[LIVE] A Conversation with Michael Ippolito

Transcript

Bank station happy Friday we got an unscripted conversation coming at you live me and Mike andito are just GNA go at it uh whenever we talk a bunch in real life uh it's always super I always learn a ton from mik bito and so I'm going to do that again today but this time live on the stream so we're gonna get into that conversation but first I wanted to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible Kraken knows crypto kraken's been in the crypto game for over a decade and as one of the largest and most trusted exchanges in the industry Kraken is on the journey with all of us to see what crypto can be human history is a story of progress it's part of us hardwired we're designed to seek change everywhere to improve to strive and if

anything can be improved why not Finance crypto is a financial system designed with the modern world in mind instant permissionless and 24/7 it's not perfect and nothing ever will be perfect but crypto is a world changing technology at a time when the world needs it the most that's the Kraken mission to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrency so that you and the rest of the world can Achieve Financial Freedom and inclusion head on over to kraken.com slbank list to see what crypto can be not invting advice Crypt trading involves risk of loss cryptocurrency services are provided to us and US Territory customers by payward Ventures eek pvi doing business as Kraken it's everyone's favorite season in crypto tax season and crypto tax is always an absolute headache especially for all you DJs out there but it doesn't have to be a

nightmare that's where crypto tax calculator comes in the software built for degens by degens as coinbase's official Global Tax partner crypto tax calculator focuses on making complex transactions into easy ones supporting over 300,000 currencies across e eum arbitrum optimism as well as a thousand other Integrations as well it's as simple as connecting your wallet pulling in all your transactions and following the automated suggestions to quickly and accurately calculate your tax obligations Plus for all the airdrop Farmers out there crypto tax calculator has your back as they are consistently adding support for new and upcoming layer ones layer twos and all the airdrops that you're currently farming 2024 is the year when the Deens do their crypto taxes with speed and confidence make taxes this year easy and affordable with Crypt tax calculator sign up at

cryptal doio and get a 30% discount with code Bank 30 click the link in the show notes for more information are you launching a token is it already live how are you managing the legal and tax obligations for providing token grants to your team it's no secret that token management gets complicated between learning all the legal language and tax obligations in every country that your team is in token Grant Management can feel like an obstacle course but it doesn't have to that's where toku steps in toku provides practical tools to handle token grants allowing for Effective oversight of token distributions and payroll tax compliance for employees contractors advisers and investors they also handle tax withholdings through their real-time tax calculations that can be done by toku or integrated into any payroll e providers

in any jurisdiction toku is a trusted provider of protocol Labs dydx Foundation me and protocol and many more get started for free and make token compensation simple at tok.com slbank how's it going Mike how you doing doing very well man doing very well no complaints almost end the week about you yeah we never talk never talk we never ever talk like what's up with that the joke is we actually we talk quite often but we never get to talk I think open-ended uh when we do it's usually in some sort of like crowded loud environment and not as productive as it could be so I hope that I hope we can kind of change the game a little bit with what we talked about today yeah I agree um well what do where do you want

to start first I mean it's been it's been an interesting week um it's been it's interesting week it's been interesting quarter uh I think things are crescendoing in their interest maybe maybe we could start um uh just as like a where we left off when we had you on the podcast like half a year ago now uh and you had I think one of the most Banger podcasts that we had in a while really just talking about um uh the salana thesis the um ethereum thesis the cosmos thesis and how they're all kind of like representative of different points to enter into a becoming a blockchain and how you were saying like everything is kind of converging uh that was like Bang episode everyone loved it uh and I'm just wondering like uh that was six months ago um there's a lot of stuff that has happened since then um

maybe that I can just present that to you and see where you want to go with it yeah I think um I think since then we've started to see even more even more convergence and one of the you know there's actually a great you know this is basically anything that vitalic writes is gold right but he's got this great very nicely summed up uh very nicely summed up diagram which is uh the the basically three different ways that blockchains are evolving and the common component of that is centralized block production uh but decentralized uh proofs and verification and there are three different ways that that's playing out across a whole bunch of different ecosystems right now so like let's take two of these examples which would be

ethereum where there's uh ethereum um and there are centralized Builders and a couple of different rollups or there or maybe let's call it one large rollup where there's one uh centralized sequencer that's doing a lot of the block construction up there or there's uh many different rollups which is sort of what we're seeing now but Mev is ultimately what end UPS ends up recentralizing that block production because you have uh meev that gets extracted with very expensive proposition to build blocks across all these different fragmented robs that requires a big centralized Builder to stand the way and then on the salana side of things like this would be sort of the high TPS chain which is the third leg of that stool you've got obviously higher bandwidth and Hardware requirements for validators but you actually saw this was pretty cool from

Sovereign Labs you saw the very beginnings of a of a light client over there an SPV type light client and we know we're going to get tiny danc around the salana side of things so I think that vitalik as per usual said it much better than than I ever could in a million years but additionally like we just saw polygon release something pretty cool this week called the AG layer which is this we we've been talking a little bit about aggregated ZK proofs which do something very similar Celestia which I I to be honest at the time I didn't really get too deep on the design is also very similar kind of Big Blocks a few chunky validators but they've got these light nodes which verify and have special powers than the chain so I think if anything it's it's pretty live and well so I think like I

the before Bank list I did this podcast with my old buddy uh Christian Corollas who then went on to work at UH Bitcoin media and my my arc in that role was like the everything guy so I'm I'm all the chains the multi-layer ones the the cosmos the inter operability uh the bridges and then he was Bitcoin he was the bitcoiner and then slowly over time I kind of morphed my thinking my like my like uh just like ideas for how this space would converge and then I converged into the ethereum uh camp and then became like a Bitcoin vers ethereum podcast and now I'm kind of like going back a little bit the other way where just like you're seeing the writing on the wall like Salon is not going away there's so there's always so much

excitement on like newer change no matter what era you're in like right now Celestia is super hyped and actually getting real real adoption monad isn't even live yet and people love it already uh there's always going to be the move towards uh just like newer chains I think people are always going to enjoy new chains and so like I'm kind of like waving the flag on just like one Central chain that will like gobble up everything even though I do think that like there are forces that push towards that direction and there always will be but there's also like push forces that push away from that direction and they likely always will be because we've definitely seen that over the last like you know eight years in crypto so David what do you think if you had to outline

what do you think the forces that push us towards that direction of one chain to rule them all and what are the forces that disperse us from that consec I think the very very simple one is like the bigger that the the top dog chain is like the one chain to rule them all the bigger that that one is the stronger of an incentive there is to Fork off from that chain and try and and uh build a new one a better like a better Bitcoin build a better Bitcoin like an ethereum killer so like there's like this natural equilibrium that is set in between like it doesn't matter how successful you are the larger the more successful you become the stronger the incentive it is to be to Dethrone you uh and then you get into like the VCS playing like the alt layer one games which you know

retail also loves retail loves that game too uh and so like there is I don't know if there's ever and then also like there there was that Meme that John Sharbino tweeted out that I think you retweeted maybe and it was like generalized chain wants to become more specific more specific or app app wants more sovereignty so it becomes an app chain on a generalized chain and then app wants more features becomes more generalized a new app comes and uh is born on that slightly more generalized chain and then now that app wants more sovereignty so it makes an app chain and there's like a cycle there's always just like you can't have too much of anything because there will always be some sort of opposing Force to check on that uh and so that's kind of I'm saying like I'm just ready for like the new crop of

layer one so like gain of attention attention in this bull market and the cycle repeats I'm I'm with you another way of saying that VCS and Retail love new layer ones is entrepreneurs love it too that is I think the single driving force which is just that entrepreneur sees inevitably with these you know with blockchain architectures you have to make trade-offs and there's always like one smart person who's like I don't really like that you made this trade-off I actually think there's a market for someone who made the opposite side of the straight off and then they go do that so every experiment ultimately ends up getting run and again I think that's I think that's a positive thing but that's a that's a funny meme because I think also one thing that might be changing at least my world view about how I used to think about things I used

to think about the world very black and white between General block Space versus app specific so like General is like ethereum right like you can do anything you want it's the world computer and then osmosis is an example of an app specific chain it just wants to be a DEX that's what it block space is optimized for but it's kind of converging in both directions and even the general blockchains like ethereum's road mapap now looks like the main chain is a bullettin proof bullet board for posting ZK proofs and it's exporting money and it's like well Bitcoin kind of started General but now it's the app chain for money ethereum looks like it's heading in that direction so ethereum is specializing but then some of those decks is like osmosis like hey yeah we've got a decks but you should come build a decks on our decks you know and

say like yeah we're actually you know we're building you know sector specific block space so all of our validators have to run their own order matching engin like you know we're kind of converging on it probably both sides that you know once you have an app that reaches some amount of product Market fit you want to expand but the big really general ones are like actually the world is just too big we need to specify so we're kind of converging there as well i' would say are you are you saying that there's no such thing as actually truly General block space I think yeah I think I'm landing on that I don't think I think it might be a myth similar to bridging okay so but ethereum at block at the Genesis Block in 2015 and then before it became had any sort of like actual real uh applications on

it that was General black space right yeah yeah yeah unmorphed and then had to specialize at some point and then had to specialize yeah but is ethereum specializing now I guess now it it will still be pretty General um until denune and that is the first in instance of ethereum specializing with um blob space right like it's still pretty General up until that point it's just like the apps have started to force it into being more dedicated towards specific reasons but not not anything inherently at the base protocol I think ultimately every even like salana which is the you know it's the light speed it's the world uh it's uh consensus at the speed of NASDAQ Global all that stuff it's probably

going to have to end up specializing I'm not technical enough to be like at this level of throughput this many transactions this globally distributed is when you'd have to start specializing but I sort of do trust the modular camp that eventually not the entire internet can sit on one layer with one set of validators ultimately you're going to need to start specializing so I think it's coming for ethereum and salana and not in a bad way it's just hey we have product Market fit on these certain things we should double down on this and really expand yeah well I think we just did this um super long podcast with Mike neuter uh and domothy 2 hours 45 minutes around the ethereum road map uh and that's kind of like when like once again it was impressed upon me that the long-term conclusion of ethereum is this

like super lightweight layer one blockchain that just receives and verifies proofs of what could be anything at higher levels um and then and that's also what the bitcoiners want Bitcoin to be like that is if you're a Bitcoin Builder if you're a Bitcoin Renaissance not a Bitcoin Maxi then like you're really interested in Bitcoin being like the truth layer for any sort of expressive alternative layers they've just never been able to figure out how to get Bitcoin to become that but that is what Bitcoin wants to be according to them um and the thing is like if Bitcoin achieves that like there's a lot of focus on the bit VM right now if Bitcoin achieves that then like it's actually achieved that faster than ethereum did and without all of the like technical debt that ethereum has which is just

kind of funny it would it would be hysterical if they wound up doing basically the same thing but I also think here's a challenge or here's just something I've been trying to think through when it comes to bitcoin you let me know uh so the great thing about ethereum from from a monetary standpoint is it's this very large very liquid asset and people historically want to do things with that asset it has this culture of like okay I have my ethereum then I buy an nft or I deposit into this di5 protocol or I'm gonna restake it Loop up probably not Financial advice maybe don't do that so much but still there's this culture of like once you have this Crypton native Capital ethereum tend to want to unlock that Capital whereas that's much less proven out in the world of Bitcoin Bitcoin is the largest Bitcoin is the largest form

or pool of Crypton native capital but and there there was early product Market fit through blockfi like you saw bitcoiners wanted to earn yield on their Bitcoin there is a culture there of not wanting to do things like the culture in Bitcoin is like I bury this [ __ ] deep in Cold Storage you know right it's like arctic tundra Cold Storage so I how much of that unlocks into these new cool use cases on Drive teams that I have no idea I have no idea and that's the big question okay yeah I I think I have some sort of like not not answer but just like I think why there is that culture in Bitcoin is because they haven't been given the tools to express themselves in their desire for more productive uh asset in Bitcoin and so like all of the people who are like I'm gonna you dig a

five foot hole inside my backyard and bury my Bitcoins in it and not touch it those people have all of the tools to like broadcast their culture and their preferences because Bitcoin hasn't been expressive but now we actually have um like ordinals as a tool for bitcoiners to be like no I want to like play with my Bitcoin um and there actually been a bunch of deals that we're like looking at at the bank list Ventures do you actually know that you know you know who's the largest custodian of Bitcoin like who's got all the Bitcoin binance because like people just trust binance with their Bitcoin binance custody uh and so like there are deals like who are working inside of this realm of just like actually there's a lot of bitcoiners who have given up their private keys because that's what that's whatever and so they're trying to build

like utility around that whole part of the world and so I think once bitcoiners have like the tools to be degens then they will become degens I think so too so one of I we going into this year prediction episode one of my highest convictions bets was actually Bitcoin jpegs for exactly this reason so I I've been cheering on just because you know when CI blew up it it eliminated the the tools for bitcoiners to do anything with their Bitcoin right right um but I think basically blockfi and Celsius was proof positive that people do bitcoiners do want to earn yield on their Bitcoin do fun things I just don't know enough about the limitations of building on

bitcoin to know if like for inance like Bitcoin still those blocks are tiny and there are 10 minute block times not 12 seconds like the 12 second block times are tough enough in ethereum like I just don't have a good enough sense about what the actual technical limitations are of that um but jpegs are just so easy it's like yeah I want to buy this monkey jpeg this looks cool um so kind of funny how fast jpeg culture got incepted into Bitcoin I feel like they have a bigger jpeg culture than ethereum does these days they do and and lowkey Magic Eden uh you know they pivoted away from salana but they basically own they have super dominant market share there like if you want to trade a Bitcoin jpeg

you basically go to magic Eden so Props them for doing that what do you think David about there have been a lot of hot takes on the death of the 10,000 pfp collection what do you think about that the death of the 10,000 PF collection what what what was the last 10,000 pfp collection to really come out well I guess you had like madlads I don't know if it was actually 10,000 but that was some madlads was yeah it counts right mad Lads was like a year ago yeah yeah there's like there's like the Brian Armstrong one on base but that's it never really exploded Beyond base right I agree yeah I wouldn't count that I mean in salono there have been a couple there have been torians I would put in there as well um there's a on bitcoin I don't know how many there there are but

there's node monkeys and there's there's also uh there's the Bitcoin Wizards right Quantum cast was like the new one which minted at 0.1 Bitcoins and or got up to like I don't I haven't checked the price in the last like week or so but like the last I checked it was like 027 Bitcoins that's what node monkeys was trading at I was like I just can't make myself do that yeah that's too high to too high that's too high yeah so but what do you think about that as a concept because you know the if you were against that concept you'd say this was ridiculous these jpegs aren't wor very much and there's no reason they ever should have traded at that valuation but I think there's maybe another case there too I mean in a digital world I've always thought like the pfp like utility on your profile is has

immense utility like me too to to the point where I'm like meeting people at a conference and I'm like trying to like get a GP grap gra like a grasp on who they are and then they show me their Twitter and I recognize immediately their pfp uh and and that hasn't seemed to be like taken up lately I think people care a lot less about that now or people just ignoring that aspect but um that was like the big thing last cycle and I don't know why that would like go away it didn't do seem like a flash in the pan they've got built-in distribution there's a guy named Scott Galloway uh who's kind of this talking head but he also he's pretty good on brand not so great on crypto but he's he's really good on brand and you know

he he talks about basically every all the great products out there they end up applying they they tap into this very Primal human desire so it could be like sexual Fitness it could be survival andsecurity whatever and pfps kind of have that it's a flex right like some people just don't get that and some people [ __ ] Crypt Punk right here there you go baby there you go yeah I've been saying for months that I'm gonna get uh get art here and hang it up but I haven't done it yet but every time I go over to your place I'm like yeah I actually got to do this but yeah I think it's um I think it's a I mean it definitely Taps into that the other thing that they have really native built-in distribution like better native verality than maybe any other product

that exists and here's an interesting thing that started to happen as well is have you been noticing that these pfp collections like bad kids or Pudgies are getting uh airdrops yeah yeah certainly uh Pudgies would love to tell you all about the airdrops that they're getting but that can't that can't be there's limited ammo there right so let me Des I mean so here here's why it makes sense from the perspective of protocol that's airdropping imagine you are about to launch your protocol and what you want to do is you you might have multiple different objectives right like starkware is pretty interesting they wanted to do they want to bring they want to reward their early users they want to attract new users they want to

reward and continue to incentivize the developer Community they want to uh transition some people who are uh staking on eth to be like restak operators on igen layer so they have all these objectives the problem is uh siers right like that's the big thing you don't want just these industrial airdrop Farmers to come in and take everything so nfts communities are this really interesting intersection of both those things where they're sibl right um so you're not going to be dumping that to airdrop farmers and they're wealthy new community members right like if you have a the floor of pudgy is like 50,000 bucks so if you're dropping to the pudgy Community you know if you get even a really low conversion rate that's probably worth it you know you probably got acquired some really high value customers so I feel like we're a couple months out from all these threads being

like I paid for my pudgy with XYZ airdrops and yeah so I could see that being a huge and there's going to be a million air drops this year as well so yeah there are going to be a million air drops it's actually kind of nuts um but okay but Pudgie's got like two aird drops though like I don't know if we have enough data to say that this is this is I maybe you're just saying it does data doesn't matter this is just what makes sense to you this is what makes sense to me I think yeah but like Pudgies are just so far away from just like Stark net yeah I so Stark Stark didn't do this but like Dimension like the dimension air drop um the dimension airdrop got targeted Pudgies and bad kids and some of the other nft questions I have NOA

did you know about Dimension before it air drop I had heard of it but I I couldn't have articulated what it did cuz there are these tokens that are getting air dropped and all of a sudden these Protocols are like between like two and 10 billion dollars that I've never heard of before yeah I'm on this page for you dude if you have a logical explanation for why Dimension is trading where it's trading I would all no clue dude it's just like I I lost my like well I need to go find it it's somewhere I send it to an address I need to go find which address but I haven't been able to actually like sell my dym and that's what I've heard is like people just like can't figure out how to actually sell the tokens but it's not the only one right like alt layer also

dropped into some sort of insane valuation and I don't think anyone heard of it uh like a month prior yeah I mean even the F the FTV of Stark net is I mean star Net's obviously a super credible uh you very attractive project but like that's super high I mean these are some of these are great projects but even like jeto and Jupiter like great projects you know but they're launch launching a multi-billion dollar ftvs is like crazy and I know people say that at this point FTV is a meme in the cycle and then people don't care until they do but I think people watch ftvs like I FV I look at FTV exclusively and I sometimes I feel like an [ __ ] for doing that because everyone says that FDD is a meme but I'm like what is the most

rational number that exists yeah well here's the other I mean the other I'd love to get Vance's take on that can you next time you have a podcast with Vance can you ask him about that yeah actually in one of the early BCR episodes he was like wait what do you guys look at market cap or FTV and we paused and he was like please for the love of God there's a right answer here so I know he's on the FDB train but uh yeah I I don't I don't really have a great explanation for it other than just like Risk there's just the market is just kind of risk on again right yeah that's kind of like yeah people just are not hitting the sell button people are hitting the buy button yeah no and and to be fair I mean maybe it to assign

like some amount of rational thinking to this like are you selling anything right now no yeah yeah okay so like the the two air drops that I got which I'm big fans of all layer and dimension both of them I'm like well if I keep them it might qualify me for a future airdrop if I don't sell Market yeah uh that's you probably just answered that question so yeah and just on the margin people like well you know I feel like everyone is in the same you know we're crypto what the the total market cap right now is at like two trillion right Bitcoin is you know 20 25% off its all-time highs I think most people have the same framework that

we're gonna slowly grind up from here and then it really gets on you know the party really starts when we cross the all-time high so right I guess to answer my own question why are you selling anything at the current moment you probably probably don't and and I everyone has these stories too right of like an airdrop that they flipped and they you know they tweet out oh I would have had one and a half million dollars so that's definitely the mindset that I have I'm just holding on to everything for the most part right now so dude the the I think everyone is trying to be Celestia right now every like there are future projects that are going to airdrop their tokens and they're like how do we airdrop our tokens at a low valuation so that it can pump for a long time afterwards like how do we do that

I'm like you guys Force the market to do anything but like the fact that Celestia dropped and it just rocketed and did a 10x to airdrop holders kicking off like the bull market like blowing up the whole like modular money meme into like this new M share that everyone has and then actually getting adoption by some of the ethereum rollups uh and it it was aird dropped to a bunch of like random people and then it pumped 10x that's like the bar that everyone will remember that that they're like that this air drop could be that this aird drop could be that and like for the next year of aird drops we're all going to hold our aird drops because it could do a Celestia but even when Celestia launched I don't remember thinking that was

particularly cheap you know like it was launched that2 billion doll FTV was like oh it's like a lot you know but it just ripped and it was did not stop yeah I mean celesia is a phenomenal project and they deserve it but like that that initial price action was I'm sure massive for the general psychology of product so yeah right um but you know Celestia is also kind of like uh Celestia is also you know going back to this convergence thing you know Bitcoin bulletin board where you can put like really small blocks doesn't even support smart contracts that's where ethereum headed that's what Celestia is doing as well Celestia is actually really similar to Bitcoin in its construction because it also you can't it doesn't support smart contracts at the you know at their

layer so yeah in a lot of ways like that's Al that's a super interesting ecosystem I would say as well yeah I I have not yet been able to like categorize Celestia very well in my brain like in the big blocker category but not in not no virtual machine so no settlement I don't know how to think about Celestia yeah so the way that I think about Celestia is they have found a way to obviate a lot of the negative trade-offs of what was this huge argument back in the day of the block science war and there were two very different camps of thinking about blockchains which is one you know you want to keep the ironically actually the small block Camp is not the way that Satoshi thought about it I know it's

gotten a Rebrand but like at the original vision of the bit in the Bitcoin white paper is digital peer-to-peer cash which required scaling Hardware um and So eventually there you know you came to this disagreement about like how big do we make the blocks the miners wanted bigger blocks uh the cord devs did not want as big of blocks and ultimately Bitcoin I think made the right decision and went the the small block route MH um I think a lot of that uh design inspiration has found its way into ethereum uh the ethereum way of thinking as well as just the next large successful blockchain post post Bitcoin and I think salana and Celestia are put in this Camp of you know the salana approach is that we're gonna have larger validators now we're going to do they don't even really have a concept of

block building it's very it's continuous building but it's basically like allow for larger validators now let uh you know let uh as what's that law where 's law hard Moors law uh to up on cost and eventually we'll be able to decentralize that way and Celestia has a different approach where they say we're okay with Big Blocks we actually are going to have fewer validators that are bigger and more expensive still permissionless but there's a barrier to entry but what we have that the the Bitcoin us didn't have at that other time is these things called light nodes and this technology called Data availability sampling so what the light nodes do is they basically can call a check on the few chunkier nodes that are producing these

very big very cheap blocks uh to keep them honest you know to to talk about at a very high level so it's kind of a cool Best of Both Worlds type thing um and that's that's the that's the architecture right and that that go back to goes back to what you're saying about vitalik's vision of just like big big blocks being checked by small blocks basically big block philosophy being checked by small block philosophy exactly yeah um and I do think you know honestly polygon has done a really good job of this I I'm not actually a huge fan of the AG layer branding but I think they've kind of nailed it with that design yeah I actually have not looked into that I think we might have a show scheduled or something like this uh what what is the AG is the is the guy yeah I basically

the idea like my my brain breaks around ZK proofs like that moon maath is just beyond a left side of the bell curve guy like me but basically the idea is that all right if you uh you know take take the example that you want to do things on like you are on chain X and you want to do things on chain Y and maybe that's a swap or something like that um that requires multiple different legs to to ultimately end up getting completed you need proof somehow you on chain X need proof that this thing happened on chain y so th that's what these execution proofs are U they get posted to the central layer so everyone knows that um you that everyone has done the action

that they said that they were going to do the big question about ZK proofs and and these a layers in general is what is the setup of the proving is it decentralized what is the cost what is the latency because obviously if you can only make send one of these proofs you know once a year then that's not useful to anyone you know but if you could do it every one or two seconds which is where polyon wants to get pretty freaking useful actually is it just a settlement layer that's on top of ethereum but below the layer twos I think it I would think of it almost as kind of next to the layer twos it it basically just allows you to take there are all these different different execution environments which are Super different from one another right and originally like we kind of thought it

would be really nice if these execution environments all could like directly pipe into each other and talk to each other but now what the the agir concept sort of asks is I'm just going to let you do things the way that you would like to do them in your layer I'm going to do them the way that I would like to do them in my layer I'm going to create a proof that the outcome the important outcome here don't really care how you did it but the outcome here that you said that you were going to do is is right and that all goes to this common layer so I don't know if it's on top of or below or next to but like right it's it's complimentary I think to the sure to the rups yeah there's there's a lot of these uh composability technologies

that being uh innovated on in the ethereum landscape and some of them overlap some of them don't overlap some of them are solving their own problems in different ways uh and there's like eight of them eight eight different categories of like ways of soling ethereum composability and they're all happening in parallel uh and coordination between because like in order to actually get perfect composability it's going to need to take like the best of all of these things and put it into one like more seamless solution which sounds like a massive coordination lift but uh the only like thought that I have about ethereum composability is that it die it dies A Thousand Cuts Like There's No One gold and silver bullet it just dies in a bunch of small different ways or what if the best solution just wins or one but I don't know I haven't

seen one solution actually be able to Encompass all types of comp posability issues is I I haven't seen that well all right here's the maybe to move into like some spicier Waters here but all right sure I think the challenge with the challenge with the eth rollup landscape as it exists today is actually that the rollups don't have as much of an incentive to uh be composable as you might think I think everyone would say that they want to but really the economic incentive is to keep people they want to in spirit but not in their bags yeah they want everyone else to do the thing that I'm doing like we should all interoperate right I've got these great standards take my stand yeah polygon come be an OP stack shade yeah come on come on I've been I've been working so hard for this you know just

come and do my thing um but I think they'll get but so that I think that's the challenge is I think what you're uh alluding to David is it's not necessarily a technical challenge there are probably multiple different techn like Tech solutions that could work but it's kind of a social it's a social Challenge and I ultimately think the market is going to end up proving out here's a question that I've been asking myself so ethereum what it's trying to do as a as a protocol is to export its currency the the way where it's exporting itself is its rollup environment how is where is The Ether going to go is it going to go evenly distributed to every rollup do optimism and arbitrum end up taking the line share of that eth do uh do weird schemes

like blast end up taking a [ __ ] ton of eth because they're offering yield when no one else else is how do you think like I'm curious there's a ton of eth out there how do you think when it gets pushed up to these rollups like how's it going to shake out like where are the final uh syncs for eth in the Gran game of things yeah and so we're not talking about igen layer because it's still on the layer one yeah well that'll be another sync too I think are are you asking me like pick your chains like is the optimism is arbitrum or are you kind of we don't have basically what I'm getting is like I what I would guess is there's this like power law where the the bigger like let's just say there's a couple different sinks for eth right there's

like the rollup sync which is um probably where most of the eth I would say is going then there's probably this sort of weird sync for people that want to wrap their eth and use it on salana which i' guess is like a really small market and then there's this kind of restak uh sync where you know you stake it in uh in Lio or something like that and then you go into this crazy liquid reaking ecosystem and do a bunch of yield type activities but I think people that want to use eth the way that you and I have thought about using eth in the past they want to do stuff like buy nfts or trade or whatever right I think they'll end up on these rollups and I'm guessing a a huge amount of eth is going to migrate up there it already is uh so

is it going to evenly distribute like you know two eth for arbitrum two e for optimism one e for scroll or is it going to like accelerate and more eth is going to pour into the rollup that already has the advantage if you know depends on the categories of composability solutions that we come up with uh because like if there is uh so like say there's like a sliding scale of composability across Roll-Ups and like on the Zero side we just can't figure it out like bridging takes you know you know minutes and days there's like you know asynchronous Unis swap pools that take forever to settle there's like high Arbitrage between these things composability sliders at Zero versus composability sliders all

the way at 100 and there's like perfect synchronous Universal composability it's one single state even though there's many different chains like cross chain contract calls are perfectly seamless and they never fail and so like we're we're at we started at zero we're already marching somewhere further away from zero so we're already off of zero in composability maybe we're at five 10 15 something um still pretty low and the Really the question is is like how far down the slider of perfect synchronous composability can we get and can we get to a 100 and if we can get to 100 then there is no sync there is no chain that dominates all of the defi there's no like defi chain if if we stayed closer towards zero my answer would be like the defi chain all of the liquidity all of

the capital would aggregate into the the defi chain and then you would have like systems like Stark net which would be like the fully onchain gaming chain that doesn't really need that much eth it just need payments right and then there would be like the Zora it doesn't need that much eth it just needs payments right and so like there would be like the one single defi chain and then the 10,000 payments chains and the payment Chains would be for different purposes like gaming or collecting or whatever um but then as we start to slide uh on down the scale like if we get past on the composability scale to the point where like uni chain is its own chain and not a deployment on arbitrum and optimism and polygon and whatever and if we get that far and like trading on Unis swap is a contract call to UNI chain and that

can happen in settlement across rollups then all of a sudden Capital would will be much more diffuse across the rollups uh because then you'll have uni chain maybe you have compound chain then you'll have like the general purpose chains like arbitr and optimism attracting like whatever activity they're going to attract uh and then there's going to be a lot more of like application specific rollups doing whatever the hell they want and then it'll be a lot more diffuse So my answer is like it really depends on that slider when where we end up yeah I don't know I think the composability stuff is going to take a while so I would bet on high yeah it's going to take a while so I feel like there's a path dependence thing here where it's a little bit of a race like if I was sitting in the if I was sitting

in the driver's seat of one of these big Frameworks I'd be like how can I get as much eth onto my platform as I possibly can right now because I feel like that's going to be a colossal mode so is that what you think blast explicitly what blast was doing yeah yeah I do they thought in your terms and they're like we are just going to do whatever we can to get as much eth as possible because the door is shutting and so we're going to play whatever game possible to make that happen I am I I look I don't know Pac-Man uh I I actually like I I like the way he thinks um a lot I'm I'm not 100% sure if I'm a big fan of blast yet but here's my here's the here is The Logical series of events as I saw it he

launches blur right it's nft trading very very successful and taking market share from open seat just like every other exchange operator that's ever operated on ethereum says these gas gas fees suck oh this is great we have these new uh things called layer twos which have cheap gas fees man um why would I take this app where I have a ton of product Market fit on and go launch it on someone else's L2 I'm gonna create my own L2 here's the problem though I don't I'm gonna launch this L2 and there's gonna be no liquidity how can I get the liquidity on oh I know I'll I'll allow people I'll do it with yield you know I'll allow people to earn yield and I I think that was the series of events that

uh if I had the guess yeah i' I've never understood the blast yield incentive because I have eth in a on optimism except and like and then I have like Stables borrowed against it and it's staked eth it's Lido staked eth so I'm getting the same eth on optimism that someone else is on blast so what's the [ __ ] deal well I probably a lot of these people are aird drop farming is right now right that's what I would guess uh yeah so they're probably airdrop farming and it's kind of this idea like I I really think crypto people love yield trafi people love yield I had a conversation with with someone who works at a big very Crypton native but very trafi type trading desk and they

were describing to me so most of the liquidity still exists in Bitcoin and eth round trading pairs right so if you want to trade in and out of something the the highest likelihood is that you're going to have the most liquidity on an ether Bitcoin cross it's like 70% uh but what they don't like doing is just holding eth or Bitcoin on their balance sheet because it doesn't earn any yield so now what they have is they're swapping out their non yield earning stables for there's a new compliant yield earning stable that hash no just launched this week and they're going to hold steth and when they want to make a trade they move from steth into eth back into the yield bearing thing and they're trying to literally David reduce the amount of time that they're in non yield

bearing stuff so this is this is the yield thing is not a story that's going away and I mean it is kind of nice right like I could just I don't even have to think about it on this L2 just whenever I'm in eth I'm just earning yield on it that's kind of nice yeah and it it solves a problem that's a different problem which is like when I go on to optimism or arbitrum or like I look at my wallet and I'm like eth but like the optimism logo and then eth but the arbitrum logo and like so so like what you if you there can't be like Lio eth on uh blast it just has to be blast eth and they have to homogenize all eth that goes onto their Layer Two like it can't have any sort of like derivative in front of it because it all needs to be

blast e um but maybe I guess that's table Stakes for all layer twos though it's table Stakes for all layer twos I actually think you just hit on a super important point this is not my observation this was John ch's observation which I'll give him the credit for the initial observation and then I want to abstain from any incorrect conclusions that I draw from it but basically uh basically protect him from all the uh wrong stuff that I say after this but the idea like every single eth instance that exists off of main chain is a WRA version of that eth like it's op eth it's rbe Etc so once you've made that mental leap why wouldn't you just hold the yield bearing version of that WAP Tok yeah I I I agree with that and that's why I have staked I

have Lido staked eth on optimism inside a and so I have a wrapped staked eth optimism W wrapped a staked eth that's the derivative set that I have that just feels a little bit more complicated and just as soon as I as soon as I get up there I'm immediately earning yield and it just feel like I don't even know I I think we'll see I I just I don't know but it's it was a novel strategy that other protocols weren't doing at the time that clearly allowed him to attract an enormous amount of liquidity um it will probably allow him to attract a lot of activity up to that roll up and it'll be a good home for blur which is where I'm assuming that they're going to

migrate I'm I'm just skeptical as to like how because a ton of eth went into blast and blast had the we have native eth yielding eth on our our layer to which doesn't exist uh and then also the the The Point Farms right also the token air drops and like everyone is describing a ton of legitimacy to like blast new Innovative strategy of native yield but really but it was legitimized by the point farming and maybe it was actually not that big of a deal we were just thinking it's a big deal because of all the eat that it got from the point farming like I'm worried that we're running into that trap David let me ask you a question uh all of this interest in igen Lay how much of it do you think is the demand is coming from yield from abss versus farming Ian points okay Igan

lir had hype before the point Farm I agree I agree but but but then the point Farm ampli I do think I think a lot of people are in there for the points so yeah and that's the hope of this whole thing right it's like you the value proposition to someone that is yoloing into igen lay because look igen layer the team is phenomenal but there's eventually going to be slashing risks there is smart contract risk you know the the way that they solve this cold start problem with this cool idea but if I'm not getting this extra thing I don't want to risk my funds is is points and rewards and all that stuff that's how our system works and some brave souls will try it will be rewarded and some are going to get in trouble for for

taking too much risk uh but the igon layer part of the ecosystem you know you and I talked about this a lot it's definitely I'm like simultaneously the most concerned about it but I'm the most interested in it and excited about it at the same time I think it is where a lot of the action is going to happen this cycle yeah I I I judge um ecosystems by their ability to nerd snip people into crypto so like Bitcoin won because it nerd sniped like the digital gold bugs and like gave them a a banner to like rally under uh and then ethereum nerd sniped a certain set of people uh and would that was sufficiently large to create the ethereum ecosystem soana nerd sniped a bunch of other people that Bitcoin and ethereum did not nerd snipe um and I'm I'm watching enan lay nerd

snipe people that no nothing else in crypto has ever nerd sniped people before both people in like on Wall Street and Silicon Valley like the SAS SAS companies can like rally behind igen laay don't care about Bitcoin don't care about ethereum don't care about salana but just like trust as this like module that they can like incorporate into their product offering like that makes sense and like Wall Street is also like totally able to wrap their heads around igen lay so like igen lay is in the middle of this like very slow motion nerd snipe and I'm just like kind of fascinated to see what kind of what types of people it brings into the fold yeah I'm I'm with you on that too I I want one maybe Dimension that I would add to what's driving a lot of the igen layer buzz and this flywheel that's

kicking in for them is as much as it is an economic security play where if you're either a cosmos chain or an AVS and you do not want to pay an enormous amount of emissions to convince people to stake uh your chain like it makes a ton of sense from the that's the demand side of their Marketplace but the other reason why you might want to launch as an igen layer AVS is kind of a grow story as well you know in the same way that remember a little while ago is like all these chains were moving to ethereum Roll-Ups because idea was like hey let me plug into this massive ecosystem in it I think that that was pretty good play for a lot of those a lot of those you know l1s that were kind of you know

wasting away Into Obscurity but now I get to plug into this ecosystem I get to put myself in this narrative there's a bunch of eth that wants to move up into rollups like it was really good for a bunch of those chains and I think there are going to be a lot of chains like that is another element to the igen layer thing that people are sort of missing which is like I could be this weird um you know AVS that does this middleware thing that no one really cares about or I could be the next I layer chain baby and I could be a part of this point uh you know take a bunch of the the the you know there's eight billion dollars of of capital eth capital that wants to find its way into these chains so I think it's a growth

story as well as a security story interesting a growth story right is that that's what I mean yeah I I think that's the meta that that a lot of these avss are uh that that these avss are playing it's like I could either launch this weird obscure middleware thing that no one's going to care about or I can catapult myself into this narrative Spotlight and seven billion dollar worth of each eth which is looking for a home in various abss of which I could be one right yeah yeah yeah well that's kind of like the bullish element of like shared security is that it actually costs very little to get a lot of security right yeah and there's like um economies of scale here the more AVS is that are providing like some minor amount of

yield to the entire system more like a leveraged amount of capital comes into that because of how free that yield is it's free Yi free yield baby it is for Real yeah you're just opting in to this incremental additional yield which is feels like a win-win right yeah and so is what you're saying is like there's like just a lot of pent up potential energy here between like the massive amount of eth that's in igen layer that has nowhere to go except for these LRT projects who are also filling to the brim with eth right now uh and then like all these avss like there's no supply side there's demand for me and there's like zero avss and there's about to be like eight and then maybe in a year they'll be like 16 or something that and

so like you're saying like well as an ABS it's going to be so easy to attract a ton of capital is that what you're saying attractive ton of capital to you know the hope is that some of those people end up being they're trying to acquire some of the the users from the people who have this eth and they're also trying to put themselves in this kind of sexy Spotlight and narrative you know I think that's I think that's all big part of it but there's also there there's a very real reason why this exists and it's super cool and I the way that I view the lrts and even projects like ethos is there there are a lot of it's very difficult right now for projects to actually connect with igen layer directly so what the lrts basically are are allowing it's like adding modularity and flexibility in

terms of how these avss end up procuring that security capital and spend um so but like we're talking about a lot of high-minded stuff here David let me let me take us out of the weeds for a second I want to get your I want to get your take on can I can I actually share something Josh I'm gonna share I'm gonna share my screen are you ready for me to share my screen uh Josh is the operator bankless Nation all right all right all right I'm gonna share my screen in a second uh here we go share screen here we go ready for this mic I'm ready uh Yuga Labs just AC acquired proof wow oh no way I did not see that

coming wow this the YouTube comments can you give us the background of that I'm actually not as familiar with that's Kevin Rose's that's Kevin roses it's the moon Birds thing the proof Collective uh and so yeah apparently yugal laabs just uh acquired all of them so I guess yeah the moon Birds collection is now part of Yuga Labs who owns board Apes mutant Apes Crypt punks uh um Mi bits all of these uh all right cool do you think do you think uh without looking or cheating do you think Moon Birds goes up or down the price of moon Birds Birds go up down up definitely up definitely up a a it's a bull market B uh there's it can't go down

anymore yeah God you're right you're right um all right what were you gonna bring up unless want to keep going with that no no no where do you wanna go I want to just get your thought on it's it's such a cliche question but just like where are we in this cycle here your sort of mental framework for it like are you you know do you wake up a lot of mornings feeling particularly euphoric and bowed up and excited um like where do you you know maybe especially if you like haven't been in the space for a particularly long time and this is your first time going through one of these Cycles you're starting to get jazzed up press B Co 50k again like how are you how are you feeling I think we are further along in this bull market than what the typical

uh newer entrance will give credit for um uh I think I was reflecting upon like my um experienced last bowl market and like last bowl market like I thought I came in with a reference like that it started in like January of 2021 um when an ether like pumped and hit new all-time highs or it hit like 11,000 right or 1100 um after being at 100 for like a year 100 to 300 so it did like a three to fourx um like all my ethereum friends were like over the moon like we're F like we're finally getting out from under the shadows of bitcoiners uh and then like and then nft Mania hadn't actually started yet but it started very quickly after that um and

that's it that bull market I was like okay that's when the bull market started it was like January February of 2021 uh so we got like a good like 18 months two years years left in this baby uh when we actually only had like 10 months because like I wasn't accounting for you know defi summer when like e price action stayed below 300 like people were making a ton of life-changing wealth but you wouldn't have really called it a bull market like I there was still during defi summer there was like is this this isn't product Market fit like this is not what people people don't want to gamble on food tokens like this isn't mainstream this isn't causing Bitcoin to go up this isn't causing eth price to go up this is is just a bunch of like longtail like Risk on assets to turn

into like yield Farms that's not a bull market and so I never accounted for uh I never added that onto my bull market time uh but that was a mistake because it totally was the bull market like people were making a ton of money and I learned this from Chris biski is like it's just like it really depends on how much net paper gains the entire industry has and that will determine whether the bull market ends or not uh and so like paper gains have started people's like paper people like we were just talking about like people are receiving billion dollar aird drops not selling them uh like Soul Bros are like massively up haven't sold definitely probably uh like you know nfts are rising like everyone's sitting on like a good healthy stack of paper gains right now and no one's

taking anything off the table because like retail's not in yet and then retail is going to come in and then like we're gonna our paper gains are going to be massive and that's really when the clock starts ticking but like I'm saying we're like we're like approaching halfway through the the bull market which I think is a lot further along than most people think yeah I was going to say about probably timelin about yeah halfway through I was gonna say fourth inning but I think fourth in fourth inning is almost halfway through yeah because you know started the fourth you know we got the fourth we're in the middle of the fourth yeah you know it it's just funny because I my experience was exactly yours I have this really vivid memory of because covid happened that was the big thing that happened last time right so it actually at the

end of if you go back and look at the price action of 2019 you'd be it looks good it looks paper up only not how it felt during that perod felt not until the very end yeah not until the very end and but then Co happened and you were like oh my God is this industry I mean Bitcoin went down to 4,000 and then it started to creep up and I remember I didn't even really start paying attention to it until it went it until it was at like 13 or 14 it was like whoa I have not seen Bitcoin at 14 in a long time right and then I sort of started to watch it heat up and go and go and I really only was like yes it is the bull market after it cleared all-time highs so that's exactly my framework now

because I mean it it's interesting like coinbase earnings came out yesterday and we don't need to go into the weeds of it but you saw the very beginnings of retail was back more than institutional the retail volume was up more than the institutional uh it really it's not even going to show up in their numbers it's weird is coinbase where is coinbase on the the App Store and that has started to jump up and yeah it's like we're starting to see the very early signs but you know what something that's kind of I mean I'd love to get your perspective on this from your bankless ventur seat but one thing that hasn't really started to happen yet is like funds are raising a bunch um I've heard it's actually still kind of tough sledding out there for uh the fundraising environment which is

surprising to me because yeah what do you what do you is that accurate inaccurate um because that was another that's another big marker of when these funds start to get raised funds are deploying bigly uh it's uh valuations of startups have crept up a pretty meaningful amount but nothing over the top nothing like slashy um uh I haven't heard of funds raising but I'm also just not tapped into that that world because like we're done raising so we're not we're not doing that uh we were like one of the only funds to raise in uh what year was that 202 uh2 2023 um you guys crushed it yeah like we were the only ones who could really like away with it um uh I haven't heard of funds raising

um so no but I I wouldn't be the one because like I'm not paying attention to funds like I'm I'm paying attention to portfolio companies and funds are definitely deploying right now like cash is being spit out and there's a lot of startup interest there's a lot of like people are actually building really cool [ __ ] really novel [ __ ] um yeah and so I would definitely call it a pretty like exciting Market nothing is too hot it's definitely a Founders Market not a VC's Market the pendulum has shifted to the founder now um whereas like maybe a year ago it was definitely still on the FEC side of things um but yeah that's that's kind of my take so you don't think the the private markets and public like public market just being liquid tokens I guess in crypto you think they're still

walking relatively similarly or is one crept up in front of the other I I I think so I've heard other people I think I've heard Chris bisy say that like private markets are starting to get like kind of crazy and I I've I've see I know I see what he's talking about but I don't wouldn't call it crazy Chris definitely knows more than me um uh but like everything seems okay to me like uh I'm I'm the bull of bankless Ventures uh Ryan's the the breaks and Bend's like the rationalist um but like at some point like I'm just like guys like these like 50 to 80 million do seed rounds are have become the norm like that is like and they're it's a hot market and this is like and they're like oh that's

really expensive I'm like yeah so was all the other ones like this is just what it is um yeah there I I've heard you know one way of thinking about it is you're a you're a price taker not a make like you just got to find the the best prices that exist out the market will tell you what the valuation is and you just got to decide whether or not you want to take it but uh you guys raised at a really opportune time because it's going to become like we've talked about this before but there's probably a window where especially for or like most people your first and even second cycle you don't make any money because you wait until the the new alltime high you have way less time than you think you know you go small in the beginning but

then the Euphoria kicks in and you invest most of your money at the top where you shouldn't and right there probably is some period of time to just sit on your hands totally I don't know when that is the the I think FTX actually painted an Exemplar model of how everyone fails in a bull market which is they started off cons conservative they started doing like Arbitrage like free Arbitrage trades between Bitcoin and stable coins and then over the bull market they started to become more and more risk on with their trading strategies to the point where they ended where they were like how can we take the most amount of Leverage three capital also did this there were also like a very safe gbtc premium trade and like even before that I can't remember what the trade was but

it even safer is like like riskof trading during the bare market and then as the bull market continued it was like okay we we are down to take price exposure rather than just like time it like settlement uh risk right we'll actually take we'll take upside now and then it was like okay we'll take leverage now oh we'll take even more leverage now and so like they were every everyone who failed was taking leverage at the top whereas like you should be taking leverage at the bottom and then clear it out before the top and then sell at the top that's what everyone ought to be doing but everyone does the opposite everyone just more and more exposure as the markets go up in price I know and I mean the other thing too there a couple other Dynamics about this is there were a lot of funds last cycle

good funds that are still around that went from $10 million in AUM to a billion dollars in AUM and your Universe of investable assets or or opportunities is so much smaller when you have that size and you I I watched this interview that the three arrows guys gave their defense on gbtc was that oh it was a really good trade but you know we couldn't account for other people piling in it's like yeah you actually could account for that and you're supposed to that's supposed to account for that's why you're a professional money manager um you you know and the gbtc thing was just such a hilarious concentric hallucination because those closeand funds always trade at discount Tav it should have been really obvious to this

industry that I just did an interview with a guy who was a huge part of the eth part of that trade and dude it was just I mean it's literally as simple as have you heard that quote there's nothing so damaging to your health as hearing that your neighbor made money it's like that's what it is it's just a couple people made 15 or 16x their their uh what they put in and everyone just fom moded into that trade so right I'm sure the same thing is gonna happen here at this time I just I just don't know what it is uh everyone thinks it's going to be reaking which makes me think it's not gonna be reaking because everyone literally thinks that it's gonna be but I have I have no idea but I think there's like a lot of just like ancient wisdom that people in Wall Street know

that like people in crypto definitely don't know uh and just byy in the fact that like sometimes we're in a bubble and so are they and our bubbles don't mix um but it's not going to be me to bring that over here because I don't know it no I don't know it either actually you know it's funny you I feel like of all people you do know it the most because you interview all the macro people so a golden rule of this that I found interviewing macro people is that you know how when you hear old macro people talk about crypto and you're just like oh my God that's the most cringe take ever uh you do not know what you're talking about it goes the other way too and when you hear crypto people talk about macro you're like oh God you have no

idea I'm not saying that I know enough to make great predictions about macro I definitely don't but I've done enough interviews where I can understand who knows what they're talking about and and who doesn't and I mean one thing that should have been extremely obvious to our industry that wasn't at the time is when they started raising rates we all should have gotten extremely concerned and I was notc I had no frame of reference for this I remember a Jim Bianco tweet saying like the times have changed this is I think maybe he used a term like paradigm shift and I remember this tweet because it burned into my brain I'm like uh Jim biano what what do you mean by that I I don't get it like why why is the a new phase of markets I don't understand and then like 10 months

later I very much understood exactly what he meant I'm very much and so did my portfolio like oh that's what you mean by that the fastest rate hike in history but this is also like why like the the end of last bull market was also just like so weird and maybe it wasn't maybe it ended just the same way it always going to end because everyone was sitting on the mountain of paper games that I was talking about but also we had the fastest interest rate hike that we've had in most Market partisan participants living memory yeah it's I feel like it's always going to be something I I sort of am in the camp that I'm in the Cris Camp of everything that goes up must come down crypto goes up so fast that it must come down although I do think that there's good

reason to believe that it's not different this time but here's here's a trend that's been happening uh since for for basically as long as crypto is in existence every bull cycle becomes slightly more mutant like the peak to trough returns of say Bitcoin as you go along has gone lower and lower and the volatility of Bitcoin and ethereum the assets go lower and lower and the reason for that is really just a law of large numbers things you if Bitcoin Peak to trough returned what it did in the 2011 cycle it'd be the most valuable asset on Earth 10 times over so that just can't happen but uh but that's probably good and then the other thing is these ETFs might have not changed the game but they

might have exacerbated that existing Trend because think about who what was driving the price of Bitcoin in the 2020 to 2021 cycle it was retail foming their stemies into Bitcoin or it was smart money that was front running that retail and so the next the incremental dollar moving into Bitcoin was that hot money retail kind of just chasing this trend but now with the Bitcoin ETFs and soon eth ETFs which I think everyone is generally sleeping on is the next incremental dollar is not a hot money retail dollar it is a slow passive dollar that is moving into Bitcoin now and the people that trade

the Bitcoin ETFs aren't like you and me they don't see oh Bitcoin go up I should probably buy more they say oh bitcoin's up 10% this week it's probably going to mean revert I'm going to sell and that behavior over time is just going to level out the the price appreciation of of Bitcoin so and I think it's gonna happen with eth and that is the way that it should ultimately end up happening I think that's a good thing but I learned this from uh I can't remember um how how press um May and maybe I need to get a second opinion on this but like his big idea was that as soon as we have like sustainable Dependable flows you get less volatility I think that's just like true of any financial asset if you have sustainable flows like volatility goes down um which would be great for like

the pr and Optics if Bitcoin can stop and ether stop being so volatile that that'll be just that's the maturing Market you said that these um markets dampen over time love of large numbers totally true like you can see that in the Bitcoin and the eth volatility but also like looking at the market Market uh bull markets as like invents events in crypto they can still be just like equally frothy as the last one because people will always go down the longtail and like there's no cap on how far down the longtail you can get like yeah we were trading uh like jpegs of text at one point when they one of them like the floor got to 25 eth like that was some extreme frothy [ __ ] and like sometimes like I think it's kind of a little bit

lost to his lost to history but the Ico waterfall of just like the shitcoin waterfall that was in the 2017 like that was an insane time where like it was completely disconnected from reality and it's kind of hard to express it's it's even hard to remember how insane it was I think Eric Vorhees had a tweet where he was talking about like yeah most people are just under indexing about how insane the 2017 Ico Mania was because it's just like lost to memory like it's it's like the memories are smoothed out you can't really remember it's hard to compare to the 2021 bull market um but also I think like with Bitcoin and ether are massively large numbers those are just uh hydraulic pumps down on the longtail and can make the longtail equally frothy no

matter what kind of bll Market it is uh 100% those those arguments never held that much water with me you you hear people talk about you know we're never going to inject 7 trillion doll in the into the market again that was as crazy as it's ever going to get I think 2017 was crazier than 2020 and 2021 I I can't I without confidence I think that's true it felt crazier it was I remember looking at the price I mean the whole first bull market though we had no frame I know but I think that it was just smaller and the prices dude I just remember these things would go up like you know 60 70% a day I I guess maybe I missed the whole nft thing last time which is maybe why I'm doubling down on

it but uh but yeah I I just I don't know equally crazy and there's going to be something equally crazy next time but yeah the longtail of crypto is as interesting as it's ever been I think and it's as dispersed as it's ever been I can't keep up with all the different you know it's it's tough to keep up with everything that's going on um but David what are your thoughts on the the eth ETF in general because I've been see there's a there's an argument on Twitter that it's not gonna being as big of a deal the attractive yeah yeah it's not as attractive to an Institutional audience as as a Bitcoin ETF is what do you think um so I asked uh Sandy from Franklin Templeton about like my my

perspective on ether is that like it's a more um attractive asset for Wall Street surprise the bankless guy thinks that ether is a more attractive asset um just because it's like a tech platform it's like a platform technology play and that just resonates with them like Bitcoin Bitcoin is digital gold okay great uh but ethereum is Tech with like apps and other chains built on top of it and just as a form factor it just is more understanding it's got like you can do DCF analysis on on eth and I know like you want to throw your flag about how to Value networks with a DCF analysis but the point is you can and they will accept it because that is what they understand I think you're I think you're probably right about that David yeah so like it doesn't maybe I'm only like

write a little bit on the fact that like okay Wall Street likes it a little bit more because of the tech play the DCF play but also eth is onethird of the size of Bitcoin so liking it a little bit more for that reason like you multiply that by three because just like it's and and then also this is you know from Van Spencer's Twitter it's like there's just much less float on ether on the on the markets because it's in layer twos it's in igen layer right it's like it's in compound it's in a uh and so like a dollar means a lot more to The Ether price than it does for the Bitcoin price I I think that's going to be the ultimate driving thing people the crypto natives will debate what is e story is it a money or a tech platform is it

yield or is it ultrasound money you know what trafi thinks they don't give a [ __ ] yeah they don't care they just need a story it's like Bitcoin it's the next Bitcoin it's smaller get in now I and and I think another another thing that I don't believe that the bitcoiners have always believed is it's only Bitcoin it's only central banks will only buy Bitcoin and that's the safest one I've just never bought into that idea if anything I think the most the the most realistic outcome is a basket they they love Bas they love baskets like they're already building baskets with bonds equities and Bitcoin in there they're already building the baskets there you go I that's and so there'll be a crypto basket and how many times have you heard

David from maybe someone who was on the older side who I don't really understand this I just want to give me broad exposure like I just want exposure you know they don't so I just I I've never bought into that idea that it's only going to be Bitcoin I think if anything I think if anything right now the Bitcoin ETF has surprised people with the flows yes even the most bullish and more yeah and I don't know if we're in some kind of near PE if you if you do a run rate of 250 trading days $500 million in flows a day you wind up with 100 billion and I think that's that just sounds wrong to me that sounds too high but it's looking like it's going to be a phenomenal success for Bitcoin right people are going to say eth is going to

do something similar to that and Vance pointed this out on on bell curve but bitco eth Bitcoin bottomed the e BTC ratio bottomed like the day of the ETFs and it's probably not to make a prediction but it's probably if it hasn't bottom it's probably it's probably a good bet that's gonna prob yeah so that's and also this is the time salana really messed everyone up you and I have talked about this before yeah the the typical thing that happens during this point of the cycle is everything sells off Bitcoin sells off the least eth is the second least and then everything else is this kind of bucket and then what ends up happening is that's when Bitcoin dominance Peaks then

Bitcoin runs first and then everything else follows and people move out along the risk Spectrum Salon just messed everyone up because it was so there was that idiosyncratic FTX event and so it got drastically underpriced then it got overpriced but this is just really typical stuff for this part of the cycle Bitcoin is running first eth is gonna run again soon so that's that's how I feel about it and the people say it's the ETF narrative but it's probably just what was always going to happen honestly yeah that's probably right that's probably right yeah there's a lot of things like that like uh the the whole interest rates were hiking faster than all time but the bull market was ending like it was we were trading text jpegs

like we're time now yeah like how much longer do you think we would have gone if even if the interest rate thing hadn't happened it couldn't it couldn't have been that much longer I agree what goes up must eventually come down so yeah all right man should we call it here we can call it yeah this was a lot of fun buddy I like these unscripted things raw unvarnished David I think I think people want that David don't they am I I I don't think I think Ryan's the more like varnish one I'm always kind of like more unscripted and shooting from the hip but maybe maybe that's my take that is true in it in the best way in the best way um all right man this is great thank you so much uh what's your Twitter handle if people want to follow you uh I am Mike iolo underscore so you

can follow me there we'll put those in the show notes thanks Mike I really appreciate it thanks partner Cheers Cheers mantle formerly known as bit Dow is the first Dow Le web 3 ecosystem all built on top of Mantle's first core product the mantle Network a brand new high performance ethereum layer 2 built using the op stack but uses IG layer data availability solution instead of the expensive ethereum layer 1 not only does this reduce mantle Network's gas fees by 80% but it also reduces gas fee volatility providing a more stable Foundation ation for mantle applications the mantle treasury is one of the biggest Dow owned treasuries which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the web fre space for mantle mantle already has sub communities from around web 3 onboarded like game s for

web 3 gaming and bybit for tvl and liquidity and on-ramps so if you want to build on the mantle Network mantle is offering a grants program that provides Milestone based funding to promising projects that help expand secure and decentralized mantle if you want to get started working with the first Dow Le layer 2 ecosystem check out mantle at mantle. XYZ and follow them on Twitter at ZX manle arbitrum is the leading ethereum scaling solution that is home to hundreds of decentralized applications arbitrum technology allows you to interact with ethereum at scale with low fees and faster transactions arbitrum has the leading defi ecosystem strong infrastructure options flourishing nfts and is quickly becoming the web 3 gaming Hub explore the ecosystem at portal. arbitrum doio are

you looking to permissionless launch your own arbitrum orbit chain arbitrum orbit allows anyone to utilize arbitrum secure scaling technology to build your own orbit chain giving you access to interoperable customizable permissions with dedicated throughput whether you a developer an Enterprise or user arbitrum orbit lets you take your project to new heights all of these Technologies leverage the security and decentralization of ethereum experience web 3 development the way it was always meant to be secure fast cheap and friction free visit arbitrum doio and get your journey started in one of the largest ethereum communities cell is the mobile first evm compatible carbon negative blockchain built for the real world driving real world use cases like mobile payments and mobile Defi and with Opera minay as one of the fastest

growing web 3 wallets cell is seeing a meteoric rise with over 300 million transactions and 1.5 million monthly active addresses and now cello is looking to come home to ethereum as a layer two optimism polygon matter laabs and arbitrum have all thrown their hats in the ring for the cell layer 2 to build upon their Stacks why the competition the cell layer 2 will bring huge advantage like a decentralized sequencer offchain data availability secured by ethereum validators and one block finality what does that all mean for you with cell layer 2 gas fees will stay low and you can even pay for gas natively using erc20 tokens sending crypto to phone numbers across wallets using social connect but cello is a community governed protocol this means that cell needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard join the conversation

in the cell forums follow cell on Twitter and visit c.org to shape the future of ethereum