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Bankless
ROLLUP: Markets Spooked? | MegaETH & Monad Mania | New CFTC Chair | Base & Polymarket Tokens? | Circle Arc Backlash
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- [00:04]
Ryan Sean Adams
Bankless Nation. It is the last week of October and we should tell everyone happy Halloween, because it is Halloween day. I missed the costume, David. Yeah, I costume.
- [00:16]
David Hoffman
My costumes were tough this year.
- [00:18]
Ryan Sean Adams
Didn't come together. I know you had a fantastic idea. Why don't you tell me what you were planning to be so I can just imagine it in my head for the rest of this roll up.
- [00:26]
David Hoffman
Well, I was very excited to do the costumes, but then when I discovered that my co host did not have his costume, I took costume off and I. And I packed it up, but.
- [00:35]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yes, you did.
- [00:36]
David Hoffman
I'm. I was going to be wearing all my mountaineering gear. So you could imagine a climbing helmet, my two ice axes, a harness, some slings, my. My jacket.
- [00:46]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, that would actually really want to see that. That would have been a sweaty podcast though. Like you'd been overheated by the.
- [00:51]
David Hoffman
There would have been a lot of like Gore Tex going.
- [00:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
Some windows.
- [00:55]
David Hoffman
All right.
- [00:55]
Ryan Sean Adams
So I ran downstairs to see if I had anything and all I had was a Sam Bankman Freed wig, believe.
- [01:00]
David Hoffman
It or not, which is your costume from like two years ago. So you've already done that one.
- [01:03]
Ryan Sean Adams
And a Gryffindor scarf and a wand. It's my kids and I don't know.
- [01:07]
David Hoffman
How those go together.
- [01:08]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. So we couldn't make it work. But what I wanted to be, what I thought of this morning was actually just like bald. I just like the B. You know, bald is bullish. Just for the market. Just bald. Not good for that.
- [01:20]
David Hoffman
That would have been good.
- [01:20]
Ryan Sean Adams
You could have been. Happy Halloween to everyone who's actually dressed up. We got a lot to talk about today. It's time for the bankless weekly rollup. Of course, we got a glimpse of October earlier this week. I thought it was the month was.
- [01:32]
David Hoffman
Green between the days of Monday through Wednesday of this.
- [01:35]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, yeah. I thought we were back, baby. But Powell. Then Powell's speech happened and it seemed like he gave us everything I thought we wanted, but the markets hated it. We're going to talk about that.
- [01:45]
David Hoffman
What spooked markets?
- [01:46]
Ryan Sean Adams
Why are we going down?
- [01:47]
David Hoffman
We've got some crypto native tokens to talk about. Mega eth hit its ICO target within minutes. It is now 28 times over subscribed to the Mega ETH ICO. We also have the Monad token to talk about. We got valuations for both of those and from the words of a Poly Market executive, we have a polymarket token to talk about as well.
- [02:11]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. And the CFTC got a new nomination. Finally. They've got a chairman coming in. Also, JP Morgan tells us exactly how much the base token would be worth. Stay tuned for the answer there. If of course Coinbase launched a token and Solana racks up two wins on the week. They got an etf, their first staking ETF in size out there. Also Western Union launching a Stablecoin exclusively on Solana. There's a bit of controversy about that. And lastly circle Ark layer 1. Remember they were doing that? They went to Testnet right now and they're marketing, dude, they're marketing.
- [02:47]
David Hoffman
Pissed Ryan off.
- [02:48]
Ryan Sean Adams
I was a little chafed. It kind of triggered me. So we'll talk about all that and more. But David, before we do, we got to talk about 20 days until the Bankless Summit. This is the Bankless Summit. Where is this happening? What is it? Why are you so excited about it?
- [03:02]
David Hoffman
This is in DevConnect. So this is the second day of DevConnect, the Tuesday. So if you are going down to Buenos Aires for DevConnect, this is. We are taking over the whole Tuesday which is the first really day because the first day is all of the EF day, Ethereum day. So second day is Bakeless Summit day. So many speakers. ToMash from the EF, Onsgaard from the EF, Luca from layer 2B is talking about native roll ups. We got Mariano Conti, arjun Buktami a second Toluca from M0 Donkrad who was previously on the EF. He previously had a Little ETH logo, now he has the Tempo logo and we are going to get some of the first words from Tempo about the relationship with Ethereum. That's going to be Donkrad's talk. I'm pretty excited for this. This is going to be the last time you are going to hear from me about the Bankless Summit because Ryan and other people in the crypto ecosystem are taking over the roll ups because I'm about to be traveling and so you have no further warnings to go get your Bankless summit ticket before we sell out. We are close to selling out. We are going to sell out. If you get yourself down to Buenos Aires and you haven't got a Bankless Summit ticket, you might not get one. So this is your final warning to go get your Bankless Summit ticket and then we have an after party after the fact. If you buy your ticket you'll be also emailed another link to go sign up for the bankless afterparty which is happening at Fede's from Landa Class. His Wine bar. It's a great wine bar.
- [04:20]
Ryan Sean Adams
Love FedEx.
- [04:21]
David Hoffman
So we have a. We have a whole, whole bankless day of first content, then wine. It's going to be Great.
- [04:27]
Ryan Sean Adams
Sponsored by M0. Thanks for them for sponsoring as well. I mean, that's going to be a very high talent per capita room. You know, some all L1 recruiters should probably go get there and pick themselves up some Ethereum researchers, huh? Maybe Tembo should go.
- [04:41]
David Hoffman
Yeah. Tempo, come recruit. Yeah. I also forgot to say, Vlad from Lighter also just signed up to speak. That is actually the first time that has been released. But Vlad is coming in all the way from Europe to here to talk.
- [04:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
I'm so bullish about Lighter. Like I think they're doing L2's God's way.
- [04:57]
David Hoffman
If you know, Vitalik's way.
- [04:59]
Ryan Sean Adams
Dude, same thing. Let's talk about prices first. Let's give the picture before the FOMC meeting, before Powell's speech. Okay, so this is actually. No, this is not a crypto price chart. This is the.
- [05:13]
David Hoffman
Yeah, I was like, that's way too awesome.
- [05:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
Looking to be a crypto chart. The S and P hit a high. It hit a high on Wednesday. Earlier this week, all time high. So stocks at all time high, NASDAQ similar. All time high this week. Actually the NASDAQ and the S and P are like pretty similar right now. It's all MAG7. You're looking at one trade here, which is the AI trade, of course, that dominates the markets all time high. And then it went down and so did crypto. So crypto is not all time high, but it was doing well up until Wednesday. So Bitcoin had recovered above 115k and ether had recovered a little bit too. It was above 4,000, so 4,232. And then we got Powell's speech. And where are we right now on prices for the week?
- [06:00]
David Hoffman
We are down on the week. Like I said earlier, we had nudged green, so there was a moment in time where we were green on the week and also on the month. We are, we are now down. Both Bitcoin and ethereum are down 1.5% on the week each. $108,000 for Bitcoin and $3,800 for ETH.
- [06:17]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay, so what happened? We're going to talk about that. One thing I want to say though, David, is there's still some hope out there lurking for the gold catch up trade. And this is none other than Sir Tom Lee saying it's worth keeping an eye on. What happened with the gold top in 2020 and Bitcoin following that aggressively. After gold topped in 2020, Bitcoin had its top just mere weeks and months later. And that same thing could be playing out right now. So we still got some gold catch up trade. Just it's not happening in October. Okay.
- [06:51]
David Hoffman
There's still a chance we could save.
- [06:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
That for November and December. So why were we up originally? Well, it seemed like we just had some good news. Right. So stocks were, you know, performing well. Cpi, there was a CPI report earlier this week for September and it came in at about 0.3% for the month. So that was 0.1% lower than expected. So CPI was doing well. I think markets were anticipating a Fed rate cut and going in. So the week was getting bullish. And then Jerome Powell came in and he gave his speech. And what did he say? This is the tweet.
- [07:32]
David Hoffman
He said, fed rate cuts by 25 bips. Second rate cut in 2025. That was according to the plan. The Polygon market predicted this. There was Mirren who dissented. Dissented in favor of 50 bips. That always happened.
- [07:46]
Ryan Sean Adams
He wanted more. That's Trump's guy.
- [07:47]
David Hoffman
Yeah, he always. He won. He wants that. There's another one who dissented in the opposite way for. For no rate cuts. And then the Fed says it will stop shrinking its balance sheet on December 1st. Which I'm like reading that. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're going to stop shrinking the balance sheet. That means we are going to. That's like if that's effectively by pressure or the removal of cell pressure.
- [08:09]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's right. The removal of quantitative tightening.
- [08:12]
David Hoffman
The removal of quantitative tightening. So like QE ish. QE adjacent. Yeah, that's bullish. And then they said the Fed says downside of risks to employment has risen. So that's kind of like scary, but other. Otherwise it feels like we're in aligning of the stars. So what's going on here?
- [08:30]
Ryan Sean Adams
Doesn't that feel like everything we. Like we're hoping for everything we want everything.
- [08:36]
David Hoffman
Go to the moon. I thought. What was the plan? That was the plan.
- [08:40]
Ryan Sean Adams
All right. Well, I think one question before we get to why markets reacted in the opposite direction. Maybe we'll flesh out some of the things you said. So of course the rate cuts is fairly straightforward. 25 bips rate cut. So that happened. But this whole quantitative tightening thing and that stopping, like, what exactly does that mean? There's a question posed to Lynn Alden. They asked, is this basically money printing? Is this QE now, what is this? Lyn Alden says it's money printing. Whether it's qe. QE or not is more semantics. That part doesn't matter. The Fed won't ever call it qe. Of course they won't, since it's not duration and it's not for explicit, explicit economic stimulus. To take a look at the Fed balance sheet, which is what we're talking about, and qt, which has been happening, you have to look at this chart. So this is the Fed balance sheet since 2008 or so. And you can see the regime that we've been in since 2022 is basically quantitative tightening. So the Fed balance sheet, believe it or not, I mean, fiscal stimulus, fiscal dominance, US Debt has been skyrocketing. But the Fed balance sheet has shown some restraint. Since 2022, they've been tightening the balance sheet. So the balance sheet, the ADIQ way.
- [09:55]
David Hoffman
To articulate this chart is when the line goes up, it means the Fed is buying our bags. And when the line goes down, it means the Fed is dumping on us.
- [10:05]
Ryan Sean Adams
Well, yes, it means when the line goes up, there's money printing. They're literally printing money out of thin air. And when it goes down, they're actually burning money. So they're actually destroying money.
- [10:15]
David Hoffman
Yeah.
- [10:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay, this is a really interesting chart. So it was. Your total assets were about 8.9 million, near the peak. Billion. Excuse me? Trillion. Wait, what, what denomination am I in trillions?
- [10:29]
David Hoffman
800 8.9 million millions or something like that.
- [10:33]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's trillion. 8.9 trillion. Okay. In 2022. And then we've been going down, so now we're at about 6.6. So what the Fed is basically saying we're no longer going down. So this, this will no longer go down. It won't necessarily go up, but it will stabilize.
- [10:49]
David Hoffman
Yeah.
- [10:49]
Ryan Sean Adams
And if you look at this chart throughout history, David, you go back to before the great financial crisis, we were in the millions on the Fed balance sheet. This was like normal times. And then what happened, you can see after the great financial crisis, we started to get. Do you remember QE1, QE2, QE3. You can see that on the chart. That was like money printing one, money printing two, money printing three. We went from 800 billion on the Fed balance sheet to 4.4 trillion by 2014. So in the course of that was the great financial crisis. And then things smoothed out for a bit. And in fact, we got into a quantitative tightening regime. So showed some discipline, showed some constraint up to about 2019. And then there was some rockiness in the markets.
- [11:38]
David Hoffman
The repo markets did not like that.
- [11:40]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's right. And then look at this spike. When does this spike happen? Covid. Covid spike boom.
- [11:45]
David Hoffman
And Covid was just the excuse of just like, yo, we need to react hard and fast. And also our constituents are going to love it if we helicopter them. Money. This was let's unlimited go to the money printer.
- [11:55]
Ryan Sean Adams
This was unlimited qe and basically we did it in a hurry. And then we shoot from like 4.1 trillion all the way to let's see where we were at the top in 2022. So that's the story of this line, where we're actually going to see the money printing is probably not in this line. This is going to stabilize, but it's probably going to be on bank balances. All right, so what we'll see likely in the months ahead into 2026 is some additional additions to bank reserves, which is the equivalent of Lyn Alden saying it's money printing. And that's going to go on the commercial bank balance.
- [12:34]
David Hoffman
Money printing with extra steps.
- [12:36]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yes. So this chart will not necessarily go up, but this one probably will. And that's more money printing. So Peter Schiff has some words about this. What's he say?
- [12:48]
David Hoffman
He says, despite rising inflation, that's 50% above target and 4k gold, the Fed made the mistake of cutting rates again. Also, with a $6.7 trillion balance sheet, the Fed is prematurely ending QT in December. This proves Bernanke was wrong. Like a banana republic, the US did monetize QT debt. Actually, can you help me understand what he means?
- [13:10]
Ryan Sean Adams
Well, he's just saying, you know that 6.7 trillion that's on this chart right here? Right. It's no longer going down. And if you think of the 6.7 trillion, that's money the US owes itself. Kind of weird, right? Yeah, that's money that effectively like the Federals, Treasury.
- [13:26]
David Hoffman
Yes.
- [13:27]
Ryan Sean Adams
And so if you add that 6.7 trillion and then you add the 40 trillion or so, I don't know, 38, 39 trillion in U.S. debt that we have, that's our total debt. So he's just saying, like this is the Peter Schiff talking point. Right. He's just saying now we've switched to an easy money regime, like, we're not ready to take any of the pain that it would actually require to be more disciplined. In this, in this line over here.
- [13:54]
David Hoffman
That'S what you say the Bitcoin argument is that we're Never, ever going to take that pain. We're just going to inflate because it's the least painful way to solve that problem.
- [14:03]
Ryan Sean Adams
How dare you call that. This is Peter Schiff. That's the gold argument, sir. It's not the Bitcoin argument. Okay? This is the gold argument.
- [14:09]
David Hoffman
I listen to Peter Schiff on Thread Guy, and we've done an episode with Peter Schiff. And I go over to Thread Guy, I'm like, all right, Thread Guy, let's see what you got. Can you get Peter Schiff off of his algorithm, off of his gold. Gold stumps? No, you can't. Computer, Schiff off the stump speech. No, it's just like, he's got one mode. He's got one mode. Yeah.
- [14:27]
Ryan Sean Adams
I heard there was going to be a Peter Schiff Czech debate to talk about that. That's like pure entertainment right there, dude. We did have that episode earlier this week recorded with Luke Roman. Did that make you more bullish on Gold? Because that was his whole platform.
- [14:43]
David Hoffman
Make me more bullish on Gold? Yes.
- [14:45]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, I feel that for sure. All right, let's get back to the main thread, which is like, why did the market.
- [14:51]
David Hoffman
So we still haven't answered the question why the markets went down. Because like we said, we were getting. Everything we have said so far is bullish. Why did the markets go down?
- [14:58]
Ryan Sean Adams
Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. Okay, so in addition to all of the things that Powell was doing with Easy Money, he said in the committee's discussions in this meeting, there were strongly differing views about how to proceed in December. Remember you mentioned those two different governors having differing views. And he said this. A further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion. Far from it. Okay, okay, wait.
- [15:24]
David Hoffman
So the last time we brought up the polymarket to talk about Fed rate cuts, we were like, and then we can go to the next one. We are currently at the next one. And that when we checked in on it, it was like 90% chance.
- [15:34]
Ryan Sean Adams
The October one?
- [15:34]
David Hoffman
Yeah, the October one. It was a 90% chance we were going to cut 25 bips. And then we even went to the December one. And the December one has something like an 85% chance that we were going to cut 25 b dips. You're saying what Powell just said is the December one. He's like, there is less consensus about cutting in the December meeting than there was previously. Which is actually what you're showing on the chart with Polymarket. So the odds kind of like plummeted from almost a sure thing to now just a mostly likely thing.
- [16:01]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's exactly right. So they plummeted from 90% certainty that we'd get a 25 bip decrease in December. So this would happen December 9th and 10th all the way down to a 70%.
- [16:12]
David Hoffman
And so the markets jittered that much. Yeah, it's because I'm calling, I'm calling shenanigans.
- [16:20]
Ryan Sean Adams
No, it's, it's, it's, it's forward guidance. Right. That's what the Fed is effectively given. And so everyone like reads these lines like, listen to this, David. A further reduction in the policy rate. December meetings, not a foregone conclusion. Don't you price that in market? Far from it. That's what he said. And so the markets didn't like that.
- [16:38]
David Hoffman
Yeah, I am, I'm calling shenanigans on the market. I think the market's just being jittery and I will stay in my, in.
- [16:47]
Ryan Sean Adams
My bullish to that.
- [16:49]
David Hoffman
I'm, I'm unfazed, David. I think the Fed knows exactly what it's doing when it says, hey, we are not totally sure about like, hey, market, don't be so sure that we're going to cut. And then in the background they might be like, we're totally going to cut.
- [17:04]
Ryan Sean Adams
I mean, if Powell doesn't cut, he gets fired by Trump. Right. There's some immovable forces out there. I mean, and to say the market coughed up like it did it really that much. So after this, S And P fell 1%. It's just, we felt that a lot harder in crypto because you're 1% in.
- [17:18]
David Hoffman
The S and P. It's kind of a lot. That's a lot.
- [17:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
But I mean, what is like 4 or 5% in crypto? So it just, it hurt us more, didn't it? Because the markets in crypto were already jittery.
- [17:27]
David Hoffman
Yeah, we're, we're already in like a compromised position. Like there is fear in the crypto markets right now, which is also kind of why I'm bullish.
- [17:33]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay. So somebody asked Powell, they were like, hey, Powell is AI in a 1990s style tech bubble. What do you think he said?
- [17:41]
David Hoffman
I don't know.
- [17:43]
Ryan Sean Adams
You know what he said? This is an actual quote. This is different.
- [17:47]
David Hoffman
This time it's different.
- [17:48]
Ryan Sean Adams
He didn't say this time, he said this is different. You said in the sense that these companies, the companies that are so highly valued, actually have earnings and stuff like that. Stuff like that. So Powell's like, no, there's Some earnings here. In contrast to the 2000s tech bubble. It was all just, like, business plans and eyeballs and advertising.
- [18:10]
David Hoffman
Yeah. You could spin up a website and IPO for like, a bajillion dollars. That's not what's going on.
- [18:14]
Ryan Sean Adams
Right. That's what we would like to believe, right?
- [18:17]
David Hoffman
Yeah. I don't know if anyone truly knows they're in a bubble when they're in a bubble.
- [18:21]
Ryan Sean Adams
I actually don't like that Powell is saying that. It makes me feel like we're more likely to be in a bubble if he's saying we're not in a bubble.
- [18:30]
David Hoffman
Anyway, you were in crypto in 2017, in November, December of 2017. Did you know we were in a bubble?
- [18:36]
Ryan Sean Adams
No, like in.
- [18:38]
David Hoffman
Well, because that was the frothiest bubble of all time.
- [18:41]
Ryan Sean Adams
In crypto.
- [18:41]
David Hoffman
You're talking about in crypto. In crypto, yeah.
- [18:43]
Ryan Sean Adams
For those that were there. For those that remember, it was insanity. Yeah. But in those moments, everyone's so kind of like, drunk. Right.
- [18:51]
David Hoffman
I was so drunk.
- [18:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
You're just drunk on the market. Yeah. You know, and that's maybe why we're not in a bubble. But although. So do you see OpenAI raising at 1 trillion, like, potentially going public at 1 trillion?
- [19:02]
David Hoffman
Yeah, that one. That one.
- [19:04]
Ryan Sean Adams
There's some drunk people out there. It's not in crypto. There's some drunk people out there, though.
- [19:08]
David Hoffman
Yeah.
- [19:09]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay. So that's the story about markets, I guess maybe one additional story that's kind of good and should be bullish, but whatever wasn't on the week is their major news. The Trump and President Xi from China. The 100% tariff on China is no longer live. Apparently they had good talks. And this is the taco trade, right? Trap boys. Chicken salad.
- [19:31]
David Hoffman
Chicken out. Ryan, he was negotiating.
- [19:34]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yes, he was negotiating. But this is the conclusion from the Kobayasi letter. This round of the U.S. china trade war is over, basically. Yeah. President Xi will be visiting the US after an amazing meeting that had just like, such a great, amazing meeting, David.
- [19:47]
David Hoffman
And this is the thing. The whole China trade war thing was the thing that jittered the market. And now people in crypto still have fear that the cycle is over and the trade war is over. But then some crypto people are like, cycle's over. Yeah.
- [20:00]
Ryan Sean Adams
Well, you know what? This was also some news on the week that didn't make me feel great, which is like Amazon, it felt like out of nowhere, but they're like, yeah, we're going to cut 30,000 positions. 30,000.
- [20:11]
David Hoffman
30,000. That's like more jobs than are in crypto, I think.
- [20:16]
Ryan Sean Adams
So it's probably a lot more, honestly, 30,000 positions. And this is morning brew with some other job cuts like Target cutting 1800 roles, Paramount cutting 2000 jobs. So there's some cost cutting. And what all of these have in common, or at least this is the narrative, is automation and AI adoption. That's the reason that some of these labor forces are being cut. This goes back to Powell's comment that labor markets, I don't know, they're looking a little unsteady. So that's something to watch too. And I think goes into the jittery feeling just in general, even though, oh my God, we're only like, we're just off all time highs in the stock market.
- [20:55]
David Hoffman
Yeah, I mean the stock market climbs a wall of worry. Like layoffs, I don't think are that crazy. Crazy, but that's a big one. At the same time, I would like further analysis and like information to come out about some of the reasoning behind it. Because like, I think it's easy to say, like, yeah, it's AI, but like, I don't know if that's really the complete truth.
- [21:13]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, probably not. I mean, but Jeff park makes the point. Amazon laying off 30,000 people is all you need to know of why the Fed is in this paralysis right now and why Powell toned down some of.
- [21:24]
David Hoffman
His comments, I guess because they don't wait. But if there are big layoffs, he would want to cut rates though, right?
- [21:34]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, I guess he would. You know, so. So I don't know. This could push them in one direction.
- [21:40]
David Hoffman
Layoffs plus a. Like a strong market, I think is actually, it's actually kind of bullish because he's. You have even more reason to cut.
- [21:50]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh, okay. You what, you want to get into the Powell speculation game too, huh, David?
- [21:54]
David Hoffman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so I was wrong. The number of people that are employed by crypto. Uh, I mean, I don't know if anyone really knows this. I just, I just asked ChatGPT thinking. So it thinks a decent amount and it says what's likely today? 200 to 250,000 total jobs.
- [22:10]
Ryan Sean Adams
What?
- [22:11]
David Hoffman
Yeah.
- [22:11]
Ryan Sean Adams
Wow, that's.
- [22:12]
David Hoffman
That's big. Yeah.
- [22:13]
Ryan Sean Adams
I can't believe that. I don't believe that. Yeah, maybe. I mean, what are they counting? Who knows what they're counting?
- [22:18]
David Hoffman
I have no idea.
- [22:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
All right.
- [22:19]
David Hoffman
I have no idea.
- [22:20]
Ryan Sean Adams
Um, speaking of financial markets, I guess in general, the Solana ETF went live. Actually, this is the big one that people were waiting for. And how did it Go.
- [22:31]
David Hoffman
The real non janky Solana ETFs. The one that's existed prior to this. I think technically the technical term is called janky. But no, we have some real ones. BSOL has started with Bitwise's Solana, $56 million of volume. Sorry, is that volume?
- [22:51]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, that was final tally of day one trading. So that's net inflows, I think.
- [22:55]
David Hoffman
Net inflows. Okay.
- [22:57]
Ryan Sean Adams
Actually I have updated numbers. So 70 million net inflows for BSOL. That's Bitwise's one on day one and then day two. Actually 72 million. And Eric Balchina said this is the strongest ETF launch this year. Of course, like, you know, Ethereum and Bitcoin were last year.
- [23:13]
David Hoffman
There's only been this one.
- [23:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
Nah, there was litecoin. I don't know, there's been some others, haven't there?
- [23:18]
David Hoffman
It's kind of, I guess he's saying ETFs globally.
- [23:21]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah.
- [23:22]
David Hoffman
So like with a gangbuster bitcoin and ether ETFs. I would expect that the Solana ETF would also have similar momentum.
- [23:30]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, and it kind of has done that, at least at first. So Bitwise Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, those are some of the big names. Notably absent is Blackrock. They're not doing a Solana ETF at this point. But James Seyfert said, you have to remember Solana's market cap is 5% of bitcoins and 22% of Ethereum. If they keep the flows that we've seen for eth and Bitcoin ETFs. So again, we're just a couple days into this. We don't know, but that would equate to 3 billion in flows in the next 12 to 18 months. I think that's possible. That's also a big if. Like if there is Bitcoin ether level institutional demand, it could do this. Solana traded down on this. This is fully anticipated. The market's priced in, it's just down. Just the way everything else is down.
- [24:18]
David Hoffman
Yeah, interesting that like BlackRock of course has Bitcoin and Ether ETFs. And I've talked to, we've talked to the Blackrock team. They're like, yeah, we're not launching a sole ETF because we don't see sufficient demand to justify it, which gives Bitwise a way they don't have to compete with blackrock in the Solana market. So I'm sure Bitwise is very happy about that.
- [24:36]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, that definitely must be nice. David. Ethereum ETHzilla so this is a dad, I think they were number four, number five. They sold some ether on the weekend.
- [24:45]
David Hoffman
Yeah. This is the first time an Ethdat has sold eth and it's. They did that after the ethz, which is the ticker for Ethzilla, was materially under NAV for a sustained period of time. And so they announced that they are buying back $250 million of its of its shares with capital funded by selling eth.
- [25:07]
Ryan Sean Adams
Well that was.
- [25:08]
David Hoffman
And then that brought the premium to NAV much higher. So easy.
- [25:11]
Ryan Sean Adams
So to be clear, they, that was. They have 250 million buyback authorization. They only did, they only did 12 million, so.
- [25:18]
David Hoffman
12 million.
- [25:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh wow. But the point is they sold some ETH in order to buy back their shares and a lot of ETH bulls were like dad's Ethereum DATs aren't supposed to sell, they're only supposed to buy you. That's what Tom Lee does. He only buys like so far. Right? Yeah. What's your take on like why they sold? Is this a big deal? What do you think?
- [25:37]
David Hoffman
Yeah, I mean if you're the whole, in theory, as an, as a purchaser, as investor into one of the DATs, if you buy a DAT below one MNAV, you're like, well I'm buying discounted ETH and because this company's totally going to sell their assets to, to return the M Nav to one. And so it's kind of like rational there because in theory the stakeholder shareholders of a DAT ought to be the first class citizens rather than the asset underneath. And then the Ethereum people are like, no, no, no, you guys, you're supposed to just buy and hold ETH forever. You're supposed to never sell. Yeah. And so like, yeah. And so the E to Z holders, the shareholders are supposed to be the first class citizens. And so this is aligned with that, which makes sense.
- [26:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
And they were happy about this. Price was up 14%. Right. Closer to M nav of one. They're still under. But the NAV was like, I don't know, 0.6 or something or 7. It was ridiculous.
- [26:30]
David Hoffman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like that, that makes sense. I think the bigger question is like the game theoretic question is like what does this do for forward momentum of Ethzilla? Does this bolster investor confidence and lead to more people buying the Eth Z asset or does this makes ether seem weak because they had to sell Ether now the total amount of ETH on the balance sheet went down Even though Ether per share went up, total thing.
- [26:55]
Ryan Sean Adams
Total down, you want ETH per share, you want volume of trading in the stock and you also want total ETH to all go up. And some of those things are in conflict right now. So I don't hate it. Whatever. What's coming up next?
- [27:09]
David Hoffman
Coming up next, we're going to talk about the Mega Eth public sale being materially oversubscribed. We're going to talk about the Poly Market CMO confirming the Poly token. We're also going to talk about the Monad incoming token and the valuations for both Monad and Mega Eth and the base token which is, you know, they didn't confirm the base token, but JP.
- [27:29]
Ryan Sean Adams
Morgan, we can speculate on how valuable.
- [27:31]
David Hoffman
It is, JP Morgan is speculating on how valuable it is and so we're going to talk about that and more. But first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic spots, sponsors that make this show possible, like Uniswap. It's a browser wallet, it's a mobile wallet. It's the fastest chain in crypto. It's the best place to do defi. Let's go hear from Uniswap. Right now, Ethereum's layer 2 universe is exploding with choices. But if you're looking for the best place to park and move your tokens, make your Next stop Unichain first. Liquidity. Unichain hosts the most liquid Uniswap v4 deployment on any layer 2, giving you deeper pools for flagship pairs like ETH USDC. More liquidity means better prices, less slippage and smoother swaps. Exactly what traders crave. The numbers back it up. Uni Chain leads all layer twos in total value locked for Uniswap V4. And it's not just deep, it's fast and fully transparent. Purpose built to be the home base for defi and cross chain liquidity. When it comes to costs, Uni Chain is a no brainer. Transaction fees come in about 95% cheaper than Ethereum Mainnet, slashing the price of creating or accessing liquidity. Want to stay in the loop on uni chain? Visit unichain.org or follow @ unichain on X for all the updates. Imagine a world where traditional finance meets the power of blockchain seamlessly. That's what Mantle is pioneering with Blockchain for banking, a revolutionary new category at the intersection of TradFi and Web3. At the heart is you are the world's first money app. Built fully on chain, it gives you a Swiss IBAN account blending fiat currencies like the Euro, the Swiss Franc, the United States Dollar or the Renminbi with crypto all in one place. Enjoy real world usability and blockchain's trust and programmability transactions. Post directly to the blockchain compatible with your Tradfi Rails and packed with integrated DEFI futures. UR transforms Mantle Network into the ultimate platform for on chain financial services, unifying payments, trading and assets like the MI4. The Meath Protocol and functions FBTC backed by developer grants, ecosystem incentives and top distribution through the UR app reward stations and BYBIT launch pool for MNT holders. Every economic activity in you are drives value back to you embodying the entire stack and future growth of this super app ecosystem. Follow Mantle on X at Mantel Underscore Official for the latest updates on Blockchain for banking. That's x.com/mantle underscore official introducing Kgen aka Verify, the world's largest verified distribution protocol or VDP. If you're trying to grow a real protocol or app, you need real users doing real actions. If it's not Verify, it's just noise. At the core of Verify is Poggy Kjens Identity and Reputation framework. It helps you reach humans, not bots. Improves what your users actually did so your budget goes to the right people. With Verify, you can run Veri user acquisition with confidence, keeping people coming back with retention tools like loyalty rewards, quests and achievements and even power AI training and evaluation using trusted verified user groups, ensuring your models learn from clean data. And when it's time to reward your community, there's the K Store, a global rewards marketplace where users can redeem perks that connect directly back to your app. Put simply, when growth is built on real users, you grow faster. And that's exactly what Verify delivers. If you're building a web 3ai or gaming, request a demo to grow your protocol@www.cajen.IO demo. That's www.kgen.IO demo. We got three of the probably most exciting tokens launching this year to talk about Mega Eth Polymarket or maybe soon.
- [30:40]
Ryan Sean Adams
To be launching because soon to be launching. Yeah, we'll see.
- [30:43]
David Hoffman
Yeah, well I said 3 mega eth polymarket monad.
- [30:47]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh right.
- [30:48]
David Hoffman
Yes, Polymarket might be next year, but whatever, we're gonna talk about em right now. So Mega Eth ICO reached their target within minutes. So the sale for Mega eth hit its 50 million limit inside of just a few moments of it being launched and then the allocations continue to flow In So it was like a 3 day long sale or whatever. We are now 28x over subscribed.
- [31:11]
Ryan Sean Adams
How is the sale conducted? This wasn't like a 2017 ICO, right? Was this on Kobe's platform?
- [31:17]
David Hoffman
Yes, this was on Kobe's platform, Sonar, which is the more public version of Eko, which is where Eko started. So this is a public ico, so you had to be an accredited US investor or a non US investor. And then you had to kind of go through a KYC process and you had to pass tests of investor sophistication. So there were some frictions. You know, the ICOs of old were like, send eth here and get back tokens. And I don't care who you are.
- [31:44]
Ryan Sean Adams
It may have been illegal.
- [31:46]
David Hoffman
You know, maybe it's slightly illegal, but it was fun.
- [31:50]
Ryan Sean Adams
Well, you think, you think this is fun too, right? Like, you think this is a good thing. I saw you.
- [31:54]
David Hoffman
I think, I think ICOs are just like. You remember when we did the whole like airdropping farm meta. So like we had airdrops which are great, but then they got abused and then we had the points and that was okay, but then they got abused. Everything has gotten abused.
- [32:08]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah.
- [32:08]
David Hoffman
And I feel. I feel bad for some of the orgs that like had to deal with this, like being the brunt of the abuse because they had to deal with inferior token distribution mechanisms because that's just the environment that they were created in. Thanks, Gary. ICOs are just an ungamable token distribution mechanism and they like, they just ask retail investors like, hey, put your money where your mouth is. Like, are you bullish this thing or are you just farming the token on Twitter and on Discord?
- [32:37]
Ryan Sean Adams
It is cool. I mean, it does kind of suck that we have accredited investor laws though, right?
- [32:40]
David Hoffman
Yes, agree.
- [32:41]
Ryan Sean Adams
Because that's just like. That totally limits it. But that I. That's the law.
- [32:46]
David Hoffman
That's the law. It's the law should go away. But that's the law that we have.
- [32:49]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. So this is better. Better than that. And your experience was good with this. Were they underpricing these tokens in the ICO as well?
- [32:57]
David Hoffman
I mean, you tell me. They priced the sale between 1 million and 999 million valuation. And so the idea is like, when you submitted your bid, you could submit up to $186,000. The speed of light was the fun fact. It was like the speed of light was like the limit.
- [33:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's like, of how much you could invest.
- [33:17]
David Hoffman
Of how much you could invest. And you would Also price. You would also price it and then enough people priced it at $999 million that likely anyone below that is not going to have their bid accepted.
- [33:29]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay, so that was everyone bought it in at a billion. I'll round that to a billion dollars.
- [33:33]
David Hoffman
Yes. The reason why it's $999 million is because they wanted it to be not a unicorn. So, so retail investors could buy in at a pre unicorn valuation.
- [33:43]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh, technical.
- [33:44]
David Hoffman
Technical. Yeah.
- [33:46]
Ryan Sean Adams
But this is probably undervaluation, right? Considering that kind of the futures markets right now that are valuing this higher than the billion.
- [33:53]
David Hoffman
Correct. We'll, we'll talk about the futures markets after we talk about monad. But yes, you are correct. This is coming in under market which is why it's oversubscribed so much because everyone's like, oh, the futures market are pricing this way higher. This is at least a 3X. So I'm going to go fat max bid.
- [34:07]
Ryan Sean Adams
Wow, this participation is blowing my mind. Is this true? A hundred thousand users kyc. Over 70,000 Twitter users. 100,000 participated in this.
- [34:16]
David Hoffman
Yeah, I think crypto is bigger than we're giving it credit for. Dude.
- [34:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
Maybe we do have 260,000 influence.
- [34:22]
David Hoffman
I mean people have got to buy. This is inclusive of Asia too. So like Mega Eth has pretty good Asia connections. So like all of Asia is getting involved with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 5% of the tokens were sold of the total supply. And so. Yeah, and then if you accepted a one year lockup you got a 10% discount. And if you were an American citizen you had to accept the 10 year lockup which. Or excuse me, one year lockup. Yeah. And so right now the ball is in the Mega Eth court. So they have all the bids and so now they are manually going through and like approving or denying people based on who they are their on chain activity. And so if you were like for example a depositor into the CAPS program, shout out to anyone who listened to that bankless episode, you got favorable allocation.
- [35:07]
Ryan Sean Adams
Wow.
- [35:07]
David Hoffman
Because that's a mega project. It's a mega Eth project. Yeah. And so there were some criteria to, to boost your chance of having an increased allocation.
- [35:17]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's great. I saw some estimates of what the FTV could end up at. But of course it's probably bullish people who are looking at this. But this one account was trying to project actual revenue. So this is supposed to be a rev rev generating token. Right. And I don't know, you could read the all the details, include a link in the show notes, but in the base case, this person says about 300 million in revenue per year is what Mega Eth could off put, which means 10 billion FDV. So if that's the case, people got to steal on this.
- [35:48]
David Hoffman
I don't know how he's backing into that valuation.
- [35:50]
Ryan Sean Adams
Might take some time to play out. Let's just say that.
- [35:53]
David Hoffman
Okay, next up, talking about Polymarket. So this is an interview on a podcast with Matthew, the Polymarket cmo. Let's go hear what he said. There will be a token. There will be an airdrop. And look, I think, I think, you know, we really pride ourselves on being the most thorough company we hope to be in the world.
- [36:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
Right. And that was a token we didn't.
- [36:20]
David Hoffman
Really need to listen to. The second half of that is like, there's going to be a token, there's going to be an airdrop. Like, okay, confirmed, Sounds good. I mean, it was tweeted out by Shane last week, but now we have somebody who just said, yeah, there's going to be a token. The most nonchalant token announcement I've ever seen in crypto. Yeah.
- [36:36]
Ryan Sean Adams
You know, this will probably be. I think our notes are correct about this. This is probably going to happen at the similar time that Polymarket officially opens to us users. That make a lot of sense. Right? That sounds like this year.
- [36:49]
David Hoffman
Yeah, that sounds like this year there's also going to be an app. The Polymarket app is coming.
- [36:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yep. A lot of cool things happening in polymarket. Let's see what that one trades for.
- [36:58]
David Hoffman
I was riding the. The New York subway Ryan, just going because I live in New York and Kalshy ads are everywhere.
- [37:04]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh, really?
- [37:05]
David Hoffman
Yeah, they're doing the whole Mom Donnie vs. Cuomo and it's actually kind of cool to be riding the subway and see mom donnie at like 87% in Cuomo to be at 13%. I mean, those numbers aren't cool. But that's aside the fact that like I'm riding the subway and seeing a polymark or a.
- [37:24]
Ryan Sean Adams
Where are you seeing this is it. Are these like digital updates?
- [37:27]
David Hoffman
They're digital ads on the subway. Yeah. And so they. It's like, oh, I'm in this my city and like there's a prediction market data in my subway. That's actually kind of cool.
- [37:35]
Ryan Sean Adams
Welcome to the future.
- [37:36]
David Hoffman
Yeah, it feels very futuristic. Yeah.
- [37:39]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh, shoot. I'm showing, I'm showing my box on mod ad.
- [37:42]
David Hoffman
How many tokens? Let's see the tokens. Let's see the tokens.
- [37:44]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's not. I mean, it's okay, right? I don't open these things. I got 88,000 mon. Okay.
- [37:50]
David Hoffman
I don't know if that's good or not. Well, you can open yours.
- [37:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
This is the third token, right? The third token.
- [37:56]
David Hoffman
The third. Yeah. So Monad is doing like three days of monad or something. Like three loot boxes. It's like, it feels like very much like a lottery or. Yeah, like, it's fun.
- [38:04]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's a video game.
- [38:05]
David Hoffman
It's a scratch off. Monad Scratch off. I'm pretty sure the numbers of Monad that you're getting were determined pre, like preemptively. But like, you do your little, like, loot box.
- [38:13]
Ryan Sean Adams
So Monad PSA for that.
- [38:14]
David Hoffman
Go check psa.
- [38:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
Go.
- [38:16]
David Hoffman
Go get there. Your mon. Airdrop people are people who were not expecting to get the Monad airdrop. Got the Monad airdrop. So go get it. So are we ready to compare these two things? Because we have perpetual futures for both Monad and Mega Eth. Which, Ryan, do you think is coming in higher?
- [38:32]
Ryan Sean Adams
Well, I already know the answer to this.
- [38:34]
David Hoffman
Which listener do you think is coming in higher? Everyone place your bets.
- [38:38]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's the one I would have guessed. Oh, really?
- [38:41]
David Hoffman
Interesting.
- [38:41]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, I would have guessed on it.
- [38:43]
David Hoffman
Okay, so $5.62 billion fully diluted from on ad and $4.3 billion fully diluted for mega eth. So pretty, pretty close. And these numbers are so preliminary. Futures markets are not accurate price discovery mechanisms.
- [38:58]
Ryan Sean Adams
There's not much liquidity out there.
- [39:00]
David Hoffman
It's something to go off of. It's fun to talk about.
- [39:02]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's kind of a high. Like, I think it's much higher than the actual spot markets are going to be when these things launch. I do think so. Yeah. But the reason I said Monad higher is because I still think there's a little bit of that L1 Premium in the air.
- [39:15]
David Hoffman
Yeah, the pendulum between L2 and L1 Premium is on the L1 side.
- [39:18]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's right. I think so it gets a little boost from that maybe, but I mean, they're comparable. Should we talk about the base token? All right.
- [39:26]
David Hoffman
Base token.
- [39:27]
Ryan Sean Adams
Hypothetically. Remember Jesse, we played that whole clip a few weeks ago and he was.
- [39:31]
David Hoffman
Like, they are looking into exploring and networking.
- [39:34]
Ryan Sean Adams
Exploring, exploring, Exploring it. Okay, well, I guess JP Morgan has been exploring what the price might be for the base token and they have some numbers for you. All right. Have you seen. Can I get you to guess what the number is or have you already seen it?
- [39:47]
David Hoffman
I've already looked at it.
- [39:48]
Ryan Sean Adams
All right, I'm not going to make you guess then. All right, let me guess.
- [39:51]
David Hoffman
Let me guess. I'll guess. Is it $34 billion?
- [39:55]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yes, you're right. JP Morgan says the base token could be worth $34 billion. So they forecast it could go from 12 to 34. So 34 is on their high side over time, let's say. And this is based on the current base network usage and some token economics assumptions. Their thesis is that Coinbase would launch this, that they would. Coinbase would take 40% of the supply. The other 60% would be, I don't know, airdrop, given to the community. Like, who knows? How do we do these things? And as a result, analysts at JP Morgan have upgraded Coinbase's stock price to 404 from the current price at the time, which was 355. So a lot going on here. Like, will base have a token? If it does, how valuable would it be? 34 billion would be a lot, considering Arbitrum is like, I don't know, 4 billion, something like that. That's a layer two we just talked about. Mega eth. A layer two price. Like, you know, 4 billion as well. So that would be a lot. Coinbase getting 40, 40% of that. But then Wall street, like, looking at layer twos and being like, oh, my God, this is adding massive value to the stock price. And they're learning about it too. So a lot going on there. What do you think of those estimates?
- [41:10]
David Hoffman
I mean, so if it's $34 billion, that puts it at number seven in the FDV of the crypto market cap, right behind solana.
- [41:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah.
- [41:19]
David Hoffman
At $113 billion. Excuse me, sorry. Seven is USDC. Eight is Lido. Staked ether at 32 billion.
- [41:27]
Ryan Sean Adams
You gotta ignore the stable coins. I feel like. Yeah.
- [41:29]
David Hoffman
So, yeah. Well, then tether's also gone. So it would go Bitcoin, ether, bnb, xrp, Solana, base.
- [41:35]
Ryan Sean Adams
Wait, wait, wait. Are you sure you're doing this by fdv or are you doing this by market cap?
- [41:39]
David Hoffman
Oh, I might be doing this by market cap. So you go bitcoin, ether, xrp, bnb, Solana, Hyper Liquid, and then base and then Tron.
- [41:49]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's how it works up there?
- [41:50]
David Hoffman
Yeah. At the FTV? Yeah. $45 billion FTV. Yeah.
- [41:54]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay. Okay. How does that feel? That feel right?
- [42:00]
David Hoffman
Feels a little expensive. Feels a little expensive. You a buyer? I wouldn't be buying that token.
- [42:05]
Ryan Sean Adams
All right, well, good news is you'll have time because they're just exploring it so you have time to decide whether you're a buyer or not. Coming up next, we got Trump about to launch a prediction market because of course, but Democrats are trying to block him in all ways Crypto Also, the CFTC got a new chairman. Who is it? Is this person good for crypto and some impressive traction. I want you to tell me about David on the X402 payment standard, which we've been supremely bullish on, and we'll tell you why we're excited. So all this and more, but before we get there, I want to thank our sponsors at FRAX for giving you a decentralized central bank. Stay tuned to hear more about frax and we'll be right back.
- [42:43]
David Hoffman
Introducing FRAX USD the genius aligned digital dollar from frax. It's secure, stable and fully backed institutional grade real world assets custody by BlackRock, Superstate and Fidelity. It's always redeemable one to one, transparently audited and built for payments, defi and banking. The best of all worlds. At the core is fraxnet, an on chain fintech platform built to align with emerging US regulatory frameworks where you can mint, redeem and use FRAX USD with just a few clicks, deposit usdc, send a bank wire or tokenized Treasuries and receive programmable digital dollars straight to your wallet. Fraxnet users benefits from the underlying return of US Treasuries and earn just by using the system. Whether you're bridging, minting or holding your FRAX USD works for you. FRAX isn't just a protocol, it's a digital nation powered by the FRAX token and governed by its global communities. Join that community and Help shape Frax Nation's future by going to frax.comrbankless Frax designed for the future of compliant digital finance. Bit Digital Ticker BTBT is a publicly traded ETH treasury company that combines the two biggest metas of our time, Ethereum and AI Compute. Bit Digital believes that ETH will power finance and AI Compute will power everything. Bit Digital gives you direct exposure to both. Bit Digital holds more than 150,000 ETH with institutional grade staking and validator operations. On top of that, the company owns roughly 73% of White Fiber, an AI infrastructure business that runs high performance GPU data centers. That adds a meaningful exposure to the growth of AI compute with over 27 million shares. This is an ETH treasury backed by real operations designed to capture staking yield today while positioning for the future of intelligent computing tomorrow. The ticker is btbt, this ad is not financial advice. Do your own research, learn more about Bit Digital and try their M nav calculator@bit-digital.com that's bit-digital.com Bankless is being compensated by Bit Digital for this ad. You can find out more information by clicking the link in the show notes. More chains to talk about we're going to talk about Circle's Ark, the EVM layer one that is going to public testnet. So if you don't know where ARC is, that's a Circle's dedicated payments chain which they described as the economic operating system for the Internet, fostering a platform shift as profound as the launch of the Internet itself and subsequent revolutions of social, mobile, cloud and AI. So no, it wasn't Bitcoin, it wasn't Ethereum, it wasn't Solana, it wasn't Hyper, it wasn't Hyper Liquid. It is ark. ARK is going to be the economic operating system that's going to be equivalent to the subsequent revolutions of social, mobile, cloud and AI. Wow.
- [45:24]
Ryan Sean Adams
I found this marketing speak just like you, David, supremely annoying and slightly triggering. Okay, just because like. Okay, so Ark, they're doing a layer one. Fine, do a layer one. Tempo's doing it like evm. Maybe you need that because of stablecoins because layer two is lack some functionality. You know, maybe it's not a skill issue. Maybe you really do need a layer one and it's not about getting an L1 premium. But then when you come out and your marketing speak says the economic OS for the Internet as profound as the launch of the Internet itself and social media, mobile, cloud and AI all combined.
- [46:05]
David Hoffman
Wow. I don't know where's that south park gif of them smelling their own farts.
- [46:10]
Ryan Sean Adams
There's an element of that and I don't know, like this could be just a marketing guy like running out of, you know, just, just running it hot here. But it's just kind of annoying to me because Circle's been in the space forever. USDC has been in this space forever. They're not like Stripe, they're not Johnny Johnny come lately's. They know about decentralization, they know about property rights, they know about public chains and to just be like guys, we solved it. We got the layer one. That's going to be the economic OS for the entire thing. We figured it out right? Like we figured it out and like launching with like a permissioned validator set.
- [46:43]
David Hoffman
I don't know, I like that they have the section on the road to distributed governance they don't even say decentralized. They're just saying, yeah, distributed.
- [46:52]
Ryan Sean Adams
What?
- [46:53]
David Hoffman
Distributed is good enough.
- [46:54]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's good. Use that terminology. Okay.
- [46:58]
David Hoffman
That can be your word.
- [46:59]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yes. You guys be distributed. Tell me about X402. There's. There's word on the street that There was a 200,000% growth in the X402 standard this week.
- [47:10]
David Hoffman
That is a true statement. Ryan. You have your facts correct? Yeah. So that's what happens when the X402 payment standard, maybe we can speed run through history. X402 was this like. Like, what would you even call it?
- [47:25]
Ryan Sean Adams
Agencic. It's mainly for agenc payments. But so, but it goes all the.
- [47:29]
David Hoffman
Way back to the creation of like the web browser.
- [47:33]
Ryan Sean Adams
How you load a website and it fails, you get a 404 error because that's a standard in the Internet. X402 or 402 was supposed to be the payment standard. Never got implemented. PayPal never got around to it.
- [47:45]
David Hoffman
402 payment not satisfactory. Like payment not satisfied. Yeah, because we didn't have payments. You can't put a credit card in there. Well, technically you can, but like not. You can't really.
- [47:54]
Ryan Sean Adams
We didn't have micro payments. We didn't have.
- [47:56]
David Hoffman
Micro payments are very important.
- [47:57]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's right. But.
- [47:58]
David Hoffman
But in the year of our Lord 2025, we have stable coins and we have micropayments. We have fast cheap blockchains. So now we can actually fulfill the missing niche in the sudoku puzzle of the Internet with X402. So X402 is this payment standard that's being developed by Coinbase to use stablecoins on base, but also Solana or any other EVM chain to like, if you are loading up a website, you might be requested like, okay, to finish loading all of this data, you got to pay me some money.
- [48:26]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. And the big thing is agent use of this, like AI use of this because it's just machine to machine microtransactions, right?
- [48:33]
David Hoffman
Yes, yes. There's going to also be human use of this too, but I think it's the automated agentic use of XOR2 that's really. That's the net new thing. Yeah. So. So the re. So how did we go? 200,000%. It's because we went from 25 historical x402 transactions just a few days ago. No, no, no, no. Nope, nope. 25.
- [48:57]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay, so what?
- [48:58]
David Hoffman
25 transactions to 3 million transactions and $3 million in settled volume in three weeks.
- [49:06]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's cool.
- [49:07]
David Hoffman
Okay, so Maybe I said week over week, maybe it was month over month or something, but whatever, after this one website launched called X402SCAN. And X402SCAN is something like they're kind of doing like the Google thing of like indexing all of the X402 compatible websites and resources and all that services.
- [49:23]
Ryan Sean Adams
Right?
- [49:23]
David Hoffman
So it's like it's archiving all the. Yeah, so he called it resources, he being this guy that I interviewed. It'll be about on the Bankless podcast shortly, Sam from Merit Systems. And so I'm sure you're asking, Ryan, how did it grow 200,000% week over month over month?
- [49:38]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's. That's one question.
- [49:39]
David Hoffman
Meme coins. Okay, of course, of course, 99% of the activity was Meme Coins. But the story behind that is like, it's a bootloader. It's a bootloader. Like, for sure, people don't know what to do. So they're like, you know what, what resource will I have people buy if they load up this website and like, I'll make them buy 5 cents of my meme coin? And so like, that was. Dev is just tinkering around. But then also, like, once some person said like, oh, there are meme coins here, let me go buy them for real. And then it got, then the flywheel started happening. And so this is, to me, the shot across the bow, the, the firing pistol, the starting pistol of an actual real X402 agentic payments system. Because before this whole meme coin mania in the FX402 ecosystem, there were something like, you know, five or 10, like, different economic resources. And I'll talk about what those are that you could call. And now there has been an influx of actual real new resources that you can call with X402. And so here's, here's some of the things that you can do. There's like AI and LLM, inference and enrichment. And so you can now call things like ChatGPT, like Claude, and you don't need to sign up. You know, you can just call their.
- [50:51]
Ryan Sean Adams
API and you just pay microtransactions.
- [50:53]
David Hoffman
You pay microtransactions? Yeah. The, the guy that I interviewed, Sam, he was really a big fan of just like, call the ChatGPT LLM, get them to generate a generative image. At the same time, call the stripe API to get that image put onto a shirt and then have that shirt sent to me.
- [51:12]
Ryan Sean Adams
What?
- [51:12]
David Hoffman
Yeah.
- [51:13]
Ryan Sean Adams
And by the way, so a human could initiate that call, or an AI agent or initiate that call.
- [51:18]
David Hoffman
Yeah. So you're typing into your AI browsers like, hey, make an image of like whale doing something and then put it on a shirt and then send it to my friends.
- [51:27]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. It'd just be like. So if you type that in a chat gp, it'd be like, of course, David, I just need access to your crypto wallet, right?
- [51:33]
David Hoffman
Yeah.
- [51:33]
Ryan Sean Adams
And then you give it access to like $5 or whatever and then it would just go buy all the stuff and make it happen. Yes.
- [51:38]
David Hoffman
You pay for the resources. Yeah. And like data and APIs, weather markets, prediction markets, other other things. Anything you can think of. And that was really the exciting thing of like, the amount of developer creativity here is limitless about what they could do with x402. So I think I'm going to get you on board with me, Ryan. We are calling for an X402 summer super cycle. X402 super size 400 super cycle. This is a starting pistol. It's only going to get crazier if you're here and I think it's going to be something to pay attention to.
- [52:09]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's a big deal and it's a very big deal. It's not just crypto, it's just like.
- [52:11]
David Hoffman
So a lot of it's the Internet.
- [52:13]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's happening on base right now, which is really cool. But Cloudflare, remember, they got involved. Google has integrated into their AI agent toolkit. This is going to be a big deal. It's something I think we're going to track. Bull bear market, whatever the devs are going to build on top of this thing.
- [52:28]
David Hoffman
Mike Selig. Congratulations to Mike Selig. We had him on Bankless, actually, so we know who this is. I had him on talking about securities law back in like two years ago. Former chair of the cftc and then he went into work in law in the crypto space and now he's back at the cftc and so now he is the CFTC Chair for Crypto oversight. So that's. I. That's huge news for us. Crypto native guy, very smart, very savvy, and I think, yeah, this is like a big win. The alternative was Brian Quintenz, also crypto native, also savvy, also on the Bankless podcast. Also on the Bankless podcast.
- [53:02]
Ryan Sean Adams
They only went through like, they were like, who? Which previous podcast guest on Bankless can we hire in this position? And that was our selection.
- [53:10]
David Hoffman
That's right.
- [53:11]
Ryan Sean Adams
Could have been you or me.
- [53:14]
David Hoffman
No, no, no, no.
- [53:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
This is bullish for crypto. Brian Selig. Is bullish for crypto. He knows the space.
- [53:19]
David Hoffman
Mike Selleck.
- [53:20]
Ryan Sean Adams
Mike Selleck. Mike Selleck. Sorry, Mike. Yeah, I think this is great. Very exciting. Excited to see what happens as a result of this.
- [53:28]
David Hoffman
David Sacks tweeted out. President Trump has made an excellent choice in Mike Selleck to lead the cftc. Mike is deeply knowledgeable about financial markets and passionate about modernizing our regulatory approach in order to maintain America's competitiveness in the digital asset era.
- [53:42]
Ryan Sean Adams
Speaking of passions, David Trump is passionate about doing every single thing he can in crypto these days. So this week, Trump Media is entering the prediction markets business. Okay. Competing against Kalshi. Competing it's polymarket and doing their own thing through Trump Media. So that's the news on the week. There's no app behind this yet. There's no kind of substance.
- [54:07]
David Hoffman
Well, I think it gets. I get. I think it gets integrated into Truth Social. So this is Truth Predict is the. Is the platform about democratizing information and empowering everyday Americans to harness the wisdom of the crowd. Turning free speech into actionable foresight embedded into Truth Social. So users will be able to bet on sports, politics, commodity prices, and more directly within the platform. So I think this is a part of his already preexisting social media platform.
- [54:31]
Ryan Sean Adams
Anything in crypto Trump doesn't have right now, I guess he doesn't have his own layer one, which maybe he should.
- [54:35]
David Hoffman
Doesn't have Trump Chain.
- [54:36]
Ryan Sean Adams
Trump Chain could have.
- [54:38]
David Hoffman
Should we produce the Trump crypto bingo card?
- [54:41]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh, my God. We told you.
- [54:42]
David Hoffman
It's already got the stable dots on it. Yeah.
- [54:45]
Ryan Sean Adams
NFT collection. Let's see, he's got the ETFs. What else? Lending protocol.
- [54:51]
David Hoffman
Yes.
- [54:52]
Ryan Sean Adams
Prediction market.
- [54:53]
David Hoffman
Says prediction market. He just doesn't have the chain.
- [54:56]
Ryan Sean Adams
He needs the layer one. Where's the EVM layer? Layer one. That's what we need. We need a. No, no, no. We need a new operating system for the Internet.
- [55:03]
David Hoffman
That should be the Poly Market. Is. Does Trump launch a layer one or layer two?
- [55:08]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh, layer two. Imagine if he was like, no, you know, layer ones are scams. I'm gonna go with the layer two. Well, speaking of scams, U.S. congressman Ro Khanna, who is actually a very.
- [55:21]
David Hoffman
Another podcast guest.
- [55:23]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yes, he is crypto favorable. He's a Democrat in Congress. He's crypto. He actually has had kind of enough of this stuff of Trump launching things in crypto, and so he's introducing a.
- [55:33]
David Hoffman
Bill that bans the prediction market is crypto. I actually don't know if that's true or not.
- [55:37]
Ryan Sean Adams
Well, ignore the prediction market.
- [55:39]
David Hoffman
All the other things we have been.
- [55:41]
Ryan Sean Adams
Talking about, like the meme coin on the bingo card, right. That bans the president and elected officials from owning or creating cryptocurrencies. I haven't read the details of this bill, but this is a Democrat backlash that was like, like obviously going to come somebody who's crypto favorable. It's interesting coming from that. I don't agree with not owning crypto. Yeah, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that.
- [56:01]
David Hoffman
If that's the case, creating crypto, I can get behind that.
- [56:05]
Ryan Sean Adams
Maybe. Depends on how you, I mean, I don't know, creating a meme coin created. I don't know, there's some squishy area there. But the one thing I.
- [56:14]
David Hoffman
What do you mean you're creating meme coin? That's the thing I don't want President, President should not be though.
- [56:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
It's, I, I, I agree with the way it's been done today. But like, I don't know your creator coin on Sora, like there's some weird blending that I just, like, I just.
- [56:27]
David Hoffman
Think that, I think you are finding some exceptions, but I think the broad rule is that, yeah, don't make cryptocurrencies as the president.
- [56:34]
Ryan Sean Adams
It definitely don't trade them. Like it's just should be put all this stuff in a blind trust. If you hold crypto assets, put in a blind trust. Anyway, that's some of the backlash that's coming down the pike there. Pretty predictable, I would say. David. Western Union, okay. This is the group that, what you call it, Western Union. You go to a Western Union, right, And it's all about moving funds. What's the word I'm looking for?
- [57:00]
David Hoffman
Remittance.
- [57:01]
Ryan Sean Adams
Remittance. Of course, Remittance. It's all about remittance. This is how people have done remittance for, I don't know, a hundred years or so. Well, they're getting into cryptocurrency, so they're doing a stablecoin and it's on Solana. So big Solana victory lap around that. It's actually kind of a big deal because Western Union remittances were always a thing we wanted to do in crypto. Right?
- [57:20]
David Hoffman
Yeah. Western Union is like one of those boogeymen about like why we need crypto. And it would actually make sense that like, well, well, if Western Union is going to get disrupted by stablecoins, maybe they should just adopt stablecoins. So that makes sense to me.
- [57:33]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay, so this was seemed Like a big win for Solana. And indeed it is. Western Union, the CEO says, like, look, this is a clip, or I'm not going to play the clip. But he's like, we looked at all the alternative blockchains, came to one conclusion. The Solana blockchain was the right choice for us. Right. You know, speed, all the things that Solana preaches. It's the right choice. All right. On the back of this, I noticed my timeline, crypto, Twitter. I didn't get involved. I don't feel like getting involved with this. I don't know what you know about this, but there was some allegations. Here's a deleted tweet I can't even find. There's some allegations that the reason Western Union went with Solana was because Solana, the Solana foundation wrote a check to Western Union, I don't know, in the form of an investment or something, to just incent them to partner with Solana and be exclusive on Solana for some period of time, six month period of time. Again, this is a rumor, but this caused some back and forth. Do you have pick up the story from here?
- [58:29]
David Hoffman
Yeah, yeah. So the. It seems to be that there's a pretty clear level of detail that has gotten circulated around crypto, Twitter, and the details that people are saying was that the Solana foundation paid Western Union $25 million for, like, the development of this program. So, like, if you guys do this, we'll pay you $25 million to do this. And then in addition to that, another $25 million to bootstrap the Stablecoin that Western Union is producing, the USPT Stablecoin. And so then people see that clip from the Solana person. Be like, we looked around all the blockchains and we chose Solana because it's the best. Yeah. And then Western Union guy, Western Union said this, and they're like, like, did you do that or did they just pay you $25 million to do this? So, like, there's a little bit of dishonesty around that. If, if that's the case. Again, we don't know the details here. We don't know if there's a payment or not, other than the fact that there seems to be pretty clear, specific details of, like, the two $25 million payments. A couple people on Twitter went out and said, look, here are the terms of the details. Again, without like, explicitly having.
- [59:32]
Ryan Sean Adams
There was muzzling.
- [59:34]
David Hoffman
There was like chain muzzling. And so I'll make a few statements. This is rational BD behavior from the chains Optimism did this with Coinbase and Base. Arbitrum did this with Robinhood. These are smart BD things that chains are doing to grow themselves. And that's. That makes sense that. That we do them. What's irksome about these types of deals globally across crypto, is that we as the market don't get to know about the details inside of these deals. Instead, they just kind of, like, emerge from the whisper networks as crypto, and then we're kind of left to speculate on, like, what's true and what's true.
- [60:10]
Ryan Sean Adams
We all, like, all the chains are incented to pretend it's all organic adoption. Right?
- [60:14]
David Hoffman
Pretend it's organic. And look, the Western Union person said, we selected Solana. It's like, that's not what happened.
- [60:21]
Ryan Sean Adams
And you got paid. You did select.
- [60:22]
David Hoffman
Yes.
- [60:23]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah.
- [60:23]
David Hoffman
You got paid $50 million to select Solana.
- [60:25]
Ryan Sean Adams
If this was allegedly. We don't know the numbers.
- [60:27]
David Hoffman
Allegedly. Allegedly. If this were Web two, the announcement would look something like Western Union is building its payment system on Solana alongside a $25 million investment from Solana to build out the development and also another 25 million investment from Solana into the USPD stablecoin. Yeah, but this is where Web3 chains are, like, incentivized to make this appear as organic as possible. What's uniquely frustrating about this one is that it seems like the details have been sufficiently leaked and the Solana representative leadership are saying, like, that's just completely fabricated and false.
- [61:02]
Ryan Sean Adams
Like, who.
- [61:03]
David Hoffman
So the one person that you just had on the. On the screen who's a Solana exec, said both made up entire. Both made up an entirely fictional. That guy. Yeah, yeah.
- [61:14]
Ryan Sean Adams
Like the idea that. So the response is 25 million plus 25 million in liquidity. And he said, both made up entirely fictional from the Solana Foundation.
- [61:25]
David Hoffman
Yeah, yeah. And then, like, Lily Lou, who's the president of the Solana foundation, responded to the claim of, like, a $50 million investment into the project with, like, the $1 billion Austin Powers GIF.
- [61:36]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay.
- [61:37]
David Hoffman
Just, like, making a farce of it.
- [61:38]
Ryan Sean Adams
Sure.
- [61:39]
David Hoffman
And. And then like Mert, who replied to the person who put out this accusation in the first place, he says, the details of this are extremely off. And I'm like, okay, what are the details then? What are. What are the details, though? What are the details?
- [61:52]
Ryan Sean Adams
I mean, can we.
- [61:53]
David Hoffman
Can we please know what the details are so we can know as the market? And, like, this is me pointing at Solana. I would also have liked to know the details of the Arbitrum do we.
- [62:04]
Ryan Sean Adams
Know the details of that?
- [62:05]
David Hoffman
No, we don't. We do. We know through inference that there was a deal. We know. We do know the details of the optimism based deal. Actually those were actually made public because.
- [62:15]
Ryan Sean Adams
It was nice to know that.
- [62:16]
David Hoffman
That was nice. The idea of there's not a deal or the details are extremely wrong and not actually being informed of what the deal is and then also being made to appear that this is organic is kind of like that's. That's what I don't like.
- [62:29]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. I don't know. I don't have a strong take on any of it. I guess I just, I saw some Solana versus Ethereum, like back and forth and there is an element of the L2s do this as well.
- [62:39]
David Hoffman
Yeah.
- [62:40]
Ryan Sean Adams
I will say like if the Ethereum foundation ever did this, that like I don't like. That is not a. To me, you're. When you start doing this sort of thing, you're acting much more like a fintech company.
- [62:53]
David Hoffman
Yes.
- [62:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
Right.
- [62:54]
David Hoffman
Which is why I said this is smart. BD work from FinTech companies for a fintech company, which is what Solana is.
- [63:00]
Ryan Sean Adams
And so are the layer two chains.
- [63:01]
David Hoffman
They are the layer two chains.
- [63:03]
Ryan Sean Adams
Fintech companies with Ethereum grade property rights is what they are. In my way of looking at crypto, I see a layer one do this and I'm like, that's a fintech company. Whatever. What a boomer take, huh? What a boomer take. David, we gotta finish out this episode with a few. Maybe just we'll go through a drive by. There's six things, but acquisitions, banks, IPOs, some news on the week. Okay. First on the acquisition side of things, AAVE acquired Stable Finance. If you've not heard of Stable Finance, this is like aave, which is interesting. Started as a defi protocol, moving into consumer friendly defi. So stable is a stablecoin savings app. Makes it super easy to go from.
- [63:49]
David Hoffman
Your bank neobank to neobank.
- [63:51]
Ryan Sean Adams
Kind of a neobank. And so this is a little bit of an aqua hire getting into consumer tech. One of the themes this cycle has been acquisitions. It's interesting to see crypto native companies starting to do these acquisitions. This is another one actually. Farcaster and Clanker. I mean you were the. You brought put Clanker on my radar. What is this?
- [64:09]
David Hoffman
I was an early Clanker Bolt. Clanker is an account that you can at on Farcaster saying, hey Clanker, make me a token with this ticker and with this image.
- [64:20]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yep.
- [64:20]
David Hoffman
And then it will give you some sort of like kind of like, existential dready response. It's like, ah, another token. I hope it entertains you in this brief moment. It's a meme.
- [64:29]
Ryan Sean Adams
Coin Launchpad. Via, like, Chatbot, right?
- [64:32]
David Hoffman
Chia Beds. Yeah, but it's a Twitter account or so. Excuse me? It's a Farcaster account. It's kind of funny. Yeah.
- [64:36]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. So Farcaster bought Clanker, basically. It's kind of the new. It's been interesting to see. I don't know if you're looking into Farcaster, but doing great things on their wallet. They're evolving into a sort of a crypto native social media. More double doubling down on that. Like doing all the token stuff. Doing all the NFT stuff.
- [64:53]
David Hoffman
Makes sense.
- [64:53]
Ryan Sean Adams
Okay, so acquisitions happening in crypto banks. All right. Banks entering crypto. This time it's more than pr. We're going to drive by this. But Zelle. Okay. Do you. I know you have a Wells Fargo account. I know you do you ever use Zelle?
- [65:07]
David Hoffman
Yeah, like, unfortunately, it sucks to like.
- [65:10]
Ryan Sean Adams
Pay landlords and pay, you know, not.
- [65:12]
David Hoffman
Even my landlord, actually. My landlord takes a check and I actually just prefer that. Okay, so it's better UX than Zelle.
- [65:19]
Ryan Sean Adams
That's how much David hates Zelle. Well, they're doing a stablecoin. Okay. Zelle is. Wells Fargo is. Zelle is used by a bunch of banks, including Wells Fargo. 150Americans on Zelle. So no details on this here.
- [65:31]
David Hoffman
150 million Americans.
- [65:32]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yes, 150 million.
- [65:35]
David Hoffman
I mean, I could go either way.
- [65:38]
Ryan Sean Adams
150 million. So. So banks, I think they're actually serious about it. I think banks are like, we're not going to get left behind from Stablecoins, so.
- [65:45]
David Hoffman
So let's put Stablecoins inside of Zelle. That's how fake it's getting catch up.
- [65:50]
Ryan Sean Adams
I didn't say it would be great. Ux. Okay, this is another bank. What's this?
- [65:54]
David Hoffman
This is a Coinbase and Citi partnership. Coinbase and Citi are working together to create a new digital asset payment solutions for institutions. They plan to use Citi's payment network and Coinbase's digital asset expertise to offer these services worldwide. So they are focusing on enhancing fiat on and off ramps to allow cities institutional customers to switch between fiat and digital assets through Coinbase's infrastructure. So Citi in the front, Coinbase in the back.
- [66:21]
Ryan Sean Adams
There you go. Brian Armstrong says crypto and stablecoins are the tools. It's not a debate anymore. We're going to update the financial system. So there you go. Okay. So that's acquisitions, banks now IPOs. Actually two interesting ones this was. I didn't think about this one, but it totally makes sense in retrospect. So Securitize here we had Carlos on CEO of Securitize. They're doing Biddle fund. They're doing all the real world asset stuff. In fact, if you go on the real world asset analytics platform, they're like the leading platform.
- [66:48]
David Hoffman
That's a good looking chart, dude. I like that chart.
- [66:50]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah. 4.5 billion in real world assets. Anyway, securitize is IPOing cool. It's a good time for them to IPO, right? Because they might get some of that love from tradfi that went into circle, right. They're like, oh, stablecoins. The securitized can be like, well, we have the next thing which is real world assets. $1.25 billion IPO.
- [67:12]
David Hoffman
Nice.
- [67:12]
Ryan Sean Adams
And yeah. Do you have any predictions on this? You think this is going to launch hot?
- [67:16]
David Hoffman
I mean in the same way that institutions want access to some investment themes or narratives and they need the right vehicle to do it. Like Real World Assets is one of those narratives. Like we saw what happened with Circle. Everyone in crypto is like, I'm bearish. Circle the revenue. And then at 5x because people needed exposure to stablecoins and now if people want exposure to real world assets, they can do this. And I was snooping around on our YouTube metric backend Ryan, you know, you know what is a sleeper video that's actually in like our top 20 most popular videos?
- [67:47]
Ryan Sean Adams
I have no idea. I never go there. I'm super curious.
- [67:49]
David Hoffman
We recorded it a year ago with Robert Leshner and we titled it Tokenizing Real World Assets.
- [67:55]
Ryan Sean Adams
Oh yeah.
- [67:55]
David Hoffman
And the SEO on that is what we need it to be because that thing, the chart on that thing is just has ground. It doesn't go flat, it just grinds up. Because people are typing in real world assets into YouTube. I think as people like get comfortable with stable coins, they're going to move down the line. They're going to go into real world assets.
- [68:13]
Ryan Sean Adams
I think we found the title of the roll up today. Tokenizing Real world assets in October 2025. That's one IPO. Interesting. Also upcoming consensus IPO. So this was more formally enough.
- [68:26]
David Hoffman
Interesting.
- [68:28]
Ryan Sean Adams
Goldman Sachs, the big guns are coming in for this one. I don't have a date yet, but that's happening. J.P. morgan and Goldman Sachs. All right. And when I think about ConsenSys and their core assets, it's like really three to me. Right. Metamask for sure. Infura for some of the infrastructure and Linnea, their L2. Those are kind of the golden eggs, I guess, of that Joe Lubin laid in consensus with some love from sbet, of course. This is backed by some of the Lubin capital in the SBet, Sharplink Gaming, Ethereum treasury strategy. This is going to be an interesting one to watch for sure. I don't know what the financials look like.
- [69:05]
David Hoffman
Yeah, consensus has.
- [69:08]
Ryan Sean Adams
They've been bloated at times.
- [69:09]
David Hoffman
Cleaning up the consensus books to get ready for IPO must have been a gargantuan effort because dude, they were paying people an eth. As they should have been back in the old days. Like they were building up a company that was not thinking about going public. And I'm sure whoever was their accountant to like make their books make sense at all had to rip their hair out for years to make this happen.
- [69:32]
Ryan Sean Adams
Yeah, but the trend here, David, is we can't just look at crypto native assets anymore. If we want full exposure in crypto, we got it. We got to have some brokerage accounts, I guess, stocks until our equities come on chain for sure. So that's happening right now, Rip to.
- [69:48]
David Hoffman
All the consensus equity holders that never got their equity from 2016 to 2020, that's. That's a deep. That's a little bit of a deep cut.
- [69:56]
Ryan Sean Adams
Wish David well because he is going to Patagonia. I believe in just a few hours time. David, come back to us, man. Go find a bull market somewhere up.
- [70:05]
David Hoffman
In the mountains I'm looking for. It's up there somewhere.
- [70:09]
Ryan Sean Adams
We need some help in November and you'll be there. So we'll see you, I guess.
- [70:15]
David Hoffman
I'm gone for two weeks. I'll be back the third week of November and then I'm gone again for one more week and then I'm back.
- [70:22]
Ryan Sean Adams
Gotta let you know. Of course, climbing mountains the way David does it is super dangerous. Crypto is also risky though in a different way. You could lose what you put in. I hope David doesn't lose anything. We are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot, Sam.