Why Crypto Just Exploded

Transcript

We just had one of the most legendary days in the crypto markets in a long, long time. Bitcoin has probably the biggest green candle I think I've ever seen since before 1010. Everything in crypto is up and up for a handful of different reasons. It's a double-digit week for so many crypto assets. The big question I think I want to ask in this episode is, is the bull market back? Was that it? Was that the starting pistol for the next bull market today? This day, yesterday at the time of recording, Wednesday, August 19th, do you remember when uh Black Rockck filed for the Bitcoin ETF and [snorts] Bitcoin popped like 12% and it was just like a moment that everyone was like, "This is it."

>> Yeah, that seems like such a long time ago. >> This that is it feels a little reminiscent of that of just like this is it. It's a this is it moment. I think not completely, but it feels a little bit like that. >> Well, I think that is the question to ask is like, did that move just break the backs of all the bears that were still out there and then had such momentum? But first, in order to answer that question, I think we have to ask the question and answer the question like why did this even happen on Wednesday? It just seemed like out of the blue, but we did have some >> out of the blue field.

>> Out of left field, but QE Treasury QE may be back this time. Okay, we'll define what that is and what Bessant said, what the Treasury is doing. That was a key catalyst these markets. Also, the White House, Trump gave a speech basically pumping crypto and also >> all day pumping crypto. >> Yeah. And also, the SEC released a uh regulation of crypto assets. Here's actually how Matt Hogan put it, which I think was great. In the last 24 hours, he's talking about earlier this week, the SEC released regulation crypto assets. This is a 402page document that we'll get into. The Treasury launched yield curve control. The White House prepared for a meeting with top crypto

executives to discuss tokenization and the Clarity Act. It's hard not to be extremely bullish, both Bitcoin and crypto right now. And indeed, the market was bullish. We got Bitcoin up double digits. I think ETH was up like was it up like 20% on the week or something crazy. Dude, the president said hyperlid on air on live TV. Uh, you know, Bitcoin goes up because of QE. All this stuff happened. You know, Venice crosses a hundred million in ARR, and the winner on the week is ETH. Actually, ETH is up like the most. Uh, so we're going to talk about all that and more. But first, we're going to talk about Ironclaw from our friends and sponsors over at Near.

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universe, we have the Bankless MCP. Do you know how much you know how many podcasts we've done, Ryan? >> Um, we got to be I know we're over a thousand. Are we over like 1,100? Over 2,000 podcasts. >> Wait, we're over 2,000 podcasts. You've been busy. [laughter] >> We've been doing this for 6 years. >> Oh my god. So, that's a lot of transcripts, right? That's a lot. >> Lots of transcripts direct from the source data that like AI labs don't have. And AI labs famously just haven't trained well on crypto data. I don't know if you go into if you notice going into your like your Claude or your Venice or your OpenAI whatever you use and you ask crypto questions usually it's it's pretty constrained with how good it can answer. It can answer the

basics but you ask anything anything beyond the basics and you get pretty poor answers. >> Yeah, >> this is what the bankless MCP is for. Uh, and so you can using your Bankless Premium account, you can hook in the Bankless MCP to your near ironclaw agent and you just have the most cryptocapable, crypto ready AI LLM ever. Uh, and so this is available for bankless premium subscribers uh, and if you want that uh, you can go into your account uh, and you can just tell your agent to install it and then all of a sudden your cryptoreated prompts will be much better.

>> Dude, that's very cool. I I want that. But I can't wait to ask myself some questions using the Bankless MCP. [clears throat] >> Dude, I I put out I put out this tweet about like announcing the Bankless MCP and then you know what I got? >> Somebody generated like a fanfiction of you and me debating about E. [laughter] >> Who won the debate? >> I don't know. It was a Socratic debate. Okay. Or or in you or answer crypto questions if you want or just make bankless fanfiction. Both work. >> You know what? We might repeat that debate in today's episode, okay? cuz I want to get your thoughts on ETH. But before we do, uh, you got prices up.

Let's just celebrate what happened last week. We have bounced >> gargantuan candle. >> Oh my god. We have bounced hardily off of the 200E moving average for Bitcoin, which was something like 63 64K if I'm recalling correctly, the 200WE moving average. What are we at the time of recording right now? >> Yeah, last week we were recording, Bitcoin was right at the 200WE moving average, $64,000. We were at 72,300. We paused right around 7,000 and we have just had continuation as of this morning. So we had a huge bullish day yesterday and we are continuing that bullish day today. Uh and so firmly away. We are we are how much is that? We are up >> that's double digits right we are

>> we are up 14% in a day and a half. Yeah. Uh really really really great. Really really great. >> Incredible. >> Some just absolute winners on the week. Etherfi. Etherfi announced uh kind of like an evolution you know. Etherfi the neo bank. I'm calling it a NEO brokerage. They're adding in assets and margin into their account and also they improved their tokconomics. And so Ether pumped 38%. Uh pumpf fun is up 28% because usage and revenue >> on the week%. It's been up 50% on the month. So huge continuation from Pump Fund just because revenues are growing and therefore pump buybacks are growing. Hyperlid is up 25%. We're we're going to get into this

cuz Donald Trump said hype hyperlquid on national TV or just the white house the white house event. So hyperlquid is up. Venice VVV is up 20% on the backs of open router getting acquired and also Venice crossing 100 million ARR. And so I think people are reacting to yesterday the Treasury announcing they're doing QE which we're going to talk about and then also Donald Trump just having a day of pumping crypto. I was like, "Wow, this is one single bullish day." No, no. There have been bullish catalysts for the last like eight days. Etherfly had its own bullish catalyst. Venice had its own bullish catalyst. And all of this kind of happened. And I think one of the reasons why it was so violent yesterday

was the combo of the QE announcement and then the White House just blew out people's shorts, which is why the one of the biggest winners on the week is ETH. ETH is the biggest winner on the week cuz so many people got wrecked. shorting [laughter] ETH. >> All the haters got wrecked. What is it? >> They got So I saw an account like lost $30 million cuz they had like a a huge ETH short open day. That's why that's why ETH just pumped so violently. So Bitcoin is up 13% on the week. >> Ether is up 23% on the week. $2,330. >> Incredible. Jamie Coot said this. ETH's move yesterday, just to put this in historical context, was the eighth uh largest single day move since 2018.

ETH's eighth largest single day move since 2018. And history says the short-term follow-through is close to a coin flip, but the odds skew meaningfully higher over the next 3 to 6 months. So, when you see that up explosion, usually that um that precedes like even more explosion, >> even further up. even further up. >> Mhm. Okay. I mean, you can you can zoom out zoom out and you can see this green candle is it's it's quite notable. >> It is. It is quite notable. But that blue line there is the 200E moving average. So, we're not there yet. [laughter] >> Despite despite having an incredible day, ETH is still about 7% below its 200E moving average, which if you're bullish and you're looking to the upside on ETH, you're like, "Oh, there's so

much more room just to have mean reversion here." >> But that's that strength is something we haven't seen in a while. Strength on the ratio, too. strength disproportionate to Bitcoin on this move up. There's some strength in the charts. I think even traders are starting to acknowledge this. I know this is a question bankless fans wanted me to ask, but I was going to ask it anyway. Okay. Does this move cause you to be tempted to go back and refill your ETH bag, sir, and retract some of the words that you've said about ETH? Is this it? Did this break the the bearish sentiment in David Hoffman?

uh retracts my words. No, I put a lot of thought into those words. Um I don't know if short a short squeeze is like the confirmation that like I want uh it no [laughter] >> is the answer. But like I don't mean to say like no it's therefore bearish. Like I think I I think uh you could absolutely justify being bullish ETH here. listeners, you guys hear that hesitation in his voice. He's he's he's not quite certain that his position is correct as he's saying.

>> He's not trying to be like too like concrete on either direction, which was also the conclusion of my article. It's like h it's just like somewhat priced in. Like it's not going to have it's not going to go too far up, it's not going to go too far down, and I'm going to look for opportunities elsewhere. And so I'm not trying to say like I give an affirmative absolutely I'm I'm buying back my bags or absolutely not. I'm totally bearish. It's the same position. It's like h it's I'm looking for excitement elsewhere. All right, Ethaxis, we still have some more work to do. But but a a way to start into that position of you flipping on your your ETH position and refilling your bags is maybe to start with some BMR, which is

Tom Lee's DAT for Ethereum. And I know you spoke to Tom Lee earlier this week on Tuesday, I believe. I actually haven't talked to you about that episode. Uh Tom Lee purchased another uh what 10,000 ETH on the week. So every single week he continues to purchase. Now has 4.8 8% of all ETH. Okay. So, how about bullish BMNR if you're not bullish ETH? >> Look. Okay. So, right after that podcast episode, I think Tom Lee and the Bit Mine team, everyone thinks Bitmine is Tom Lee. It partly is, but I think the Bitmine team also is kind of like a sleeper about Bitmine.

>> Oh, that team is cracked. >> Cracked team. Cracked team. And And Tom Le is a great just uh like figurehead. Like my hot take is that I think Tom Lee is a better Michael Sailor than Michael Sailor is. And like these are apples to oranges, but these are both leaders of the number one and number two DATs. And Sailor is a classic steak eating Bitcoin maxi laser maxi who's a little bit too aggressive. Tom Lee is a measured, moderate balanced reasonable leader of Bit. And I think Bitmine I think between Bitine and MSTR I think Bitmine wins big. I think Bitmine outperforms MSTR.

>> So you'd rather own BMR than MSTR? That means you're bullish ETH rel. You're bullish ETH relative to Bitcoin. Yeah. I Well, I think it's not quite the same. I think Michael Sailor disrespects his equity like none other. [laughter] And I think I think Tom Lee respects the [ __ ] out of his equity. >> And I think I think that is going to be uh I think that is going to be the story between these two assets moving forward.

Uh and so like really I came out of that episode with Tom Leos being like I think bit BMNR is quite bullish because to your point like I do see upside like a possible upside with Ether the asset in the future. I know we've said before Tom Lee is probably the most important person in the Ethereum ecosystem as of right now. Certainly the most important new entrant over the last 18 months. Uh I can't wait to listen to that episode. I think it's coming out on Monday. I just have one question about that episode. Did you ask him the question of where is he getting all this money to go buy ETH every single week? And did you get a good answer? What did he say?

>> I got a partial answer. >> Yeah. Partial answer. >> Where's he getting the money? >> No, you got to listen to the episode, [laughter] bro. H always money in the banana stand, right? Uh [laughter] okay. Okay. There was also a big day for uh ETFs as I understand it. What's What are we looking at? >> Yeah, this is a hunter horsely from a bit wise. $300 million of volume today across just the Bitwise ETFs, which are our favorite uh ETFs here on the podcast. Is that >> Yeah, I like the Bitwise ETFs. >> Okay.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Crypto native. >> But I mean, who are you going to pick? Black Rockck. [laughter] >> Okay. I I'll pick for this week. I'll pick Bitwise ETFs. They're the best. Anyway, >> these are these are our favorite ETFs. Uh top five by volume, uh bit Bitcoin ETF, Salana ETF, Hyperliquid ETF, Ethereum ETF, and XRP ETF. So, uh these are just volume. There was also just broad inflows into the ETFs as well. I know I just talked [ __ ] about the Black Rockck ETF, but here's Alex Thorne talking about IBIT. And IBIT had his biggest retail buy of IBIT in the last 2 years.

>> Wait, wait, wait. That candle. That's the biggest scandal. Yeah, that's the biggest scandal in the last two years. Incredible. >> That's right. So, so we got we got some bullishness out of the ETFs as well. >> Well, uh, somebody had to say it. Somebody did say it. If you're in AI, pivot to crypto, the capital rotation of the year, that's what you got to do. Uh, crypto outperformed basically everything on the week, including, of course, >> AI in a big way. And this seemed to come out of nowhere. I think we need to talk about why after the break, David. Was it the Bessant Treasury QE thing? Was it the White House remark? We're going to discuss that and then talk about whether this bullish sentiment has changed things, whether it can be sustained. So,

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reflected automatically, 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. Trump giving a speech at the White House. Here's one of the things he said. I understand that Mike is also working to bring hyperlquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion. He's working very hard on that. >> He said the words. He said hyper liquid.

Did you? He said them in all caps. Did you hear that? [laughter] I think that's what the the the hype believers want people to believe. Do you see Mike Celig's absolute [ __ ] eating grin? cuz he knows the hyperlquid [laughter] people are going to be over the moon about this. He is so happy with himself. >> Yeah, that is somebody who is u who's very excited that that he said the thing that crypto Twitter wanted him to say. I suppose in this moment >> like the hyperl people are going to love this one.

>> This is not the only thing he said. This is um you know from Bloomberg Business Daily. Trump speaks alongside crypto leaders at the White House. It was part of a longer speech. This is um about I don't know 30 minute 45 minute speech. Not just not >> goes to almost an hour. Yeah. 45 minutes. Yeah. >> Not just not just Donald Trump. Other you know leaders in his um administration also spoke in including I think uh Mike Zelig and surrounded by actually you know what so let's hear some clips from that just a a highlight reel. >> I want to thank the chairman of the commodity futures trading commission Mike Salic for his tremendous leadership. Come here.

>> Thank you Mike. And thanks as well to a very special man, a man that everybody respected for a long time, Chairman Paul Atkins, who's also doing an outstanding job and everything else he touches. He's doing a lot of things for the for the country. So I want to thank you very much and many other top industry leaders including Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, CEO. He's one of the greats. CEO of Robin Hood, Vlad Tenev, thank you. and CEO of Kraken Arjun Sethi and thank you very much wherever you are Brad Garlinghouse CEO of Ripple Brad thank you very much Brad Sergey Nazerov co-founder and chain link Labs thank you

very much good Sergey and Tyler and Cameron Winklvos have tremendous people tremendous investors brilliant people Chris Dixon is here >> I mean okay that was just like a who's who of people in crypto standing around Donald Trump for this for this speech. >> Yeah. Yeah. I just love that Cameron and Tyler Winklebos just you just get everyone just lumps them together. [laughter] >> He also said this um day one we fired Joe Joe Biden's rogue Gary Gendler. We like Paul better. He said that there's like a lot of Trump classic uh quotes coming out in in this speech, but this was this was really for the crypto people. You know, part of part of this

struck me as like um maybe Trump realizing that the clarity bill may not pass and that he had I guess promises that he had made and campaigned about for the crypto industry. And this was a speech like on how to keep his promises through, you know, proposed rulings and through the executive branch if clarity act is is not going through. That's partially how I interpreted this. >> This also came at the same time as announcements from the SEC, which we're going to get into later in the show, which is basically the SEC doing their part of Clarity. And then we also kind of just got another verbal announcement

from the CFTC saying, "Hey, we're going to do a similar thing." So, to your point, like, yeah, it's like, okay, Clarity is not looking great. So, what do we need to do to like follow through on promises? Let's do a little pump in the bags of the crypto industry. Let's pat everyone on the back, thank everyone, and then also we're just going to round about our way back into we're going to back our way into clarity. Yeah, very much. This is how Chair Sal put it. The United States has a choice. We can either write the rules that define the next generation of financial markets or we can let other countries write them for us under the president of the United States leadership. We've made our choice. America will lead. executive branch taking action to continue cryp uh the US as the crypto capital of the

world. This is a Trump campaign promise. >> Can you play the clip with uh Donald Trump talking about him signing the Genius Act? >> Yeah, this is this is Donald Trump talking about himself signing the Genius Act. >> One year ago this summer, I signed landmark legislation known as the Genius Act. I named it after myself. I didn't want anyone to I didn't want to use my name, so I just called it the Genius Act. >> [gasps] [sighs] >> That's so unnecessary. [laughter] >> So unnecessary. At least no meme coins were mentioned. I mean, I guess that era is over.

>> Um, man, I would like Trump so much better in this position as kind of like political leader of crypto. If he didn't do all the grifting [ __ ] >> if he didn't if he didn't pocket like how much did he pocket? >> Billions, tens of billions of dollars. It's like a moving target at this point, right? But because like this was not just a speech. I mean, this is the executive branch moving on things. The SEC and CFTC standing right beside him moving on some things. So, there's some substance to this that we'll get into later in the episode. But that happened Wednesday, right? The same day that Treasury came out with some major announcements. There's almost a question. Did the uh the White House speech move crypto markets or did did

the Treasury QE news move crypto markets more? >> That's kind of what I was saying. Even other than those two things which definitely moved crypto markets, we also just had fundamental growth in some of our like big crypto assets like I talked about them before like Venice a bunch of revenue. FOMO is making a bunch of revenue. I know that's not a crypto asset. uh EtherFI revamping his tokconomics. And so like the the lead up to these very big announcements was underscored by revenue, buybacks and revenue in some of like the fundamentals of our crypto industry. And then we just got get hit with this wallup of news from the Treasury. Treasury announcing the increased size of nominal long-end liquidity support buybacks, which is

just just words for like, hey, we're going to buy bonds. We're buying bonds. Yeah, >> we're buying we're buying long longdated bonds starting September 9th. And so this isn't QE in the traditional sense because QE must come from the Federal Reserve region of the United States. This is coming from the Treasury region of the United States. It's the same thing though. We're we're creating dollars to buy back longdated bonds to increase the value of bonds and lower yields. I'm sorry. Isn't that QE? It it is kind of like QE. It's not QE in the Fed sense. So, some people are calling this QE light. Um, other people are calling this Treasury QE. And it's not a lot right now. It's a trickling, but it

is a doubling. So, what they're actually doing is they're doubling the, and this was announced on Wednesday, the maximum size of purchases of a longerdated debt, longerdated bonds from 2 billion to 4 billion. So, a2 billion increase. But it's more the direction of travel that is the thing that investors have observed. And this brings into the question of well is the debasement trade back on and the market thinks yes. I mean you can you could see gold prices, you could see the Bitcoin price, you can see the ETH price. These are debatement debasement hedge assets that really pumped on this news. Um I was trying to understand exactly what Treasury was doing here. And it's not so much that

they're printing new money. Here's the nuance. They are buying long bonds. So these are, you know, 30-year bonds, that sort of thing with T bills with short duration bonds. So they're swapping out the duration. Okay. So in a sense, that's not printing new dollars. >> It's not pure QE. It's it's soft Q. It's a little bit softer, but it's directionally QE nonetheless. It's directly QE and it's directionally also money printing even though no new net new units got printed because you're moving that like a a a T bill >> is money like okay a 30-year you know bond is not a 30-year bond has volatility a a T bill does not have

volatility so you're knocking duration out and it's also the Treasury saying hey we're going to work in conjunction with the Fed to set a top on yields on long-term yields So, we'll we'll pull up the longterm long-term yield chart in a second, but it's like it was floating upwards, you know, 5.3%. We've remarked on this last two rollups, like 20-year highs, and they're saying it's not going to go higher because if it starts going higher, we're going to buy the long duration with short duration. And if you recall, Yelen was doing this as Treasury Secretary. Now, Besson is kind of like doubling down on it, uh, tripling down on it. But the initial effect was uh yields started to fall from the 5.3% range on down. I think it was like 5.1%.

Uh and also the dollar falls too. Okay. The reason the dollar falls is because there's more dollars in circulation on the short end. >> So this is at a time of course when uh we have you know debt, US debt. This was a uh another tweet I saw you threw into the agenda. U$40 trillion this week, David. We just passed nominal debt exceeding $40 trillion that the US has right now. Okay. So, this is moving some of those debt payments from a 30-year problem to like a a you know 3month type problem by moving it to the short end.

And um there were some updates you threw into the agenda this morning is that um price chart that we're seeing, right, where we see yields on 30-year government bonds heading towards excess of 5.3%. The Treasury stepping in and saying we're going to buy the long end of uh of bonds. Immediately yields dropped to like 5.1%. And then they started popping back up. That was early Thursday morning popping up to 5.24%. So, I liken this to like the Treasury trying to keep a beach ball underwater here. They're like, "Okay, we're just going to push it down, but the beach ball wants to keep popping back up, popping back up." And so, they made another announcement this morning. What?

That they were doing even more of >> They're doing it again. They're just doing it more. They're just going to They have an infinite money printer. These are the words that I'm familiar with, but Besson said buybacks could soon be bigger than the four billion that we announced. Whether or not he's going to follow through on that, I don't know. It kind of it's this is what he's telling the market is like, yo, we we can buy back as much bonds as we want. So you you better the market better fall in line anyways. >> So he said that this morning, right? Like that >> Yeah.

>> you buybacks could continue. And you're sort of seeing the top that the Treasury is willing to sustain. Like once it starts getting that 5.3% zone, that's the beach ball surfacing. They want to push that. >> This is a taco moment. Like Bessant is just tacoing on Trump's behalf. Like Trump tacoed at 5% with uh the liberation day tariffs. He tacoed at 5% with the Iran war. We got we got there organically anyways. And so now Fed is just once again like or excuse me, the Treasury is once again doing this. You asked me the question at the start of the section like what why did we pop so aggressively? It's like is this the Treasury? Was this like the White House pumping the crypto assets? This is for Bitcoin and ETH like Bitcoin and ETH pumped the most because of this which

obviously sets the floor for the whole rest of the industry because those two things are like 70% of the entire market cap of crypto. But like it was all of these things all at once. This is the big one because the White House doing a big press thing and shaking Brian Armstrong's hand and Vlad's hand and all that kind of stuff. That's a nice shot in the arm and especially for Hyperlquid and like the other per coins like shot in the arm for that >> and tokenization and all of that. >> Yeah, this is structural. >> This is store value asset, you know, debasement stuff. This is this is putting the tailwinds in our industry's sales and so it's nice to get the shot in the arm stuff but this is like the big one but it really just all happened

at once. >> Yeah, kind of incredible. It almost seemed coordinated that it all happened the same day but uh I don't think it was and then the reason you see this as as the debasement trade as well as other debasement asset gold and silver added $1.3 trillion after the treasury's announcement that happened on Wednesday morning. Right. So the debasement trade has been pretty dormant. Uh the AI trade has kind of taken all of the attention, all of the glory, superseded it. AI stocks flat on this news. Basically flat. >> AI stocks down. No down 2%. Intel was down 6%. Like chips, chips and AI stocks were down >> cuz AI stocks are going to trade based on AI token demand. That's how they're going to trade. The forecasted demand,

all of this. And this is some issues in the credit markets. Uh and this seems to indicate that the Treasury is going to step in and like fix things uh when yields get high enough and that is that is a debasement type trade. So the market is really stiffing this out at this point in time. Uh Ral Paul calls this the Besset put. Okay. So this is like the Treasury put similar to the Fed. >> This is what they're going to be doing. >> The 5% put just can't touch 5%. 5% is lava. >> Yeah. I think uh a great summary here. The do signals keep firing. Marginal macro policy is moving towards the Treasury. So now the Treasury is more important than the Fed to watch what they do. The government will ensure the

AI buildout goes off without a hitch. This is the US government doing that. And since the new marginal buildout is being funded debt, we've seen that with the Nvidia, Black Rockck, etc. deals uh that happened last week. The long end must be kept in check through that. So this is Felix from Ford Guidance saying because of all this I'm liking to basement trades again like gold and bitcoin. Uh he thinks bitcoin will do well in this type of environment. So this is an environment shift. It's a fed treasury macro type shift that happened and that all happened on Wednesday too.

I think the question for us is these enormous moves in crypto did that break the bare markets back David. Right. So again, you had stocks flatish, maybe downish a little bit, and we have Bitcoin and ETH moving double digits on the week. Shorts getting absolutely liquidated in the process, >> getting wrecked. >> You know, a lot of people have said that the bare market will end with a, you know, massive capitulation, a lot of volatility, right? Or a lot of volume, I should say. Okay. Well, this was a lot of volume, but it was to the upside.

>> Is this kind of a a market ender? I think there's a case for Yes. What like what would you say is the case for yes? >> I think there's a very big case for yes. Mainly just because again it goes to the fundamentals of this industry. We are a debasement industry. Bitcoin and ETH are fundamentally scarce assets. They are non-s sovereign stores of value. When we are doing money printing, I don't care if it's not technically QE. We're creating more money. And so scarce assets do well. This is and maybe you could you could be bearish and be like, oh, but like look at gold. Gold's doing just fine and gold will take all the oxygen out of crypto sales because people are just tired about crypto. Gold is doing fine. You're totally right about that. On top of that, we have what

we're going to talk about next with the SEC providing basically the SEC sides of clarity and the CFTC's doing the CFTC's job and doing the CFTC side of clarity. So, [ __ ] clarity. We're getting it anyways. And so, it's just there's momentum here. And I don't know, dude. Like I I should have looked at the numbers before doing this podcast, but it's it's actually notable how bad shorts just got blown out in the last two days. And so people aren't going to be touching shorts for a while. >> Yeah.

>> Maybe maybe that's bearish because now people are going to like lever long and maybe they get blown out. But I this is a it's a very reasonable claim to make that there is enough energy and momentum here that that defines the bottom. >> Are you ready for the opposite case? The case for maybe no, we didn't break the back of the the bare market here. >> Do you do you believe it >> or is it is it real? Is it a real argument? >> I think it's real. Yeah, I think it's a real argument and I think the argument is this. So okay, what Treasury is doing is yeah, maybe hinting towards debasement. Um, they're also using all of credit facilities and kind of like uh protecting the long end to protect

credit markets so that credit markets can can continue funding AI tokens. And so the entire US market at some level like almost the entire world market is now like dependent on AI token demand itself. We keep you pushing inflating that bubble and now that bubble is starting to increasingly be um filled with and the reason I call it a bubble by the way it may not be a bubble it all depends on what you think AI demand goes in the future but now we're doing it on credit not just profits and retained earnings of uh these companies and so if you get one demand blip right oh my god AI tokens we have more supply than we have demand just like we saw when we had a period of time in 2021 where we didn't

have enough blocks space and you know ETH gas prices were going to $200 and then that suddenly changed and we had like too much block space. No one was buying it. Okay, same thing could happen with AI token demand. If that happens that could cause a massive cascade riskoff sell that will just pull crypto down with it and that in that context you could see new lows for crypto. Out of that the good news is more debasement is probably the answer, right? Treasury and Fed stepping in, print money, get us out of this, more debasement. But before that happens, you could see a pretty massive blip down because this is a lot of credit being injected into the AI speculation. I asked Mike Nato about

what he thought about this cuz it was funny. We just finished recording a podcast. gave basically this exact case and then crypto prices went crazy and he said he's fading this uh bull run in crypto right now because NASDAQ weakness and the 30-year moving back up is pretty telling is is he's saying the base case is that crypto makes a idiosyncratic move up uh based on short positioning on Bitcoin that the shorts getting blown out based on >> well that happened the Trump just happened >> yeah but he said that might be what's needed before then we go down. So, he's watching for signs of durability.

[laughter] Okay. Uh, this was kicked off, he says, by a massive short squeeze, and you got to see if that squeeze is durable. ETF flows, spot volumes until until it's durable. He's staying a bit skeptical. So, that's the that's the bare take. I give it kind of equal weight. Honestly, I'm like 5050 on whether this >> is a sign of we've broken the back and debasement is back on or we still have more to go. Yeah, I I do think about like there people are making fun of all the people who said like, "Oh, I'm going to wait for the capitulation wick in October and then like 10,000 people are saying that and like so therefore we're not getting it."

>> But now now people aren't saying it anymore. >> Now that now that's non-conensus. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Not at all. I I think maybe I'll invite Ben Cohen back on and and see what he thinks. >> I think you could always take the position of just always be >> bit long dollar cost average in. You don't have to you don't have to worry about these wigs. >> I'm always exposed. >> Always exposed. Always exposing yourself, aren't you? [laughter] >> Also on the week, David, uh Iran shifting from kinetic to economic. What What is this about? >> Yeah, this is a a a truth social that got tweeted out by the White House.

Basically, uh Donald Trump is is communicating that we are shifting our strategy with Iran. We're not really doing kinetic stuff. we are just going to continue the economic chokeold on them which is pretty pretty it was working is working >> and not is that what this implies kinetic is kind of >> I think kinetic is firmly not working yeah or at least it's it's not working as much as it once did uh the the takeaway here is that this is going to be months like three plus months for the chokeold to really actually have like a capitulation moment for Iran. Uh the Iran economic situation is dire, but the whole point of the Islamic regime is like they can they're cockroaches. They can just hold on for for they can just hold that's what they

>> been economically sanctioned in the past. Is this like a deescalation in your mind of just like you know cuz deescalation for a and trading for an economic escalation? >> Okay. Trump has these words. It's going to be the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country. But the fact that he's moving from kinetic to just purely economic seems to be a deescalation. But it also seems to indicate this whole thing is going to continue to grind on. >> This whole thing is going to continue to grind on. Yeah. I I bet you we go through the midterms.

>> Wow. Uh when we come back, let's talk about the SEC's new 402page document. Is this SEC version of the Clarity Act? David read it and he can give us the details on that. and a few other things in crypto, including FOMO, BAP, and Hyperlquid Compound, Rebirth, and Hayden Adams first blog post since 2019 that I thought was really good. We'll talk about all that more, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible. Bankless Nation, we've built something for you. Introducing the Bankless MCP. Chat GBT and Claude are great at a lot of things, but ask them anything beyond the basics of crypto about protocol mechanics, tokconomics, or just what happened last week in crypto, and the gaps will start to show.

The problem is context. Bank list, on the other hand, has spent almost a decade building one of the deepest archives of crypto data anywhere. More than 2,000 podcast transcripts, 10,000 articles, and countless conversations with the people actually building this industry. And now we've structured all of that data into the bankless MCP. So you can go and connect it to your claude or chatbt and suddenly your AI can answer your crypto queries with the entire bank list archive behind it. And every new Bank list article or episode gets added automatically so the context keeps staying up to date. The Bankless MCP is exclusively available to Banklist premium subscribers. So you can go to banklist.com upgrade to premium and connect the MCP in just a few minutes and all of a sudden your crypto [music] queries to your AI LLM, whatever you use

will get a thousand times better. So go check it out. There is a link in the show notes and once you become a banklist premium member, you can hop into the Banklist Discord and let me know how you like it. Cheers. Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best cryptocycle 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 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. [music] 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, the SEC has a new proposed rule titled regulation crypto assets. This is what we were talking about earlier in the show, which is basically this is the SEC just doing their half of clarity, whatever they can do to clarity. I'm going to say some things. I'm going to tell you what's going on in here, and you're going to feel like, oh, we've talked about this for all of my our time in crypto. This has always been what has been discussed about what we want out of

the crypto industry, and we're just we're just getting it from the SEC as rulemaking, not laws, but rulemaking, which is the second best thing as to a law. And so the first one is how startups in crypto can raise money with with a token that doesn't make the token a security. Uh and so there is exemptions, three different exemptions that have been produced in this rulemaking that allows for this to happen. One is a startup exemption allowing token issuers to raise up to $5 million in a one-time event that allows the team to launch and release a network token. No financial statements are required. No accredited investor limits.

No resale restrictions on the token. General solicitation is allowed. The issuer can be an entity, an individual, or a loose group of people each signing on, but there's a $5 million raise cap on the raise amount. And so this would kind of like token sales, airdrops, like that general kind of like token issuance behavior can be applied here. That's the first exemption. The second exemption is a fundraising exemption. If you're if you speak TRA, this is just reggga a for tokens. Uh so issuers can raise a constrained amount of money every 12 months. You have to do a filing with the SEC. You have to tell them that you're doing this. And there's two different tiers. So tier one with unodudited financials issuers can raise $20 million

every 12 months. And then tier tier two if you submit audited financials that unlocks the ability to raise $75 million every 12 months. So reggae for tokens. And then the third the third exemption is an investment contract safe harbor. This is kind of the big one. Rule 400. A crypto asset is deemed no longer subject to be an investment contract and therefore not a security if the issuer has completed or permanently ceased all essential managerial efforts it promised and isn't making any new promises.

Again, it has to file a form with the SEC saying that it is doing this with a certification and supporting analysis. But nonetheless, you get to say, "Hey, we are no longer managing this token. This is a decentralized network and you and it's not a security." And so this is these new pathways for tokens to be issued, funds to be raised, but those security were just never be invoked. Why are you saying this is all we've ever wanted? Like this is kind of what like what I guess what this is doing if I understand it is it's saying that all of the kind of the ICOs for decentralized networks, the Ethereum ICO for instance, which was under the crosshairs of the Gendler administration, that is all okay in this new regime, in this new

paradigm. And also that last one you talked about the rule 400, the investment contract safe harbor that is explicitly painting a path providing clarity to the uh the crypto industry of how something that is an investment contract, something that is a security becomes a commodity, becomes a decentralized network if it no longer has essential managerial efforts. So, it's essentially providing a pathway for networks like Ethereum or say Salana or other crypto networks that launched in that way to become decentralized and no longer securities. That's kind of all we've ever wanted from the SEC, right? Just like stop coming after tokens and give

us some clarity. Like this is the SEC's portion of the Clarity Act, is it not? Through rulemaking. >> Yeah. Yeah. And you remember when the uh XRP versus the SEC versus Gary Gendler case, Ripple won that case. And really what that was about was not about XRP being a security, but it was determined that some the investment contracts. These are the investment contracts that creates the token. So a is even more defended that tokens are not securities. And now in addition to that the investment contracts these are about the ways that you can create an investment contract that is also itself not a security. So these are legal investment contracts to create a token and both of

these things are not securities. That's that's what's very very exciting. It's very generalizable. It's very scalable. You know what this does away with Ryan? air drops, points programs, yield farming, any other stupid, convoluted way to issue and distribute tokens to the general public interest that is just inefficient, gameable, poor, like all that mess that we went through time and time and time again because we needed to find like creative ways to get around securities laws.

>> Yeah. Now we have the paths to doing that that's direct and efficient that is confirmed to be not securities >> and the requirements are light and there's somewhat of kind of a a sandbox right so as you get bigger as it's more fund funding at stake like from 20 million to 75 million you have to do various things but you don't have to file you know 10k filings and the whole >> burdens of compliance >> that comes with that um okay I guess a couple reactions first of all that's Great. And that means that all of these things that were in this ambiguous area in the past, we did particularly our blockchain decentralized networks like we don't have to worry about that being under the crosshairs anymore. And I don't even think David a future

administration can really reverse this. If the SEC in this administration 2026 comes out with this rule making, right? Let's say you have AOC's administration or something like this and it's Gary Gensler v2 and they try to reverse this. The court's got to laugh them out of the court, right? Cuz just like guys guys hold on >> there there is some precedent that your institution has to uphold and if you say something is okay in 2026 there has to be continuity. You can't reverse everything in 2029. >> You have to have a legal rationale for reversing it not just a vibe rational.

>> Exactly. So even if we don't have a bill out there the clarity I just think this is really hard given the precedent that's being set by an institution >> uh that has to has continuity from one administration to the other. um to like reverse this. Maybe some things can be reversed around the edges. So that's one thought. I guess my other thought is like how much do we really need this anymore because like like I mean for existing assets we do but like how many more cryp decentralized crypto networks are we actually going to launch? Like we have Bitcoin, we have Ethereum, we have kind of the long tale of blockchain. Are there more that we have to launch?

>> Are we done? It is a little bit ironic that the appetite for issuing a decentralized network to the general public and doing a token distribution program is is a thing of the past. Now that we have the clarity and the regulation that we need to do it like no investor wants to invest in any of the stuff that this like regulation actually protects at least in this current form of crypto. No one wants new L1's. No one wants middleares. Like that's that's the appetite is gone, >> right? The question is how many more decentralized networks without managers do we actually like want or need?

>> Yeah, people are really into managerial effort these days. [laughter] >> Like I want them for some things. I don't want them for Bitcoin. I don't want them for Ether. But like I do want them for like a lot of other things in crypto and I wish everything else. >> Yeah. actually that we need more managerial [laughter] efforts in crypto. >> But anyway, it's great we have a path and this is uh I think the CFTC's portion of the the Clarity Act. >> Let me round out this one part uh that I think is worthwhile. Uh in addition to the startup exemptions that I talked about, in order to have those startup exemptions be applied to you, you need to take part in standardized disclosures. Again, if you speak TRD, this is basically S1 filings for tokens, but it's much easier. Uh these there

there are a couple rules for how you do this. It must be in plain language and stage appropriate. So what this means is plain language. You can't obuscate details with overly technical terminology. And stage appropriate means that forward-looking plans must be clearly delineated from what actually exists. Again, this is like a reminiscent of the 2017 ICO era where like you would read a white paper and there were some stupid [ __ ] white papers [laughter] back then with incredibly complicated math that promised the world and retail investors would look at this and be like, "Wow, geniuses wrote this white paper. I understand nothing. The team is amazing." When in fact, the team is intentionally writing ridiculous, ridiculously complicated white papers

that don't actually make sense and the team is actually scammers. And so there's so you write you write these disclosures and then there's 10 specific subjects uh of the disclosure requirements. You have to disclose what you promise and how far you've gotten, what you're selling, and what you'll do with the money, who's behind it, and what they hold. So management conflicts of interest, related party transactions, like market making stuff like insider holdings, like all of that, like the Blockwork Works token transparency report type stuff, all of that must be disclosed. and then how the code works and who controls it. And so in addition to all this, we're getting kind of the disclosures that the industry has also wanted for a very long time.

>> That's great. And it fulfills what Hester P's vision has been for the SEC of don't be a merit-based regulator. Okay. Just like >> emphasize disclosures, but it's up to investors what they invest in. They you're not trying to protect investors from making bad decisions. People can always still make bad decisions. So I think this is um a good path for the SEC to take. Dave, there was a big win for stable coins. actually kind of went under the radar with all of this other good news this week, but you picked up on it. What happened? >> Yeah. So, this is the FASB. What is the FASB? Financial accounting services board. Sanders board. Sanders board. Uh they are uh creating a comment period.

This is like the first step. This this is going probably going to happen that will allow stable coins to be considered cash equivalent on corporate balance sheets. Uh and so right now stable coins are not considered corporate uh cash equivalents. The issue that they're fixing is like be before this they're trying to fix this. Uh right now some companies will report stable coins as like yes this counts as cash. Some will say no and a also the auditors don't agree with the interpretation. So FASB is just standardizing everything. And so according to this rule the answer can be yes stable coins are cash or cash equivalent if the following things are true. You can cash out whenever you want, which means you need a direct relationship with Circle basically or Paxos. Uh you can you must cash out with

the issuer itself, not a middleman. So you can't use Coinbase. You have to go straight to Circle. And also the issuer itself backs every coin with real cash or short-term T bills, which is just genius compliant, which means not Tether. So this is I think is uniquely bullish for Circle. >> Oh, for genius compliant stable coins. for genius compliant stable coins probably Paxos too, but like I think circle is the big winner here. >> I think maybe the not the middleman is probably going to be argued out in the in the comment period just because it constrains things. Um but uh yeah, this is going through comment period.

This is probably going to happen. >> You asked if this is a big deal like publicly. Austin Campbell says, "Yeah, it's a big deal." David, you're correct. Like Faz Granted, Austin Campbell is the stable coin risk guy, so he would think it's a big deal. kind of like um I agree with this. I mean FASB is GAAP standards for accounting, right? That that is all corporate balance sheets. That's everything in the US. That's the largest capital market standards body setting thing in existence. >> And they're saying this is now stable coins are cash and cash equivalents. So I do think it's a big deal for adoption and uh probably went under the radar. Um some other things we should cover in in crypto. Venice just crossed a 100red million in annualized revenue. David, uh, that's a pretty big deal.

>> Very big deal. Very big deal. Over 4 million users and Venice also had 7 days of consecutive all-time highs of VVV burn. So, there's a lot of energy in the Venice ecosystem right now. At the same the same time, Stripe acquired Open Router this week, which is very comparable comparable to Venice itself. It's very different at the same time, but also very similar in that is both model aggregators. Uh, and then also rampbot router. Open router is not router. That's a different company. But it's also very similar. It's just like there's a bunch of models out there.

There router like open router way too similar of name. Uh, aggregate all the models. Uh, so the other two model aggregators out there just got bought this week. Open router for 7 billion. Open router has 8 million users got bought for 7 billion. Venice has 4 million users. Currently at a $1 something billion FTDM >> token. kind of like aggregators like right they're almost like a one in you know for um purchasing AI tokens they just like route it to various models 1 in yeah this is I I was trying to learn about the details about how to actually compare the thing I would take the 1-in comparison actually apply it closer to Venice in the sense that it is userforward like users go to 1 in and users go to Venice open router is a

little bit more like Google AdSense in that it is a marketplace and an auction mechanism for models Okay. >> And so it's slightly different. Uh >> it's fascinating because Open Router doesn't use stable coins right now. So if you want to you purchase something, it just does the oldfashioned way where it'll take like you know >> I don't know $1,000 or whatever aggregate all these transactions and kind of settle it later. So you sort of wonder if um if Stripe is going to integrate them into the stable coin ecosystem, micro payments, tempo, all that. A lot of possibility there. Um I think the theme really has been energy on the week. some energy also in FOMO crossing 150 AR. We talked about FOMO last week. I learned David that you're

actually uh I don't know if you're a daily active at this point for FOMO, but you enjoy the app, do you not? >> I enjoy the app. I mean, in terms of like a just a casual gambling trading app to throw pocket change into. It's a great app. It's a great app. I don't know if the 100 million annualized revenue I think that's like a high water mark because because trading volumes are so uh volatile um but there was at least a day where they had 100 million 150 million annualized revenue but the growth around FOMO has been just pretty pretty crazy uh and so again we had you know the Feds the Fed is pumping our bags excuse me the Treasury is pumping our bags white house is pumping our bags which is great in crypto startups in crypto are making

money are making bank and so there's just like fundamental strength in the industry. >> Yeah. Is is really I guess social crypto was memecoins all along, wasn't it? I mean, you kind of think Farcaster tried at this for 5 years, you know, and before >> throwing and then they pivoted to becoming a wallet because they realized that people just wanted a wallet to trade me flavored meme coins. >> Yeah. And now FOMO is having the success there. Maybe that was the the product market fit all along. They revealed preference. [clears throat] Um, also base app integrating hyperlquid. This has got to be the Kobe effect of not prioritizing the base blockchain.

>> Kobe effect. This is the work of Kobe. [laughter] >> Do you think that's a sign of things to come? The base app is just going to be much more agnostic with respect to, you know, >> yeah, it's just like user centric. It's like we're going to get you the thing that you want. We don't care what chain it's on. We're not going to prioritize base over anything else. And so we'll just bring Hyperlid in here. >> Yeah. Yeah, I do kind of wonder how far that will go. Like will Hyperlid try to be the backend for Coinbase or will Coinbase try and build out their own native per products? Um, you know, if if it's Kobe's way, it's like the former >> Why you think Kobe's way is just userentric like DGEN uh trader focus?

>> No, Kobe's way is he's very bullish on Hyperlquid. He owns a ton of hype. >> Oh, okay. So, it's hype specific. Interesting. That is interesting. I wonder if that comes out in the disclosures. Anyway, moving on. >> [laughter] >> uh compound. Are they having a little bit of a rebirth? [clears throat] I don't know if I see that yet, but I see something. They have announced new leadership in >> Mhm. >> I mean, the one of the first DeFi protocols that really took off. It was like kind of like second to Maker Dow back in the day and it had >> a lull where a took over. Robert Lesner and leadership kind of like faded just almost felt like kind of like not abandoned it, but it just didn't have any leadership. Well, it was supposed to be very constrained and so it was like

anti- adding new assets to be conservative, but then they also just got straight out competed by AB. But they were they've been printing money for a very long time. I don't know how much TVL is left in compound, but like they they they still they held on to TVL for a very long time just because of how safe it was. >> So, what's happening now? uh new leadership as you said, $52 million approved from the DAO for a development program uh aimed at institutional credit and real world assets. Uh and so like yeah, let's see if we can kind of like kick restart this thing.

>> I think that'd be nice. >> PBD. >> I think that'd be nice. >> I think that'd be nice. >> But there is some energy coming back to OG Defi Protocols. In fact, I would almost feel like saying that OG D5 protocols are back. And here's the thing that really crystallized that for me is did you read this Hayden Adams post? This is his first blog post, founder of Uniswap since 2019. >> I have not read it. It's on my to-do list, but I know you read it, so maybe you can explain it. >> It's worth the read, man. I read it this morning, and he's basically saying AMMs could actually eat the world. Okay. And he compares them to uh index funds. The frame he puts on it is, you know, index funds in 1976, you know, uh, John Bogle, the index fund

guy, people are saying it's unamerican, couldn't ever compete against more actively managed funds. And now passive uh, index funds are the way most Americans hold their capital. Okay, passive funds rule. He's equating that to passive LPing. Basically, passive AMMs are going to eat the trading market the way passive index funds ate traditional finance. And he gives a lot of reasons why, you know, first um we came for the longtail in AMMs, you know, had the long tale of tokens and better trading experience to do that. Uh the second thing AMMs went and conquered was sort of um uh paired assets, you know,

like USDC and USDT, those types of pairs. The next thing they're going to um start doing is give you options for correlated pairs. So he sees a world where it's actually something like Nvidia and SPY that are the correlated pairs and they become much more liquid than say just Nvidia and USDC or US dollars or something like that. So he he provides a whole I guess theoretical basis for how AMMs can start really competing against traditional market makers against siloed tradi and just really like start to dominate the market. It's a compelling article and it just feels like Hayden, Uniswap is back

and the DeFi energy is starting to come back and they're like no like DeFi is actually better and here's how and this is after a decade of doing this. Uh so I don't know second wind energy rational points made. I'm excited to see what AMMs and and UNIS swap and Hayden do in the future. I think the the word that comes to mind is creativity. Yeah. And I think that that's something that this industry has really been missing and I think something that we all saw in DeFi and we don't we haven't had that as much lately. And so if if Hayden, you're telling me that we can get really creative with our asset structure uh in the back end, then I can get bullish again.

>> Well, can you get bullish again? Is is that the the end of today's this week's episode? Are you bullish again officially, David? Well, I mean, since we started uh recording an hour ago, Ryan, ETH is up eight more%. It's at 23,000 $2,350. Bitcoin is almost at 73,000. Uh I'm going to go watch the CFTC uh innovation talk that Mike Zelig is giving right now with Vlad from Lighter talking at right now. There is a lot to be bullish about. How can I just say that?

>> You could definitely say that. That's a good way to end. I guess we'll check in next week to see if this is sustained. >> All right, we'll see you in Oh, I will you will not be checking in with me next week because I will be >> That's right. >> at Bernie man. >> Bye. I'm gone for two weeks. Hib's taken over. So, I will see you in three weeks, Ryan. >> All right, time to get bullish then. David's gone. Time to get bullish. You better buy your ETH before you leave. >> Did you know, Ryan, that ETH hit all-time high while I was at Burning Man one year ago? >> I think you should give that when ETH hit alltime high was a year ago. You need to consider that.

>> I thought it was so much longer. >> You need to get your buys on before you leave. That's what that means to me. [laughter] >> All right, I'll see you in 3 weeks. Bankless Nation, you guys know the deal. Crypto is risky, but not risky enough. The institutions are here, so we are leaving and going even further west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you are with us on the bankers [music] journey. Thanks a lot.