Ryan Sean Adams:
Bankless nation it is the fourth week of july the final week of july is time for the bankless weekly roll-ups david we got all-time high on the uh total
Ryan Sean Adams:
crypto market cap do you know that i just saw this while i was preparing the agenda yeah.
David Hoffman:
Yeah yeah 4.001 trillion dollars yeah
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah that's great yeah for four trillion dollars it's incredible also the genius
Ryan Sean Adams:
bill was signed last Friday. The question is, what's next? I think this is a big, big, big deal. And what do you do if you're the White House, if you're Donald Trump? Well, first, you got to throw a party with all the stablecoin bros. And he did that. We have some clips from those shenanigans. Also, the big question, what's going to happen next after the genius bill? What next issuers are we going to see?
David Hoffman:
Yeah. What does this actually do? What does this unlock? How are the TradFi
David Hoffman:
players going to make their moves after all this is unlocked. Speaking of making moves, Polymarket is making moves into the United States. They buy an onshore exchange that makes them US compliant. We're going to talk about that.
David Hoffman:
Shane Compline on CNBC talking all about it. And then the ETH, the big story of the week, if you're on CT, this was the news of the week, was the ETH ETF inflows god candles. The ETH treasury companies are soaking up ETH, but so are the ETFs. The ETH ETF, ETH A, the BlackRock ETF, is now the third fastest ever ETF to hit $1 billion. We're going to go look at a chart. And spoiler, it's just a vertical line. So we're going to talk about that.
David Hoffman:
More ETH treasury companies got announced this week. We're talking about that.
Ryan Sean Adams:
And lastly, an update. Roman Storm's lawyers are asking for a mistrial after, will you believe this? The government put up a witness who's stolen funds, probably didn't even use tornado cash, David. What are they doing over there?
David Hoffman:
Witnesses that didn't use tornado cash? What's the point? What's the point of that?
Ryan Sean Adams:
All of this would be almost like hilarious if a man's life wasn't at stake. So there's some big stakes here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
And the Roman Storm trial will update you on all of that and more. I got to let you know, though, David is, he would be even higher energy given ETH price point on the week, but my man's got a cold.
David Hoffman:
I'm a little sick. I'm a little sick.
Ryan Sean Adams:
So if you're saying that in the voice.
David Hoffman:
I'm here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
You're here and you're bullish.
David Hoffman:
Right? I'm still, I'm here and I'm bullish. That is correct.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Well, in your most bullish way, can you give us the Bitcoin price in the week?
David Hoffman:
Bitcoin price on the week up half a percent on the week. We are currently clocking in at $119,000 Bitcoin, $119,000 Bitcoin. No, no, no all time highs on the seven days, unfortunately.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Unfortunately. How about ETH on the week? No all-time high yet either, right?
David Hoffman:
We still got 40% until the ETH all-time high. But nonetheless, pretty happy week for ETH holders. 9.5%. We're going to round up to 10%. Yes. Round up to 10% on the week. So ETH up to $3,720 this week. Pretty good week.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That's been a really good run. David, I want to play this clip for you. I just enjoy Jim Cramer sometimes. Let me tell you what Jim Cramer says about Bitcoin.
David Hoffman:
Own something.
Ryan Sean Adams:
As a hedge against the 37, 8 trillion dollars. They want to own a debt. They want to own it for their kids. And you know who else feels that way? Me. I don't want that debt. My kids, I'm worried about my kids. Worry about your kids?
David Hoffman:
30-inch drill? Yeah, we all do. We all do.
Ryan Sean Adams:
So many different ways. Why don't you buy some Bitcoin? I just enjoy that exchange. He's just like, it's somewhat awkward. He just turns to the other anchors. He's like, you worried about your kids? You worried about your kids with all that debt?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Why don't you buy some Bitcoin? Why don't you buy some ETH?
David Hoffman:
I love how that's so simple. Do it for the kids. Do it for the kids. Buy Ether for the kids. Do it for your kids.
Ryan Sean Adams:
This is the hidden genius of Jim Cramer. We've been talking about ultrasound money. And this guy comes out and he's just like, Do it for the kids. Yeah, Shill and ETH for the kids. That's what we got to be doing. Do it for the kids. How about the ratio on the week? Are we greenish?
David Hoffman:
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, Bitcoin up half a percent on the week. ETH are up 9.5% on the week. So, you know, you add those, you do the math. I'm not a math genius, but I think that means that the ETH BTC ratio is up 9% on the week. That's kind of how that works.
Ryan Sean Adams:
All right. And you said it in the intro, but we are about above a bill uh four
Ryan Sean Adams:
trillion dollars right we got an actually slightly.
David Hoffman:
Below it right now but yeah right now we're at four trillion we're rounding up to four trillion
Ryan Sean Adams:
That's the highest that's the highest it's ever been four trillion dollars the.
David Hoffman:
Highest it's ever been it has been this week that's correct
Ryan Sean Adams:
And i guess our previous all-time high what was that when's that was that in december that was december 2024 that was the previous total crypto market cap all-time high and then before that the.
David Hoffman:
Launch of the trump meme coin
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah before that we had And 2021, $2.8 trillion was the top of the 2021 bull run. Where do you think we go on the top here?
David Hoffman:
Six.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Six?
David Hoffman:
That is so bearish. Six trillion.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That is bearish. That is David Cole bearish. I'm not going to accept that answer.
David Hoffman:
Six trillion, but I have a cold.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Do you want to ask me? Ask me.
David Hoffman:
I don't think I do. Let's move on.
Ryan Sean Adams:
10 trillion.
David Hoffman:
10 trillion this cycle. inside of like 18 months yeah
Ryan Sean Adams:
Or however long it takes i mean could maybe it's six months i was.
David Hoffman:
On uh i was on a um a trad fi content producer amit i was on a stream last night educating about eth because he because his audience was pretty large there were like almost 2 000 people watching the stream he was like i i they all my listeners are asking about eth and so i went on for an hour and talked about the youth and then of course they asked me they He asked me the price predictions.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Don't tell me you gave him something stupid like 7K.
David Hoffman:
I said 7K. Oh my God.
Ryan Sean Adams:
By the end of this year. I didn't say that.
David Hoffman:
Was a top. I said it was the end of year price prediction. I said 7K.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Bank of Station, help me out here. Let's get David a bit more bullish. He's forgotten what ETH can do in a bull run, in a secular bull run. And maybe it's the cold speaking, but I feel like you could pump those numbers up, buddy.
David Hoffman:
In addition to that, I also talked about the F word.
David Hoffman:
Not in the near term, but he asked, It's like, do you think Ether will ever F-word Bitcoin? And I didn't give a timeframe on that because I've been burned by that in the past. I don't want to give out that level of specificity. But I said, Ethereum is shooting for the number one spot and it's doing it with all of the research and all the innovation and all the investment that the Ethereum Foundation has put into Ethereum. So the purpose of Ethereum is to become the number one spot and it's got the chops to do it. And time is on Ethereum's side. Bitcoin actually does not have time because time actually decays Bitcoin. It actually like falls apart every time with quantum and the security budget. But Ethereum has time on its side. And so I gave my bullish, yes, eventually it takes the number one spot.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Well, further into this episode, I'm actually going to invoke the F word, but not quite yet. Okay. And we'll put that into context. First, you got to tell me about some of these coins pumping on the week.
David Hoffman:
Yeah, we got some movers of the week. Athena, the big mover of the week. This was definitely downstream of the Athena treasury company that went live. There's a little nuances on that one, because I don't know if it's specifically stacking ENA, the token.
Ryan Sean Adams:
They are a little bit, right? But for buybacks to kind of stabilize things, it's a thing, right?
David Hoffman:
It's a thing. So Athena pumped 28% on the week. Pengu, the meme coin of the Pussy Penguins ecosystem, pumped 25%. That price action is incredible. It's a very large green candle. And then Uniswap. Not often do you see Uniswap as a mover of the week, but up 13% on the week. Why? did
Ryan Sean Adams:
They add a fee.
David Hoffman:
Switch god I wish why isn't the Uniswap in the year of our lord 2025 why is the fee switch not on DAO
Ryan Sean Adams:
Help us out.
David Hoffman:
DAO just turn it on yeah
Ryan Sean Adams:
It's time I'm.
David Hoffman:
Still holding this god damn bad beauty
Ryan Sean Adams:
Well, some good news for your altcoin bags as well. Google searches for altcoins just hit a four-year high, according to Lark Davis. So you got that going for us in Google search. Does anyone use Google anymore, though? You know, I want to see some chat GPT numbers. That's what I want to see.
David Hoffman:
Yeah, when Google, the altcoin term is in Google at an all-time high, I'm like, that doesn't make me feel great.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, who searches for altcoins? I feel like crypto-native people do that.
David Hoffman:
Yeah, I don't know. I bet you if you typed in the XRP search term for Google, it would be also very high.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I don't want to do that, dude. I can't look at the XRP price on the week anymore. It hurts too bad.
David Hoffman:
It's just an XRP bull market and we're just living in it.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It's pretty much true. Some numbers I can look at on a weekly basis and I will look at this week are the ETH ETF flows. You mentioned a god candle in ETH ETF flows.
David Hoffman:
Not that they have candles. If they did, it would be god sized.
Ryan Sean Adams:
No, I got a candle here. I got a candle in the agenda. Yeah, we can see candles. Okay, so this is Matt Hogan and this is a stat for you. So between July 2024 and now, ETH inflows, ETF inflows were about $4.2 billion. An entire last year, $4.2 billion. Just in this month, July 2025, we exceeded that amount.
David Hoffman:
That's so stupid.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That's a god candle.
David Hoffman:
Oh my god.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Okay. Yeah. So let me show it to you. Well, this is kind of how it looks on the Eric Balchunas charts.
David Hoffman:
That's the vertical chart that I was talking about.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, this is ETH in green. What's interesting here is so Ibit in orange. All right, so this is Bitcoin. This is just the BlackRock ETH A numbers, which is like 80% of all inflows into Ethereum. It's got the dominant position in BlackRock as well. You can see what did Bitcoin ETFs do? They went vertical pretty much from day one. They were just shot right up. Like a SpaceX rocket, right? Not coming down. And what about Ethereum? Ether ETS were slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. It's been slow over the last year. It's kind of up and down, up and down. And then suddenly this month...
David Hoffman:
It goes from like 5 billion in ETH-A deposits to 10 billion in like four days.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It's doing what the Bitcoin chart is doing just with like a one-year delay.
David Hoffman:
At least so far.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I mean, that's pretty impressive, right? And we also got a, this is where I'm going to use that for it. We got a flippening, okay? In daily inflows. So for the last five days, Ethereum ETF daily inflows have exceeded Bitcoin daily inflows by like a whole lot every single day.
David Hoffman:
A whole lot.
Ryan Sean Adams:
So that happened as well.
David Hoffman:
Yeah. So the total ETF rankings, Bitcoin, $54 billion in Bitcoin ETFs. ETH coming in at $8.7 billion in ETF deposits. And since Solana is on there, technically it has an ETF. 105 million in Solana ETF deposits. That's the current ranking, the current horse race.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I mean, it does seem that if ETH just even catches up to its market cap size in proportion to Bitcoin, it's got some growing to do, right? That's what, at least like $15 billion or so, something like that. And then maybe it exceeds that. So we'll have to see. Some more institutional purchasing of Ether on the week was this, David. We've got another ETH treasury company that is-
David Hoffman:
This website is so aesthetic.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, it's called the Ethereum machine. No, sorry, the Ether machine, because it's all about ETH asset. And what's this? Who's behind it? How much are we talking?
David Hoffman:
Yeah, this is a good friend, Andrew Keyes. we had him on the podcast so long
David Hoffman:
ago, and we're going to record with him tomorrow on Friday. That episode will be out on Monday. That episode will add roughly $10 to $50 billion. Looking forward to that one. So it's all about Ether, the productive asset. This is also something, Ryan, since you called me an ETH bear a second ago, this is also something I talked about on the stream last night, again, with the kind of like Trad5 retail audience. Ether, the asset, has a particularly strong resonance with crypto acquisition companies in comparison to Bitcoin, simply because Bitcoin is inert. It's just an inert asset. And that's its narrative, 21 million hard cap units. That's how it works. But ETH is productive. And so when these ETH acquisition companies come online and they take on debt, they take on debt that have to pay off like 2% to 4% to 5% in order to take on that debt. That's their debt payments. Well, they can pay that off using the yield that they get from the Ether that they purchase. And so there is this automatic repayment mechanism that Ether, the asset specifically enables for his acquisition companies. And this is exactly the narrative that Andrew Keyes is leaning into with the Ether machine. He wants to make Ether...
David Hoffman:
The Ether that the Ether machine acquires as productive as possible in order to scale out how much access to debt, access to credit that he can finance. And he's leveraging that. And so literally the number one thing that they say on the website, we exist to make Ether productive. And the best part about this is that there's seven different ways to make Ether productive, right? And one of the biggest ones is that he's just going to take Ether and he's going to inject it into DeFi. He's going to go get yield on Aave. He's going to go stake it on Ethereum. Whatever ways in DeFi that Ether can become productive, he will use. And I think companies like this that are doing DeFi operations to get yield on their Ether, they're just going to inject a whole bunch of TVL onto Ethereum DeFi, which is just going to give the whole ecosystem a boost. So there's a really just sexy flywheel going on here between Ether, the asset being productive, putting it into DeFi, and then having that go onto Wall Street, having Andrew Keyes go onto Wall Street, and then pitch this operation that he's doing to the boomers so they can FOMO
David Hoffman:
in to our backs. It's going to be great.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, he was on Wall Street too. Do you see him on CNBC? They asked him, okay, after he gave kind of similar pitch that you just gave, basically, they said, so Andrew, do you own any Bitcoin? This was his response. So you're an Ethereum guy.
David Hoffman:
Do you own Bitcoin? I'm not. I do not own Bitcoin. None. I'd rather have an iPhone than a landline.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Ooh.
David Hoffman:
Wow. Did you see what Andrew said after that?
Ryan Sean Adams:
No, I heard him say he went, ooh.
David Hoffman:
So right after that,
Ryan Sean Adams:
He goes, burn, sick burn.
David Hoffman:
I think that's what the kids call a sick burn.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Oh, you said that?
David Hoffman:
Oh my God.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That's so funny. Okay. Yeah. So it's Andrew Keyes there just talking about, you know, the apps and the economy that you can build on top of this productive asset called ETH. So a few other stats. This was to be the largest ETH treasury to date. Was to be?
David Hoffman:
Was to be?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Well, I got an update for you. Okay. So it was to be 400,000 ETH. Okay. That would be top of the charts. Last I saw the ETH reserve, last we were looking at it last week, Lubin and Tom Lee, they were having around 300,000 ETH in terms of supply. This would be 400,000 from Andrew Keyes. So they're coming in.
David Hoffman:
Jumping in at the number one spot.
Ryan Sean Adams:
But you said what? That was the plan. That was the plan. Yeah. Everybody's got a plan until Tom Lee enters and buys some more ETH.
David Hoffman:
Okay well first of all i
Ryan Sean Adams:
Gotta i gotta tell you what the ticker is and it's a nice clean ticker it's eth m e th m all right so it's not a former bitcoin mining thing.
David Hoffman:
You know not a sports
Ryan Sean Adams:
Thing it's just straight eth m which i sort of like.
David Hoffman:
I think that matters actually no like versus sharp link gaming granted joseph lubin has done a great job because whenever i strategic bet on it yeah when i think s bet i think strategic bet on it yeah but then like tom lee's like bit mine I think the branding actually matters here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, a little bit. Maybe. I don't know. Who knows? You know what does matter, though, is when you buy in size. And that's what Tom Lee did. So breaking as of today, this is the time of recording, Bitmine Immersion, BMNR added another 266,000 ETH to its balance sheet, bringing its total. You ready for this? New number one slot, 566,000 ETH on the balance sheet.
David Hoffman:
That's number one?
Ryan Sean Adams:
That's number one by a healthy margin here. Okay, that's $2 billion. If I were to run some math for you, remember we got into a little bit of the math last week, right? Tom Lee said he wants to buy 5% of all ETH. We're about one month in to the Tom Lee purchase engine. He's 10% of the way there. He's got another 90% of the way to go if he's going to hit that 5%. Right now, Michael Saylor owns 2.9% of Bitcoin. So Tom Lee is planning to almost 2X, two sailors worth of ETH in proportion to Bitcoin, in proportion to the amount that MicroStrategy owns. So that's a lot. And he's not going to be able to always buy it at these prices, is he? I mean, if he.
David Hoffman:
Doesn't- You got to get it below the all-time high.
Ryan Sean Adams:
You got to do that. I mean, that's pretty, like you were talking about, last time you were talking, you were talking about, it's got to be the race to a billion ETH, or sorry, a million ETH.
David Hoffman:
Right?
Ryan Sean Adams:
We're 50% of the way there on that race too. We're just like a month or two in.
David Hoffman:
You know what? New race. 10 million Ether. New race, 10 million Ether.
David Hoffman:
Minus 5% of the way there. Keep going, Tom Lee. You're doing great.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I think they'll get diminishing returns. It gets harder and harder to buy with fiat as the price goes up, right? And you're heady 7K levels. Oh my God.
David Hoffman:
Wake me up at 10 million Ether. The Bitmine Immersion Technologies up 10%. That was announced today, right? The acquisition that you talked about?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, just this morning. On Thursday for our PayPal system.
David Hoffman:
On Thursday, which is today, yeah. 9.5% Bitmine technology. No, yes. That's what the stock price jumped today.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, and you know what? When Tom Lee is schmoozing with people like Kathy Lee, who's also purchasing Bitmine, and this guy, you recognize this guy?
David Hoffman:
Yeah, that's Jensen from NVIDIA. Dude, Tom Lee is such a funny-looking guy, man. that's
Ryan Sean Adams:
Part of the appeal man just the hair is working for him you know he's just.
David Hoffman:
Yeah something's doing it for me yeah you like this i'm into it all
Ryan Sean Adams:
Right you you ready to revise your uh price predictions now.
David Hoffman:
Okay so i am a holder of sbet ryan i don't know if you are i'm a holder of sbet and sbet is down 40 on the week after it peaked out at 40 and like i know that like joseph lubin is just dumping on me because he's going to issue shares to raise funds to go buy more ETH. And it's like a mixed feeling that I have of just like, okay, so I'm holding this stock and I'm adding to the premium and Joseph Lubin is going to sell this and he's able to sell it because people like me are buying, but he's dumping on me, but it's okay because he's going to go buy more ETH. And then when he announces it, it's going to go back up. It's just like a weird, weird game theory going on.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I got the perfect solution for you. You ready for this? Okay. make sure you just still own some ETH man and he's dumping on you in order to buy your other cannot fail actually comes comes the question these are some questions from the bankless nation that our discord our private discord for bankless citizens they've been asking about the treasury i want to raise some of these questions because you know like when somebody starts saying things like cannot fail that was you know satire by the way okay don't clip me clip clip lords like at some point this is going to go in a direction where it's over pumped and that that was the first question that came out of bankless discord is the hype around
Ryan Sean Adams:
eth treasury plays indicative of a bubble what do you think david a.
David Hoffman:
Bubble seems like such a binary thing so is it a bubble or not like it's bubblish it's definitely frothy it's definitely like we you know you know the euthanasia roller coaster like we have one good thing and then like crypto has a pattern of taking one thing to its logical conclusion, which is incredibly distorted. I definitely see that that's what's happening. Litecoin treasury acquisition companies, like, come on, like, let's come on here. Yeah, come on. Yeah. And so like, this is a message that I sent inside of the our bankless team discord, just kind of like about my thoughts on it, just to like kind of give everyone's a heads up of where I am with this meta, this bubbling meta. At the end of the day, yes, this is a true unlock. Treasury vehicles are a net new thing, both for TradFi and crypto. There's a real primitive here that is valuable that Michael Saylor has pioneered, and now we are trying to copy. And so I don't want to discount that. When we look at some of the deals of the ETH treasury companies or the Bitcoin treasury companies, they are pulling forward demand. And so we are borrowing from the future to have demand today. So it's kind of a shot in the arm. It's a little bit of a shot in the arm.
Ryan Sean Adams:
And in the process, reflexively creating net new demand that you wouldn't otherwise have.
David Hoffman:
Definitely that. And that is both, you know, there's a double-edged sword. So we're reflexively, you know, causing marketing to happen, you know, that price is the best marketing. So we're buying it, we're bringing in net new buyers via that shot in the arm. And, you know, maybe that shot in the arm is especially what Ether needed to like get it out of its like REV meta from the ETH concerners and into the ETH as a global reserve asset meta that the ETH treasury companies are like taking it so maybe we're elevating ether into a better market
Ryan Sean Adams:
To happen it needed to happen we're not even at all-time high yet right.
David Hoffman:
Yeah and so like that's kind of how i'm thinking about this it's a temporary it's a one-time shot in the arm that we don't know how like how large that shot in the arm is maybe it's very large like maybe maybe like this like race for crypto reserve assets is very large and maybe maybe it keeps on going this is something that here's my cautionary tale is that there is a there is opportunity for grift in these treasury companies doesn't matter if it's a Bitcoin treasury company,
David Hoffman:
an ETH treasury company, a Litecoin treasury company. But I think as you go down the market cap, the likelihood of it being pretty grifty goes up, or the surface area for grift goes up. And I'm going to hearken back to the days of the yield companies, Celsius, BlockFi, Gemini Earn, which no one really wants to be lumped in with Celsius, but Celsius was cheating. It was a Ponzi scheme that was cheating, and it was truly grifty. And Celsius was so bad that they pulled in their competitors to kind of get into the mud with them. And so BlockFi really, in order to be competitive, had to do some things it didn't really want to do. And that got Zach Prince in trouble with BlockFi. But like, were they really bad to begin with? Not really. And then there's Gemini Earn, who was involved with just in the yield arena, but they didn't lose any customer funds at the end of the day. And so these are the same three businesses.
David Hoffman:
One was a full out scam. One was above board, but kind of got sucked into the mud. And then one was totally fine, but it was just in the same environment. And it's really about the leadership, in my opinion. It's going to be the leadership of these respective ETH treasury companies or crypto treasury companies that determines whether this thing is the final outcome of each individual company. That's kind of my analysis on these things.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, my take is I see that analogy for sure in terms of things that go out of hand, have gotten out of hand. But just to be clear, this is nothing like Celsius. You know what I mean? There are assets there. What you really have to worry about is the MNAV premium on all of these treasuries. And there could come a time where that actually dips below one. And that would cause some unwind. And you don't know who's making bets and leverage and things in the background. We didn't know that Three Hours Capital was doing all this shit in the background on top of the GBTC NAV plays, right? And so you don't know until you get into bearish territory, and that can unwind in a hurry and cause some chaos.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I guess my take around bubble territory is I'm like yellow, all right? It's not green. It's not red yet. It's not red.
David Hoffman:
Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It's not even orange. It's yellow moving to orange. What I do think that could happen is an after boom into Ether, though. You were talking about the, sorry, into DeFi rather. You were talking about the productive capital uses. All right. This is QCarp, Nexus Mutual. ETH treasury companies reaching out as they plan to deploy into ETH staking DeFi and want to do it safely. Pretty bullish for DeFi generally. Yeah. I think that's something to get ahead of, but I think all of that will happen. Like we'll see DeFi do a run before this whole thing is over. So I still feel like we've, quote unquote, got some time, but you can see things are moving that direction a little bit more. How in the world did Bitmine and Tom Lee just stack another, what, 250,000 worth of ETH? Another billion dollars, a cool billion dollars, without moving the market. You said we're up 9% on the week. I mean, shouldn't we be up like 29% on the week with these kind of purchases? Which sort of makes you wonder what the source of this actually is. Is this OTC going in the background? This is some speculation here. Did Justin Sun sell his ETH stack to Bitmine OTC? Justin Sun did some unwinding this week. I don't think that's necessarily the case, but I guess- I.
David Hoffman:
Could totally believe it.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It is interesting, right? There's some stuff going on behind the scenes, OTC sales. There are some net sellers of ETH or else you wouldn't have Tom Lee being able to purchase a billion worth of ETH without this massively affecting prices. It's only affected prices a little bit. So that's also interesting as well.
David Hoffman:
Yeah. Well, eliminating sell pressure is the same thing as adding buy pressure. yep sbet absorbed however much the ethereum foundation just sold to them so yeah we didn't get sbet buying eth because they bought it from the ethereum foundation who would have otherwise sold it so in the grand scheme of things it actually nets out equivalently like justin son if justin son unwound his eth and gave it to tom lee justin son was eventually going to sell that eth for one reason or another and now he's not because now it's in a treasury treasury acquisition company that his goal is to hoard as much ETH as possible. So I feel better about Tom Lee having Justin Sun's ETH than Justin Sun having Justin Sun's ETH.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Hypothetically, all that's a rumor. I don't even, it's probably not the case, but substitute Justin Sun for some other OTC seller and you get kind of a similar outcome. But buyer beware on these treasury entities. Some more news that maybe the end is getting a little closer.
Ryan Sean Adams:
This is Solana Bull Joe McCann. You just launched a liquid fund. Oh, sorry. He just launched a Solana treasury. 1.5 billion is what he plans to raise. So notable hedge fund manager, Joe McCann.
David Hoffman:
Notable. Definitely notable this week.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Certainly notable.
David Hoffman:
Certainly notable. David, we got
Ryan Sean Adams:
A lot more to talk about, including the Trump party, the crypto party at the White House as genius became law. Trump also met with Palo, the founder of Tether. I think it's got to be the first time. That was a fun encounter. That's right. Also, Polymarket, now available in the US. We'll talk about how that is. And a little bit later, you're going to tell us how Ethereum is shipping bigger blocks without a hard fork. How do you make that happen? But before we get to all of that, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Last Friday, the Genius Bill was signed into law. This is, Bunch of guys, bunch of members of Congress, I should say, watching. And a few Bankless podcast guests. Yeah, I see.
David Hoffman:
A call member. Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Bill Haggerty.
David Hoffman:
Uh-huh. Oh, yeah, there's Bill. Good old Bill. There's something funny about just eight dudes surrounding Trump looking over his shoulders while he signs a bill. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That was it. So, Genius Bill signed into law, of course. So, last Thursday, the House approved Genius. It was a 308 to 122 vote. 308 said yes. Not even close, man. That is a, wow.
David Hoffman:
Blowout.
Ryan Sean Adams:
And after it was signed, they had a party at the White House. They called it a ceremony with a whole bunch of the stablecoin folks. Actually, maybe I'll play some clips. This is sort of a clip reaction with some of the names who attended there. My name is Michael Meebacher. I'm the CEO at MasterCard. And we just witnessed the signing of the genius bill. This is really the beginning of a financial revolution here in America. With the passing of this, we've got crypto stablecoins now that can be built right here in America to make every payment fast, cheap, and more global. Enables us to upgrade the financial system, make it fairer, more accessible. The president was able to achieve one of the most important changes in the legal framework in the United States to allow the creation and the safely usage of stable coins. This is going to mean fantastic benefits for individuals and businesses around them. Looking forward to the great results for crypto and for the U.S. This is a great day for crypto.
David Hoffman:
This is a great day for the US dollar,
Ryan Sean Adams:
And it's a great day for America.
David Hoffman:
This is foundational legislation, foundational regulation that is going to unlock
Ryan Sean Adams:
The power of the.
David Hoffman:
Internet in rebuilding the financial system. Not only that, but it positions the US as the global leader in this new digital assets industry, which I think is incredibly important. Wow, they just posted a Glaze video out of the White House main account.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, that was out of the White House Twitter account. Wow. Okay, that's pretty incredible. And Trump, I get the sense that this is the actual, the first time maybe Donald Trump met Paolo from Tether, but he called him out by name as part of the ceremony. Here he is. Paolo Ardino of Tether. Paolo, thank you, Paolo. How far has Tether come on his journey? Yeah, look at Donald Trump shaking hands with Polo here and you get the sense that, wow, you know, I wonder if Polo like just whispered to him, you know, do you know how many treasuries I own? Tether has more treasuries than the majority of G20 countries.
David Hoffman:
Do you think Polo is like, Trump, I'm your daddy?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Not quite at that level.
David Hoffman:
Not very many people have leverage over Trump because he's just like a big figure.
David Hoffman:
But Paulo, Paulo's got leverage.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It's kind of crazy that an individual of a corporate interest has that amount of treasuries.
David Hoffman:
Hi, I own $160 billion of treasuries. You better be nice.
Ryan Sean Adams:
This is Scott Besant talking about the Genius Bill. Of course, the Treasury Secretary. Blockchain technologies will power the next generation of payments in the US dollars coming on chain. Thanks to President Trump, Trump's leadership. We got the Genius Act. will help cement the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency for generations to come. That's really the message. There's a win-win for the U.S. year and also for crypto. We get the dollar as the reserve currency for generations to come. You know, my family members actually brought this up to me. They're like, oh, Genius Bill signed. Like, what do you think? You know, so I think this has gotten some mainstream attention. Not a lot. You don't get a lot of bills.
David Hoffman:
Okay, so you have three kids and a wife. Which family member?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Oh, no, no, extended family members. It was actually my father-in-law, and he mentioned it. He never talks to me about crypto. And he's like, oh, Genius Bill. They passed. Tell me about that.
David Hoffman:
Whoa, your family members are asking you about the Genius Bill, and are they asking you about like XRP or Cardano?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Oh, no, other family members are doing that. That's like, you know, the text messages you get like after 10 p.m.
David Hoffman:
All right.
Ryan Sean Adams:
But what I'm saying is it's pretty notable. It's national news. When Congress passes a bill with bipartisan support, that's national news. And they did it on crypto.
David Hoffman:
This is also worth talking about what Tether's plans are now that this bill has been signed. And so when we had Paulo on the podcast, we asked him a little bit about this. And he wasn't, I'm not going to call him cagey, but he's being patient with the Tether plans post the Genius Bill. I don't think he's in any rush. And the reason why he's not in any rush is because Tether has three years to comply with the Genius Bill. And there's two different ways to comply, as I understand it, Ryan. Maybe you can fact check me. But there's being a foreign issuer, which Tether is going to be. So they're going to comply as a foreign issuer.
Ryan Sean Adams:
With an existing USDT, right?
David Hoffman:
They might go down that path. Yes, the current USDT, as we all know it and use it, is going to register as a foreign issuer. And then Tether is going to spin up a US-centric coin, a new token that's going to comply with the onshore compliance. And why he's going to spin up a second coin rather than just make Tether onshore, I'm not sure if we totally know.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I think he wants to keep his options open, quite honestly. You have the domestic one. It might not make sense for USDT to fully register, actually, which would mean it would be effectively banned from US exchanges. But he might be fine with that. That actually might.
David Hoffman:
Be the net EV play. I mean, is PEDR on Coinbase anyways?
Ryan Sean Adams:
I mean, a little bit, right? But like not in size, not in size. And it's almost you kind of wonder if it's actually a bug for USDT to be like formerly registered, recognized by the United States. Maybe the holders of Tether don't fully want that. Maybe that's more of a bug than a feature for them. So maybe he's just playing his options here.
David Hoffman:
Yeah. But it does mean that in order to be a foreign issuer, he's going to have to move away from Bitcoin, gold and corporate bonds backing Tether. and this is the existing tether and so he has to he has to move all the reserves towards t-bills and cash like instruments
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah he might not want to do that either right but.
David Hoffman:
He's already he already bought the bitcoin at like 20 000 bitcoin like he's already bought gold at like 40 percent cheaper than current prices so he's already in a huge profit so i don't think he's too bummed about that you know
Ryan Sean Adams:
One one of the other things i like about this is you know people outside of crypto they they say things like oh crypto has no use cases i mean look at it it's just and they ignore completely store value bitcoin number go up because that's just ponzi tech so they ignore that and they're like it has no use cases stable coins are an incredible use case this is easily a 10 to 20x better system than like i was trying to do a wire last week from one bank to another one of my banks to another my god it took days at one point the wire yeah it took days i talked i don't know how many people i talked to on the phone to do this yeah it literally at one point the wire got lost some one of one of my it's absurd it got lost they had the notion of getting a.
David Hoffman:
Wire loss is insanity i
Ryan Sean Adams:
Really don't understand how wires work but i very clearly i know when i move usd usdc or stable coin from one address to another i could see the settlement on chain and it happens instantly 24 hours a day it's easy we don't need a whole back office multiple phone calls to all these people to actually move move funds around this is a 10x improvement already And that's just moving funds domestically. You're trying to get funds to somewhere else in the world. It's like impossible. Like- The banking system kind of sucks. I mean, this is the reason we started this podcast, but it's actually true. It does suck. And stable coins are a 10x improvement, at least on that. Whenever I hire a guide.
David Hoffman:
Guys are always, is a pain in the butt to send money to. A mountain guide. Because they are, mountain guide, yeah, to climb. So it's always in a foreign country. It's usually in Europe or Argentina or something. Sending them money is a huge pain in the ass. And I don't really want to be like the crypto guy before I meet them, but then I go hang out with them for like three days in a row. You have to talk to them about your life because you're spending three days with them. So he asked me what I do and I talk about crypto. And so I just teach about them crypto because they're stuck with me for three days. But then I always say, okay, I'm going to tip you with crypto. You always tip your guide. But I get them to download Coinbase or Kraken
Ryan Sean Adams:
Or whatever continent.
David Hoffman:
They're in. And then I get them to send me their Tether address. And then I send them Tether and they're like, whoa, that was instant. And I didn't even have to give you any information and all that stuff. This is great. Yeah. And I think I pill them every single time about at least accepting crypto as an option for payments.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Stablecoins are great for payments. They sure are. Polymarket, David, is now available, going to be soon available to US users for the very first time.
David Hoffman:
So I don't have to use a VPN.
Ryan Sean Adams:
This is Shane Copland basically saying, this pays the way for us to welcome American traders again. I've waited a long time to say this. Polymarket is coming home. David, how is he doing this? How is Polymarket coming home?
David Hoffman:
Yeah, so they just acquired an exchange. So they acquired QCEX, which had just received its CFTC license just weeks before the deal. And so this one, this other company gets the CFTC license and then Polymarket buys it.
David Hoffman:
And that was probably, the deal was probably in the works prior to that. And so they just, they basically bought the registration. And so now that they are using that exchange, they now have the compliance that they need to service U.S. customers. When this goes live, uncertain. I'm assuming it's not happening like immediately.
Ryan Sean Adams:
No, it's not. You got to join a wait list in order to do this. So there's a place you can join in the US on a wait list and they'll notify you when it's ready. But yeah, this is a CFTC approved. Actually, Shane went on CNBC and explained this to.
David Hoffman:
People on CNBC. We've just like dominated CNBC conversation over the last weeks.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Let's hear. You've been operating. We talk about Polymarket as if everybody can use it. But the truth is that most folks couldn't because you had to be out. You had to be in Europe for trading. I mean, I think the way you guys talk about Polymer, it's kind of like become the Bloomberg terminal for reality almost. And it's it's awesome. I'm humbled that every time I tune a Squawk box, you're like, well, Polymer. And, you know, I was watching Eric Adams episode. And the first thing he said is like, well, the Polymer for this. And I was just like, you know, I'm I'm from New York. I went to high school right here. And the mayor talking about our site is just incredible. But but yeah, I mean, look, there's a ton of latent demand for people who want to participate in the markets, not just look at it. So for us, you know, where we sit, it was like a must have. And so what happens now? So obviously, I think people are pretty surprised. It was like a big acquisition. And the simple the simple way to put it is it's it's kind of the perfect asset. So it's an exchange and a clearinghouse. And, you know, that lets us go and serve brokerages and FCMs as well as retail and institutions. which is really important. They all know and love Polymarket. When I get to meet these people, they say, oh my God, Polymarket's amazing, but I wish we could trade on Polymarket. And, you know, ask and you shall receive, right? So how much does this compete? It's pretty great. I mean, his whole story arc.
David Hoffman:
That's bullish.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, Shane's story arc. Like a year ago, he was being investigated by the FBI. I mean, they busted into his house. Now a year later, he's on CNBC announcing an acquisition coming home to the United States. I feel like this type of thing also, So if I were to put my money long term, maybe there's a Polymarket for this. Is Polymarket going to go public? Doing this kind of CNBC roadshow tour is part of the way you kind of build an audience for that. I don't know what's in Shane's mind. We haven't talked to him about this, but that could actually be a possibility for Polymarket to go public. I mean, this is an entrepreneur with some pretty big ambitions, I would say.
David Hoffman:
Yeah, I'm sure Shane has some PTSD from getting raided. And as a founder, I think being a public company on the public stock market is like raid insurance. The next dem administration that comes in, you can't raid the founder of a public company. That's ridiculous.
Ryan Sean Adams:
You're exactly right. Or somebody that's on CNBC, mainstream media all the time. In fact, actually, Andrew asked him that question about him getting raided. This is what he said. Did you freak out that morning? yeah yeah like that's yeah that's kind of a crazy yeah i mean you know i think uh you got to make lemonade out of lemons so that day was very crazy but it was also an inflection milestone you freak out that day yeah like.
David Hoffman:
He paused he's like yo it's okay to say that you freaked out
Ryan Sean Adams:
Bro it's traumatic i'm sure that was traumatic side note dave do you remember this he wasn't the only guy that got rated only the only crypto person that got rated actually jesse powell the founder of Kraken got FBI raided around
Ryan Sean Adams:
the same time, maybe a little earlier, actually. And he was also vindicated. So the FBI has dropped all charges against Jesse Powell. This is sort of a weird thing. It wasn't related to Jesse's activities at Kraken or Crypto. It was allegations centering around a nonprofit that he was part of. He was part of the board and there were allegations of hacking and cyber stalking that Jesse did. And so they raided his house, basically. And they took dozens of electronic devices. For me, this was actually in 2023, but similar timing-ish. They stole laptops, cell phones, all of these things. And now Jesse, all charges were dropped against Jesse as well.
David Hoffman:
I don't really care what excuse the FBI says that they have when they raided Jesse from Kraken and they raided Polymarket. These anti-democratic, I don't know if actually, no, excuse me, Shane was just neutral. Polymarket just reported on the truth, which I think was offensive to the Democrats. I don't believe what excuse. I don't care about the nonprofit that they said that they raided about. I'm calling shenanigans.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It felt like that. We don't know all the facts and circumstances. Certainly in Shane's case, it was that. In Jesse's case, it felt like that. Brian Armstrong even said about Jesse's case, we still need more progress, but obvious moves like this, which is vindicating Jesse, are a good start cleaning up past lawfare. Man, if that's what that was, lawfare against crypto, which it seems like it was, I'm very glad to call that era over. Although we're not done yet.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Coming up next, we got to talk about the prosecution of Roman Storm. And the DOJ brought a witness to the stand who apparently had nothing to do with Tornado Cash at all. We'll talk about that. Also, Ethereum Blocks getting bigger and Zora getting a little pump on the week. David, you want to compare Zora and Pump, don't you? The actual pump. Maybe there's some competition brewing. We'll get to all that and more. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors. that made this episode possible.
David Hoffman:
The Ethereum mainnet just processed its largest block ever, 45 million gas units. That's up from where it was just 12 months ago at 30 million. So Ethereum blocks are 50% larger than where they were just like six to nine months ago.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That happened.
David Hoffman:
I'm so glad you asked. Ethereum block sizes can actually get voted up or down by Ethereum validators. So this is an in-protocol feature that Ethereum can scale or contract its chain based on a voting of Ethereum validators. And so more Ethereum validators have been voting, saying, hey, we're ready for more capacity. Let's give us some more capacity. And when sufficient critical mass of validators signal for higher gas sizes,
Ryan Sean Adams:
Then Ethereum, the protocol.
David Hoffman:
Increases the gas size. And so it trends upwards. It doesn't like violently move in any direction. It just kind of slowly trends. But we just had our first 45 million gas block on the Ethereum layer one. And people are targeting for more. They're asking for 60 million in the near to medium term. I bet we hit 60 million by the end of the year.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That's like what, a 25% jump in terms of when you're saying block sizes, you're basically talking about transactions per second right the.
David Hoffman:
Amount of total throughput yeah
Ryan Sean Adams:
So a 25 percent jump.
David Hoffman:
Just uh 50 50 uh 30 30 to 45 percent is a 55 oh 30 okay okay very good i mean it was it was 36 initially but like it was it's been 30 million gas for a long time and then it jumped to 36 recently and then it continued going to 45 where we just it's not holding 45 but we are getting we're getting 45 million blocks at a time this
Ryan Sean Adams:
Is part of the the donkrod proposal basically to kind of 3x tps on ethereum layer one every year for the next five years right this is part of that process.
David Hoffman:
Yeah and it's worth noting that there has been a meaningful shift in priorities over for ethereum uh protocol upgrades this is pot is tweeting out he's a an ethereum developer he He says, two forks ago, we did not have cheap layer twos. Two forks from now, Ethereum will have perfect parallelization of execution. That's called a block access list, Ryan. Order of magnitude more gas limit. That's what we're talking about right now. Orders of magnitude more blobs. That's pure DAS. And then better censorship resistance. That's a fossil. There are some very big... things that are getting shipped to Ethereum that really round out the protocol in a very big way. And so we're getting parallelization. The Ethereum layer one is continuing to scale. And especially with parallelization, I think it's going to be able to fit quite a lot of activity, both meme coin traders and TradFi, treasury acquisition operations, all on a layer one. And that makes me pretty excited.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, for sure. I'm speaking of networks that are not sitting still solana is talking about a large tech upgrade that's incoming it's called the bam protocol and this is jito introduced this so jito you know to me jito if you if you're coming from the ethereum world it's a bit like lido and lido plus flashbots plus geth so it's almost like they do client work they do mev protection type work and they're also a staking protocol that's where most people know them, like Lido. And they are proposing something called BAM, which is a structure that really trying to fix or take a crack at fixing the MEV problem on Solana. And I very much like you, transactions per second, that's definitely, you need to increase that in order to scale block space, like decentralized transactions per second. It's very important. The other thing that's important actually is minimizing MEV on chain because that's a scale limiter as well institutions users they're not going to deploy on chain if they're getting basically raked over the coals.
David Hoffman:
Do things that are illegal in trad fi like most mev activities are like illegal to happen in trad fi
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah and it's legal or illegal it's just like it's bad practice you know i just spent you know you cost me a dollar in slippage for this you know ten dollar trade that sucks okay anyway some people are mert has said that this is the biggest change in solana history, private encrypted mempool, app-specific sequencing, and verifiable ordering so institutions can build without worrying about MEV. I didn't get into all of the details of this, but as I understand, this is very much inspired by a Flashbots type of design on Ethereum. And this is Gito kind of adopting some of these practices and trying to implement it into a future Solana hard fork. Is that right? That's right.
David Hoffman:
Yeah. Specifically the builder net from Flashbots, where they do a lot of expressive rules-based order sequencing, transaction sequencing inside of a TEE. And then you get all of these pretty good properties. BAM stands for Block Assembly Marketplace. It's basically like Flashbox,
David Hoffman:
Buildernet, like I said. Yeah, I was like this feature specifically is like one of the, in my opinion, going after Solana's weakest link is like the MEV and order transaction ordering supply chain. And so I think this is like a very important upgrade for Solana.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I agree. David, speaking of Solana, so I ran across this. There's actually a civil case that was recently filed against some of the people we were talking about, Gito, also Solana, the Solana Foundation, and also Pump. In fact, the whole thing centers around Pump. And this is, we've seen a lot of court cases before, including civil cases. This is the first time I've seen a civil case of this type, okay, which is they are charging, they are alleging that these entities, so Pump on the app Lair, Solana, and Gito together inspired to create an unlicensed on-chain casino. So they're invoking RICO laws. RICO, the R in RICO. Yeah, that stands for racketeering. Basically, racketeering laws. If you're not familiar with that term either, it means it's when you combine wire fraud and illegal gambling and unlicensed money transmission all together. That's called racketeering. It's like casino license type rules. Stuff the mob was doing before, that's racketeering. And they're alleging that these entities conspired to racketeer. They created conditions for an online casino, essentially, a meme coin casino that turned Solana into an unlicensed algorithmic slot machine for meme coins, costing the plaintiffs here billions of dollars.
Ryan Sean Adams:
And so the way they got to billions is all the fees from Pump plus, interestingly enough, The MEV fees in JITO, plus the price appreciation of sold the token, they got to like, you know, 3 billion or so.
David Hoffman:
They're lumping all these things together?
Ryan Sean Adams:
They're lumping it all together, which is interesting. They're saying all of these entities together are creating basically an on-chain casino. And they pulled up some quotes, you know? So of course you got the PumpFun founder, Here's a tweet. Greatest casino. It's all part of the experience. It's a privilege. The Pump.Fund CEO on August 8th, there is a tweet in the complaint here. We also have people like Mert that were quoted here. The Solana fee model is stochastic on purpose to naturally simulate a casino environment. So on the one hand, this looks like it could be a frivolous lawsuit, right? It's just like, here's some money. Here's MemeCoin Casino. We're going to go after the money and see if we can do it. And I think that's probably the base case of what this is. On the other hand, I get worried that this could set a precedent, not for a civil case, but for a DOJ type case, you know, a federal case at some point in time, if the climate in the US changes to something like it was back in 2023, 2024. So it's going to be an interesting case to watch for sure.
David Hoffman:
Yeah. Okay. When I hear class action lawsuits in crypto, my mind immediately goes to the Pull Together frivolous lawsuit where somebody just put money into Pull Together, lost it, and then sued them for being an unregistered lottery, which Pull Together is not a lottery.
Ryan Sean Adams:
That one turned out to be political, right?
David Hoffman:
Yeah, it turned out that person worked for Elizabeth Warren, and it was very frivolous and opportunistic lawyers. So when I see a class action lawsuit, especially in crypto, I'm like, okay, all right, who's trying again? Yeah, I've seen this before. Like class action lawsuits can become a big payday for lawyers. And then they're advocating, you know, they're representing millions of people who lost billions of dollars. And then when it's all said and done and say the lawyers win the lawsuit, the average individual gets like a $7 check and the lawyers walk away with like $100 million.
Ryan Sean Adams:
For sure.
David Hoffman:
I don't know. I don't know what's going on here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Could be that.
David Hoffman:
It could be that. And I think it should be considered that until proven otherwise.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Just worrisome. I mean, this kind of lawsuit could be brought against Ethereum, let's say, right? It could be brought against layer twos, you know, all sorts of things. If this goes forward, I think, I don't know, could pave the way for some other nasty stuff. David, Coinbase offering perp futures to US citizens for first, Your Bitcoin or your Ether, you can get them on perps in Coinbase. That's new. You ever trade any perps, David?
David Hoffman:
I am an expert perp trader. Are you? I perp trade. You call you Mr. Perp? Yeah, that's right. Everyone knows I'm the world's greatest perp trader. Everyone, they tune into the podcast, they hear about
Ryan Sean Adams:
The perp trades. We finally got them in the US because all of this has to be CFTC regulated and now it is on Coinbase.
David Hoffman:
Now we get to watch perp volumes on Coinbase compete with hyperliquid perp volumes. and then also when Robin Hood rolls it out Robin Hood 2, that's going to be interesting to watch
Ryan Sean Adams:
There was more news from Coinbase. PNC Bank and Coinbase announced a partnership. What's going on with this partnership?
David Hoffman:
Okay, so I recently did an episode, Coin vs. Hood. It was a very illuminating episode. And we, on the two guests, really drilled down the strategy that Coinbase is doing, where they are trying to basically be the crypto backend for TradFi institutions who don't want to do it themselves. And so PNC Bank looks like it's one of those. But you could imagine Fidelity or anyone who wants to allow their customers to trade crypto, They kind of just whitelist Coinbase and plug into Coinbase in the back end. Looks like that's what's happening here. And so Coinbase is being the crypto back end for PNC Bank. Is that what's going on?
Ryan Sean Adams:
That's what's going on. I feel like every bank is going to... First of all, post-Genius Act, they're like, okay, stablecoins, crypto is fine. It's fully regulated. Game on. So now they have to have a strategy. Are they going to build out all of the crypto functionality? Do they have the teams? These are banks, man. They do not have the teams in place to deploy the custodial technology, the exchange technology of the Coinbase. So what are they going to do? They're going to open it for their customers, but they're going to use entities, crypto-native entities like Coinbase on the back end. That's great. And the relationship works the other way too, which is Coinbase gets a good banking partner on their side too. So it gives them a bit more being debanked insurance, I suppose, you know, in the future.
David Hoffman:
I wonder how much PTSD from the last four years is indicative. Shane wants to take Polymarket public rather than issue a token because he wants to buy insurance. Brian Armstrong wants as many banking partners as possible because he doesn't want to be debanked. I wonder how much...
Ryan Sean Adams:
Never again, right? It's got to be a never again type attitude. David, we should update folks on the Roman Storm trial. So it is the second week, the first full week, and it's really been the prosecution so far. Were you following some of the highlights from this?
David Hoffman:
I was reading it loosely. I think you pay attention to it more than I was, though.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, I did. So the big news on the week, the big thing that kind of blew up, which was very interesting to me, is that we almost got a mistrial. This is at least what Roman Storm's defense attorneys were calling for. They were saying, all right, this has gone too far. We need a mistrial.
David Hoffman:
On what grounds?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah, on the grounds. So you remember last week, we talked a little bit about some of the witnesses that the prosecution will bring to the stand. Well, one was a very sad story of a Katie Lynn, it's an air quotes, it's pseudonymous, I imagine, who made five total deposits totaling roughly $250,000 to a sketchy platform called NTU Capital. This is called a pig butchering scheme. Okay, have you heard of that pig butchering scheme?
David Hoffman:
I'm assuming we're not literally talking about pig butchering?
Ryan Sean Adams:
No, we're not. Okay. It's a common scam scheme. It's called pig butchering. And the idea is you fatten up the pig and then you slaughter them. Okay. So, you know, the pig in this case is the victim. And it's a pretty, you know, traditional scam. And it usually begins in a telegram chat. In this case, it was a WhatsApp chat. Somebody pings you and they're like, hey, how are you? We just ran across one another. And suddenly, David, they've got this incredible investment opportunity. They kind of get to know you back and forth. They build trust that way. And eventually the victim sends them funds into this fake opportunity that seems real to them at the time. And then of course, they steal all of their money. And at the end, they usually try to manipulate them into investing more before that. And then they end up cutting the victim off and oftentimes just making fun of them after the fact, like, ah, stole all your money, see you later, right? It's kind of sad.
David Hoffman:
What does this have to do
Ryan Sean Adams:
With Tornado Cash? Exactly. Okay, so Caitlin- Let me guess.
David Hoffman:
Let me guess. The exploiter, the criminal, used Tornado Cash.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Okay, that's what they were claiming. So they had a sad story from Caitlin, a legitimately sad story. We've heard this so many times. This is not just crypto. This is just like everyday type scam. And what the prosecution was saying is, And then they use some of the funds, some of the proceeds that the hackers and the scammers through Tornado Cash. And when Katie Lynn emailed the generic Tornado Cash, you know, email bounce back generic thing, she didn't get a reply. All right. So that was the case. But what they were trying to do is they were trying to tug on the heartstrings of the jurors, right? Look at all the bad things happen. Roman Storm, he enabled all of this, all of these scams, all of these victims, all of these, you know, pig butchering schemes. It's all happening. Okay, but there's only one problem with that, David. They didn't even use Tornado Cash in this instance.
David Hoffman:
Wait, what? What? What did they use? What was the purpose then? If they didn't, what was the association?
Ryan Sean Adams:
The DOJ apparently thought that maybe Tornado Cash was being used. But when it turns out, we've got the best super sleuths in the business in crypto Twitter. Okay.
David Hoffman:
You've got Taylor Monaghan pulled up. Oh, that's cool.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Zach XBT, people like Taylor Monaghan. They went through and they traced it. Okay. And according to this very case, the $250,000, there's no evidence that any of those funds went to Tornado Cash. There's evidence that some of these funds went to exchanges. I won't name them, but there's a few exchanges on the list. They're not on the stand. None of it went to Tornado Cash.
David Hoffman:
So you're telling me the prosecution brought on this sob story.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yes.
David Hoffman:
Got the jury to sob as hard as they could. And then they were like, and here's Roman Storm. Yes.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yes. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So they basically were blaming Roman Storm for somebody getting scammed in crypto, right? And you're painting him as the perpetrator here.
David Hoffman:
Why didn't they go after the scammer?
Ryan Sean Adams:
Great question. Also, there's other parties involved. I mean, you could blame the internet. You could blame the Ethereum blockchain. You blame the internet. The internet made all this possible. Who can we get the CEO of the internet and hold them responsible for this? I mean, that's basically what's going on in this case. Now, the defense demanded a mistrial, basically. And then the prosecution, last minute, they parachuted in a witness, an expert witness, an IRS agent that said, no, no, no, actually, you know, I do see part of this 9.78 of this $250,000, went to tornado cash is what he tried to say. Yeah. And then under the cross-examination, the expert witness actually admitted that this doesn't prove the hacker actually did the tornado cash. And, you know, experts on crypto Twitter are like, they're doing it wrong. We can see it on chain. We're tracing it in the correct way. None of it went to tornado cash. Even the expert witness says he may have been wrong, but this prevented a mistrial. So that's.
David Hoffman:
Some of the
Ryan Sean Adams:
Shenanigans going on right now. I think Jake Chervinsky had a great take. An update from Roman Storm's trial, he said, DOJ had years to prepare for this. And so far, their case is basically crypto is bad. Their first witness had literally nothing to do with Roman Storm or Ternato Cash. DOJ is trying to imprison a DeFi developer, and this is the best they can do.
David Hoffman:
Well, I'm not in the jury. And so I have a lot more context and education about crypto than- They're
Ryan Sean Adams:
Seeing none of this, by the way, right?
David Hoffman:
Likely the jury does. Exactly. But I hope that the jury understands enough that they should be fucking annoyed that they are there. You wasted our time. Like, why are you wasting our time?
Ryan Sean Adams:
David, even the witness. Like, prove that.
David Hoffman:
He's guilty or get out of here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Even the witness, okay? She had to, like, relive all of her trauma, went through this, right? The DOJ told her. And Trenio Cash wasn't even part of that. Right. I mean, she's like, why is she there?
David Hoffman:
I'm not a lawyer. I'm not Roman Storm's defense counsel, but I'm kind of... They can ask for a mistrial, but if it's a mistrial, can't the prosecution just go back and try again? But if they lose the case, then they can't go back and try again. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm a fan of this teetering on the edge between being a mistrial and not a mistrial, because if it's so close to being a mistrial, then it's likely that he's going to be
Ryan Sean Adams:
Like, excused? Yeah, we'll see. I mean, it depends what the jury thinks about this. They still have some ammo on the prosecution side. They're trying to say that Roman had control over the front end. He should have taken it down. They're calling expert witnesses from the government who are saying, no, this is how a tornado cash should have worked to prevent any money laundering, that sort of thing. So we'll have to see. Meanwhile, Roman Storm is getting debanked all the time. Gusto just canceled his payroll stuff, right? That's happening in the background. But next up, next week, the defense presents the case. And then closing arguments could be mid next week. And a final verdict could be on the table on Friday. So big week next week.
David Hoffman:
Eight days from the time of recording.
Ryan Sean Adams:
Yeah. And I think we're going to be trying to talk to some of the reporters who've been covering this fantastically well at The Rage. Shout out The Rage. They've been covering the Trinidad Cash case very well. There's a link in the show notes. And we'll hopefully be talking to them next. So David, Zora versus Pump. What do you want to get into here?
David Hoffman:
There's a pretty strong juxtaposition going on right now between PumpFun and Zora. And PumpFun has had a ton of attention ever since the PumpToken launch. So maybe to recap some of the details, there was a very large ICO for the PumpToken at $4 billion valuation sold out within minutes. And then something like a $700 million raise, both from private VCs in the private sale and then also on the public sale to ended individuals. $700 million sold out very quickly. The pump launched at like $5 billion, so an immediate 25% return, got up to $6 billion. Things looking pretty good. And since then, there's just been a lack of communication out of the pump team. And also since then, there's a new token launcher, token launchpad called
David Hoffman:
Bonk bonk and bonk is taking 60 to 70 percent of token launchpad volumes and so pump is actually as of as of july the month of july pump is not the dominant launch token launchpad volume but based on volume on on salada uh pump the pump founder alan went on to the live stream with thread guy and it was very watched live stream i think there was something like 5 000 or 6 000 concurrent live viewers which kind of gives you an indication about how many people are watching this, people were asked, like waiting for clarity, like, okay, what happens next? Because there was a pump airdrop that was promised. We're looking for the pump live streaming feature. Overall, there's a lot of the community that were looking for indication as like, what happens next? A lot of people invested into pump at $4 billion.
David Hoffman:
And there was just a lot of missing communication, I think people felt from the pump team about what happens next. During the pump live stream, right as Alon said that there was going to be an airdrop, but not in the immediate future. There's going to be an airdrop, but not in the immediate future is when the pump token loses, goes from $4 billion in value to $3 billion in value. Oh, wow. And so there's some frustration on the pump side of things. And overall, I'll blame the very high expectations that a $4 billion valuation leads to. And so like at $4 billion, where people gave $700 million to their money to, that's the bar that's set. Now let's go over to the flip side of things. The Zora. Zora app mints are up only and there's no second best in the Ethereum landscape. I bet you it doesn't actually hold a candle to Solana launchpad. So Solana launchpad are just launching much more assets in general.
Ryan Sean Adams:
But you got me onto the Zora app once again for like the third time today. Yeah, you were saying last week, you were just saying, Zora's not for me. You're saying that.
David Hoffman:
If you download the Zora app, you can just imagine normies having a ton of fun. And it's exactly like Frentech. So when you go on to Zora, you can launch your token. And then I bought some Ryan. Ryan bought some of me. I'm at a humble $112,000 market cap. And then I launched a picture. So I posted a picture and it's got like a $1,000 market cap and there's like 36 buyers of it. I've earned $13 from it. It's just fun. Go ahead.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It's interesting that you're comparing them though because I see Zora as completely different versus Pump.
David Hoffman:
I see them as the same, dude. Why? Alon is all about creators. Tokenizing, creators using tokens and running with attention.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It's not like wrapped in a social network, right? It's just, or I guess maybe that's what they're doing. They're saying they're trying to disrupt Twitch.
David Hoffman:
That's right. And so they're going after streaming, but Zora is going after social media. But they're both trying to reward creators by having tokens and capturing attention. Now, the difference here is the Zora token market cap earlier this week. So Zora started the week coming in at a market cap of just about $38 million. Now, that's not fully diluted. fully diluted was maybe something about 400 million so 400 million dollars it has pumped in the last seven days 300 percent 300 so it's it went from a market cap of 34 million up to 175 million and i think it's just because the expectations are totally different like pump has a huge expectations at four billion dollars now is clocking in below three billion dollars and everyone's kind of written off zora all the trench people have like kind of written off zora but the Zora app is so polished and it's so good it does the same thing it does the same thing as pump it's it
Ryan Sean Adams:
I've never been a heavy pump user but I did engage in the friend tech experiment and it reminds me.
David Hoffman:
I doubt you I'm sorry have you ever bought a token on pump fun no I never did no you have not yeah not
Ryan Sean Adams:
At all not even been tempted I like I just I just don't really care but like I don't know it was kind of fun now I will tell you this I have no idea what to like post on Zora.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I just haven't figured that out. Like it's, I like, I know how to tweet on Twitter. I know what Instagram is like the post on Zora. There's almost like, for me, there's like the pressure of like, Oh, it's gotta be good. Cause people, people spend money on this thing. So what do you post?
David Hoffman:
I think it's iconic memes. I like truly iconic stuff, like viral moments. Like if we posted a clip saying Bankman Free getting rattled under the focus of Eric Voorhees, that would have gone super viral.
Ryan Sean Adams:
It has to be at the time probably, right?
David Hoffman:
It has to be at the time. You have to capture it as a guest. Yes. It's highly related to attention, in my opinion. And I think you're onto something where the content form factor that's resonant with Instagram or the content form factor that's resonant with TikTok or Twitter. Every medium is its own modality. Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
I think that's a correct segue.
David Hoffman:
And so like what goes viral on Pump or Zora is going to have its own kind of form factor. And like Zora native creators are going to figure that out. And they're going to be the leading creators on Zora.
Ryan Sean Adams:
We'll see what it does. Wait till they get to it. It's all crypto people there still, right? You need some big, big celebrity type creators to kind of like get this thing off the ground, but maybe that's coming next. We will end it there. Guys, of course, none of this has been financial advice. It never is. You know, crypto is risky. So are meme coins, pump tokens, Zora, treasuries, all the things you can put in.
David Hoffman:
I've lost $5,000 on Zora this week.
Ryan Sean Adams:
There it is in the disclaimers. 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.