ROLLUP: The GENIUS Act Passes | JP Morgan Stablecoin | Stablecoin Summer

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:03] Bankless nation is the third week of june it's time for the bankless weekly roll-up man exciting week this week we got the genius act it just passed in the senate and uh is the secretary of treasury bull posting on crypto david he called for a 3.7 trillion in stable coins by the year 2030 that's a that's a pretty decent bull

David Hoffman:
[0:20] Post did he call for a stable coin summer no.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:23] We gotta get him saying it that's next

David Hoffman:
[0:26] Jp morgan is also joining in on on stablecoin summer with her own stablecoin on the base network but it's a little bit different from the rest so we're going to talk about that and then coinbase releases not one not two not three four banger products that we're going to talk about as well we're going to rank order our favorites and overall there's just a lot of chaos in the world there's a conflict in the middle east and black BlackRock

David Hoffman:
[0:50] has a take saying smart money is buying chaos. We'll talk about exactly what that means.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:56] David, I'm glad I got you saying stablecoin summer now too. It was not in our notes. That just popped in your head. The virus has spread. Some people on Bankless Discord actually sent me, it was a Coinbase email. And you know what the title, you know what the subject of the email was? It was like their big newsletter they sent out to all their customers. You know what it was?

David Hoffman:
[1:11] Stablecoin summer?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:12] Stablecoin summer is here.

David Hoffman:
[1:15] I cannot believe how sticky that has gotten.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:18] It was always going to be sticky. And I think we got prices to back it. You're going to show some circle charts later in the episode, right?

David Hoffman:
[1:24] Yeah, we're going to show some stablecoin summer charts. That's right. All right, let's see that. First, we got a message for everyone going to DevConnect down in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is probably the greatest crypto city, I think, on the planet. I'm going to go ahead and say that. We are doing the second ever Bankless Summit at DevConnect. If you don't know what Bankless Summit is, it's like TED Talks for Ethereum. Doing it at DevConnect. We're doing it on Tuesday. Uma Roy is our brand new sparkly speaker. She's joining the bench of all the speakers that we got at DevConnect, including Justin Drake, Donkrad, Ansgar, Arjun, a returning speaker, and then Tamash from the Ethereum Foundation. So that's not until November. But let me tell you, you heard it here first. So if you're going to DevConnect, make sure you get your tickets. But it's going to be an all-day event. Again, no panels, no performative panels, just talks. And then we have a wine bar rented out. Did I tell you about that, Ryan? We're renting out a wine bar.

David Hoffman:
[2:13] We're actually renting out Fede's wine bar. I don't know if you know who Fede is. but uh of.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:17] Course yeah absolutely yeah he's got a wine

David Hoffman:
[2:20] Bar and we're renting it.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:21] Just special wine argentinian wine like yeah naturally

David Hoffman:
[2:24] Yeah malbex is probably what the word that you're looking for.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:27] Oh man this is this is worth going to just for that huh and the bar is really high on these bankless summits because the last one was like an absolute banger i mean i watched almost every presentation that came out of that remotely of course But it was just fantastic content. So hopefully the speakers are prepped for that level of content, huh?

David Hoffman:
[2:43] I have told them that it is their job to take command over their session. And they all understand the assignment. Anyway, secure your tickets before price goes up in the future. Speaking of prices going up. It didn't. They did not. They did not go up. They actually went down.

David Hoffman:
[3:00] Bitcoin price went down 3.4%. $104,000 is where we are. Each price went down even more. it is not what I'm going to call a Ryan Sean Adams week.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:11] No, I don't. I take no credit for this.

David Hoffman:
[3:13] Ryan takes no credit. It's down 9%, it's down 9% to $2,500.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:18] What the heck? You know, things were looking so rosy. And then you said it about the chaos in the world, Israel and Iran, and that started happening, escalating even more. And then we did a tank, it seemed like, on the back of that.

David Hoffman:
[3:29] We did a little tanky. Is that the reason?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:32] This started happening Thursday, Friday?

David Hoffman:
[3:34] I don't know. I mean, Bitcoin actually started to really appreciate after the conflict. And, you know, it got its regular jitters. We're going to talk about this because BlackRock put out a piece about this. It got its regular jitters whenever uncertainty happens. But then it started to perform really strong. But now we're just like ranging again. We are ranging. You know what has gone uppity uppity up? Let me tell you. Circle price. This chart is the chart of Save a Coin Summer. Last week, Ryan, we were talking about the circle price. Do you remember what it was roughly last week, roughly seven days ago?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:04] Yeah, I was thinking around $80, correct?

David Hoffman:
[4:07] Yeah, which was just fine. You know, it was down from the $110 peak that it had like two days prior, but $80 for Circle is incredible. Have you been watching the price section?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:18] No, I've been seeing tweets about it. I've not looked at charts, but I mean, even the 80, that was way, it was up double, you know, like more than almost triple, you're right from like, what was the IPO price? 30, something like this? 31, yeah. 31, 32. Okay. What are we doing now?

David Hoffman:
[4:31] We are clocking in at $199.84 and it all hit like an intraday high of like $230, which put Circle at something like a $55 billion market cap. The $199 price, that's a $48 billion market cap. But Circle is like almost a Coinbase. Coinbase is currently at $75 billion after having a 15% day the day before recording. So Circle or Coinbase also had a.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:56] Pretty good- 15%

David Hoffman:
[4:56] Up. 15% up. Yeah. 15% up. Yeah. But Circle is just, it is starting to be completely Delulu price action right now.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:04] This is crazy. It can't, this can't continue, right? I'm not going to short it, but it can't continue.

David Hoffman:
[5:10] I thought about like, man, I know it's dumb to short and I'm not a short seller and I should not do that. But man, I want to short it. And I was thinking those thoughts are like $110. Just admire.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:21] Just admire. That's all you have to do. You brought some other charts, though. What do we got here?

David Hoffman:
[5:25] Okay, this chart is the Solana-Ethereum ratio. Solana is flat versus Ether on the year. On the year. I mean, it's obviously done- On the whole year. On the whole year. So, I mean, it's June 19th. So, six months, 19 days. Solana versus Ether is flat. So, Solana has shown some weakness just over the

David Hoffman:
[5:43] last couple months or so. And over ether over the last like six six months has been flat obviously the six months before that were very bullish for solana but solana has not made any ground.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:53] Is this this is sole weakness or strength or does the answer that yes

David Hoffman:
[5:58] Yeah i think that's up for interpretation of the listener but there's definitely some sole weakness not which is not to say that it has been strong it did have that like 50 candle day but so far that's kind of proven to just be just a one-off and then it's really having.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:13] A hard time

David Hoffman:
[6:13] Yeah it did not turn that 50 candle day into momentum as of yet if you look at the next chart which is sole btc does this chart look familiar to you ryan at all when you look at the shape of this chart the sole solana bitcoin chart sole btc ratio it just looks like an.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:30] Asset that is just bleeding lately anyway bleeding out since 2024 looks like bleeding out the bitcoin right to king bitcoin just kneeling it's just like kneeling it's crouching down before the king and it's, you know, apologizing, kissing some feet maybe. So when you look at this chart, like, oh, and let's go up and up the next chart, which is the ETH-BTC ratio. No, this is painful.

David Hoffman:
[6:51] And let's flip back and forth between the Solana Bitcoin ratio and the Ethereum Bitcoin ratio. Do you just notice anything?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:58] Yeah, it's bleed season. They're just bleeding to Bitcoin.

David Hoffman:
[7:01] They look like the same chart. Just Solana is just one, one and a half years behind Ethereum.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:07] Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[7:08] Well, I mean, it's the same chart.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:09] There's a little bump. It's a little bump. there's a little green right here lately in the last you know two months or so so maybe not all hope is lost there's got to be some reversion to the mean here right overall

David Hoffman:
[7:22] Like the big common denominator i'm seeing is like bitcoin strength is just so high which i mean we the other chart that's missing here is bitcoin dominance which continues to be very very high.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:32] I mean all coin season is nigh though david it's got to be because it's around that time and bitcoin I

David Hoffman:
[7:38] Don't even know what all coin season means.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:40] Anymore. You'll remember once we get the first hints of green, the first green shoots from these charts, you'll remember. Sure, sure. I'm still a believer.

David Hoffman:
[7:50] All right, let's get into the rest of the market's news. Trump's Truth Social has filed for a dual Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF. This is in addition to their Bitcoin ETF. So now they have another one. The allocation will be 75% Bitcoin, 25% Ethereum, which will rebalance quarterly to maintain that ratio. Ticker B.T custodiancrypto.com they are again like I said they already had their Bitcoin S1 filed like one or two weeks ago so the SEC has a 45 day window to review this can stretch it up to 240 days if greenlit it could launch in later in 2025 do you feel like dual ETFs.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:25] Are weird like I can just buy if I want to I can buy 75% Bitcoin ETF and 25% ETH if I want to I don't need somebody to like dual it for me and just I don't know.

David Hoffman:
[8:36] Yeah, at that point, just like I'd prefer to have something like ARK, which is like an actively managed ETF by somebody who I trust.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:43] And speaking of ETFs, David, there's a lot more on the horizon. This might revive the altcoin season in UK.

David Hoffman:
[8:50] Except as an ETF season in Tridfly?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:53] Maybe. So this is, I believe this is a chart of the Bloomberg probability of approval for down market assets, non-Bitcoin, non-Eth assets, of when they're going to get their ETF. Okay. And the Bloomberg guys are pretty good at this. Odds of approval in 2025, again, not next month, but this year for Litecoin, above 90% for Solana, above 90% for XRP, 85% for Dogecoin, 80%. Cardano even, 75%. We're just getting ETFs for all the things.

David Hoffman:
[9:28] Wow. This is just extremely favorable. Everyone is most more likely to pass than not pass.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:33] Yeah. I mean, I guess this is not surprising given we have such a crypto favorable administration and SEC and we have kind of whatever the opposite of Gensler is. That's who Paul Atkins is as the chair. So we're getting approvals for all of these. And there's also talk that some of these ETFs will include staking. Maybe the Solana ETF will include staking, for instance, which also begs the question, how about ETH staking ETF? That's coming as well? What's that waiting on?

David Hoffman:
[10:00] If one gets the staking ETF, then the other will too.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:05] Okay. I think they'll probably come at the same time.

David Hoffman:
[10:07] Did you notice though.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:08] Look at the firms that have filed for the S1s for all these other ETFs. What's missing? Which firm is missing here?

David Hoffman:
[10:15] Okay. Grayscale, Bitwise, Hashtags, Franklin Templeton, CoinShares, VanEck, 21Shares. These are all, I'm reading off all the potential issuers.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:22] Yeah. Who are you missing?

David Hoffman:
[10:25] Who's the big multi-trillion dollar asset manager in the room that doesn't have a down market ETF that they want approved? Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:33] There's no... There's no say it.

David Hoffman:
[10:36] BlackRock. There's no BlackRock.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:38] Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[10:38] Yeah. Which like you would wonder BlackRock, they're not dummies. So why not issue anything below Bitcoin and Ethereum? As we know, both Bitcoin and Ethereum had massively successful ETFs, like incredible demand compared to any other type of ETF that came before it. And I mean, we've talked to BlackRock people before. They would say that they would issue an ETF if they had consumer demand for it, if their clients actually demanded for it. And so my indication, understanding those statements that they've said, that they don't think that there is demand down market beyond Ether, which is a hypothesis, is an idea that we will be able to test if all of these things are more likely than not to get approved by the end of 2025. We will be able to see exactly how much demand there is for a Dogecoin ETF or a Solana ETF. Yeah, I wonder.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:25] You really have to wonder how much demand there is going to be for Dogecoin ETF, right? The thing that was like, I just wanted Dogecoin in my 401k.

David Hoffman:
[11:33] I wasn't going to buy Dogecoin before now, but now that it's in my, now it's in Robinhood, I can get it.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:38] Yeah. So maybe BlackRock.

David Hoffman:
[11:39] Oh, it's already in Robinhood.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:40] Yeah, it is. Yeah. So like maybe BlackRock has kind of the right idea. Maybe the market's just too small or maybe like, and that's the thing that would push this over to a hundred percent. Cause if BlackRock was on the, one of these, you know, then probability is a hundred percent cause BlackRock always gets what they want. Right.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:54] Do you want to talk about the, uh, the Fed this week, what they're doing with interest rates, David?

David Hoffman:
[11:57] I would like for you to inform me about what happened. Yes, please.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:00] It's pretty simple. The answer is nothing. They're not doing anything. So they're keeping the rates the same target range, 4.25% to 4.5%. This was completely expected. This was in script and much to Trump's dismay. Did you see some of the clips coming out about Donald Trump? It's just like entertaining. Okay. It's just entertainment. I'm going to play you one. Here it is. Doing well. And as a country, if the Fed would have a lower rates, you know, would buy debt for a lot less it's a shame this guy i have a guy do you ever have a guy that's not a smart person and you're dealing with him and you have to deal he's not a smart guy he's worried about inflation i said that's right if there's inflation in six months or nine months you lower the rates so you raise the rates you can do whatever you want brian right so let's say there's rampant inflation which there's none you know what there is a success i got a call from congress last night sir there's a problem i said what is it money is pouring in we don't know how to account for it. I said, check the tariffs. $88 billion came in from tariffs. No inflation. And it's going to get even more so. I know what I'm doing. So we have a stupid person, frankly, at the Fed. He probably won't cut today. Europe had 10 cuts. And we had none. And I guess he's a political guy. I don't know. He's a political guy who's not a smart person, but he's crossing the country of fortune. So what I'm going to do is, you know, he gets out in about nine months. He has to he gets fortunate and terminated. That was donald trump speaking of a fed chair

David Hoffman:
[13:28] Jerome powell just being a total bully if you that clip goes on for three five minutes we only played a bit of it but the whole time he's just calling jerome powell a stupid man he's like oh man yeah i have to deal with a stupid man he just makes stupid decisions like if inflation goes up you just raise rates if it goes down your lower rates it's as simple as that it's.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:47] All ad lib it's like it this looks like a stand-up routine to me he's got you know the background he's like kind of i don't know they're construction workers are just like laughing, chuckling along with everything he says. Anyway, the Fed is supposed to be independent, making its own decisions.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:00] We'll see how long that lasts right now. They're holding the line here. Something else that's been happening in the chaos, of course, Israel, Iran, conflict. You'd expect investors to flee to the safe haven assets, right, David?

David Hoffman:
[14:12] Yeah. Conflict in the Middle East with one of the world's largest oil producers, where there's a fight tug of war over nuclear weapons. That's scary for markets. That's uncertainty for markets.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:23] And what is the safe haven asset of safe haven assets? What sets the risk-free rate for all capital?

David Hoffman:
[14:29] My favorite assets on the world, in the world, bonds.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:33] Bonds, that's right. Treasuries, okay? But a curious thing happened when this conflict was breaking out, all right, which is treasuries didn't look like safe haven assets at all. So their yields barely budged after the Israeli attacks on Iran, and that was pretty chaotic for markets.

David Hoffman:
[14:50] Instead, what happened... Yields have gone up. Yields have gone up since then. Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:56] Instead, what happened was gold and silver took a run And they started appreciating. So are investors fleeing to gold rather than treasuries? I mean, seems like it looks like it from the charts. And that was a pretty instant reaction here. Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[15:12] Downstream of that, gold has now eclipsed the euro in market cap. So, I mean, I'm kind of surprised that it hadn't already. But it turns out because of the appreciation of gold and also just net buying of gold by European countries, as well as China and Turkey and non-European countries pushing up the price of gold. Gold is now larger than the euro.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:32] Yeah. So gold on central bank balance sheets is about 20% of all central bank reserves. Right. And so I guess the dollar is still at 46%. So treasury says 46%, but euros is only 16%. You know, BlackRock is trying to do this thing. We had them on last summer and they keep saying that Bitcoin is not a risk on asset. It's a risk off asset. Okay. And they're continually trying to reinforce this. And they put together this chart, David. What do you see in this chart? This is a chart of major catalysts. It's a table, really, of major catalysts, kind of catastrophic events, things that are destabilizing. You've got in 2020, U.S.-Iran escalation. You've got COVID outbreak. You've got the election challenges of 2020. You've got the Russia invasion of Ukraine. And what they're charting here is 10-day return for S&P 500, for gold, and for Bitcoin. And you look at the 10-day return and you look at the 60-day return. You see all the green here, David? So Bitcoin is green. It's green on the 10-day for a number of these events, three out of the, I guess, six here. And on the 60-day return, it's green in all of the events,

David Hoffman:
[16:46] Basically. Almost all of them, yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:47] Yeah, so what they're making the case is, hey, 60 days from a destabilizing event, something like Israel and Iran conflict, what tends to happen is first Bitcoin, maybe it goes down, but six years later, it's back up.

David Hoffman:
[17:01] So they're saying.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:02] It's actually a risk-off asset. It's not a risk-on asset.

David Hoffman:
[17:06] Yeah, and they've been saying this for over a year now. No, and I think with the Israel-Iran conflict, you actually really just, it's one thing to make a prediction, you know, looking at data retroactively, but then something after that prediction

David Hoffman:
[17:17] happens that would test that hypothesis and Bitcoin performed right in line with that hypothesis. So it's growing in confidence that that's exactly what Bitcoin does. It gets the jitters just like all other assets, but then after that, it just comes out stronger.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:30] So what that means is if this follows the trend 60 days from now, we're going to be well into the green.

David Hoffman:
[17:34] Granted, if you zoom, the longer you zoom out, the more likely Bitcoin is going to be green. So at some point, it's also measuring that at the same time. All right. So in addition to Sablecoin Summer, it's also SPAC Summer. So Justin Sun's Tron Group is trying to go public in the United States with a special acquisition vehicle for TRX. The Wall Street Journal, or maybe it was in Financial Times, they reported it as Tron trying to go public. That's not what's happening. It's basically a micro strategy for TRX. And this happens just a number of months after U.S. Regulators paused a fraud probe into Justin Sun and his companies under his control, which is after Justin Sun makes a major investment into World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin and does a video blog of Justin Sun's attendance of the meme coin dinner. I don't know if you saw that blog. So there's a little bit of like what's going on over here, because not only that, but Justin Sun is going to be an advisor to Tron Inc., the company, of course, that makes sense. But so will Eric Trump. The Trump family will reportedly have a position on the board of this like special acquisition vehicle for Tron.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:39] The special acquisition vehicle is like a micro strategy for Tron, right? And so Justin Sun is depositing. It's like 1% of all TRX supply into the balance sheet to just start a treasury company. And then there's some there was some questions to how involved eric trump was i think it first came out that he was like actually active in the project like one of the you know leadership team and then eric trump said that he's not he denied he's having that like a role in the new firm he said i'm the biggest fan of tron and love justin's son he's a great friend and an icon in the space that said the below isn't accurate i don't have public involvement in this company There's been like three things

David Hoffman:
[19:17] That have come out of the Trump orbit where like the Trump sons are like, I do have involvement in this one. I don't have involvement with that one. And they just have to make clarifying statements all the time.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:29] It's every week. Honestly, it's been every week since I've gotten back here. This is a tweet commenting on this effect. Am I getting this right? Number one, Tron investigated by the SEC for market manipulation. Number two, Justin Sun becomes top holder of Trump and World Liberty Financial. Number three, investigation is dropped. Number four, Trump goes public via reverse merger with Eric Trump taking a role at the company. Crime season is here.

David Hoffman:
[19:53] Crime season.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:55] What do you think of this?

David Hoffman:
[19:57] Yeah. I mean, this is what it costs to get Trump into presidency. We have the Genius Act. We have Ross Ulbricht going free. There are some really nice things about the Trump presidency. And then we have this.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:10] This is Molly White, who's obviously a perma critic of everything going on in crypto. She's taking log of all of these things.

David Hoffman:
[20:16] So she had a... I thought this tweet was so weak. Tell me about it. I'm usually able to give Molly the benefit of the doubt on most things. I accept her points at times. She's a valuable critic. This one, I thought, was uncharacteristically weak of her. She tweeted out...

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:32] Well, let's describe what it is.

David Hoffman:
[20:33] ...quid pro quo between cryptocurrency firms, the Trump administration, and the Trump family's crypto ventures. And so she tweets out a picture of a chart and she lists the company, the benefits that they are getting because of Trump being in office, and then the contributions that they made. So like Cumberland, DRW, Ripple, Coinbase, A16Z, Gemini, Kraken, Circle, Robinhood, Consensus, Binance, Crypto.com are all listed. And they all, she like labeled out all the benefits that they get. Like Circle, the SEC approved the Circle IPO. The Circle is also getting favorable stablecoin regulation with the Genius Act. You know, Cumberland DRW SEC enforcement case was dismissed with prejudice. Ripple SEC enforcement case pending revolution. Right. And so all of the benefits that crypto companies have gotten now that Trump is in office. And then there is also Justin Sun SEC enforcement case stayed criminal investigation possibly paused.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:22] Like, I just thought, like, she's just using the Biden,

David Hoffman:
[21:25] The Biden choke point 2.0 oppression of the industry as this benchmark of what ought to have been. And then now that anything different has happened that's positive towards crypto, she is alluding to being a quid pro quo of the crypto industry to the Trump administration, which is just like totally unfair. It's like you're there. The benchmark that she's using is completely unconstitutional.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:46] Yeah, I mean, I guess some of this is would you say some of this is fair, but most of it's not part,

David Hoffman:
[21:50] Which is it's convenient that she listed him. and then all the other like Coinbase. Like how is Circle going public quid pro quo to the Trump administration?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:01] Yeah, and also you look at kind of the SEC enforcement against Coinbase and, you know, on down Kraken and Robinhood. I mean, that was unjustified in the first place, right? I mean, it's like that should never have happened. And the SEC and as well as the FDIC was completely weaponized against crypto. And so what choice did some of these crypto companies have? What I hate about this is you're forced to pick a camp, right? And it's like, that's why I feel like everything forces us into, you're either pro-crypto or you're against, you're like crypto. Either crypto is kind of bribing its way into relevance or it's, you know, surviving for its life against a brutal government, right?

David Hoffman:
[22:39] This is a problem with government. There's no nuance. If you don't pay the government like tax, then you get stamped out as an industry. Crypto is not the first or the second or the third industry to learn this. Every industry just learns that you have to bribe government to make your industry illegal. And so it's not fair for her to single out the crypto industry. This is just the way that things are. You know, Elizabeth Warren came in with a hammer against the big banks, and now the big banks are her biggest donors. I don't see the Molly White tweet about that relationship between big banks and Elizabeth Warren. Like, go tweet about that. You're just criticizing the notion of money in politics, which I'm also a critic of. But you don't get to say that this is a uniquely crypto thing that we are doing. We are just playing the game shoulder to shoulder with all other industries.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:24] Yeah, I will say the Justin Sun thing. That's pretty unique.

David Hoffman:
[23:26] Yeah, it's really unfortunate that Justin Sun is really fucking all this up for us.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:30] But what do you think of the overall soul of crypto right now? As you kind of like look back. So this is Zach XBT, right? And he is the sheriff of crypto. Good guy. White hat has helped so many in the space. He said he put out a tweet that this he basically said this. The crime super cycle is indeed very real. He's talking about crypto. While it's true, the industry has historically been ripe for abuse, it has noticeably increased since politicians launched meme coins and numerous court cases were dropped, further enabling behavior. He goes on, he talks about the laundering, money laundering that's going on with OTC brokers. He talks about KOLs facing zero repercussions, basically scamming their communities, courts siding with smart contract exploiters, basically like criminals. Can we fix the system that the vast majority of people still do not care unless they lose money? There's kind of a feeling of like some OGs in crypto that were that were losing that were losing something that this crime season is kind of rotting out the soul. What's your feeling of it?

David Hoffman:
[24:28] Yeah, it does kind of feel like the Overton window of on-chain crypto markets has drifted farther to crime than like any of the OGs really hope that it would. And then you have like serious companies, Robinhood, Coinbase, Circle going public on the public stock market. And like we're like, oh, we're left with like leftovers. And we don't really get any cool, valuable tokens. We only, all the tokens that are like interesting investments are all problem childs. We'll talk about that with the BlockWorks Transparency Report initiative that comes later in the show. Because there's the whole idea that like as crime permeates and becomes normalized, then the whole sector becomes uninvestable. And so tokens are like becoming uninvestable, which is problematic because we want tokens to become the new way to issue equity. But if if you're just issuing your equity shoulder to shoulder with crime, then like maybe it's better off to be in the public markets. Like, I think that's a pretty logical train of thought.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:21] I mean, have we swung too far on the other side of this? Right. It's like now everything's permitted. And so, you know, criminals are coming in. I mean, previously, a year or two ago, it was Operation Chokepoint. Nothing was permitted. They're trying to choke at the industry. But now this is Taylor Monaghan. She's saying crypto right now is in a rough spot. It's attracting and retaining more anti-social, selfish, corrupt people while excluding, demoralizing and wrecking those who are good faith. cooperative selfless is there an element of that yeah yeah i

David Hoffman:
[25:48] Think i think people have a hard time like parsing the good guys from the bad guys in crypto.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:52] My take is you know the biology corkscrew of progress right where sometimes you kind of go too far on one side and then you go too far on the other but but you're always corkscrewing up yeah into into some progress here i feel like that's what crypto kind of is we went operation choke point now we're probably going a little too far in the crime season we'll balance back out yeah hopefully

David Hoffman:
[26:10] Sooner rather than later all All right. Coming up next, we're going to talk about the genius stablecoin bill that the Senate just voted yes on. It is almost done, but we got some hurdles left over. We're going to talk about that. And then JP Morgan, whose CEO called Bitcoin a pet rock and said if he were the government, he would shut it down, is now launching a tokenized deposit token on base. Interesting. We're going to talk about all of that and more. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, like Uniswap. It's a mobile wallet. It's the best place to do DeFi. Let's go and hear from Uniswap right now. The Genius Act is passed in the Senate. The vote was 68 to 30, like overwhelming bipartisan support happened roughly six weeks after Senator Bill Haggerty, who we just had on the podcast, go listen to that episode, introduced the legislation in the first place. We also got some commentary. The Senate just passed an incredible bill that is going to make America the, all caps, undisputed leader in digital assets. Nobody will do it better. It is pure, all caps, genius. Digital assets are the future and our nation is going to own it. The House will hopefully move lightning fast, pass a clean genius act, get it to my desk ASAP, no delays, no add-ons. Trump wants that bill on his desk. He doesn't want the House to add anything because if the House adds anything, then it has to go back to the Senate. So Trump's saying, House, don't do anything other than vote yes so I can sign this bill into law, which, bullish, very bullish.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:32] Speaking of bullish, this is Secretary Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary of the U.S. He said, recent reporting projects that stablecoins could grow into a $3.7 trillion market by the end of this decade.

David Hoffman:
[27:43] Yeah, it's increasing its price targets. That's kind of some bull market top signal activity right there.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:49] It's fantastic, coming from a Treasury Secretary. He said, But a thriving stablecoin ecosystem will drive a demand from the private sector for treasuries, which back stablecoins. This demand could lower government borrowing costs and help rein in the national debt. He gets it. He's looking at stablecoin holders and he's saying, oh, these are customers. These are people who will buy my bonds when maybe countries won't. He's getting the full picture. This is everything we've been saying. And to have the treasury secretary behind it is something else. There's also an interview. I think this is really going to change the conversation. If there's anyone left in government who is saying, hey, crypto is bad for the U.S., maybe it's bad for the U.S. Dollar, this is the Treasury Secretary in response to a reporter who used that line.

David Hoffman:
[28:30] Because crypto, I mean, that seems to be a threat to the dollar, doesn't it? I think it's the opposite. Oh, really? I think stable coins could reinforce dollar supremacy because with stable coins, stable coins could end up being one of the largest buyers of U.S. treasuries or T-bills. So all of a sudden, if you are using a stable coin in Nigeria that's backed by the U.S. Dollar, you don't actually have to have dollars. It's on your phone. You can transact. So I think there's a very good chance that crypto is actually one of the things that locks in dollar supremacy.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:14] Isn't that crazy? He was so

David Hoffman:
[29:16] Ready for that question.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:17] Yeah. He was like, I'm

David Hoffman:
[29:18] So glad you.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:19] Asked. He's smiling the whole way through. What's interesting about this, you know, the big concern all the way back to the genesis of crypto is that it would be choked off by the world governments and particularly the U.S. Okay. So if Bitcoin crypto is starting to threaten the U.S. Dollar, what's the U.S. going to do? It's just going to choke it off. This to me is signal that we have completely neutralized that threat. And this is surprising to a lot of probably people who, you know, back in 2015, if you told them, look, the U.S. Is actually going to use crypto rails to export dollar supremacy, and they're going to love crypto. That would have been surprising to them. So I feel like we've completely, at least in this cycle, neutralized the attack from the U.S. Government on crypto. And that's a big win as well.

David Hoffman:
[30:04] Okay. Question. Hypothetical question. Democrats get elected next election cycle. Blue House, blue Congress, blue Senate, blue president. How far back does the pendulum swing or is crypto like well embedded and Democrats learn their lesson and they're like, you know what, we're just not touching it. We're just going to let it go.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:23] I think there's going to be a backlash. I think there is going to be a like a Thor hammer smacked on the head of a bad backlash. Yes. In certain sectors of crypto, but not all of it. In the next two to four years, it's going to become so embedded that you won't be able to kind of completely. You won't be able to strip it out. but there will be some sort of backlash, right? It's like, you know, in the genius bill, they called it, Democrats called it the Trump loophole. All of Congress was not able to issue a stablecoin or make profits based on the issuing of a stablecoin. No member of Congress could do that, but you know who could? The President of the United States. All right.

David Hoffman:
[30:58] Well, if that's where the backlash goes, that's totally fine. There's things that will circle going public and I hope many more crypto companies going public. Yeah, it's interesting. It's something that does cement stablecoin position. Yeah. And so at least with stable coins, I don't think there's going to be much

David Hoffman:
[31:12] blowback. I agree. Maybe other parts of the market. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:15] Maybe other parts of the market. There are still some threats here. Will this bill pass? That's the question. Polymarket's giving it an 82% chance right now, which is pretty good. I mean, there is some question though, what does this mean for some established stable coins? Obviously, this is very bullish for Circle. How about Tether though? Because Tether is kind of the stepchild of stable coins, right? It's like offshore. It's got this reputation of maybe like being used criminals and is a bit maybe nefarious. It's certainly not a domestic assets. So what happens to Tether in this bill?

David Hoffman:
[31:46] I would say just kind of reading his body language and some of his answers when we asked him about the Genius Act. Paulo is indifferent. I think Tether is...

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:54] That was your take?

David Hoffman:
[31:55] I think Tether is so large that Paulo is like, I don't care. I'm the 18th largest treasury owner. I am sitting shoulder to shoulder with countries.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:06] Like I already won?

David Hoffman:
[32:07] I was the fifth largest treasury purchaser in the last 12 months. I don't care. Like, the Genius Act is interesting to me. I'm going to issue my domestic United States flavor of Tether, just be in that market. But like, I'm so large that

David Hoffman:
[32:22] I'm bigger than the Genius Act. That was my takeaway from Apollo.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:25] He's just completely unaffected. I totally see that interpretation. I mean, like mechanically in the Genius Act, what it means is that if USDC does nothing right now, OK, within three years, it will be completely banned from the US. So no crypto exchange can list it. All right. No bank can kind of service it. It's out of here. It's out of here. Now, there is an opportunity for Tether to acquire an OCC license. And Paolo told us, yeah, we're planning to do that. And he also told us they're planning to do a domestic onshore U.S.-based stablecoin, too. So they still want to do both and pursue both at the same time. And it seems to me he thinks that the big use for stable coins is actually not in the U.S. Banking. It's not domestic at all. It's not in the U.S. banking system.

David Hoffman:
[33:14] It's foreign. It's foreign.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:14] Yeah, it's foreign. It's for everybody that doesn't currently have access to a U.S. bank, right? And so he thinks that Tether is best positioned to capitalize on that market, whether it gets through the OCC license under the Genius Act or not.

David Hoffman:
[33:30] It does kind of buy for cake Circle from Tether in the sense that Circle is for domestic payments and Tether is for foreign like crypto dollars, like a euro dollar. It is the new euro dollar market. And that's not necessarily for payments. It's for reserves. It's for like a savings vehicle. It's for bank deposits in foreign banks. It's for individual deposits in the Tether bank account on whatever blockchain they use. And so very different outcomes, I think, even though the end up product is kind of the same.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:00] It does strike me, though, that there are some losers on the back of this bill, again, assuming it gets approved. And that's got to be the visas and MasterCards. That's got to be the incumbent payment system that charges 3% on every single consumer transaction in the U.S. That's a tax. I don't know. Like, I live in Virginia. State tax is like 5%, okay? The MasterCard and visa tax is 3%. It's almost as high as my state consumption tax. Right. Which is absolutely crazy. And it feels like if stable coins really take off in the way that we think they can, that rent seeking is going to be eroded.

David Hoffman:
[34:39] Yeah, which is a fundamental promise that the crypto industry started writing in like 2010, 2011. So it's good to finally see that show up in reality. Visa, MasterCard stock prices reacting to this is finally indicative of this is actually here. And there's also other news in this roll up that we'll talk about with Shopify and USDC and BASE, which is, again, just, again, going right.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:04] After these payment networks. Just sidestepping the credit cards, right?

David Hoffman:
[35:07] BASE is the new Visa. Shopify is the new endpoint.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:09] You promised to tell us about the JPM coin. So what's this? A stable coin from JP Morgan?

David Hoffman:
[35:15] Yeah, not a stable coin, a tokenized bank deposit. What's the difference? I'm not too sure. But this one is also permissioned. It's like an intra-network for JP Morgan, and it's supposed to just be for JP Morgan and his permission clients. How a JPMD token is different from a stablecoin at the end of the day, I think we aren't totally sure. But first of its kind on a public blockchain, it'll be issued on base. And for, you know, 24-7, 365 settlements between JP Morgan accounts...

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:44] Like, why permissioned? Unsure. I guess they're just using base as, like, back-end bank account infrastructure for themselves,

David Hoffman:
[35:52] But using a public blockchain? It doesn't really impact me. I don't really know.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:57] What's your take? It's interesting, right? So there's this word that JP Morgan has filed a trademark for something called JPMD, which appears to be a stablecoin, right? So that happened. And then also Coinbase has announced that JP Morgan put the tokenized deposits, as you said, on-chain, on-base, using that as a settlement layer. And that's called JPMD. It's the same JPMD, right? Right. But this is as he's like, it's not like a stable coin because you can't move it from one address to another. It's just for institutions. And so it's on chain, but it's unclear like why it's on chain or what you can do with it. It's on chain. And I'm really not sure why JP Morgan is pursuing this rather than the Genius Bill Act stable coin strategy, which feels like, OK,

David Hoffman:
[36:44] Why does you just got the green light to do an actual stable coin? Just make an actual stable coin. You are a bank. Go do a stable coin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:51] Go do it. You can now do it, basically. So maybe this is a stepping stone to that. It probably is. That's probably the future. And it's pretty significant because the guy who said, like, if I was the U.S. government, I'd kill Bitcoin, I'd ban Bitcoin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:04] Now his bank is issuing a stablecoin on a public blockchain. So more from them, I'm sure.

David Hoffman:
[37:11] I'll read a quote from Alex Lauren's newsletter, which goes out today. It's very possible that this is innovation theater with an announcement timed to benefit from the glowing coverage of stable coins and not much more than that. Oof.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:22] Ah. Oof. Maybe so. Deadly.

David Hoffman:
[37:24] All right. Coming up next, we're going to talk about all the big Coinbase announcements that came out of their Coinbase State of Crypto event that they held last week. And then also Kraken launches a token for their Layer 2. And we're going to talk about all this and more. But first, a message from some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. The Inc. Foundation, which is the foundation that supports the Inc. Layer 2 blockchain, which is the blockchain supported by Kraken, the exchange, will launch its native token Inc. To bootstrap the marketplace through a liquidity first strategy. They tweeted out, most tokens launch with a vibe and a prayer. Inc. is launching with utility, a single token model designed for usage, not speculation, no fluff, no governance theater, just aligned incentives from day one. So what's the token going to do primarily for usage in DeFi? It sounds like it's going to be incentives for TVL and DeFi. They are getting a version of Aave. Aave is deploying onto the Inc. network. And so they are going to mint a fixed supply of 1 billion Inc. tokens. And there will be an airdrop to early users of the Inc. network. So if you've already been on Inc., congratulations, you're probably getting an airdrop. What was your big takeaway? What was your response? What was your thoughts about Inc.?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[38:30] It seems like it's a liquidity mining token, which we've seen before. And so it's unclear what the utility actually is. I mean, zooming out though, so... Coinbase has its Layer 2 base, which is actually massive. Almost $4 billion in total value locked at this point. So Kraken has been out for seven months now. And their TVL is only $7 million. So it's like a massive delta there. So it feels like Kraken is struggling maybe with adoption of ink. And I'm not sure that the ink token is going to spur that adoption very much. Do you think this is coming

David Hoffman:
[39:05] From a place of strength or a strength of weakness? It sounds like it's coming from a place of weakness.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:10] It's definitely coming from a place of weakness at this point. Maybe it'll help. I mean, token incentives have kind of helped the Unichain bootstrap some liquidity. You definitely need that. But this has to be part of a broader strategy that Kraken needs to deploy to increase the total value locked and the usage of its chain.

David Hoffman:
[39:28] Another announcement this week comes out of Eigenlayer. They launched Eigencloud. What is Eigencloud? It is basically Eigenlayers as a product, is the packaging up in this very accessible package to developers. And so it's kind of like AWS, but with all of Eigenlayers services built right into it. And so there's all these different AVSs that build little modules on Eigenlayer. There's a couple of these components. Everything in Eigencloud is just all of that wrapped up so that developers can go access what Eigenlayer sells, which is basically cryptoeconomic security, trust, you know, slashable trust. And so that got launched this week. That also came with an announcement of a $70 million token investment, token purchase from A16Z.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:08] I listened to your podcast with Sriram. The whole concept was like, it's a verifiable compute, right? It's like AWS for verifiable compute. I still found it hard to wrap my head around.

David Hoffman:
[40:19] It's hard to imagine.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:20] Yeah. It's hard to imagine. I understand why verifiable compute is important for blockchains because it's all about property rights and assets. And you need to know that the supply is what it says it is. and I need to know your address has received my funds and I need to know how much, like it's that verifiable compute in the asset property registry space. Like I understand that now. I can't really imagine use cases beyond that. And maybe that's a limitation that I have in my thinking.

David Hoffman:
[40:48] Yeah, I think if you are like a eigenlayer bearer or a bull, it really rests on like how easy it is to imagine that future. And from the bullish side, it's like, well, yeah, it's because this is a net new thing. There's no comparable to really illustrate what Eigenlayer, Eigencloud is trying to do. But there are some things that you can kind of like understand. Like say, for example, we wanted to... Govern over something like a company a very large company using an ai llm and we needed to have some assurance that the computation of that llm is the done by the right code and there isn't like a man in the middle attack or any other sort of just like spoofing to verify that computation and so yeah i think whether you're an eigenlayer player or a bull kind of rests on like how, how easy is it to produce the future that eigenlayer wants to produce and you know the The bullish side of things will say, well, this is Eigenlayer is a net new thing. There is no comparable. And that's why it's hard to imagine. And SreeRam gave a few examples and I could probably list off a bunch of examples and it would still kind of just like kind of feel the blind men feel the elephant. But now the thing is, is like now this access to what Eigenlayer is selling is as easy as a developer going to AWS and getting like an S1 bucket or something like that. And so the whereas Eigenlayer and the smart contracts and like Eigencompute and all that kind of thing that are like kind of these components inside of a car well now we have like the actual product the actual car and so you don't have to actually understand how a carburetor works to drive the car and we just now have the fully seamed stitched together package.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:16] And maybe the eigen token will join what blockworks has just put out which is the the blockworks token transparency framework so this is a 40 point grading rubric basically on token it's like token supply, various stats, who holds what, and it's self-reported. I shouldn't say what the SEC should be doing in crypto, but there's an element of it. It's kind of ground up opt-in regulation.

David Hoffman:
[42:40] Layer 2B for token disclosures, token transparency.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:43] That's a great take. That's exactly what it is. And I'm very hopeful that our tokens adopt this type of a standard. And it's great that Blockworks is propagating this and putting it out there.

David Hoffman:
[42:53] Yeah. So there's 18 different criteria with three points that you can score per criteria. So there's like supply schedules, market maker agreements. Like if you've signed a deal with a market maker, that deal is made public, then you get a point. Exchange listing agreements. These are all trying to make these things public so that the average investor can go look at what the actual details of the market maker are. And there's also things like, well, is there equity token misalignment like Uniswap Labs or is it more like Morpho where there is no equity, there's just a token things like this. And this was all Don's dream of some efforts from Felipe, who we've had on as a guest, and his notion of like lemon markets. This is what I brought up earlier, where like, well, if we have a bunch of markets, if a bunch of tokens, for example, say 50% of the tokens that are potentially investable are kind of shitty because of bad disclosures, bad market maker agreements. Well, it really taints the remaining 50 that are potentially good. And so we are trying to just illuminate, give people who have put their best foot forward with their token, a way to.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:55] Have advertised the fact that they have put their best foot forward. Transparency.

David Hoffman:
[43:59] There's a transparency. Yeah, there's a page on BlockWorks where you can go look at the tokens that have gone through this report. I think there's like six of them right now. Morpho is one of them. Stride is one of them. And so the call to action here is if you have issued a token and you would like to flex your transparency and your good intentions, the BlockWorks transparency report is a place to do that. And then also, in theory, like you can imagine if there was like 100 tokens that have gone through this process. You can imagine like a Blockworks version of CoinGecko that only lists tokens that have gone through the transparency report. And so it's kind of like a trusted place to get token information.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:33] Yeah. And I think that the good tokens will go do this, right? Yeah. Because what do they have to lose? We're not afraid of transparency. And so you get a market level format on that too. David, there were some major Coinbase product announcements here recently. Can you rattle a few of them off? Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[44:47] The Coinbase One credit card, a metal american express card launching in the fall of this year four percent bitcoin cash back four percent if you have enough assets on your coinbase account and then some boosted uscc yields as well so credit card perpetual futures cftc compliant perps for united states traders that's a first right yes perps onshore perps is a first is a very big deal so they are going after of course what is hyperliquid's non-kyc volume in-app access to dexes so base dexes are going to be baked into the main application that's pretty cool uh coinbase in business a small medium enterprise suite for global pay custodian and trading services api automation uscc rewards and then shopify tie-in so merchants can accept uscc on base with one percent cash back straight into shopify.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:39] Yeah, that was a big deal, that Shopify thing, right? Shopify is a $142 billion in volume company, and they've got 5.5 million merchants. And one of the things Coinbase rolled out, too, was this concept with Shopify of a commerce payments protocol.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:56] So one of the problems with crypto, I guess when you compare it to a network like Visa, is that the payments are immutable, okay? And this is great for a lot of things, but for every day, like you're buying a coffee, you just want a refund, I don't know, there's some fraud, you want to cancel something.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:15] Credit cards are way better than just an immutable blockchain. So Coinbase has provided a service in Coinbase Commerce that's deployed on base to just use a smart contract as escrow. So think of it as like there's a step in between if I send a merchant some funds I'm paying with stable coins on base, then the money actually goes in a smart contract escrow. It's like money in the lockbox, holds the cash. So I'm not actually sending it. I'm just signing approval of it. And then once the merchant ships their product, maybe does some fraud detection or something to that effect, then the funds are released by the escrow. And in the Meanwhile, both sides can kind of cancel the transaction. And if the transaction is canceled, nothing leaves my wallet in the first place. So it's basically giving you some of the same capability that credit card networks have had. Their big feature is like, we're not immutable. You can, you know, we got fraud detection. We can refund if there's like something that needs to be refunded. We can cancel. And now you can do that on crypto too. So you really see Coinbase leveling up payments and that meshing well with stablecoins and doing that in a programmable way completely on-chain.

David Hoffman:
[47:26] There was one announcement that was not in the Coinbase state of Crypto Summit, but was more kind of behind the scenes. This was reported on Reuters. Coinbase seeks SEC approval for on-chain stocks. So they want to create, if it's on-chain, I'm assuming it's a token, they want to tokenize stocks or support tokenized stocks. Maybe they don't want to do the tokenization themselves, but they want those things. And they're asking the SEC for either a no action letter or a regulatory exemption

David Hoffman:
[47:54] so that they can do tokenized stocks, you would presume on base. And so just reading between the lines, we have a Coinbase One credit card, Perpetual Futures, an in-app Dex, Shopify tie-in, and then also approval for on-chain stocks. Coinbase is going for a financial super app. And then, you know who else is also going for? All on-chain. Yeah. You know what else is going for a financial super app? Robin hood which has many of these things they have stocks they have the credit card they're they're going for banking services the robin hood banking announcement i think banking comes in like q3 q4 and then robin hood i don't know if they're doing this on purpose but coinbase had their state of crypto summit and then robin hood has their big crypto day at etc in a couple weeks which they've been hyping up interesting in a very big way and so yeah like i i'm just seeing these two.

David Hoffman:
[48:41] Financial clash of the titans i mean titans in the grand scheme of things like they're both ish 70 billion dollars right now so like small in the grand scheme of things but oh it's similar market cap similar market caps yeah yeah yeah well coinbase had a 15 day last trading day it's it's juneteenth so the markets are closed today so like coinbase took a little bit of a lead but i think the coin versus hood story is going to be a huge story because imagine if you are a zoomer even a millennial you're coming of age you're you're you know finally getting some wealth what are you going to use yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:13] It's one of those

David Hoffman:
[49:14] Two ameritrade you're going to use fidelity charles schwab yeah no you're going to use coinbase or robin hood you're going to do one of those two things yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:23] And coinbase doesn't have stocks but they want stocks robin hood has just started the crypto they want to be more on chain so they're kind of converging aren't they yeah i do wonder at ethcc do you think robin is going to roll out like a layer two i think

David Hoffman:
[49:35] I think that would be the easy guess yeah i think that'd be the easy guess maybe it's.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:40] A stable coin david get some of that circle stable coin premium you talk about that you know that if it wasn't all good news for coinbase let's say or good press there was also this thing a little thing of the u.s army parade do you see this so this went mainstream so of course there was on flag day i believe this was saturday i was not watching the parade there's a big parade it's also trump's birthday was it not in Washington, D.C. There's a military parade. I've never seen one of these in the U.S.

David Hoffman:
[50:06] And never seen a United States military parade before now.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:08] Yeah, first time for everything, I guess. So we saw a military parade. What was surprising to me in looking at this was it was sponsored by, in part, by Coinbase. Now, Coinbase was not the only sponsor, but you saw a lot of images like this, like two big tanks, the whole U.S. Army kind of platform and Coinbase branding. And so the crypto world kind of reacted to this. I saw some good reactions to it, some positive reactions, we'll get to that. Some coinbase employees with positive reactions

David Hoffman:
[50:38] Coinbase employees thought this was sick yeah a.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:42] Lot of a lot of negative reactions what's kind of the negative reactions that you saw

David Hoffman:
[50:46] I mean generally that this is completely antithetical to what crypto is supposed to be yeah which i very much resonate with like the cool thing about bitcoin proof of work and ethereum proof of stake is that we can create a money without a military and so the notion of a crypto company sponsoring a military is like, wait, what? Many people I think got disillusioned because, and I can resonate with this, like I'm here for the counterculture. I'm here for like the revolution that is antagonistic to nation state powers and nation state overreach. And I think the military is the symbol of like nation state overreach and the reason why it can't overreach in the first place. Did you ever read one of my favorite OG articles in the space is A Most Peaceful Revolution from Nick Carter. It's a 2019 piece. Do you remember that one? i.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[51:31] Do yeah yeah what was the what was the theme of that

David Hoffman:
[51:33] Basically the tldr is that like as nation state fiat just prints and you know people lose their savings in fiat they're going to use bitcoin as a savings vehicle and that's going to force government to be more fiscally responsible because, they're it's going to collapse down to the value of the services that governments can provide their citizens it's going to be the value of their fiat and so that they're going to not be able to support their armies of their armies and sovereign.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[51:57] Individual type of thesis right exactly

David Hoffman:
[51:59] Yeah And so it's just like, Completely antagonistic to just sponsor the army.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[52:05] I mean, here's the other side of this, though. It's Coinbase's, I mean, members of the army, on board to crypto. What are they going to use? Maybe there's some affiliation here. Maybe there's some eyeballs on this that wouldn't be otherwise.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[52:17] This is all part of crypto going mainstream in that story. And Victor Bunin says, he was very excited about it. He said, hell yeah, this is great. The men and women defending our nation and our way of life deserve our culture and respect. And this is just Coinbase giving respect to the military.

David Hoffman:
[52:32] Well, Victor Buunin is the target market for this. As a Coinbase employee who was a huge Trump fan, like, of course, Victor Buunin is going to be like, I love this. This was great.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[52:41] Yeah, well, there you go. I mean, maybe alienating some crypto OGs, but maybe picking up some eyeballs elsewhere. David, Roman Storm is short on his legal defense. What's the update here?

David Hoffman:
[52:52] Yeah. So the Ethereum Foundation donated $1.25 million matching fund to Roman Storm. First, he needs more money because his court case is coming up very, very fast. July 14th in New York, and he is short $750,000. And so the crypto, we've raised a decent amount of money for Roman Storm. Remember, if Roman Storm wins his case, the precedent that open source software developers can't go to jail is set in. And we can just feel good about the fact that we protected one of our own. And so the big call to action is that the EF is matching your donations. So you donate one dollar, the EF donates another dollar. And then we need to get Roman Sorum $750,000 more so we can win his case, make sure he doesn't go to jail for writing open source software.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:36] Yeah, big encouragement. It was great to see the EF step up and go do this.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:40] And this is the second time they donated. So absolutely huge. Well, that's it. We got to wrap it up. David, I got a question for you in the midst of Stablecoin Summer. It's a question about crypto in general. I saw this tweet from Jason Choi. He said this, The irony is not lost on me that crypto went from let's replace the banks to let's provide an alternative to fiat to let's strengthen U.S. dollar dominance. What's your take on this overall with with our excitement over stable coins, you know, going mainstream, all of these things?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:10] Is crypto starting to lose the plot as to why we're here? I mean, aren't we here to go bankless?

David Hoffman:
[54:15] I don't know if it. So, Jason, he brands this as crypto went from let's replace banks to. Let's provide an alternative fiat to let's strengthen the United States dollar dominance. It's not either or to me. It's yes and. And crypto has always been about replacing banks. It's always been about providing alternative to fiat. And now with the innovation of stable coins, we're like, actually, we can we can do all of these things. We can. It's a yes and. So we're going to strengthen the United States dollar dominance for those who want that. We're going to provide an alternative to fiat for those who want that. And for those who want it, they can replace banks. I think it's all of these things together. I agree.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:50] I think stable coins are a big step towards that. Actually, I mean, the banks don't like it. We no longer need their savings accounts, right? We can keep the stable coins in our non-custodial wallets. All we need is the yield. And hopefully that comes at some point. So we are making progress on this. Got to end with this, guys. Of course, you know, none of this has been financial advice. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we're 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:
[55:19] Music