Circle’s $20B IPO Ignites Stablecoin Summer

This week, Ryan and David unpack Circle’s explosive $20B IPO—crypto’s second biggest—and what it signals about Wall Street’s newfound love for stablecoins. They break down the confusing Trump wallet drama, where even Trump’s own sons deny involvement, and explore why Pump.fun’s rumored $4B token raise has the industry split. Ethereum enters “wartime mode” as the Foundation lays off staff and spins up a lean new R&D force called Protocol. Plus, Ray Dalio says “a bit of Bitcoin,” Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill adds $2.4T to the deficit, and SBF is headed to Netflix.

TRANSCRIPT

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:10] There it is.

David Hoffman:
[0:11] Huge congratulations to Circle for being crypto's second biggest IPO. Coinbase is the first. They didn't technically have an IPO, but details. So we have our second big United States company going public and trading, Ryan. First, Circle shares were sold in the IPO at $31. $31 the day before. Do you know what Circle is trading at right now, about one hour into trading?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:35] Okay, I saw something about this, but it's significantly up, right? So, I don't know, has it doubled?

David Hoffman:
[0:41] It has more than doubled. I'm looking at it right now. It's trading at $88.50. It also hit a peak high of $103, which is just crazy. So, almost a tripling out of the gate, a tripling out of the gate of the evaluation of Circle. I can't load this chart.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:57] It's like it's breaking the charts, David.

David Hoffman:
[0:59] That's right. The chart's broken. Just type in CRCL. That's the ticker of the Circle Internet Group, Inc. Apparently, that's the company name. Circle Internet Group. trading on the NASDAQ.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:09] Wow. Just a green line straight up.

David Hoffman:
[1:11] Big green line. Yeah. Well, you're going for a weekly candle and let me tell you, it hasn't been trading for a week.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:16] I'll do the, how do I do? Shorter time rate.

David Hoffman:
[1:19] Click the W and go under one minute. There you go. $20 billion is the valuation that Circle is trading at.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:26] That's crazy.

David Hoffman:
[1:26] People were initially pricing it at around six, six or seven billion dollars currently trading. I mean, we're just, we're one and a half hours into trading. So, you know, who knows? But it's coming in at $20 billion.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:37] They got to feel smart for like rejecting the Ripple offer, rejecting any Coinbase offers in the six to nine billion range just going with his IPO. It's a lot more shareholder value here.

David Hoffman:
[1:48] Yeah. Well, so far, they still have like lockups and all that kind of stuff. So things still need to play out. But yeah, they're coming in at a juicy, juicy valuation, which I mean, this sets the tone. A lot of people are saying, oh, this is now going to be the starting gun for a variety of further crypto IPOs. I think people are looking at Kraken. There are other companies that people are looking at. Everyone's talking about bank lists going public.

The Rise of Stablecoin Summer

David Hoffman:
[2:15] No one is talking about that. A multi-billion dollar valuation.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:17] You know what they are probably talking about? After our episode last week, they're probably using the word stablecoin summer to describe this price action. Stablecoin summer. I told you it was going to be stablecoin summer. And you said, how can people make money on stablecoins? The answer was right in front of us this entire time. They just had to buy stocks.

David Hoffman:
[2:37] Yeah, I'm seeing people's screenshots of their IPO purchase requests in Robinhood and other venues. And they only got like one third of it filled, one half of it filled. But if you got any amount of circle stock in the IPO buy, you are up like 2x. So congratulations.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:54] Are you surprised that there's this investor appetite for this? Like, this is surprising to me.

David Hoffman:
[2:58] It is a little bit surprising to me, and I'm, like, of two minds about this. Circle is just the only good, meaningful way of getting stablecoin exposure for TradFi. That is the only, like, valid conduit for stablecoin exposure.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:12] But we've been telling them they could buy ETH. ETH is a stablecoin platform.

David Hoffman:
[3:16] Most stablecoins are on ETH. Yeah, that's right. ETH is not available on the NASDAQ, though, and apparently that matters. And so, yeah, if you are bullish stablecoins and you would like to have exposure to stablecoins, you know, Circle is now trading on the NASDAQ, on, excuse me, on the NYSE. And so that's a way to do that. And so maybe you can read into this $20 billion valuation, this 3X higher valuation than what people predicted, because Wall Street is a super bullish stable coins, which we know they are. And that's what's happening. The other half of the story is like the story of Circle economics, which I don't know if that totally is defensible at a $20 billion valuation because their income, their profit was like 130 something million dollars over the last year. So how does how is 130 million dollars of income justifying a 20 billion dollar valuation? And they still have that Coinbase deal where they split like almost half of the revenue or something or third revenue with Coinbase. Yeah. And so I don't know if the market is disconnected from reality. Maybe Circle has plans to like clean this up and make better economics. But I mean, I know when you compare this to Tether, which I would love to see Tether go public, but that's never

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:25] Going to happen. Can you imagine? Jesus. I mean, for crypto natives, we've always looked at sort of the income statement of Circle versus something like Tether. And as you said, I mean, Circle, it's got all of these additional costs here and it has to do this revenue share. It amounts to a net income of 156 million, even though they have how many billions in stable coins out there? 60 billion. Not only is Tether like double that size in terms of the amount, triple, in terms of the amount of stable coins issued, it's also, I don't know, like five, six billion a year in terms of profit is just like a cash cow. Incredible. The number of employees it has, it's like one of the most profitable companies in existence these days. And of course, it'll never go public in US markets, but you can imagine if it did.

David Hoffman:
[5:13] But nonetheless, this is just a monumental event for the crypto industry. Like I said, it's the second big United States company to go public. The first IPO, Coinbase Floated Shares, which is like a different mechanism. They actually did, Circle actually did an IPO. Jeremy Allaire tweeted out, I'm incredibly proud and thrilled to share that Circle is now a public company listed on the NYSE under CRCL. 12 years ago, we set out to build a company that could help remake the global economic system by reimagining and rebuilding it from the ground up natively on the internet. So you also just have to sit back and reflect that this is

Celebrating Circle's Milestone

David Hoffman:
[5:45] just yet another huge milestone for the crypto industry. So congratulations to Jeremy Allaire and all of the Circle team.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:51] Yeah. And I wonder if this will trade like based on the Genius Bill and that going through Congress, if that will be reflected in the market price and this is a good way to educate Wall Street on that. What's this take that you included here?

David Hoffman:
[6:02] Yeah, this is from David at Blockworks Research, I think. Blockworks Advisory. Yeah. He says, with Circle going public today, one thing that the entire world is underway on is Coinbase's venture portfolio, specifically because he's calling out that there's a bunch of Coinbase investments that would not ever go liquid with a token, but instead will go liquid on the NASDAQ or the NYSE. And so he thinks that this is also a starting bell for like a valuation of a lot of Coinbase's venture portfolio and generally venture capital. More companies, more crypto companies going public on public markets was always going to be good for VC. And he says that I wouldn't be surprised if Coinbase Ventures' non-token portfolio is valued at $10 billion in two to three years now that the market is likely valuing it at zero today. I think the stock market, the traditional market, does not understand the value of Coinbase Ventures as a part of Coinbase equity.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:57] Well, I know you follow Coinbase stock on a daily basis. Yeah, so was this up on the Circle IPO, down?

David Hoffman:
[7:08] Kind of, not really. I mean, we're also dumping right now. I just got the notification that Bitcoin is below $103,000. So goodbye, James Wynn. You're out of here for the fourth time.

Tariffs and Tax Tensions

David Hoffman:
[7:20] Coin is down. It was up. I don't know if it's trading any sort of relevancy to Circle right now.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:25] We got a lot more to talk about on the weekly roll-up today, guys. Tariffs are back. Also, tax bill deficits are causing some tension in this Elon and Trump relationship. Okay. I don't know if that chapter is coming to a close. We'll talk about that. and also how Ray Dalio thinks you should position your portfolio as a result of these tax deficits. We'll talk about that.

David Hoffman:
[7:45] Ryan's going to bring you the very sophisticated macro takes. I, in contrast, have some macro memes for you, for all of y'all.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:52] You guys talk about the breakup, aren't you?

David Hoffman:
[7:53] I'm going to talk about, well, I'm going to talk about the memes. We're going to talk about the memes. I got some memes to show you. Pump Fun wants to raise a billion dollars at a $4 billion valuation. But the real news here is that a token is confirmed. And I think an airdrop also confirmed.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:07] Gotta be. You can't have a token without an airdrop in these times. Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[8:11] At least Pump Fun needs to have an airdrop. And then also the Ethereum Foundation rolls out a new special forces team called Protocol, along with some strategic restructuring and also new information about their treasury policy. So we are now getting treasury policies from the EF, which is appreciated.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:27] Yeah. And I got to talk about this too. Trump, did the Trump team launch a crypto wallet that Trump knows absolutely nothing about? This was the weirdest story of the week.

David Hoffman:
[8:35] Which part of the Trump teams in the Trump universe is launching what product? We don't really know anymore.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:41] We got to figure this out. We'll get to the bottom of it on this roll-up. David, there's a meetup coming up that you wanted the Bankless Nation to hear about. This is beers with Bankless and Frax. When is this happening and where?

David Hoffman:
[8:52] Yeah, so if anyone is coming to Permissionless, any Bankless listener that is coming to Permissionless, we're doing a meetup with Frax. That is in Brooklyn.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:00] I like how you said that.

David Hoffman:
[9:01] Frax, yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:02] It's all like emphasis on the FR. It's good, yeah.

David Hoffman:
[9:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is happening at Halea Beer Company, great beer company. So we just rented out the place. We're going to have free beers for all you listeners out there who want to come and get free beers. And so there is a link in the show notes to register for the event. If you are a bankless citizen or a Frax community member, you get priority access.

Market Movements and Bitcoin Trends

David Hoffman:
[9:21] And I will see you all at Permissionless.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:23] Awesome. Tell me about markets, David. What's Bitcoin on the week? You said dumpage earlier. Yeah. I'm kind of scared to look at this chart, but I'm going to.

David Hoffman:
[9:30] Yeah, I think I'm going to go actually update my numbers. Looking at Bitcoin right now, $103,150, down 3.2% on the week. Ether, Ryan

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:41] Ryan, what did you do last week? I believe you called for $3,000 Ether last week.

David Hoffman:
[9:48] We are looking at $2,567. Trust a little bit outside. We are down 3.4% on the week. What did you do?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:58] I got cocky. You were glowing me up. You were telling me about a five-week streak. Every week I've been back, Ether's been up.

David Hoffman:
[10:05] You're supposed to be the cool-headed one.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:07] I was super cool-headed. And then I just got overly excited. And in the moment, I blurted out 3K. I wasn't planning to do that. It just came out. And now look at us.

David Hoffman:
[10:18] You tried to manifest a little too hard.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:19] Yeah. You know, I'm going to be much more humble on rollups going forward. Okay. And I'm not making a price call this week. It's kind of sad to see what like what's causing this dumpage, David.

David Hoffman:
[10:30] I don't know. I mean, dumpage. Bitcoin's at 103,000. So is that dumpage? I don't really know.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:36] But circles up though. Like, I mean, are they selling their Bitcoin and Ether and they're buying Circle stock? Is that literally what's happening?

David Hoffman:
[10:43] Yeah, everyone is dumping their assets to buy to pump Circle up to $20 billion. We got a total crypto market cap of $3.35 trillion, down like 1% from last week. But also, we got a mover of the week. Oh, actually, I wouldn't call this a mover. We have a crypto token launch. We have these all the time. We talk about them. We celebrate them when they're in the trad markets,

New Crypto Token Launch

David Hoffman:
[11:02] but we get them all the time. uh lagrange which is a zk coprocessor startup coming in at a whopping 1.25 billion valuation they just launched that's weird for zk coprocessor which is an extremely hard thing to like describe in a sentence

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:16] Yeah zk coprocessor i can barely say it like so explain that one like in i thought infra was dead right this is sort of niche this is.

David Hoffman:
[11:26] Deep deep tech

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:27] Infreum infra and it's already 1.2.

David Hoffman:
[11:30] Billion? Yeah, a coprocessor is like, you know how blockchains all redo their own computation and all the nodes do all their own computation. This is kind of like not that, the opposite of that, where you just have one person do the ZK computation and then you can just show your work around. And I think it's like more generalized rather than, like we talk about this for enshrining the layer one as a ZK roll-up and that's how Ethereum will scale and I think this is like similar to that but more generalized. But 20% float So, you know, 80% is still locked, but coming in at a $1.25 billion valuation.

Exploring Market Valuations

David Hoffman:
[12:02] So congratulations to LaGrange and LaGrange investors. LaGrange.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:06] LaGrange, I believe. LaGrange, LaGrange. I don't know. Tell me about these memes, though.

David Hoffman:
[12:10] Oh, yeah. I got some memes for you. Okay. So you know the big, beautiful bill that's going through Congress?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:16] I do know that. And actually, okay, big, beautiful bill. I thought it's always in quotes whenever I read it. This is the tax bill that's going in Congress. OK, I thought they were quoting Donald Trump, who's calling it the big, beautiful bill. Do you know that's literally the name of the bill, David?

David Hoffman:
[12:30] That's literally the name of the bill. They're calling it this. Yes. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:34] I had no idea. It's literally a congressional bill. It's called one big, beautiful bill act. That's the name of it.

David Hoffman:
[12:40] Yeah. And so this is going through Congress. It's it's kind of like, I guess, Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump's budget. It's Donald Trump. It's like a big, big deal. It's his proposed budget.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:48] The bill is a meme in itself, like the title of the bill. It's just like, what are we doing here?

David Hoffman:
[12:53] We could unpack all of the details of the bill, but that's the beautiful thing about memes is actually memes just really distill a lot of information here. So this is the Better Call Saul meme where he's just like presenting a board to people. And the board says, we cut spending by increasing spending. And it's Donald Trump's face. And then if you go to the next meme, if you would, and it's Donald Trump showing documents to this interviewer that's happened, I think, in the Trump 1.0 era. He's like, I have a plan to cut spending. And then he shows the papers to the interviewer, and the paper says, we're going to increase spending. And the interviewer's just super confused. And then here's Elon Musk. So this is when this becomes drama in the White House. So this is the train running into a school bus meme, and the school bus represents money that the doge has saved the government. and then the train just ramming through that thing. It's Trump's big, beautiful bill. So apparently the Trump's BBB is going to add something like $2 trillion of budget deficit.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:53] I have the numbers.

David Hoffman:
[13:54] Oh, you have the numbers?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:55] I have the numbers. I did the research for this section. You've got the memes.

David Hoffman:
[13:59] You've done the research. I've got the memes.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:00] But the memes are better. I don't even think I need to explain any details. It's literally what's happening. But okay, does this also imply some kind of tension in the Trump?

David Hoffman:
[14:10] Elon relationship the Trump Elon relationship is totally broken up okay should

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:15] We play this this is Donald.

David Hoffman:
[14:16] Trump Elon is out Besant is in I'm

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:18] Gonna play this clip it's Donald Trump, He said the most beautiful things about me. And he hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next. He's talking about Elon. But I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot. I'm very disappointed.

David Hoffman:
[14:33] I'm very disappointed. And he did do a lot for Elon. He got into the Tesla. He shilled Tesla. He did that whole everything's computer meme.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:40] Oh, brother. Elon did a lot for Trump, too, though. Okay. And in fact, he was... Did he, though?

David Hoffman:
[14:44] Oh, he did. That's true. Yeah, he did do a lot.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:46] Elon is taking credit for getting Trump elected, basically. In another tweet that I saw recently this morning, also getting Republicans, both the House and the Senate.

David Hoffman:
[14:54] Yeah, this is true.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:55] I did see this tweet from Elon Musk about the big, beautiful bill he's saying about the bill. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it. Wow.

David Hoffman:
[15:13] Wow. Wow. Holy shit.

The Trump Wallet Controversy

Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:15] Let's get a little spicy out there.

David Hoffman:
[15:17] Yeah. Anyway, so my big takeaway here is that, other than the Elon Trump drama, which is always hilarious, is that even despite Elon Musk, who is an insanely good operator, no one can argue that. He has made massive companies. He is a process engineer. He knows how to do process and organization. elon musk went toe-to-toe with government bureaucracy tried to cut spending tried to lean up the government and lost big time like did not actually save any money it's elon musk cannot get the government to lean up and be more efficient and save money no one can and without that like all trump is doing is like okay you know what eff it $2 trillion more deficit. And then meanwhile, I'm also going to issue a Bitcoin ETF with one of my companies. So Bitcoiners are always right. Bitcoiners are always right.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:11] That's another thing we should talk about. That is what he's doing. You know, there's so much you could say about Doge. I mean, of course, Elon Musk was doing the cuts in the executive branch, right? The existing government operations and the big costs of the future are really entitlement programs, aren't they? It's like that's, you know, so he wasn't even tackling the things that needed to be cut, this big, beautiful bill, you are right. It would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years' time. Because this bill has both tax cuts, which decreases US revenue, and it also has spending cuts as well. And so if you add this together, it amounts to a $2.4 trillion deficit. The odds of it... So it passed through the House already, like the last week of May, and the odds of it getting past the Senate, they're saying, are about 50-50. There's four Republicans in the Senate who might flip over, not get it approved, but Trump wants it. And he's like, get it on my desk. I want to sign this thing by the 4th of July. This is the biggest tax cut and spending cut in history. It's a big, beautiful bill, right? So, I mean, like, did anyone seriously think any government from either party, Democrats or Republicans, was going to reverse the deficit problem that we have? Like, was there ever any hope of that? Was anyone ever serious about that?

David Hoffman:
[17:30] I was hopeful. Yeah. I thought they started off this administration pretty serious about that. And I was like optimistic. It's like, okay, we're doing the pain thing, which if we're ever going to get back on track and have like fiscal responsibility, it's going to take pain. And like, that sucks, but I guess we're doing it. And I can't really complain because it's a responsible thing. And I was on board with that. And turns out No, it wasn't. It never was.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:54] Yeah, I didn't think it would. Like I was not as hopeful as you were, David. I was super bearish. I know that they were talking about it, right? But they wanted to appear like they were doing, not actually go through the pain. Did you see Ray Dalio's post about this? So he's coming out with a book and he explains it this way. So he compares it to a household and the US right now this year, revenue to the household is $5 trillion. That's what the US makes in tax revenue. Okay. Expenses, the stuff it's spending, $7 trillion. So if you take, and plus, the US as a household has a lot of debt out there, about $30 trillion of debt, or six times its revenue. And for actual households in the US, so if you're a US citizen with a household, you are about 230K in debt. That's your portion of the $30 trillion of US debt.

David Hoffman:
[18:44] Yes, you are a household. $230,000 of debt?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:47] Yes, that's yours.

David Hoffman:
[18:49] Because I'm a United States citizen?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:51] Yes, that's right.

David Hoffman:
[18:53] Wow.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:53] Yeah. So the annual interest on that debt is about $1 trillion, of course. And some of the debt comes due, right? Because it's debt. It's got a term. About $9 trillion comes due in the next little bit. Okay? And the hope of the U.S. government from a fiscal position is hoping that creditors or others will just like relend to them. Relend. Renew the terms. Keep doing it.

David Hoffman:
[19:18] Which they have so far.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:20] So Dalio says, he just sums it up. He's like, this is the current condition. That's it, David. 230K in debt. And, you know, what do you think he says? What do you think his portfolio prescription is for all of this? Knowing Dalio the way you know him.

David Hoffman:
[19:34] Not bonds.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:35] Yes.

David Hoffman:
[19:36] Whatever. Not bonds. He doesn't say Bitcoin. Did he say Bitcoin? Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:40] Okay. No.

David Hoffman:
[19:41] Yes, he did. I mean, he said Bitcoin before, so it's not the first time.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:44] Can I give you his quote?

David Hoffman:
[19:44] I would have expected him to go straight to gold.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:47] I know, but I've been reading Dalio. He's been talking about this for years. We've both been talking about it. We've been talking about this stuff. Yeah, he's good. Sure. So this is what he says. I suggest diversifying well in asset classes in countries that have strong income statements. I don't know where you find those. And ballot sheets. And not having great internal political and external geopolitical conflicts. Again, I don't know where you find those. Sorry, Dalio. Underweighting debt assets like bonds. Basically, you know, he said bonds are shit. Sell bonds. And overweighting gold. and, wait for it, and a bit of Bitcoin.

David Hoffman:
[20:19] A bit of Bitcoin. What do you think he means by that? Do you think... Over or under 1%?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:25] It's a bit, you know? It's a bit. So that's up for you to define. I mean, for some people listening, that might mean 50% plus. Just a little bit of your portfolio.

David Hoffman:
[20:34] Just a little bit. Are we talking like Michael Saylor or above or below Michael Saylor's level of Bitcoin?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:41] Come on, though. This is notable. I mean, we've been doing this podcast for how long? And now Dalio's, we've always been wondering, hey, you're in the gold train. Why are you not on the digital commodity train? There he is with Bitcoin. Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[20:52] I remember in the 2021 cycle, we talked about Dalio a lot because that's when the United States did the helicopter money and all that kind of stuff. And we were just saying, Ray Dalio, say Bitcoin, just say Bitcoin. And he was like, gold. And we're like, no.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:06] And then we would say, but he actually means crypto assets. He doesn't just mean gold. And sure enough, we were right. We just had.

David Hoffman:
[21:12] To wait for it. All right. Coming up next on the opposite side of Ray Dalio and macro, we're going to talk about pump funds getting ready to launch a token.

Upcoming Projects and Clarity

David Hoffman:
[21:20] And then Ethereum is in front of Congress this week. So what was said in front of Congress and who was representing? And also the SEC giving clarity on staking, ETH staking, what's the downstream of all of that. But first, before we get there, we're going to talk about PumpFun wants to raise $1 billion via a token sale, which would include a public sale. So PumpFun doing an ICO for a token at a $4 billion valuation. So they want to raise $1 billion. They want to grow a $1 billion treasury and launch their token at a $4 billion.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:51] And this is an ICO, you said?

David Hoffman:
[21:53] We're still looking for more details. I think what's happening is that they are just talking to VCs, talking to potential investors, trying to find $1 billion of capital.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:02] Is this coming from accredited investors, or is there going to be some sort of a public sale, you think?

David Hoffman:
[22:08] From what I'm reading, what I've heard, and also what is reported on by BlockWords, again, is also talking to what they said. Two sources with knowledge of the matter said that there is looking to be a public sale and an airdrop. There's a Twitter account who tweeted out, PumpFun launching PumpToken in the next two weeks, airdrop for users confirmed as well. And then one person says, like, are you LARPing or give me sources? is. And then this Twitter person says, nope, source close to the team confirmed seed investors already know. And so if they are looking to raise $1 billion, they're going around to investors in the space and showing like terms and talking about terms. And so that's how this would ultimately get to some news reporting agency like Blockworks. And so a loose confirmation of an airdrop, loose confirmation of a $4 billion valuation public sale.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:58] What do you think about $4 billion for PumpFun? What do you think about that? I was going to ask you the same question, David. And actually, okay, let me give you some more comps here first, and then I'll get your answer in mind. But let's compare it to Circle, okay? They were hitting the bell earlier. So the app, Pumped Off Fund, has already generated $700 million in cumulative revenue.

David Hoffman:
[23:18] Cumulative revenue.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:18] On a very small team. So you've got to imagine the vast bulk of that is actually profit. And we said earlier, what's annualized Circle doing these days? $150 million?

David Hoffman:
[23:27] $140 million, $150 million.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:28] $150 million versus, let's call it $600 million in annual profit for pump fun. Circle, what did we say? $20 billion, pump fun, $4 billion. Which is the better deal, David? Which would you rather buy today, pump fun or circle?

David Hoffman:
[23:45] When you put it like that, wow, pump fun seems really cheap. I don't know what the... So the revenue for pump fun has come down. They made a lot of their money. And it was like, I think that their peak revenue was around the Trump meme coin launch, because that's when all meme coins just like went absolutely gangbusters. Yeah. Looking at more recent timeframes of revenue, Pump Fund has made six and a half million dollars of revenue over the last 30 days. And that annualizes out to 78 million dollars, if this dune board that we're looking at is accurate. So 78 million dollars. That's less.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:16] Less in circle.

David Hoffman:
[24:17] Say, let's say they have like eight million dollars of costs. Very slim team. Maybe it's less, maybe it's more. Eight million dollars. They're making $70 million a year. Sure.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:25] So durability of the revenue is a question, isn't it?

David Hoffman:
[24:29] Yeah. For a $4 billion valuation at $70 million of revenue annualized, there's a gap there.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:37] Well, it depends what you think, right? So like, hmm, what's the moat? You know what PumpFun kind of reminds me of, to be honest? Like, I'm not sure. So I am not convinced of the durability of meme coins. It's certainly durable this cycle. but if and i think they will persist don't get me wrong meme coins will always be a thing right but you have i sort of think of pump fun is open almost like the open sea of last cycle right you had nfts open sea was dominant looked unstoppable what happened well nfts went down you had other competitors like blur launch do things a little bit differently uh you know suck up some of that liquidity and also the nft market collapsed right easy like and so the dynamics around meme coins in crypto, you're taking some bets on the future here. And there's so much disruption that could happen in terms of like the market dynamics or new entrance. It's really hard to think about like that versus buying a circle. Not that we're seriously, you know, like considering these two things, I suppose, but I just have questions about the durability of this lead and the durability of the space.

David Hoffman:
[25:43] I think the comparison of Pump Fund to OpenSea in 2021 is one that many people are making. And this is a, so we have a bullish tweet and a not bullish tweet. Vanna Charmer, Mossy, he was on Chopping Block recently, great episode. He made that point of just like, this is more of a flash in the pan. This is more of a one-time meta. I'm not totally convinced. I think there's two ends of the spectrum here. There is 2021 OpenSea, which like raised at a $13 billion valuation at the absolute top. And I don't think they could even be valued at like half a billion right now. And so there's that end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is like, this is actually 2013 Coinbase. Actually, meme coins do have incredible durability across time. You know, Dogecoin has been around for a long time. Meme coins were not created by PumpFun. Meme coins have been around. and PumpFund has really captured it. And so it's actually much closer to 2013 Coinbase in which meme coins are here forever. And there are meaningful attempts at dethroning PumpFund. There's Believe, there's Virtuals, there's other token launchers.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:49] They haven't been successful yet.

David Hoffman:
[26:50] They've had some success. Yeah, I wouldn't say not success. And so there's actually going to be always a consistent interest in funding PumpFund competitors because of the durability of meme coins. And so that's the bullish end of the spectrum. I'm somewhere in the middle. I think $4 billion is kind of rich. I don't think the $4 billion token is going to make any investor at $4 billion valuation. You're not going to 10x that. You're not going to get rich off of that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:18] How do you get to $50 billion from that? How do you get to $100 billion on that? So this is the bullish tweet. It's been about eight months now and I hope you're starting to see the vision for where Pump is headed. They're going after platforms like Twitch and TikTok. It's only a matter of time before creators realize they can monetize far more effectively on Pump. that's the take that's.

David Hoffman:
[27:35] Interesting placing pump fun shoulder to shoulder with twitch and tiktok i think is interesting as a content platform where it's actually content first more than token first i think that's really

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:45] Interesting though is just like how much how much do you get from that if you're a creator i mean there is something extractive from your community about meme coins or there certainly can be and oftentimes the incentives lead towards shortcuts extraction people feeling burnt everyone wants to buy the meme coin so that it goes up but when it goes down it sucks.

David Hoffman:
[28:06] No one wants to collect the meme coin meme coins are not collectibles

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:09] Yeah if you're a creator you launch something it goes up you're amazing it goes down you're hated.

David Hoffman:
[28:15] You are hated get off the

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:17] Internet they hate you it's just very volatile.

David Hoffman:
[28:21] Ryan what do you think the aggregate market cap of all pump fun meme coins is? like if you add the market cap of all them add them together oh

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:29] Just the pump fun ones not all the.

David Hoffman:
[28:30] Crypto just the ones pumped on yeah exactly that's right i would get the ones like five

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:35] Billion something like this yeah.

David Hoffman:
[28:37] Pretty close 4.5 billion 4.5 billion same

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:39] As the market cap at the.

David Hoffman:
[28:40] Platform yeah that's interesting

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:42] I don't know what that tells me.

David Hoffman:
[28:43] That's that's interesting it's interesting i also don't know what it tells me i think bnb somebody was i posed this question to twitter bnb is actually like far worse in the sense that the valuation of bnb is massive bnb

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:55] The Binance chain.

David Hoffman:
[28:56] Thing? Binance chain, yeah. The aggregate value of Binance chain. You know, people call this a casino. Binance chain is a casino. The value of all aggregate tokens on Binance is like one-tenth the value of BNB itself. But granted, Binance Exchange buys and burns BNB, and so you're actually investing in Binance revenues too, so maybe it's not a very good comparison.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:15] Real hard to compare Circle and BNB and Pump. Yeah, let's compare Circle and Pump Fund.

David Hoffman:
[29:21] Shoulder to shoulder.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:23] Let's throw in a bank. Like JP Morgan, compare that too. Well, let's talk about the Ethereum Foundation update this week. So a protocol special forces team. All right. So some people saw this tweet from the Ethereum Foundation announcing protocol. And they were like, what? Like, what is protocol?

David Hoffman:
[29:40] Announcing protocol, like question mark?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:42] What is protocol?

David Hoffman:
[29:43] Protocol, I think it's just the name of a very slimmed down research and development team that has been categorized into three swim lanes, three lanes. You know the Verge, Urge, Splurge Those are gone There are now just three They're still there,

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:58] We just don't.

David Hoffman:
[29:59] Talk about them They're still there, but this is not what we're talking about This is not how we're presenting it What they are now is First track, Scale the Layer 1 Led by Tim Baco and Onsgar Second track, Scale Blobs Led by Alex Stokes and Francesco D'Amato And third track, Improve UX Led by Barnabé and Josh Rudolph And then Donkrad is the person orchestrating all of these things. So he's kind of like the head of these three independent teams. Each team is only two people. And then Donkrad is the guy at the top. And this is the Ethereum platform. development team. This is the people dictating the next steps of the protocol. Love it. And the EF wrote in the blog post, the process of shipping protocol is messy, asking us to respond proactively to demands that are hard to articulate and even harder to fulfill. This moment may be Ethereum's best shot at deploying not only our technology, but our values at planetary scale. And this announcement also came with a reduction in staff. And so there were layoffs from the Ethereum Foundation. Tim Baker wrote, as a part of this reorientation, we have also revisited our team structures. will be doubling down on some areas and reducing efforts in others. This resulted in us deciding to part ways with some EFers whose skill sets no longer matched our priorities. So, okay, remember when I'm going to invoke he who must not be named by the Ethereum community? That person is-

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:19] There's so many of them. Who are you about to say? There's so many. Call somebody. That's one of them.

David Hoffman:
[31:24] He asked for. When we had him on the show, we were like, okay, Kyle, what do you think we need? What does Ethereum need to do? And he goes, yeah, Ethereum needs to go into war mode. There needs to be fires.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:33] Didn't he say fire people? There needs to be fire people.

David Hoffman:
[31:35] Yeah. A wartime CEO needs to come in and people need to get fired.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:39] Well, didn't he also say fire Vitalik somewhere else? Or am I misremembering that?

David Hoffman:
[31:45] Did he? I'd have to go back and rewatch. Anyways, I'm seeing Donkrad being elevated to a position of very strong leadership, people being fired, laid off, and the organization being restructured to be able to, as Tim said, ship code, ship technology at a planetary scale. It's good. That's what I'm saying.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:02] I think this is good. This is like, you know, to me, this is Tamash coming in. This is absolutely Tamash.

David Hoffman:
[32:09] Yeah. This is Tamash.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:10] He's bringing organizational, executional firepower, a thing that the EF, for all of its great things, and there are many great things about the EF, as a piece it was missing, to be honest. Not executing on things, particularly the roadmap. Not having clear timelines, communication. And he's just... putting names accountable and leaders accountable for specific deliverables. And these deliverables are exactly where Ethereum needs to go. And the technology is there. If Ethereum could just execute on this roadmap, things are going to go very well from here. And there's still a big if, but I'm starting to see mounting confidence here, right? Like this is a good sign to me. Scale L1, scale the blobs, improve UX. These are all the things that, and now we have a team that's executing on it. It's called protocol.

David Hoffman:
[32:59] Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I do these kind of high touch episodes that require like multiple guests being stitched together. And so I'm doing Ryan interviews with each of these teams for like 20, 25 minutes each going to stitch them together. Hopefully Donkrad gets back to me on Telegram and says, yes, I'm down to be the co-host because I'm going to get Donkrad as the co-host because he's the guy. And so I'm trying to make that episode happen. So bear with me. I think that would be great.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:20] That'd be a fantastic episode.

Ethereum Foundation Developments

David Hoffman:
[33:21] Not the That's the only news coming out of the EF. So the EF has also released a new treasury policy. So we're finally getting some clarity about the EF's treasury.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:31] Because it has some ETH in its treasury.

David Hoffman:
[33:33] It has some ETH in its treasury, yes. The big line, I think, we intend to reduce our annual OPEX roughly, linearly over the next five years, ending at a long-term 5%. So the EF wants to spend just 5% of its treasury every single year, down from 15% where it is now. In addition to that, the EF will seek to earn acceptable returns on treasury assets. So they're going to invest, make their assets more productive. They both have stable coins and ETH as well. They're going to invest in a manner consistent with Ethereum's underlying principles. And also quarterly reports will be a thing. So we're going to get quarterly reports. With going back to that investing their ETH topic, they want to support nascent DeFi protocols to help develop privacy features. And they're going to allocate, deposit their Ether into DeFi protocols in order to get it healed.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:22] Primarily emphasize what they are calling DeFi punk protocols.

David Hoffman:
[34:26] So what's DeFi punk? I'm so glad you asked. DeFi apps that prioritize security, being open source, financial self-sovereignty, I think we would call that banklessness, tech solutions over trust-based solutions. So no multi-sigs, no reliance on legal coercion as recourse, active deployment of cryptographic tools to protect civil liberties. Not sure what that means. And then also privacy. So the EF is trying to make their capital productive by also leveraging what they are calling DeFi punk defi apps which i think we would have always called these defi apps but the word defi has kind of been diluted that they needed to remake yeah you gotta call it yeah that makes sense defi punk is just defi 1.0

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:03] We're just calling everything defi this these days hyper liquid that's defi sure right yeah that makes sense i would say just a refresher how much how much eith does the ef hold like i'm just recalling this from memory if someone were to make me guess i would say it's like it's pretty low compared to other foundations as a percentage of supply right Something like 1%. It might even be less than 1%. Now, that amounts to a lot of money because ETH is just so massive in terms of size, but it's not very much as a portion of total ETH supply.

David Hoffman:
[35:33] Yeah. Yeah. If this Google search is correct, the foundation's total treasury is about $970 million, $790 million in crypto and $180 million in non-crypto assets. I'm guessing that's dollars. Yeah. So less than a billion dollars.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:48] Yeah, less than a billion dollars. They really have to make it last, I guess. It's good, though, for them to roll out these policies.

David Hoffman:
[35:56] Quarterly reports is going to be really nice.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:58] I have a conspiracy theory for you.

David Hoffman:
[35:59] I would like to challenge all other layer one foundations to issue quarterly reports about their financials.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:04] Maybe they will, because I have a little bit of a conspiracy theory for you. I think part of the reason the EF is doing more of this, transparency. I mean, there's lots of reasons, cultural change, all of these things. It's all good. They realized they woke up from their slumber, all of these things. part of it I think is the SEC is no longer on their throat oh.

David Hoffman:
[36:22] I definitely think that's true

Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:24] So they can actually add more leadership and more coordination in the space, including things like quarterly reports. In the past, if they did a quarterly report, you know Gary Gensler would point at that, bring it into a court case and say, he was already snooping around trying to say that Ether, the asset, was a security, that EF is kind of like a centralized corporation. And if they had a quarterly report of some kind, he would bring that. That would be a misnomer in court. He'd use it against them. I think this is part of the reason we're seeing more leadership.

David Hoffman:
[36:52] I think you're absolutely correct. There's also a story of Vitalik is just not an operator. He's just not an executive. That's true. So it's a little bit of both. You definitely see Tomas fingerprints on this. But also on this one, Xiaowei, this is Xiaowei's work. That's great. So if we're going to tip hats to Tomas, we also have to tip hats to Xiaowei.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:11] Amazing. Let's tip a hat to Vitalik here. Actually, this is him commenting on Ethereum layer one scalability. how fast should we see a lot of these changes to the l1 that have been talked about in the last couple months yeah okay so my view is like uh generally i think we should uh scale l1 by uh about 10x over the next year and a bit based on delayed why the in a bit why not here a more ambitious here uh no year would be great.

David Hoffman:
[37:37] It's great just to see this reprioritization and this like can-do attitude of scaling the layer one yes just permeate around the ethereum culture i've been I've been pushing for this for a while now like I went back and forth like last year I was like yeah we need to scale the layer 1 no the path that we're on it took me a while to like get dug into this like we need to scale around scaling and I've been pushing different parts of the Ethereum community for the last like I don't know 2-3 months I was in the Daily Guay discord like fighting with them and they were like no we can't do this like the engineers you don't know anything David that the engineers don't know and then you see the engineers start saying yeah we're going to scale the layer 1 I'm like thank you it's just an attitude thing It's just an ad. We can do things. We can just do things.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[38:21] There's also, there are some trade-offs with scaling too much, but I feel like the Ethereum researchers know they got the get out of jail free card now, which is ZK tech is really catching up. And so that's going to allow massive scale here.

David Hoffman:
[38:35] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There was a conversation in the Bankless Discord from Centauri, one of our Bankless citizens, who said, to get a 10x increase in a year, we need to pressure larger operators to change the gas limit on their nodes, which brings us to this tweet from Victor Bunin who is a protocol specialist at Coinbase and he says hey so Coinbase is once again one of the first large operators to signal the increasing gas limit people used to bully us to go faster but guess it's now it's our turn to bully others so he tags Lido, P2P Figment, Film, Chorus and say yo guys it is time to increase the layer 1 gas to 60 million right now is that 36 million let's get it up to 60 million gas on the layer 1 so there are people from Lido who are listening there are people from P2P who are listening you are requested pump the gas you are requested to pump the gas let's do it let's do it

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:20] We got a lot more coming up. David Saylor. Michael Saylor found a way to raise more money to buy more Bitcoin. I'm shocked. Yes, he did.

David Hoffman:
[39:28] Which couch cushion did he look under this time?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:30] Yeah, who knows? Did the Trump team launch a crypto wallet? Some say yes, some say no. Maybe we'll find an answer.

David Hoffman:
[39:36] I always found up for debate.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:37] Also, David, SBF, his story. It's headed to Netflix. We're going to talk about who's playing SBF's role and also Caroline's role, of course. All that and more. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible, including a tweet from Michael Saylor. Strategy Today announced the launch of Stride. That's a ticker symbol, STRD. A new perpetual preferred stock offering available to institutional investors. All right. I thought Michael Saylor already had a stock offering, and that was called MicroStrategy, MSTR. Now he's got STRD that he's releasing. What's going on? Explain this.

David Hoffman:
[40:12] Yeah, it turns out he also has STRF, which has already been trading for a while. So we were trying to understand what's going on here. So MicroStrategy, MSTR, is the common stock. And you know how like Pendle kind of unwraps tokens and allows you to express different ways of having exposure?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:30] You're trying to explain complicated equity stuff to me in DeFi crypto language.

David Hoffman:
[40:34] Yeah, it's a little bit like that. So if you are maximally bullish Bitcoin and you would like to express that bullishness with MicroStrategy, you would buy MSCR. You would buy the common stock. Sure. STRF is a 10% like coupon, a Series A perpetual strife preferred equity. So it's this thing that exists in this no man's land between equity and a bond, a corporate bond. But it's preferred.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:58] So if common stockholders get wiped out because something real bad happens, the preferred equity owners are able to get.

David Hoffman:
[41:07] Paid out first. Yes, exactly. And so you as a STRF preferred strife, preferred equity owner, you get paid a 10% coupon, a 10% dividend yield, a fixed 10% cumulatively.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:20] Ah, that's the benefit.

David Hoffman:
[41:21] So if the board skips a payment, because it doesn't make many money, it piles up and you will get paid that payment that you are owed later. Okay. It's at the top of the equity sack. So like you said, if anything, this gets paid out first. It is the most safe, most defensible. This new thing that MicroStrategy is issuing is STRD. It's the third thing. The third thing, the third asset. So he has MicroStrategy. He has STRF. Now he has STRD, not yet trading. It's a 10% series, a perpetual stride preferred. So it is junior. It also pays 10%. Okay. But if MicroStrategy cannot make a payment and it misses a payment, you do not get that payment. You do not get that payment later, unlike STRF. Okay. And it's also junior to STRF. It's also junior. And so if MicroStrategy gets wiped out, you also get wiped out because now you won't be getting any more payments. And so this is like, it's a little bit sussing out the credit worthiness of MicroStrategy. So I think if something breaks in microstrategy, this thing will get wiped out first. Like this thing will go to zero first. STRF will go to zero last, and then MicroStrategy just trades like a company.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:28] So the reason he's doing it is so that he can sell this new Stride shares, basically, and raise another, what, $250 million or so to go do what? What's he going to do with $250 million?

David Hoffman:
[42:40] I don't know. You know, buy a few Bitcoins here and there. So, yeah, he's got these two additional credit vehicles that he can sell more in. And if the market perceives him to be credit worthy, the price of these things will go up and he'll be able to sell more.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:56] Okay. So for an investor, did I see Dylan LeClaire over here on Twitter call these kind of like junk bonds? The stride is kind of like the junk bond version. Yes.

David Hoffman:
[43:07] The most recent one that he issued. Yes. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:10] It's kind of like it's junior. You're not getting the guaranteed payments. You know, it's like, I don't know, it seems maybe some investors will want this, but it seems the worst of a couple of worlds here, right?

David Hoffman:
[43:20] Because you're not getting a guarantee payment. He ends it in a really interesting way. He's issuing a 1,000-year USD Bitcoin swap and buying the Bitcoin up front. The balance sheet itself is extremely de-levered. And so he's using whatever capital, whatever dollars he has to pay loans in order to buy Bitcoin up front so he can get it as from it. He can pull forward the future as much as possible and then sell that future into Bitcoin and then assuming that it appreciates.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:48] It'll be totally fine so long as you don't get over leveraged and so long as number keeps going up, it'll be totally fine.

David Hoffman:
[43:56] I know that for certain. So long as number goes up. I mean, even if number goes down, he's also still fine. Probably fine. But he made a bad bet or a worse bet.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:05] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Trump, David. I saw a tweet talking

SBF's Story Heads to Netflix

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:10] about a new crypto wallet that the Trump team launched. I went to the website. This is kind of what you see on the website. All right. It's like trumpwallet.com. Guys, I don't know if you should go to this or not. Because I don't even know if it's real. I actually thought it might be an official campaign. Okay. It is real. Anyway, the news was, this came out of crypto media sources like Bitcoin Magazine, etc., that Trump had launched a crypto wallet where you could buy, sell, trade. The Trump token was featured inside of the crypto wallet. And it was like the Trump version of a crypto wallet in case you're like, you're done with Uniswap and MetaMask wallets. And you just like, you wanted your Trump wallet, you know, because you got to hold your crypto in the Trump wallet. So that was the news. And then something funny happened, which was, The sons of Donald Trump, Eric and Donald Jr., started denying that this thing was real. They denied affiliation with this whole thing.

David Hoffman:
[45:04] And so the launch of the Trump and while it got community noted saying the Trump organizations have not have distanced themselves from this. Right.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:12] And so crypto media started reporting on this. Mainstream media started reporting on this. Funny, though, Magic Eden, the it was originally it was an NFT platform, right? On Solana. Now they're maybe doing more things. They started doing Bitcoin ordinals.

David Hoffman:
[45:24] They bought slingshot wallet. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:26] They said that this was real. In fact, they had helped develop this in partnership with Trump. And when press, guys, hey, they're saying it's not real. The sons of Trump are saying this is not real. Magic Eden said, no, it's real. We really have a deal with the Trump organization. So I left this story here.

David Hoffman:
[45:43] They said they are partnering with the Trump meme coin team.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:47] Which is, I mean, the same people as Eric and Donald Jr.

David Hoffman:
[45:52] In Eric's tweet, he says that World Liberty Financial and that group, which he's a part of, has nothing to do with the Trump wallet. And that's not anything to do with any Trump organization.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:02] But they do have something to do with the Trump meme coin, right? But apparently it has.

David Hoffman:
[46:05] Yeah. Apparently this is a Trump meme. This is not a World Liberty Financial wallet. This is a Trump meme coin wallet.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:10] But they imply Trump has nothing to do with it. Yes.

David Hoffman:
[46:12] They said the Trump organizations have nothing to do with this.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:15] But that's not quite true. Somebody in the Trump organization has something to do with it and did indeed roll this out.

David Hoffman:
[46:22] Magic Eden, which is a legit company, is doubling down on the fact that this is real. And it would be ridiculous for them to launch a Trump wallet without actually being able to claim that to be true. Here's Donald Trump Jr. saying the Trump organization has zero involvement with the product.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:37] Eric and I know nothing about it. They know nothing about it.

David Hoffman:
[46:41] So what is this thing? Do you know what the URL is?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:43] I thought it was TrumpWallet.com.

David Hoffman:
[46:45] I'm going to TrumpWallet.com and it is giving me a site cannot be reached right now. So maybe it's done.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:51] Maybe I have the wrong URL.

David Hoffman:
[46:52] Anyways, unrelated but also related. I saw this tweet from Molly White, which I think kind of explains everything. And it is kind of like an org chart map of all of the different Trump entities and all of their crypto dealings. Wow. And it kind of looks like spaghetti. Yeah. And there's like an unknown associations and there's known associations. And so you got World Liberty Financial. You got the Trump meme coin. You got the Trump NFTs. You got the Melania NFTs. You have some people who are part of the Melania NFTs plus World Liberty Financial Organization. You have other people who are part of the memes and then like different part of the Trump meme corner. It's just a kind of a mess. And so I kind of am not surprised that somebody in Trump's orbit and influence and part of his company's.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:36] Like goes.

David Hoffman:
[47:38] And pioneers a Trump wallet and a different part of the Trump crypto verse is like unaware of that happening because I think they're all operating on under their own initiative and somebody just decided to make a wallet and their other side of the Trump crypto verse is like I didn't know about

Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:52] That that must be it right the the the website and offering said it was the official Trump wallet and the official like you know Trump meme coin wallet endorsed by Donald Trump they said this explicitly this is the president of the united states right as like a big media empire world's most powerful man you wouldn't want to put that out there no way if you didn't really have some sort of permission there right and if you're.

David Hoffman:
[48:16] Gonna lie about that you would you would launch and then rug a meme coin you wouldn't launch a project that you would invest

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:21] In i thought okay this is lazarus group or something like this and like this is kind of a you know they spun up a website this is not real they've hacked magic eden's account it's really hard to unbundle what's going on it says what's interesting about the spaghetti mess here is I do actually think Trump has some legitimate projects here. I keep hearing that the World Liberty Financial team is like a pretty solid team. They're building a treasury of crypto assets. They're doing DeFi protocol.

David Hoffman:
[48:47] They haven't gotten hacked or exploited or anything. Haven't lost some money.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:50] That could actually be something. And then you have other areas, which is like the Trump meme coin and whatever that is. And then you have a Trump wallet and you have melania coin whatever that is and then there was also you mentioned it earlier in the episode trump media which they're the the true social parent company i believe if i'm understanding this correctly they are rolling out a bitcoin etf as well so they're registering for a bitcoin etf which a bitcoin etf product is you know legitimate as well so what do you make of all this you.

David Hoffman:
[49:24] Know i'm you said the world liberty financial is legitimate i'm going to the world Liberty financial.com place. Cause like, you know, it's supposed to be an app. It's supposed to be like an obvious fork. Yeah. There's just a token sale website.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:37] I keep hearing that, like, people telling me that there's, like, a team. They're kind of, like, crypto legit. You know, I don't know.

David Hoffman:
[49:44] I've heard that, too. And I was like, okay, how do I, can I go get yield in this? And it turns out you can just buy WLFI. Yeah. Anyways, what do I make of all this?

Trump as a Crypto Franchise

David Hoffman:
[49:55] Trump is a franchise. You know, like, I feel like there's that, there's that guy behind Elvis, like Elvis's promoter who just franchised the F out of Elvis and sold everything Elvis branded and made Elvis like a bajillion there but I feel like that's just what's happening and they're just realizing that with crypto you can do a Bitcoin ETF you can launch meme coins you can launch NFTs you can launch a DeFi app just do everything he's literally doing all the things doing a wallet yeah just like make every business possible put Trump's name on it and sell it see what happens see what happens

Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:27] See what happens I kind of.

David Hoffman:
[50:29] Get it Just like one coroner made the wallet before a different coroner who also had another idea. Because the other part of this is that Donald Trump Jr. said like, no, we're making a wallet out of World Liberty Financial. And so you have competing Trump products and they're both wallets. And one's coming from the meme coin and one's coming from World Liberty. Yeah, you just don't know what's going on.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:49] Do you know, so the Clarity Act is being presented in front of the House these days. And this is the new market structure bill. Right, yeah. This isn't the new market structure bill. It's the successor to FIT21. You guys have heard us talk about this, right? This is defining what's a security and what's a commodity in crypto. We need this bill. And there's congressional hearings going on this week, and it keeps coming up. Maxine Waters, of course, talking about the Trump coin, all of Trump's activities in this. It's coming up. And in fact, I don't know if you saw this clip, a CNBC interview clip with Donald Trump Jr. And the interviewer asks him specifically about the meme coin. This is the clip. Feed into some of the other things. The meme coin. Is that okay for your dad to have a meme coin?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[51:30] Listen, of course, when he did that, before he was in office, he did these things. The reason we got into crypto, and we're all in on crypto, and we're doing American Bitcoin, and we have World Liberty Finance, and USD1 was because there was a time, and probably I'd been on this show, where I could call any single banker in New York City. They'd pick up the phone. I'd be able to get a loan for whatever real estate project I was doing across the street. Then we got into politics, and all of a sudden, they wouldn't take your call. You couldn't get financing. We were debanked. And what I realized, and my brother realized, because we were the recipients of every subpoena imaginable, was that, you know what, we were actually just the top of this sort of pyramid scheme that we didn't realize we were a part of, that the financial system was totally undemocratized. Because we had a certain balance sheet and whatever, we could kind of do whatever we wanted. The regular guy was messed up. Now we were all of a sudden in the shoes of the regular guy that wouldn't be able to take advantage of the markets and we said what's the solution for that the answer is crypto, End of MemeCoin. Masterful.

David Hoffman:
[52:30] Why did you launch a MemeCoin? Well, let me tell you about this one time we got debanked.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[52:36] He's not wrong about that, though. We got forced into crypto.

David Hoffman:
[52:38] And, you know, we needed crypto. And so, never mind. I don't think he's had MemeCoin once in that. Oh, my God. A complete masterpiece.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[52:47] It is funny. It is funny. David, let's talk about Sam Bankman-Fried headed to Netflix. What are we getting here, David?

David Hoffman:
[52:53] Apparently, they're getting a one-season series on SBF in the fall of FTX, which I am just waiting on the edge of my seat for as a big TV person.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:04] This is not a documentary. This is an actual kind of, I don't know.

David Hoffman:
[53:08] Yeah, you know, I remember like The Social Network. I think it's something like that where it's like a documentary but with acting and a story.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:14] It's a true story of what happened. It's a true story.

David Hoffman:
[53:16] Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:16] The Altruists is what they're calling it?

David Hoffman:
[53:19] The Altruists. That's what they went with. a huge just punch to the face of effective altruism yeah yeah i would because i think that has to have a big overarching story they're going to name it that the actors portraying the the people as we know them anthony boyle but i'm not a movie person and then also julia garner and these two individuals i would say are pretty they are beautiful people and crypto twitter was not happy about that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:46] Have you these choices?

David Hoffman:
[53:48] They do not resemble the real characters. The contrast between the beauty of these actors and what we know SBF and Caroline to be was not what people wanted. Because I think people want to make fun of Sam and Caroline.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:01] Yeah. They got hurt pretty bad, didn't they? Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[54:04] Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:05] Look at this one. So here's one. Bella Ramsey is what others were saying in Jonah Hill. I feel like Jonah Hill as Sam Bankman Freed is kind of perfect though.

David Hoffman:
[54:16] But I love Jonah Hill is the problem with that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:18] You like him too much? Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[54:20] I like him too much. Yeah. He's too good. Oh, there you go. I mean, it's unfortunate. If you're an upstarting young actor, do you really want your first role to be Sam Bankman Freed?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:32] I don't know. That could be a fun role to play. Yeah, I guess. He's such a character. You know what? I hope he goes on a crypto podcast in the series.

David Hoffman:
[54:41] In the series? Yeah. Yeah, do you think the Eric Voorhees Twitter episode will be in there?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:46] Which means there could be someone playing you, David. There could be someone playing me. Oh, no.

David Hoffman:
[54:51] I'm not. I don't want that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:52] You don't want that. I don't want that. But if you had to pick someone to play you, who would it be?

David Hoffman:
[54:56] Oh, my doppelganger, which is, what's his face? Tobey Maguire.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:00] Oh, Tobey Maguire would make a perfect David Hoffman. Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[55:03] Yeah. The people have always called me Spider-Man. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:05] Who would I be then?

David Hoffman:
[55:07] Who is your double ganger?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:09] Joseph Gordon-Levitt. That's who I'd want to play me. Yeah. I'd make a good Ryan Sean Adams.

David Hoffman:
[55:14] He's not as attractive as you, but yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:16] I can see that. I can see that. David, we're looking for some talent as we wrap this show up. So we got some jobs. If you're interested in a job, what do we got? We got two very big jobs.

David Hoffman:
[55:26] These are not entry-level jobs. We are looking for a BD sales lead. So if you are in the BD sales ecosystem of crypto, you know every single company that's in crypto. So you have Context, you have a Rolodex. We are looking for you to do sales for Bankless, mainly sponsorship sales. And so if you are interested in that, there is a link in the show notes so you can apply. And then we are also looking for a growth manager. So somebody who understands podcasting, understands YouTubing, clips, distribution, virality. We have a Bankless, but also Limitless, our second podcast, which is doing very well, penetrating into AI and frontier tech. And we need to step on the gas on that. So if you would like to add fuel on top of a very hot fire, we have a killer podcast AV production team. We have me and Ryan as guests.

Job Opportunities at Bankless

David Hoffman:
[56:14] And we have access to some of the best guests that are coming on both Limitless and Bankless. So if you would like to add fuel to that fire, either on sales or on distribution and virality, click the links in the show notes to apply.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[56:28] Amazing. And because we didn't get a chance to see it, actually Ethereum was mentioned in Congress today in a congressional hearing. So I feel like we should play that as the moment of Zen. This is Vivek from Ethereumize. He's coming on next week, actually. They're dropping some big things, but we'll play that clip after I read this. Of course, you know, crypto 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. Thanks a lot.