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ROLLUP: War Returns, Markets Shrug | Saylor Sells | Robinhood Memecoins | Ethereum 3.0?
01:04:58
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- [00:00]
Interviewer/Host
Foreign.
- [00:05]
David
Another Friday, another week. It's time for the bankless weekly roll up. Ryan, how you doing?
- [00:09]
Ryan
I'm great, David. I was really excited to celebrate the Fourth of July, you know, the 250th anniversary. It is actually July. This is the, I think. Is this the 10th? This is the 11th year of existence for Ethereum. Is that right? July 11th, correct. No, is it correct?
- [00:25]
David
11th, yeah. The Ethereum blockchain started sometime in July, in 2015. So this makes it Ethereum 11 years old.
- [00:33]
Ryan
Yeah. So where do you think Ethereum will be?
- [00:35]
David
So forget America's birthday. Happy birthday, Ethereum.
- [00:37]
Ryan
250 years from now, where do you think Ethereum will be still producing blocks? Give me an ETH price prediction.
- [00:45]
David
I don't know if the dollar is the correct denominator at that point in 250 years. I mean the dollar's got Lindy, but I don't know if it's got 250more years of Lindi. Not to say anything about Ethereum's 11 years of Lindi.
- [00:57]
Ryan
Well, we are not going to be around, so it's not going to be our problem. Unless you do the Brian Johnson thing,
- [01:01]
David
I think there's a very solid chance that at least I will be around because I am at least trying half heartedly to do that.
- [01:08]
Ryan
Well, you might need a new roll up co host then because I'm not sure about myself. What do we got this week?
- [01:13]
David
This week the cease fire with Iran is over. The United States struck 80 targets over two days across Iran. Iran hit back with US bases in Bahrain and Kuwait and oil sanctions on Iran are back on. So how are the markets responding to all of this? We did it during market hours this week. You know, usually Trump waits for, you know, Friday at 4pm after the market closes.
- [01:35]
Ryan
Does he really?
- [01:36]
David
Yeah, he did that like four times. Like it's Friday at 4pm it's time to bomb Iran. But there's a ceasefire and then now is seemingly over. Trump's got some words to say. There's also Michael Saylor. Once upon a time, you know, in distant memory, he sold 32 bitcoin. And bitcoin dropped like 20% this week. Saylor sold 3588 bitcoin and bitcoin went up 3%.
- [02:04]
Ryan
Huh. You told me you think that marks the bottom. We gotta dive into what your thoughts are on that. Also, the Robinhood chain finished its first full week in production with a killer use case that's emerging. We'll talk about what that is.
- [02:16]
David
You've never seen this use case before. Brand new meta in crypto. We've never seen it.
- [02:21]
Ryan
Speaking of brand new, there's a new Ethereum roadmap brought to you by Vitalik. At least he published it. He pushed it out. It's called the Straw Man. I really get the feeling. Oh, straw Map. Oops. Not Straw Man. I really get the feeling. They wanted to call this Ethereum 3.0, but like, just didn't because of reasons.
- [02:38]
David
He did say the third phase.
- [02:40]
Ryan
I know he did say that. Just say it. This is Ethereum 3.0, folks.
- [02:43]
David
We're on Ethereum 3.0.
- [02:45]
Ryan
We'll weigh in on that. Okay.
- [02:46]
David
We never really knew when 1.0 ended and 2.0 started. And it's going to be the same thing now.
- [02:50]
Ryan
2.0 started with the merge. 1.0 was when the whole thing kicked off. 11 years ago. 10 years ago.
- [02:56]
David
CD yeah, that's fair. Okay.
- [02:58]
Ryan
The merge was 2. I guess we've been in 2 for a while. Yeah.
- [03:02]
David
It's a little bit like Theses ship though, because the merge, we ejected the consensus layer and added a new one, but the execution layer stayed the same.
- [03:09]
Ryan
We'll get into it. I think it's Ethereum 3.0 at least. But let's start with Iran. The big news around the world. What happened with Iran?
- [03:20]
David
So two major waves of airstrikes on July 8th and 9th across Iran, targeting 170 military sites in total. So I would imagine this was a pretty big in terms of strikes, which was a pretty big one. This was in direct retaliation for Iran attacking three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week, which the United States characterized as a clear violation of the existing truce. So I'm guessing what happened here is like, we decided to like, see what we can do with pushing boats through the Strait of Hormuz and seeing what Iran would allow. And Iran was like, well, we're going to strike those ships. And they struck those three ships.
- [03:53]
Interviewer/Host
And.
- [03:53]
David
And then, you know, the United States just escalated and so here we are. So I think the big question is, is the ceasefire over? Like, are we just back to war with Iran? Let's go ask the Donald himself. Let's see what he said.
- [04:06]
Interviewer/Host
Have any questions, Mr. President?
- [04:09]
David
Is the ceasefire over? Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead?
- [04:14]
Interviewer/Host
That's a very interesting question to me. I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people, and they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Woodkoff, Jared Kushner, but they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. We make a deal and they. If I make a deal with him, we have a deal, and he goes out, he talks, we make a deal. Everyone's agreed, no nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press. They say, we never even talked about it. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.
- [05:07]
David
As far as I'm concerned, it's over is what he says. Now, Ryan, you would expect markets to just be in turmoil. Gold or oil.
- [05:15]
Ryan
I just want. Like, that sounds pretty over. But it's also. It's Donald Trump. Okay. That's Donald Trump. So I feel like he said those words previously. What did he talk about? Ending the, you know, Iranian civilization, all sorts of things. And then was back like, oh, these guys are great. Let's make a deal. We got a great deal. These are beautiful people. Respect. And now he's back to what he was before. So I don't know from anyone else, I'd be like, that's. This is so over. But from Trump, it's like, okay. Right.
- [05:45]
David
And I think the markets are saying exactly what you're saying. So looking at the oil prices as, like, the indices of. How over is this? It's not that over. Or actually somewhere in the middle. So, like, oil prices jumped from $68 for WTI up to $71. That's up 5%, which is, in the grand scheme of the war, that's like, nothing. Yeah.
- [06:08]
Ryan
Zoom out a little bit on this chart.
- [06:10]
David
This is the entire war. This is the entire war.
- [06:12]
Ryan
Wait, this is the entire. Wait. Entire war.
- [06:13]
David
Yeah. So these are weekly candles.
- [06:15]
Ryan
200 week. I see you're doing.
- [06:17]
David
This is the weekly candles. So here, I'll go to daily candles. Yeah, I get it. And so, yeah, like, we're doing fine.
- [06:24]
Ryan
Yeah. Because we were above 100 at various points in the war. Right. Like, as high as 112.
- [06:28]
David
So this is as high as 112. And then it was ranging between 85 and 112. And then the lows which we were at three days ago was $67, and we were at below $72.
- [06:39]
Ryan
So the market kind of thinks oil prices, Right? The market thinks it's over. I mean, sorry, not over. It's just, like, not a big deal.
- [06:46]
David
Like, it's not a big deal. Yeah. And I think, like, the Trump administration did a phenomenal job, in my opinion, doing expectation management with the markets as it was to the war. When the war was actually in its height. They really just, like, they only struck on the weekends. Then it was like, peace time between Monday through Friday during market hours. But then once the weekend hit, it was wartime. And they did that so long that, like, now that, like, we're striking Iran again, the market's like, whatever, like, we'll add 3% to the oil prices, but we're moving on. I mean, it showed up a little bit in the indices, but really, like, the NASDAQ and the SPY are fantastically green today. So there was like, a red bloodbath on, like, Tuesday, but it was one day.
- [07:31]
Ryan
That kind of implies that the market is calling the shots on this war, which is sort of bizarre, but maybe that's what's going on. But it also implies that Trump has a really, a real weakness around this. If Iran knows what's happening, they could do the same analysis you just did and just be like, Trump is not going to do anything if the markets go down. And so they can exploit that. They have all sorts of ways to exploit that.
- [07:52]
David
I guess that's not my interpretation. My interpretation is that the market doesn't care. Donald Trump gets to do whatever he wants because the market is what will push Donald into a corner, not Iran. And so, like, Donald just got away with two days of strikes across Iran, and the market was like, whatever, we're just going to cough a little bit.
- [08:10]
Ryan
I'm choosing to just, like, not let it affect my.
- [08:13]
David
I think you're allowed to not think about it.
- [08:15]
Ryan
That's what the market's been doing. That's what I've been doing. That's what the market agrees with.
- [08:18]
David
Beyond that, let's look at the crypto prices. So Bitcoin, up 2% this week. We're at $63,000 eth, up 2% this week at 1750. And then stretch, I think, is the most interesting thing. Trading at $86. Stretch from strategy. It's trading 14% off. I think this is kind of starting to, like, find some sort of equilibrium about, like, how comfortable people are holding. Stretch. And the yield at $86, $100 is too high, but $70 is too low. And the other indicator of, like, health of this bull market, Ryan, that's the stretch. And Master MicroStrategy is like the crypto health side of things. DRAM is like the momentum of the AI stocks. It's kind of come off of its highs from $80 down to $60 and up to 65. And so I kind of think the memory stocks, the AI trade is kind of consolidating right now. It's not going too high, not going too low, and it's a little bit of a pause. But as far as I'm concerned, like, the market, the trend is still in the market's favor. These are all my takes.
- [09:19]
Ryan
What about this. What about this big Michael Saylor sale then? I mean, the market seemed to absorb that, which was somewhat unexpected, I suppose, because this is a $200 million sale here. I mean, that's not. It's. It's less than. It's about half a percent of all MicroStrategy holdings. But that's the first time that strategy has sold in size. It's a big amount. It indicates more to come or more could come from somebody previously in previous regimes thought of as just an accumulator. You know, the strategy. Saylor does not sell. It only buys and outsold, and the market shrugged that off. So what, what happened here and what do you think this means?
- [10:04]
David
The biggest piece of information for me on, on this is Saylor sold a lot in comparison to what he sold last time. So 32 ETH. Or 32 Bitcoin is what he sold last time. He sold 3588, so way more. He raised 216 million, which is like one and a half months of dividend coverage. So in terms of, like, buying time, he didn't buy himself that much time. So it's. We're going from like micro sales to small sales of bitcoin.
- [10:34]
Ryan
And still, to your point, it's only 45 days he bought.
- [10:37]
David
Yeah, right. It's still very small. And so I do think it's bullish that Michael Saylor is selling because he needs to become, my opinion, irrelevant to the market. And when there is such a large overhang from Sailor and he has such a large obligation for dividends, that's just going to define the bitcoin price because that's what the market is going to be looking at. And Sailor needs to, in my opinion, puke up some bitcoin so he can absolve himself of some sins and, like, get 30 plus months of dividend coverage shored up. And so he sold. He's selling, but in my opinion he's not selling enough. But it is notable that the bitcoin price has gone up this week despite Saylor selling 3588 Bitcoin.
- [11:20]
Ryan
Do you think bitcoin price in the market is just saying they're accepting the fact that he's going to puke up some, some bitcoin. But so long as he pukes it up in an orderly fashion, the way everyone can kind of absorb it, it's not unexpected. You know, markets hate uncertainty. This is sort of some certainty in the market that they can predict. Yeah, sure he's going to puke up a little bit, but he's going to do it in an orderly fashion according to a plan. It's not going to be a graceless collapse or unwind. It's just going to be something that now happens. And I guess the market is bullish on that because they've removed some uncertainty. This is how strategy is going to solve its, its STRC preferred shares dilemma. Yeah, funding problem.
- [12:01]
David
Yeah, yeah. When he sold his 32 bitcoin and then bitcoin dropped like 20% from like 70 down to like 58,000 or whatever. Like I don't think it was the market responding to that 32 bitcoin sale. It was the market anticipating much larger sells like this coming in the future. And perhaps this is the first of a handful of these, hopefully in my opinion the first of many. Whereas Saylor actually does again puke up some bitcoin to shore up his defenses so the market can kind of move on. And so the drop in bitcoin price way back, way back a month and a half ago or whatever was front running all of that future selling, this selling and all of that future selling, giving Saylor kind of terrible execution on the sale. Like he's buying the top and then selling the bottom. But nonetheless, like this is I think what it takes for us to kind of just clear this debt that we have.
- [12:53]
Ryan
Well, let me ask you if you, what you think this might imply. So do you think now that the market has and sailors seemingly resolved the, the problem here? Right. We have a path towards resolution. You just keep doing this type of sale and orderly way, however frequently you want to do it. It's not a problem right now. It's going to be very orderly. So that removes the Saylor microstrategy blow up risk. I guess what I'm asking your probability. Last time that we saw the Bottom was what, like 50%?
- [13:23]
David
40 to 50%?
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Ryan
Yeah, yeah. Has that gone up or down?
- [13:27]
David
It's gone up so. Because when we bottomed at like $57,000, Saylor was selling into that with this sale. And so to me like, and so when I said it was 40 to 50 probability, I didn't know. No one knew that Sailor was selling at that time. Had I known that Sailor was actually selling into that, I'd be like, oh, he's the forced seller selling into the bottom. This is what a bottom looks like. So my probability is going up.
- [13:50]
Ryan
So now you're waiting, your waiting is basically that you're what, 60? Something like this?
- [13:55]
David
60.
- [13:57]
Ryan
Seen the bottom? That 58k was the bottom.
- [14:00]
David
57 and a half k I think was the pico bottom. What about you, has that changed?
- [14:04]
Ryan
My probability has not changed. I think I'm remain unaffected by the Saylor thing and I'm probably more influenced by Michael NATO and the work that he's doing.
- [14:14]
David
I haven't listened to your guys episode yet this week. What do you guys think?
- [14:16]
Ryan
His probability that we've seen the bottom is 45%. So his probability that we have not seen the bottom, that we go to lower lows is 65%. And he's like limit orders at 55k or so and 55 what we're like
- [14:31]
David
it's the same same.
- [14:32]
Ryan
That's the first limit set of limit orders. Then you got 50k limit orders and then you could get into this, into the 40s if things get really ugly. And like 40 is kind of a 60, you know, 3, 64%, something like this drawdown from all time highs which would be commensurate with kind of the trend that we've seen. And his reasoning is kind of different. He's looking at, you know, hold the coin switching hands from different cohorts and he's also looking at volume numbers. And he's like, we haven't seen the volume that we typically see in these kind of mark the bottom capitulation type events. He really wants to see some heavy volume on the buying and the selling.
- [15:10]
David
I will agree with the signal that it was not this bottom was not a violent bottom and all the other bottoms have been violent.
- [15:17]
Ryan
That said, look, his portfolio is something like 70% in crypto now, 30% in cash, right. So he's still the weight of, you know, right on the, the bullish side
- [15:28]
David
of things, he's leaned exposure. Which means like after, like right before 10:10 he went to like 80% cash, right?
- [15:35]
Ryan
Yeah. He did, yeah. So he's totally switched and bought in. He just, he's, he's, he's pretty convinced.
- [15:41]
David
Slower than I am.
- [15:42]
Ryan
Yeah, a little slower to call. A little slower on the draw there.
- [15:47]
David
There's one more angle of the sailor thing that I want to talk to you about because I think it's kind of actually important. There was this like they had, they released the like statement or whatever they're filing about the selling of their bitcoin price and there was like a bunch of words that has come with this. And so there are now there are three buckets in their like digital framework, monetization framework, shenanigans, which is just how
- [16:10]
Ryan
they're going to sell or how they're going to sell.
- [16:13]
David
And so there's three different categories for how strategy sells bitcoin. There is the build the reserve category which they have. That's the authorization that they have authorized themselves to sell $1.25 billion for the USD reserve. That's one type of authorized sale of Bitcoin.
- [16:32]
Ryan
So that's just like emergency fund, cash padding, that kind of thing. That's what the resource is.
- [16:37]
David
I don't know if it's emergency fund, it's just cash.
- [16:39]
Ryan
Rainy day, rainy day fund.
- [16:41]
David
Yeah. Then there's cover the preferreds, which is you sell bitcoin to pay the fixed dividends and interest strategy owes on its preferred shares and debt or to replenish the reserves after they pay them. When management decides to sell bitcoin beats, beats issuing common stock. So after they pay out like their monthly dividend or bi weekly or however long they're doing it, they're allowed to sell bitcoin to immediately replenish those dividends. And then there is a third bucket which is just to fund buybacks, which they are allowed to sell bitcoin to repurchase its preferred shares, MSCR stock, up to $1 billion of each with bitcoin sales potentially covering related taxes, fees and expenses. So there's three different buckets for how they sell Bitcoin. That 1.25 billion authorization that they authorize themselves to, which they don't need to do, but they did, is, is untouched by this sale of $216 billion, a million dollars of bitcoin. This, that is the COVID the preferreds category, not the build res, the reserves category, the build the reserves category. They have still authorized themselves $1.25 billion of permission to sell bitcoin. And this sale from this week is not in that bucket. It's in the COVID the preferreds bucket, which is a limitless bucket. They can sell as much bitcoin as they need to cover the preferreds.
- [18:00]
Ryan
Okay, so they're just saying all of the sales we made this week didn't count towards the number we gave you last week.
- [18:05]
David
And also we deem that we authorized that to not count.
- [18:09]
Ryan
Right. So I don't know what I get from that other than the selling could continue and yeah, they can do whatever they want.
- [18:16]
David
What are all these words for, dude?
- [18:20]
Ryan
Well, I'm glad we talked about that and cleared all that out. Dude. What do we have next?
- [18:25]
David
Okay, coming up next, we're going to talk about the brand new innovative use case on Robinhood chain that has been recently discovered this week. No one saw it coming. And then also Ryan's going to talk to us about Ethereum 3.0. We got a new straw map to talk about that. Okay, it's all of that and more. But first we're going to talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Trading is changing, not gradually. Right now. OK X just launched trading bots directly inside the OK X app Grid Trading DCA arbitrage. You set your strategy once and it executes around the clock. No staring at charts all day, no manual entries, no missing moves while you're asleep. And for the first time, automated trading actually feels simple. But OK X is thinking bigger than just trading. They also launched the Agent Payments Protocol, an open standard that lets AI agents execute full commercial transactions on chain. The Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap and AWS are already building on it. And now it's live inside the United States. And new users who deposit and trade can get up to $500 in Bitcoin through the bankless link. The link is in the show Notes to learn more, not investment advice. Not available in New York or Texas markets. Don't move one asset at a time. One day it's Bitcoin, the next Nvidia, then Gold, and then the S and P. But most traders are still managing their portfolio across different platforms, different accounts and different pools of capital. Bitget just changed that. Their new Stocks 2.0 product lets you trade tokenized equities directly with USDT all inside the same app you already use for crypto. This is not just another tokenized stock product. Stocks 2.0 is designed around deeper liquidity, faster execution and the lowest fees in the market. At just point zero, 4% and one to one economic exposure to the underlying stock dividends. Stock splits and other corporate actions are reflected Automatically helping your position stay aligned with the asset. You actually want exposure to one platform, one account, multiple markets, crypto equities, commodities and more. All accessible with USDT Bitget Trade Smarter. Start trading today through the link in the show notes. This is not investment advice. Last week we had the rise of Robinhood chain. This week it opened for business. The bridges opened up and you're able to go and buy tokenized stocks and put money into Morpho and trade on uniswap and get 7% yield. You know what happened, Ryan? Yeah.
- [20:35]
Ryan
People did all of those things that you said. Is that right?
- [20:38]
David
Sure, some people did, yeah. But what is actually, everyone's excited about meme Coins. Meme coins. Can I tell you about the meme coin that's on Robinhood chain that people are excited about?
- [20:49]
Ryan
What's it called? What's the meme coin of the week?
- [20:51]
David
It's called Cash Cat and the lore is that this is what Robinhood was called before it was called Robin Hood. And there's a tweet from Vlad from 2021 about this and people immediately found that meme and it jumped up to $180 million in market cap or something. And then because of the flurry of activity of meme coins on Robinhood chain, so many people wanted to bridge to Robinhood chain that all the bridges ran out of eth. Ran out of liquidity on the Robinhood chain. Just like everyone bridged over and like we don't have any eth for you. You have to go to the canonical bridge if you want to go on. And so like people just rushed in to buy meme coins on Robinhood chain. I forgot that like when a chain launches, the first thing that happens there is just people just buy the native meme coins of the chain.
- [21:37]
Ryan
But that's doesn't always happen though. I mean, didn't happen for Kraken's Inc. It just depends. It doesn't happen for lots of chains.
- [21:45]
David
You would want it to. You would want it to.
- [21:47]
Ryan
Everyone would want it to. Maybe we'll talk about why. But like this seems like an endorsement almost from Vlad Tenev, the founder of Robinhood. He tweeted tweeted this while we're building Robinhood chain to be the best chain for real world assets. It works great for memes too. There you go. It does work great for memes.
- [22:04]
David
Blockchains do work great for memes. That is something that we've actually known for quite a long time. So now like all the meme coin traders are like Looking at Robinhood and Vlad being like, are you guys going to list the memes? Like, but you have to support the meme economy. You need to list Cash Cat on the main Robinhood app because we need you guys to support the memes. And I think people are just have way too much hope for that. I don't think that's happening at all.
- [22:30]
Ryan
I guess the theory of why a meme coin would explode on Robinhood is distribution. You've got, you know, 25 million same
- [22:38]
David
trading meme coins on base. It's like you pump the meme coins on base and then Coinbase will list it.
- [22:43]
Ryan
Yeah, but with Robinhood, it's. It's untouched people too, right? It's like, yeah, the same.
- [22:48]
David
They have been burned by meme coins before. They've already could burn them.
- [22:52]
Ryan
That's right.
- [22:53]
David
We could be the guys that burn them.
- [22:54]
Ryan
This is a whole audience. We could burn. This is a whole new audience. Like, that could tap into the potential. I think that is probably some of the theory. It's. It's Robin Hood distribution. I mean, you correct me, I'm not a meme coin trader. What do I know about this?
- [23:06]
David
That's right.
- [23:06]
Ryan
That sounds right.
- [23:07]
David
And I think people are getting even if Robin Hood does do that, which I don't think they will, and I don't think that they ought to. Because you shouldn't be, in my opinion, distributing meme coins to your retail buying, like, just because you want to support them. Why not?
- [23:22]
Ryan
Why? Can't keep David. Why? Gatekeep, you're such a gatekeeper.
- [23:25]
David
I'm sorry, I'm listening to all the people who own Cash Cat on Twitter and be like, vlad List, Cash Cat. Vlad List Cash Cat. And all I'm hearing is, vlad, let me dump on your customers.
- [23:33]
Ryan
This is always the case. This is always the case.
- [23:36]
David
Like, there's no way. There's no way. And like Robinhood moves slowly and, you know, to some degree that's actually benefited them because they've been able to be like, 17th mover advantage on Ethereum layer twos. And they just get to bring all their distribution and, like, going fast. They would have been in the experiment, like, wild west phase and like, that's not their deal. And so I don't, like, I'm not holding my breath for Robinhood to list Cash Cash.
- [23:59]
Ryan
Nor do you think they should. You're saying you think they should.
- [24:01]
David
Nor do I think that they should
- [24:02]
Ryan
shoot that segmented sandbox. Do you want. You want memes?
- [24:05]
David
If you want to buy memes download Robinhood wallet, not Robinhood app.
- [24:09]
Ryan
Yeah, at least there's a step there and a hoop someone has to go through. And so they're not like enticed by this. But this has been pretty good for some of the native defi protocols for wallets. I saw 140,000 wallets have been opened on Robinhood chain. This is Hayden Addison.
- [24:25]
David
On one day. That was just one day. I think we're cumulative. Cumulative wallets on Robinhood chain is over 200,000. On July 8, there was 141 new active wallets on Robinhood chain. $500 million of trading volume in Uniswap in 24 hours, which is roughly a third of Solana's Dex Spot volume just on the Uniswap version of Robinhood chain. Pretty crazy.
- [24:48]
Ryan
I mean, could you make the argument that, hey, this is memes are a great way to bootstrap an ecosystem. You get users you people use like on the wallet, doing things, activity. And then once they, they come, they'll, they'll, they'll stay.
- [25:00]
David
I've heard this story before.
- [25:01]
Ryan
I feel like I've. We've said this before.
- [25:04]
David
I've heard that before.
- [25:05]
Ryan
More, more, more crypto wallets in more hands is net good.
- [25:08]
David
I think memes just are always kind of just like it's the spark. Whether or not it lights anything is completely unfounded.
- [25:17]
Ryan
Well, there were some defi protocols that are winners here. You mentioned Uniswap. There's also Athena and Morpho, which received some, some they benefit from Robinhood Chain doing well. Some of these Robinhood tokens were on Pump Fun, which is a massive.
- [25:33]
David
Yeah, so like Pump wants to give their users in on the action. And so you can buy Robinhood meme coins on PumpFund now, which also now includes Robinhood stocks. So you can now buy Robinhood stock tokens on Pump Fun, which is interesting.
- [25:46]
Ryan
It's a great way to cycle your meme coin winnings into something that's a bit more sustainable. I hope that's what they're doing, David. But how about the real world asset part of things? How about the tokenized stocks? Are those flying off the shelves? We selling some tokenized stocks on Robinhood chain? Sure.
- [26:05]
David
There's $366 million of assets on Robinhood chain. 266 of that is stablecoins, granted. And a lot. A decent chunk of that is, as you said in Morpho, getting that 7% like boosted yield from the Robinhood stablecoin. The USDG, that's Paxos so $90 million of that is in. In Athena getting yield. $86 million of that is in Morpho getting yield. And then there is a whopping $13 million of tokenized stocks. Robinhood tokenized stocks. $13 million, which I mean zero. It's day three, you know.
- [26:43]
Ryan
Well, I'm sure that number will go up when they open it up, at least to the U.S. it's just Europe.
- [26:48]
David
Yeah, right. It's not even. It's not available in the US which sucks.
- [26:51]
Ryan
I'm sure there's a lot of gates that like I haven't tried to purchase.
- [26:55]
David
I actually haven't actually tried it out directly because Robinhood stocks are permissionless, actually.
- [27:00]
Ryan
Yeah, it's a. To do it for next time. David's going to go try this. Yeah, let's. Let's look at the data availability purchase from Ethereum. Some interesting stats nerd. This is L2B. Now Robinhood chain is on L2B. And because Robinhood chain is a layer two and probably the most successful layer two that's come out in the past like 12 months or so. Right. As far as off the bat success, it's kind of like people are looking for some validation of the Ethereum L2 roadmap, which has not been going well lately. So Robinhood Chain purchases its data availability from Ethereum the layer one and they have so far spent about $600 purchasing that data availability.
- [27:44]
David
$600 of ETH. It's just gone forever.
- [27:47]
Ryan
600 of blob space so far. And that' start. And of course it only spikes up when there's contention. So because there's much more supply than demand, the fees are low.
- [27:55]
David
Competition.
- [27:56]
Ryan
Yes. You know the drill. Should we talk more about Ethereum? You want to talk about the straw map?
- [28:01]
David
Yes, you do have to give a shout out to Arbitron, which is going to be our to token mover of the week, which was up 13% this week.
- [28:07]
Ryan
Oh, they are up because they were only up like 3% last week when we talked about this.
- [28:10]
David
So they got a boost. They got a boost because they get 10% of all of the execution fees of Robin Hood Chain goes into the Arbitrum Dao. So arb Token Mover of the week. Congrats. Arb.
- [28:19]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [28:19]
David
Okay, now talk to me about the straw map.
- [28:21]
Ryan
Well, I don't know. Did you see it? So this is Vitalik posting the straw map. So we already had a version of the straw map, which is basically Ethereum's roadmap for the next call. It three to five years, maybe 10 years plus.
- [28:35]
David
Why do we call it that?
- [28:37]
Ryan
Like strawman, you know, I said, I
- [28:39]
David
think it's like, it's like an idea of a roadmap.
- [28:42]
Ryan
It's. Yeah, it's just like a draft of a roadmap.
- [28:45]
Interviewer/Host
Right.
- [28:45]
Ryan
This could change. Like, don't take it too seriously. It's just a straw.
- [28:48]
David
I never did.
- [28:50]
Ryan
Well, you might have reason to take it a bit more seriously this time around because this is a new version of the straw map. And this one has something I didn't see in previous versions, which is some columns for dates. For dates.
- [29:06]
David
That's new. That is new.
- [29:08]
Ryan
Can you imagine dates?
- [29:09]
David
How specific?
- [29:10]
Ryan
It's just a straw map, so don't get too excited. Okay. These are straw map names.
- [29:14]
David
I got excited.
- [29:16]
Ryan
But we do have these dates and we have them tied roughly to future hard forks. So we have lists of features tied to hard forks which are shippable pieces of software on Ethereum tied to like, I don't know, this looks like a six to nine month cadence and it goes from 2026 and the two next hard forks all the way to 2029. And you also have this, this column called North Stars. And so these features are grouped so you know the layers of the cake for Ethereum. How many times have we educated ourselves on this and the rest of the bankless nation on this Consensus layer, data layer, execution layer, the three layers of the cake. And then you have these North Stars, which I appreciate. Why are we doing these things? The north stars are fast. L1. So fast. Finality teragas L2. So lots of blobs for Robinhood chain and base, 1 gigabyte per second. And then gigagas L1, that's 1 gigagas per second. And then private L1. So those are the four north stars for Ethereum at this point. And all of the features across all of these swimlines map to one of those four north stars. Are you with me so far?
- [30:31]
David
Yep. Mm. Mm.
- [30:33]
Ryan
So Vitalik calls this the biggest kind of thing, New era of Ethereum. He doesn't say Ethereum 3.0, but that's my interpretation. Now, unlike the merge, it's not like a one shot, like we ship the whole thing. So this happens much more gradually, which is maybe some of the reason you don't want to call this whole thing Ethereum 3.0. It's because it's just not a moment in time.
- [30:53]
David
There's never a moment.
- [30:54]
Ryan
No. We're shipping Ethereum 3.0 as I'm calling it in these kind of hard fork phases towards these North Star definitions. Do you have any, like, I don't know if you saw this compared to the previous version of the roadmap, but like, based on everything I've said, what are your impressions of the changes here, if anything?
- [31:18]
David
Well, this, the old version was a straw map which was subject to change and updating and all that kind of stuff. And I think really the first version, you know, the beta version of the straw map was Justin Drake's most hated slide ever. Yes. Out of Con in bogota.
- [31:35]
Ryan
Was that 2024?
- [31:36]
David
Bangkok. 2024?
- [31:37]
Ryan
Yep.
- [31:38]
David
Is it 2024? Yeah, 2024.
- [31:40]
Ryan
Were he into Lean Ethereum, that whole idea? Yep.
- [31:43]
David
Right. And it was like a five year plan and everyone was grumbling about or two and a half years later or halfway through. But like it's a straw map. And so it has been updated. It was subject to change, we've changed, it's now this. And what has changed in those two and a half years? AI and also quantum.
- [32:02]
Ryan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
- [32:03]
David
So those two things are like reshuffling priorities. And then you also have the unbundling of the ef. Vitalik doesn't really care about block times. ETH Labs now cares about block times. And so because of the reshuffling of the actual organizations leading this drama app, you kind of see also some of the priorities. And so it's just updated for 2026 is kind of like my summary of how things changed.
- [32:23]
Ryan
I think it is updated for 2026 with some of those priorities. I want to get back to that in a second. But also I'd point out it's like so much more detailed, so much less fog of war. If you go back to. Do you remember Justin Drake's slide from 2024? It was just very vague and it was like there was a. We're going to pill everyone first. You know, like that's part of the reason we got some pilling pushback. Right. This is detailed, this has dates, this has columns, this has hard forks, this has specific features.
- [32:51]
David
Does it have like microstrategy authorization to sell Bitcoin dates or are they dates?
- [32:57]
Ryan
I think that. Well, I don't think you. The dates are straw map. Okay. But the level of detail is something that we haven't seen for this era of Ethereum. But, but let's talk about the prioritization that you noticed. Yeah. The advent of AI formal verification seems to be getting kind of a big boost in this or at Least you could see the effects. In the same way that a secret unlock for Ethereum in the past has been snarks. That's what's allowing this roadmap. And we've already kind of priced that in, let's say, and incorporated that in previous versions of the Straw Map. This one seems most affected by formal verification because there seems to be this idea that we can move from a multi client execution layer to a more consolidated single client pieces of the execution layer. So rather than have, in order to preserve security redundancy through multiple clients, there's this idea I think, interjected through this version of the roadmap that we can consolidate, have a single client as long as it's formally verified. That gives us the security that we need. And because we can only have one client, that speeds a lot of things up. So in particular that was all a
- [34:07]
David
lot of development, just governance, coordination and so many different layers. Yes, it's so much faster. We can just focus on one client.
- [34:17]
Ryan
Yeah. So what you see here is that the ZKEVM has been sped up. Okay. Now it's in kstar, the K fork, whereas previously it was like an L or longer. So that has moved forward and now
- [34:30]
David
you actually see, I can't even imagine L star. I'm going to be 40 years old.
- [34:33]
Ryan
No, you're not. This is K star is 2028. L star is 2029. Okay, okay, you're going to be 40 in 2029. So all the way. Native rollups also make an appearance on this. I don't know if I've seen that on previous versions. Native rollups with a date is new. So anyway, I think that's cool. Another thing that I noticed was there seems to be more acceleration towards quantum. So some of the quantum dates have moved up as well. More from the 2029 and 2030 to the 2028 time period for quantum acceleration. Privacy also more ambitious, I will say about Quantum.
- [35:15]
David
It is nice Ethereum being the second market cap blockchain because if you have a quantum computer, like are you going to go for Bitcoin or are you going to go for Ethereum? And the answer is unequivocally you're going to go for Bitcoin because Ethereum is still going to be harder to break and more readily available. And so like Bitcoin will take the bullet for Ethereum.
- [35:35]
Ryan
Yeah, I mean, that's right. And also I think Ethereum is kind of leading the way for Bitcoin in terms of figuring out which cryptography works for Blockchains privacy. Ethereum looks like it's going by the end of this in the longer term, going full zcash. So what we're looking at is, at least in the straw map is a privacy pool at the consensus layer that's like basically zcash functionality on the zcash
- [36:02]
David
that is a shielded pool in the layer one that is zcash something that
- [36:05]
Ryan
Bitcoin is not doing. But it's basically saying, hey, privacy will take that. That'll be a feature that we add onto our blockchain rather than launch an entirely new blockchain. So those are the big things I noticed now there are some things that were deprioritized. Data availability. Blob features seem to be pushed back a bit more because like, I guess we have enough and they're not really bad. Like, I mean it's not generating a lot.
- [36:25]
David
They just charge Robinhood more money. That's fine.
- [36:28]
Ryan
It was an okay product. It's not a. It's blown out, you know, the records in terms of sales for Blobspace also, let's see, slot times were moved back a little bit. But I was looking at the ETH Labs team, this is Barnaby from the ETH Labs team, to see what they'd say about this roadmap. And they were actually bullish. This is Barnaby saying he likes decoupled. Consensus is very bullish, he said, because they're decoupling some things. You get the sense that ETH Labs might be able to move on slot times independent of this roadmap, whereas maybe the Ethereum foundation isn't prioritizing it. There's opportunity because they're decoupling for ETH Labs to come in and prioritize it. So there's that too. And then one other thing I noticed, which is like, I don't know what this is exactly, snail issuance, like I've heard talk about that. But like issuance, ETH issuance could be on the table in some form or another. It has an emoji which is like uncertainty emoji. So that could be a discussion in the future too.
- [37:34]
David
I can't believe we're going to do another round of ETH issuance debates in the Ethereum community. And like I can just see that tidal wave coming and I'm going to take part in it because I find ETH monetary policy probably the most interesting subject about Ethereum. But I'm just like, I'm just going to get so many gray hairs.
- [37:52]
Ryan
I do share this. Take that, donkrad had on the back. So Donkrad, former ETH researcher of course now he's at Tempo. He said the Ethereum straw map has a lot of really cool features in all caps. Fully proven STF and scaling to giga gas with finality in seconds gets me excited. He said but three to four years is very slow. I think we should be ambitious and get it done in one year.
- [38:15]
David
I think that's unreasonable to get it done in one year. I think if we wanted to get it done in one year you would basically have to punt every single Ethereum developer and then get Tempo to come in and do it in their very like top down, like centralized way. I don't know how we would do that in one year.
- [38:34]
Ryan
So you're fine with three to four
- [38:36]
David
years but not I agree with Donkrat is that he should be done as soon as possible but I just don't see how we do that. It's just not in the culture that we have in Ethereum.
- [38:45]
Ryan
Defi Ignis had a take on this. He said it was bullish overall but he said the missing piece is ETH tokenomics. Although it's a non issue if reduced fees attract more transactions per user, that's a big if. So his thing was like there's nothing that addresses fee generation on Ethereum is that kind of insight. And if the bear market continues for longer then Tempo Canton they start to eat away at eth's market share.
- [39:13]
David
I don't know about that latter point because for all this like Ethereum is in a league of its own and Ethereum and to his first point about like inducing fee demand like that's no one's job to do BD and growth on Ethereum that's kind of been the
- [39:30]
Ryan
issue the entire token economics take which
- [39:33]
David
is just like that's issuance so it is touched on that is issuance but
- [39:37]
Ryan
that's just reducing issuance because like I think what, what Defi Ignis and some people are looking for is for the burn to come back for there to be some sustained cash flows in terms of fee generation or me demand and
- [39:49]
David
we can't force demand to happen on Ethereum.
- [39:51]
Ryan
You could.
- [39:52]
David
We can't just induce demand.
- [39:53]
Ryan
It's not just demand, it's also supply. I mean you can.
- [39:56]
David
Right, which is reducing issuance.
- [39:58]
Ryan
Um, no, no, no, sorry not for like I'm talking about actual fee generation. So what I'm saying is people like Defi Ignis think of ETH right now as it doesn't have a value Proposition unless it can generate substantial fees. Not like issuance from like fees or MEV sales. Right. Like the monetary premium thing is like not a thing. We want to see discounted cash flow to ethics. And this roadmap does not create any discounted cash flows that they would like to see. I don't know what he proposes, but.
- [40:32]
David
But that's not what this roadmap would ever do. Like, when did we get like the burn? We got it from Defi Summer. We got it from NFT Mania, which is like app the application layer creating products that people wanted. And the Ethereum foundation and the ETH developers were never involved with the app layer intentionally so. And so there's nothing in this protocol that is like, oh, and then here's how we create demand.
- [40:57]
Ryan
It's not just a demand story. That's just the one point I want to emphasize. Because the other reason you got fees was because you had restricted supply because you weren't scaling anything. See, part of the reason we have no fees right now is because supply outstrips demand.
- [41:11]
David
Right.
- [41:11]
Ryan
And so this is why I don't agree with the whole ignis take and the takes that ETH needs to be a discounted cash flow type asset is because fees will never be a thing. Fees will never like I think this whole roadmap, when I look at it again, it's inkblot test. You could look at this and be like bullish or you could look at it bearish. I'll give you the bullish way to look at this. This is optimizing for ETH as a store of value in a crop censorship resistant type way. And it's optimizing for slow defi at the cost of fast defi, say your super fast lot times. You trade that off and you get like privacy for your crops asset. Like I think what if what Vitalik's. Because this is kind of Vitalik's vision. Right. What Vitalik is doing is he's creating a crops defi friendly a platform with ETH as the store of value without actually saying that's what he's doing. Right. Because that's what the roadmap essentially is. That's what it delivers if you get to the end of this.
- [42:13]
David
Yeah. You're saying that Ethereum is a app chain. It's a application specific chain. The application is ether.
- [42:20]
Ryan
Yes.
- [42:21]
David
The fact that you can build turn complete smart contracts is really just because then we can build things like Uniswap and AAVE for Ether.
- [42:28]
Ryan
Yes.
- [42:29]
David
And we can implement the zk, the Privacy pool inside the layer. One for Ether.
- [42:36]
Ryan
That's what I'm saying.
- [42:36]
David
So it's an app chain for Ethereum.
- [42:39]
Ryan
And it's about time that. Because when I look at this architecture, I'm like, oh, that's what you're building. It's about time that the Ethereum community and the EF say that that's what they're building. Because that's what they're building.
- [42:51]
David
Yeah. If we as a community, as an Ethereum community had gone back in time to 2017 and then started thinking on those terms, I think we would have ended up in a very similar yet very different spot. Whereas what is Ethereum for? It's for Ether versus what is Ethereum for? It's for the world.
- [43:11]
Ryan
Yeah, I agree. Well, but like, Ether is for the world. But I see what you're saying.
- [43:15]
David
You're saying Ether's for the world.
- [43:16]
Ryan
But all these tokenized use cases and all that, like all the stuff that was kind of a side quest.
- [43:21]
David
Decentralized Internet or World computer? No, no, no, no. World asset.
- [43:27]
Ryan
Yep, that's right. And then Bitcoiner's like, but you stole that from us. I'm like, yep, that's right.
- [43:31]
David
Yeah, it was a good meme. But your blockchain's boo. Boo.
- [43:35]
Ryan
Anyway, that's my take. And this, I don't really know how
- [43:37]
David
we got there from the demand side or whatever, but whatever. Yeah.
- [43:40]
Ryan
And maybe my last question on this. Do you think that Ethereum is going to deliver this maybe not in three to four years, but say four to five years?
- [43:49]
David
Yeah, like the, the long term conclusion on the roadmap is inevitable.
- [43:54]
Ryan
There you go.
- [43:55]
David
Like, but that's just never been the issue.
- [43:58]
Ryan
What do we have coming up, David?
- [44:00]
David
Coming up next, we're going to talk about the JP Morgan $700 million fund on Ethereum. We're going to talk about the paradigm race. And then also we're going to do a little portfolio check in because, Ryan, I'm going to top my own portfolio and do a little victory dance about something that I think I deserve. And so we're going to talk about that and more right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.
- [44:20]
Ryan
Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael NATO. He runs the Defi Report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 10:10 price drop happened. His cycle analysis has been absolutely on Point. I've been following him for years and this year we started recording weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle. There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes, they're short, they're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So let's do it together. Go subscribe to this podcast, Search the Defi Report Wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find a link in the Show Notes, there's a new episode waiting for you now.
- [45:07]
David
Hey, Bankless Nation, it's David. If you're hearing this, that's because you are listening to the free Bankless podcast feed. Did you know that there is a premium Bankless RSS feed? The premium feed has extra interviews that I do for my own personal research and just deeper questions that I want answered about the crypto industry. Questions that I want to answer so I can be more informed as an investor, both at Bankless Ventures and also just in my own personal portfolio too. Also, there are no ads, which means if you listen to the premium feed instead of the free feed, you'll get about 20 hours of your life back every year because you choose to support Bankless directly. So if you're interested in getting extra content all while skipping the ads, or you just appreciate what we do here and want us to keep doing it, we'd appreciate it if you signed up for Bankless Premium and there is a link in the show Notes to get started. Cheers to a good 2026.
- [45:49]
Ryan
This is a title. JP Morgan built a 700 million fund on Ethereum and nobody noticed. So we talked about this, I don't know, a month or so ago, maybe
- [45:59]
David
six weeks ago, about jltxx. What a ticker.
- [46:03]
Ryan
This is the second tokenized that JP Morgan has released and there was a question at the time, well, will anyone care? Will it get any traction? It's actually grown 250% in the last month, so it now is now a $700 million money market fund. And this is all on Ethereum. So just a refresher of what this thing is. It's. It's the money market, so it's US Treasuries, overnight repo. It's not for, you know, typical retail investors. There's a $1 million minimum. There's some expense ratio. It is denominated in USDC. It is on public mainnet layer one. It does accept stablecoins for redemptions. And it was designed for the genius act. And what's interesting about JP Morgan's strategy is they have their own internal blockchain system. It was once called Quorum. I always forget what it's called now.
- [47:00]
David
Connexus or something.
- [47:02]
Ryan
That's right. And they also deployed something on base. They deployed jpmd, which was their deposit token token, and they piloted that on base. So you get the sense that their strategy is they're going to have an internal blockchain, but they're. And they're also going to have maybe payments, deposit tokens on base and various L2s. But on layer one it looks like they're building their, you know, big money market funds. And what's interesting about that is they are actually doing it on Ethereum L1, not on a layer of two, not on their own internal chain. And I was kind of wondering about this question because there is a real world asset war going on out there. I think I've made the point. And you've agreed that Ethereum is not necessarily optimized for real world assets, Right? It's optimized for censorship, resistance, it's privacy, like other things. And yet it still might win the real world asset game or at least JP Morgan is continuing to deploy there. The biggest, biggest bank in the U.S. what are your thoughts on I guess the real world asset game here? Do you think Ethereum could actually win this by just optimizing for crops and then as a second it becomes the liquidity hub and wins network effect for that and then thus becomes the home also for tokenized real world assets? Or do you think it's going to be a knife fight out there with Canton and Tempo and even Solana rising up the ranks?
- [48:33]
David
The properties that Ethereum has and what it's being built for, the crop stuff and then the properties that real world asset tokenized issuers want in need are somewhat overlapping, but they are not one to one. No asset issuer is looking at the censorship resistance of Ethereum and being like, great, I can call this place home. I was talking to Carlos Domingo from Securitize and they issued Securitize. What does Securitize do? They secured Securitize assets into tokens on, on Ethereum or public blockchains. And so when they spacked, they did the obvious thing and then they tokenized their own equity. So this is not a Robinhood stock token. This is not an Ondo like derivative. This is actual the, the actual equity with, you know, DTCC compliance and they're. Because they're a, what is it called? They're a transfer agent. They do all this stuff. So it's the actual equity. It's KYC'd on the Ethereum layer one. You have to have a KYC to get it because that's how equities work. Excuse me, it's not on the Ethereum one, it's on Solana and it is on Avalanche. Why is it there? Because they, Because Avalanche has like the permissions and like the compliance needed that securitized needs to make that work. And why is it on Solana? Because Solana has like the prop AMM ecosystem to provide the really tight slippage because there's just a lot of regulation and complaints constraints about how to compliantly issue these things and they right now they can only do it on Avalanche and Solana, they're going to do it on Ethereum. But the fact that it's not first on Ethereum is very notable to me. And I asked Carlos like why not? And he was like well the block times are really slow and that prevents our market makers from being able to compliantly quote the price that it needs to be because they have to do they have to give you the, the asset at a best price because they need to give you at the best price. There's like some stupid rules about it which actually the SEC is going to eliminate in a year, which is interesting. Okay, but this is like Ethereum has properties and those are adjacent somewhat congruous, somewhat parallel to real world asset tokenized issuer needs but they are not the same thing.
- [50:35]
Ryan
So it's not clear cut. It's. It's not the case that Ethereum will be the default for this? No, it will be the default in some cases. It seems to be at least currently the default for JP Morgan, their money market fund. But I mean I guess that could erode, that could change over time or it could be the default for certain types of defi use cases. Like, like this is kind of a vault use case. This is definitely a slow use case.
- [50:57]
David
I found the Etherscan for this. So I'm looking at this. It's not even listed on Coingecko. It's got like a preview page on Coingecko. The Etherscan has six total wallet holders of this thing.
- [51:07]
Ryan
So these are just whales, kind of just parking stuff in this?
- [51:10]
David
Yeah, like one wallet holds like 83% of it. And so like this is like an accounting tool as far as I'm concerned.
- [51:17]
Ryan
Interesting. Yeah, I don't Know, I mean the other question is if Ethereum does win the real world asset war anyway, or let's say it wins majority something like 60%. Does that even matter for eth price? Does that matter for eth price?
- [51:34]
David
Marginally, yeah.
- [51:36]
Ryan
That's kind of what I think too. Yeah.
- [51:38]
David
A non zero amount.
- [51:40]
Ryan
Paradigm has raised 1.2 billion for their Fund4David. They've kind of pivoted into AI a
- [51:47]
David
little bit, but I think more like a little bit. Yeah, I don't think there's any crypto like 100% crypto VC left. No one is a. Let me know if I'm wrong at me on Twitter. But like no one is a crypto only VC anymore. And you're seeing this raise reflected with paradigm. $1.2 billion is pretty chunky raise. But they have also said in addition to crypto they are also going to be investing in AI and robotics and just other frontier technologies, which I think is like the right category. Like that's kind of what I'm interested in is like frontier technology broadly crypto has something to do with it. Like Venice for example. Private AI, AI also crypto frontier technology. Absolutely. Like using, using like nears, like near AI to do all that kind of stuff like frontier tech. And that's sick. And so that category is. Is what I think kind of crypto is now is just like crypto plus frontier tech.
- [52:42]
Ryan
This era in general. Can we extrapolate this has seen kind of the death of the crypto only investor.
- [52:49]
David
Correct.
- [52:50]
Ryan
Like there aren't crypto only like VC firms as you pointed out. But like you're not a crypto only investor. Right. Like who's left is a crypto only investor.
- [52:59]
David
There are a handful, a handful of people.
- [53:02]
Ryan
Most people are playing into other assets though and other frontier tech.
- [53:06]
David
I have more of my money in the stock market it than doing crypto.
- [53:09]
Ryan
That's first time since I ever met you. I think that's probably the case, right?
- [53:12]
David
Yes, that's. Yes. Yeah.
- [53:13]
Ryan
So this is a story of what everyone is doing this cycle. David, you included this. The CFTC talking to the CME telling them to buzz off. What's this about?
- [53:23]
David
Yeah, the CME filed to do 24 7, 365 markets I think just starting with their oil market. And the they asked the CFTC if they could do that and the CFTC just said no, you can't do that. That is not what you are for. Like stay in your zero and kind of interesting. I don't really know like all the nuances behind this. But this is very much the CME very much did this in response to Hyper liquid and the 24 7, 365 perp dexes listing oil and gold and all this stuff. And so the fact that the CFTC is telling CME is like, this is not what you guys are for. Like, stay, like stay in your arena, do what you're good at and then let the perp Dexs do what they're good at. I. That's kind of, kind of what I think is happening here. This is why Jake Stravinsky is tweeting this tweet, because he's at the Hyper Liquid Policy center. So he would know and he's like, kind of like, kind of. He's able to read between the lines. But I do think it's interesting that there is a. There's a war being fought in the same way the banks and coinbase and crypto have been fighting each other for the past four years. There is a brewing war between the commodities exchanges and the perp Dexes.
- [54:34]
Ryan
And yet within that too, the cycle, there's a war between the perps Dexes themselves. I think maybe this gets into a little bit of your portfolio. But before we started recording, you told me you think that Hyper Liquid versus Lighter is the. I think you said the new Ethereum versus Solana or something like that.
- [54:52]
David
Yeah, it's the new Ether of Solana. That's right.
- [54:53]
Ryan
So what's interesting is it does feel like every single bull cycle for your cycle. We do get some kind of dichotomy of competitors here. I think 2017 is very much the Bitcoin versus Ethereum kind of cycle.
- [55:09]
David
Totally.
- [55:09]
Ryan
Maybe previous to that it was. Or after that it was Ethereum, let's say, versus Solana or Ethereum versus the ETH killers. Are you planting a narrative that this cycle might be like the big perp Dexs fighting off Ethereum or, sorry, Hyper Liquid versus Lighter. Is that just going to be a substory of this?
- [55:30]
David
I don't know if I'm planting the narrative, but like this happened downstream of the lighter partnership with the Robin Hood wallet and they're getting the endorsement from Robinhood is like now like there are a bunch of very triggered dot HLS. Remember the dot eats like we were the dot ETHs. Now there's like dot HL.
- [55:47]
Ryan
Is dot HL like the ENS for hyper liquid?
- [55:49]
David
I don't know if it's an ENS. I think they just did it. Maybe it's actually like real. I wouldn't know, but like there are like Hyper Liquid has made a ton of people very wealthy and has earned like won the hearts and minds of like a lot of people because they got the Hyper Liquid airdrop and they got wealthy as a result of it. And so it's, it's created a very strong tribe. And now like lighter has pumped like 50 or something in the last like week or so off of the back of like the Robin Hood announcement, which is, you know, an insult to the identity of a hyper Liquid person. Like, how dare any other perp dex do anything good. And so now you're starting to see like the, the Lighter versus Hyper Liquid tribe emerge. And I like, I'm not used to being the smaller guy.
- [56:33]
Ryan
I'm chosen a tribe. You're indicating you've chosen a tribe.
- [56:36]
David
I own both. I own both in a very healthy like one to one ratio. Okay. And so, but like, yeah, I think Lighter has more growth to it. And so like I kind of identify with like the Lighter camp.
- [56:48]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [56:49]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah.
- [56:49]
Ryan
So you're team Lighter and you're excited about Lighter. What is the, what is the case for Lighter versus Hyper Liquid? I'm curious, as someone from the the Lighter tribe, how would they. What they say?
- [56:58]
David
Yeah, Lighter is the very technically competent. I think it could potentially create a framework for the end game of like exchanges, like full stop. Not just crypto exchanges, not just per Dexes, but like exchanges like the NASDAQ and the NY nyse and like stuff like this. A high performance app specific ZK L2 is such a logical conclusion of strain exchange technology. And Lighter posted a blog post about all of the tech that went behind, like shaving off microseconds on like latency around hyperliquid and like all this kind of stuff. It was, I started reading, I was like, this is breaking my brain. I don't understand this. But like the point was, point was made and you get all of the assurances of the ZK so like the individual user can verify the state of the exchange and the, the validity of the exchange and the exchange playing by the rules, which feels very good. Like a lot of the cryptopunk ethos, but mainly they are positioned to take the US market. And so Vlad from Lighter, not to be confused with Vlad from Robin Hood, but Vlad from Lighter, who, they're buddies by the way, which is funny. He's on the CFTC advisory, like innovation advisory board and Lighter is just, just at the gate waiting to get a CFTC license to penetrate the US market and they're doing the coinbase thing rather than what hyper liquid strategy is, which is being like the one per decks to rule them all, you go to Hyper Liquid. It's a first party exchange. You know, builders build on Hyper Liquid kind of like on Ethereum. Everyone comes to Ethereum layer one that's kind of like Hyper Liquid. Lighter is a little bit more like a hub and spoke model where they have a spoke now out to Robinhood chain and it's its own instance on Robinhood chain. But with the ZK technology a lot of the liquidity flows back to the main hub hub. And so this is like compliance spokes for bespoke compliance needs.
- [58:50]
Ryan
I see.
- [58:50]
David
So if any, if Charles Schwab wants to build a perp Dex, but they need to kyc all of the traders and all the liquidity and all this kind of stuff. Lighter can do that and they can do that with their specific technology and they have a bunch of forward deployed engineers. So the whole idea is they just send their engineers to the United States financial institutions of the world who want perp Dex stuff and then the four deployed engineers build it into the brokerage or Robinhood Jane or whoever. And because. Because each one is its own bespoke walled garden is highly compliant with US regulation. So that's kind of the pitch for lighter as. As it differentiates from. From Hyper liquid.
- [59:26]
Ryan
It sounds like there's a little bit of a like binance versus Coinbase thing going on here or like a tether
- [59:31]
David
versus like offshore versus onshore. Yeah, yeah.
- [59:33]
Ryan
So that's the element of this. Okay, so Broadnet, what's your portfolio like these days? So you said you were going to talk about it. So what's. What's gone well? What hasn't gone well is since you made some changes in May. Correct?
- [59:46]
David
Yeah. So I. This is the tweet that like got some attention because I tweeted it out at the actual picotop of like a lot of these tokens. But. And so people were like making fun of me on Twitter because they were, they were reading it as if I bought the tokens in that moment and then they. They're at the pico top and like I tweeted this tweet in that moment because it was a brag. I wanted to remind people that I bought these tokens and they were all up. But I bought these tokens in like may. May like 9th or something. And then lit was the token that I bought on June 3rd with like the bulk of my. It's the ether portfolio that I sold and so I would like to do an account of how these, these people will call them trades. I will call them investments. There'll be trades if I sell them too soon. But since I hold all of them still, they are, they are in the category of investments in my mind. And so zcash, I'm down 20%.
- [60:38]
Interviewer/Host
Hype.
- [60:39]
David
I'm up 56%.
- [60:41]
Ryan
VVV.
- [60:42]
David
I'm down 20%. Near. I'm up 25%. And then lit, which is the token that is my largest position, is up 80%. So that's my little victory that I would like to take.
- [60:52]
Ryan
So you, you are moving into kind of your. Your trader era, but you're, you're. I guess I don't know if that's
- [60:59]
David
right, because I'm not going in and out of stuff.
- [61:02]
Ryan
Maybe you're just, you're just rebalancing towards something in crypto that is much more application forward, let's say, use case forward.
- [61:11]
David
Yeah. And they're all much smaller market caps, which just feels safer to me by comparison because, like, ETH has to justify a much higher market cap and it has to just work harder for that. And like, when I look at like, lit, that's at like a $600 million market cap, I'm like, oh, there's a potential large amount of growth here.
- [61:31]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [61:31]
David
And that's kind of where I like, I like the smaller caps rather than just like, like, ETH was great and because of what it was like money, Internet money, all that kind of stuff. But, like, commanding, like trying to get to a trillion dollars, like, that's a really hard fight.
- [61:44]
Ryan
That's. That's a hard fight, as we've seen over the past five years.
- [61:47]
David
Yeah.
- [61:48]
Ryan
Well, congrats on those gains, David. That's. I'm. I'm looking forward to seeing how that does in the future and where you choose to deploy. I think, like, for me, I'm kind of like, I'm still waiting for the bottom, the bottom signal.
- [62:02]
David
You're waiting for people to puke up some stuff.
- [62:04]
Ryan
Yeah, I don't think it's quite time. I think we're nine. We're nine and a half months into this thing. I still think it's going to take a few more months for this to sort itself out. I don't think we've seen the bottoms yet.
- [62:15]
David
When do you have. What is your shopping list?
- [62:19]
Ryan
I like, lit would be on there, except it's had an incredible run from the very beginning. So if I bought lit, it would be at some lows I have some, like bitcoin, obviously on the lows would be interesting. I don't know. I haven't fully decided. I mean, I'm really enjoying Michael NATO's work. In his watch list, a number of these are holdings that he has. For example, he's looking at Zach. He thinks it's overpriced. He's been a big bull of lit. Not quite in near, but there's some things on his list that I've been eyeing as well. So I just don't think we've heard the Pump.
- [62:59]
David
What about Pump Fund? You're going to buy Pump.
- [63:02]
Ryan
It's printing some revenue, which is insane. And that's hard to ignore if you believe in kind of like. Well, an application has to deliver revenue, doesn't it? That's what hyperliquid and lint do. They have the potential to do that. So does Pump. So that's something I'm weighing. But it's like hard for me to get really excited about that particular use case.
- [63:23]
David
But yeah, I can't imagine you holding onto Pump for a long amount of time.
- [63:27]
Ryan
Right, right. Anyway, we have to end it there.
- [63:30]
David
David, can I show you these magic alien hands?
- [63:33]
Ryan
Oh, yeah, sure. What you got?
- [63:34]
David
Yeah. This is the most wild thing I have seen on Twitter in a long time. So for the listeners, we are looking at a actuating robot hand with just seemingly perfect, high fidelity human like movement in all of the fingers.
- [63:51]
Ryan
Is this real? What? Like what is real? What am I looking at?
- [63:54]
David
Yeah, yeah, we're right. And look, watch. Brand new robot hands. We solved fingers.
- [63:58]
Ryan
Elon has said fingers are the hardest part ever.
- [64:01]
David
Yeah, fingers are the hardest part. That's right, dude. The future is going to be wild. I think that's the message I would like to leave. This podcast with future is going to be weird.
- [64:08]
Ryan
I'm pretty. I'm pretty excited about it though. I'm pretty excited actually. Like, I've gotten over some of the existential stuff of AI. Maybe that's because of like using it daily.
- [64:16]
David
Yeah, we're probably fine.
- [64:17]
Ryan
I don't know. And then what choice do we have? So anyway, we'll see.
- [64:24]
David
All right, Bankless Nation, we'll see you once again with Ryan and David on the weekly rollup in seven days. But until then, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, this frontier is not for everyone. But we are glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot,
- [64:42]
Ryan
Sam.