over. Bitcoin is down. Ether is down. We'll talk about that in a second. And so this is the tension that there has been momentum in the crypto markets. Park inside the crypto markets. But Chris Berniske tweets, I don't see a new paradigm where majors are rotated out of and select up and up and comers can sustain their swim against an outgoing tide for long. Instead, I think majors are telling us something and people are finding reasons not to listen. That is a bearish tweet. And I think for the last couple of weeks you were talking about a lot of the analysis that you were doing with Michael Nadeau about this is kind of like a make it or break it where if bitcoin goes up for here, from here, it's pretty unprecedented in terms of like bear market strength. But if it goes down from here, then the cycles are simply cycling. And right now it seems like bitcoin ether on the precipice of the cycles are just cycling.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That's right. And yet how do we explain the. The Four Horsemen pump here of these coins that we're going to talk about maybe later in the episode. But what is it? It's Hyper Liquid near Venice and zcash all hitting basically all time highs. That doesn't usually happen during a bear market. So there is this juxtaposition. But I guess Bruninski is saying, hey, like if the majors aren't pumping, this is not guys. Yeah, this is not going to be long lasted. Let's look at bitcoin price on the week. So we are in the low 70s, right? What's the price at the time of recording?

[David Hoffman]

Bitcoin's coming in right at $73,000. It is a down. Down from $78,000 on the week. So not, not a Great week. Down 5% for Bitcoin. The, the Iran war, which bitcoin and crypto really actually performed well in. We are basically approaching some of the lows, the recent ranging lows and so any sort of momentum that we had, it's kind of been like a race in the last week here.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

There's a headline here that says the Bitcoin falls below 73k as BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF sees second largest outflows since debut. There's a stat that Mike NATO put out earlier this week that the last 12 days have been the bottom 5% of worst performing days for inflows. Outflows. Outflows in the bitcoin etf. So that is. Yeah, bottom quartile, bottom decile, bottom bottom, you know, 5% of performance. So ETFs not holding up at least this week. There was actually a $1.3 billion sale of IBIT from a Whale, I don't know if that came across your timeline,

[David Hoffman]

but I noticed this the largest single cell event of IBIT ever.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I think big, chunky sell. And Michael's take is this is like front running some macro worries, right? Just bitcoin again, being kind of canary in the coal mine of macro troubles ahead.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, it's really been like the momentum and morale, I think, in the crypto industry was somewhat higher in the earlier part of the week, and it's just completely got erased. You see the same thing in ether price. Ether Bitcoin down 5.2%. Ether down 6.2%. Below $2,000. We're at 1995 when. When the ether price is somebody's birth year. It's not good. I don't like that.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

What is that? What year is it?

[David Hoffman]

1995. Right now.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

1995. Oh, my God. Y. That doesn't feel good either. David, you're telling me before the show, though, there is a way to play this market and somebody in hyper liquid figured it out. You can still make tons of money on crypto in this market. How do you do it?

[David Hoffman]

So this is a screenshot of somebody's position on hyperliquid. They have a good number of positions. The S&P 500. They have a position on the XYZ 100, which is just the NASDAQ. So there's two long positions that this one trader has, the S and P and the Nasdaq. And then there's looking something like 12 to 13 short positions. So they're short Ether, Mega Fart, Coin, Trump, Athena, Layer, zero, zk, Sync, Bitcoin, Cash, Uni, Cardano, Litecoin, and shib. They're short all of these things and they have a perfect portfolio. The two things that they are long on are in the green, and the 12 things that they're short on are also in the green. And so they just crack the code. Just go long equities and short crypto and you can make money, which is a really sad time to just be in crypto if you can just blindly do this and it works across the board.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Look at the leading short here. It's ETH is a $10 million position on ETH. It's a 25x position on ETH, and that is by far 25x short position, short position. That is by far the, like the largest short position they have. It always takes the brunt of this man.

[David Hoffman]

It's also just the largest market out of anyone here of anything here.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

It's the largest market but you could short Bitco. They choose not to. They skip that and they go to eth. Let's like F U eth especially, you

[David Hoffman]

know, in particular, for some reason, people feel like they can short ether more safely than than bitcoin.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I saw a clip earlier this week from Mark Cuban. David, do you remember it was five years ago now that two enterprising podcasters had Mark Cuban on the Bankless podcast. Yeah, this is children, actually. Let me play this. Yeah. Hear how crappy my microphone is. Let me just play this really quick. All right, Bankless Nation, we are super excited about this extra special episode with Mark Cuban. I'm going to introduce Mark in just a minute. That is the voice of someone who is innocent to the crypto market. Somebody who's not yet beaten down and is very enthusiastic.

[David Hoffman]

That is a second cycler right there. That's what a second cycler sounds like. A second cycler on the upswing. Yeah. This is literally the most euphoric time to ever be in the markets.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

If you're not seeing this. This is 2001, 2021, I should say, where David and I had Mark Cuban on the pod and we were shocked at how knowledgeable he was. He was about crypto.

[David Hoffman]

He was writing code, he was writing Solidity.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. He was like, yeah, I've been messing around with Solidity on the weekends. And we're like, okay, this guy knows what he's doing. And he talked. He came on again, Bankless later, and he's been very favorable about bitcoin, crypto, Ethereum, Defi. He was in the weeds doing loan positions on aave. I saw this clip of somebody asked him, what do you think of crypto now? And here was his answer.

[David Hoffman]

Mark, let's end on this. When we last sat down and did

[Ryan Sean Adams]

an interview, it was all about crypto,

[David Hoffman]

which also had a lot of sports tie ins. You were into NFTs at the time.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Is all that stuff dead?

[David Hoffman]

Dead and done?

[Mark Cuban]

I don't know if it's dead, but I'd say it's disappointing. Put aside NFTs. But I think Crypto is disappointed because it hasn't come up with an application for Grandma. And that's really what I expected. If you looked at apps when, when the iPhone came out, it was like, okay, whatever. Then the app store came along and now all of a sudden there's Instagram, Snapchat, everything else. Facebook came on there and grandma had a way to use it. And I always thought that there would be a way for that. So that's Part one and part two. And this might get some people upset. I think bitcoin has lost the plot. And when I started buying bitcoin and I've sold all of it, except not all of it, most of was because when all the shit hit the fan with the Iran war and you know, bitcoin was always the best alternative to fiat currency losing its value. And I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up and went, you know, to $5,000. Bitcoin dropped. And every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should have gone up, you know, because if it's priced in dollars, it was cheaper. So anybody from around the world could go pay in $. And it just didn't do that.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Not such a hedge.

[Mark Cuban]

No, it's not that I expected it to be. And that was really disappointing. And so I'd say I'm more disappointed in bitcoin, not as disappointed in Ethereum and the rest, you know, the token stuff, the meme coins garbage.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

David, he sounds a little bit like you, except maybe the inverse. He's more disappointed with Bitcoin less than Ethereum, but he's disappointed in both.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, yeah. He really ascribed a belief to what bitcoin is supposed to do. Like it's supposed to be an Iran war like conflict hedge. I think people, people need to kind of just like understand that. I don't think we really know how and why bitcoin trades the way that it trades. Like, I still don't think we know that.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

You don't think. But isn't that what it's supposed to be? Digital gold? Like it says, it says what it's supposed to be in the meme. That's what, that's what, that's what Cuban is saying.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. I think if you over ascribe a model onto bitcoin, you're destined to be disappointed.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

He does sound a little bit like you in the, you know, I thought crypto was going to be useful for grandma, sort of the, the strong crypto use case. Yeah, yeah. Whereas we got a bit more the weak crypto side of things. And then he's looking at weak crypto and he's like, well, store of value. It's not even performing as well as gold in this type of environment.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, yeah, we'll define, we'll define strong and weak crypto later. Yeah.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

This is bear market things though. Let's check in on the dax. How are they looking?

[David Hoffman]

It's, it's worth probably taking a note of what's Going on strategy. The average bitcoin cost basis for strategy is $75,700. Bitcoin strategy has spent a total of $63 billion to acquire what is now worth $61 billion of Bitcoin. So they are down $2 billion on their Bitcoin position, which I think is like, fine. It's. It's an explicit part of this strategy of strategy to take a. An efficient amount of risk. And that's going to involve being in the red from time to time. If you're never in the red, then strategy's not taking enough risk is like, I think, I think the right philosophy to have. But nonetheless, it's notable when strategy is below its position because it shouldn't. It shouldn't be below its position for any ongoing amount of time.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Did you see they were buying bonds on the week rather than bitcoin?

[David Hoffman]

They weren't. Were they buying bonds or they were buying. Rebuying their convertible notes. Yeah. Which is kind of the same thing, but. Yeah, but they want to clear out their convertible notes. And this is a part of their strategy.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Shoring up their balance sheet.

[David Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

But using some of their dry powder to go shore up their balance sheet rather than buy bitcoin. Which gives you the sense that the bitcoin buys are tapering.

[David Hoffman]

Yes, that. And it's also kind of like, okay, if you have excess cash, why are you paying down the mortgage on your house faster? Because, like, that mortgage is favorable and you can definitely use that cash to get better opportunities elsewhere. It's kind of like the same philosophy. Sure. How about Tom, different story over with Bitmind. Bit mine. Down $8 billion on their position. On their much smaller position of ether and so much, much further in the red. Again, being in the red is part of the deal. But $8 billion being down $8 billion on $18 billion is a very different story than being down $2 billion started later.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I mean, Saylor's been at this for five years. Right. It's kind of surprising that his cost basis is in like the 75k range. Sailor. That is when he's been at this for 5 years, it goes to show you how much he's been purchasing the last couple of years.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. This Michael strategy line of credit, the ability to buy goes up when bitcoin price goes up. And so the higher prices just easily wash out the lower ones.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. Well, with Tom Lee, I either think it's going to go one of two ways. Either this is like a generational trade for him totally. Or it really Wasn't. Oh yeah. So we'll have to see. But this, I mean he's only a year in. I mean the story is not yet written on.

[David Hoffman]

I think it's even less than a year. There is one, one dat, Ryan. That is in the green. Have you heard of Purr P U Double?

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Oh, I saw this in the gen. I was like, what is this?

[David Hoffman]

This is the Hyper Liquid. I don't know if it counts as official, but it's seemingly the community supported. One ticker sign is Per. It's Hyper Liquid Strategies. Okay. It is the Hyper Liquid dat and it is the only DAT out of all of them. Like the 30 of them that I think remain. That is in the green.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That makes sense. Hyper Liquid is doing quite well.

[David Hoffman]

Hyper Liquid is also in the green.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

What doesn't make sense is why. Why per. Why the name P U R R Hyper Liquid?

[David Hoffman]

Also there are. The Hyper Liquid has I think like an NFT. That is cats. They have cat NFTs.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Let's take a look at polymarket. David. Viewer discretion is advised here. Okay, because these are some disturbing numbers. This is the question on polymarket. What price will Bitcoin hit in 2026? What are the answers? Receiving the highest probability weight here.

[David Hoffman]

So the highest probability we got a 55% chance that Bitcoin will hit $55,000. Yikes. There's a 42% chance that it can hit $50,000 and there is equivalently a 50% chance that it will hit $90,000. So there's a about equal probabilities of Bitcoin hitting $55,000 and $90,000, which when the all time high is $140,000. Oh God. The majors are just not doing what the market needs them to be doing.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I don't like this number. There's almost a 20% chance that we get to 35k Bitcoin at some point this year.

[David Hoffman]

That is wild.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I cannot imagine that 20% chance.

[David Hoffman]

Incredible.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

1 in 5. How about ETH? Is this going to be even scarier?

[David Hoffman]

ETH has a 60% chance that it will hit $1,500. A 25, a 1 in 4% chance it hits $1,000 and a 21% chance that it hits $3,500.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Give me some of the upside here. We got a 5% chance of 6,500 eth this year at least at some point.

[David Hoffman]

6% chance of 6,500.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I'll take those.

[David Hoffman]

Okay, let's look at the down market because there is just been a tale of two cities in the crypto world in the crypto industry in the last like month or so. And it's really been expressed in the last two weeks. We talked about these tokens last week. The tokens that hit all time highs last week are the same tokens that hit all time highs this week. Near did not hit an all time high, but it's like a local market high. Everything else did hit an all time high. Hype $64 and 40 cents is the new all time high since the bitcoin has fallen off from like 80 down to 72. Hype is now down from 64 to 57. VVV Venice hit an all time high of just over $20. It's now at 1488. Near hit $2.88. It's now at $2.33. And then Zcash hit an all time high of $682. It's currently coming in at 535. So you can really see the fear in the market from bitcoin each year, the majors, the crypto industry as a whole, like word turning over. And exactly what Chris is saying is like, if bitcoin drops, you know, $10,000, nothing is safe.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I'm somewhat off Twitter these days. What's the sentiment? There are people like is energy back in crypto Twitter because of this kind of mini altcoin pump?

[David Hoffman]

I would say so. And like that's kind of like the tweet that I wrote out that caused a firestorm in the ethereum community of just like when you look elsewhere outside of ethereum sentiment, you get of just a vibe shift. Like people actually are making money in the crypto industry on these tokens and a few others like Railgun is also up massively. There's a just a handful of other tokens, altcoins, if you will, that have pumped very strongly to all time highs. And so for people are making money for the first time in crypto in a very long time. Hopefully that time is not over. But again, this is up to bitcoin and where bitcoin wants to go. But yeah, there's. There has been just like a morale vibe shift in crypto because people are making money interesting.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

A select few, a select list of assets though this is not these tokens.

[David Hoffman]

Hype VVV near zcash like on Twitter. These are called the consensus coins. Like what everyone, everyone kind of believes in these things and the sentiment. The idea is that there are so few people left in crypto that it doesn't matter if These tokens are consensus because there's just like 50 people buying these things that are left and that's all of crypto. Twitter.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That's not great. That doesn't feel very sustainable. I think Chris might be right here. Hype got some more attention on the week though, didn't it? Is this in TradFi circles? ETFs.

[David Hoffman]

ETFs. Yeah. So the Hyper Liquid ETFs launched between one and two weeks ago. They have done very, very well. There's over $101 million of inflows since their launch earlier this month. This is mostly between the Bitwise B Hyp and the 21 shares T HYP ETFs. There are a few others. So Grayscale also filed for G, H, Y, P. And there's also a VanEck one which I, I can't find any information on, but allegedly there is one. But that's one of the big stories of the week is just the strength of hyper liquid being expressed in tradfi. And like tradfi is noticing hyper liquid more and more and this is how they would get exposure to it because they're in their brokerages and that's where their money is. And so they're not coming to crypto. They're definitely not making it all the way to hyper liquid itself because you have to go into USCC to Ethereum, to Arbitrum.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

The more they notice, the more they're going to want to enter this market. Right, Competitors. So Coinbase already has a good perp exchange competitor in the U.S. robinhood.

[David Hoffman]

Not in the U.S. no one has yet. No one has, as I understand it, perpetuals license, because there just isn't one. And so I think there's a bunch of positioning and we're actually seeing this from Polymarket. So Polymarket announced that they are building out their perpetual platform. The Perps beta is live for select users, rolling out access to more people.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That's a good move by Polymarket.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, I agree, I agree. So yeah, the, the United people, everyone is positioning to try and claim the United States perp market and no one has really made a move because compliance and like clarity around this is just like uncertainty.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

But even global markets gotta be somewhat up for grabs. I'm sure Polymarket is going after hyperliquids global market for perps right now.

[David Hoffman]

Probably. Well, they are also offshore, but I think it's really the regulated compliant onshore market that is really the golden goose. I mean United States is still the center of capital, so.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about the center of capital versus Iran. Any moves on the week there. So I think right before we started recording I saw another more word of a peace deal. I have not been keeping up with Iran and and Trump negotiations. What, what is the latest?

[David Hoffman]

So this week the theme of this week was two contradictory tracks. Both a re escalation of the kinetic war and apparently a real legitimate deal inching closer and closer to being signed. The deal as of this morning we actually kind of have most of the terms revealed because there was, it was leaked. I bet you it was intentionally leaked which is why the market priced it as legitimate throughout the week because we

[Ryan Sean Adams]

have S P all time highs. Right.

[David Hoffman]

We have S P all time highs. That's right.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That's right

[David Hoffman]

on this news. But also the AI trade is still strong like memory stocks still up, gas also down, oil down. We'll talk about that in a second. So there's there the the terms of the deal is an immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the United States lifting the blockade off Iran of course just travel, shipping travel is just free. A 60 day ceasefire extension. Hormuz traffic is going to be restored to pre war levels within 30 days. So Iran stops threatening people. A mutual declaration that all military operations including in Lemadan will end permanently and then Iran reaffirming that will it will never build nuclear weapons. These are the broad strokes of things. Importantly the nuclear issue, the nuclear material, Iran giving it up and suspending their nuclear program. The details of that will be hashed out within a 60 day window after this MOU this memorandum of understanding is signed. So this is firmly a peace deal and not a nuclear concessions deal because Iran really does not want to concede nuclear concessions because it's part of their identity and so Iran is deferring that. So meanwhile over this past week that was all the progress on the deal and we it seems like the deal is like ready to be signed by the highest levels of power on their respective sides. So like Donald Trump could sign this literally right now. Same thing with the Iranians. But over this last week there was also a re escalation of the kinetic war. So there have been just trading near daily strikes, blow for blow. On Monday the United States hit Iranian missile sites and also mine laying boats. On Tuesday Iran's headed down to US drone and fired at a US jet. And so that went on. So it's still skitterish but nonetheless like technically there is a deal potentially on Donald Trump's Trump's desk right now that he could find.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

If they don't have the nuclear piece, I mean, like, isn't that the crux of it? Isn't that a big piece of it? You just kick that one out for 60 days with an MOU?

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. I mean, I don't trust the Iranians. And I think Donald Trump also knows to not trust the Iranians with regards to the nuclear deal. Like emphasis on underscoring how existential that nuclear program is for the national purpose and identity of Iran.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Neither party trusts the other party.

[David Hoffman]

Right.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That's part of, you know, part of

[David Hoffman]

the reason we're here.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

So oil. We're below 100 on the week. So oil down.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. Oil is at wartime lows. You have seen it get to war. I've said these words wartime lows on the weekly roll up a handful of times between wartime highs. It's back at wartime lows pretty low. $93, $94 a barrel for Crent for Brent crude. It's previously been $112 which would be wartime highs. We, in order to really feel good in the markets, we really need oil to break down below A like $90 and meaningfully and move there. That would be the lowest it's been in the war. Sustained 10 year yields is a slightly different story. You know, yields have tended to trade alongside oil. That is not what is happening this week. Yields 10 year yields are up despite oil being down. And that is not good because we could settle this whole Iran war thing. And nonetheless the impact on the global economy because of the sustained high oil prices would still show up in inflation, would still show up in yields which still show up in economic strife domestically. The stagflation word comes to mind. And so yields are not responding favorably. But nonetheless, Ryan, The S&P 500 is

[Ryan Sean Adams]

at all time highs just on an absolute tear. And not just all time highs in specific sectors like Micron is a stock maybe to look at this week. This, I don't know what this. I don't think I've seen a chart like this.

[David Hoffman]

I don't think I've seen a chart.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Not even in crypto have I seen a chart like this. This is Micron.

[David Hoffman]

I think I've seen a chart like that in crypto, but not at this size. Not at this size.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Not at this size. No. Is the market cap of over a billion. A billion? You said a billion, but I think it's a trillion.

[David Hoffman]

You're right. No, I meant. That's what I meant. It's $1.06 trillion, which is also over a billion.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Which is also over a trillion dollars. What? I saw someone comment on Twitter that It's almost like Micron, 20 years in the future, has discovered time travel or something crazy. And so somebody came back and bought it all in the last couple of months. What, what if you had a thousand

[David Hoffman]

dollars of micro stock, Micron stock a year ago, you would now have $100,000.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

That is insane. Yeah, I can't. I had no idea stocks could do this, David.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, yeah. I mean the, the AI trade is putting a ton of momentum and creating momentum trades. People are getting in on it. I mean, does it remind you real.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I'm. I don't want to be like, I don't want to throw this in here because it could be different. But like, does it remind you a little bit of the euthanasia roller coaster where we sor. These kind of rolling sectors that pump really hard and then when we're done pumping one specific sector that's tied into the overall AI narrative, we get another sector with a set of assets and the market keeps moving from sector to sector. And now we're on Microns.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, it's like the question is like when it moves from sector to sector, does the hot ball of money like snowball or does it leak and fall apart? And right now I think you can definitely argue that it is snowballing. Like it's getting bigger. Like we're going up. Yeah. This is memory.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Where's it moving next? Do you know? Can you give me some tips?

[David Hoffman]

I think Leopold is the person.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How about maybe Pokemon cards moving over there?

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, you know, it's a viable contender. Dude. The tokenized Pokemon card marketplace and Pokemon cards as a whole is up bigly. I mean, this is so far away from memory stocks. But like it's worth noting that like it feels a little 20, 21 y in that like equity markets are at all time highs and then like weird shit like baseball cards and Rolexes are being priced at all time high. Anyways, Pokemon cards marketplaces are also up. So that's it for the market section. You know what's not up, Ryan? In fact, what's down is the supply of eth in my personal portfolio. I wrote an article about it. I want to get your takes about it. I think people I would like to process a little bit. And so I want to talk to that, to you about that. And then also why a former Defi Security founder says he's advising his friends and family to leave Defi Yikes all of that and more. But first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. $100,000 is up for grabs. Metamask and Ondo are giving it away in the Ondo Trading competition five weeks, three tiers. Whoever earns the best percentage return in each tier wins the biggest Cut. Pick from 260 Ondo tokenized stocks, funds and commodities to swap inside Metamask and let your portfolio do the talking. If you think you can out trade everyone else, this is your chance to prove it. From now until June 18th, click the link in the description below and opt in on Metamask Mobile Trade RWAs on mobile or desktop to compete, not investment advice Trading is changing, not gradually. Right now, OKEx just launched trading bots directly inside the OKX app grid Trading DCA arbitrage. You set your strategy once and it executes around the clock. No staring at charts all day, no manual entries, no missing moves while you're asleep. And for the first time, automated trading actually feels simple. But OKEx is thinking bigger than just trading. They also launched the Agent Payments Protocol, an open standard that lets AI agents execute full commercial transactions on chain. The Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap and AWS are already building on it and now it's live inside the United States and new users who deposit and trade can get up to $500 in Bitcoin through the Bankless link. The link is in the show Notes to learn more, not investment advice not available in New York or Texas. In 2024, emerging markets generated over $115 billion in annual yield for investors. With yields ranging between 10 to 40%, these are some of the highest, most persistent yields on earth. The problem? Defi can't access them. BRICS changes this Built on mega ether, BRICS takes emerging market, money markets and sovereign carry and turns them into composable primitives you can access straight from your wallet. While defi investors earned 3 to 6% on stablecoins and T bills, institutions have been harvesting 10 to 50% yields backed by sovereign monetary policy. Bricks connects these worlds with institutional grade tokenization, local banking rails compliance across jurisdictions and real time stablecoin settlement. Bricks does the heavy lifting so DEFI can finally access real collateral and structured products on top of real world yield. Even the best carry trades can be within reach. Bricks brings DeFi's promise to the emerging world and brings emerging market yield to your wallet. Let the yield flow with Bricks.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Alright, so David, you posted this to Twitter earlier this week. Why? I sold my ETH It's a long form article. And this gets into some of your thoughts. We touched upon this last week on the weekly rollup. I think maybe you took the weekend to sort of process things and to write things down, why you made the decision that you made. And the result was this long form article which is composed of a number of sections which we could get into. But maybe talk about why you felt the need to publish this.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, well, after being so pro eth for so long, like, I feel like I just. It deserves a thorough explanation, like a complete thought. Some people are curious, some people want to know, like, it's a big pivot of like being so pro eth ever since 2017, 2018. And then like not having ETH in my portfolio anymore. I don't know, for my own purposes, it's like worth it to go and do the writing exercise to come to like a pretty coherent conclusion. And so that's why I felt, felt compelled. Compelled to write it maybe.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I mean, do you want to go over, like, what this article says or do you just want me to give my thoughts on it?

[David Hoffman]

There's two things that I'll just like summarize. The ETH is money challenge was monumental, is monumental, remains to be monumental. It's a big, ambitious challenge. Ethereum is a big, ambitious project that had more ways, more, more challenges than like, easy roads. It was easy for it to fail. It's easier for Ethereum to fail than it is to succeed. And Ethereum ended up somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum. And then also the whole, like, monetization of ETH and the, you know, accumulating market cap of ETH was environmentally difficult, more difficult than I originally gave credit for. And so, like, despite Ethereum's like, success, the environment was really just not cut out for it. That kind of goes back to this idea of strong crypto versus weak crypto. Strong crypto, I think, really had its highs, its peak in 2021, where, you know, Defi was growing. Defi was the epicenter. NFTs on chain, on chain culture, like DAOs, all this kind of stuff. Strong crypto is emblematic by like the cypherpunks building an alternative financial system, you know, in spite of Wall street, not in collaboration with Wall street, you know, something completely our own. And strong crypto has never felt weaker to me now in 2026, because weak crypto, which is just like a backend efficiency upgrade for the world's biggest financial institutions, seems to be the meta. And so the idea of like, strong, strong Crypto was when Ether was the most money. And that environment hasn't been around since 2021. And so there was a particular environment that Ethereum and Ether was particularly well suited for. And that environment hasn't been around since COVID And it was Covid, dude. It was like the most assorted time and money ever. And so in addition to how challenging the Ethereum project is to achieve its maximum potential, there's also just like environmental constraints that I think also just provide some fundamental constraints to the, to the maximum market cap of Ether. And so I feel like that's an okay summary.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I actually thought the strong crypto point was probably the strongest point in the article, the one I resonated with the most. I think that's right. A lot of things that Ethereum had hoped would come to fruition, use cases, et cetera, really haven't. The things that remain are like some hardcore defi type protocols and store of value. It's kind of the money type of thesis things. A lot of the things we thought would happen just haven't happened yet. Not to say that they won't happen in the future, but the prospects of that feel somewhat dim. I think there are some things that I disagree with a bit more. So one of your points you make, which is L1 assets and rev like revenue are tied together and I think you make the point that there's some correlation here. When ETH revenue was all time high, ETH was popping the most. You saw that with sol, you saw that with nearby. And you're sort of doing this thing where you're segmenting out and you're saying smart contract platforms, at least the market is saying that they have to produce some revenue. When they produce revenue, price goes up, when they don't, price goes down. I think that is how the market has priced this previously, but it's not fully how the market is pricing it now. There's a couple of aberrations here, one of which of course is Bitcoin, which you might say, well that's not a smart contract platform. Another you could say, which is we've been talking about in the week is zcash. You might also say, well, that's not a smart contract platform. So you're saying, well, smart contract platforms, different rules apply for those. And from a fundamentals perspective, why, why should they have different rules? Why should different rules apply to smart contract platforms? And I think if you were like building this from the ground up, my objection would be like that's how the market sees it and that's why there's a massive opportunity in ethers. Because smart contract platforms don't necessarily need to have rev. In fact, none of them actually will because they will perpetually expand block space. If they're doing what they should be doing, they will minimize mev. And so no layer one blockchain will actually have sustainable fees into the future. They're all money or they're nothing. And so now you're back to a competition of which assets are the best money. So, but you've heard that pushback before, you know, like, so that's probably nothing new coming from me.

[David Hoffman]

My evolved thoughts on that because I was thinking about your voice was in my ears while I was writing this section. And so my attitude on this is that yes, what you are saying could have happened where Ethereum and the leading smart contract chain is not valued by revenue in any particular way. But in order to create that stable equilibrium, Ethereum would have needed to basically be so dominant and have such a monopoly on the smart contract ecosystem that like the second, third, fourth place to smart contracts are so distant that they're just not valued by the market. And so because something like Solana actually did nip at Ethereum's heels and actually did take away users and revenue, it's Ethereum is different when it's like 95% dominant versus 65% dominant. If it's 95% dominant, then it's likely that ETH is valued as money. If it's 65% dominant, then it's going to be valued as a smart contract chain. And so Ethereum losing momentum is the difference between those two realities.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah, I just don't understand why, like if you're looking for the properties of money, right, which is decentralized money, it would be a different access. You wouldn't say is it programmable or not. You would say how censorship resistant is it? How decentralized is it? What's the hardness of the inflation schedule? And on all those points, Ether and Ethereum score really well and nothing else is really close. So I would just say, okay, point acknowledged up to this point, but it's still kind of too early. And that goes to a theme of my rebuttal to this is a lot of I feel like what you're saying is, all right, right now in 2026, this is what it looks like, but it's still, it's still early. I mean, the monetary fight competition will take years and decades to actually play out. This idea that ETH is money, like required everything to go right I don't quite agree with that either. And so like bitcoin, certainly not. Everything has gone right with bitcoin. It's had many problems, many flaws. Imagine if you said the criteria for Bitcoin was that everything goes right. I mean the title of the white paper is Peer to Peer Digital Cash. It's not used as a cash store of value, is almost a pivot in some ways. What Bitcoin is the lightning.

[David Hoffman]

It was a pivot in narrative, but never a pivot in direction.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah, that's true. I mean bitcoin has had a more cohesive direction but you know, lightning didn't work out. There's so many things that just like didn't work out on Bitcoin. I think that Ethereum can make mistakes and it has made mistakes and that doesn't disqualify it. So the idea that perfection is what's required, you know, I don't quite agree with that either. The other idea, that other. A few other things that I felt like were I agree with but they're kind of incorrectly framed or I would frame them differently. The idea that Ethereum is a giver, not a taker, I agree with that. And yet I would say that's why it's a fantastic money.

[David Hoffman]

I totally agree. And the condition for me to think that this money is it would have needed to maintain market dominance for that

[Ryan Sean Adams]

to be perceived as money market dominance. So the other thing of when you say ETH is, let's say it's being valued by revenue or something like that. It's not right now being valued by revenue. There's clearly a monetary premium. This is what you said in the article where you're like, well it was a partial win on money and yeah, it definitely was a partial win on money. We can work with that. We can work with the first 10 years being a partial win and building on that success into a, into a brighter future. One of the things that I do feel like I don't agree with, like this is almost a hundred percent disagree, which is the idea that you can be bullish on Ethereum without being bullish on ether the asset. I actually think this ties into the original sin that Ethereum had in the first place, which is this emphasis on the blockchain rather than the asset itself. And I think that it is paying for that sin right now. Right. Like ETH effectively is skipping a cycle and it didn't, it barely hit all time highs last cycle, didn't overperform and now we're feeling this crisis in the bear market part of this had to do with a rollup centric roadmap that felt like kind of a side quest in retrospect. Yes, the weak crypto kind of winning over the strong crypto. But the original sin, this idea that Ethereum matters and ether and defi don't matter so much, and that embedding of that idea into the culture where we talk about crops but we don't talk about crops for what? I just like. It's like that goose meme, you know, I'm like, people are like, crops. I'm like, crops for what? For what? For Ethan Defi. Right. That's what we're doing here. And culturally, we have not emphasized that use case enough. We've been distracted by other things like daos and like, what if we build a decentralized Uber? I know this is the early days, but almost everything aside from focusing on ether as a store of value assets,

[David Hoffman]

literally anything else other than ether of the asset.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

And this was a fight we somewhat took up at bankless in like 2019 and 2020, which, like, hey, guys, ether is an asset, eth is money. And I think we tilted the culture somewhat in that direction. But still, the original sin came back to bite us this cycle. By the way, bitcoin has an original sin too. I think all crypto networks really do, like zcash does. Solana has a. They're not scaling, dude. They're going to end up with all of the bitcoin in Michael Saylor and ETFs. And they're scaling on sidechains. They're not scaling and they don't have native defi. So it all ends up and all collects in custodial institutions. And that's something. It'll still work, but it's still a sin that they will pay for. Ethereum doesn't have that. It actually is scaling. It does have defi. Ethereum's original sin was like a lack of focus on eth, the asset and crops for what? And decentralized finance. Anyway, there's an element where. David, I feel like we're paying for that now. And I knew there would be some blood during the bear market if we skipped a cycle. We certainly skipped a cycle. So now the blood is being paid, I guess. Who else is left to sell, though? If one of the original Bankless guys has sold? I mean, I've seen a lot of bottom tick memes on the timeline, right?

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, a lot.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Like at some level, look at the staking queue, you know, it's up there's. You know, 31% eth staking. Who's left to sell?

[David Hoffman]

That's not an indicator of. Because you can still sell after you put your ETH in the staking you

[Ryan Sean Adams]

can, but I mean, price is holding up for what it is. This is like the worst sentiment I've seen.

[David Hoffman]

It's definitely the worst. Yeah.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

And we're still a, you know, $200 billion asset, maybe end dropping, but I don't know if we can get through this. What I go back to is I do see some of the ETH as money fundamentals still being strong. We have privacy, we have defi, we have quantum resistance. Do we have scaling? Would you say? Do we have privacy? Not yet.

[David Hoffman]

Not yet.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

But it's being worked on. You can with Railgun.

[David Hoffman]

On the app layer.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah, on the app layer. Right.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I just like if you're looking to store your value, a gnosis multisig with privacy, that's not a bad route to go. I mean, show me that on Bitcoin. Show me that on zcash. Yeah, I don't know. The fundamentals I think are still there. It's just really a crisis of faith. So overall I didn't disagree completely with this article. I think it was well put. I think you put a lot of thought into it. I guess the, the summary would be like, it's not. Well, one, I kind of hope you're

[David Hoffman]

wrong, but like two, hey, I hope I'm wrong too.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. Two, if you're wrong, it's because like it was just. It took longer than we all thought.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. Yeah. Like that, that I think is like the main. I'm thinking about writing an article about why David Hoffman is selling his ETH is wrong. And like just doing that exercise and I think the, the leading argument would be like currencies are a centuries long battle, but at the same point it's like I don't, I don't got centuries, dude. Like, yeah, I need to get on with my life. Like I need to do things.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah, I understand. And I will say the strongest point of your article is strong crypto is not played out.

[David Hoffman]

Strong crypto has not played out.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

There've been a lot of distractions of use cases that Ethereum, the ecosystem, the culture, the community has been pursuing that have just not panned out. We got to get back to the basics which are defi and ETH as a store of value.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. I would like to plant a flag and make it be Known that I am not an ether Bear. I am an ether is about tracking the market is like kind of my base case. I don't see how it gets rerated in any direction. Haseeb made a tweet that I really, really liked called Ethereum. Is the Microsoft of crypto, is what he said. And like, I thought this was a pretty good Rorschach test because, like, Mike, Microsoft is just like not cool or innovative or it has like just a boomer brand, but it's like the fourth most valuable company in the NASDAQ or in the S and P. And so like, being Microsoft is not a bad place to be. It's just like you're not. Not on the innovative frontier. Like, you're too big to grow, but you're too existential to. To die.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. So I do think another analogy is like, it's silver. I feel like it's kind of like silver right now versus Bitcoin's gold. Yeah, but yeah, I see that. Let's end this on a bullish note. Not from either of us. All right. Standard charter is saying that Ethereum right now, eth, the asset is like trading like Amazon during 2001 after the dot com bubble burst. And if you look at how Amazon did and if you project that into the price of ETH, David, you get ETH by 2030. 40k.

[David Hoffman]

Oh boy. Let's go. They should put some money on polymarket.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. So standard chart are coming out and definitely declining.

[David Hoffman]

Declining the bearishness.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. And they're looking at a ratio appreciation too. So a doubling of the ratio. The ETH per share of the bitcoin.

[David Hoffman]

They named the bitcoin ratio.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yep. Wow. So you know it's credible. You see that standard charter eth to 40k by 2030.

[David Hoffman]

Do you know what Vitalik's doing to work on Ethereum?

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Are you saying he's writing sci fi?

[David Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I didn't read the sci fi. I saw this.

[David Hoffman]

I'm not reading the sci Fi.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

This was. He posted this on Farcaster. In lieu of the usual blog post, I decided to try my hand at decentralized governance. Sci fi. I can't read it. I'm kind of done with decentralized governance for like a long time. So we'll just let that be sci fi. I did appreciate, however, his post on where the Ethereum foundation is going. And so the summary is he basically said it's shrinking. We don't have a lot of ETH left. We have to focus on one thing. The rest of the ecosystem is going to have to focus on other things. Our focus is going to be crops. And so we're sizing the team and the foundation to support censorship, resistance, open source privacy and security. He did say this. I liked this David, because maybe you might say this is a little late in coming, but he said this. The most high value product of the Ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is eth the asset. Ethereum secures 250 billion of ETH. The type of properties of Ethereum that I mentioned above are very good for eth asset. Nearly 90% of my net worth is in eth and most of the remainder 40 million of on chain fiat of which every dollar has already been allocated. That's the remainder. So he's basically saying hey crops because of eth the asset. I can't recall him ever saying this so directly in this way.

[David Hoffman]

And I Vitalik rule would just not acknowledge the existence of Ether.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Honestly, it's part of the original sin to me and it feels like it's 10 years kind of not too late, but like I would have appreciated it maybe five years ago.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

But nonetheless he's saying it now and he's saying it pretty directly.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, yeah, this is good. This is good. There's this one tweet that rocked around the Ethereum community. It's a founder of Open Zeppelin and Open Zeppelin is a premier security company, smart contract security company. He tweeted out this this tweet that kind of sent shivers down everyone's spine. I've been privately advising friends and family to exit all defi positions, including low risk blue chips like AAVE, MakerDAO and compound due to coding agents that are superhuman at finding vulnerabilities. And so when it's it's not. This is not a new take. AI coming to make defi risky is not new. But when the founder of Oakland Zeppelin says it, it kind of takes on a new meaning. This got a very mixed response from different parts of the community. Other some people said that because of this background makes this warning extre extremely legitimate. Others called it alarmist and outdated and just disagreed with the blanketing. All of D5 mostly DeFi founders had the most to say about this. Stani from AVE said this is not a good take. Defi infra today is materially more resilient than in prior cycles. Mark Zeller said, what a moronic thing to say. Less than 10% of the past year defi issues are due to code based bugs. Jack Sanford said $630 million was lost in April 2026. Unfortunately, over 96% of those losses were unrelated to code security. And Hayden Adams from Uniswap said something pretty much to the effect this is not a defi problem, this is a supply chain opsec problem. But nonetheless, I think the conversation, one of the weaknesses I think Ethereum feels uniquely is the threat of DEFI under AI. And so that conversation went around Twitter this week.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah, I agree and I understand the sentiment for sure. We've seen a ton of hacks this year. Not all of them have been AI related, but at least some subset of them certainly have been. What do we have Coming up, coming up next.

[David Hoffman]

Remember Andrew Kang Ryan? Do you remember that name?

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I do, yeah.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. He left crypto about like a year and a half ago to invest in robotics and now he's back and Nick Carter is joining him. We're going to talk about what they are building over there. Somebody is using finders keepers laws in New York to claim Satoshi's coins. I don't know how that works. And then SoFi has launched a stablecoin to its 14.7 million banking app users. So we're going to get to all of that and more. But first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. What's something you're actually looking forward to next month? Because Coinbase is doing something interesting. Coinbase One member month starts with 20% off your first year of Coinbase One, plus a $50 Bitcoin bonus when you spend $100 with a new Coinbase One card in your first 30 days. They're also layering in extra rewards and perks throughout the month. And if you're active in crypto, Coinbase One is basically designed for you. You get zero trading fees on thousands of crypt 3.5% APY on USDC and boosted staking and lending rewards and up to 4% Bitcoin back with the Coinbase One card. So if you're going to try it, now is the time to lock in a 20% discount before the weekly rewards kick off. Start your month of more with 20% off the first year of your annual plan at coinbase.combankless that's coinbase.combankless visit coinbase.combankless to get 20% off of the first year of your annual plan today. Offers are valid until May 31. Terms apply. Coinbase One card is offered through Coinbase Inc. And Cardless Inc. Card issued by First Electronic Bank. Bitcoin back rates are based on a

[Ryan Sean Adams]

cardholder assets On Coinbase, 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 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 Hoffman]

So Nick Carter has signed on for Andrew Kang's Robo strategy. Robo Strategy is a publicly traded on the NASDAQ closed end fund, that ticker's bot. And it's basically a fund of all these different positions in robotics and physical AI names. So figure AI, one of the leading companies behind humanoid robots, Apptronic, Dyna Robotics, standard bots, just a bunch of robotics companies that are not public, that are, that are still private. And then if you want access to these, you can, you can just buy this fund. Nicarter. I think it's actually pretty notable that is joining the board as an independent director and then also if, you know, intern, former Monad ecosystem individual, is now also on the Robo Strategy board.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Are these just crypto people pivoting to AI to, to robotics?

[David Hoffman]

Yes, it is. That is what's going on now.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Nick Carter isn't leaving Castle Island.

[David Hoffman]

Correct. Nick Harder staying with Castle Island. He's like an extra set of eyes

[Ryan Sean Adams]

on the independent director is what the title is.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the whole like robo strategy is actually a direct call out to MicroStrategy. So the idea is that if the NAV trades above, if the, if the asset trades above nav, they will issue new equity to purchase more shares of the robotics company. So it's kind of doing the MicroStrategy ATM thing. This only works at the fund trades above NAV and also new buyers are willing to pay the premium, which is two very big ifs. But nonetheless it's something David, I know

[Ryan Sean Adams]

You've been going deep into the near protocol lately. There was announcement of near confidential transactions. So this is. Is actually sending eth to the Ethereum foundation wallet from near confidentially. Can you explain this?

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. So near has a near confidential transactions. It's like tee encrypted magic on the near side of things.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Oh, so it's Tee.

[David Hoffman]

It's te. It's not. It's not cryptography. It's Tee.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

It's not fhe. It's not ztech.

[David Hoffman]

I don't think so anything. It's tee. Okay, yeah, yeah. I don't know if that's a final form, but nonetheless, it's got an adoption. And so with near, near intents confidential intents. Venice uses this. Venice uses near to do this. And now the. It's kind of just a proof of concept of you send Ether from Ethereum address A to Ethereum address B, but you route it through near confidential intents and it's private. And the fact that it's in production and working I think is notable because, you know, it's privacy. Apps are hard and this is naturally just not just, just privacy for Ethereum, but it's privacy for anyone who wants to integrate with it. And this is one of the reasons why near is up so much because this has actually seen adoption and has led to a bunch of near revenue.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

The adoption part matters, doesn't it?

[David Hoffman]

The adoption part does matter.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Speaking of that, SoFi is launching SoFi USD. Is this a new stablecoin to its 15 million banking app users?

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. They claim SoFi claimed the first instance of a US national bank issued stablecoin embedded directly into a retail banking app.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

This is all genius compliant. I agree.

[David Hoffman]

It's all genius compliant. Yeah. And the narrative that they are saying is that this is the end of the crypto versus banking trade off. This is crypto and banking cool. They can f off. I still think it's crypto versus the banks. Something I thought was pretty funny. Solana like tweeted out this clip about this one Sofi guy talking about the Solana conference about why SoFi picked Solana. If you go to the Sofi stablecoin on Solana, there's $26,000 worth of SoFi. If you go to Ethereum, there's a hundred million.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Oh my God.

[David Hoffman]

It's quite the difference. Quite the difference.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Oh, wow. Don't draw attention to that.

[David Hoffman]

Needed to tweet out that that there was 100 million SoFi stable coins instead of the 26,000 on Solana.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

But nonetheless no, no, they don't. You know, it'll just happen in the background. Credit neutrality is all you need. Cash app adds mult, USDC support. So block's cash app, now they have 60 million monthly active users. And rather than just sending dollars, you can send usdc, I suppose, and you can withdraw that to all the popular chains. Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Solana.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, and you can also. This is Ilya from, from Near. You can also do that with Near Private Intents. So you can go from Cash App to Near Private Intents to any other blockchain. Zcash, for example, is what Ilya's example is through Near Intents. And so you can go from Cash App to zcash privately with Near. I think it's pretty cool.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I'm shocked that near is like, like coming to dominate the intense space. Like there are so many other earlier movers. Now near is getting into a, a.

[David Hoffman]

I don't know if it's pivot. They just made some investments and they're working off. They're paying off.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

David, should we end the roll up with this story? So this was crazy. This is. Someone is suing Su, a pseudo anonymous. This individual or set of individuals is suing to claim legal ownership of Satoshi's coins. So Noah Doe, that was the name. Fake name, of course.

[David Hoffman]

I also would not want my name public if I was doing this. That's right.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

They filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court claiming that the 3.8 million Bitcoin in wallets that haven't moved in six plus years. So that's 18% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist is actually his. And the way he's claiming this is through a set of laws I believe called finders keepers laws. This is a law from the 1958 that covers things like, hey, I found a wallet on the subway.

[David Hoffman]

Can I keep it?

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Finders keepers.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah. Am I good to keep this?

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. So Noah Doe is essentially arguing, I found these wallets. They've been dormant for six to 10 years.

[David Hoffman]

How did he find them?

[Ryan Sean Adams]

He used the blockchain to find them, David. He used a block explorer to find them. Yeah. And he's like, ah, I found it.

[David Hoffman]

I found Satoshi's public office.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

This is abandoned property. And so you know, you could have found this, David. You missed your opportunity.

[David Hoffman]

I'm pretty sure I did find it actually.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

And anyway, he sent them notice. So he dusted all the accounts, sending them some notice. I guess there was some embedded text inside the account. He got no response. He's like, hey, I told you, it's abandoned property. I found it. And he got no response. So now he's going to court and saying, therefore, I own these. I own $285 billion worth of Bitcoin. And by the way, given the way the law works, I think the way he's filing this and they're escalating this under New York law to. From the New York Police Department to the court system. So there's. There's something there.

[David Hoffman]

That's something. The. The only way that this actually pays off for the individual, assuming satoshi's wallets are burned, is that quantum comes the United States. Some. Some entity inside the United States gets the Satoshi coins. And then this person says, oh, those are my coins, because I filed this in the state of New York. I guess if there's, like, a.01% chance to. It's worth a hundred billion dollars. It's.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

Yeah. I mean, but, like, that's also assuming that the court, like, thinks this is credible at all. Right.

[David Hoffman]

I mean, I imagine I'm factoring that into my 0.01% chance of working, then

[Ryan Sean Adams]

I think it should be less than 0.01% chance. I think it should be far less, but crazy that he's actually doing this, so.

[David Hoffman]

Oh, my God.

[Ryan Sean Adams]

We'll have to follow this. Entertaining. Anyway.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, it is entertaining. All right. Bankless Station. That is it for the week. Thank you for being with us as we continue our journey west. This is Frontier. It's not for everyone, but it is for us and you. And we're glad that you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.