War Is Back. Saylor Sold. Bitcoin Went Up Anyway?

Transcript

Bankless Nation, another Friday, another week. It's time for the Bankless Weekly roll up. Ryan, how you doing? >> I'm great, David. I was really excited to celebrate the 4th of July, you know, the uh 250th anniversary. It is actually July one. >> This is the I think is this the 10th? This is the 11th year of existence for Ethereum. Is that right? >> July 11th. Correct. >> Correct. No, is it 10th? >> 11th. >> Yeah. The Ethereum blockchain started sometime in July in 2015. So this makes it Ethereum 11 years old. >> Yeah. So where do you think Ethereum will be?

>> So forget America's birthday. Happy birthday Ethereum. >> 250 years from now. Do you where do you think Ethereum will be? >> Still predicting bucks. >> Give me an E price prediction. [laughter] >> I don't know if the dollar is the correct denominator at that point in 250 years. I mean the dollar's got Lindy, but I don't know if it's got 250 more years of Lindy. Not to say anything about Ethereum's 11 years of Lindy. >> Well, we are not going to be around, so it's not going to be our problem unless you do the Brian Johnson thing. >> I I think there's a very solid chance that at least I will be around because I am at least trying half-heartedly to do that.

>> Well, you might need a new uh rollup co-host then cuz I I'm not sure about myself. >> What do we got this week? >> This week, the ceasefire with Iran is over. We uh the United States struck 80 targets over two days across Iran. Iran hit back with US bases in Bahrain and Kuwait and oil sanctions on Iran are back on. So, how are the markets responding to all of this? We did it during market hours this week. You know, usually Trump waits for, you know, Friday at 400 p.m. after the market closes. >> Yeah. He did that like four times. Like, it's Friday at 4 p.m. It's time to bomb Iran. But there's a ceasefire and then now it's seemingly over. Trump's got some words to say. Uh there's also Michael Sailor. Uh once upon a time, you

know, in distant memory, he sold 32 Bitcoin and Bitcoin dropped like 20%. Uh this week, Sailor sold 3,588 Bitcoin and Bitcoin went up 3%. Huh. You told me you think that marks the bottom. We we got to dive into what your your thoughts are on that. Also, the Robin Hood chain finished its first full week in production with a killer use case that's emerging. We'll talk about what that is >> when you've never seen this use case before. Brand new meta in crypto. We've never seen it.

>> Speaking of brand new, there's a new Ethereum road map. Uh brought to you by Vitalic. At least he published it. He pushed it out. It's called the straw man. I really get the feeling Oh, straw map. Oops, not straw man. Uh I really get the feeling they wanted to call this Ethereum 3.0, but like just didn't because of phrases. >> He didn't say the third phase. I know he didn't say that. >> Just say it. It's this is Ethereum 3.0, folks. >> We're on We're on Ethereum 3.0. We'll weigh in on that. Okay. >> We never really knew when 1.0 ended and 2.0 started and it's going to be the same thing now. >> Um 2.0 started with the merge. 1.0 was when the whole thing kicked off 11 years ago. Uh 10 years ago, excuse me. Yeah, that's fair. Okay.

>> Uh the merge was two. >> Um I guess we've been into for a while. I >> Yeah, it's a little bit like thesis ship though because the merge we we ejected the consensus layer and added a new one, but the execution layer stayed the same. >> We'll get into it. I think it's Ethereum 3.0 at least. Um but let's start with Iran, the the big news uh around the world. What happened with Iran? >> Uh so two major waves of air strikes uh on July 8th and 9th across Iran, targeting 170 military sites in total. So I would imagine this was a pretty big in terms of strikes, which was a pretty big one. Uh this was in direct retaliation for Iran attacking three commercial vessels in the Straight of Hormuz earlier this week, which the United States characterized as a clear

violation of the existing truce. So, I'm guessing what happened here is like we decided to like see what we can do with pushing boats through the straight of Hormuz and seeing what Iran would allow and Iran was like, "Well, we're going to strike those ships and they struck those three ships and and then, you know, the United States just escalated." Uh, and so here we are. So, I think the big question is, is the ceasefire over? Like, are we just back to war with Iran? Let's go ask uh the Donald himself. Let's see what he said. >> Have any questions? >> Mr. PRESIDENT, >> IS [laughter] THE CEASEFIRE OVER? IS IS THE CEASEFIRE DONE? IS theou dead?

>> It's a very interesting question. To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people. And they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Woodco, Jared Kushner, but they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. We make a deal. And they if I make a deal with him, we have a deal. And he goes out, [clears throat] he talks. We make a deal. Everyone's agreed. No nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside,

talk to the press, they say, "We never even talked about it. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo." As far as I'm concerned, it's over. As far as I'm concerned, it's over is what he says. Now, uh Ryan, you would expect markets to just be in turmoil across there. I just like >> that sounds pretty over, but it's also it's Donald Trump. >> Okay, that's Donald Trump. So, I feel like he said those words previously, talking about ending the, you know, Iranian civilization, all sorts of things, and then was back like, "Oh, these guys are great. Let's make a deal.

We got a great deal. These are beautiful people. Respect." and now he's back to what he was before. So I don't know from anyone else I'd be like that's so this is so over. But from Trump it's like okay [laughter] >> right and I think the markets are saying exactly what you're saying. So looking at the oil prices as like the indicy of how over is this. It's not that over uh or actually somewhere in the middle. So like oil prices jumped from $68 for WTI up to $71. That's up 5%. which is in the grand scheme of the war. That's like nothing.

>> On this chart? >> Oh, this is this is the entire war. This is the entire war. >> Wait, this is the entire Wait, entire war? >> Yeah. So, these are weekly candles. >> 200 week. I see you're doing this. This is the weekly candles. And so, here I'll go to daily candles. Um, and so yeah, like >> I mean, we're doing fine. >> Yeah, cuz we were above 100 at various points in the war, right? Like as high as 112. Is that what this as as high as 112 and then it was ranging between85 and 112 and then the lows which we were at 3 days ago was $67 and we were at below $72.

>> So the market kind right the market thinks it's over I mean not sorry not over it's just like not a big deal like >> it's not a big deal. Yeah. And I I think like the Trump administration did a phenomenal job in my opinion doing expectation management with the markets as it was to the war when the war was actually in its height. They really just like they only struck on the weekends. Then it was like peace time between Monday through Friday during market hours. But then once the weekend hit, it was war time. And [laughter] and they did that so long that like now that like we're striking Iran again, the market's like whatever. like we'll add 3% to the oil prices, but we're moving on. It showed up a little bit in the indices,

but really like the NASDAQ and the S spy are fantastically green today. So, there was like a red blood bath on like Tuesday, but it was one day. >> It kind of implies that the market is calling the shots on this war, which is sort of bizarre, but maybe that's what's going on. But it also implies that I mean Trump has a really a real weakness around this. Iran knows what's happening. They could do the same analysis you just did and just be like Trump is not going to do anything if the markets go down. And so they can exploit that. They have all sorts of ways to exploit that. I guess that's not my interpretation. My interpretation is that the market doesn't care. Donald Trump gets to do whatever he wants cuz the market is what will push Donald into a corner, not Iran. And so like Donald

just saw got away with two days of strikes across Iran and the market was like whatever. We're just gonna cough a little bit and go >> right. I'm choosing to just like not let it affect my >> I think you're allowed to not think about it. That's what the market doing. That's what I've been doing. That's what the market agrees with me on that. >> Let's look at the crypto prices. So Bitcoin up 2% this week. We're at $63,000. Uh ETH up 2% this week at 1750. Uh, and then stretch I think is the most interesting thing. Trading at $86. Stretch from uh, strategy. It's trading 14% off. I think this is kind of starting to like find some sort of equilibrium about like how comfortable people are holding stretch and the yield at $86. Uh, $100 is too high, but $70 is

too low. And the other indicator of like health of this bull market, Ryan, that's the stretch and master micro strategy is like the crypto health of side of things. DRAM is like the momentum of the AI stocks. It's kind of come off of its highs from $80 down to $60 and up to 65. And so I kind of think the memory stocks, the AI trade is uh kind of consolidating right now. It's not going too high, not going too low. And it's a little bit of of a pause, but as far as I'm concerned, like the market, the trend is still in the market's favor. These are all my takes.

>> Um what about this? What about this big Michael Sailor sale then? I mean, the market seemed to absorb that, which was somewhat unexpected, I suppose, cuz this is um a $200 million sale here. I mean, that's not it's it's less than it's about half a percent of all Micro Strategy holdings, but that's the first time that strategy has sold in size. It's a big amount. Uh it indicates more to come or more could come from somebody previously in previous regimes thought of as just an accumulator. You know the strategy sailor does not sell. It only buys and outsold and the market shrugged that off. So what what happened here and

what do you think this means? The biggest piece of information for me on on this is Sailor sold a lot in comparison to what he sold last time. So 32 ETH or 32 Bitcoin is what he sold last time. He sold 3,588. So way more. He raised $216 million, which is like one and a half months of dividend coverage. So in terms of like buying time, he didn't buy himself that much time. So it's we're going from like micro sales to small sales of Bitcoin. >> Still, to your point, it's only 45 days he bought.

>> Yeah, you're right. It's still very small. And so I do think it's bullish that Michael Sailor is selling because he needs to become in my opinion irrelevant to the market. And when there is such a large overhang from Sailor and he has such a large obligation for dividends, that's just going to define the Bitcoin price because that's what the market is going to be looking at. And Sailor needs to, in my opinion, puke up some Bitcoin so he can absolve himself of some sins and like get 30 plus months of dividend uh coverage short up. And so he sold he's selling, but in my opinion, he's not selling enough. But it is notable that the Bitcoin price has gone up this week despite Sailor selling 3,588 Bitcoin. Do

you think Bitcoin price in the market is just saying um they're accepting the fact that he's going to puke up some some Bitcoin? But so long as he pukes it up in an orderly fashion the way everyone can kind of absorb and it's not unexpected. You know, markets hate uncertainty. This is sort of some certainty in the market that they can predict. Yeah, sure he's going to puke up a little bit, but he's going to do it in orderly fashion according to a plan. It's not going to be a graceless collapse or unwind. It's just going to be something that now happens. And I guess the market is bullish on that because they've removed some uncertainty. This is how strategy is going to solve its its STRC um you preferred dilemma. Yeah. Funding problem.

>> Yeah. Yeah. When he sold his 32 bitcoin and then bitcoin dropped like 20% from like 70 down to like 58 or,000 or whatever. Like I don't think it was the market responding to that 32 bitcoin sale. It was the market anticipating much larger sells like this coming in the future. And perhaps this is the first of a handful of these. Hopefully, in my opinion, the first of many where Sailor actually does again puke up some Bitcoin to shore up his defenses so he the market can kind of move on. And so the drop in Bitcoin price way back way back a month and a half ago or whatever was front running all of that future selling this selling and all of that future selling giving Sailor kind of terrible execution on the sale. Like

he's buying the top and then selling the bottom. But nonetheless, like this is I think what it takes for us to kind of just clear this debt that we have. >> Well, let me ask you if you what you think this might imply. So do you think now that the market has and sailors seemingly resolved the the problem here, right? we have a path towards resolution. You just keep doing this type of sale in an orderly way, however frequently you want to do it. It's not a problem right now. It's going to be very orderly. Um, so that removes the sailor micro strategy blow up risk. I guess what I'm asking your probability last time that we saw the bottom was what like 50%.

>> 40 to 50%. Yeah. >> Yeah. Has that gone up or down? >> Yeah, that's gone up. So because when we bought them at like $57,000, Sailor was selling into that with this sale. And so to me, like and so when I said it was 40 to 50% probability, I didn't know, no one knew that Sailor was selling at that time. Had I known that Sailor was actually selling into that, I'd be like, "Oh, he's the forced seller selling into the bottom. This is what a bottom looks like." So my probability is going up. >> So now you're waiting your waiting is basically that you're you're what 60% something like this.

60% chance that you seen the bottom that 58k was the bottom. >> 57 and a halfk I think was the pico bottom. >> Okay. >> What about you? Has that changed? >> My probability has not changed. I think I'm like remain un unaffected by the sailor thing and I'm probably more influenced by um Michael Nato and the work that he's doing and his >> I haven't listened to you guys' episode yet this week. What what do you guys think? >> His probability that we've seen the bottom is 45%. So, his probability that we have not seen the bottom that we go to lower lows is 65%. >> Okay. >> And he's like, uh, limit orders at 55K or so.

>> And what we're like, it's the same same. >> That's the first limit set of limit orders. Then you got 50k limit orders and then you could get into this into the 40s if things get really ugly. and like 40 is kind of a um 6, you know, 3 64% something like this draw down from all-time highs which would be commensurate with kind of the trend that we've seen. And his reasoning is kind of different. He's looking at, you know, >> hold the coin switching hands from different cohorts. And he's also looking at volume numbers and he's like, we haven't seen the volume that we typically see in these kind of mark the bottom capitulation type events. He really wants to see some heavy volume on the buying and the selling. I will agree

with that signal that it was not this bottom was not a violent bottom and all the other bottoms have been violent. >> That said, look, his portfolio is something like um 70% in crypto now, 30% cash, right? So, he's still the weight of, you know, >> on the the bullish side of things. >> He's leaned exposure like after like right before 1010, he went to like 80% cash, right? Yeah, he did. Yeah. So, he's he's totally swi switched and bought in. He just he's he's he's >> he's pretty convicted than I am. >> Yeah. [laughter] Little slower to call. A little slower on the draw there.

>> There's one more angle of the Sailor thing that I want to talk to you about because I think it's kind of actually important. Um there was this like they had they released the like statement or whatever they're filing about the selling of their Bitcoin price and there was like a a bunch of words that has come with this and so there are now there are three buckets in their like digital framework monetization framework shenanigans >> which is just how they're going to sell or >> how they're going to sell. And so there there's three different categories for how strategy sells Bitcoin. There is the build the reserve category which they have that's the authorization that they have authorized themselves to sell $1.25 billion for the USD reserve. That's one type of authorized sale of Bitcoin.

>> So that's just like emergency fund cash padding that kind of thing. That's what the reserve is. >> I don't know if it's emergency fund. It's just cash. >> Rainy day rainy day fund. >> Yeah. Then there's cover the preferreds, which is you sell Bitcoin to pay the fixed dividends and interest strategy owes on its preferred shares and debt or to replenish the reserves after they pay them. When management decides to sell Bitcoin beats uh beats issuing common stock, so after they pay out like their monthly dividend or bi-weekly or however long they're doing it, >> they're allowed to sell Bitcoin to immediately replenish those dividends.

And then there is a third bucket which is just to fund buybacks which they are allowed to sell Bitcoin to repurchase its preferred shares MSTR stock up to $1 billion of each with Bitcoin sales potentially covering related taxes fees and expenses. So there's three different buckets for how they sell Bitcoin. That 1.25 billion authorization that they authorize themselves to which they don't need to do but they did >> is is untouched by this sale of $216 billion a million dollars of Bitcoin. This that is the cover the preferreds category not the build the reserves category. The build the reserves category they have still authorized themselves $1.25 billion of a of a permission to sell Bitcoin. And this sales from this week is not in that

bucket. It's in the cover the preferred bucket which is an limitless bucket. They can sell as much Bitcoin as they need to cover the preferred. >> Okay. So they're just saying all of the sales we made this week didn't count toward the number we gave you last week. They also redeem that. We authorize that to not count, >> right? So, I [laughter] don't know what I get from that other than the selling could continue. And >> yeah, they can do whatever they want. What are all these words for, [laughter] dude? >> Well, I'm glad we talked about that and cleared all that up, dude. >> What do we have next?

>> Okay, coming up next, uh, we're going to talk about the brand new innovative use case on Robin Hood chain that has been recently discovered this week. No one saw it coming. Uh, and then also Ryan's gonna talk to us about Ethereum 3.0. Uh, we got a new straw map to talk about. Okay [laughter] >> it's all of that and more. But first, we're gonna talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Trading is changing, not gradually. Right now, OKX just launched Trading Bots directly inside the OKX app. Grid Trading, DCA, Arbitrage. You set your strategy once and it executes [music] around the clock. No staring at charts all day, no manual entries, no missing moves while you're asleep. And for the first time, automated trading actually feels simple. But OKX is thinking bigger than just trading. They

also launched the agent payments protocol, an open standard that lets [music] AI agents execute full commercial transactions on chain. The Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap, and AWS are already building on it. And now it's live inside the United States. And new users who deposit and trade can get up to $500 in Bitcoin through the Bankless Link. The link is in [music] the show notes to learn more. Not investment advice. Not available in New York or Texas. Markets don't move one asset at a time. One day it's Bitcoin, the next Nvidia, then gold, and then the S&P. But most traders are still managing their portfolio across different platforms, different accounts, and different pools of capital. Bit just changed that. Their new stocks 2.0 product lets you trade tokenized equities directly with USDT, all inside the same app you already use for crypto. This is not just another

tokenized stock product. Stocks 2.0 is designed around deeper liquidity, faster execution, [music] and the lowest fees on the market at just 0.04% 04% and 1:1 economic exposure to the underlying stock. Dividends, stock splits, and other corporate actions are reflected automatically, [music] helping your position stay aligned with the asset you actually want exposure to. One platform, one account, multiple markets, crypto, equities, commodities, and more. All accessible with USDT. Bit trade smarter. Start trading today through the link in the show notes. This is not investment advice. Last week, we had the rise of Robin Hood chain. This week, it opened for business. the bridges opened up and you were able to go and buy tokenized stocks and put money into Morpho and trade on unis swap and get 7% yield. You

know what happened, Ryan? >> Yeah, people did all of those things that you said. Is that what >> Sure. Some people did. Yeah. >> But what is actually everyone's excited about? >> Meme coins. >> Meme coins. Can I tell you about the memecoin that's on Robin Hood chain that people are excited about? >> Uh what's it called? What's the memecoin of the week? It's called Cash Cat and the lore is that this is what Robin Hood was called before it was called Robin Hood. And there's a tweet from Vlad from 2021 about this and people immediately found that meme and it jumped up to $180 million in market cap or something. And then because of the flurry of activity of memecoins on Robin Hood chain, so many people wanted to bridge to Robin

Hood chain that all the bridges ran out of ETH, ran out of liquidity on the Robin Hood chain. Just like everyone bridged over like, "Oh, we don't have any ETH for you. You have to go to the canonical bridge if you want to go on." >> And so like people just rushed in to buy meme coins on Robin Hood chain. >> I forgot that like when a chain launches, the first thing that happens there is just people just buy the native meme coins of the chain. But that's >> doesn't always happen though. I mean, didn't it happen for Krakens Inc. Like it like it just depends. Doesn't happen for lots of chains. >> You would want it to. You would want it to.

>> Everyone would want it to. Maybe we'll talk about why, but like this seems like an endorsement almost from Vlad Tennv, the founder of Robin Hood. He tweet tweeted this. While we're building Robin Hood chain to be the best chain for real world assets, it works great for memes, too. >> There you go. It does work great for memes. >> Blockchains are do work great for memes. That is something that we've actually known for quite a long time. So now like all the memecoin traders are like looking at Robin Hood and Vlad being like, "Are you guys going to list the memes?" Like, but you have to support the meme economy. You need to list Cash Cat on the main Robin Hood app because we need you guys to support the memes.

And I think people are just have way too much hope for that. I don't think that's happening at all. >> I guess the theory of why a memecoin would explode on Robin Hood is distribution. You've got, you know, 25 million. >> Same thing with meme coins on base. It's like you pump the meme coins on base and then Coinbase will list it. >> Yeah. But with Robin Hood, it's it's untouched people too, right? It's like >> the same >> they haven't been burned by meme coins before. >> We could burn them. [laughter] We could be the guys that burn them. >> This is a whole new audience we could burn. This is a whole new audience like that could tap into the potential here.

I think that is probably some of the theory. It's it's Robin Hood distribution. I mean, you correct me. I'm not a memecoin trader. What do I know about this? >> That's right. Sounds right. >> And I think people are getting even if Robin Hood does do that, which I don't think they will and I don't think that they ought to because you shouldn't be in my opinion uh distributing meme coins to your retail buying like just because you want to support them. >> Why gatekeep, David? Why gatekeep? You're such a gatekeeper. >> I'm sorry. I'm listening to all the people who own cash on Twitter and been like, "Vlad list cash. Vlad list cash." All I'm hearing is Vlad, let me dump on your customers.

>> That's always the case. This is always the case. Like there's no way. There's no way. And like Robin Hood moves slowly and you know to some degree that's actually benefited them because they've been able to be like 17th mover advantage on Ethereum layer 2s. Yeah. And they just get to bring all their distribution and like going fast would they would have been in the experiment like wild west phase and like that's not their deal. And so I don't like I'm not holding my breath for Robin Hood to list cash cap. >> Nor do you think they should? You're saying you think they should. >> Nor do I think that they should keep that segmented sandbox. You want you want me.

>> If you want to buy memes, download Robin Hood wallet, not Robin Hood app. >> Yeah. At least there's a step there and a hoop someone has to go through and so they're not um you like enticed by this. But this has been pretty good for some of the native DeFi protocols for wallets. I saw 140,000 wallets have been opened on Robin Hood chain. This is uh Hayden >> on on one day. That was just one day. I think we're cumulative cumulative wallets on Robin Hood chain is over 200,000. On July 8th, there was 141 new active wallets on Robin Hood chain. Uh $500 million of trading volume in unis swap on in 24 hours, which is roughly a third of Salana's DEX spot volume just on the unis swap version of Robin Hood chain. Uh pretty crazy.

>> I mean, could you make the argument that hey, this is beams are a great way to bootstrap an ecosystem. You get users, you get people use like on the wallet doing things activity and then once they they come they'll they'll they'll stay. >> I've heard this story before. [laughter] >> I feel like I've we've said this before. >> I've heard that before. >> More more crypto wallets in more hands is net good. Um >> I think memes just are always kind of just like it's the spark whether or not it lights anything is completely unbounded. >> Well um there were some D5 protocols that are winners here. You mentioned unis swap. There's also Athena and Morpho which received some some total value here. So they benefit from Robin Hood chain doing well. Some of these

Robin Hood tokens were on Pump Fund which is a a massive >> Yeah. So like Pump Pump wants to give their users in on the action. And so you can buy Robin Hood meme coins on Pump Fund now, which also now includes Robin Hood stocks. So you can now buy Robin Hood stock tokens on Pump Fund, which is my god interesting. It's a great way to cycle your your memecoin winnings into something that's a bit more sustainable. I I hope that's what they're doing, David. But um >> how about the real world asset part of things? How about the tokenized stocks? Are those flying off the shelves? We selling some tokenized stocks on Robin Hood chain.

>> Sure. Uh there's 366 million of assets on Robin Hood chain. 266 of that is stable coins granted and a lot a decent chunk of that is as you said in Morpho getting that 7% like boosted yield from the Robin Hood stable coin the USG that's Paxos um so $90 million of that is in in Athena getting yield $86 million of that is in Morpho getting yield and then there is a whopping $13 million of tokenized uh stocks Robin Hood tokenized stocks $13 million which >> I mean not zero [laughter] It's day It's day three, you know.

>> It's day three. >> Well, I'm sure that number will go up when they open it up at least to the US. It's just Europe only, right? It's not even It's not available in the US, which sucks. >> I'm sure there's a lot of gates that like I haven't tried to purchase. >> I I actually haven't actually tried it out directly yet because Robin Hood stocks are permissionless actually. >> Yeah, it's a to-do for next time. David's going to go try this. Um, >> yeah, >> let's uh let's look at the data availability purchase from Ethereum. There's some interesting stats. So, um, [laughter] this is L2B. Now, Robin Hood chain is on L2B and because Robin Hood chain is a layer 2 and probably the most successful layer 2 that's come out in the past like 12 months or so, right? As far as off the bat success, it's kind of

like people are looking for some validation of the Ethereum L2 road map, which has not been going well lately. Mhm. >> So, Robin Hood chain purchases its data availability from Ethereum, the layer 1, and they have so far spent about $600 purchasing that data availability. >> $600 of ETH is just gone forever. >> $600 of blob space so far. And that's just the start. And of course, it only spikes up when there's contention. So, because there's much more supply than demand, the fees are competition. >> Yes, you know the drill.

>> Uh, should we talk more about Ethereum? You want to talk about the straw map? Yes, you do have to give a shout out to Arbitrum, which is going to be our token mover of the week, which was up 13% this week. >> Oh, they are up because they were only up like 3% last week when we talked about this. >> Yeah. So, they got a boost. They got a boost because they get 10% of all of the execution fees of Robin Hood chain goes into the arbitr. So, ARB token mover of the week. Congrats, ARB. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Now, talk to me about the straw map. >> Well, uh I don't know. Did you see it? So, this is Vitalic posting the straw map. So we already had a version of the straw map which is basically Ethereum's road map for the next call it three to

five years maybe 10 years plus >> why do we call it that >> like straw man you know uh I said I think >> it's like an idea of a road map >> it's yeah it's just like a draft of a road map right this could change like don't take it too seriously it's just a strong >> I never did [laughter] >> well you might have reason to take it a bit more seriously this time around cuz this is a new version of the straw map. And this one has something I didn't see in previous versions, which is um some some uh columns for dates for dates.

>> That's new. That is new. >> Can you imagine dates? How specific? >> It's just a straw map, so don't get too excited. Okay, these are straw map dates. >> I got excited. [laughter] >> But we do have we do have these dates and we have them tied roughly to future hard forks. So we have lists of features tied to hard forks which are shippable pieces of software on Ethereum tied to like I don't know this looks like a 6 to9month cadence and it goes from 2026 and the two next um hard forks all the way to 2029 and you also have this this column called north stars and so these features are grouped. So you know the layers of the cake for Ethereum. How many times have we educated ourselves on this and

and the rest of the bankless nation on this consensus layer, data layer, execution layer, the three layers of the cake, and then you have these north stars, which I appreciate. Why are we doing these things? The north stars are fast L1, so fast finality, uh, Terra gas L2, so lots of blobs for Robin Hood chain and base. One, uh, gigabyte per second. And then Gigas L1, that's one gigas per second. And then private L1. So those are the the four north stars for Ethereum at this point. And all of the features across all of these swim lines map to one of those four north stars. Are you with me so far?

>> Yep. Mhm. Mhm. >> So, Vitalic calls this the biggest kind of thing uh new era of Ethereum. He doesn't say Ethereum 3.0, but that's my interpretation. Now, unlike the merge, it's not like a one shot like we we we ship the whole thing. So, this happens much more gradually, which is maybe some of the reason you don't want to call this whole thing Ethereum 3.0 is cuz it's just not there's never a moment. >> No, we're shipping Ethereum 3.0 as I'm calling it in these kind of hard fork phases towards these northstar definitions. Um do you have any like I don't know if you saw this compared to the previous version of the road map but like based on everything I've said what are your

impressions of of the changes here if any? Um it well this the old version was a straw map which was subject to change and updating and all that kind of stuff. And I think really the first version you know the beta version of the straw map was Justin Drake's most hated slide ever out of DevCon in Bogota. >> Was that Bangkok 2024? >> Yeah. >> Is that Yeah. 2024 >> where he introduced lean Ethereum that whole idea. Yep. >> Right. And it was like a fiveyear plan and everyone was grumbling about it and you know well we're two and a half years later halfway through but like it's a straw map and so it has been updated so it was subject to change. We've changed

it. It's now this and what has changed in those two and a half years AI and also quantum. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I agree. >> Those two things are like reshuffling priorities. And then you also have the unbundling of the EF. Vitalic doesn't really care about block times. ETH Labs now cares about block times and so because of the reshuffleling of the actual organizations leading the straw map, you kind of see also some of the priorities and so it's just updated for 2026 is kind of like my summary of how things changed. >> I think it is updated for 2026 with some of those priorities. I want to get back to that in a second, but also I'd point out it's like so much more detailed, so much less fog of war. If you go back to do you remember Justin Drake's slide from 2024? It was just very vague and it

was like there was a we're going to pill everyone first, you know, like that's part of the reason we got some push back, right? This is detailed. This has dates. This has columns. This has hard forks. This has specific features. >> Does it have like micro strategy authorization to sell Bitcoin dates or are they dates? >> I think that well I don't think you the dates are straw map. Okay. But the level of detail is something that we haven't seen from this era of Ethereum. But let's talk about the uh prioritization that you noticed. Yeah, the the advent of AI formal verification seems to be getting kind of a a big boost in this or at least you could see the effects in the same way that you know a secret

unlock for Ethereum in the past has been snarks. That's what's allowing this road map and we've already kind of priced that in let's say incorporated that in previous versions of the straw map. This one seems most affected by formal verification because there seems to be this idea that we can move from a multi multiclient execution layer to a more consolidated single client pieces of the execution layer. So rather than have in order to preserve security redundancy through multiple clients, there's this idea I think interjected through this version of the road map that we can consolidate have a single client as long as it's formally verified that gives us the security that we need and because we

can only only have one client that speeds a lot of things up. So in particular >> that was a lot of development just >> governance >> create coordination and so many different layers. Yes. It's so much faster if we can just focus on one client. >> Yeah. So what you see here is that the ZK EVM has been sped up. Okay. Now it's in it's in Kstar the Kstar fork whereas previously it was like in LAR or longer. So that has moved forward and now you actually >> I can't even imagine LAR. I'm going to be 40 years old.

>> No you're not. This is uh Kstar is 2028. L-star is 2029. Okay. 40 in 2029. So um >> all the way [laughter] >> native roll-ups also make an appearance on this. I don't know if I've seen that on previous versions. Native roll-ups with a date is new. So anyway, I think that's um that's cool. Another thing that I noticed was there seems to be more acceleration towards quantum. So some of the quantum dates have moved up as well more from the 2029 and and 2030 to the 2028 uh time period for quantum acceleration. Privacy also more ambitious.

>> I will say about quantum it is nice Ethereum being the second market cap blockchain cuz if you have a quantum computer like are you going to go for Bitcoin or you going to go for Ethereum? And the answer is unequivocally you're going to go for Bitcoin because Ethereum is still going to be harder to to break and more readily available. And so like Bitcoin will take the bullet for Ethereum. >> Yeah, I mean that's right. And also I think Ethereum is kind of leading the way for Bitcoin in terms of you know figuring out which cryptography works for blockchains. Uh privacy Ethereum looks like it's going by the by the end of this in the longer term going full Zcash. So what we're looking at is at least in this raw map, okay, is a a privacy pool at the consensus layer.

>> That's like basically Zcash functionality >> as a shielded pool in the layer one. That is Zcash. >> Something that Bitcoin is not doing, but it's basically saying, hey, privacy, we'll take that. That'll be a feature that we add onto our blockchain rather than launch an entirely new blockchain. So those are the big things I noticed. Now, there are some things that were dep prioritized. data availability blob features seem to be pushed back a bit a bit more because like I guess we have enough and they're not like I mean it's not generating a lot >> just charge Robin Hood more money that's fine >> it was an okay product it's not a um it's blown out you know the the records in terms of sales for uh blob space also um let's see slot times were moved back a little bit but um I was looking at the

ETH Labs team like this is Barnaby from the ETH labs team to see what they'd say about this this uh road map and they were actually bullish. This is Barnaby saying uh he likes decoupled consensus uh is very bullish he said because they're decoupling some things. You get the you get the sense that ETH labs might be able to move on slot times independent of this road map whereas like maybe the Ethereum Foundation isn't prioritizing it. There's opportunity because they're decoupling for ETHABS to come in and prioritize it. So there's that too. Um, and then one other thing I noticed which is like I don't know what this is exactly. Snail issuance like I've heard talk about that but like

issuance ETH issuance could be on the table in some form or another. It has an emoji which is like uncertainty emoji. >> So that could be a discussion in the future too. >> I can't believe we're going to do another round of ETH issuance debates in the Ethereum community. And like I can just see that title wave coming and I'm gonna take part in it because I find ETH monetary policy probably the most interesting subject about Ethereum. But I'm just like I'm just going to get so many gray hairs. But you share this take that Donrad had on the back. So Donrad former ETH researcher of course now he's at Tempo. He said the Ethereum straw map has a lot of really cool features in all caps. Fully proven STF and scaling E gig gas with finality in seconds gets me excited. He said, "But 3 to 4 years is

very slow. I think we should be ambitious and get it done in one year." >> I think that's unreasonable to get it done in one year. I think if we wanted to get it done in one year, you would basically have to punt every single Ethereum developer and then get Tempo to come in and do it in their very like top down like centralized way. I don't know how we would do that in one year. So you're fine with three to four years, but not >> No, I I agree with Donrad is that it should be done as soon as possible, but like I just don't see how we do that.

It's just like not the culture that we have in Ethereum. >> Defi Ignis had a take on this. He said it was bullish overall, but he said the missing piece is ETH tokconomics, although it's a non-issue if reduced fees attract more transactions uh per user. That's a big if. So his thing was like there's nothing that addresses feed generation on Ethereum is that kind of uh insight and if the bare market continues for longer then tempo canon they start to eat away at ETH's market share. I don't know about that latter point. Uh because for all this like Ethereum is just in a league of its own and Ethereum and to his first point about like inducing fee

demand like that's no one's job to do BD and growth on Ethereum that's kind of been the issue the entire >> token uh economics take which is just like >> that's issuance. So it is touched on that is issuance but that's just reducing >> just issuance because like I think what what DeFi Ignis and some people are looking for is for uh the burn to come back for there to be some sustained cash flows in terms of fee generation or >> demand and we can't force demand to happen on Ethereum we can't just induce demand >> it's not just demand it's also supply you can >> right which is reducing issuance >> um no no sorry not for like I'm talking about actual fee generation so what I'm saying is people like defy Ignis Think of ETH right now as it doesn't

have a value proposition unless it can generate substantial fees, not like issuance from like fees or MEV sales, right? Like the monetary premium thing is like not a thing. We want to see discounted cash flow to ETH and this road map does not create any discounted cash flows, you know, that they would like to see. I don't know what he proposes, >> but but that's not what this road map would ever do. Like when did we get like the burn? We got it from uh DeFi summer. We got it from NFT mania which is like app the application layer creating products that people wanted and the Ethereum foundation and the developers were never involved with the app layer

intentionally. So and so there's nothing in this protocol that is like oh and then here's how we create demand. >> It's not just a demand story. That's just the one point I want to emphasize because the other reason you got fees was because you had restricted supply because you weren't scaling anything. >> See, part of the reason we have no fees right now is because supply outstrips demand, >> right? >> And so this is why I don't agree with the whole Ignis take and the takes that ETH needs to be a discounted cash flow type asset is because fees will never be a thing. Fees will never like I think this whole road map when I look at it again it's inkplot test. You could look at this and [clears throat] be like bullish or you could look at it bearish.

I'll give you the bullish way to look at this. This is optimizing for ETH as a store of value in a in a in a crop censorship resistant type way and it's optimizing for slow DeFi at the cost of fast DeFi. Say you super fast lot times. You trade that off and you get like privacy for your crops asset. Like I think what if what Vitalik's cuz this is kind of Vitalik's vision, right? What Vitalik is doing is he's creating a crops defy friendly a platform with ETH as the store of value without actually saying that's what he's doing, >> right?

>> Because that's what the road map essentially is. That's what it delivers if you get to the end of this. >> Yeah. You're saying that Ethereum is is a app chain. It's a application specific chain. The application is Ether. >> Yes. The fact that you can build turncomplete smart contracts is really just because then we can build things like unis swap and a for ether. Yes. And we can implement the the zk um the privacy pool inside of the layer 1 for ether. >> That's what I'm saying. >> So it's it's an app chain for Ethereum. >> And it's about time that because when I look at this architecture I'm like oh that's what you're building. It's about time that >> the Ethereum community and EF say that that's what they're building because that's what they're building.

>> Yeah. If we if the if if we as a community as a Ethereum community had gone back in time to 2017 and then started thinking on those terms, I think we would end have ended up in a very similar yet very different spot. Whereas like what is Ethereum for? It's for Ether versus what is Ethereum for? It's for the world. >> Yeah, I agree. Well, but like Ether is for the world. But I I see what you're saying. >> You're saying Ether is for the world, but >> tokenized use cases and all that like all the stuff that was kind of a >> side quest like decentralized internet or world computer. No, no, no, no. World asset.

>> Yep. That's right. And then Bitcoiners like, "But you stole that from us." I'm like, "Yep, that's right." >> Yeah, [laughter] it was a good meme, but you're blockchain boooo. >> Anyway, that's my take. And this know how we got there from the demand side or whatever, but whatever. >> Yeah. Uh and maybe my last question on this um do you think that Ethereum is going to deliver this? Maybe not in three to four years, but say four to five years. >> Yeah, like the the long-term conclusion of the road map is inevitable. >> There you go. >> Like but that's just never been the issue. [laughter] >> What do we have coming up, David?

>> Coming up next, uh we're gonna talk about the JP Morgan uh $700 million fund on Ethereum. We're gonna talk about the paradigm raise. And then also we're going to do a little portfolio check-in cuz Ryan I'm going to top my own portfolio and do a little victory dance about something that I think I deserve. And so we're going to talk about that and more right after we brought to you some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. >> Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Nato. He runs the DeFi Report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 1010 [music] price drop happened. His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point. I've been

following him for years and this year we started recording [music] weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle. There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes. They're short. They're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So, let's do it together. Go subscribe to this podcast. Search the DeFi Report wherever you get your podcast. YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find a link in the show notes. There's a new episode waiting for you now. >> Hey Banklist Nation, it's David. If you're hearing this, that's because you are listening to the free Bank list podcast feed. Did you know that there is a premium bank list RSS feed? The premium feed has extra interviews that I do for my own personal research and just

deeper questions that I want answered about the crypto industry. Questions that I want to answer so I can be more informed as an investor both at Banks Ventures and also just in my own personal portfolio, too. Also, there are no ads, which means if you listen to the premium feed instead of the free feed, you'll get about 20 hours of your life back every year because you choose to support Banklist directly. So, if you're interested in getting extra content, all while skipping the ads, or you just appreciate what we do here and want us to keep doing it, we'd appreciate it if you signed up for Banklist Premium. And there is a link in the show notes to get started. Cheers to a good 2026. This is a title, JP Morgan built a $700 million fund on Ethereum and nobody noticed. So, we talked about this um I don't know a

month or so ago, maybe 6 weeks ago about this >> JLTXX. This is the second uh tokenized money market that JP Morgan has released. And there was a question at the time, well, will anyone care? Will it get any traction? >> It's actually grown 250% in the last month. So, it it is now uh a $700 million money market fund. And this is all on Ethereum. So just a refresher of what this thing is. It's it's a money market. So it's US treasuries overnight repo. It's not for, you know, typical retail investors. There's a $1 million minimum. There's some expense ratio. It is denominated in USDC. It is on public

mainet layer 1. It does accept stable coins for redemptions and it was designed for the Genius Act. And what's interesting about JP Morgan Strategy is they have their in own internal blockchain system. It was once called Quorum. I always forget what it's called now. >> Uh Kexus or something. >> That's right. And they also deployed something on base. Um they deployed JPMD which was their deposit token and they piloted that on base. So you get the sense that their strategy is they're going to have an internal blockchain, but they're and they're also going to have maybe payments deposit tokens on base and various L2s, but on layer 1, it looks like they're building their, you

know, big money market funds. And what's interesting about that is they are actually doing it on Ethereum L1, not on a layer 2, not on their own internal chain. And I was kind of wondering about this question because there is a real world asset war going on out there. I think I've made the point and you've agreed that Ethereum is not necessarily optimized for real world assets, right? It's optimized for censorship resistance. It's, you know, privacy like other things. and yet it still might win the real world asset game or at least JP Morgan is continuing to deploy there the biggest bank in the US. Um what are your thoughts on I guess the real world asset

game here? Do you think Ethereum could actually win this by just optimizing for crops and then as a second it becomes the liquidity hub and wins network effect for that and then thus becomes the home also for tokenized real world assets or do you think it's going to be a like a a knife fight out there with Canton and Tempo and even Salana rising up the ranks >> the properties that Ethereum has and what it's being built for the crop stuff and then the properties that what Ethere the real world asset tokenized issuers want and in need are like somewhat overlapping, but they are not one to one. Like no asset issuer is looking at like the censorship resistance of Ethereum and being like great, I can call this place home. I was talking to

Carlos Domingo from Securitize and they they issued uh Securize. What does Securityize do? They securitize assets into tokens on on Ethereum or public blockchains. And so when they spacked, they did the obvious thing and then they tokenized their own equity. So this is not a Robin Hood stock token. This is not an Onondo like derivative. This is actual >> the a the actual equity with, you know, DTCC compliance and they're because they're a uh what what is it called? They're a transfer agent. They do all this stuff. So it's the actual equity.

It's KYC on the Ethereum layer 1. You have to have a KYC to get it because that's how equities work. >> Excuse me. It's not on the Ethereum one. It's on Solana and it is on Avalanche. Why is it there? because they because Avalanche has like the permissions and like the compliance needed that securityize needs to make that work. And why is it on Salana? Because Salana has like the prop AMM ecosystem to provide the really tight slippage because there's just a lot of regulation and complaints constraints about how to compliantly issue these things and they right now they can only do it on Avalanche and Slana. They're going to do it on Ethereum but the fact that it's not first on Ethereum is very notable to me and I asked Carlos like why not? He was like, "Well, the block times are really slow and that prevents our market

makers from being able to compliantly quote the price that it needs to be because they have to do they have to give you the the asset at a best price >> because they need to give you at the best price. There's like some stupid rules about it which actually the SEC is going to eliminate in a year which is interesting. Okay, >> but this is like Ethereum has properties and those are adjacent, somewhat congruous, somewhat parallel to real world asset tokenized issuer needs, but they are not the same thing. >> So, it's not clearcut. It's it's not the case that Ethereum will be the default for this. No, it will be the default in some cases. It seems to be at least currently the default for JP Morgan, their money market fund. But I mean that I guess that could erode that could

change over time or it could be the default for certain types of DeFi use cases. Like this is kind of a vault use case. This is definitely a slow use case. >> I found the Ether scan for this. Um so I'm looking at this. It's not even listed on Coin Gecko. It's got like a preview page on Coin Gecko. The Ether Scan has six total wallet holders of this thing. >> So these are just whales kind of just parking stuff in this. >> Yeah. Like one wallet holds like 83% of it. And so like this is like an accounting tool as far as I'm concerned. >> Interesting. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I I don't know. I mean the the other question is if uh if if Ethereum does win the real world asset, you know, war anyway or let's let's say it wins majority something like 60%. Does that

even matter for ETH price? Does that matter for ETH price >> marginally? >> Yeah, that's kind of what I think too. >> Yeah. A nonzero amount. >> Paradigm has raised 1.2 two billion [laughter] for their fund for their fund for David. Um they've kind of pivoted into AI a little bit, >> but I think more like a little bit. Yeah, they I don't think there's any crypto like 100% crypto VC left. Like no one is a let me know if I'm wrong at me on Twitter, but like no one is a crypto only VC anymore. And you're seeing this raise uh reflected with Paradigm. $1.2 billion is pretty chunky raise. Uh but they have also said in addition to crypto they are also going to be investing in AI and robotics and just

other frontier technologies which I think is like the right category like that's kind of what I'm interested in is like frontier technology broadly crypto has something to do with it like Venice for example private AI AI also crypto frontier technology absolutely like using using like near uh like uh near AI to do all that kind of stuff like frontier tech and that's sick uh and So that category is is what I think kind of crypto is now like it's crypto plus frontier tech. >> This era in general can we extrapolate this has seen kind of the death of the crypto only investor.

>> Correct. >> Like there are crypto only like VC firms as you pointed out but like you're not a crypto only investor right like >> who's left is a crypto only investor >> there are a handful a handful of people. [laughter] Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Most people are playing into other assets though and other frontier technology. I mean like I have I have more of my money in the stock market than doing crypto. >> That's first time since I ever met you. I think that's probably the case, right? >> Yes. That's Yes. Yeah. >> Uhhuh. So this is a story of what everyone is doing this cycle. >> Uh yeah, David, you included this. The CFTC talking to the CME telling them to buzz off. What's this about?

>> Yeah, the CME uh filed to do 24/7 365 markets. uh I think just starting with their oil market and the they asked the CFTC if they could do that and the CFTC just said no you can't do that is not what you are for like stay in your lane bro uh and kind of interesting I don't really know like all the nuances behind this but this is very much the CME very much did this in response to Hyperlid and the 24/7 365 perexes listing oil and gold and all this stuff uh and so the fact that the CFC is telling CME is like this is not what you guys are for like stay like stay in your arena do what you're good at and then let the

perplexes do what they're good at. I that's kind of kind of what I think is happening here. Uh this is why Jake Shvinsky is tweeting this tweet because he's at the hyperlquid policy center so he would know and he's like kind of like kind of he's able to read between the lines. I do think it's interesting that there is a there's a war being fought in the same way the banks and Coinbase and crypto have been fighting each other for the past four years. There is a brewing war between the commodities exchanges and the perplexes >> and yet within that too this cycle there's a war between the perexes themselves. I think maybe this gets into a little bit of your portfolio, but uh before we started recording, you told me you think that Hyperlid versus Lighter

is the I think you said the new uh Ethereum versus Salana or something like that. >> Yeah, it's the new Ether for Salana. That's right. >> So, what's interesting is it it does feel like every single bull cycle for your cycle. We do get some kind of dichotomy of competitors here. It's like I think 2017 it was very much the Bitcoin versus Ethereum kind of cycle. >> Totally. >> Maybe previous to that it was um or like after that it was Ethereum let's say versus Salana or Ethereum versus the ETH killers. >> Are you kind planting a narrative that this cycle it might be like the big perp dexes fighting off Ethereum or sorry Hyperliquid versus Lighter. Is that just going to be a substory of this? I don't know if I'm planting the narrative, but

like this happened downstream of the lighter partnership with the Robin Hood wallet and they're getting the endorsement from Robin Hood is like now like there are a bunch of very triggered. Remember the ETHs like we were the ETHs now there's likeh >> ishl like the ENS for Hyper Liquid. >> I don't know if it's an ENS. I think they just did it. Um maybe it's actually like real. I wouldn't know. Um, but the like there are like Hyperlid has made a ton of people very wealthy and has earned like won the hearts and minds of like a lot of people because they got the Hyperlid airdrop and they got wealthy as a result of it. And so it's it's created a very strong tribe and now like Lighter has pumped like 50% or something in the last like week or so

off of the back of like the Robin Hood announcement which is, you know, an insult to the identity of a Hyperlid person. like how dare any other perp decks do anything good? And so now you're starting to see like the the lighter versus hyperlquid tribe emerge. And I like I'm not used to being the smaller guy. I'm >> You've chosen a tribe. You're indicating you've chosen a tribe. >> I own both. I own both in a very healthy like onetoone ratio. [laughter] >> Okay. >> And so uh but like yeah, I think lighter has more growth to it. And so like I kind of identify with like the lighter camp. Yeah. So you're team lighter and you're you're excited about lighter.

What is the what is the case for lighter versus hyperl I'm curious as someone from the the lighter tribe how would they what they say? Yeah, lighter is the very technically competent. I think it could potentially create a framework for the endgame of like exchanges like full stop. Not just crypto exchanges, not just perplexes, but like exchanges like the NASDAQ and the NYSE like stuff like this. a high performant appsp specific ZKL2 is such a logical conclusion of str exchange technology and later posted a blog post uh about all of the tech that went behind like shaving off micros secondsonds on like latency around hyperlquid and like all this kind of stuff. It was a I started reading I was

like this is breaking my brain I don't understand this but like the point was point was made uh and you get all of the asurances of the uh the the ZK so like the individual user can verify the state of the exchange and the the validity of the exchange and the exchange playing by the rules which feels very good like a lot of the crypto punk ethos but mainly uh they are positioned to take the US market uh and so Vlad from lighter not to be confused with Vlad from Robin Hood Uh but Vlad from Lighter, who they're buddies, by the way, which is funny. Uh he's on the CFTC advisory, like innovation advisory board, and Lighter is just just at the gate waiting to get a CFTC license to penetrate the US market. And they're doing the Coinbased

thing rather than what Hyperlid strategy is, which is being like the one perex to rule them all. You go to Hyperlquid. It's a first party exchange. You know, builders build on Hyperlid. Kind of like you on Ethereum. Everyone comes to Ethereum layer one. That's kind of like Hyperlid. Lighter is a little bit more like a hub and spoke model uh where they have a spoke now out to Robin Hood chain and it's its own instance on Robin Hood chain but with ZK technology a lot of the liquidity flows back to the main hub and so this is like compliance spokes for bespoke compliance needs. I see. So if any if Charles Schwab wants to build a per deck but they need to KYC all of the traders and all the liquidity and all this kind of stuff lighter can do

that and they can do that with their specific technology and they have a bunch of forward deployed engineers. So the whole idea is they just send their engineers to the United States financial institutions of the world who want perplex stuff and then the forward deployed engineers build it into the brokerage or Robin Hood Jane or whoever. And because because each one is its own bespoke walled garden is highly compliant with US regulation. So that's kind of the pitch for lighter as as it differentiates from from hyperlquid. >> It sounds like there's a little bit of a like Binance versus Coinbase thing going on here or like a Tether versus onore.

Yeah. Mhm. >> Yeah. So that's the element of this. Okay. So uh broadet what's your portfolio like these days? So you said you were going to um talk about it. So what's uh what's gone well? What hasn't gone well? I think this is since you made some changes in May, correct? >> Yeah. So I this is the tweet that like got some attention because I tweeted it out at the actual pico top of like a lot of these tokens but and so people were like making fun of me on Twitter because uh they were they were reading it as if I bought the tokens in that moment and then they were at the pico top and like I tweeted this tweet in that moment because it was a brag. I wanted to remind people that I bought these tokens and they [laughter] were all up, but I

bought these tokens in like May May like 9th or something and then Lit was the token that I bought on June 3rd with like the bulk of my is the Ether portfolio that I sold. And so I would like to do an account of how these these people will call them trades. I will call them investments. They'll be trades if I sell them too soon, but since I hold all of them still, they are they are in the category of investments in my mind. And so Zcash, I'm down 20%. Hype, I'm up 56%. VVV, I'm down 20%. Near, I'm up 25%. And then Lit, which is a token that is my largest position, is up 80%. So that is my little victory lap that I would like to take.

>> Uh you you are moving into kind of your your trader era, but you're you're I guess >> I don't know if that's right cuz I'm not going in and out of stuff. Maybe you're just you're just rebalancing towards something in crypto that is much more um application forward. Let's say use case forward. >> Yeah. And they're all much smaller market caps which just feels safer to me by comparison because like ETH has to justify a much higher market cap and and has to just work harder for that. And like when I look at like LIT that's at like a $600 million market cap, I'm like, "Oh, there's a potential large amount of growth here."

>> Yeah. And that's kind of where I like I like the smaller capsu uh rather than just like like ETH was great and because of what it was like money, internet money, all that kind of stuff, but like commanding like trying to get to a trillion dollars, like that's a really hard fight. >> That's that's a hard fight as we've seen over the past 5 years. >> Yeah. >> Uh well, congrats on those gains, David. That's um I'm I'm looking forward to seeing how that does in the future and where you choose to deploy. I think like for me I'm kind of like um I'm still waiting for the bottom the bottom signal.

>> You're waiting for people to puke ups and stuff. >> Yeah. I don't think it's quite time. I think we're nine we're n and a half months into this thing. I still think it's going to take a few more months for this to sort itself out. I don't think we've seen the bottoms yet. >> When do you have what is your shopping list? >> Um I like um LIT would be on there except it's had an incredible run from the very beginning. So, if I bought lit, it would be at some lows. Um, I have some um like Bitcoin obviously on the lows would be interesting. Um, I don't know. I haven't fully decided. I mean, I'm I'm really enjoying uh Michael Nato's work in his watch list. Like, a

number of these are are holdings that he has. For example, he's looking at Zack. He thinks it's overpriced. Uh he's been a big bowl of of lit. not quite in near, but there's some things on his list that I've been eyeing as well. So, I just don't think we've >> pump Fun. You're going to buy Pump. >> It's printing some revenue, which is insane, and that's hard to ignore if you believe in kind of like, well, an application has to deliver uh revenue, doesn't it? That's what Hyperlid and Lid do. They have the potential to do that. So does so does Pump. So that's um that's something I'm weighing, but um it's not it's like hard for me to get really excited about that particular use case but >> yeah, I can't imagine you holding on to pump for [laughter] a long amount of

time. >> Right. Right. >> Anyway, we have to end it there. Uh dude, >> can I show you these magic alien hands? >> Oh yeah, sure. What you got? >> Yeah, this is the most wild thing I have seen on Twitter in a long time. So for the listeners, we are looking at a actuating robot hand with just seemingly perfect highfidelity humanlike movement in all of the fingers. >> Is this real? What? Like what is this? What am I looking at? Yeah. >> Yeah, we're watching brand new robot hands. We've solved fingers.

>> Elon has said uh fingers are the hardest part of a robot. >> Yeah, fingers are the hardest part. That's right, dude. The future's going to be wild. I think that's the message I would like to leave this podcast with. Future's going to be weird. >> I'm pretty I'm pretty excited about it, though. I'm pretty excited actually. Like I've gotten over some of the existential stuff of AI. Maybe that's because I'm like using it daily. >> Yeah, we're probably fine. >> I don't know. Like and then what choice do we have? So, um anyway, [laughter] we'll see. All right, Bankless Nation, we'll see you once again with Ryan and David on the weekly rollup in seven days. But until then, crypto is risky.

You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, this frontier is not for everyone, but we are glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.