UK bullish on crypto, Narrative changes and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #348 - Ethereum Updates

Transcript

hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the delight refuel worry cup the latest news in the ethereum ecosystem i'm your host anthony sosano and today is the 5th of april 2022 all right everyone let's get into it so just an update on uh yesterday around elon musk taking that massive stake in twitter that i spoke about uh the current ceo of twitter agrawal i think that's how you say his name here announced that elon has actually joined twitter's board so this was announced only i mean i'm recording this 20 minutes after this was announced this is a very recent thing uh i mean i'm not surprised that all this happened i mean it makes sense that twitter's largest now largest shareholder would be on the board and then you know elon replied to barag's tweet here and said looking forward to working with prague

and twitter board to make significant improvements to twitter in the coming months and elon also had a poll out today asking if people wanted an edit button which is obviously something that people have asked about on twitter for a very long time uh look you know obviously this isn't directly related to crypto but i think that we all spend so much time on crypto twitter uh i mean i live on it that it kind of like will have an impact here i'm really wondering kind of what implications this has for crypto in terms of what integrations there's gonna be i hope it's not just elon basically integrating doze and that's it i hope that we go further than that as i discussed yesterday i think there's a bunch of things that can be done here um besides something like you know like that simple but i mean twitter's already doing that

sort of stuff like as i mentioned yesterday since jack dorsey left they've just been a very different company which is good i i you know i didn't like twitter under jack dorsey even though he's the founder he became it's funny because like he literally became like one of those other bitcoin maximalists you see on twitter just like a posting about things and calling everything except bitcoin a scam and stuff like that it's just it's kind of crazy to see like someone like jack become that but whatever that's in the past now um going forward i look forward i really do look forward to seeing what changes elon can i can import here because he spends a lot of time on twitter he's obviously got a bunch of companies that he's found they're obviously very successful entrepreneur so i'm hoping that the ideas he puts forward uh a good one

somehow as i said i'm hoping it's not just the doge integration like that would just be super disappointing and it wouldn't really get us anywhere but yeah i'm going to keep paying attention to this and obviously keep talking about it but just wanted to kind of mention that as a follow-up to uh to yesterday all right so some very very big news out of the united kingdom yesterday and this came out shortly after i put out yesterday's refill but basically uh the united kingdom or uk treasury has outlined a plan to regulate stable coins and issuant nft and they've gone you know even further than that and it seems like they're taking a very friendly approach to crypto in general from what i've read it seems like they really want to uh be at the forefront of crypto and basically make the uk a crypto hub again uh

specifically london i mean london was a big financial hub for a very long time i think it kind of got overshadowed um [Music] through the years by other kind of like cities around the world and stuff but it's still it's still a major financial hub don't get me wrong uh but uh this is very positive i mean it's funny because people were saying oh look finally a positive of brexit now i don't have a view on brexit i mean it didn't really concern me but obviously uh the uk kind of like um i'm sorry uh britain left um the eu a little while ago and there's people kind of been like okay why did it lead like this is just pointless all these kind of like um deals are off the table now and like uh you know people didn't think it was a good idea and then

obviously other people who thought it was a good idea that's why it kind of like happened but on top of that there was also the i think last week i spoke about it the eu coming out and basically saying that they were going to regulate crypto very heavily that they weren't taking a friendly approach to it and then you have the uk coming out and being like you know what we're going to take a friendly approach to to crypto and basically in direct opposition to what the eu is doing now it's funny because like you kind of think to yourself is the uk only doing this because they want to oppose what the eu is doing uh specifically because this news has come out so soon after the the eu zone news around crypto i mean i'm sure there's an element of that but at the same time i saw that uh kobe has

actually been in contact with some of the relevant people uh uh within the uk kind of like government or i guess like around the uk maybe not within the uk government i think there was a law firm or someone who kind of like does um does uh policy advocating and lobbying and stuff like that or some some group that does that uh kobe's i saw on twitter has been in contact with them so he's kind of like had a hand there but yeah it just seems like a very positive development out of the out of the uk here and you got some quotes here from from uh from some people in the government that say we want to see the businesses of tomorrow and the jobs they create here in the uk and by regulating effectively we can give them the confidence they need to think and invest

long term uh and then they're also issuing an nft which is pretty cool and stuff like that so yeah it seems that they really want to be a forward-looking place for crypto they really want to embrace it they want to do the exact opposite of what the eu is doing and it's very very positive and you know the funny thing is like i remember a few weeks ago you guys requested that i talk about uh regulations and kind of like my view on on crypto and my view on government's banning it and whatnot as and i think one of the things i said then was that you're going to find that some governments or some regulatory bodies are going to be harsher than others and then others will go the complete opposite direction that's exactly what we're seeing here the eu seems to be you

know want to be very harsh with crypto want to come down hard on it and then the uk comes out and says well no we're going to embrace this we think it's a technology that has a lot of long-term viability and we want to be at the forefront of all the innovation so yeah there's there's no point kind of like saying that crypt all the governments in the world are going to ban crypto they're going to do this they're going to do that like there are going to be different approaches depending on what government it is and you know some of the traditionally um traditionally friendly jurisdictions that people have kind of like talked about before like singapore is actually turning a bit of a uh a kind of like um they're taking the turn for the worst there and they seem to be clamping down on crypto as well and

people thought singapore was like uh i mean still still do to some extent but they were kind of like bullish on singapore because of the fact that there was um zero percent capital gains tax from what i understand um and you know there's only very few places in the world that that kind of like have that and that are desirable to live and the places that do it slowly introducing capital gains tax anyway because you know they realize that they're kind of like countries literally just a tax haven uh and stuff like that so so yeah it's it's it's kind of like it's going to be interesting to see what the world looks like in 10 years because it's going to take a while for this to play out but you know which countries and which kind of like uh government bodies and which regulations

which nation states have embraced crypto and which ones have kind of like heavily regulated it and basically forced all the innovation out of the respective jurisdiction and how do they fare in terms of like economic economic output employment uh opportunity all that sort of stuff i mean i obviously i'm taking the the bets and will always take the bet that the countries that embrace crypto as an ecosystem as an industry are going to do very very well over the next 10 20 30 years just like the ones that embrace the internet did very very well uh and looking at other countries like america it seems like it's funny because if you look at um the the um the regulatory bodies in america and you look at them in a vacuum so look at the sec

they're really really shitty right i've talked about the sec before and i've talked about how they kind of like have a really crappy view of of crypto right now gary ganzler doesn't seem to be very friendly towards it but then you look at the other regulatory bodies and they seem to be much friendlier and i think i actually think like america is going to come out pretty positive uh in the end with crypto i think they're going to keep doing well i think i i think slowly the sec will gary genzler will get pushed out and there'll be a new sec chair and and they'll you know more likely than not be crypto friendly just because the other um regulatory bodies out there are already crypto friendly they want to be aligned on everything and it's just kind of like better to do that especially as an

administration i'm invited to sign that executive order which is actually a positive thing about kind of like doing more research into crypto before regulating it making sure people have a chance to kind of give feedback and all that sort of stuff there so so yeah anyway really really bullish news out of the uk here i'm super excited about this i hope that my own country follows suit here australia with their kind of like i guess like regulatory um work and just like anything in general we seem to follow other western countries especially uh you know the us and the uk and pa and other western parts of europe so i think that we'll be all right as long as the us and uk and other parts of of western europe are all right as well with crypto so i'm very much looking forward to that but has

actually not been too bad um even though they're a follower they haven't tried to kind of like do anything egregious towards crypto uh the tax situation is still you know broken as hell just like it is in pretty much everywhere in the world you know doing crypto taxes is just the worst thing in the world no matter where you are right now i don't know of any country that actually has it easy to you know it's easy to do crypto taxes and the one i think funny thing is from what i understand that even though the zero percent capital gains taxes in places like singapore and you know a few other places there you still have to kind of like document your trade and document your investments and kind of like file that as part of your tax return someone correct me if i'm wrong but like from my understanding

that's still how it is and that stuff is still quite difficult so yeah i i i'm curious to see which country actually sorts out that first and and you know that would actually attract a a fair few people to their to their borders and and they would be happy to pay the tax as long as they understood how to pay and then have to go through all the headache of kind of like calculating and all that sort of stuff um but yeah gonna leave it at that uh very very cool to see the uk embrace uh crypto and uh i'll be keeping an eye on what happens here all right so i put out this tweet just before uh basically a very basic tweet i've talked about this on the refill plenty of times but i wanted to touch on it again today where i said you know

easy mode outperforming usd hard mode outperforming ether and obviously i'm talking about investing in the market it's not necessarily kind of like trading uh and i think you know as i said i've talked about this a lot before but i wanted to add a bit more context here our performing usd is not hard to do especially when usd is inflating so much especially when usd is programmed to lose its purchasing power over time given that it's inflationary you can outperform usd very very easily by literally just buying an index fund not even in crypto outside of crypto the s p 500 for example you can buy that and on average you'll return eight to ten percent a year and outperform you know usd uh now that's not obviously factoring in inflation and stuff like that but you're making a gain against

usd if factoring in inflation i mean inflation has been traditionally high now factor all that in you're still kind of like outperforming even if it's only a little bit but on the flip side if you're benchmarking against eighth as a as a crypto asset especially if you're investing in crypto as i've mentioned plenty of times it's extremely hard to outperform ether over the long term short term you can you know you actually can like and you cannot perform either a lot in the short term if you catch the right waves but if you're a long term investor and you want to invest in something and kind of like hold it for a while and outperform ethan a big way it's going to be very hard because if you look back at the golden kind of like children from d5 summer those defy tokens back then that

everyone was super bullish on that actually in the short term very much outperformed each by a lot they've been absolutely crushed against eth and i always go back to examples such as uh the wi-fi token that i believe got to 110 eighth per wi-fi so if you could trade one at the top you could trade one wi-fi token for 110 eighth crazy right yes guess what it is today it's around six or seven eighth so you can only trade one wife one wire five for one uh for six or seven east today whereas back in i believe it was at the top i believe was maybe september 2020 or something like that you could have gotten a you know 110 eight for it now obviously you

have to try time though that top and not many people did but it's just kind of like illustrates my point that it's crazy how much they can underperform because for example the reason why things underperform eighth so easily is because if you buy something and it goes up against kind of like usd and ethan the short term and then eth suddenly wakes up and starts going up and then the token you bought actually goes down in usd not only is it going down in usd it's going down against ethan ethan's going up which means you're getting hit with a double whammy because you're you're basically i mean everyone who's got that coin is probably selling it to chase the eighth pump a lot of the traders would be doing so uh so it's going down against usd in eighth and then eighth is going up so it's just a crazy amount of

underperformance there and that's the primarily the number one reason why it's so hard to outperform eighth but i think there's a lot of other things that go into this as well such as eth just having the best tokenomics out of anything in crypto like i believe as an asset eth has the most reason to appreciate out of anything in crypto doesn't matter if it's bitcoin if it's if there's another l1 or if it's another kind of token out there and i'm not talking about the gravity of our performance obviously a token that has a 10 million market cap can go 10x very easily whereas 10x for 8 would be kind of much harder to do but i'm talking about like actual long-term value accrual to it i mean look at eats tokenomics right it's a staking token it's a fee token where the fees get

burned it's used as collateral within d fight it's a story of value it's a money i mean we have an issue introduction coming up like it's and not only is it that the fees being burned tens of millions of dollars worth of atheists being burned every day via those fees so when you you know when you take all that into account there's literally nothing else out there that that has the tokenomics of eth and not only does not have the tokenomics of each because anyone can copy aids to economics it doesn't have that value accrual like any network could spin up and basically like okay we're a staking fee token we burn the fees you know you can use this as collateral uh you can use this as a story of value in money but people wouldn't right there's very few things that people use as money in crypto and

ethic is one of them you know the majority of the money used in crypto is stable coins but ethys is used within the nft ecosystem a lot as money um and you know obviously being used to pay fees which again you can't fake especially burning them because you would have to burn tens of millions of dollars a day to fake that uh which obviously barely anyone can afford to do for very long even the biggest whales in this ecosystem so that's why it's i mean those are the two main reasons why it's hard to outperform either one because you get hit with a double whammy if you've held something and then it starts going up against it and it starts going down and two just eats tokenomics are the best in the ecosystem it's not even close to be honest guys like it really isn't

in terms of like long longevity of the tokenomics as well because the fees have been high for since d5 summer it's been almost two years since the fees started being really really high because compound started d5 summer in june 2020 where in april it's literally almost been two years and i think for a month or two maybe gas got two single digits again but mostly it's been you know at least over 20 way which would put us at the flight in that deflationary post merge anyway uh so taking all that into account you see why it just out outperforms even though it's a much larger market cap and won't give you like a 10x within six months for example uh but you know over the long term i believe it will you know we'll go up 10x

i believe it's going to go to 100k long term and long term being you know five 10 years sort of thing uh and i believe you know 10k it could happen way sooner than any of us think like it could happen this year guys like there's no reason in my mind why i can't 10k is not very far from here especially because we have all these bullish catalysts coming up with the merge and and uh and continued scaling and stuff like that and narrative getting much better around 8th yeah i just yeah i mean i you guys know this i'm literally preaching to the choir but i felt like it was worth repeating um but again not investment advice like i'm not gonna go tell you not to buy something because it might outline perform eighth or what to buy to outperform eighth like honestly i

don't even do much public market investing these days because of the fact that i find it hard to outperform eat as well like if i the way i look at it if i have money and i want to buy something on the public markets i really just buy eighth if i buy anything else it's i kind of like i don't like holding much else because of the fact that uh it's very hard to kind of like top time those tops and bottoms against usd let alone against 8th and i'd rather just kind of like uh you know play it safe and buy some eighth get another 32 eighth and then stake it for uh you know stake another validator like that's kind of like my jam but everyone has their own situation every everyone's very unique in what they do uh and you know my situation doesn't necessarily mean uh

it doesn't necessarily map to yours it probably doesn't right like i'm i'm in a very different position here but yeah just a bit of uh kind of like as i said not advised but just a bit of kind of like context around this tweet that i put out i hope you guys got value out of that there but anyway moving on to the next update here or at least a tweet from suzuha who said imo there is a huge amount of info information asymmetry around ethereum mistake the average response i get from tech people on here is that earth proof of stake is theoretical and will never happen it isn't common knowledge that it has been running for one and a half years now and is about to be merged i mean again preaching to the choir here guys you know this i've told you guys so

many times that the amount of people who actually understand i guess the merge the implications of the merge the issue introduction the fact that there's gonna be that six at least six month dead period a dead zone period of no new eat coming to market is tiny then factor in the amount of people who actually realize that ethereum proof of stake is live as part of the beacon chain it has been live for one and a half years again small group of people then factor in the amount of people who actually believe that the emerge is going to happen and go through successfully you know a small set of people as well it's just i mean and you know i saw a tweet from dc investor the other day who said the same thing where he said i underestimated uh a kind of like how

bullish the merge would be and how how kind of like good it would be from the ethereum narrative and that's the thing like i've been telling you guys that a lot of people are underestimating this because they really did believe that a lot more people were aware of this sorts of stuff but like to contextualize this for you 99 of people in this ecosystem will get their information from really really shitty sources and these sources will not give them accurate information will not talk about the things that i talk about especially not in depth all they're going for is the click bait sound bites thumbnails titles that can get them the most viewers so they can show their referral links show their coins and kind of like make their money that way uh so it you know that and if you kind of like look at the view count of what

my videos get versus what someone like a bit boy gets it's a it's it's a huge difference so and when you fact and when you factor into the account that a lot of people especially the new people into this ecosystem have zero context and all they see when they've they use ethereum is the high fees and then they kind of like see these other chains that are advertising lower fees they probably think ethereum's a scam it's kind of like milking me dry yes it makes no sense when when you kind of like learn more about ethereum and you you realize it and makes no sense to us who know these things but to the casual new observer right they kind of like have a sour experience now obviously we're alleviating this with layer twos and things like that but but i mean we can't expect people to to

realize especially new people to realize all this stuff and that's another reason why i'm so bullish is that they will in time i think as more people learn about these sorts of stuff especially the bigger money they'll come in they'll stake their eat they'll realize the implications of the merge they'll want to keep stacking eighth because they'll realize not only is that obviously the merge but there's the burning of the fees there's all the other stuff i talk about and uh and and yeah i think eventually people clue in but by the time they clue in the alpha i mean i think the alpha is still there a lot right now but it's funny because the alpha was it was it was much bigger alpha in 2019 to buy eighth and then realize you know how big dfi could get realized that uh you know the merge was

eventually coming it was going to be a proof of stake realized that eth was becoming like a money and a store of value obviously buying eth back then between 100 and 200 was much more profitable um or at least has been more profitable than buying it like two thousand dollars but still there is a lot of alpha to be had in just kind of being on top of these things and realizing that these things kind of like exist uh exist there but yeah it's good great tweet from suzuha here today all right another tweet here from advanced spencer another great tweet where he says the 2021 narrative was that alt l1 have solved blockchain scaling eth 2.0 is too little too late the 2022 narrative is now ultr ones haven't been able to scale most all of them have structural issues eth 2.0 plus rollups are the most viable to scale

blockchains in the near term funny how things change obviously i agree with this and it really is funny how the narrative changes i would say that there are rather large cohorts of people that still think that ethereum's design the modular design with rollups and all that sort of stuff is not the best way for it there's a lot of people who think that avalanche has the best scaling design with subnets which boggles my mind because subnets are literally just side chains and they've been around for a very long time there's nothing innovative there and i guess they get that avalanche has their own consensus mechanism stuff like that but guys like i mean that that doesn't to me that doesn't move the needle at all to me that doesn't really mean anything um and i don't think it really means anything for scalability uh and then obviously

there's like the solana's of the world where they're taking a completely different approach where they're kind of like you know we're gonna do everything at least one and they've got like a bunch of people on there who believe in that vision and it's fine to believe in that vision but you know i think they're wrong obviously and i think the if the ethereum scaling vision is right but just to kind of like vance's tweet here what he's talking about when he talks about like kind of like structural issues is you know for example solana not being able to handle the load because they have no fee market and the bots just spam the network and the network falls over and now they're talking about implementing a fee market and i've casually joked to some friends that i feel like solana over the long term is just going to end up looking

like ethereum because they're just going to rediscover all of the issues that ethereum has already been aware of and walk back a lot of their design decisions to basically fix their blockchain and those design decisions being you know unlimited throughput for everyone at layer one not embracing layer twos uh you know completely centralizing with um with data centers and stuff like that which is very very hard to walk back mind you uh but yeah a lot of that kind of like stuff going on and there's other ones like avalanche on the um the c chain given that it's a geth fork you know it hit scaling limits when they when they reach the gas limit on there and and basically the fees went up and then they just increased the gas limit which you guys know is not a great kind of long-term solution but they did that

and the fees came down again the fees are still relatively kind of like high on and not as cheap as they used to be on on those chains um and then other issues around kind of like the um cosmos ecosystem i believe with like cross-chain stuff and people being bearish on cross-chain but bullish on multi-chain you know there are these things that exist today whether they can be fixed or not in the future remains to be seen everyone's taking their bets on on different things i obviously believe that the ethereum scaling roadmap the modular road map but not just for ethereum but for other chains out there maintains is embracing the modular roadmap uh obviously celestia is doing it as well um i believe that's the the best long-term scaling solution and i think a lot of more people are clueing into that and i think people have kind

of gone bearish on some of these l1 but these l1 now have large war chests they're spending lots of money on gaining developers and developing mindshare and liquidity mining and stuff like that so they'll be around for a while uh but yeah it's just funny how quickly the narrative changes and i i think that with the l2s being live people being able to use the l2s and them actually working and then being relatively cheap especially compared to ethereum l1 it just further changes the narrative and as soon as these l2s have tokens guys like it's going to get even wilder like the narrator is going to completely change everyone's going to be shilling these l2 tokens and i i think that the l1s will probably lose out just based on the narrative war as well because everyone's going to be like well i can own eighth i

can own these l2 tokens why do i care about these other l1 tokens and and kind of like stuff like that so yeah that's uh it is it is what it is uh like that now and we'll see what the narrative continues to be throughout the rest of this year all right so uh actually i'm going to save this to the end there's a couple other things i wanted to get through first so danny ryan published a blog post today or at least kind of i guess added to the blog post about the client incentive program about the um going through the the full technical details of how the ethereum foundation's client incentive program will work now you guys will remember that the client incentive program was something that the ethereum foundation spun up in order to give a total of 144 validators or 4 68 to each client team

to operate on on main and this is a way to basically keep them aligned it has vesting and stuff like that and get them incentivized to keep building good mainnet software and now as danny ryan says here full technical details of how this all works have been added to uh to the blog post here so if you're interested in kind of reading through this you can it'll be linked in the youtube description below and speaking of uh core protocol development lighthouse has a new release today so if you're running the lighthouse client this is actually a major release this release implements something called proposer boost which is an incentives improvement that also mitigates an attack uh if they're saying the release is low priority besides kind of i guess the proposer boost feature but you can update in the coming weeks the attack isn't critical but the

network needs to needs to be patched here so if you're running lighthouse be sure to update your validator it's actually quite easy as a solid sticker to update your validator you literally just restart it and it just auto updates in the background there so here very very easy to do that uh there all right finally here we have a really great thread from wesley who has put together a bunch of links and resources to help you get around and explore amsterdam if you're heading to devconnect now obviously i am heading to dev connect and i am i'm kind of like um going to make use of this thread and a bunch of other threads that he kind of linked to in his thread and and what i really like is that he kind of circled the areas here of where you should stay in amsterdam it's probably going to be

hard to find accommodation this close to the event now um but i'm staying in this area as well i'm staying like near where the canals are and one of the hotels there i'm not gonna dock i'm not gonna dock myself completely there but i'm staying in one of one of the hotels there uh but yeah i'll be around like i mean i'm pretty sure the venues are kind of like right one of them's right in the heart of amsterdam here like right in the center and then the other ones off to kind of like the right in the uh near the eastern docklands park another kind of like nemo science museum there so guys like i am super pumped for amsterdam as you guys know it's my first real kind of like conference or first ethereum conference since 8th denver 2020 so it's been over two years i am so

excited to meet all the people that i've made friends with over the past couple of years in the ethereum ecosystem i'm so excited to just vibe with each people again i'm speaking at a bunch of events i'm judging the amsterdam uh kind of like hackathon and uh and i've told you guys my schedule before which events i'm going to i'm just just really really pumped and i hope a lot of you guys are going to be there a lot of the the listeners if you are definitely uh come come find me at one of the events that i'm going to be at uh damning me for like a beer or to kind of like catch up it's probably going to be very hard my dms are already a mess and i'm probably not going to be checking my phone very often while i'm at the

conference so yeah just come to me i'm gonna be wearing my hat you'll be up i have the beard and everything i have my look going it'll be very easy to spot me um but yeah feel free don't be shy literally come to me say hey uh and and and you know we can catch up and and meet and all that sort of stuff there but uh yeah as i said very much looking forward to this and i think the funny thing is i was looking at the rest of the conferences for the year i'm undecided about which ones i'm going to go to i'm definitely going to try and get to devcon in october but besides that i don't know which other ones i want to go to because being in australia to travel to both europe and the us is usually 20 plus

hours of travel time um and if it's only going to be for a two or three day conference then it's kind of pointless so either i make a holiday out of it uh and like and just do the conference and then and then kind of go on a holiday with my fiance or something or there are other back-to-back events around it that's why i kind of like devconnect tr is because basically there's a lot of events it's kind of like a you know a week-long thing and then i can enjoy amsterdam and then after that as well i'm actually going to be going to paris for three days too before flying home so that you know and europe's good like that because everything's so close uh but anyway i'm rambling there definitely check out this thread from wesley if you are going to amsterdam but i think

that's it for today so thank everyone for listening and watching be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet give the video a thumbs up subscribe to the newsletter join the discord channel and i'll catch you all tomorrow thanks everyone