ROLLUP: ETH Breaks New Records While BTC Hits ANOTHER All Time High
Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:03] Bankless nation is a third week of july it's time for the bankless weekly roll-up david it is crypto week this week okay that's just not that's not just we're talking
David Hoffman:
[0:12] Crypto this week.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:13] Yeah no this is donald trump declaring it crypto week he said happy crypto week did you see this where
David Hoffman:
[0:19] Did he say this.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:20] You said this on truth social yeah yeah and the reason why is because the genius bill is in front of the house as well as the clarity act some other house bills for crypto. So he's declaring you and everybody at Bankless a happy crypto week. We got to talk about the genius.
David Hoffman:
[0:35] It is a happy crypto week. I felt that actually this week.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:39] Okay. So the genius bill at the time of recording, we don't know whether it has passed or not, but I'm going to go ahead and say it passed. Okay. Bankless listeners, they're living the future. We're recording this on Thursday. The bill is going up for vote at 4 p.m. today. We don't know the outcome yet. You guys do. I think it passed, David.
David Hoffman:
[0:55] Okay. Hold me to that prediction. I'm assuming that it's passing is going to pass. And also, I don't think that that is why the market has pumped, especially Ethereum has pumped. I think that the market will pump more as a result of this passing.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:08] After it passes? After it passes. Oh, it has passed, of course. It has passed. It has passed. Yes. Also, we got to talk about Bitcoin hit an all-time high. We got another all-time high week back to back. But do you feel like all eyes are on Ether this week?
David Hoffman:
[1:21] Because there's been a Bitcoin story this week.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:23] No, there's been a vibe change. We talked about that last week. But now we've got ETFs, ETFs breaking all-time high records. We also have Tom Lee saying he wants to buy 5% of all ETH supply. That's a true story.
David Hoffman:
[1:38] That's like 6 million ETH. And he is not anywhere close to 6 million ETH right now.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:44] No, he's got to work his way up, but he's getting there.
David Hoffman:
[1:46] And then, of course, I'll cover the PumpFun ICO because we don't want Ryan to
David Hoffman:
[1:49] do that. How did it go? Who bought in? What happened afterwards? And then Coinbase launched its everything app brand new release out of coinbase we're entering in the world where crypto companies like robin hood coinbase they are doing their own internal like you know jazzy marketing campaigns marketing like streams like steve jobs ask yeah and they're doing the they're doing their own roadshows in their own kind of context which is pretty cool we're gonna talk about the roman storm trial as well and remember that one time the polymarket founder got raided by the fbi yeah We're going to hear more about that story as well. But first, before we get into the markets and talk about all the different ETH
David Hoffman:
[2:27] treasury companies that are up like 40% on the week.
David Hoffman:
[2:30] We're going to first talk about fundamentals and all those fundamentals you're going to hear are at the Bankless Summit. The Bankless Summit is a one day event that we are throwing at DevConnect. We are recruiting all the greatest speakers in Ethereum to give 20 to 30 minute talks, no panels, just straight information about Ethereum. The newest speaker is Donna from L2B. He is joining the ranks to talk about native rollups and all the research that he's going there. But we've also got Justin Drake, Ansgar, Tamash, Arjun, Uma Roy. It's going to be a who's who. It's a TED Talks for Ethereum, the second day of DevConnect. So if you are going to DevConnect in Buenos Aires, which I highly recommend, because all you're going to go do is you're going to go down to Buenos Aires. You're going to talk about ETH. You're going to eat steak. You're going to drink Malbec. And then you're going to talk about ETH some more. I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to go to Buenos Aires. They are the people that adopted stable coins and ETH. They are the people that built MakerDAO. They are the people over at OpenZeppelin. It's a great place to just be a crypto person. And then once you're done being a crypto person, you just eat steak. It's great. Anyways, I'm very excited about it. This is, again, happening the Tuesday of DevConnect. Get your tickets before I increase the prices. Prices are $80 right now. They will not be $80 in the future. They're going to track ETH. And so they will be about $160 by the time we run around to DevConnect.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:44] That's an ETH price prediction, okay? That's a 6K ETH if I'm running the math right. No, 7K ETH.
David Hoffman:
[3:49] Oh my God.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:49] Wow, we are bullish on the week. Let's talk a little bit about Bitcoin price because we got an all-time high this week. Not quite at the time of recording, but previous to that, what did we hit and where are we at right now we are
David Hoffman:
[3:59] Currently coming in at 19 000 bitcoin is up seven percent on the week a good old seven percent the new all-time high 122 thousand eight hundred dollars i think i think it did hit one two three thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollars so a pretty some charts i guess yeah yeah fell off it fell off it all the way all the way it crashed ryan bitcoin crashed this week from 123 000 all the way down to 16 116 000 and has since come up to $119,000.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:28] See, they always told not to buy because it would crash.
David Hoffman:
[4:30] It always crashes every time.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:33] That's why you never buy Bitcoin. Well, part of the story of this cycle, of course, has been the infinite institutional bid for Bitcoin, the asset. And you're seeing that in no better place to see that than in BlackRock's IBIT. So BlackRock's IBIT, of course, is the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF. It just became the fastest ever to hit 80 million in AUM. And David, I got to tell you,
David Hoffman:
[4:57] It's not even- 80 billion.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:58] 80 billion. Oh my God, did I say million?
David Hoffman:
[5:00] You said million.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:01] I'm going to up those numbers here. I don't know what- 80 billion bear
David Hoffman:
[5:04] Got in your mind.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:05] Okay but look at this chart it's like it's like oh it's the fastest ever okay nothing else is close all right it's four
David Hoffman:
[5:13] Times faster than the nearest competitors it looks like like all the all the nearest competitors are like all within a pretty similar range to each other like pretty neck and neck and then bitcoin is like i am four times faster than all of you.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:25] This is why wall street is so bullish on on crypto assets this cycle is because they're providing a lot of the capital flows here. The question is, is Bitcoin fair market value or not? Well, if you look at some charts, like the long-term holder net unrealized profit and loss, the Nupple, okay? This is basically how up our Bitcoin holders, I believe it's a measure that it's that kind of measure. We're actually not in froth market territory, okay? We're between a point- The Nupples
David Hoffman:
[5:54] Are not frothy.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:55] The Nupples are not frothy, not yet at least. we're uh somewhere at 0.69 and that's the uh the below 0.69
David Hoffman:
[6:04] Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:07] Have i been sabotaged with this week's agenda my god is this even a real metric forget this let's go to the classic
David Hoffman:
[6:15] I like this chart much better this is the classic eric wall rainbow price chart it's way easier to understand than long-term holder net unrealized profit loss what the fuck is that no you just look at the rainbow chart we are clearly still on the lower side of the rainbow chart we are in the accumulation zone we are not in the massive deal we are not in the fire sale we are not in the buy buy buy section we're in the accumulation zone which is a, modestly leaning bias towards buying but not overly so but we are definitely on the lower side of the bitcoin price we want we what we want to do is we want to get into the yellows and oranges slowly we want to get into the yellows and oranges in like 2027 which would put bitcoin somewhere between one and two million dollars if we got if we got to the orange red area where like FOMO is happening, and then also it's a sell signal.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:07] This is a much better... I feel set up. I think I was set up with this week's weekend and talking about the nipples. I gave
David Hoffman:
[7:12] You the opportunity.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:12] To kill the nipples in the car,
David Hoffman:
[7:14] But you just walked right into that one.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:16] Alright, you wanted to talk about this, so there's a new denomination.
David Hoffman:
[7:20] I think this is so cool. Okay, so we all like to talk about price. Bitcoin is only 21 million. Price targets, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's also the cultural element of Bitcoin acceptance and the tolerableness of Bitcoin. And this is an indication that Bitcoin is just becoming so understood.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:39] Do you remember the first time we got into the Bloomberg terminals? That was huge. That was a huge moment for us, right? And we're not
David Hoffman:
[7:45] That far away from it. And Bitcoin was like $3,000 or $7,000 or something. Okay. The cool thing that's happening right now, maybe this is small, maybe I'm over hyping this, but if you want to go look at Bitcoin in the Bloomberg terminals, the pricing chart on the right side, like the graph where you see the prices, They are denominated in millions of dollars. So right now, on the price of a Bitcoin, according to Bloomberg, when you go up and open up Bloomberg, you see a Bitcoin price of $0.112 million, not $112,000 or whatever. You see it denominated in millions of dollars, which means if you implied it's going to be worth millions of dollars, like it wouldn't be worth a million dollars if people don't assume it's going to hit one point something or two point something. The fact that we are denominated publicly on mainstream society, that we are denominating Bitcoin in millions of dollars, I think is a huge historical land, like cultural milestone.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:43] I choose to believe that. And also you need to make room on the graphs, right? So every 10x, you got to move the point somewhere, right? So pretty soon we're going to denominate in like, what, tens of millions of dollars? Yeah. Is that what's next for Bitcoin?
David Hoffman:
[8:59] Well, I mean, I think Bitcoin needs to get to a million dollars and then we can start talking about that.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:04] Yeah, this cycle? You think that's happening in this cycle?
David Hoffman:
[9:06] What I just said, yeah. Sometime in 2027, one to two million dollar Bitcoin.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:10] That's what the Nipples tell you or the rainbow?
David Hoffman:
[9:12] That's what the rainbow tells me. Yeah, okay. But the Nipples are also pointing in that direction.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:19] We've got enough here. Let's get to the ETH price on the week. This is, tell us about ETH price. I am very excited about this number, but why don't I let you say it?
David Hoffman:
[9:29] The number, the number for ETH, $3,420 up 23% not just double digits but double digits with a two handle on it. Mostly driven by massive ETH treasury accumulation, I woke up every single day to three different ETH treasury companies announcing their purchasing of somewhere between 10 and 300 million dollars of ETH. And I got confused as like, okay, was this yesterday's announcement or is this tomorrow's announcement? Which announcement is this? Is this a repeat from the last one? Which BTCS, like MNBT, like treasury company is doing this? I don't know. They're all just buying. Each one is buying like somewhere between I think 20 was the smallest number that I heard, like $20 million. And then the largest I heard is like $300 million. But it just happened. It was just a big week. And then on top of that, we're going to talk about this, ETH ETF inflows had its largest number ever. So BlackRock ETH ETF took in $500 million of ETH for a total combined 700 something, something, $700 million of inflows.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:38] 726 million yesterday. That's all time. That's the biggest inflows ever for ETH or the asset. far by it was
David Hoffman:
[10:47] A big week for ease.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:48] Really big week also kind of close to flipping uh bitcoin on that on the daily remember that's the kind of in
David Hoffman:
[10:54] Terms of daily which is already massive because bitcoin is still four times larger than eth right.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:58] Now it is massive we've got some other measures of that maybe we'll just talk about that for a second so this is nate gerasi saying we have record daily inflows for spot eth etfs nearly 720 million obliviates the previous mark of 430 million Obliviates. Just obliviates?
David Hoffman:
[11:14] Oh, obliterates.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:16] I'm using Harry Potter language. That's how bullish I am, okay? If you want to get into Anthony Sassano level bullishness, though.
David Hoffman:
[11:26] Oh, yeah. You can look. I don't know. You can't go any higher than that.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:29] You start to become. Yeah, that's max. That's like, you know, your power maxed at Anthony Sassano, you know, bullishness.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:34] So he likes to do this and he's been doing this on the daily basis. He likes to take the net inflows, and then he likes to look at the net ETH issuance. So we got net ETH inflows of about $720 million. And do you know how much ETH supply was minted that same day, David?
David Hoffman:
[11:52] Not that much. Less than that.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:53] 6.7 million. Okay. So I'm not going to use the words ultrasound money here because that's not what we're talking about. But we are talking about like a lack of supply in this market because this is the demand. The inflow demand was 110x the amount of supply issued. Okay. So much so that there are reports of OTC desks running out of ETH.
David Hoffman:
[12:21] Wintermute just said that. Wintermute said, yeah, we don't have any ETH on our desks. Everyone bought it. Can I be nitpicky about Sazzle's tweet?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:29] No. This is bull mode. We'll allow it. Okay. You get one bearish thing.
David Hoffman:
[12:35] What he's doing is he's kind of using the whole... This happened with the early days of the Bitcoin treasuries too. But the difference here is... Well, actually, wait a second. And this is a bullish interpretation of Anthony's tweet. Bitcoin miners have to sell their ETH. And so when we look at the net.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:51] Bitcoin miners have to sell their ETH? You lost me on that.
David Hoffman:
[12:53] When Bitcoin miners. Yeah. Excuse me. Sorry. When Bitcoin miners mine Bitcoin. Yes. They have to sell the Bitcoin to pay for the expenses because it's very competitive, very low margins. Yep. And so when the sailor was accumulating like three times more than the Bitcoin mining sell pressure, there was bullish Bitcoin because like, oh, well, like all the supply is being. soaked up by the by like Michael Saylor and Bitcoin treasuries.
David Hoffman:
[13:17] Anthony is doing that same thing of alluding to that same effect. And it's just even more like there's an even larger discrepancy here between the 720 million dollars that was purchased versus the 6.7 million dollars of ETH that was minted. But the thing is, are you staking ETH, Ryan?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:31] I'm staking ETH.
David Hoffman:
[13:32] Did you? Well, do you do you sell the ETH rewards that you accrue?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:37] It depends. I mean, mostly mostly not because I continue to be bullish at these prices.
David Hoffman:
[13:42] Yeah. And so you just you just stake that eth too right that's what most eth stakers do they stake their eth and sometimes less.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:49] Their tax bills
David Hoffman:
[13:50] But yes whatever yeah uh you you pay.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:55] For those in other
David Hoffman:
[13:55] Ways you you take when you stake eth stakers when they stake they take their eth rewards and they stake them again they keep on accumulating stake because they don't have very much costs so you don't have to sell right and so like the there's not even any sell pressure there it's actually just accumulation there's just accumulation going on yes.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:12] And the story behind the last bull mart again we talk about, put this in perspective, right? We're not even at all-time highs. We're not even at December all-time highs. December, sorry.
David Hoffman:
[14:22] We're still 40% off of all-time highs.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:25] Yeah. Okay. So like at some level, this is a pump for ants still. Okay.
David Hoffman:
[14:30] We still have a lot more to go.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:32] I mean, 2021 was crazy. Do you remember all of that? 2020, 2021, we were range bound from like 150 to 300 for a very long time. And then explosion upwards. And then it went to $4,100. People don't remember that era of what ETH can actually do. But at that time, what was really interesting is the ETH monetary schedule kind of sucked. Where issuance was like, what, like 5% or something? This was pre-merge?
David Hoffman:
[14:57] Yeah, it was like 3 ETH per block in a proof-of-work context. Yeah, it wasn't great.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:01] Yeah, it wasn't great. This time around, you have much less supply. Annual issuance is like 0.45%.
David Hoffman:
[15:07] We have not seen ETH in a bull market under the paradigm of both proof of stake and EIP 1559, which came in 2023 and 2024, 2022 and 2023, respectively. See? And so, yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:21] The other thing I saw this week, which was interesting, there were actually days where Bitcoin was down,
David Hoffman:
[15:26] But ETH was down. Down in dollars and ETH was up in dollars.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:28] On the 24 hour. And again, this is segments of time, but I just like, do you remember the last time we've seen this?
David Hoffman:
[15:34] That has not happened in a long time.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:36] Sometimes you've had days. Sometimes you've had days where ETH outperforms Bitcoin, right? Those have been rare, but I can't even remember a day this cycle where Bitcoin's actually gone down and ETH has gone up. So this is some more story of the winds changing here. We got more to talk about ETH in the treasury section.
David Hoffman:
[15:51] We're not done.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:53] We're not talking about ETH.
David Hoffman:
[15:54] But do you want to talk about macro really fast though?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to know what happened here?
David Hoffman:
[15:58] In macro world?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:59] Yeah, in macro world,
David Hoffman:
[16:00] In TradFi world. Can you start with, is it bullish or bearish?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:03] Oh, actually, before we get to that, can we just check in on coin total crypto market cap? Because I feel like we might be all time highs or
David Hoffman:
[16:11] We are tied for all time highs on the market that we are $3.9 trillion. We hit $3.9 trillion four months ago, five months ago. Wow. So we are tied for a total crypto market cap. And that is inclusive of Bitcoin dominance being very high.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:28] Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Here's what's going on in macro. So we had some CPI numbers in the report. Inflation picked up a little bit, but it really wasn't that bad. It just ticked up a little bit, but it was pretty much as expected. And I think the big story here, oh, I should say the numbers, 12 a month was at 2.7%. This is still the highest since February, but pretty much in line with expectations. Do you know the story that was going on like three or four months ago about tariffs causing inflation? We just haven't really seen that. in the data yet. In fact, if you look at Polymarket, compared to that point in time, where you had US recession odds in 2025 at about 64% during tariff craziness, it's down to about 20%. Now, of course, we have less time in the year, so the prediction gets a little more crisp, but 20%. So recession fears have kind of evaporated from the market pretty much. And Trump, of course, used this as an opportunity to beat Powell over the head. He said, consumer price is low. Bring down the Fed rate now. He's talking to Powell, of course, about this. And I don't know if you saw this, David, but there was actually the New York Times reported that President Trump actually drafted a letter to fire Chair Powell. All right. So he had the letter all drafted. I got to wonder what that letter said. But he had the letter. This is what the New
David Hoffman:
[17:51] York Times- I'm sure it was extremely cordial and respectful.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:53] Reported. Okay. But then reporters asked Trump, do you have the letter? Have you drafted a letter? they say trump said i haven't drafted a letter reporter said i have concepts
David Hoffman:
[18:01] Of a letter.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:04] The reporter goes so you didn't show it to republican lawmakers last night this is what the new york times was reporting i talked about the concept of firing palace no what he said no he
David Hoffman:
[18:14] Actually said the word concept.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:15] Yeah this is a quote again verbatim
David Hoffman:
[18:18] The guy's a fucking meme lord.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:19] It's great it's great so uh trump on jerome powell he said he's a terrible fed chair i was surprised he was appointed apparently forgetting to remember that he was the guy that originally appointed Powell actually so it's all you know great stuff but
David Hoffman:
[18:35] What a circus it is.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:37] A circus I mean lots of clippable stuff you can talk about on the week but the bottom line for me is like what what's the probability that Jerome Powell is out as the Fed chair again this would be unprecedented never happened in U.S. history right Polymarket gives that an odds of about 20 21% chance happening this year okay so it's still pretty low
David Hoffman:
[18:55] Odds pretty low odds can i get my macro take yeah i don't want to rock the boat i think if you are just like, irrationally or uber bullish you want trump to fire fed the powell so that he can like lower down interest rates.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:10] Do you think you want that that's i don't know if you want i think
David Hoffman:
[19:13] That i think that's naive i think some like naive bulls are like yeah just cut the interest rates fire powell cut the interest rates let's fucking take this to the moon which will probably happen and then there will be a massive hangover all throughout 2022 and it's going to just delay further wealth like it's short-term wealth it's short i don't.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:27] Even know if it's like who knows how the market might react to that they might react in the opposite way they might be like okay the central bank impartiality is totally screwed the u.s
David Hoffman:
[19:36] Is i think that's a black swan i think we don't want to rock the boat we have a good thing going right now the spy the sp500 is up two and a half percent from its peak in january right before the tariff dip so if you just ignore the tariffs we are we're at all-time highs right now like things are good like let's just not keep it going i mean don't change anything i'm.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:57] Kind of inclined to agree with polymarket that I don't think it's going to happen. It's like 20%. But the odds that Trump continues to talk shit about Jerome Powell, what are the odds of that? Yeah. What are the odds of that?
David Hoffman:
[20:06] I don't want... Powell's doing fine.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:08] Give that 100% odds. Okay. Coming up next, David, we got to talk about this race to a billion dollars in ETH treasury. It seems like all of these treasuries are racing. And we may have a winner already on the week. Somebody first to a billion in ETH. Also, we've got more Bitcoin...
David Hoffman:
[20:23] Billion dollars of ETH.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:24] Billion dollars of ETH.
David Hoffman:
[20:25] I need to specify about that because we're going to talk about that later.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:28] More Bitcoin mining companies. They're pivoting to ETH treasuries. And also Peter Thiel is making a big bet.
David Hoffman:
[20:33] Peter Thiel has entered the chat.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:35] Yeah. And you got to tell me more about the Coinbase wallet turning into a super app, an everything app. They've got a big revamp. We'll have some videos and more. But before we do,
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:44] we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Okay. We got maybe the first to $1 billion worth of ETH in treasuries. It's been a race. And I got to say, the race may have concluded earlier than I thought. It's moving Moving faster. We've got number one. This is strategic ETH reserve, by the way. I'm going to filter by treasury companies here. We got a new number one, and it's just over $1 billion in ETH. worth of eth that's uh 300 000 this is bitmine immersion technologies okay this is tom lee's tom lee this is team
David Hoffman:
[21:15] Tom lee this is the horse that tom lee is the jockey.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:18] Of he's riding yeah he's riding this bit right
David Hoffman:
[21:20] And he's in the lead.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:20] Technology of course he's in the lead he just but he just like he just took the lead okay kind of last minute it looked like sharp link gaming was going to be first joe
David Hoffman:
[21:29] Lubin that's joe lubin's the jockey of sharp link gaming.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:31] Yep that's s bet But we'll talk maybe more about these tickers. Maybe people will remember. Maybe they'll forget like I do almost on a weekly basis. We get so many tickers going on. But Lubin with SBET, he got up to $960 million, at least publicly disclosed. He may have more that's not yet been publicly disclosed, but will be. So just short of a billion. So David, Tom Lee may have won the first round here to $1 billion worth of ETH.
David Hoffman:
[21:57] I think that's great for him. $1 billion of ETH. but he's at 300,000 Ether-ish and Joe Luzman's at 280,000 Ether. Like the better number is who's first to 1 million Ether.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:11] Oh, okay, okay.
David Hoffman:
[22:12] But I think that's a much better race because it's roughly three times more than what we need where we're at right now and it's ETH denominated. And so the ETH price doesn't like actually, because then we're measuring dollars of ETH price and then we just, why denominate in dollars? Like it's millions of ETH on the balance sheet is what we want.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:30] Okay, Tom's thinking the same thing, David. He's already ahead of that line of thought. This is a quote from Tom Lee. About Bitmine, we are well on our way to achieving our goal of acquiring and staking 5% of overall ETH supply. David, Tom Lee wants to buy 5% of total ETH supply. What are we talking about? What's the math on that? If you want to do ETH denominated, what's ETH denominated 5% of total supply?
David Hoffman:
[22:58] We are at 120 million. So times 0.05 is six. Six million ETH. Tom Lee wants six million ETH.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:09] He's got 300,000 now. He's got 300,000. He wants to get to six million.
David Hoffman:
[23:14] He's basically at zero. He basically doesn't have any ETH.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:17] That is probably one Michael Saylor worth of ETH supply if you do the comp to Bitcoin, right?
David Hoffman:
[23:24] What does Saylor have?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:26] Three, four percent? No, he has three percent.
David Hoffman:
[23:29] Maybe he has three percent. Maybe it's 2.5.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:33] He's trying to do a 2x Saylor.
David Hoffman:
[23:35] All right, I've got the number. It's 2.86% is Michael Saylor. This is MicroStrategy.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:42] Or Strategy, I should say.
David Hoffman:
[23:43] MicroStrategy. MicroStrategy. Michael Saylor. strategy owns 2.86 percent of the total bitcoin supply all right so my so tom lee wants six percent and joseph he said.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:54] Five percent five percent five percent yeah
David Hoffman:
[23:56] Yeah let's.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:57] Not get ahead of ourselves it's actually interesting sbet actually has more eth now publicly than the ethereum foundation okay so that was yeah
David Hoffman:
[24:08] So the ethereum foundation made a sale of eth this week to fund do their normal funding operations but they just sold it to microstrategy or excuse me to to sbet to joe lubin so it never actually hit the order books yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:21] Everyone was very
David Hoffman:
[24:22] Bullish about that it's like oh the ef's not gonna dump on us they can just buy it they're gonna get absorbed by sbet but like also at the same time it's it's just neutral because then the sbet dollars don't actually hit the order books this.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:34] News came in i don't know if this is recent but it just came in with the edgar filings i can't believe i'm talking about edgar filings okay this This is where
David Hoffman:
[24:41] SEC- One of us has to do it.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:44] Peter Thiel bought 9% of Tom Lee's ETH treasury company. That's the bit mine. Okay, so Peter Thiel is in on all of this too. He's providing some of the capital for, I guess, these ETH purchases. That seems kind of bullish to me of big money, institutional money coming into these ETH treasury products. The thing is too, there's more coming. Okay, so it's not just these companies. There's other horses that are going to enter this race. Pretty certain of that. Maybe let's look at the stock prices here. These are the ETH treasury companies that are all publicly traded in the US. So the first is SBET. So this is Sharplink. Look at this chart.
David Hoffman:
[25:17] It is an unreal chart. That is a chart that just is a parabola up starting at the very beginning of July.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:25] Okay, but before that, do you remember that? Do you remember this bump right here?
David Hoffman:
[25:28] That weird spike where it was announced and it had already pumped from like a dollar up to $50 and then it crashed back down and then everyone on Twitter was like grave dancing on it. That was such a weird, what happened there? What happened? It looked like such a low float like thing to do and then it seems like just a bunch more float has hit the market. The market's behaving much more orderly right now.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:48] It is. But this was literally, I think, crypto investors misinterpreting the Edgar filings, the SEC filings. They thought all the original holders of this were like exit selling. And they misinterpreted it. People were wrong. And it's since not fully recovered, but it's back to 34.
David Hoffman:
[26:03] Actually, I don't think there was much volume. Sorry, go back there and look at the volume under the very big spike that happened in June.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:11] Oh, yeah.
David Hoffman:
[26:11] Just no volume. Absolutely no volume. Good point. And so like people are like, oh, like Joseph Lubin and ETH people are dumping on you. It's like it hit $100 for a blip because like people were FOMO. We're trying to like snipe it. Now the volumes under it are like 10 times larger than when it was at like $100.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:30] Okay. This is BitMine. So this is the BMNR. This is the Tom Lee. I can't believe we're looking at stock so much on this. Okay.
David Hoffman:
[26:39] It's stonk season, man.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:40] Okay. So I don't know what this chart is showing you. Yeah.
David Hoffman:
[26:43] I don't really know. No, it looks like that one mountain in the Midwest I'd like to climb.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:47] This is BitDigital. Another mountain maybe you want to climb here because it's going up. It's a nice ascent here.
David Hoffman:
[26:53] I mean, SBET has all the price action. All of these are just not really doing what SBET is doing. Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:59] And then there's BT. This one's nice. BTCS. Yes. These are what I'm quoting are the top four. And if you're noticing all the Bs in these ticker symbols, it's because it used to be Bitcoin mining companies.
David Hoffman:
[27:11] Yeah, these are all Bitcoin miners. which is kind of interesting that Bitcoin miners were like, you know what? Mining sucks. We're going to accumulate ETH.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:20] Literally. I mean, this is the founder of BitDigital told us. We have an episode coming out with the founder of BitDigital. And he basically said it was a shit business. And so instead, they've diversified into staking ETH, which is also validating a chain. There's another company that just this morning, another Bitcoin company pivoting to ETH. This is BTC Digital. This is something we hadn't talked about yet. This is BTCT. You got another B acronym here.
David Hoffman:
[27:48] One the this i wonder how far this is the brand of this is indicative like does wall street see notice like all of these are bitcoin mining companies becoming eth treasury companies and do they take that into account as to like what's going on because like my narratives here as a crypto native who's familiar with these subjects it's like oh yes this is highly indicative of bitcoin long-term security problems and you're actually seeing bitcoin miners being like okay well we are not paid much by bitcoin we're not paid enough to keep on doing what we're doing yeah so let's do something else and all of a sudden when something good lands on their doorstep they immediately jump ship to that other good thing which is eath which has a sustainable i mean i don't know they don't really have to do that the capex expenditure of asic mining and like electricity and all that stuff they're just doing the eath.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:34] The capex is buying
David Hoffman:
[28:35] Eath that's happening but like yeah right but that doesn't deteriorate like the electricity and the actual hardware that they have to buy so it's a better business and to me to me that is indicative of the security budget stuff story that we've told for years.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:48] I think that's a longer term story. I think probably Wall Street is not looking at that right now. I think right now they're just looking at, oh my God, could this be the next Bitcoin? And they're very excited about that. And it looks like it's a treasury asset from early indications. One other thing that the strategic ETH reserve actually added was the price to the MNAV.
David Hoffman:
[29:07] Very T metric.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:09] Yeah, this is the premium above basically the the assets the eth assets under higher is better companies well higher is more of a premium higher is more expensive like i don't know necessarily if it's better it depends on like you know if you own it it's better if you're
David Hoffman:
[29:26] A buyer if you are yeah it's not great for the buyers if you already own it it's better because that means that's the premium that you're getting for eth holders you want to see higher higher means that there's more premium to squeeze to buy more eth so the premium eventually turns into buy pressure for yeah i.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:41] Think that's true also i think it's indicative of froth potentially in the future right there's a time where these premiums will go
David Hoffman:
[29:47] Down and there's a time when the under the premiums will be under one but when they're not yet.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:53] Anyway, so we got a range, you know, SBET is 2.63 MNAV, whereas Tom Lee is 2.19 MNAV. Anyway, investors can look at this and all the data is on the strategic ETH reserve. So, wow, that's the treasury story. It seemed to come out of nowhere. David, there's also another treasury on the scene this week. I don't know if you saw this. This is the hype token getting its own treasury. Sonnet Biotherapeutics.
David Hoffman:
[30:17] I believe this is its second treasury reserve company, Hype's second Federal Reserve Company which is pretty crazy this new company will hold 12.6 million Hype tokens at 570 billion dollars they also have 305 million dollars of cash which they're going to use to buy Hype.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:34] And then also the investors in this,
David Hoffman:
[30:36] You will hear and recognize their names. Paradigm, Galaxy Digital, Pantera, Republic Digital. Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang said, we've been investors in Hyperliquid since November, 2024. We keep hearing from our Tradify friends that they'd like easier access. So I'm pretty sure Paradigm just like had their hype bags and then they did the in-kind investment into this new vehicle and then they were.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:57] Able to get
David Hoffman:
[30:58] Shares back. And so now they have the shares and we're like, why do you want those? Well, because they traded a premium. Yeah, it's a free premium.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:03] That's the thing is, as excited as I am about all of these treasury entities, particularly for ETH and kind of the propagation of ETH as a reserve asset, treasury reserve asset first, right? You can also start to see the signs of how this gets too bubbly and too frothy and almost how it ends, right? So some of these are funded by, this goes for all treasuries, in-kind contributions, as you said. So somebody already has a bag, let's say, of Ether or Bitcoin or Hype, and they just contribute it to this entity before it goes public, essentially, and then they get an MNAV premium, okay? And then they can, quote unquote, exit to retail, all right? I'm not saying that's what's happening yet, but you start to, always in the beginnings of these big narrative, you know, like exciting bubble type things, you can sort of, if you squint hard enough, you can see how it's also going to end. So be excited now. And also at some point in time, probably it's going to get overheated and buyer beware. I don't think we're close to that yet, but you can see a little bit.
David Hoffman:
[32:02] I don't know if it's necessarily retail. It's squeezing the juice out of public markets, out of the TradFi markets, retail included, but also large investors, right? Whoever's buying in their brokerage, that's who is paying for the premium and the premium converts into buying the L1 asset.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:23] Let's talk about another exciting retail product that Coinbase just rolled out. This is the base app. So I believe this used to be, David, correct me if I'm wrong. This used to be the Coinbase wallet. And they've rebranded this. Previously Toshi.
David Hoffman:
[32:33] Toshi turned into Coinbase wallet. Yeah, it used to be called the Toshi wallet.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:36] That's a long time ago. I remember that.
David Hoffman:
[32:38] Which was Brian Armstrong's like cat or something or dog.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:40] Okay. So that was a long time ago. I don't think most people even remember. Congrats if you remember what Toshi was. But then at Coinbase wallet, now it's the base app, basically.
David Hoffman:
[32:49] The base app.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:50] But it's totally revamped. So they've added a bunch of things. What have they added here?
David Hoffman:
[32:55] It's just that Coinbase and Base and Jesse really leaning into on-chain social. So they're just continuing to double, triple down on the whole on-chain social thing. So it is a Farcaster client. So when you go on there, it's Farcaster. It's their own client. So they're a competitor to Warpcast. And so you can do tweets and all the things that Warpcast, Farcaster allows you to do. You can buy...
Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:17] They're using the Farcaster protocol, importantly. Exactly.
David Hoffman:
[33:19] Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And so you can tweet and you can share out tokens that you buy and do any of the other features that Farcaster has. Zora Markets, for example, there's like ENS. And then there's also payments. And then they're doing the whole mini app thing. So there is an open graph for mini apps as well. They brand it as an everything app. It's a super app is what Brian Armstrong called it. And so it does a bunch of different things. There's also an encrypted chat. And then you can just trade tokens and like I said, make payments. And so kind of encroaching on world apps territory because they're doing the mini apps too. Telegram, the Tom blockchain, also doing mini apps. So mini apps are a thing. And now the base app is also doing this. And then, yeah, like emphasis on, really leaning into the creator economy they had a gary v and people pleaser and one other creator that wasn't familiar who talked about how nfts and the creator economy just helped them with their careers so they were kind of doing like a narrative campaign for the creator economy and like branded it with the base app so yeah pretty pretty cool presentation well.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:19] All the posts can be minted right to your point about the creator so they've also integrated zora what i think is interesting here is it just feels like it's a coming together of a whole bunch of narratives from like circa 2015, 2016 for Ethereum. So you got money, okay? That's obviously stable coins. That's Ether, the asset. You have identity. So they've integrated E and S in this thing. So you have one single identity. You also have socials. This is the Farcaster platform. It's a little Web3E. And then you also have the ability to create mint posts. That's the creator economy stuff. You have markets. So you got Uniswap in here, very easy to trade things. You've got all of the DEXs in here. And they've got the communication protocol XMTP, which is decentralized permissionless communication. And they slapped it all together in a nice, polished, retail friendly, user friendly front end. So this is like, this almost feels like the contours of crypto's version of a super app of an everything app. I haven't used this yet. So I'm looking at videos at this point in time, but I could see some potential here. I could see it all coming together.
David Hoffman:
[35:21] Yeah yeah it is definitely a like a dream come true from very early narratives up to up to like 2021 2022 on-chain social like you said i i was listening to this presentation and i was like i don't think this app is for me like i'm still yet to become a post collector or things of that nature and this i feel like this is kind of like a shared sentiment like i want coinbase to do this and to win and to make this a reality and to take on-chain social mainstream and have like collecting content and the creator economy i want that to work it doesn't work for me and i don't think my last time you've.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:57] Been on a farcaster has it been uh well
David Hoffman:
[35:59] I was perusing through this the this app yesterday not on my phone but on a friend's phone who had the access to it it's like farcaster.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:06] Is kind of putting it together yeah farcaster and i enjoy it i also feel like it's somewhat overwhelming uh with all of kind of the mini app experience but it's evolving very fast I don't know. I mean, I think it might be for you, David. Maybe not yet, but.
David Hoffman:
[36:22] The creator economy and coining content. And I don't. You don't want to.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:27] Coin your post? Look at this post. This is a perfect kind of post to coin. This is Brian Armstrong and Jesse from BASE. Jesse Pollock from BASE doing a little fist bump handshake kind of exchange here.
David Hoffman:
[36:37] That was a nice moment.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:38] And I think they are going to coin that on the Coinbase base app. So there you go.
David Hoffman:
[36:43] I'm not totally. I'm supportive of Jesse and I want him to win. I have not been coining content pilled.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:50] You haven't coined any content yet? I have not.
David Hoffman:
[36:52] No, I have not.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:53] What do we got coming up, man?
David Hoffman:
[36:55] Coming up next, Crypto Week in DC, the genius bill. We're going to talk about that. We talked about it in the intro. And then also PumpFun just became the world's third largest ICO to ever come out of crypto. We're going to talk about all that details and more. But first, a message from some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:10] It was Crypto Week in DC. That's what Trump declared it. This is Bo Hine. And so he's an executive director in the President's Council of Advisors, basically for crypto. He said, huge week ahead. It's crypto week in the house. Genius heads to the president's desk. That's a genius bill. Clarity, another bill, moves to the Senate. Time to make America the crypto capital of the world. Donald Trump echoed those sentiments. You know what? We should start with the genius bill itself. Of course, you guys know we've talked about this for a long time. That is the landmark stablecoin bill that passed in the Senate with a decent majority. even got some Democrat support, and is now in the House. By the time that you are listening to this, I am predicting, I think you are probably predicting, David, that that will have passed. So assuming that's true, we have the first Stablecoin Act, the first
Ryan Sean Adams:
[38:00] Largest legislative action out of Congress for crypto ever. And this is a milestone moment. I do think Scott Besson is right. The passage of this bill, we're going to see trillions in stable coins on chain. Scott Besson echoed sentiments of $3 trillion by 2030. So that in of itself is significant. There was last minute some jockeying around. They tried to package all of these bills together. There were actually three bills. There was the Genius Bill. There There was the Clarity Act as well. That's, you know, defining what the difference between a commodity and a security with respect to crypto is. And then there was like an anti-Central Bank digital currency bill of some sort. And some people wanted to package all of these things together. And so, you know, it was difficult to get all of the Republicans on board last minute. So, you know, Trump tried to knock some heads together in his own party and get some of those that were not voting yes to actually vote yes. So that's probably happened right now, which means huge progress for crypto in the US. So while this was going on, there was also a campaign by some Democrats. This is Representative Maxine Waters. She actually announced an anti-crypto corruption week. And she said, I'm sounding the alarm in MSNBC. She wrote an op-ed about this. GOP crypto bills don't just fail to protect consumers. They greenlight Trump's billion-dollar crypto grift and invite the next financial crisis. I think I'm kind of with her on the first part. There's a little bit of a grift going on. I don't know about the second part, and I want to play this clip for you, David. This is Elizabeth Warren on the Genius Act and some of these bills.
David Hoffman:
[39:28] Guard rails to make sure that crypto is used to blow up our entire economy. So I'm very worried about that, but I want to add one more twist, and that is the clarity bill has all those problems, but it also has a provision in it that would let any company listed on the New York Stock Exchange opt out of SEC regulation by just digitizing themselves, put themselves on the blockchain. And all of a sudden, it turns out that Amazon or Meta or General Motors is no longer governed by the SEC. You just put yourself on the blockchain and then And all the rules just go away. That's how it works. You can just digitize yourself.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:17] Do you hear what she said? That could literally blow up the value of the New York Stock Exchange. All right.
David Hoffman:
[40:22] You know, that's why I'm in crypto, because I understand that if I'm on the blockchain, then no rules apply to me.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:31] That's what I'm here for. He's being sarcastic, okay? In case this gets clipped.
David Hoffman:
[40:37] You just digitize yourself. You put yourself on the blockchain and then you get to be God.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:41] I just, I'm just kind of annoyed at the doubling down of a clearly, on a clearly losing position. Talk about the anti-corruption. That's fine. But to talk about crypto as if it's going to blow up US capital markets, that is just crazy at this point.
David Hoffman:
[40:56] Yeah. I, before crypto, before Elizabeth Warren came after crypto, My family was very pro-Liz with Warren. And I'm like, oh, okay, sure. She's like anti-Big Banks. I'm like kind of into that. And then when she goes on crypto, I'm like, oh, wait, you're just lying about stuff. You're just lying through your teeth. None of that's true. And now I can't trust anything that you say ever. And now whenever my family is talking about Liz with Warren, I'm like, bro, she's a snake. Why are you guys supporting her?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:23] Yeah, it's pretty disappointing, I think, to some that are watching this. David, tell me about the pump ICO, because I don't think disappointing is the word we would use for that.
David Hoffman:
[41:33] Actually, certain people are disappointed about that. Oh, really? Yeah. I was taking attention to this.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:38] Yeah.
David Hoffman:
[41:38] This is why I'm learning this section.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:40] Okay.
David Hoffman:
[41:40] It started off pretty good. Yeah. And we are now down a decent bit. So we are coming in at a $2 billion market cap. Oh, wow.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:48] Wait, really?
David Hoffman:
[41:49] Is it down that much? Wait a second. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Market cap, $5.6 billion fully diluted. Okay. So they're doing fine. they're doing fine.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:56] Well why are people i the way i saw this was basically they had an ico on chain it was a successful ico was filled in like i don't know six minutes or something like this you tell me 12 minutes okay and a chain didn't go down some of this activity happened on exchanges some of this happened on solana there is like some sort of a rev share components not 100 percent but yeah so they
David Hoffman:
[42:16] Announced they started doing their initial buybacks and then the token pumped up to its like now current all-time highs which i mean the token's actually not volatile i remember talking about how it's going to be volatile. Sorry, I was actually wrong about that. The token price has become pretty, is very liquid and it's pretty stable in the grand scheme of things.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:33] Okay, so why are people mad? Who's mad?
David Hoffman:
[42:35] Well, because it went down. It went down 10% while ETH went up 20%. Okay. And so like it didn't track. I don't think you actually tracked beta. If you did the ICO, I think you're okay. But since launch, it hasn't done anything. So I think people's expectations are dashed. Just to put out some stats, this makes Pump the third largest ICO in history. Raised $600 million. EOS is number one. No one's ever going to beat that. $4.1 billion in 2017. That was also crime. telegram did 1.7 billion dollars in 2019 and now pump is now number three at 600 million dollars i mean there's a lot more stats here overall i think it's it's successful and the buyback is pretty cool and we could see more of that but i think people were were having higher expectations than what happened um i do have some breaking news ryan stuff that's not in the agenda so we're actually going to go back into ethereum conversation because black rocks i shares eth treasury just filed for ETH staking. Wow. So they have filed to have ETH staking in the ETH ETF. The ETH A, the BlackRock iShares for the ETH ETF, filed for staking. And BlackRock gets what it wants.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:46] That's not going to help the ETH pump ratio there, David. So, you know, I guess.
David Hoffman:
[43:51] The ETH pump ratio. Yes. Are you looking at the ETH pump ratio?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:56] No, dude. You made reference to it. I'm trying to riff off something you did. Also, Binance doing a, what is this?
David Hoffman:
[44:02] Yeah, Binance is doing a launch pad. Okay, actually, maybe perhaps one of the reasons why Pump hasn't had the seller performance is this other launch pad called Bonk continues to maintain volumes against Pump. And so it's taken a little bit of the wind out of the sails of Pump. And then also Binance has unveiled its own launchpad on BNB chain, 4.meme. Remember 4? Yeah. 4.meme is now the Pump fun of BNB. And so that's out there. And then Ryan, I'm going to read you a headline and you're going to guess what year it's from. Snoop Dogg sells $12 million of NFTs in 30 minutes. What year is this headline from? yeah i.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:43] Mean that i know it's now that just happened this week but if i were to hear that in isolation that would be so you know 2021 coded that's what was happening all of the
David Hoffman:
[44:53] Time so this was on the ton blockchain and this is part of a sticker pack so the stickers you can use in telegram can be like unique fungible assets a non-fungible assets uh the tokens in the collection included vintage cars swag bags a digital dog a marijuana related objects of course a mix of other items and symbols. So it's a Telegram gift that people can purchase. And because it was on TAN, it's integrated into Telegram. Yeah, $12 million in 30 minutes by selling stickers, NFT stickers on Telegram.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:23] I'm not feeling bullish on the JPEGs these days, David.
David Hoffman:
[45:27] You're not a buyer of a lit blunt, Ryan?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:31] It's been a hard four years on the lit blunts, JPEGs. Okay, I'm going to wait this one out. I'm going to let other people go first. David, this was actually big. Okay. This is Shane Copeland. Do you remember it was, what is it? Just like November? It was November of last year because it was just-
David Hoffman:
[45:46] Right before the election? Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:48] No, it was eight days after the election. Okay.
David Hoffman:
[45:51] After the election.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:51] So Shane Copeland from the founder of Polymarket. The FBI just showed up at his apartment. I believe he's in New York. Busted in. Without due process, without a warrant, busted in, arrested him, and took a whole bunch of his equipment.
David Hoffman:
[46:06] Including his phone. Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:08] Including his phone. This is the founder of Polymarket. Obviously, we talk about Polymarket all the time. Incredibly successful prediction market. This is a startup founder in the US. Okay, an update on that story. This is from Shane. Eight months ago on election night, we were on top of the world after Polymarket called the election. You remember that? Eight days later, the FBI broke down my door at 6 a.m. and took all of my computers and phones looking for anything that could imply foul play. While traumatic, it etched the story of Polly Market's accuracy and enduring resistance into the history of American politics. And today, here's the news part. I'm happy to announce that the chapter of the story is over. After cooperating and engaging, we've been cleared of any wrongdoing. Justice prevailed. Okay, so the FBI was like, oops, sorry. You didn't actually do anything. But what kind of evidence did they have busting into his house at 6 a.m. in the morning and confiscating all of his stuff. Is that not crazy to you? And let me ask you this. Do you think that the outcome of this investigation would have been different under a different president? I don't know.
David Hoffman:
[47:13] I don't know how to think about that. I don't want to think about that. It doesn't make me feel good to think about that. I do enjoy the juxtaposition of an application that speaks truth to power, gets harassed by the FBI, and then the FBI just has to let him go and be like, you did nothing wrong. But this technology that's anti-authoritarian gets authoritarian,
David Hoffman:
[47:35] like the eye of Sauron gets pointed straight at Shane Copland. And then because at least we're in a good country with a good court system, Shane gets through that process and it's just completely Scott Clear.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:46] Brian Armstrong says, this was one of the most egregious examples of lawfare from the last administration that should never have been possible in America. Imagine having your door broken down for predicting an election. The onus was on the government to prove there was something worth pursuing here and they failed to do that. This is how you lose trust in institutions.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:02] All right. So that's good news though. He was exonerated. Shane Copeland, we've got another trial that started this week. This is the trial of Roman Storm, the tornado cash trial. And as you'll recall, Roman Storm faces charges of a conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business at a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison. 45 years, David. The stakes are incredibly high. Roman Storm raised a whole bunch of funds from the crypto community. He still needs more, I believe, because this trial is going even longer than everyone suspected. There is a judge in the case, Catherine Polka-Filela. She is not exactly crypto favorable, okay? Not exactly, it seems like, favorable to Roman Storm's case. Of course, we don't know for sure, but this has been indicated from some of the pre-trial statements and some of the things she allowed in the trial and things she didn't. So the prosecution, this is the government in this case, is alleging and trying to prove that Roman Storm turned a blind eye or he enabled some of the criminal activity that happened on Tornado Cash. Whereas the defense is of course saying, no, this is a decentralized, open protocol. Roman Storm had no ability, no control over how third parties would actually use it. This is similar to, you know, HTTPS, the internet, cryptography. Criminals, good guys can use it. It's a tool. Bad guys can use it as well. And this case is ongoing.
David Hoffman:
[49:30] So like Brian said, this court case has just started. So we're going to be continuing to watch this and we'll provide updates probably towards the end of every weekly rollup moving forward just to keep an eye on this. I don't feel like anyone really knows what the outcome here is, which is kind of the scary thing. The fact that this is like close at all to Roman Storm losing is automatically scary. Definitely doesn't deserve to have anything happen to him. and so it's something that we're going to be keeping an eye on moving forward over the next four weeks i think is how long this case it's expected to take so we wish the best for roman storm and we'll provide more updates as they come.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:04] Guys we got to end with this of course you know even though it's been bullish on the week none of this has been financial advice 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
Music:
[50:22] Music