ROLLUP: Gold & Silver ATHs | Fidelity’s Stablecoin | Ethereum’s Quantum Pivot | Tether Buys Gold

Summary

Bankless Rollup: Gold & Silver ATHs | Fidelity’s Stablecoin | Ethereum’s Quantum Pivot | Tether Buys Gold

Date: January 30, 2026
Hosts: Ryan & David

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Episode Overview

This action-packed Bankless weekly rollup dissects one of the wildest weeks in both the commodities and crypto markets. The hosts cover gold and silver’s breakneck all-time highs (and subsequent dump), the mushrooms of macro volatility (Fed indepencence, government shutdown risks), Tether’s surprising bullishness on gold, Ethereum’s decisive quantum pivot, Fidelity’s landmark stablecoin launch, explosive L2 scaling benchmarks, and even a wildly audacious on-chain theft. If you want macro, micro, DeFi, and irreverent crypto energy, this episode brings it all.

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1. Markets Recap: Commodities Rocket, Crypto Chops

Gold & Silver’s Meteoric Boom, Macro Havoc

• Gold and silver surge to all-time highs before a dramatic pullback.

• Peter Schiff takes victory laps as gold bulls finally win big.

• Macro turbulence across all markets: Microsoft’s earnings, AI capex doubts, government shutdown drama.

• Quote [00:28]:
  Ryan: “Tether has a nuclear resistant Cold War bunker where they’re stacking a tremendous amount of gold, maybe even buying more gold than they are bitcoin right now.”

• Gold’s record-setting timeline:

  • Jan 19: Gold & silver hit record highs after Trump warns of extra tariffs over Greenland.
  • Jan 21: Gold tops $4,900 amid fears for Fed independence.
  • Jan 23: Silver breaks $100; gold pushes to $4,988.
  • Jan 27: Gold exceeds $5,181 following US government shutdown fears.
  • Jan 28: Gold spikes to $5,600, then dumps to $5,100 within hours.
  • Even after the pullback, both assets are still near all-time highs.

• Quote [18:43]:
  David: “A 5.5% move in gold in eight hours... One bitcoin’s worth of a move in eight hours, bitcoin was added to the gold market cap.”

Crypto Markets Down, “Hype” Defies the Mood

• Bitcoin drops 5-6%+ on the week (~$83,700).
• Ethereum fares slightly better, down 5% (~$2,780).
• Hype and Hyperliquid: “While the rest of the market is down so bad, Hype is up 50% this week” due to the launch of gold and silver perps and permissionless deployment ([05:28]).
• Hyperliquid’s success comes from integrating real-world commodities, fueling volume even when crypto slumps.

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2. Macro Volatility: Fed Independence & Government Shutdown Risks

Fed Rates, Trump, and the Lisa Cook Case [07:54]

• FOMC holds rates steady (expected), with 10-2 vote showing minor dissent for cuts.
• Supreme Court to rule whether President Trump can fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, based on “for cause” provisions—a historical first threatening Fed independence.
• PolyMarket shows 4% chance Cook is ousted by Feb 2028.
• Macro uncertainty, legal battles, and political posturing compound market nerviness.

Government Shutdown Probability Soars [12:10]

• Policy Market’s chance of a US shutdown jumps from 9% to 80% in a day—they may fail to fund DHS/ICE, especially after a controversy spurring Democratic resistance.
• “Uncertain, crazy, volatile times,” says Ryan ([13:54]), as shutdown worries help fuel the gold/silver rally (“flight to safety”).

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3. The Commodities Supercycle: Gold & Silver Dominate

Massive Value Creation

• Gold market cap now ~$40T, silver $6.3T—surpassing major tech companies and even US Treasuries as reserve assets.
• Gold overtaking Treasuries in central bank reserves for the first time in two decades ([20:42]).
• Quote [22:01]:
  Ryan: “Now we have fiat Olympic medals, like quite literally... This is the most Safedine Ammous thing I’ve ever seen!” ([22:29])

Crypto vs. Gold: Sad But Hopeful?

• Gold hits $5k before ETH—a moment of melancholy for crypto, with memorable banter about “fiat Olympics” and social media gold memes.
• Gold outpaces Bitcoin over five years; Ryan: “Orange vs. yellow. Now yellow is winning.” [23:26].
• “Store of value TAM”: Crypto store-of-value market still $3T (same as 2021); precious metals exploded from $12T to $40T ([24:09]).
• David’s skepticism: “[Crypto] was always going to catch up, and now gold is so much bigger... but gold doesn’t need to rotate the way fiat does.” ([24:23])
• Hope from generational shifts: “Once millennials run central banks...do you think they’ll want the yellow metal?” ([26:03])
• Ray Dalio reminder: With currency debasement, gold soars, and it “makes everything look like it’s going up” ([33:09], paraphrased).

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4. Tether’s Transformation: From Stablecoin Giant to Gold Whale

• Tether now holds 140 tons of gold ($23B), aiming for 10-15% of reserves in physical gold, stored in a Cold War Swiss nuclear bunker ([30:00]).
• “If Tether were a country...top 25 in world gold holdings,” jokes Ryan ([31:45]).
• Tether now holds more gold than many G20 nations.
• Tether launches “USAT,” a Genius-compliant US stablecoin for onshore compliance (but it won’t be allowed to hold gold or Bitcoin in reserves) ([46:04]).

Quote [31:40]:
Ryan: “Tether now holds 140 tons of gold... the CEO Paolo says he aims to allocate 10 to 15% of Tether’s total treasury to physical gold inside their investment portfolio.”

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5. Ethereum’s Bull Case & Quantum Pivot

Record L1 Activity and PSA on Address Poisons

• Ethereum L1 hitting record transaction throughput, though partially fueled by “address poisoning” scam attacks ([33:35]).
• PSA: Never copy addresses from your incoming transaction feed; scammers spoof similar addresses to steal funds ([34:24]).

Ethereum’s Quantum Readiness [35:50]

• Ethereum Foundation, led by Justin Drake, formally launches a $2M prize fund and dedicated effort to achieve post-quantum security—after years of R&D.
• $1M for hardening Poseidon (hashing algorithm) and $1M for quantum-resistant ZK constructions.
• Quote [37:36]:
  Ryan: “If quantum computers are ready to attack blockchains by the early 2030s, Ethereum’s going to be ready.”
• Hosts and experts note Bitcoin community largely in denial, whereas Ethereum “doesn’t have its head in the sand.”
• ARK’s Lorenzo lists five reasons ETH is better-positioned: quantum defense, upgradeability, monetary policy, insulation from AI energy costs, and deflationary economics ([38:57]).
• Mega ETH’s competitive edge: “ETH will be the only quantum secure crypto asset and flip Bitcoin in one to two years.” (Vance Spencer, [41:00])

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6. Major Industry Moves & Platform Highlights

Fidelity Digital Dollar Launch [44:03]

• Fidelity, $6.8T asset manager, launches FIDD, a permissionless USD stablecoin on Ethereum, targeting both retail payments and institutional settlement.
• Simon Taylor: Incumbent banks should be more worried about Fidelity than about Circle or Tether.
• Fidelity’s crypto experience predates Ethereum; they are “OGs” who mined Bitcoin in 2014 ([45:12]).

Layer 2 Scaling Breakthrough: Mega ETH [47:03]

• Mega ETH public mainnet launching Feb. 9, 2026.
• Stress test: 11B transactions in 7 days (= 18-35,000 TPS), 2x all-time Base blockspace, $2M in test fees vs. $180M in Base fees.
• 53% of Mega token supply locked behind KPI targets—only unlocked by “stake and score” for truly aligned token holders ([51:21]).
• Uniswap announces on-chain CCA auction mechanism, launching token sales natively via their app ([53:48]).

Crypto Infrastructure Moves

• Robinhood invests in Talos ($1.5B valuation) to challenge Coinbase’s institutional infrastructure.
• Prediction markets now live on Coinbase via Kalshi across all 50 US states ([57:46]).

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7. Crypto Meets AI: OpenAI's Social Network & Worldcoin

• OpenAI plans new social network with human verification powered by Worldcoin ([57:46]).
• Can this solve rampant bot scourge on platforms like X/Twitter? David skeptical: “If this is valuable, existing social networks will simply integrate it.”
• Worldcoin barely moves on the news.
• “Bots are the worst. There are nice bots out there, but not the ones I was talking to.” (Ryan, [60:19])

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8. Only in Crypto: The $40M Telegram Flex Theft Story [62:28]

• Son of a US government crypto custody contractor (cmdss) allegedly steals $40M in seized bitcoin; caught after bragging and leaking addresses on Telegram.
• ZachXBT and on-chain sleuths uncover the connection between his wallet and US Marshals’ custody wallets.
• “How did this guy expect this to end?” (Ryan, [63:07])

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9. Meme of the Week & Final Thoughts [63:18]

• Viral photo of Vitalik in a hammock, surrounded by onlookers, compared to Forrest Gump:
  David: “Everyone is just, like, watching Vitalik. Just, like... 'Say something wise.'” ([63:52])
• None of this is financial advice; “We are headed west. This is the frontier...but we’re glad you’re with us on the Bankless journey.” ([64:01])

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Segment Timestamps

• [00:00–03:10] — Markets overview, Kraken DeFi launch, market storminess
• [04:54–07:49] — FOMC meeting, Fed independence, Lisa Cook case
• [11:59–13:54] — US gov shutdown risk and macro uncertainty
• [16:49–24:09] — Gold & Silver ATHs, flight to safety, value comparisons
• [30:00–32:08] — Tether’s gold strategy
• [33:16–41:53] — Ethereum’s bull case, quantum security, ARK analysis
• [44:03–46:29] — Fidelity’s stablecoin, Tether’s USAT, regulatory compliance
• [47:03–54:36] — Mega ETH stress test and token distribution innovation
• [57:46–60:28] — Predictive markets, OpenAI + Worldcoin integration
• [62:28–63:13] — $40M crypto custodian heist
• [63:18–64:01] — Meme of the week (Vitalik in a hammock), wrap-up

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Notable Quotes

• Ryan ([00:28]): “Tether has a nuclear resistant Cold War bunker where they’re stacking a tremendous amount of gold...”
• David ([18:43]): “A 5.5% move in gold in eight hours... One bitcoin’s worth of a move in eight hours was added to the gold market cap.”
• Ryan ([22:01]): “We now have fiat Olympic medals...this is the most Safedine Ammous thing I’ve ever seen!”
• Ryan ([31:40]): “Tether now holds 140 tons of gold...the CEO Paolo...wants 10 to 15% of Tether’s total treasury in physical gold...”
• Ryan ([37:36]): “If quantum computers are ready to attack blockchains by the early 2030s, Ethereum’s going to be ready.”
• Vance Spencer (read by Ryan, [41:00]): “If the status quo plays out, ETH will be the only quantum secure crypto asset and flip Bitcoin in one to two years.”
• David ([63:52]): “It seems to me like everyone is just watching Vitalik... ‘Say something wise.’”

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Takeaways

• The commodities supercycle is here; gold and silver are the #1 global assets.
• Fed and government volatility is both a market driver and a modern drama.
• Tether’s gold bet signals rising central bank/sovereign vibes among stablecoin giants.
• Ethereum is doubling down on quantum resistance, pushing a unique technical and economic value prop.
• Mega ETH and Uniswap are spearheading new token distribution and scaling paradigms.
• Real-world stories (Tether vaults, Telegram $40M thefts) make crypto a wild west—full of possibility, risk, and absurdity.

This episode delivers the ultimate mashup: macro chaos, DeFi innovation, regulatory brinkmanship, and pure crypto culture. Whether you’re tracking the gold bug thesis or the quantum-resistant future of blockchains, this rollup is a full-spectrum download.

Transcript

[Ryan]

Foreign. Nation is the last week of January. It's time for the bankless weekly roll up. We got markets in a little bit of a tumble right now. David. I was getting ready to say gold and silver are unstoppable because they have been on the week, but now things are reversing.

[David]

But then they stop. At least for a moment. At least for a moment.

[Ryan]

But we do got to talk about gold and silver. All time highs this week. Peter Schiff taking victory laps, of course.

[David]

Also, he's earned it.

[Ryan]

D Did you know, David, Tether has a nuclear resistant cold war bunker where they're stacking a tremendous amount of gold, maybe even buying more gold than they are bitcoin right now.

[David]

You know what, what does Tether not have? You know, if you told me, if you told me Tether had bought a private army, I would be like, you know what that sounds, right?

[Ryan]

Yeah, that might be by 2030. Anyway, we'll talk about that. And also this energy from precious metals, is that going to rotate back into crypto? What else we got? Right, right.

[David]

It totally will. Right, guys, Fidelity is launching a Fidelity dollar, a new stable coin on Ethereum. We're going to talk about why this one is a little bit more significant than all the other stable coins that have launched in recent months. And speaking of Ethereum, nice big chunky Ethereum section. We're going to make a pretty good macro ETH bull case Ryan and I both saw on Twitter. We're both like, this is the best thing that we've seen around Eth in a while. We're going to talk about it. Quantum resistance efforts, macro conditions. This is really good setup for Ethereum. And also Ryan's got this story. Maybe you guys have heard about this.

[Ryan]

You want me to tell this story?

[David]

I don't know this story. Ryan. Put it in the agenda. Son of a government contractor who may have stolen $40 million from the U.S. yeah, so that they could brag about it and flex in Telegram, which is how they got ousted for doing it in the first place.

[Ryan]

Yeah, it's kind of funny actually. Dude, I can't wait to tell you the story. But first, before you get in, we've got some news from our friends over at Kraken. They're launching a pretty juicy Defi product, aren't they? What is this?

[David]

They have launched Defi Earn. They launched it this Monday. Made a pretty big splash across the crypto sphere. Ryan, have you heard of this thing called the defi mullet?

[Ryan]

Have I. Have I ever.

[David]

You might. You might have Been the guy who coined it, I do recall.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[David]

Yeah. So this is. This is that and the cracking mullet. Defi mullet. Exactly. Yeah, the crack mullet, yeah. Ave Morpho, Tyro, a number of defi apps. They are just bullish on vaults in the same way our friends over at Bitwise bullish on vaults. Kraken also bullish on vaults. And so you can get up to 8% APY with the new Kraken Defi Earn product. Also inside of their crack app. Do you know, you know that's what they have. They called. They have a crack app.

[Ryan]

They have a crack app. Okay.

[David]

That's what it's called.

[Ryan]

This is basically like I put my stablecoin inside of a vault and it's managed by these vault managers that have been kind of commissioned by Kraken. And I collect 8%. That's right.

[David]

And there are three different strategies, all dollar denominated strategies but different strategies based off of like how aggressive you want to be with your strategies. And so yeah, there is a link in the show notes Bankless CC Kraken to go get started with Defi Earn.

[Ryan]

That's cool. Our friend Dan Litzier is a fan too. Kraken takes care of the safety, compliance and flexibility to ensure their customers can enjoy a high risk adjusted yield. I love the highest risk adjusted yield and so if I can get that within my Kraken app, I'm going to go do that. Very cool. How about our prices on the week? David, tell us about bitcoin storminess.

[David]

Definitely feels like the right word. Storminess in the bad way. Choppy waters down 5.5% on the Bitcoin. Down to 83,700. Maybe that's actually down 6 or 7 and dropping.

[Ryan]

We're like 6%, 6% over the last.

[David]

Week eth doing something similar. Down to 2780. Down 5%.

[Ryan]

Down less. Down less.

[David]

Oh, yay. Oh man. What's causing this? Seeing the 278 to the 27 handle is not great. Yeah, man. I don't know what's causing it. There's like a bunch of things causing it. Like gold and silver have been absolutely ripping and then they like sneezed and the whole rest of the market is just like down bad as a result.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[David]

Last night after the market closed, Microsoft printed terrible earnings and was down some very significant amount of percentage dropped. Dropped 10 to 12%. The worst day since COVID since 2020 on just like slower growth and concerns that like massive AI capex just won't deliver returns. And so earnings were bad.

[Ryan]

It was not a bad miss. Right. It's just like kind of a smallish miss.

[David]

A small. A small miss, I guess. But like the Microsoft, which is like what, the third or fourth largest company in the world.

[Ryan]

Yeah. And it's dropping.

[David]

10% isn't great.

[Ryan]

It's definitely a bellwether weather for all the other AI stocks as. Right. So that's it. So I guess it's the volatility. Maybe these are time for a pullback.

[David]

Dude, we're like positioning aircraft carriers outside of the Middle east like Trump and it's going after Powell and the Fed. We're doing a government shutdown. We were doing that two days ago.

[Ryan]

We were doing that two days ago. Why? Why today?

[David]

It's all. There's just a lot going on right now, man.

[Ryan]

Okay, so we'll talk a bit more about gold because that's been a huge theme. But you know there has been a bright spot in crypto. It's not the crypto market cap which is now under 3 trillion David, but it is in an asset called hype. Hyper liquid actually. That had a good week.

[David]

Very good week, dude. Hype up 56% on the week. So why the rest of the market is down so bad? Hype is up 50% on the week. Well, hype volumes due to coin, due to gold and silver are up very, very bigly because they just recently launched their gold and silver markets and they did it with their HIP3 program. Do you know what that is, Ryan?

[Ryan]

Yeah, that's like their incentive program for launching markets.

[David]

Yeah, exactly. Permissionless deployment. Maybe it's not permissionless, maybe it's still whitelisted. But like this this one group, I was like reading into this, this One Group Trade XYZ, one of the leading HIP3 builders deployed the gold and silver markets. And so the HIP three markets had a total open interest a month ago of 260 million to today where it is at almost a billion dollars in open interest just from third party builders putting on third party assets onto hyper liquid. So obviously a very good time for hyperliquid to put gold and silver into the platform. It's pretty interesting the trade xyz, these, the people that made this market, they are accruing on a seven day basis about 1.2 to $1.4 million in fees on the hyper liquid platform for fostering for building this market.

[Ryan]

That's a nice incentive and of course you can create perps on anything. So as long as there is a market somewhere, either long or short. Right. Hyperliquid can kind of list it and earn perps commission. It's interesting that it is trading off cycle. Right. So like bitcoin down, of course, but hype still up on the week by 50%.

[David]

You kind of like. Because the hyper liquid right here is getting exposure to the commodities frenzy that's happening right now.

[Ryan]

Yeah, that's. It seems like a counter, like counter crypto, cyclical, fundamental. But I don't know. Do you think it can really sustain this even in a sustained crypto bear market? I guess we'll have to see. But it is, it is, I think.

[David]

Yeah, it's just un. Well, it's just untitled. Hyper liquid is doing the thing of being like the global place to trade anything. And right now gold, like commodities are the place, the place to trade. So like it's like hyper liquid in this moment is like kind of breaking out from being a crypto.

[Ryan]

It's good to be hungry. I mean all of cryptos like this and hyper liquid perps in particular, they're going to be hungry to consume more real world assets. Right. If the market's not in crypto, you want to get to the assets where the market actually is.

[David]

Like Ondo last week announced. We talked about it last week. Ondo put their, some of their tokens on hyper liquid last week.

[Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're doing it too. Let's talk about Powell for a minute because there was an FOMC meeting this week, David, and the rates were unchanged. Okay. This was pretty much expected by the markets. So the rates, 3.5 to 3.7%. They said that Powell and company said economic activity is expanding at a solid place pace. Excuse me. Jobs gains remain low, but the unemployment rate is stabilizing for all of these reasons. Oh, inflation is somewhat elevated, but for all these reasons, we're not decreasing rates any further. It was a 10 to 2 vote. So of course, you know, Trump's favorites, Stephen Mirren and Christopher Waller, they voted yes, but that there was 2 dissenters and 10 voted to keep the rates the same, whereas 2 voted to decrease rates some more. What's interesting about this, David, is because remember Powell's statement we talked about this was that a week or two ago Powell was like, hey there, you know, Trump is unfairly prosecuting me because I'm not bending to his will. And so Powell has been on a crusade, I think, to talk about Fed independence, including attending a Supreme Court hearing in the Lisa Cook case. David, are you familiar with the Lisa Cook case and who she is Nope. Okay. Powell says this is perhaps the most important legal case in the Fed's 113 year history. So he had a front row seat to it. And the history of this is. So Lisa Cook is a Federal Reserve governor. She's still a governor. So she voted in favor of stabilizing rates. She was one of the 10. So she's still voting. But in August 2025, Trump tried to remove Lisa Cook from the FOMC and alleged mortgage fraud in her past. Said she's, you know, she shouldn't be on the Fed because she has mortgage fraud in her, in her past. Now, the federal law that governs this says you can only fire a Fed governor for cause. Right. So this is Trump saying, well, we have cause, it's mortgage fraud. Cook is saying, that's not true. There's like, that's a allegation that needs to be proven in court. And so I guess she won part of her case in a lower court and the lower court issued a injunction, preliminary injunction, preventing her firing. That's why she can still vote. That's why she's still on the board. Now this case is going to the Supreme Court, and it's really, the Supreme Court has to decide whether the president's firing can stand, whether this justified the cause or not. And this is significant. I think Powell's right, because this is the first time a president has ever tried to remove a Fed governor. Right, right. So big moves afoot in terms of Fed independence, and Powell is trying to hold that institution to, you know, like, be more independent. And Trump, of course, pushing back. Now, there's some trading markets about this on Polymarket, of course. So There is a 4% chance on polymarket that Lisa Cook is out as a Fed governor by. Yeah. February 28th.

[David]

If it's 24%, does that mean it's a nothing burger right now?

[Ryan]

But this is a big case and that's only by February 2028. So maybe there's, you know, other, other dates in the future anyway. It's Fed independence. Yes. No, it's one of those types of cases.

[David]

As I understand, Donald Trump's strategy with just lawfare is that he will try something else and everything to do anything that he is trying to get done. Like, he just, he just thinks that, like, all options are available to him and, you know, he can try. And so he's going to try and so it's going to make news. But, like, if you tell me, like, 4% of this chance happening, I'm like, well, that's just not going to happen.

[Ryan]

Yeah. I mean, the other thing to watch, of course, is the poly market on how many Fed rate cuts will happen for the rest of 2026. The probability of the rates actually decreased slightly after the fomc, but not all that much. So that's happening. Meanwhile, David, the probability of a government shutdown has spiked on policy market that.

[David]

Kind of like rocked around the world this week because we went from a chance of US Government shutdown by Saturday, which I think is the last day of this month of January.

[Ryan]

Yep.

[David]

It was at 9%. It was going down. It was like, it was like 20 earlier in the month, 10, 9%. And then it shot up to 80%.

[Ryan]

In a single move on January 24th.

[David]

It shot up on January 24th. And so now the market, Poly market is pricing in that the government's getting shut down. And that's part of the story of the macro news this week and also kind of why I think the market is just like super nervous.

[Ryan]

Right, right. And so are there reasons for this? Like, so of course, on, on this Saturday, Congress doesn't pass the new funding for a group of agencies. Right. Then it shuts down, but it seemed like they were just going to pass it by default. And then the probability of them not passing it has now spiked up on the 24th. Was this, was this part of kind of the, the ICE controversy?

[David]

This is, as I understand it, so Democrats, the Republicans don't have control. The Senate needs 60 votes to get spending bills passed. Republicans don't have 60. So they need the Democrats, which means that the Democrats can just say no unless they strong arm Donald Trump into an agreement. And right now there is the fight over the funding of the Department of Homeland Security, which is where ICE is.

[Ryan]

Ice. Right.

[David]

And so the Democrats are like, we are going to shut down the government until like you get ICE officers out of Minnesota or something happens there.

[Ryan]

So this was all, this was all after the, the killing of Alex shooting.

[David]

Yeah, that's right. Exact. Yeah. Maybe this is what happened is like Democrats on the inside were like, yo, we're going to just like shut down the government until. Because that's a way for them to defund ice, I guess, because.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, temporarily or temporarily get some concessions. Maybe that's what the hope is.

[David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan]

Uncertain, crazy, volatile times, aren't they, David?

[David]

Fine, fine, fine, fine.

[Ryan]

We're to talk about some of the volatility hitting the precious metals markets, including gold. It's getting so high, I don't know if we should be scared or not. Also tether, as I mentioned you David, they are breaking in to one of the top holders of gold in the world, like surpassing a lot of central banks at this point.

[David]

So they're one of the top holders of Treasuries. They're also one of the top holders of gold.

[Ryan]

I know, they just need an army and a border and they'll be a.

[David]

Whole one of the top holders of ETH too.

[Ryan]

Well, you're going to give us the Eth bull case too after the break. So we got all that to look forward to. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

[David]

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[Ryan]

How about this, you know, two years ago we did an episode of Peter Schiff and he said gold was going.

[David]

Yeah, but he always says that, doesn't always say that. Okay, so there's a, there's a story coming to the market about the precious metals but also kind of something like we had just like left off before the break of just like the politicization of the Federal Reserve, the destabilization of just like investor appetite. So I'm going to run through a little bit of a timeline. So January 19, Monday. So about 10 days ago this was kind of the kickoff of the tariffs in Greenland part of this which is when gold and silver both hit record highs. Right after Donald Trump warned of extra tariffs on European countries tied to the Greenland dispute. Dollar sliding. Gold hit 4700. Silver hit 95. The next day gold pushed further into all time high. Reuters tried to tie this to a political risk off move again, another softer dollar day and also rate cut expectations that we have been talking about with the Fed. The next day, January 21st, gold hit 4900. While the news cycle that day was talking about threats to the Federal Reserve independence. Fast forward to Friday, January 23rd. Silver breaks $100 clearing that like $100 Psy barrier barrier and gold is at $4,988. Monday, the psychological barrier breaks for gold. Gold hits over $5,000. Silver goes was up 20% over that weekend to $1,020. The next day, Tuesday, January 27, gold hits 5,181. The day that the US government shutdown jumps from 15 to 80% on polymarket following day Wednesday, that's that was yesterday from the time of recording, gold made a staggering 5.5% move in eight hours. Do you know how big that is, Ryan? A 5.5% move in Bitcoin Gold, it's gotta be trillions. It is one bitcoin's worth of a move. In eight hours, bitcoin was added to the gold market cap. And then so the day of recording this morning, that mania, that parabola increased. Gold broke through 5,500. It topped out at 5,600, silver at 121. And then so nicely, right before we were starting recording, everything dumped. Usually things dump after we record. This happened before we were recording. Everything started dumping. So gold dropped 7%, went from 5,500 to 5,100, which is currently retraced back to 5,350. Silver dropped 10% from 120 to 106, currently retraced back to 115. And also the S&P 500 dropped 1.5%, which is where my portfolio feels like it has left off because my stock portfolio is down bad, Ryan, and so is my ETH bags.

[Ryan]

Yeah, well, I mean, that's the bigger story of, I think is crypto is not moving like these precious metal prices. Right. But what's incredible is even after this kind of dumpage that we've seen this morning, this is still way up. I mean, gold hit all time highs. It is still close to all time highs. And silver is just trading like gold's altcoin right now. Yeah. And when you zoom out on gold a little bit and start comparing it, Right. You could see how big this, these moves actually are. Right. So look at gold now. I mean, I know over the years, David, we've talked about this company's market cap.com, like the biggest assets in the world. We shown this leaderboard, right? Gold number one and nothing else does close. I remember a time when this is like, I don't know, 15 trillion or something.

[David]

It is now almost 10 to 15 trillion dollars. Now it's at 40 trillion dollars.

[Ryan]

And silver number two. Silver used to be, I don't know, down like 10th, 5/10. Yeah, something like that. And now it's 6.3 trillion dollars. So gold and silver indisputable. Like gold. Silver bigger than Nvidia on this run. Okay.

[David]

The commodities, Commodities, precious metals are the number one and number two most valuable assets in the world.

[Ryan]

This is another thing. I know we've been tracking this, but gold has overtaken U.S. treasuries in central bank FX reserves. This is the first time in 20 years. That happened in 2025. Look at. So you know, in yellow, confusingly enough, is the foreign official. Treasury holding in black is gold holding. So you see that? Well, It's a replacement of the assets. I don't know who put it in yellow, though.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

If you look at the stock. I know we talked about this in our Luke Gromin episode, but this is the. If you measure stocks, US stocks in gold, they just hit a 12 year low. If you use gold as the denominator here, rather than dollars.

[David]

Wow.

[Ryan]

All right. So, like, stocks aren't really moving in gold terms at all.

[David]

As I understand it. Stocks have never really moved in gold terms.

[Ryan]

Yeah. And this floated up on my timeline. It depends how far you zoom out, but this floated up in my timeline. David, I thought you'd enjoy this. This is an Olympic medal in 1908. It's 100% gold. And this is an Olympic medal today. It is only 1% gold. And I was just thinking this is the most Saphodina Moose thing I've ever seen. We now have. We have fiat Olympic medals, like, quite literally.

[David]

Oh, that is a good deep cut. That is a great deep cut. I wonder how many percentage of the listeners understand that reference.

[Ryan]

Now, if you want to read the bitcoin standard, guys, it is the bible for that way of thinking about the fiat way of the world. But it's not altogether wrong. It's just.

[David]

It's like spiritually interesting. What he means by what Ryan meant, which is a reference to what Sephedin meant, is like, because of. The money of the world is hollow. The fiat currency is hollow because we can print it from thin air, therefore there's nothing material inside of it. It hollows out the world.

[Ryan]

It hollows out the world. Yeah.

[David]

Safedin applies it to everything, quite literally. Fiat food, like the junk in your. In your food. Yeah. Like terrible food with fillers and preservatives.

[Ryan]

Because we printed money. It's because we got money.

[David]

It's because we printed money. Yeah. Fiat music, like, you know, Miley Cyrus, like the most pop culture, empty, hypnotic, like, like spiritually empty music. It's because we print the money.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[David]

But I take Ryan's point and he literally points to the Olympic gold medals. And the modern Olympic Gold medal is 1% gold.

[Ryan]

It's fiat. It's fiat Olympics, David. I don't know what else to say.

[David]

Good job.

[Ryan]

Saved. Let's bring some more pain into here for crypto holders, which is gold hit 5k before eth hit.

[David]

Yeah, that used to be a joke when eth was like 4500 and gold was like 2000. Whatever. And. And like all the youth holders got triggered because they would say, like, that's never going to happen. And then turns out it just totally happened.

[Ryan]

Kind of sad. And if you want to look at another chart, look at this. This is gold outperforming bitcoin on a five year basis. Wow.

[David]

Yeah, that's never happened before.

[Ryan]

Orange versus yellow. Now yellow is.

[David]

It had to happen at some point. It had to happen at some point.

[Ryan]

That's what. Okay, all right, well, do we want to bring some. Some sunshine into the mix here? Which is like. This is a Meltem Dumaris tweet, the market cap of stores of value. So first it, first it starts sad, which is in 2021, crypto store of values were about 3 trillion in assets. In value, I should say precious metals were 12 trillion. Now 2026, crypto is still about 3 trillion store of value assets. Outside of crypto, precious metals are 40 trillion. Okay, this feels bad, this feels sad. But David, on the upside, look at how much we can grow into our tam. Just 4x'd. We were always gonna surpass gold, and now gold is so much bigger. So the TAM of crypto has just gotten bigger.

[David]

I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm on board with that. Why not? Because gold doesn't need to rotate. You don't need to rotate out of gold in the same way that you do need to rotate out of fiat. You don't need to.

[Ryan]

Will you? I mean, will you? I mean. Okay, so here's another counterpoint I have for you, which is, wait, first of all, let me give you some ETH porn really quick too. Okay? So if eth were to catch up to gold, which at one point people on the Bankless podcast said that that might happen at some point in the future.

[David]

Do you mean the hosts or guests?

[Ryan]

I don't know. We'll let listeners decide who said this on the Bankless podcast, but at current prices, okay, if ETH were to match gold's market cap, ETH would be worth 298k right now. If eth was just a silver, a mere silver and match silver's market, I'll take silver. I'll take silver. It would be 50k right now. This is the type of space that the crypto digital store of assets could grow into. David, if you let your imagination go with you, but you seem skeptical, perhaps a little bit.

[David]

My big question is, okay, so we just had how much wealth created out of like gold? Gold has like, gold's up 110% on the year. It's gone from like 18 trillion to like 37 trillion. That means that we have like 20 plus trillion dollars of wealth that just got created. Where, who's got that? Where did that wealth get created? Who's got all the gold?

[Ryan]

Okay, central banks, China, and then I'll give you kind of a, you know, a generation which is the baby boomers. Right?

[David]

The baby boomers own gold.

[Ryan]

I mean, the baby boomers are running the central banks. They are the most bullish. It's a cohort of them for sure. I guess my point is right. I think it's inevitable that crypto catches up to this because once millennial younger generations are in charge of central banks, do you think that they're going to want the yellow metal?

[David]

Yeah, but that's too slow, dude. When the millennials are. When do you think the boomers are going to hand us the keys to the central bank? Come on, we've got a whole generation between us. First it has to go through gener X.

[Ryan]

Look.

[David]

And the boomers don't want to give it up.

[Ryan]

Investing is about patience. Investing is about patience, David. And sometimes you have to have that decades long.

[David]

The gold holders who held for like 15 years while gold, gold was flat are now finally happy. And I think that's part of the, partly the contribution to like why the sentiment in crypto is so bad because people are like, oh no, what if we're the gold bugs and like we have to hold our crypto bags for 15 years in order to, to see a price? Like that's, that's a current sent to make in crypto lane right now.

[Ryan]

I don't. It's not going to take 15 years though. That's just like. Okay, so let me show you another data point which is this. This is the bitcoin gold ratio. If you look at this chart, it's not actually that bad.

[David]

Oh, that's a normal good looking chart. Oh, wait, this is a Michael Nadeau chart.

[Ryan]

Yeah, this is a. Michael and I talked about it on the Defi report actually earlier this week, which is we're at about 12 or so now on the bitcoin gold coin gold ratio.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

And we've hit lower lows just as recently as 2023, which was below 10. Okay. So from a ratio perspective, Bitcoin versus gold, it's kind of normal for a bear type.

[David]

Actually. It looks like the general long term parabola of bitcoin going up versus gold is pretty intact. And it's telling you to buy.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, 10 years ago, it's.

[David]

Telling you to sell gold and buy Bitcoin. Right Now, Bitcoin is a deal in gold terms.

[Ryan]

It's getting closer to that. Right. And you might wait for a 10 or a 9 on the ratio or something like that, but we're getting pretty close to that as of now. And look, it's up from one 10 years ago. All right, Just your map. That's all you gotta do.

[David]

Solve all your problems.

[Ryan]

That's all you gotta do. Is the Trump administration worried about this? Because more than crypto's loss, it's actually the dollar as a reserve currency's loss that we're seeing here. Here's another chart showing institutions reducing dollar exposure. This is the global foreign currency reserve. As a percentage, the US dollar is now down to about 56%. Okay. From the 2000s, dollar reserves were 71%. So this is institutions, central banks, reducing their dollar asset exposure. Right. Buying other currencies and certainly also buying gold. And Trump has asked a little bit about this. Here's what he said. How, Mr. President, with the current value.

[David]

Of the dollar, do you think it's declined too much? No, I think it's great.

[Ryan]

I mean, the value of the do at the business we're doing no dollars, dollar's doing great.

[David]

Trump is not at all doing great.

[Ryan]

Not at all worried.

[David]

I have a question.

[Ryan]

Go ahead.

[David]

Does Trump want a weaker dollar?

[Ryan]

I. I kind of think he does.

[David]

I think he does. So when like the dollar's going down and Trump is saying the dollar is doing great, he means I like what's happening here.

[Ryan]

It's hard to know with Trump. For me, it's hard to know with Trump because I. But who knows what he actually knows? It does feel like this is. When you listen to what things that Bessant says, for instance, Treasury Secretary, I think this is part of a plan, a weaker dollar. Right. It's just less hollowing of manufacturing in the U.S. i mean, we're talking about Triffin dilemma even last week. Right. So you sort of need a weaker dollar and you need dollars to be less of the world export and to weaken in terms of reserve currency power. If you're going to reverse the effects of the Triffin dilemma and start to bring some manufacturing back to the U.S. yeah.

[David]

So it's kind of, it's aligned with increasing tariffs. Like a lower dollar is effectively the same outcome as increasing tariffs, right?

[Ryan]

Yeah. I mean, in a way, if you do these things in kind of parallel. Right. It just seems to be an intentional economic strategy, which is the market is realizing this and the market is, I think overall Aside from the gold bugs you mentioned, which are a minority, most people, most, most US investors, most people don't have a lot of gold in their portfolio. And I think there's like a, oh shit, we better get some gold in our portfolio. And it's kind of a catch up that's happening right now. Speaking of catch up, David Tether. Tether now holds 140 tons of gold. This is worth about $23 billion. The CEO Paolo of Tether says he aims to allocate 10 to 15% of Tether's total treasury to physical gold inside of their investment portfolio. And they hold all of this gold in a cold war Swiss nuclear bunker. Okay, this is a, you see this chart? This is the value of Tether gold holdings. It's going up in dollar terms, but this is a share of their overall reserves which are going up and they're kind of going up at the cost of, I'm going to say bitcoin. Right. Because you know, Tether has non fiat reserves. Of course they have a ton of Treasuries but then they also have gold in bitcoin. And Paolo says he wants to increase this to 10 to 15%. It's at about 7% now. So this is effectively them from a relative perspective buying more gold than bitcoin, being more bullish.

[David]

On Tether, a central bank. Dude, Tether is a central bank, like.

[Ryan]

A central bank from the 1900s with like stablecoins.

[David]

They're going backwards in time.

[Ryan]

I looked this up if Tether were a country just in terms of gold holdings, right? In terms of treasury holdings, they're top 15 in terms of gold holdings right now. They're top 25. Top 25. They have far more gold than like a lot of G20 countries.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan]

Okay.

[David]

That's why we were joking in the beginning. Like when are they going to have like the top 10 army of the world?

[Ryan]

I knew why not like right now they're outsourcing that to Switzerland basically, who is kind of like the sovereignty and security in this nuclear. But like, I don't know, it's, it's, it's very strange I think and we haven't seen it in our times. And this is what Ray Dalio makes the comment of maybe we should leave with the Ray Dalio reminder, which is like in these unprecedented times you need to factor in the denominator changing on you. Here's how he puts it. But last year American stock market, American markets significantly underperformed foreign markets and people don't quite Realize that. And the best asset class in a sense was gold, because. But think of that as being the money. So in answer to your question, okay, I've, I've learned. That was a lesson. I learned that if there's a depreciation in the value of money, it makes everything look like it's going up. There you go. Reminds, right?

[David]

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Ryan, I'm done with gold. Can we talk about eth? Yes, I want to talk about eth. So there's been something going on on the Ethereum layer 1. Ethereum layer 1 transaction activity like transactions per second and total transaction volume ripping through the roof. Did you know this?

[Ryan]

Yes, I did know this.

[David]

We're just breaking through transaction all time highs. Pretty great. It's not for the best reason, however, because there is partially, partially, there's a, there's this thing going on called an address poisoning attack where somebody is doing this like kind of clever, nefarious, very evil, toxic thing where a scammer sends you a small transaction from a wallet that looks like a wallet that is yours. So maybe like the first few letters and the last few letters are the same, but the middle is completely different because of, you know, you can't perfectly have the same wallet. It's called an address poisoning attack. The goal is to trick you. If you are trying to like go get your own address to send yourself your own money or, or somebody, you go to your wallet page on like Etherscan and you go to the, the most recent transaction or something and you copy that address.

[Ryan]

By the way, this is why you should never do that. Yeah, for this very reason. Don't do that. But some people do, right?

[David]

And they, they know, they know the vibe of what their first four characters or their address looks like. So they go, and then they see it on their page where they would expect it to. But it was actually somebody who spun up a fake address to send them money in hopes that they would copy that one. And so then they send them. You, you mistakenly send that address the money. So what that takes is that you have to send basically every address on Ethereum a very small transaction, just like a, even like a transaction that effectively does nothing just to put it into the blockchain. And then they hope that people falsely copy that address and it almost never.

[Ryan]

Works, but it works 0.01% of the time and that's enough. So there was a case, right, where There was a 509K sent to an attacker's wallet because of this address poisoning. And that pays for the Whole operation pays for it.

[David]

Yeah. And the month before that, one victim lost $50 million. So that's also very profitable. One of the reasons why it is economically possible to do this is because Ethereum is so cheap these days.

[Ryan]

Sure.

[David]

So in one way it's a success story of Ethereum. In another way we're like, oh no, it's not great.

[Ryan]

Well, address poisoning is pretty easy to avoid if you like, don't do what we just said. But you know, I guess this is also a bit of a PSA on those types of attack. But. But still, you were going to give me the bull case for eth.

[David]

The bull case is that, you know, The Ethereum layer 1 is the cheapest that it's ever been and it's supporting the most transactions that it's ever been. And so like if you can support spam transactions at that scale, you can host so much more. So there's capacity on the Ethereum layer one. That's great. There's also a much more important topic in my opinion, ETH quantum. So this got announced from Justin Drake this week. He tweeted out today marks an inflection in the Ethereum Foundation's long term quantum strategy. So basically the EF has set up a quantum team to aggressively apply a lot of the research that the Ethereum foundation has been doing since like 2018, 2019. Ethereum post quantum like research efforts has been going on for forever. But since this is now like in vogue in the narrative and it's probably good for all blockchains to like, like broadcast what they are doing about quantum. This is exactly what's going on. So Justin Drake describes this as, after years of quiet R and D, the EF management has officially declared post quantum security a top strategic priority. And so they are. The Ethereum foundation is backing this whole effort with $2 million of prizes in order to just kind of improve some of the cryptography that runs ethereum. There's a $1 million Poseidon prize to harden this one hashing algorithm that is used heavily in ZK Systems and then another million dollar prize for another post quantum cryptographic research around/based ZK constructions. Basically there is money for people to just make Ethereum even more quantum resistant. And so. So a lot of stuff being put into production with this announcement from Justin Drake.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I think that the message is they're going to be ready when it happens, you know, and it could happen as early as like the early 2000-30s and Ethereum's going to be ready.

[David]

You mean Quantum Computers are ready to attack blockchains by the early 2000s.

[Ryan]

That's right. And as we've discussed, if that happens, Bitcoin is in a lot of trouble unless they do similar preparations. Because all chains need to replace some of their cryptography with quantum secure cryptography. I think Vivek from Etherealize agrees with you, David. He puts it this way, Ethereum will be more future proof than any other blockchain ecosystem. That's why the financial sector is moving onto Ethereum infrastructure. It is nice that EF doesn't have its head in the sand with respect to this because it definitely is an ETH holder.

[David]

That makes me feel very good. That is one. Like if. I'm sorry, if I was a bitcoin holder I would be sweating right now.

[Ryan]

Well, Nick Carter is a little bit that way.

[David]

Yeah, Nick Carter is sweating. And think God for Nick Carter because he's actually like doing something about it.

[Ryan]

There's more than Nick Carter, definitely. But a lot of the bitcoin social layer just seems to be just in denial about it. Not a big deal. We'll worry about that later.

[David]

It's going to be pretty funny when the bitcoin social layer has to basically just come around and copycat Ethereum's efforts in order to improve their own system. Wow, they're not going to like that.

[Ryan]

Well, I guess maybe this, maybe this news is bullish for Bitcoin then that Ethereum's going to forge the way here. But that's not the only reason to be bullish. Lorenzo from ark. This is Cathie Wood's outfit. They've been pretty bullish on ETH lately and Lorenzo gives a few reasons why.

[David]

Capital allocators like ARK and Cathie are all kind of trying to wrap their heads around quantum but also crypto. And so he puts out five things about why ETH is uniquely positioned. And I thought this was just a very good non hopium analysis of ETH's current positioning. 1. Store value plus quantum. We just talked about that. Commitment to quantum resistance makes ETH better long term set and forget store of value asset. That's what we're just talking about. 2. Immutable Forever will be a tougher sell. This is the problem that Bitcoin is running into. As AI finds vulnerabilities faster, the need for a system capable of safe upgrades like Ethereum becomes more credible than the immutable forever promise of simpler chains, which is Bitcoin.

[Ryan]

So there's no such thing as ossification in this?

[David]

Exactly. Like minimum ossification. Like just the whatever you need for be minimum viable ossification while still upgrading in case of something like quantum next. The cleanest monetary policy ETH has arguably the cleanest monetary policy we see in crypto. We've been talking about that since forever. With zero net inflation since the merge structural separation Ethereum's infrastructure. I thought this was really interesting Ryan. Ethereum's infrastructure doesn't compete with AI for power or capital insulating it from future security budget pressures that will intensify as AI spending grows. This was what we were talking about when we saw multiple bitcoin mining companies transition into ETH treasury companies where bitcoin service providers like companies that their job was to provide security to Bitcoin were throwing in the towel because being an ETH treasury company was a better business model because of staking and now also they are. This individual Lorenzo is integrating just the capital and energy demands that AI has is going to be more profitable than mining Bitcoin because mining bitcoin is not profitable as the happenings happen. I thought that was very very smart. It's very astute. And then lastly deflationary optionality. Ethereum's economics are currently sustainable but future growth in stablecoins tokenized assets payments could dramatically ramp up fee burn. So that's like the 15 5.

[Ryan]

So Van Spencer summarizes it. I wonder if he'd go this far. If the status quo plays out, ETH will be the only qu secure crypto asset and flip bitcoin in one to two years.

[David]

Dude, are we saying that word again?

[Ryan]

I didn't say it. Vance said it.

[David]

Vance said it.

[Ryan]

There you go.

[David]

That's there's like maybe I'm just in the pessimistic mode but just like ETH flipping bitcoin. Oh, I just said it because of quantum is like. Well, the more obvious way that that plays out is everything nukes. Bitcoin nukes super hard and ETH flips bitcoin while being down 40% of the day in dollar.

[Ryan]

It'll take a long time for that to play out if it does. But it is interesting to consider. I think I agree that the setup here is pretty nice but it might take some time. We might go lower. I think we're going to go lower before we get go higher. But it's a nice setup. It's a nice base layer for some catch up a little bit later.

[David]

Michael in the DOE is in your brain, dude.

[Ryan]

Yes, David. We're going to talk about the digital dollar and what is it? It's Fidelity's Digital dollar, I should say. And which blockchain are they deploying to? You're going to tell me about the the Mega eth main net and some of their performance that They've had and OpenAI's plan for Worldcoin. What is Sam Altman doing? We'll talk about all that and more. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

[David]

Few people in crypto put real skin in the game when they make public top or bottom calls. The Defi Report is one of them. The week before the October 10th flash crash, Michael from the Defi Report emailed his entire newsletter saying he's going aggressively right risk off and sold the majority of his book from crypto into cash. This is when Ethos about $4,000 and Bitcoin was 110. Michael runs the Defi Report, an industry leading research platform built on data cycle awareness, risk management, transparency and most importantly, skin in the game. We like Michael at Bankless. We like his analysis and that's why you hear him on the Bankless podcast.

[Ryan]

About once a month.

[David]

And the Defi Report is giving Bankless listeners one free month of access to the Defi Report. So if you're looking for some sharp data driven analysis to make better informed decisions around your portfolio, you can learn why and how Michael called the top and what he's doing next, all in the Defi Report Pro. Check it out. There is a link in the Show Notes. 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 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. Fidelity launched the Fidelity Digital Dollar last week. A USD stablecoin with a ticker FIDD on shocker. Ethereum, permissionless stablecoin. Everyone can use it, targeting both payments and also institutional settlement, which is what stablecoins do.

[Ryan]

Should.

[David]

Launched in early February 2026.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I think Simon Taylor, he's a fintech expert with stablecoin expertise. He's got a good perspective on this. He says Fidelity, the $6.8 trillion shadow bank, he calls them a shadow bank, just entered the chat. The stablecoin battle, I should say fidd launching in February on Ethereum. And he actually concludes that the banks, the existing incumbent banks, shouldn't be worried about Circle and Tether so much as they should be worried about Fidelity. Because Fidelity is not a bank, it's an asset manager.

[David]

But now it can do bank things.

[Ryan]

Yes, it can do bank things. And Fidelity is somewhat like BlackRock too. So Fidelity is moving. You wonder if BlackRock is going to move with a stablecoin as well. They could remember they're, they're. And so they could be competitive type banks in this type of setup.

[David]

And he's like, use Ethereum as their bank account.

[Ryan]

Yeah. And so, you know, Simon's making the point that this is actually a pretty big entrance here. And I think people forget this. I know you and I know this, Dave. But it's worth repeating for folks who don't know Fidelity has been in crypto for a long time.

[David]

Oh, yes, they were in crypto before Ethereum was a thing.

[Ryan]

Yeah, they're OGs. They don't get credit for that. They were mining bitcoin back in 2014. They were like paying for cafeteria lunch in bitcoin at that time. They've been experimenting for a while.

[David]

They were recruiting a lot of stuff.

[Ryan]

And they're bullish. Bitcoin, they're also bullish eth. They put a pretty good report last year that I read which talked about ETH as a story of value. I mean, they've got a good crypto out fit and a good head on their shoulders when it comes to applying some of this technology. So I think Simon's right. I think this is going to be a pretty big deal. Along with that, David Tether released their official onshore US shore. I should say Stablecoin. Okay, this is USAT that is now launched. This is Paulo saying an official Ethereum smart contract. USAT gives a link in Etherscan. Can you refresh, people? What is usat? Why does Tether need a second Stablecoin?

[David]

So they can be compliant with the genius bill. And so USAT is USA Tether as the second stablecoin out of Tether that is Genius compliant so that they can penetrate into the US market. I don't expect it to be that big, really. I kind of think it's going to be like Binance versus Binance usa. Like Binance USA had some traction, but really it was Binance that was the gargantuan. That's kind of my understanding.

[Ryan]

I kind of think that's right. And of course Genius compliant means everything has to be backed by treasuries 1 to 1. So tether can't do the cool thing that they really love doing, which is like fill Swiss nuclear bunkers full of gold.

[David]

Yeah, you're not allowed to do that with the Genius compliance stablecoin.

[Ryan]

No, you're not allowed to do that. And that's, I think, the fun stuff for Tether, of course.

[David]

All right, jumping to what I think might be the biggest announcement of this week is Mega Eth has announced the date of their public mainnet, which is 2 9, 2026. What date is that, Ryan?

[Ryan]

Well, I was brought up, I went to school in Canada, David. So I understand what this is trying to say, which is February of February 9, 2026.

[David]

All the Americans were like, why are you guys announcing a September 2nd launch day? What the hell's going on? It's so far away, right? No, no, no, no, no. February 9th. So next week, something like next week, maybe, maybe the start of the week after that. Something that they did this week prior is this Mega Eth global stress test which like we should have seen this coming. If they're doing a stress test, they're probably going to like launch their main net coming up soon. And so they did this stress test. They did mega eth 11 billion transactions in seven days, which is kind of crazy. And while doing just like spamming their own network with all types of transactions, they were also getting Mega Eth users to also use their own apps to make sure that the apps could still function. And reportedly no apps were disturbed in the middle of this like 7 billion transaction process. I want to do some some benchmarking, Ryan. I've got some, some comparatives to make some comparables. Inside the seven day stress test. The amount of block space that Mega Eth produced in this seven days is about 2x the amount of base block space that base has ever produced, ever, which is kind of crazy.

[Ryan]

In seven days, like another way to normalize those Metrics. It's between 18 to 35,000 transactions per second.

[David]

Yes.

[Ryan]

During this Test.

[David]

Yes. And so and again, just to make the comparable base has taken in $180 million of transaction fees over its lifespan. And the cost of all of the transactions over that seven day stress test for Mega ETH was $2 million. So Mega ETH just like spammed their own network for $2 million of transactions. And so you can just kind of see the, the contrast between the modern set of layer twos that we have and what, what Mega Eth has now, some asterisks. This is a controlled environment. It's run by Mega E itself. The network's not open to the public. So like it's not a perfect comparison since base is live and in production and in the wild and Mega Eth data is still somewhat like behind like closed doors. This is just their testnet. But like nonetheless I think it shows a pretty astounding like step function improvement in block space. I want to go to this website, growthepi.com Ryan, do you notice anything weird about this website right now?

[Ryan]

You're asking me about this, but I guess, okay, here's a spike on a chart. I see transaction count and throughput count has spiked up ever since January 25th.

[David]

The graph has completely just broken because why? What grow the pie does is it aggregates all of Ethereum's ecosystem's transactions including the layer one and also the layer twos. And the first charts that you see are the rolling basis of transactions. That is so the spike is Mega Eth being added to the aggregate transaction count of the Ethereum ecosystem and it just breaks the graph, it just goes straight up up. And not only that, but that is a seven day rolling basis. So that spike is being averaged out over the seven days that this stress test wasn't even happening. And so like the emphasis here is to just like illustrate how much more block space Mega Eth has.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I guess the scaling era is here for sure.

[David]

This morning, Thursday morning. Namik, who's one of the Mega Eth co founders, he introduced this kind of like tokenomics mechanism, I'll call it mechanism. They're calling it the KPI rewards. And I want to highlight this because this is something that I think is kind of like plaguing the industry about like why tokens aren't good investments. And so they, Mega Eth is introducing this thing called the four. They have a four KPI scoreboard category. So there's this KPI milestone unlocks for mega supply. They are taking 53% of the mega token supply and they are putting it, locking it behind these four different categories. So eco ecosystem growth, that's like TVL and stablecoin supply, Mega Eth decentralization, Mega Eth performance and also Ethereum decentralization. And they are locking 53,3% of the total supply of mega behind these KPIs. And these, they only get unlocked if the KPIs are met and they get unlocked. Two people who stake Mega Eth to that locking contract. And so if you want to get, if you are bullish Mega Eth, you would have to hold Mega. And then if you want the dilution of Mega Eth, it has to go to the people who are staking Mega Eth to that locking contract. So it's a mechanism that only transfers Mega Eth to people that have Mega Eth and want to lock up their Mega Eth. Because if you lock up more Mega Eth for longer, you get more of the unlocked Mega Eth tokens. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to be smart with their token dilution rather than giving it to like farmers or liquidity miners or anybody. They are just doing this mechanism that gets it straight to the hands of the people who have proven to be long term aligned with Mega Eth. This is pretty similar to what Cap Money is doing. Are you familiar with cap's stable drop?

[Ryan]

No.

[David]

They are doing an airdrop. So people that were farming cap points, this was a mega mafia startup, but now it kind of transitioned to the Ethereum layer one and people were farming the points and they are airdropping stablecoins, their own stablecoin because it's a stablecoin project to the people that farmed their points. And then they are doing a uniswap cca, they're doing a token sale. And so they are saying, hey, people that deposited capital into the Cap Money project, here is your compensation, here's your stable coins. And also we are doing a token sale if you choose to invest in the cap project. And so it's doing the same mechanism of allowing people to exit if they don't want to hold the token. Like, here's your dollars, you can go away now. But if you do want to hold the token, you can invest dollars. And so this is I think just a maturation of the whole token distribution paradigm that we've seen throughout crypto where projects are being very precise about who is getting their token so that tokens aren't just like bleeding out and down only. So I'm, this is like a meta that I'm following And I'm seeing both of this happen inside of Cap and also Mega Eth.

[Ryan]

So we figured out, we figured out distribution.

[David]

I think it's something that I'm watching. It's something that I'm watching.

[Ryan]

You just mentioned CCA auctions by Uniswap when you were talking about the distribution of Mega Ethereum. There's also this. Uniswap Labs announces auctions are coming to the Uniswap web app fully on chain, powered by CCA Discover Bid and claims starting February 2nd. What's going on here?

[David]

Yeah, this is in the same spirit of Coinbase doing token sales natively on Coinbase.com, coinlist also doing native token sales. Echo and Sonar doing token sales there. And this is Uniswap's product entering into that same field. And so, so Uniswap CCA in the background, but they also have like a front end for people to just participate in ccas. I think there are three there. One of them is the Cap Money cca.

[Ryan]

These are token launches.

[David]

It's a token launchpad. It's a token launchpad. No, that's not right. It's a token investment platform so you can participate in Uniswap launched tokens straight through their front end. And so it's like a liquidity bootstrapping mechanism for kind of what aspect is exactly what aspect. And now, and now Uniswap has a dedicated front end, which I think is pretty cool.

[Ryan]

Very cool.

[David]

There was an announcement this week, Ryan, that caught my eye. Robinhood invested in crypto trading platforms talos at a $1.5 billion valuation. So my big question was like, why, why would they invest instead of buy? And so that, that kind of perked my interest, I think, I think, Ryan, this is a precursor to them buying or at least formally integrating Talos into Robinhood and them having a share of it.

[Ryan]

What's Talos?

[David]

I'm glad you asked. Talos is a institutional trade lifecycle platform for digital assets. I'm going to rattle off some buzzwords, but then I'll define them. So they bring connectivity, order execution, management, request for quote system, smart order routing, all the post trade stuff and then fix. There's, there's a bunch of words in there that are trad words. Connectivity means that these are the pipes that let a trading system talk to other systems. So other exchanges, OTC decks, market makers, custodians. In this like standardized, reliable way without connectivity, you're basically one app connected to one venue. You, you are the app and the Trading venue. But with connectivity you can plug into many venues and route orders wherever the best liquidity and price is. Fix is a standard legacy standard for electronic trading. Messages stands for financial information Exchange. It's this industry wide language for sending orders and receiving, you know, bids and fills between firms and trading venues. Smart order routing is this algorithmic router that lets you just split up your order across multiple venues to get the best outcome. And then post trade is just the clearing, settlement and reconciliation. And also reporting why this is important right is I did this podcast a while ago called Coin Coin versus Hood and it was a debate between like who's a which, which is a better asset to invest in Coinbase vs.

[Ryan]

Hood.

[David]

And the outcome of that was that they are actually going in completely different directions. Robinhood has incredible distribution. They are going in one particular direction and Coinbase is doing this whole crypto white labeling service where like exchanges like Charles Swap or Fidelity or whatever can just plug into Coinbase versus with Coinbase's white labeling service in the back end and get access to Coinbase Exchange and provide the value of a crypto exchange to their customers. This is exactly what Robinhood just invested in with Talos. And so what I'm seeing here is Robinhood is trying to penetrate into Coinbase's strategy with a very large investment into this Talos company. Now I kind of would have expected them to like acquire it, but $1.5 billion is a lot. But what I'm seeing here is I'm seeing not a pivot, but an expansion of Robinhood's strategy to get more into Coinbase's territory with this investment. Speaking of Coinbase, they also announced that prediction markets are now up and running on the Coinbase app. We saw this coming from a long way off. They've always been planning on doing this, but this is now live inside of Coinbase. Politics and policy, economic, sports and culture. It's going to be interesting to see what they curate, which markets they specifically curate. But as of now, via Kalshi, Coinbase is now offering prediction markets for US users inside of all 50 states.

[Ryan]

OpenAI do you see this, David? OpenAI is building a social network and they are considering integrating worldcoin inside of it, at least the worldcoin capability. So I don't know yet why no one has solved the problem that we see across every single social media tool that we use in Web2, which is like who's a bot and who's a human? And it's getting more and more annoying. And I guess it can get more annoying because everybody kind of feels locked in to the social media networks that they use. Right. The network effect is just so large that we're willing to put up with all of this crap, but it is crap, to be honest. Like, I want to know. I'm talking to a human. I want to know who's a bot. And we can't do that. So this is OpenAI and Sam Altman saying, we're going to fix that. We're going to launch a OpenAI social network. Who knows what this looks like? I mean, it probably has AI in it.

[David]

Right.

[Ryan]

But we're going to use worldcoins capability to actually differentiate between the real humans and all of the robots, which I'm kind of interested in this. I don't know. I didn't look at the worldcoin chart on this news. Did that move at all?

[David]

Not that I saw. Not that I saw.

[Ryan]

Let me see.

[David]

Because people said that. I mean, it's up a little bit. It's up 3.5% cent on.

[Ryan]

Yeah, it did.

[David]

It went from 4 point from 46 cents up to 63 cents down to 47 cents. So it did have a bit of a spike. I'm Ryan, I'm bearish. Yeah, I'm bearish on this platform.

[Ryan]

Why? You just don't think OpenAI can build.

[David]

A social network that it's like, if this is valuable, then the existing social networks will simply just integrate it. And also I kind of think that like, Sam Altman is just doing what Sam Altman is familiar with with. So he, Sam Altman was at Y Combinator in the era of Peak Web 2 Attention Algorithm Optimization.

[Ryan]

Sure.

[David]

So it's like, to me, I'm saying, like, oh, like to Sam Altman, everything for it. To a hammer, everything is a nail.

[Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[David]

He's like, and I know what we'll do. We'll build a social network, bro. That was for the 2010s. Like, we are in the late. We're almost in 2010.

[Ryan]

But like, okay, who's going to solve the problem that I just stated though? Like, don't you think it's a problem?

[David]

Existing social network?

[Ryan]

Okay, so you think Twitter just adds that, but maybe they have to be forced to add that by competitors because they're not doing it right now. I had hopes that they would maybe not.

[David]

They're definitely not. And I have run into a ton of bots in the last two weeks. Let me tell you, they're the worst.

[Ryan]

Bots are the worst. They're nice bots out there, but you.

[David]

Just like, not the ones I was talking to.

[Ryan]

They have so much more time than we do. You just waste a lot of time.

[David]

That's a good point.

[Ryan]

Huge time wasters.

[David]

That's a good one.

[Ryan]

Back to the humans. David, I'm going to give you a crazy human story of the week. I know I was telling you little bit about this, but there's an emerging story that's happening in crypto that I just think is like really odd. Only in crypto. Kind of interesting. The son of a government contractor, who was the contractor, was responsible for custodying a portion of US government crypto funds that were seized. He is being, it looks like allegedly he stole $40 million of US seized crypto funds. I think this is primarily in bitcoin. And Zach XBT caught him doing this through some on chain sleuthing. Okay, so there's this government contractor called cmdss and some of the assets, crypto assets seized by the US Marshals were being cussed or they're responsible custodian in. In in some way was cmdss. The CEO has a son by the name of. His name is John De Gida. He also goes by the pseudonym Lick. Okay. And somebody caught Lick John flexing crypto wallets on a telegram chat. So there's a back and forth between John and this other guy and they were talking about their crypto stash and this was all recorded. And unfortunately for John, some of the addresses that he leaked during this chat, Zach Xpth sleuthed it out and connected it to government custodial wallets. And a $40 million theft, quite possibly. Now this is all alleged, so this is like ongoing U.S. government. U.S. marshals are looking into it, but it looks like this kid somehow got his hands on his dad's company's private keys that were actually.

[David]

How old do you think this kid is?

[Ryan]

I don't know, early 20s.

[David]

I don't think he's. I don't. I. No, dude, no, that is, that is. Okay. Maybe that watch is something like a 20s year old adult would want. But like that picture is like a picture I took in middle school. Like the. With the sunglasses dude. Yeah, I think he could be under 20.

[Ryan]

He's also launched a meme coin, by the way. So he's been in crypto for a while. There was the Solana Meme coin lick that was launched on Pump Fun. It's all connected to this guy's wallet. So can you believe if he literally stole $40 million from the US government on chain. How did this guy expect this to end?

[David]

I don't think he thought about that, bro. I don't think he was thinking that far ahead.

[Ryan]

All right, well, I guess we gotta wrap it up here. David, you got a meme of the week. What are we looking at?

[David]

I mean, I don't even know if this is a meme. This is just a hilarious photo of Vitala. Could you click on that and blow that up? This is Vitalik in a hammock having a good time, and then there's, like, a gaggle of people just around him kind of. You know what this reminded me of?

[Ryan]

What does it remind you of?

[David]

That scene in Forrest Gump where forest is just running, and then everyone's just kind of, like, watching him to do something. And everyone, it seems to me like everyone is just, like, watching Vitalik. Just, like. What's he say? Something smart.

[Ryan]

Say something wise.

[David]

Say something wise. Our. Our sage of our old sage who's so wise. That's a funny photo, dude.

[Ryan]

Yeah, it's classic. We gotta end it there, guys. None of this, of course, has been financial advice. You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Journey. Thanks a lot.