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- [00:00]
David
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Ryan
Station is the first week of May. It's time for the Bankless Weekly roll up, where we cover just about everything that happened in crypto. At least everything that happened that's important. David, man, we got to talk about tariffs. All right, I want to bring some macro into today's episode.
- [00:20]
David
People have been looking for your macro takes.
- [00:22]
Ryan
Oh, yeah, well, they're hot takes, all right. And GDP numbers just came in and they're kind of. They're not looking great. So I've got three macro catalysts. I think that bankless listeners, crypto investors, Catalyst should be looking out for Catalyst, not saying they're good catalysts. They could. They could go either way, but we'll
- [00:38]
David
get into that somewhere. We're also going to talk about the Ethereum pivot or just a strategic reprioritization. It really depends on who you ask. And we're also going to talk about that as well.
- [00:49]
Ryan
Worldcoin also, they're rolling out the orb in the US we'll talk about what that means. And I guess this is like, for people worried about dystopia and AI bot propaganda. I don't know which world is better, that world or like, we're going to all get orbed, our eyeballs orbed. So, like, I may be up for this.
- [01:05]
David
I think as AI has gotten more real, people are slowly coming around to the idea of WorldCoin more and more. We'll talk about that. And then also, Bitcoin is just embedding itself deeper into American politics. A massive hack sends Monero up 50%. Sui is up 60% on a bunch of speculation that they're going to win Pokemon.
- [01:24]
Ryan
Okay.
- [01:25]
David
And then Ripple tries to buy Circle, but gets denied all of this and more. But first, before we get into all of that, a message from our friends and sponsors. Build Bear. This is a. This one is for the web 3 devs we know testing smart contracts. It shouldn't be a pain. It is a pain. There's a lot that devs need to go through to make Testing Smart contracts work. Build Bear lets you spin up your own EVM sign sandbox so you can test, debug, deploy all in one place. It's like GitHub for Web3, trusted by teams like Consensus and Gelato. So if you want to, which you should, you can streamline your workflow and launch faster. Check it out at Bankless CC buildbear. All right, Ryan, you ready to get into the markets?
- [02:00]
Ryan
Yeah, let's do it, man. It's been a while since I looked at these Charts. So tell me what's going on in Bitcoin?
- [02:04]
David
Bitcoin up 4% this week. Really strong showing this morning. $97,000. So slowly grinding up, trying to hit that $100,000 mark. Ether up 5% this week. 5% up to $18, 50. Let's take it very different numbers. ETH, Bitcoin RAT019 and a total crypto market cap. Ignore the ratio, total crypto market cap of 3.14 trillion. As a reminder, Ryan, the all time high for the total crypto market cap I believe is just short of 4. Yeah, it's like 3.9 trillion and we are coming in at 3.13 trillion today.
- [02:43]
Ryan
I mean, this is not looking so bad, right? Where's the blood here? I mean bitcoin is down.
- [02:48]
David
Oh, I know.
- [02:49]
Ryan
Bitcoin all time high.
- [02:49]
David
Oh, don't ask.
- [02:50]
Ryan
Where are you going to find some blood.
- [02:51]
David
You know where the blood is.
- [02:53]
Ryan
Oh God, look at this red chart on the ratio. But ignoring that, I mean bitcoin's looking good, crypto market caps looking good. And there's some positive indicators. So overall, I mean, I don't think we're in a bear market, David.
- [03:05]
David
Nope, nope, nope. First, before we get to your macro takes, we got to talk about the movers of the week and this section is brought to you by our friends and sponsors over at Uniswap. SUI is the mover of the week. A bunch of things going on in Sui land. The price rebounded about 40% in April to 3.$6. After falling from his January all time high of 5.$3. The market cap remains in the so SUI has cracked the top 20, top 15, peaking above 15 billion. Its DeFi ecosystem has surged recently with a TVL in Sui DeFi topping over $2 billion. Driven by high yield protocols like Aftermath, Steamfi and also some native stablecoin integrations. And also Phantom Wallet supported has improved its onboarding into the SUI ecosystem. SUI itself pivoting hard into btcfi, positioning itself as a bitcoin defi hub with integrations like Babylon to enable Bitcoin st. And then even beyond Sui. SUI is launching its own gaming console. Interesting strategy called the Sui play 0x1. And then there was this massively speculative rumor like driven found out by the Internet sleuths connecting like terms of service between like a SUI webpage and Pokemon. Somehow it's all rumor, we should say all rumor so that there's a rumor out there that they may be partnering with Pokemon on digital collectibles. And that has contributed to the Sui price action. All of this brought to you by the bankless writer David C. Who put this into an article. And that is our Movers of the week section. Ryan.
- [04:34]
Ryan
Yeah, it's interesting. Look at this too. Canary Capital Advances, first ever Sui ETF with an SEC filing. Just seems like SUI is like trying to speedrun all of the things that a blockchain is supposed to do to garner adoption. I gotta say though, look at this fully diluted valuation. That's almost $40 billion, David. $37 billion.
- [04:53]
David
Okay, that's well, $12 billion market cap three, $7 billion fully diluted valuation. There's a big delta there.
- [04:59]
Ryan
What are we pricing in here? We pricing in like future fees? Is this, you know, DCF model? Is this monetary?
- [05:05]
David
Only only ask those questions about Ethereum. Right. Other, other ecosystems, you don't have to ask those questions about.
- [05:10]
Ryan
Yeah, or just pricing and growth. Let's talk about macro for a minute. Okay, so I've been just digesting what has happened since the beginning of this year from a macro perspective. And there's kind of three things that I'm keeping an eye on, David, and I think at like the first is tariffs in general and this idea of a tariff driven recession. All right. The second is American Capital flight. This seems to be a trade that might be on, may not be. We'll talk about that too. And the third is increasing global money supply. Okay, so that is the good old M2 monetary supply. These are the three things I think that are going to be really important for crypto investors over the next three to six months. The first is tariff driven recession. David, what's like your probability? How are you feeling about things, man? Like, what's your probability of recession right now?
- [06:01]
David
I mean, I'm just going to outsource my opinion to Polymarket because I think that's the role of Polymarket and Polymark is pricing it in at increasingly high. Okay, so you got it, you just pulled it up. Because I think you're of the same mind coming in at 62% odds of a recession in 2020.
- [06:14]
Ryan
We don't know better than Polymarket. Right, that's my take too.
- [06:17]
David
I'm not, I'm not smarter than polymarket. No way.
- [06:19]
Ryan
Okay, so, so, so then you would, you know, basically defer to this and be like, hey, probably over 50% odds, 62% odds that we're going to have a recession sometime in 2025. You pretty much agree with that. Okay, so GDP numbers came in just this week and it wasn't great. So the consensus was we're hoping for growth this quarter. This is Q1 GDP of 0.3%. What we got was negative 0.3%. And keep in mind, January was actually a positive number. So we had kind of a shitty February, kind of a bad March to contribute to that negative rather than positive on GDP numbers.
- [07:01]
David
So missed expectations by 0.6%.
- [07:04]
Ryan
Feels large. Yeah, it is large. Right. And so this is clearly the result of tariffs. It's very difficult to, I think, spin this and say it's something else.
- [07:14]
David
This is Q1. Like we started Q1 being very bullish and we in the middle of Q1 tariffs unexpectedly happened. And so that's why we missed.
- [07:24]
Ryan
Yeah, they did. And keep in mind that now There's a baseline 10% tariffs that America has just on basically everybody. And the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besant says that this is the new normal. So that's what's just generally in place. There is a next decision point on July 9th where ideally the US is negotiating with all of its partners. So EU, South Korea, Switzerland, it said that these deals might take like weeks, not days. So maybe those deals could come in before the 9th. If not, then that's another decision point. And the tariffs could increase for those partners there. And the China tariffs, that's true tariff war between the US and China. It's all part of this geopolitical struggle. So there's a report I read from a, you know, a fund Apollo report. They're predicting a summertime recession, David. And here's kind of how this works. So we got our April 2nd Liberation Day tariffs, right? And then we start to get, you know, container ships to US ports coming to a stop as these tariffs kick in. And then they, they kind of time box this out. Trucking demand comes to a halt. That happens in May or late May. And then in early June we start to see layoffs in trucking and retail industry and we get a summertime 2025 recession. Right? That's how it is May 1st.
- [08:44]
David
It is May 1st right now. That is not far away. That is almost here.
- [08:48]
Ryan
Okay, so is this going to happen? I think that's what Poly Market is saying is definitely a possibility at this point. And short term, that's gotta be not great for crypto. Okay. Like the short term expectations on that catalyst recession is probably not good. Crypto is generally a risk on asset. That's the perception so far. That's how it trades. So that's probably not going in our favor. The second thing Though, David, is American capital flight okay? And this kind of trade seems like it's on. You can sort of see it when US Stocks go down, bonds go down, like bond yield prices, dollar goes down and then you have gold skyrocketing up.
- [09:30]
David
People are leaving, capital is just saying goodbye.
- [09:34]
Ryan
Basically, the US has been the store of value, I mean, for the entire world. So people store their value in the risk free rate. That's UST bills, the US Stock market, S and P. It's been kind of the capital reserve, the property rights system of the entire world since Bretton woods really. And maybe that's showing signs of reversing. And so the question is, does that trade continue? I guess it could be worse. When you reflect on the year, the S and P is only down 4 to 5%. And of course indices like the S and P and the Nasdaq, Nasdaq's down 8%. These are future predictions. Right. So it doesn't seem to be pricing in that much capital flight, at least at this point in time. But bonds of course are stubborn at 4%, 10 year treasuries. Scott Bessen is trying to get bonds down as a result of all these tariffs, and they're not really falling. So you got stock market down, you've got bonds kind of pricing up or being very sticky. And then you got, of course we talked about total crypto, but then you have gold, which is trading at 33% up on the year. This looks like capital flight. Trump of course, says, this ain't my stock market. This is Biden's stock market. Do you see this tweet here?
- [10:48]
David
Dude, that was so funny. Everyone thought that was so clowning.
- [10:51]
Ryan
You should just read it out. What did he say here?
- [10:53]
David
So Donald Trump tweeted this out on, on Truth Social, his platform, his Twitter platform. This is a tweet from January 29, 2024. So a little like almost a year and a half ago is when he tweeted this. He tweeted out, this is the Trump stock market. Because my polls against Biden are so good that investors are projecting that I will win and I will drive the market up. Everything else is terrible. And record setting inflation has already taken its toll. Make America great again. Okay, so that was his position, that this is the Trump stock market a year and a half ago. He truths out just yesterday, this is the Biden stock market, not Trump's. I didn't take over until January 20th, which was nine days before that. He tweeted out the last tweet that I Just read, tariffs will soon be kicking in and companies are nine days a year before. Nine days a year, yes. Excuse me, excuse me. So, you know, I think it's pretty classic. If it's going up, it's Trump, but if it's going down, it's Biden.
- [11:47]
Ryan
Yeah. He continued, this has nothing to do with tariffs. I'm not sure that the market is leaving all of that, but. So let's say the American capital flight trade continues. Right. So it's tough to know what magnitude this is. It's clear that there's something kicking in here. What do you think? Is that good or bad for crypto?
- [12:05]
David
People have noticed that Bitcoin has started to trade more like gold since the tariff announcements. And I consider Bitcoin as being in this like third body superposition between tracking the NASDAQ and tracking gold. And sometimes it tracks gold more, sometimes it tracks NASDAQ more. And in this moment it has shifted to tracking gold more. But it still is exposure to nasdaq. So I don't, I'm bearish on crypto if the stock market goes down, but if the gold is going up in response to that, Bitcoin does get that benefit. It does get to be positioned as a sovereign, non sovereign store of value, which is what this current market is looking for as an asset.
- [12:44]
Ryan
I totally agree. I think the tariffs are negative in the short run, but this is basically the trend that everyone in crypto has predicted. This is the entire thesis. It's the decades long thesis that a credibly neutral alternative to the US monetary system, to all the fiat monetary systems around the world and alternative property rights system would kind of kick in. That's what we're seeing with Bitcoin. And I don't think it's just going to be gold and bitcoin. I think it's going to be the rest of crypto too. But that might not play out over the short run. We have no idea. And so can that counteract the tariff recession? We don't know. So you got to take that in mind. And the last thing is, David, increasing global money supply. And look at this chart Raoul Paul puts out. This is global M2. It's a projection on global liquidity, basically all of the money in the system, the fiat system across all countries. And it charts this with Bitcoin here. And we're at the point, we're at a bottoming zone of global M2. So the last few years we've had a cycle of actually decreasing global monetary liquidity in all of the fiat systems. And now we've sort of bottomed out and we're starting a new cycle. We're starting another. Raoul Paul thinks of these in four year cycles, a liquidity cycle and M2 is going up. And if you get recession, okay, you get American capital flight, what's going to happen? The money printers are going to turn on. So what's that, my friend? Is that bullish or bearish crypto?
- [14:08]
David
Ray Dalio put out a really good tweet that we don't have time to cover, but he titled it It's Too Late, the Changes Are Coming. This is an essay and article that he wrote inside of Twitter. And his first big point is that we are on the brink of a new monetary order. The domestic, political and international world orders are breaking down to unsustainable bad fundamentals that can be easily seen and measured. I think what he's pointing to and what I think everyone agrees with is like, okay, yes, new world order, incoming trade imbalances being fixed, you know, China's needs to become not dependent on United States debt. United States needs to become not dependent on Chinese manufacturing. That is going to cause pain. And in no way is there at all any sort of need to not print a bunch of money in order to ease that pain. Why? Why would we not do that?
- [14:52]
Ryan
Yes.
- [14:53]
David
And so if anything, if pain is going to happen, that is going to come out of the value of fiat currencies globally because we just are going to print ourselves into less suffering, which has been the bitcoiner thesis about monetary policy since as early as I can remember.
- [15:09]
Ryan
Look, and all the governments are going to do this because the more they print and the more closed they become, the more isolated they become, the more attractive a credible neutral monetary system that is permissionless and completely open becomes. That is bullish crypto.
- [15:22]
David
As bullish crypto.
- [15:23]
Ryan
Maybe not in the short run. Maybe we got through a summertime recession. I don't know what it's going to do. But like long term time horizons, 12 months and further, we gotta be going up.
- [15:33]
David
Yeah. All right, coming up next, things are changing in the Ethereum Foundation. They put out a blog post, a handful of blog posts talking about the new leadership structure. This isn't new news, but it's really codifying into an actual reality and putting that into a blog post. So we're going to talk about that. We're also going to talk about, did Ethereum pivot or did it do a strategic refocusing? I do think the words matter base and scroll are all stage one roll ups and also World Coins US rollout. Have people change their minds about the eyeball scaling company because now there perhaps is going to be an Apple like worldcoin retail store coming to a city near to get orbs. You just go go walk into a world coin orb store and get orbed. We're going to get to all of that and more. But first a message from some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible like Uniswap. It's a browser wallet, it's a mobile wallet. It's also the best place to do Defi. 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Each passport creates one unique identity. Second, you can share proofs privately. Third party apps request identity proofs like confirming you're over 18. You can also link proofs securely to public wallets for airdrops or governance participation. And then last, secure verification apps validate your proofs instantly on chain like on Celo or off chain audited by ZK Security. The Self app is live on iOS and Play Store. Visit Self XYZ and follow Self protocol on X the Ethereum Pivot or the Ethereum Reprioritization this is the theme I think that has been going around the Ethereum ecosystem, starting with the Ethereum foundation announcing leadership structure change. So like I said, this is not anything new. Xiaowei and Tomash are the new co executive directors of the Ethereum foundation and with that comes just overall restructuring of the EF as a whole. So now there are four board of Directors of the EF that includes Vitalik, Buren, Ayamaguchi, Patrick Storschnager who is the Swiss legal counsel and then also Xiaowei who is also the co executive director and that and so the board oversees the Ethereum Ethereum Foundation's vision, ensures alignment with his values, holds authority over the executive appointments, holds authority over the executive appointments and of course the executive appointments are Xiaowei and Tamash who I think everyone is very bullish on Tamash coming in and providing some like leadership operational excellence in the Ethereum organization. And so the Ethereum foundation put out this blog post and also another blog post from Xiaowei and Tamash about kind of a co statement about what their near term goals are.
- [20:31]
Ryan
What kind of red like what are those goals?
- [20:34]
David
There were a handful of goals, but toMash specifically identified three things that Tomash wants to bring for the next 12 months of time during his time as his his, you know, first first 12 months of as co ed of the EF scaling the layer 1, scaling blobs, improving UX now these three things have kind of turned into an Ethereum tagline. This is the take that hisee put out on Twitter this week is that oh this these are very clear, precise three things that can represent a rallying cry cry for the Ethereum community. Scaling layer one, scaling blobs, improving ux. And to me I'm kind of like wrapping this all up and calling it Ethereum's pivot towards a product centric roadmap. So rather than the rollup centric roadmap, which we still are still on, it is now a roll up and a strong layer one rollup centric roadmap, which is the thing that Ansgar and Donkrad identified in on my podcast episode with him. But I think if you can just really distill it down to what is Ethereum trying to do? What is it pivoting towards? What is it refocusing towards? It is refocusing towards a product centric roadmap. What's your take?
- [21:38]
Ryan
I agree with that. So like there was some debate though, whether you call it a pivot or a reprioritization. I mean the thing that I would say justifies a pivot in some people's minds, I would say, including mine, is this top one scaling the L1. That did not seem to be, according to the roadmap, a priority. Three months ago, six months ago, certainly not a year ago, it was all about.
- [22:00]
David
It had also been like culturally blasphemous to talk about scaling the layer one at times.
- [22:05]
Ryan
Well, I definitely felt that. Like I felt that last summer when we had episodes with people like Max Resnick for instance, who is now he's on Solana and his reason for that is like he's basically like, oh, Ethereum didn't scale the L1. So I'm going over here to a place they will. So that feels like a change to me. And I would hazard to call it a pivot. But what's the other side of this? Anthony Sustano says, look, it's not a pivot. We always add scaling the L1 as part of the roadmap merge surge scourge Verge, purge, all of that stuff. And he's also not wrong and he's saying this is more of a prioritization. So you're just taking things that were out there and you're bringing it up here. So pivot reprioritization. Do you think this debate even matters?
- [22:45]
David
I think it does matter. The messaging does matter. And I agree with Hazu's commentary on this where he says, yes, you can point to Ethereum's 100 item roadmap and say, look, we have been working on all of these things, which is true. Scaling the layer one was always on the long term roadmap for Ethereum. The pivot is that that long term part of Ethereum's roadmap has been brought to the forefront and there are people like Dunkrod and Onsgar and Tomash who are like, okay, we are going to emphasize layer one scaling now this month and really like zooming out again. I will also talk about site hazers take here where this is just like an ego thing. It's an ego thing where like we don't want to admit that we were wrong, we don't want to admit fault and we actually get to save face by saying it was always on the roadmap. And I think that is damaging because it's, it's good to admit that we got things wrong. Like it is okay to change your mind. It's okay to change our minds. We don't have to like always say that we are infallible and we always got everything right. And so I think the market and the broader crypto industry, they want to hear which is becoming larger and larger where like, you know, there used to be a large amount of Ethereum dominance, there's now less Ethereum dominance. Most people do not align themselves with Ethereum messaging. It's good and okay for us to say it is a pivot because we got things wrong and we're going to make things right. And that is what the market wants to hear. That's my take.
- [24:07]
Ryan
I hear that take too. And I think Tomash at the EF is clearly a pivot as well because this is somebody from the outside coming in and changing things. By the way, bankless listeners, we have an episode that drops with the two new EF co leads that's, that's coming
- [24:20]
David
out on Monday, I believe, already out for premium subscribers.
- [24:23]
Ryan
Okay, so you can hear from the horse's mouth what they're, what they're planning to do there. So that to me was like kind of a pivot. In leadership, there's actually been some sort of cultural pivot at the EF and like things like this. So did you see this proposal from Dankrad?
- [24:37]
David
Yeah.
- [24:37]
Ryan
You put out. So this is EIP to scale Ethereum L1 100x over the next four years. All right, and EIP, let's go. I don't think this could have happened six months ago in the cultural state that Ethereum was in. And I don't know. Did you read his details? Like the details as to why he said this was a very. My take was it looked like Ethereum is waking up, particularly the EF researchers. I mean, you and I, we're investors, we're podcasters. What can we do? Oh, we're just like, we're just talking heads. Right. But the EF researchers kind of moving towards. Well, let me just read what Dankrad said. He said key considerations. Why I think we should commit to the gas limit change. Oh, first he says this, the current way of doing things is likely to make Ethereum irrelevant over the next five to 10 years. And so instead he said we shouldn't just do the current thing we're doing. We should aim to 3x the scaling on Ethereum transaction throughput on Ethereum every year for the next four years and basically guarantee that to the market. Like that's the roadmap. And then back our way into like making that possible. And he lays out how he plans to, how he plans to do that and he gives the reason. He said Ethereum layer one will always be the fee revenue driver. It's the moat for da. If you have an unimportant layer one then you lose the alliance of all of your layer twos. Layer twos want to join a layer one that is actually winning, actually has liquidity, actually has defi and fragmenting the layer 1 liquidity across a number of layer twos is a good way to lose the battle. It was pretty stark and also pretty objectively. We can action this, we can turn this into an EIP and ship it.
- [26:27]
David
I really like his line where he says committing to a scaling timeline makes it clear what the goal is and lets us plan backwards from that goal, which I don't think is really the thing that has happened in the EF and all core devs calls where we. There was no. There's always incremental progress towards the future, but not goals to work backwards from. And I think donkrad is advocating for like let's make this very firm commitment and get there and actually get there. Yeah.
- [26:53]
Ryan
What's. What's Vitalik going to be doing? Because he put out some tweets as well about what his focus is.
- [26:59]
David
So Vitalik tweeted out my personal focuses for 2025 one Ethereum obviously particularly number one layer one long term roadmap, single slot finality, long term VM, stateless statelessness, security resilience and decentralization. So interesting that Vitalik is emphasizing the long term roadmap of the layer 1 and then also full stack security, open source privacy, all the cipher punk stuff and then also two big picture dac. And so this is Vitalik saying oh I'm focused on defensive acceleration diack which
- [27:31]
Ryan
is stuff outside of crypto outside of
- [27:33]
David
crypto inclusive of crypto outside of crypto which is just like you know, comms tools, things like signal infra and social layer mechanism design and then, and then he listed some other things as well. Yeah and so that's what Fatal continues to be like kind of leading Etherium via like philosophical blog posts. And I think that is what he is saying like this is my direction for 2025.
- [27:56]
Ryan
I think overall this is a good development. Most in the Ethereum community I've talked to seem pretty excited about these changes Reprioritization or pivot and I think it's going to be bullish. Something else that's bullish for ethereum David is two big layer 2s actually got to stage stage 1 on L2 beat with respect to their level of decentralization. A key milestone, something a lot of people said would never happen. They said these chains were not incented to ever become a stage one base got there this week, that was a big move and also scroll got there. So now we have the top four chains by total value secured and they are all stage one level of decentralization which is fantastic. What is stage one? Can you remind people of the difference between stage one and stage zero?
- [28:42]
David
Stage one is just a measure of property rights as users have on these layer 2s. And so at stage 0 I would describe as like a pretty trustful layer 2. It's a pretty ruggable layer 2 like the operators can, can, can and do they have a large degree of control over users assets on layer two on, on a stage one roll up there is degrees of protections for users and so base hit this milestone by having a fully functional security council of 10 independent entities across multiple jurisdictions. Upgrades to base now requires 75% consensus between the council base optimism and then coinbase and a few other things. So this has significantly reduced coinbase's unilateral control over base. And so there's just like a very strong set of user protections for all users on base now.
- [29:31]
Ryan
Big step towards decentralization. David, tell me about the Worldcoin news this week. So Worldcoin coming to the U.S. i thought they kind of were in the U.S. what's been announced?
- [29:41]
David
Yeah, so Worldcoin is kind of rolling out maybe like a boots on the ground brand for itself. So the app Last event in San Francisco, World Coins event that Sam Altman gave a keynote presentation at, he just rolled out a few key announcements. So of course the US rollout World is deploying orbs in six major cities. Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco with a series of Apple like in person stores. So World Coins, like stores that you could go into. New users will receive 16 world tokens upon iris scanning and existing users will get a pioneer grant of 150 world. Interesting. So there are some partnerships as well. So collaborations were announced with Visa, Stripe and Match Group. Ryan, do you know what the Match Group is?
- [30:27]
Ryan
Are you talking about like match.com, like the dating website?
- [30:30]
David
Yeah. I'm actually surprised because, you know, you're a married man, so. Yeah, like else could it be match.com, hinge, tinder, they are going to integrate world ID so that they can verify that you are talking to a human, not a bot. Because they're.
- [30:46]
Ryan
Wait, is that a problem on.
- [30:47]
David
Apparently, apparently there are like, there's like
- [30:49]
Ryan
dating bots that just like try to date you. Like towards what? Yeah, try to scam your money or.
- [30:54]
David
I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, but apparently there's bots on like Hinge and Match or whatever. Okay.
- [30:59]
Ryan
So there's going to be like retail stores in malls across America. The way there's, you know, Apple Stores where people can go in, stick their eyeball into an orb. This is what it looks like. For people who are not familiar with
- [31:10]
David
this still looks as dystopian as it always did.
- [31:12]
Ryan
Okay. In exchange for World Coins. So they get sort of paid for this, right?
- [31:17]
David
Yep.
- [31:18]
Ryan
And then what? You get the World app. You're all set up, you feel good. That and then you have your own.
- [31:23]
David
You can also go on to. You can open up Hinge and tell your prospective wife partner that you're real. Yeah.
- [31:31]
Ryan
And there's like. Was it 10 million users have already been orbed something like this.
- [31:37]
David
The population is huge. Yeah. I think more people are getting signal about the users of the World app, more than the number of users that have been orbed. Because the World app is actually. Is actually boasting, like by far the crypto's most active application. And so that's also part of the announcement here. So the World app will support USDC transactions through Circle, integrate Stripe for payments, and then off, also offer access to Kalshi's prediction markets, interestingly enough as well. Then I also noticed this tweet from Joe Weisenthal, who I think he was a pretty. Yeah, Tradfi commentator out of Bloomberg, also did a fantastic job covering the tariffs. So he's like, kind of grown. His. The Joe stock has grown recently. He was also recently on. On Chopping Block as well, talking about crypto. And he said on the Chopping Block podcast last week, I thought that worldcoin was the only thing in crypto that is really interesting to me. And so he reiterated this on a tweet. So Joe's tweet, his opinion carries weight here.
- [32:35]
Ryan
Okay, so just what do you think about this? So for people who look at this orb thing, look at it on the screen, this guy looking into an orb, and it feels very dystopian to have the guy who is, like, leading the AI race is also the guy behind the company that wants to biometrically scan your eyeball. So just stick your eye into this orb. Don't ask too many questions. We got it all covered. This feels kind of stupid.
- [32:57]
David
Here, have some tokens.
- [32:58]
Ryan
Okay, here I have some tokens. We're paying you for this. If it's so good for me, how come you have to pay me to do it? Yeah, I can just imagine. That's, like, the reaction. This really hasn't hit mainstream yet, but it will. Okay, so there's that maybe dystopia. Not sure. It seems kind of dystopic. But then I was listening to the AI roll up earlier this week, and you guys were talking about all of the Reddit propaganda bots. These are bots literally trained to methodically convince people of different opinions. You don't even know you're talking to a bot. And it's basically 100% effective. The humans don't really know on Reddit whether they're talking to a bot or not. And you can unleash these bot armies, AI bot armies, to basically get the humans, get the squishy humans to believe whatever you want. And the thing is, we don't know who's a human online and who's a bot. They all look the same. And that is just starting to hit Us, that's dystopic as well. So which dystopia do you want to choose? Maybe worldcoin is actually, like, the thing that we need right now.
- [33:59]
David
Yeah. Oh, I think the World Coin dystopia thing has really been overblown because they've actually done a very good job and they always have. The, like, many in the crypto community just kind of rejected it, largely because it's like, it had this. It was a massive high fdv, low float coin. And so that always gives crypto people, like, a bad taste. But, like, the security practices around worldcoin has always been, like, top notch. Like, they actually don't store pictures of your eyeball. They just make a hash. They throw out the data. And so unless you think that they're lying, which I think is onus, is on you to prove that, like, the actual dystopian nature of worldcoin is much more, like, cosmetic than fundamentals. And I think as people are realizing how bad AI is going to get, and by examples that you've heard the stories that we hear, the AI that's proliferating throughout all of our applications, that people are starting to be like, okay, no, we actually. This is actually very.
- [34:53]
Ryan
You actually need this.
- [34:54]
David
Yeah, like, civilizationally, civilization might actually need this.
- [34:56]
Ryan
Yeah. And if we're not doing this, what's the other answer?
- [34:59]
David
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Nick Harder tweeted out it's a bad look to be the arsonist and the firefighter at the same time, but I also don't think that's a fair. Fair. It's funny take. I don't think it's a fair take because, I mean, Sam Altman's just trying to make AI happen along with Anthropic along with Deep Seek, along with Claude, along with, you know, everyone else too. And so, yeah, okay, so you see a.
- [35:20]
Ryan
You see an orb store in your local shopping mall, you're just. You're just hanging out. What do you do? You go get orbed.
- [35:27]
David
I don't. I. I told. I've said this take before that I will get orbed when it becomes practically useful for me to get orbed. I'm open to being orbed, but I do not need to get orbed. And so I will get orbed at a future. I'm bummed. I didn't get 150 World Coin tokens, though. I don't know how many. How much that money.
- [35:43]
Ryan
That actually is not going to be an early adopter. He's going to wait for a few more Millions.
- [35:47]
David
I'm going to wait for utility 150 world coin. The dollar and 8 cents a token is $150. Okay, so not that. Not that great.
- [35:55]
Ryan
Okay, so you wouldn't do it for 150?
- [35:56]
David
I wouldn't probably.
- [35:58]
Ryan
Maybe a thousand. Now you're talking.
- [36:01]
David
All right, coming up next, the Trump administration is doubling down, tripling down on bitcoin. We have even more interviews out of the White House administration all about how bullish they are on bitcoin. We got another Howard Lutnick interview and a few others. And then also Ryan, some breaking news in the crypto space. There were some shenanigans this week. Shenanigans happened. Movement, Monero, all of these things. A bunch of shenanigans. So if you were ready, if you were missing the shenanigans in your life during your three month hiatus, let me tell you, I got some shenanigans for you. But first, before we get to all of those shenanigans, we're gonna gotta talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, like frax, the decentralized central bank of crypto and the FRAX stablecoin. It's got some of the best yields on defi. It's like if Circle, Athena, Makerdao all had a baby. And it's got a layer two, the fraxel layer two. Let's go hear from FRAX right now. In the wild west of Defi, stability and innovation are everything. Which is why you should check out FRAX Finance, the protocol revolutionizing stablecoins, defi and rollups. The core of FRAX finance is Frax USD which is backed by BlackRock's institutional Biddle Fund. Frax designed Frax USD for best in class yields across defi t bills and carry trade returns all in one. Just head to frax.com then stake it to earn some of the best yields in DeFi. Want even more? Bridge your Frax USD over to the fractal layer 2 for the same yield plus fractal points and explore fractals diverse layer 2 ecosystem with protocols like curve convex and more. All rewarding early adopters. FRAX isn't just a protocol. It's a digital nation powered by the FXS token and governed by its global community. Acquire FXS through frax.com or your Go to Dex Stake it and help shape FRAX Nation's future. Ready to join the forefront of DeFi? Visit frax.com now to start earning with Frax USD and staked Frax USD and for Bankless listeners, you can use frax.com/r/bankless when bridging to Fraxel for exclusive Fraxel perks and boosted rewards. Imagine a world where your day to day banking runs on a blockchain. That's exactly what Mantle is building. Powered by a $4 billion treasury and poised to become the largest sustainable on chain financial hub. As part of their 2025 expansion, Mantle is introducing three new core innovation pillars that bridge traditional finance with decentralized technology. First is their enhanced index fund aiming for $1 billion in AUM by Q1. It provides optimized exposure to Bitcoin, ETH, Solana and USC complete with built in yield opportunities. Next, Mantle Banking promises to revolutionize global value transfer through seamless blockchain powered banking services, bridging crypto into your daily life. Finally, Mantle X blends AI with DeFi to deliver an intelligent user friendly experience for everyone. And the best part is that this is all in addition to their already launched products like Mantle Network ME and fbtc. Ready to step into the future of finance. Follow Mantle on X at Mantel Underscore official and join the on chain revolution today. And we're back. President Trump's executive director says on camera on an interview that there is a space race amongst countries to accumulate Bitcoin. Wow, what a statement. Let's go hear it straight from the horse's mouth.
- [38:59]
Ryan
Structured the executive order that we recognize Bitcoin as being unique and we've said repeatedly that we view Bitcoin as digital gold. And a question that I get from journalists all the time is how much do you want? And I think that's really a silly question. That's like asking any country how much do you want of any asset with intrinsic stored value? You want as much as you can possibly accumulate. You know there are stipulations in the eo we must do this in budget neutral ways. It don't cost a taxpayer a dime. But as the President likes to say, we have a lot of high IQ people in this administration, specifically over at treasury and at Commerce and I'm very confident in the leaders in those buildings to come up with, with, with extremely creative ways for us to accumulate and we're very excited about that. And certainly we want to move as expeditiously as possible to do that. You know, I think that there is definitely a sort of space race as it pertains to accumulation of this asset. No different than there is with gold. Right? So space race when it comes to accumulation, David, Bitcoiners have fully infiltrate. Infiltrated the White House at this point.
- [39:55]
David
Yeah. No different than with gold. So it is. There's a little bit of a hedge there. It's like, yeah, it's bitcoin and gold. You know, bitcoin's on a loan, but it's also positioning gold as this extremely legitimate asset.
- [40:08]
Ryan
Yeah. According to Coingecko, if you're looking at the charts, governments now hold about 2.3% of the total Bitcoin supply. So, like, 2.3% is not nothing. It's still just like not a lot. Which if you're bullish on this, that means there's a lot of room to potentially grow. Of course, the US has it and it's mainly these countries own it. The US and China, they own because they've acquired it from nefarious actors in the past year. Are you surprised at how far bitcoin has gone? I mean, this is the White House now talking about. Yeah, we view this as digital gold. This is a space race. We're going to get as much as we can without costing the taxpayers anything. It's incredible how much progress the bitcoin story has made.
- [40:52]
David
Yeah. This has always been the bitcoiner thesis that I remember being given to me in 2018, 2019. It seemed incredibly far fetched then. I think the thing that I did not account account for was that bitcoiners could ride the pendulum swinging from the Biden administration to the Trump administration, which was all about the oppression of crypto, but like, more so about the market beyond bitcoin. It wasn't really about bitcoin. It was more about Ethereum and everything else. Like you saw that clip maybe going around about how Gary Gensler talked about how bitcoin was a special snowflake and all the bitcoiners, like Gary Gensler is a bitcoin maximalist. And so the thing that did not account for was that the United States government was going to come with the absolute ban hammer during the Biden administration on crypto. And then bitcoiners would leverage the swinging of the pendulum to their bank gain to win the Donald Trump administration to like totally capture the Donald Trump administration.
- [41:46]
Ryan
It was masterful. Incredibly well played.
- [41:48]
David
Well done. It was well done. Yeah, yeah.
- [41:50]
Ryan
Very impressive. I mean, it's not just that official. I was saying it's Howard Lutnick who's the Commerce Secretary. So he sat down with Bitcoin magazine and emphasized the same thing. Bitcoin by this administration is going to be treated like oil or gold, not As a currency. So major support for Bitcoin, acquiring Bitcoin as a reserve asset coming out of this administration.
- [42:11]
David
I think that's a big plus one to your blue money thesis for Ether as well.
- [42:16]
Ryan
It's coming from behind though, isn't it?
- [42:18]
David
Yeah, we are a little bit behind on that one.
- [42:21]
Ryan
All right, tell me some shenanigans, David.
- [42:23]
David
Shenanigans.
- [42:24]
Ryan
I was missing all this when I was off.
- [42:26]
David
All right, what is going on with Movement Labs? Movement Labs, which is the, the company, the organization, the development team behind the move layer two is under investigation after 66 million move tokens were dumped the day after launch, causing a $38 million sell off. Tokens were loaned to Rentech, a shadowy entity tied to both Web3Port and the Movement Foundation. Web3Port is a market maker in crypto under a deal initially flagged as predatory but later signed anyways. Co founder Rushi Manch, who purchased, pushed the agreement, is now on leave and both Movement Labs and the foundation are implicated in using the same market maker to offload tokens, raising serious questions of insider self dealing. So that is the accusation going towards Movement Labs. I think everyone at Movement is saying there's just a bunch of lying. Movement is actually the, the, the victim in this scenario we got today got taken advantage of by this market maker. And so Movement is kind of declining the legitimacy of this story, but they are nonetheless kind of on, on the defensive as a result of this story that got broken by CoinDesk this week.
- [43:30]
Ryan
Yes. Kind of a question is like were they actively participating in the scamming or are they just like incompetent and negligent with this market maker? Right. And like both scenarios aren't great. I mean it's just a shady market making deal just like designed to dump tokens onto retail whether it was the market maker or Move or like the both of them in cooperation. It's not a great look, David.
- [43:51]
David
It's definitely not, definitely not a great look. Market making and new tokens, especially the high ftv, low flow tokens, has left a stain on people's feelings about this industry. All right, you ready for the next Shenanigans?
- [44:02]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [44:03]
David
When's the last time you heard about Monero?
- [44:05]
Ryan
It's been a long time, like 2017 era. Right. It's like privacy coins were catching a bid. It was zcash, it was Monero. And the thing that Bitcoin, Ethereum were missing is like privacy at the base layer. And so these chains were sort of the future of that. That is probably the last time, you know, left Monero.
- [44:22]
David
Yeah, yeah, There was all Monero always had like a pretty like hardcore like bitcoiner like ideology around it. It's like privacy is, is actually the number one thing, not, not the 21 million. Anyways, Monero pumped 50% due to a suspected $33 million Bitcoin theft. This was ousted by Zach XBT, who identified a $33 million Bitcoin theft and then identified that the transfer of 3520 bitcoins was going to be going, going through Monero. A Privacy. The privacy focused cryptocurrency by the stolen funds were rapidly funneled through six exchanges and then converted to Monero. And that once people identified that this person was selling bitcoin for Monero, that caused Monero price to surge by 50, so peaking at 339 before settling around $274. So I mean, that was always the thesis around Monero is that like, if you need to hide your bitcoins, you got to buy Monero.
- [45:19]
Ryan
Yeah, it's interesting the lengths that hackers will kind of go through to sort of protect their privacy. But when they use Monero, my question is, so you get those assets, you get that value onto Monero, first of all, you're going to spike the price that we saw. So that's going to be massive slippage costs, et cetera, to do that. And then what do you do when you're on Monero? There's not much of an economy kind of surrounding Monero, but we've seen similar attempts with tornado cash and trying to launder money through. Through other privacy tools. So yeah, it's interesting that it pumps price though.
- [45:53]
David
All right, coming up next, tether now holds 7.7 tons of gold to back their tokenized gold token. 7.7 tons of gold. How much do you think that's worth? How much do you think that's worth?
- [46:07]
Ryan
How much? Just like off the cuff. So I'm not a gold bug. I have no idea. It's like, yeah, 7.7 tons.
- [46:13]
David
It was currently $2,300 per ounce.
- [46:17]
Ryan
Okay, I'm going to guess like 50 million. This is a shot in the dark.
- [46:22]
David
You got to pump those numbers up, baby. $570 million.
- [46:26]
Ryan
No way. Yeah, I guess 7.7 is a lot of tons. Where is this?
- [46:31]
David
A lot of tons?
- [46:32]
Ryan
Yeah, it's just not like Tether. Corporate office holds this, right?
- [46:34]
David
Yeah, it's right in. Under Paolo's desk. Yeah, yeah, he's sitting on it as a chair. No, it's in a Swiss vault. It's in Switzerland. And so 7.7 tons of physical gold to create the Xaut token, which is the gold backed token issued by Tether. So Tether is in the business of issuing treasuries and now also gold. I wonder how they monetize that one though. Because they can't monetize it with the interest from the yield markets.
- [47:01]
Ryan
That's a good question. It's also good to remember this is of course, an IOU for gold. Right. So we think it's in the Swiss bank. I guess it is. It's not like a on chain crypto asset. How about this one, David? This is good news. US bank regulators, they pulled back guardrails on bank crypto activities. So this is like a Biden administration thing that was like hanging over crypto. Basically, anytime a bank, any bank, wanted to do something with crypto, there was guidance from the Fed and the FDIC and the OCC that said, no, you just can't do that. You have to come ask us for permission first. And did they ever give permission? No. The answer would be no. Or like we're not home or like
- [47:40]
David
you have to come ask for permission. And the answer is no.
- [47:44]
Ryan
Right. So like nothing really happened. Well, that guidance has been reversed under this new administration. So the Fed, the fdic, the occ, they officially said, guys, you don't have to ask. You can just like do stuff with crypto now.
- [47:57]
David
Stop asking, just do it.
- [47:58]
Ryan
It's like, that's a big move. So here's a comment from Alex Svanovic. Regular banking oversights still apply, but the path is way clearer for banks to enter crypto. So there you go, David.
- [48:12]
David
You don't have to ask permission. That was always allowed, apparently. Okay. Coming up next, the Senate moves to ban congressional stock trading. Again, this has been tempted before. So Senator Josh Hawley has introduced the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning securities and Investments Act. Preventing Elected Leaders Pel. Owning securities and Investments act. Osi Otherwise called the Pelosi Act. Love it. You know. Okay, so there's two stablecoin bills going through Congress. You know what they're called?
- [48:45]
Ryan
I should know what they're called. What are they called?
- [48:48]
David
One is the Stable act and the other one is the Genius act. Remember these words?
- [48:54]
Ryan
Are they trolling us?
- [48:55]
David
Like, no, no, they're trolling Donald Trump. The stable genius act. Remember, Like, I'm a very stable genius. I don't know how that ended up trolling Donald Trump, but it did.
- [49:04]
Ryan
I feel like US government used to Be way more serious, you know, now things are done for.
- [49:09]
David
Like, they might have always done this.
- [49:11]
Ryan
It's always been like this.
- [49:12]
David
I wonder, I wonder how many of them are putting this into ChatGPT. And then also like, maybe it's like the, the staffers, like the young, you know, millennial zoomer staffers who are like, I bet. What should I, what should I call this bill? Also make it stand for Pelosi.
- [49:29]
Ryan
Okay, so the Pelosi act prevents Congress from owning securities investments, or at least has some restrictions around that. Of course, like, Congress has been running wild. Particularly the members of Congress have been just like insider training. That's at least the allegation. So this kind of like puts a stop to that. Now let me ask you, this is coming from the Republican side. Okay, so do you think Democrats, you know, when they regain your control of government apparatus, do you think they come after crypto in a similar way? I mean, they gotta be like, I saw you post on Twitter from the daily podcast, and they were talking about the inherent corruption, I mean, you tell me, in the Trump meme coin. And that's a vector for all sorts of insider trading. We were talking about this last week, but that's also a vector too. So it's not just securities. It's basically any asset that you can profit off of that allows corruption to seep into the system. So Democrats will just come back and just be like, oh, call it the Trump Act. And it's like, like, you know, tokens,
- [50:25]
David
I don't know, launch meme coins.
- [50:27]
Ryan
Yeah, something like this.
- [50:30]
David
Yeah. I mean, I think that we should have an act that is inclusive of presidents and government leaders issuing crypto assets and having crypto businesses that are good conduits for corruption. Like the same thing. It feels like. Yeah, it's the same thing. And like, I don't think anyone is defending Trump's actions with like Trump Coin and all this stuff.
- [50:51]
Ryan
So what I kind of expect is Democrats to take charge and just be like, okay, no one in Congress or government can own any crypto and we get a bill like that instead. Instead of something measured and actually reasonable.
- [51:03]
David
Yeah.
- [51:04]
Ryan
Faith in government is not an all time high right now for me.
- [51:07]
David
The only crypto assets that government leaders are allowed to own is bitcoin. How about that one?
- [51:13]
Ryan
Nice.
- [51:14]
David
Brought by bitcoiners. Bitcoiners love this one.
- [51:18]
Ryan
All right, let's go check in on Alex Mashinsky. David. So for people who don't know, I
- [51:24]
David
wish I was you.
- [51:25]
Ryan
I bet you knew.
- [51:26]
David
Oh, Ryan knows Ryan knows who Alex Osky is.
- [51:29]
Ryan
He's the guy running a crypto scam company from like circa 2022 that blew up after FTX called Celsius and he is in front of the DOJ. The DOJ is seeking a 20 year prison sentence for the Celsius founder. I was always like wondering why this case has taken so long. Like Sam Bankman Fried's been prosecuted, like many of the other cases have already been prosecuted. I have no idea why it's taken so long for Alex Mashinsky, but it seems like they are unleashing everything they got asking for a 20 year prison sentence. $4.7 billion in crypto user losses here.
- [52:08]
David
Yeah, the DOJ cited his role of a year long campaign of lies. Mashinsky did admit to leading this fraudulent scheme and personally pocketing over $48 million. I think that means that he that's pled guilty in some of these accounts. Sentencing is set for May 8, which is seven days from the time of recording. So that's coming up pretty damn soon here. The other conversations going around Ryan, is that talking about SBS, SPF, like 25 year sentence. Yeah. Without parole. But then also people are looking at, well actually FTX with their like investment in anthropic and then billions of dollars that were able to be recovered actually is paying back its users. And then also the bankruptcy lawyers are walking away with $1 billion of profit for themselves. So some people, some, some of the conversations looking back towards Sam Bankman Frieda being like, huh, I wonder like since everyone is getting paid back, do we really need to sentence this guy for 25 years? I don't really have an opinion here, but that is the conversation that's going around.
- [53:06]
Ryan
Yeah. Do you think some future president just like pardons him or something like that? That feels like a long shot.
- [53:12]
David
Yeah. Who knows? There's not any. There's not enough global sympathy for Sam Bankman for Freed or like compared to Ross Ulbricht which had so much, who had so much sympathy like there's no sympathy for Sam Bankman Fried.
- [53:23]
Ryan
All right, what's the last thing we cover?
- [53:25]
David
Last news of the week, Circle rejected a Ripple takeover bid of 4 to 5 billion dollars. This is kind of breaking this news. This didn't, this bid did not happen this week. But Ripple tried and failed to buy Circle apparently for four to five billion dollars. And this is Ripple just kind of buying their like, like first they pumped their token and now they are buying assets that make it a valuable business. Which got it is a Strategy that
- [53:52]
Ryan
is like the true, like, I think that's the true strategy of fake it till you make it.
- [53:56]
David
Right.
- [53:56]
Ryan
Basically, because, like, Circle does have massive utility Circle, of course, issues of USDC, which is like the most used stablecoin, at least in the U.S. i mean, second to Tether still, but absolutely massive. And they did it on the back of the value of XRP in their treasury and the meme that it's created. I mean, it's like not much USDC does anything on Ripple right now on the XRP chain. Right? But you have to imagine if they acquired Circle instead of Circle going public for 4 to 5 billion dollars, it would have all been on XRP, it would have all been on Ripple. I mean, at least they would have given massive preference towards their own chain. Right, because that's in their interest. So that's the reality we could have actually lived in. Can you imagine if Jerem is just like tweets out, announces, I'm so excited I'm joining the Ripple chain?
- [54:48]
David
Like, wow, I know you were out when they released it, but Circle is filing to go public. Right. Did you get a chance to poke open their S1?
- [54:56]
Ryan
No, I didn't. What's, what's, what's good there?
- [54:59]
David
So the, the thing that people are taking away from the rip of the circle S1 is the gap between Tether and Tether has like maybe 2 to 3x the market size of USDC. So there's a like 2 to 3x more USDTS than there are USDCS. And then tether is printing something like something like a billion dollars a day, dude. Like, it's like an insane amount of money. And then Circle, because they have an incredibly high operating overhead costs, is making something like 1 to $200 million a year. And so even though the gap between Tether and circle is only 2 to 3x in terms of size of the Stable coin, the revenue, the profit of the respective businesses is hugely different and way more positive to Ripple. Excuse me, not Ripple. Get Ripple out of my mind to Tether.
- [55:47]
Ryan
And so when you have that level of treasury, it allows you to use that capital to buy political influence. Okay, I'm not making any allegations, but of course Howard Lutnick is the Commerce Secretary and he is very much into tetherworld. Right? And there's like, lots of financial incentive there, which makes it difficult for Circle to kind of make regulatory inroads and do like, in a Machiavellian way, what's in their best interest, which is like, oh, all the dollar should only be. And the only regulated coin should be usdc. And we're going to block tether. And it's very interesting how all of this is working. We're definitely. Crypto is definitely in the geopolitical arena now. Like I've never seen it.
- [56:28]
David
Yeah, yeah. All right. That's all the news for the weekend. We are coming up. We thought that this was going to be a hugely long agenda. I thought we were going to go 10 good.
- [56:36]
Ryan
We're getting efficient.
- [56:37]
David
Yeah, Welco. Welcome back, dude. Okay, so last week you came back for your first episode, but it was still kind of like a meta episode about like Ryan and his break and like what you've been missing. And so now this is actually back into the. Just like we are trying to cover as much news as possible. How does it feel to be back one week?
- [56:53]
Ryan
I mean, it's good. It's like kind of where things left off, to be honest. Just like some of the things have. Like one thing I've been focused on is getting that fighting spirit back in Ethereum. Ethereum, like mentioned last week, is still kind of like. Like one of my first loves in crypto and I feel like it's undervalued and so I've been spending some time doing that, writing some articles. Otherwise, I mean, crypto is just kind of like just watching it further invade the public sphere. But stablecoins and bitcoin seem to be the main thing, I guess. I'm not really into meme coins, so not a lot has changed. Is maybe one answer to this.
- [57:31]
David
Yeah, I think that's right. I think you and I have been going back and forth about like, what does Ethereum need to do? And I think we're like slowly coming up to like, you. Like it's interesting that you and I have this grown a divide of focus. We don't have a mutually exclusive opinions but like I am very interested on establishing and strengthening Ethereum the product and you are very interested in establishing Ether as a global reserve asset and we have different focuses right now. Yeah.
- [57:58]
Ryan
And the reason I'm more focused on eth asset rather than the network and the product is because I actually feel like the product is now post reprioritization pivot going in a very positive direction. And also I can't contribute towards that. I'm not a dev. I can't submit an eip. And so the thing that I feel like Ethereum is missing is all of the inroads that you can clearly see bitcoiners have made, which is like like memeing the asset into something larger like a global world reserve currency. And they did that through kind of like a small cult that just chanted and believed and they kind of like worked their way up. And the same surface area exists for Ethereum to do something similar. Like it has the properties to be a global store of value reserve asset, but it just doesn't have the religion. And so incepting a bit more of that I think is important. The network's always to be important and the network actually is the differentiator versus Bitcoin in the end. So it's not, not important. It's just like something I'm focusing less on because I just like, I have less impact there.
- [59:09]
David
I, I think there's a lot left to work left to do on the whole pivot thing. I think there is a lot of old culture of Ethereum that needs to be overpowered by the product focus side of Ethereum. So like, you know, Bitcoin had their big block, small block wars, right? Is, is Bitcoin a payments currency or is it a store of value? And the store of value side one, to me, the, the division that I'm seeing in the Ethereum community right now is that you have the product centric roadmap people and then you kind of have this older ideological, holier than thou side of Ethereum which I'm, I'm trying to like, trying to dislodge, dislodge. And I think that in order to like, like the, the money side, the side that you want to build for Ethereum, the, the blue money cult needs to be established on a very strong product. And so we like, this is something that we've kind of like gone back and forth on. Like Ethereum has always been this balanced ecosystem. Like take the middle road, don't be too extreme on one end. And that is true for the Ethereum product. We need to have convexity in the product to enable concavity in the like religious fervor ness around the asset. But we do not have convexity in the product because we do not have people thinking of Ethereum as a product. We have people thinking of Ethereum as an ideology and that needs to change.
- [60:33]
Ryan
I think the thing on that to watch for everybody listening is what does Tomash do at the ef? So in our episode with him, he said we're gonna deliver like upgrades, forks every six months. Okay, will that happen? Look for that, look for that organization, look for that coordination. If that happens, it's bullish that you're Right. That the product pivot is fully instantiated. The other thing I think is people like Donkrod's proposal. 4 years, 100x. How is that received and is it actually actioned? Even if it's just 50x over four years, you have to kind of scale back or if it's 100x but it takes 5 years, something like that. That if you get signs like that, then I will feel secure that Ethereum has kind of reprioritized the right things. And yeah, you're right, it's not over yet. It's just like some of this is still talk and we have some new leaders, we have some cultural changes, but it needs to be put into action before you can say like, yeah, mission accomplished. This pivot happened.
- [61:36]
David
I feel very good about the presence of Tamash's like operational leadership. His cause he, Nethermind is his old company. Still, still his company. But he's like, you know, focusing on the EF now. And so he's bringing a founder, CEO product mindset to the Ethereum foundation and to the Ethereum like organization, which is great. In addition to that, I deeply trust Don Grad's direction and leadership direction for the changes, the protocol changes that needs to happen to Ethereum. And so I hope the Ethereum community elevates donkrad more because from what I hear, he is still in the minority. And I think Onskar and donkrad are definitely on the target for what needs to happen with Ethereum.
- [62:22]
Ryan
We'll see how it plays out, guys. Of course, gotta let you know all this stuff is risky. You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Journey. Thanks a lot.