UDSKRIFT 🔗
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Hey, Bankless Nation. This is a special episode. Actually, an interview recorded with Guy
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from Coinbeer about a month ago. So, some of the prices, some of those details might
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be dated, but I think we talked a lot about the Bankless story, David. So, we thought
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you guys would enjoy it during the holidays.
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Importantly, this is an interview of us by Coinbeer House. We are, this is not a Bankless
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podcast, but we are putting it on the Bankless podcast feed.
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Yeah. So, I hope you guys enjoy it. As usual, I was shocked that he did a podcast.
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I don't, I still to this day have no idea why SBF came on a podcast with an $8 billion
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haul on his balance sheet.
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Hello, everyone. And welcome back to Coinbeer O. We have two very special guests with us
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today. I am deeply honored to welcome none other than Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman,
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better known as Bankless, one of the best crypto podcasts out there and invaluable source
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of information for not just all things Ethereum, but all things crypto and beyond as well.
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I've been listening to Ryan and David for years now and it's just they just keep on getting
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better and better. I'm really glad that they've been able to join me today. It's pretty
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early in the morning for them. But guys, welcome and thank you so much for joining.
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Yeah, thanks for the kind word, Guy.
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Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.
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It's great to, it's great to finally meet you. Like I say, I've been listening to you guys
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for years now. And like there are so you guys have had so many incredible conversations with
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some of the, you know, some of the top names in the space. And there's no way we've got time
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to sort of dig into all of those today. But I do want to sort of get your thoughts on a few
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sort of episodes that you've done a few people that you've spoken to. But I thought an interesting
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thing to do to start with because one thing I've kind of noticed is that crypto, the crypto
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podcast world and the crypto YouTube world seem to be sort of quite separate polls a lot of the
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time. And obviously like you guys, you guys have a YouTube channel, but I think you're sort of
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best known as as podcasters. So I thought for anyone sort of unfamiliar for anyone who sort of
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gets most of their information from, from YouTube, could you guys, you know, give us your,
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give us your backstory a little bit like how you came to, how you, you know, how you got into
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crypto and how you came to do what you do with, with bankless. You want to start David? Yeah,
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sure. Um, I think to start things off, Ryan and I are definitely podcast people, I would say we
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both are big podcasts consumers. And I don't really know how anyone would start a podcast without
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having that as their foundation. Like first we enjoy podcasts. And then we are like, okay,
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we could, we could start a podcast. So that's probably why bankless is known as a podcast is
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because that's where we came from. Yeah, like David, how much, how much, how much
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a podcast listing do you do versus YouTube? Would you say, uh, yeah, like three to one ratio. And
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it used to, it used to be a 10 to one. It's gone. YouTube has increased lately. And I would say
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that's been on track with bankless's emphasis on YouTube. Like we've nailed the podcast game
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relatively early, but the YouTube game is still like new to us. We stuck a YouTube. Yeah,
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we stuck a YouTube. We're working on it. But we started first as, you know, as podcast consumers
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and then podcasters. And that's really where bankless came to be, uh, filled this niche in the
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early days of Ethereum, where there were a lot of people that had a lot of shared ideas and
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understanding about what this Ethereum thing is and what it could be. And this was back in like
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2018 to 2019, which it was very, very early and no one knew what Ethereum was or where it was
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going. It's like we had just coined the words DeFi. Uh, and so we started the podcast to help
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articulate that story. Uh, and a lot of Ethereum people at the time were like, Oh, thank god.
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Finally, someone is saying the words that I feel about Ethereum. Uh, and that's kind of where we
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got our first early foundations in this base. Yeah, I think like the perspective at that time,
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2019 when we kicked things off was we had just come out of 2017 and guy, uh, you remember this,
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right? The highs of 2018, the elation, all the way. And we're going to change the world
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and crypto is everything all the way to the lows of 2018, 2019 and the absolute despair. And so
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David and I were on kind of a similar question journey where we were fully bought into this crypto
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thing. And we obviously we had bags of 2017. So we're trying to figure out like, Oh my god,
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are we wrong? Like, did we, did we miss something? Did we screw something up? Like, so for me,
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it was just going down to base principles and trying to figure out if I was crazy or everyone
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else was crazy. And so bankless really began as a quest, right? It was just a couple of investors
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on the journey to make sense out of crypto. Like, what are the use cases? What, what are blockchains
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good for? Uh, how do they actually accrue value? And so we basically open source this quest.
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And it was a series of conversations between David and myself. And then we'd bring guests on
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and we developed what we call the bankless thesis. Indeed, the name of the podcast is kind of
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a thesis for crypto, which is what does crypto do helps us go bankless, right? We have a money
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system, an alternate money system that does not rely on central banks or commercial banks
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in order to thrive. So even the name of the episode is kind of the name of the thesis is in the
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podcast format. But like one other thing I'll say is, um, I think that podcasting is a different
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medium than than YouTube. Yeah. Right. So our podcast like the reason it hasn't translated so well
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previously to YouTube is just we tend to go on for a long time, long time. It's like deep, long
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form conversation. And, um, you know, YouTube, at least my impression of YouTube, and I think
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there's some convergence, I think, uh, things change. But YouTube just like, give me the answers,
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right? I want like, I want to see 15 minutes, like articulate something and it takes David and I
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along in 15 minutes to actually, uh, go through an idea maze and talk to a guest. So that's my,
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that's why we're probably native podcasters rather than YouTubers. Yeah. Well, because I mean,
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you guys have been, you guys have been working together for so, for so long now and you, you know,
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you gel so well together. I think that's part of the appeal, isn't it? It's like, it's not just
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two guys
who, who really care about what they're talking about and what they're into, but also just
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you know, a really sort of bounce off each other so well. I think that's why, you know,
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I think that's one of the many reasons why it works, why bankless works so well as a podcast.
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Yeah. I mean, you know, from my experience of it, like, from my experience of YouTube,
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because I mean, when we started, when we started Coin Bureau, you know, all those years ago,
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we had to sort of, we had to kind of figure out YouTubers, we went along and it was sort of like,
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surely, surely what people want is just like really short, like, you know, a couple of minutes.
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And then we were quite surprised when they wanted kind of turns out they wanted kind of longer
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form stuff. But it's just, it feels like a lot of the time, it feels like the sort of goalposts
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are almost shifting in a way because you're sort of trying to, you're trying to find that balance.
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Like people do like longer form stuff on YouTube, but only, only up to a point and then there's a
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sort of moment where they're sort of like, no, this is enough. Like, I can't, I can't deal with this
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anymore. Yeah, I was actually going to ask you guys because I think you do this really well
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with your YouTube channel and kind of your platform. But it seems to be there can be a challenge
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with anyone who is in crypto media with presenting candy to the audience versus presenting
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vegetables, right? We like to say at bankless what we're trying to do is like healthy candy.
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But like, sometimes that's difficult because if you go by attention spans or narratives,
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then you're just talking about maybe the latest meme coin. And what is the substance there?
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Like, how does that actually help us change the world and fulfill the promise of crypto and
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actually go bankless, right? And so if you give almost like the audience just the candy,
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oh, here are the 10 coins that are moaning and you need to buy right now, then I feel like you lose
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the plot. But if you don't do any of that and if you're just deep into the research and you're
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talking about like ETH research posts all the time with big brain cryptographers, then you're
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not changing the world either because you don't have an audience that actually cares about that.
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I'm curious from your perspective because you seem to balance this very well.
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How do you like manage this? The candy versus the health foods?
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It's tricky. It's a good question. Yeah, it's that idea of calories and calories or sweeties.
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And it's, you know, healthy calories, healthy candies, you say, it's tricky. One of the,
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I think one of the things that we found that that kind of helped us grow was that was the sort of
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realization that, you know, crypto is no longer in a bubble. And I think this was coming,
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this was really sort of coming out sort of 2020, 2021, I think. This realization that crypto
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had evolved from just this thing that a few people were interested in and the only that kind of
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existed in and of itself. And suddenly it was much more susceptible to macro forces to it was
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a part of, you know, it was becoming a part of the kind of traditional system, which isn't,
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you know, which isn't great in many ways. But that's still this kind of cold, hard facts. And I think,
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I think sort of we pivoted a little bit to covering sort of more macro content as well in order
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to kind of, you know, flesh out the ecosystem for those who maybe sort of had a kind of passing
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interest in crypto. But like, you know, kind of like you say, they didn't want, they didn't want to
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listen to like a deep dive into the latest EIPs or anything like that. But they're still,
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you know, they've still got enough interest. They still want to know what's going on.
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But yeah, you can't, they don't want, they don't want the hardcore tech. But it is tricky because,
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and I think especially during kind of periods like we've, we've just come out of and I think this is
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why I certainly hear, I, it's here at Coinbeer. I'm kind of getting the sense of it from you guys as
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well, you know, sentiment is kind of really sort of picking up because in a bear market when things
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are really bad, it's so difficult to keep people engaged and entertained and you sort of feel like,
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well, I should try and find some good news to cover. And then you're like,
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piracy, I, you know, everything sucks. Everyone's at each other's throats and all this sort of stuff.
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It's, it can be really
difficult. So yeah, it's I guess striking that balance between what you
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think your audience wants to see and what you think they should see and sort of try and give them
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both because yeah, I mean, it would be very, it would be very easy to do like top 10,
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top 10 meme coins for, or October. It's just like, yeah, we even, there's a little piece of
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you dies. I mean, we try to balance it out a little bit, but we will like still do a show on
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an entire EIP. Like we did a show called dank sharding and like we didn't even, no, no,
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blob space, blob space, blob space. So like, but as it can't be all of our episodes,
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that's how we, we just do a portfolio, right? So you get a, some vegetables mixed in with
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everything else. I think that's where we've kind of settled is there's just an extreme amount
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of variety on bankless. So you get the one and a half hour long very technical deep dyes with
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Justin Drake. And at the end of that, here, you end up saying like, I can't really regurgitate
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anything, but I still kind of got it anyways. And then they're like, that's how David and I feel.
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And then there's like the 45 minute shorter forum episodes where we're specifically talking
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about market movements and like kind of doing the dopamine content that everyone in crypto pays
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attention to, whether you're, you know, an adiq degen who just got in or you're Justin Drake,
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like one of these, like both everyone kind of pays attention to like market drama, no matter what,
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maybe Justin does. There's plenty of market drama. Yeah. Yeah. Always all the time in crypto.
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I would say in in the YouTube game, and this is something that we identified pretty early at
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bankless, I would say, we didn't our, our, the first podcast episodes were no video just because
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we didn't have that set up. The technology wasn't there and we weren't very good at, like we could
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have done it, but we weren't very good at it. But it was something like that you tapped on to guy
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when you said just like the, the, the chemistry between mountain me and Ryan is really, really good.
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A lot of, I say like content producers as an industry, when people watch content, they kind of
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want to just catch a vibe. They want to like feel things. And one of the ways that we, me and Ryan
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got traction in the early days is that we were able to articulate some of the grand visions of
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crypto in the in the grand scheme of things and the fullness of time. And you put those into words,
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but that was a, that was an articulation of the way that a lot of people felt about this industry.
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And then we're also doing it like me and Ryan lean inherently optimistic. And then we also kind of
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have this, like we think similar, similarly, so we can bounce ideas off of each other. Yeah,
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but I, David is gas and I am breaks. Yeah, we're, we're, we have the difference is in you and me,
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which is like the gas and breaks and like the, you're, you're a business background. I'm a
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psych background, but these are actually complimentary, not, not like they don't conflict. And so like,
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the bankless brand just makes people like feel things at times. Sometimes negative things.
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Some people don't like that. But like the, the idea is like the, the people do feel stuff. And
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like we have like leaned into that a little bit. It's not an apathetic brand. By the way,
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you could tell that David and I are still podcasters because we have these big, big acid headphones on.
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We're just talking about it. We're not, David just sent me like, I want to, I want to get the
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invisible headphones. I want to get that point. You'll know that we are trying to like do more
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with YouTube when we get the invisible headphones. That's, that's the moment you transition.
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The headphones come off and suddenly, suddenly you're a YouTuber and you're so good. Yeah.
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Is it better on the other side guy? Is it better to be on the YouTube side?
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It's okay. It's okay. It has its, it has its moments. It can, it can get a bit weird as well.
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Well, you guys, you guys deal with some characters on YouTube that I just don't, I don't think
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exist in the podcast game. Like there are some absolute like crypto YouTube personalities.
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I would say there's certainly. I was, yeah, it's sometimes you just find yourself kind of,
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you know, it's like, what is going on? Is this real? Is this real? Am I actually, am I actually seeing
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this? Am I actually, am I actually a part of this world? Yes, it would seem that I am. Good
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--> 00:14:56.240
Lord. It's, yeah, it can be very, it can be very strange. There's, there's never a dull moment.
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But yeah, I mean, going back to what you were saying, David, I think, you know, I think
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the chemistry that you guys have is, is really sort of tangible. But I think like all the best
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podcasts, I think when it's two people talking like, you know, you, you feel like you're in the room
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with you guys. And I think that's, but I think that's a big attraction for, for, you know, for
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people with podcasts, you know, I think most people tend to consume podcasts like, you know, when
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they're, when they're kind of, you know, walking or going, you know, kind of going about their day.
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And I think that's part of the joy of it because you can just sort of, you know, you can get on
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with your day whilst also having, whilst also being in the company of these, of these people
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talking about, you know, blob space and all this kind of weird stuff. And because I listen to you
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guys on my, on my way into work, I've got one of those, I've got one of those electric scooters
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because I thought I'm gonna, I'm not gonna go down the Dubai route of buying a, buying a big
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super car and getting stuck in traffic. So I listen to you guys on my, on my scoot in and it just
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like, you know, it just makes the time go beautifully. But it's a, obviously, you know, YouTube is a kind
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of, is a kind of different, different medium entirely. It takes, it takes a bit of cracking, but
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it's, yeah, it's rewarding. Come, come over to the other side and join our, we're working on it.
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Our team is, is corralling us over there and they're doing a good job.
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Okay, you just have to, you know, you, you have to lose it at some point and just
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give over, give over to the nuttiness of it all. You'll enjoy it. I want it to, so like, like I said
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earlier, you know, there are so many great episodes that you guys have done. I want to take you
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back in time, if I may, to sort of just over a year ago, because my, my wife Katie and I just
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moved into our house here in Dubai and she'd set me the task of building the bed that we'd had
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delivered. And I noticed that there was a bankless episode on and it was the debate that you guys
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hosted between Eric Voorhees and Sam Bankman Fried. And I kind of put it on and my wife came up
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about an hour later and found me, just sat on the floor, surrounded by a completely unbuilt
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bed, just sort of, you know, what is happening? She was like, what, what, please tell me what is so
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fascinating that you completely fail to do this. But yeah, I mean, I remember that was such an
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incredible, an incredible episode to listen to as an incredible debate. I just wanted to,
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I just wanted to get you guys take on it, you know, after everything that's happened,
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obviously we're talking in the wake of SBF being found guilty. He's looking at, you know,
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possibly possibly a hundred years plus in jail. But looking back on that time, do you guys,
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what do you guys make of all that? I mean, I think it's, I think it's fair to say that Eric kind of
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won that debate hands down. Yeah, yeah, certainly. Yeah. What did you, what did you make of it all at the
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time? Did it, did it feel as surreal as it kind of came across to listen to? Yes, definitely. And
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there's, if you go, if you look at, I mean, only we can see it because we only we have the back end
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to the, to the particular episode, the analytics. But you can see the chart of viewers, concurrent
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viewers who are watching the live stream. Like it spikes up as all live streams do. And then it
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hovers around some flat line for a little bit. And then the debate really picks up. And you can
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see the moment when friends are texting friends or people are sending out tweets and they're like,
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yo, everyone get in here and watch this. Eric is dismantling SBF. And so like it's a right
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around halfway through. And like the the viewership like triples very, very quickly. And at the same
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time, like everyone talks about like, oh, this like this huge episode that the bank list did that
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you guys produced. Ryan and I stopped talking about one third of the way through the podcast.
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Yeah. And like we had like a mid role sponsor break that, you know, we do for every single
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live stream. And I'm texting Ryan's like, text again, we should be doing sponsors right now,
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but like we can't end this. Like we just have to let this roll. And and so like we just went hands
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off. Like the the episode wrote
itself. It's SBF like handed Eric, his jugular and Eric was like,
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okay, thank you. And he proceeded to just dismantle SBF. Yeah, it was it was a surreal moment,
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I think, for the entire industry. I think it was. And I think that this was part of the unveiling.
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So so let's remember the fast, you know, go go back in history rewind a bit further. So this
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was this happened in the end of October, 2022. But if you rewind to January, 2022, the the three
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smartest people in crypto were Doquan, SBF and Suzu. Okay, these were the legends. These were the
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people we put on a pedestal, right? SBF, this phenom that built a an exchange faster than Brian
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Armstrong, right? Like he was he was so big at the time. And then of course, we saw the downfall
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of Doquan. We saw the downfall of Suzu, but who is still standing in October, 2022, the savior
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of crypto, a sandbag been freed. And so this debate actually happened 12 days before all of the
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shit went down and everything came to light. And so we were actually, first of all, I was shocked
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that he did a podcast. I don't know. I still to this day have no idea why SBF came on a podcast
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with an eight billion dollar hole on his balance sheet. That to me does not make logical sense.
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That is some kind of like, SBF level hubris. Well, we didn't yet know that SBF didn't shut up.
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Like he had he had just entered that arc of I do not he does not have the shut up gene. And
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I think we saw that in court. He decided to testify on his own behalf. Like he just he's got
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something that most human beings don't have. And so the reason he came on was because he was
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pushing for this this anti defy legislation in DC behind closed doors in a way that would
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effectively pull up the ladder from the decentralized exchange front ends and accrue more power
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to his exchange. And so we were like, SBF, come on, talk to us about it, engage with us. And then
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yes. And then Eric Voorhees wrote a blog post about the same issue. So we're like, you know what's
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even better than us talking to him is Voorhees talking to him. And so that was the genesis
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for the conversation. But I thought it would be a bit more equal like sparring back and forth.
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But at the time, the piercing moral clarity of Eric Voorhees, just to kind of like, why are we here?
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Like what are we doing, Sam, juxtaposed with the kind of like, um,
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compromising falsely and bargain that was SBF. It was so clear even at the time. And we didn't know
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that that he was short eight billion dollars. But we knew he was short like values. We knew he was
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short like the reason we're all in crypto. And I think Sam articulated like I am here not for
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decentralization. I'm a mercenary. I'm just going to make as much money as possible. And then I'm
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going to give it away. And I think people were okay with that until he stepped into Congress,
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until he like started to play into the the regulatory arbitrage game. Anyway, I that the other
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interesting thing about that episode, David is like when we were going through it like, uh,
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SBF seemed like shaken during the time. Like if you watch like he, he was unable to articulate
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in the same way that he usually is. He started to fall apart. He started to fall apart.
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And, you know, if like I speak English, but I'm guessing if you didn't speak English and you
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watch that episode, you would understand that it'll like yo that the Eric guy won the debate.
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Like you don't have to understand the words that were said to understand that like Sam
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Bingham Free just like fell apart. I don't know. What did you think of it guys? So at the time,
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of course, the entire industry didn't know that what what SBF was up to behind the scenes. But
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yeah, what did you think of that when you were trying to assemble that bad?
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It was like, you know, the more the more that it went on and the more, you know,
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because Eric just sort of killed him with logic and clarity, like you said, didn't it? It was so,
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it was so clinical. It was sort of like I don't, you know, when you, you know, when you sort of
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feel like, oh, you feel on edge, even though you're even though you're completely, you know,
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in agreement with with the party that's winning, you're like Eric is absolutely right here. Like,
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wow, it was still kind of, it was still sort of painful to listen to in, in, in a way, because it,
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you know, even though they're even though right was winning out, it was still like this is,
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I mean, this is
kind of, this is embarrassing for for SBF, you know, this, and I guess at the same
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time, you're like, wow, hang on, this is someone who was, you know, the JP Morgan of crypto a few
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months before that, you know, as you said, the, the, the savior of it or so we thought.
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And Guy, I'm so glad we did that episode and that it's on the record. I'm, I'm glad on
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behalf of bankless, but I'm also glad on behalf of the crypto industry because I think after that,
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um, crypto has been painted in a such a light that it's full of SBFs and scammers and people who
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don't, you know, like, uh, take accountability for their actions, right? And indeed, we had an
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episode with, um, SBF, like, even before that in March of that year where it was just like,
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you know, we've had CZ on the podcast, we've had Brian Armstrong, we've had the Winkelvoss twins,
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where you've got a big exchange. Let's talk about your vision for it, right? And so I am so glad we
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had an episode pre FTX collapse where there's someone in crypto who represents like why we're here,
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calling this man to task like on behalf of our industry. I feel like that is evidence we can point
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to you as an industry and just be like, no, we knew something. He was not, he wasn't our guy. He was not one
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of us. He wasn't us. Yeah. I think it's so important. It is, it is like, you know, people outside
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of crypto think that it's, you know, the whole, the whole industry just sort of exists to scam
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people or whatever. I think it's really important to have, to have a record of that, to have a record
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of people in the industry going, I think I'm going to say, no, what's going on here? You know,
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you have to, you have to explain this. And I think, I think Eric around that time was, was talking
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about this idea of having industry standards as well. Right. Um, you know, the industry itself
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saying this is acceptable. This is not, you know, a lot of it I think was, was going to be around
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sort of exchanges and proof of reserves and, and solvency and things like that. And it was such a
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great, it was such a great conversation to have because it's like, yeah, yeah, how do we expect,
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how can we expect, uh, government agencies, you know, people who, people, for outsiders to come
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and, to come and regulate us, if we can't sort of clean out our own house, if we can't, you know,
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try and, try and draw up, try and police ourselves, try and draw up regulations for ourselves.
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Um, and that's, yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to sort of discuss that,
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that discuss that episode with you, because I think, I think it is a really sort of important
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moment in, in the history of crypto, really. It's like, you know, not only was this guy sort of
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the, the whole facade started to fall apart, but it's also like, you know, here is evidence of it.
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Here is evidence of the industry sort of, you know, policing itself to an extent.
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Well, absolutely. And I don't know if you read a post from, uh,
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Bology, Srinivasan, who, who makes this, this point. So it wasn't just that bankless episode.
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It was, um, crypto media who actually like broke the story. It was like that coin desk article
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from the reporter who revealed the balance sheet. And then it was crypto Twitter that was looking
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at kind of, oh, what's this money going on in the blockchain? Let, let's, let's, uh,
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look at Alameda's accounts. Let's look at FTX's accounts and see where's the money, right?
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It was the citizen journalists. It wasn't traditional media that actually, uh, broke this and
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disclosed. It certainly wasn't Gary Gensler who had multiple meetings with SBF earlier in the
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year. It was really the crypto industry that revealed this. And so that's another untold story.
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And I hope, guy, I hope these stories make the, the Hollywood like movies and the documentaries.
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And when the social network comes out for crypto, I hope they, they, they, they cover it in the
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right way. But if they don't, then I think, you know, the real ones know people who are in crypto
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at that time, you know, they, they know what actually happened. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, well,
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it's so important to, to pass that lesson on, isn't it? To go look, because that's another thing
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I wanted to ask you guys just on that, on the, on the subject of that interview. So I do you,
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do you think, do you think crypto has kind of, as an industry has kind of learned its lessons
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from that whole saga? Are we, are we older and wiser? Or do you think there's
still a likelihood
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that we're, we're going to make the same mistakes again? I think this last 2022, the, the year of
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just terrible price action and blowups and fraudsters being revealed as fraudsters. That was
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pretty unprecedented in crypto. Like we had some pretty undesirable behavior in the downfall of
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2018 in that same, same kind of era, but it was not at the same level of the gaping hole that
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was three hours capital or the absolute just toxicity that was the dokewan army and dokewan himself
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followed by like the level of fraud in 2022 was quite unprecedented. And I think a little bit of
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that was because there had been fraud in the industry before and no one had really gone to jail yet.
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And so it was perceived as like crypto as an industry where you could get away with fraud and
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you could make billions of dollars and walk away without ever like being tried by a justice system.
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So I think 2022 was useful in the fact that like no actually if fraud is fraud no matter where you
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are or what industry that you're in. So now that we have this precedent, I'm optimistic, I'm happy
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that we have that foundation to stand on. I'm also cautious about entering a bull market in which
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people's values tend to be forgotten and it is the moment. It is the time in which leaving your
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values behind is the most profitable. It's the most profitable time to do that. And so, you know,
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crypto is more mature. If we do enter a bull market, people will do less than desirable things,
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but at least we have precedent of people, you will go to jail if you do anything significant.
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So check yourself. So I'm mixed. Yeah, the way I would answer that is we will make the same mistakes
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just in different ways. So I think that if you look at kind of the parallels between
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ICOs and all of these like futility tokens and all of this money that was raised in 2017,
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that was the mistake. That was the cardinal sin of the 2017 bull market. And then if you look at,
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you know, 2021, 2022, it was quite obvious at the cardinal sins were there. Algo stablecoins,
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you know, margin trades with hedge funds, you know, pumping these ecosystems that really didn't
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deserve it. And ultimately, centralizing all of our private keys, right? And trusting the
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block fives in the Celsius, Alex Mishinsky, God, he doesn't get enough shame. Alex Mishinsky,
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and you know, all of those people that stole our funds, we will make mistakes that are
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fueled by the basic human psychology of boom bust of bubble every cycle, but we won't make
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them in the exact same way. I don't think we will trust another Alex Mishinsky who's wearing a
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shirt that says don't trust banks and is himself the least trustworthy banker in existence.
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Maybe actually, maybe not in existence because he had, you know, quite a quite a list of other
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untrustworthy crypto bankers at that time. But so, and in fact, Dave and I just did an episode,
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I think you listened to a guy because you mentioned this before we recorded with an investor who's
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outside of crypto just to try to find kind of investor named Morgan House and wrote a book called
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the Psychology of Money, where he's just like the reason it will never change is because human
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beings don't change. We're running the same like a homo sapien software that we always have.
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And so we're going to have these, you know, envy greed filled booms and these buss that we have
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to live with. We're going to throw the crazy wild party and everyone's going to get drunk and then
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someone's going to have to clean up afterwards. That's just how it is. And I guess I've come to
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terms with kind of accepting that. And my belief is, and I think our hope is, and the optimist in both
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David and I is like, well, the benefit at the end of this is going to be worth all of the painful,
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you know, hangovers and parties that we've had along the years because we are building an open,
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permissionless money system for the world. If it was all neat and orderly, if it wasn't chaotic,
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that would be an indication that it was a centralized system. It's almost like it has to happen
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this way. If it's bottom up and decentralized, that's how you know it's new and it's a movement
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from the bottom up. Yeah, I was listening to that episode that you did with Morgan yesterday.
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And can I just say to anyone watching, if you listen to anything before the pull market starts,
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you should listen to to Ryan and David speaking with Morgan Houser. It was such a good episode.
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Obviously, the psychology of money is a wonderful book. And I haven't had a chance to read his
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new one. That was what you were discussing, wasn't it? Same as ever. I think it was cool. Same as
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ever. And he just talks about the timeless principles of life and investing, things that don't change.
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Yeah. It reminded me of something, something my grandmother used to say, she was used to say,
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if something is easily got, then it isn't worth having. And I think I really kind of felt
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that with listening to that discussion. It's like, yeah, it has to be hard. Because as you said,
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we're starting, we started from zero. We started from Satoshi started from zero 15 years ago.
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And I mean, that's no time in the grand scheme of things. And we're still kind of, we're still
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building. We're still making mistakes. We're still screwing up things. Some things are working.
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Some things are collapsing into dust. But that's the way it has to be. Otherwise, you don't get
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progress from that. Yeah. Completely agree. I don't think there's an easy path here. The volatility
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is the price of entry. It's another thing that Morgan Housel said, if you want something to five X,
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okay, the reverse of that is you have to be comfortable with an asset losing 80% of its value.
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Like, that's kind of the trade-off that we make. And so, yeah, we don't get to have our cake and
368
00:33:58.880 --> 00:34:05.680
eat it too in crypto. It can't always be infinite up. That's not how life works. Yeah.
369
00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:09.920
Well, of course, because I mean, that was the point that was a point he made, wasn't it, about
370
00:34:09.920 --> 00:34:15.200
the, you know, this idea of people years ago, sort of trying to figure out how to stop recessions.
371
00:34:15.200 --> 00:34:20.480
It's like, well, you, you can't buy if you, if you never had a recession, that would,
372
00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:24.560
that would create the perfect conditions for an absolutely massive recession.
373
00:34:24.560 --> 00:34:29.920
You know, I just think I imagine how much worse our industry would actually be if we didn't
374
00:34:29.920 --> 00:34:36.320
have a 2020 tail. And we still had an Algo stablecoin that was rather than 30 billion. It was now
375
00:34:36.320 --> 00:34:43.680
300 billion. Okay. And then, and then actual retail, non-crypto retail got involved because
376
00:34:43.680 --> 00:34:49.040
some Fentech app started offering it. And we had Sandbake Ben Freed, who had grown to the largest
377
00:34:49.040 --> 00:34:54.800
exchange in the world with FTX. And he was, it was larger than Binance at this point in time.
378
00:34:54.800 --> 00:35:01.280
And it wasn't eight billion dollars in loss private keys. It was 50 billion dollars.
379
00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:06.000
Like, and then we had Alex Mishinsky and Blockfine. All of these things were continuing to grow.
380
00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:12.240
Imagine that. Like, to me, it's, uh, we dodged a bullet, honestly. It was like 2022.
381
00:35:12.240 --> 00:35:17.040
It's painful was, as it was, was the best possible thing that could have happened to crypto.
382
00:35:17.040 --> 00:35:23.840
Yeah. We did clean up all of the mess in 2022. In, in 18 months, I mean, it was one year of time
383
00:35:23.840 --> 00:35:31.120
between the fall of FTX and Sam, like being charge guilty. I remember, one of the very early takes
384
00:35:31.120 --> 00:35:36.080
that I heard in the middle of, middle of 2022, I think right after the fall of FTX was from
385
00:35:36.720 --> 00:35:41.280
a friend of our pod Nick Carter. And he, he said that it was Nick Carter and Matt Walsh. And they,
386
00:35:41.280 --> 00:35:45.760
they said that we're not going to be able to have a bull market until we clean up the fraudsters
387
00:35:45.760 --> 00:35:49.680
and the scammers and we throw them in jail. And I remember listening to that take and like,
388
00:35:49.680 --> 00:35:54.720
not wanting to believe it. This was like November, December of 2022, because I was like, man,
389
00:35:54.720 --> 00:36:01.600
Doquan's still out there. SPF just, we had new one, right? Like, uh, three hours capital. They're,
390
00:36:01.600 --> 00:36:05.280
they're still running free. Like, we have to, like, according to this take, we have to get every
391
00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:09.760
single one in jail before we can have a bull market again. And like, it's obviously not
392
00:36:09.760 --> 00:36:14.320
perfectly correlated. Like, we could find some internal, like, catalyst, like DeFi summer to have
393
00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:19.200
a bull market, but just like the sentiment of just like, we will never be legitimized as an
394
00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:26.800
industry until we throw away the scammers and fraudsters. And then on the dot, the week that SPF
395
00:36:26.800 --> 00:36:33.760
gets charged guilty, like tokens pump 50% off the ground. Like, the, the take was super prescient.
396
00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:39.600
And again, correlation, not causation, et cetera. But I thought it was a, it was a great take. And
397
00:36:39.680 --> 00:36:45.840
also at the same time, we can now feel good about prices going up rather than bad. Like, I wouldn't
398
00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:51.600
feel the same if SPF was walking free. And like, Doquan was in in jail and three hours capital
399
00:36:51.600 --> 00:36:56.160
was still being three hours capital after all of the harm and fraud that they caused. And then we
400
00:36:56.160 --> 00:37:00.960
just had another bull market with them. That
would not make me feel good. Well, I'm actually curious
401
00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:05.280
from you guys. Do you, are you surprised that this is happening so soon? I mean, there's an element
402
00:37:05.440 --> 00:37:10.960
of me as like, this is my third cycle here. And I'm just like, wow, we've recovered from that.
403
00:37:10.960 --> 00:37:16.800
Yeah. Yeah. And like, I do feel like that. Like you said, at some level, I'm like, it was only a
404
00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:23.840
year ago. It was only a year ago when we had that conversation with SPF and so much has happened.
405
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:29.920
And now you're saying we've healed and we're back to bull market like too soon. It seems fast,
406
00:37:29.920 --> 00:37:35.440
but also it's the same exact time as last cycle. I mean, time just goes faster now because we're
407
00:37:35.440 --> 00:37:39.760
older. We've done that. We've seen this before. Okay. I know first cyclers are like, what are
408
00:37:39.760 --> 00:37:43.520
you guys talking about? We went through so much pain. That was that last. That was the worst.
409
00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:46.800
But I don't know. I'm just like, wow, that was quick.
410
00:37:48.480 --> 00:37:52.000
Well, you guys were talking about this the other day, weren't you? Because you're like, there's always
411
00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:56.560
that, there's always that thing in the back of your mind. It's like, okay, so it goes in cycles,
412
00:37:56.560 --> 00:38:00.320
but is it really going to, are we really going to have another cycle? It's just
413
00:38:00.320 --> 00:38:04.160
just chicken. It can't be that easy. If everyone thinks it's going to go in cycle, it's not
414
00:38:04.160 --> 00:38:08.640
going to go into cycle, right? Before you cycle. Yeah. And then it's like going back to a
415
00:38:08.640 --> 00:38:12.720
more good household thing, right? If it's, if it's easy, it's not worth it doing is like,
416
00:38:12.720 --> 00:38:16.800
yeah, the four year cycles, if you, if they really play out that way, that's super easy.
417
00:38:16.800 --> 00:38:22.800
But come on, you had to live through 2022 and 2023 wasn't great either. Like those weren't,
418
00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:26.720
that was hard. That was hard. That was hard. That was hard. That was hard. You guys earned it.
419
00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:31.360
Hey, if you're still listening to coin bureau, if you're still listening to bank lists,
420
00:38:31.360 --> 00:38:36.640
it's likely where you live through all of that. And I feel like you have, you've got veteran
421
00:38:36.640 --> 00:38:42.320
status now. All right. You were going to be the OG for future generations of crypto. I mean,
422
00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:47.200
we are still like, you know, one fifth of the US owns crypto. We are still on the early side.
423
00:38:47.680 --> 00:38:52.640
Barely anyone's using DeFi and actually has possession of their own, you know,
424
00:38:52.640 --> 00:38:56.640
private keys and is actually
bank lists. We're still very early. I couldn't agree more.
425
00:38:56.640 --> 00:39:02.880
I couldn't agree more. And it's, yeah, it's like that OG status is kind of hard earned,
426
00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:08.320
isn't it? You really have to, you really have to walk through the fire to get that. And I mean,
427
00:39:08.320 --> 00:39:12.720
I guess you look back to some of the, some of the true OG, like Eric Voorhees, who was there,
428
00:39:12.720 --> 00:39:16.720
sort of almost at the beginning and went through Mount Gox and went through, you know,
429
00:39:16.720 --> 00:39:21.360
all that sort of stuff. It's like these guys have, these guys have earned a right to have an
430
00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:28.000
opinion for, by, you know, by through years of just kind of putting up with, I guess what might
431
00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:32.560
be turned, you know, even worse back in the day, like Mount Gox was sort of almost terminal,
432
00:39:32.560 --> 00:39:37.200
wasn't it? I remember getting into crypto about that time. I heard about crypto sort of
433
00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:44.080
late 2013. And then I think it was sort of early 2014 when Mount Gox started crumble. I was like,
434
00:39:44.800 --> 00:39:45.600
whoa, this
435
00:39:48.640 --> 00:39:55.200
hang on a sec. And then it survived. And I was like, okay, wow, this is, this is more resilient than
436
00:39:55.200 --> 00:40:01.200
I thought. That was a moment for me. But like, to have been someone in it, you know, invested in
437
00:40:01.200 --> 00:40:06.960
it. Or like I speak to a lot of people who had, who had money on Mount Gox. And they were just like,
438
00:40:07.040 --> 00:40:11.200
yeah, I remember trying to do that. I remember trying to get it off. It was, I remember just like,
439
00:40:11.200 --> 00:40:16.240
like trying to email Mark Carpellis directly. And it was like, it was, it was pretty wild.
440
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:23.120
You guys have earned it. Yeah. And we've come such a lot. I mean, that was a magic,
441
00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:31.680
the gathering, like, a card changing trading exchange that converted to a crypto exchange.
442
00:40:31.680 --> 00:40:35.360
You know, it's like, we have come so far since then. We have real companies here.
443
00:40:36.160 --> 00:40:38.960
You know, like, it's 10 years. I mean, it's not a long time.
444
00:40:39.760 --> 00:40:45.280
No. We have, yeah, we have real companies. We have, we have, we, we will have ETFs before
445
00:40:45.280 --> 00:40:51.280
two longs. It's, it's crazy to think. And touching on, touching on the ETFs, I obviously,
446
00:40:51.280 --> 00:40:57.680
you guys are not, not in tight, not solely focused on Ethereum. But, you know, Ethereum is,
447
00:40:57.680 --> 00:41:04.240
it is kind of a large part of bankless's focus. So can I just get your, get your take on,
448
00:41:04.240 --> 00:41:10.960
on where Ethereum is at the moment? Obviously, it's been kind of in Bitcoin shadow a lot recently.
449
00:41:11.840 --> 00:41:16.800
Network activity has been down, you know, ethwent inflationary for a bit again. There's kind
450
00:41:16.800 --> 00:41:21.520
of a lot of fudge flying around about Ethereum, which I think is sort of always the case.
451
00:41:22.080 --> 00:41:27.600
I don't think that's necessarily anything new. And then, of course, suddenly, we're now talking
452
00:41:27.760 --> 00:41:34.080
about Ethereum ETFs as well. So yeah, I just, I just wanted to get your guys take on it. You know,
453
00:41:34.080 --> 00:41:39.440
is he, has Ethereum still got kind of quite a lot of work to do before it can really join the
454
00:41:39.440 --> 00:41:47.920
party or are you sort of more optimistic? Are you ready to cope, David? Yeah, like you said,
455
00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:54.960
like Ethereum always kind of occupies this uncanny space in which it never really seems to be
456
00:41:54.960 --> 00:42:04.960
popular. I think from January of 2021 to like May of 2021, Ethereum was like invogue.
457
00:42:04.960 --> 00:42:09.120
For the moment of time in which I thought, okay, finally, like it's getting the recognition
458
00:42:09.120 --> 00:42:14.320
it's deserved, like DeFi is now being recognized, NFTs are now being recognized finally. And then
459
00:42:14.320 --> 00:42:18.800
people just went down the market cap stack until like, washine your objects, right? And this is
460
00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:26.080
where like the whole sole Luna Avax like trade came, came about and was like, oh, let's
461
00:42:26.080 --> 00:42:32.720
find the even shinier object than Ethereum. And like Ethereum's roadmap and what it wants to do is
462
00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:41.600
so incredibly ambitious and multifaceted that it like not most people don't have the whole
463
00:42:41.600 --> 00:42:47.120
entire scope of it able to like be realized inside of their brains. Like it takes a lot and a lot
464
00:42:47.120 --> 00:42:52.960
of knowledge and a lot of appreciation for the many, many, many moving parts of Ethereum to really
465
00:42:52.960 --> 00:42:58.640
understand the grand vision of the whole entire thing. And then also at the same time,
466
00:42:59.360 --> 00:43:05.920
Ethereum's market cap is big. It's $300 billion right now, $250 billion. And so it's not,
467
00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:11.200
it's not a penny stock anymore. And so when so much of crypto is kind of like the crap stable
468
00:43:11.200 --> 00:43:16.000
and rolling at the dice and like trying to, trying to get the 10 X, the 100 X quickly,
469
00:43:16.080 --> 00:43:22.080
like Ethereum doesn't really occupy that space. And so it's always there's that one meme of the
470
00:43:22.080 --> 00:43:27.840
like the guy up against the wall. And there's like 50 swords pointed at him. That's always kind of
471
00:43:27.840 --> 00:43:32.480
felt like a theory. You know what movies that from that's from David? It's like a pace. Yeah. Yeah.
472
00:43:32.480 --> 00:43:34.480
Tangled. Tangled. Tangled.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
473
00:43:34.480 --> 00:43:40.960
Yeah. Tangled. All right. Fun fact. Yeah. And so like Ethereum occupies the space where yeah,
474
00:43:40.960 --> 00:43:47.360
it's getting the ether ETF because of its size. But then also just the ambitiousness of the
475
00:43:47.360 --> 00:43:52.880
roadmap is too long to be realized and catch that dopamine hit of people in the short-term
476
00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:57.200
investing cycle that has a bull market to be interested in that. So it's just always occupying
477
00:43:57.200 --> 00:44:06.800
this like uncanny valley of just like it's too big to be a fun speculative bet. And it's moving
478
00:44:06.800 --> 00:44:14.000
too slowly in its roadmap to satisfy a lot of the now now now investors. So I guess that's good
479
00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:22.880
cope, David. Good. Thanks. Here's my cope on it. So first of all, I think things in Ethereum are
480
00:44:22.880 --> 00:44:29.520
going just fine. Yeah. Like I think it is executing incredibly well from a fundamentals perspective.
481
00:44:29.520 --> 00:44:36.240
And you just look at the growth of layer two's. And also it's doing pretty well from an institutional
482
00:44:36.240 --> 00:44:42.560
narrative perspective. There will probably be two ETFs that we get this bull cycle season.
483
00:44:43.680 --> 00:44:48.640
One of them, sorry, XRP lovers. It's not going to be XRP. Unfortunately, that was fake news.
484
00:44:49.760 --> 00:44:54.400
But it's going to be Bitcoin and ether. And those are the two ones that I think will get institutional
485
00:44:54.400 --> 00:45:01.920
capital attention. But what I think is going on is this reminds me a lot of 2020. And if you remember
486
00:45:01.920 --> 00:45:08.400
2020. So this was like when we were just starting to recover post COVID, it was about this time
487
00:45:09.120 --> 00:45:16.240
back in 2020. And the things that were pumping were smaller cap DeFi tokens and Bitcoin,
488
00:45:16.800 --> 00:45:24.320
not Ethereum. And so there was very much this narrative of you Ethereum is just a gas token.
489
00:45:24.320 --> 00:45:29.280
It's just for payment only. What does it really do? You you want to own a store of value,
490
00:45:29.280 --> 00:45:33.520
which is Bitcoin. You want to own your money. And then you want all of these DeFi tokens,
491
00:45:33.520 --> 00:45:37.840
which gives you exposure to the DeFi economy, the neo banking system. And that's all you need.
492
00:45:38.480 --> 00:45:43.440
And as David was saying, like Ethereum in that world and that narrative world just gets left behind.
493
00:45:43.440 --> 00:45:49.760
It's, you know, the stepchild that no one loves, right? It's just like not even part of the
494
00:45:49.760 --> 00:45:54.640
the appetite in that kind of world. I think something similar is playing out right now. But it's not
495
00:45:55.200 --> 00:46:04.880
DeFi tokens. It is Bitcoin and all of these very fast alternative layer ones. And so what's
496
00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:10.640
interesting to me is actually what happened in the aftermath of 2020. Because any time price runs
497
00:46:10.640 --> 00:46:15.520
up, like so high, remember what we're actually doing. Of course, there's there's the narrative
498
00:46:15.520 --> 00:46:20.160
reason it pumps. But if you still believe in fundamentals and you know, I might be one of the last
499
00:46:20.160 --> 00:46:25.600
guys in crypto still that believes in long term fundamentals. Okay. But if you think that the
500
00:46:25.600 --> 00:46:31.280
world of fundamentals is a real world and that narratives are shorter term, but fundamentals are
501
00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:36.720
the things that last what happened with DeFi tokens is they pulled forward a whole bunch of
502
00:46:36.720 --> 00:46:43.600
future expectations. And I'll admit, I got caught up in it too. The thesis for DeFi tokens in 2020
503
00:46:43.680 --> 00:46:50.400
was that these governance tokens would pivot into like governance would vote in profit share
504
00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:55.520
essentially so that you'd have on chain revenue and on chain profit associated with these DeFi
505
00:46:55.520 --> 00:47:00.560
tokens. And so what happened? The massive run up. The whole market realized that this would be
506
00:47:00.560 --> 00:47:07.520
huge. And so DeFi tokens absolutely went on a tear. And all of these these future expectations
507
00:47:07.520 --> 00:47:12.960
hopes were pulled into the present. Okay. What has happened since then? It's been completely flat.
508
00:47:12.960 --> 00:47:19.040
Three year bear market in DeFi tokens. And let's talk about the reality. Very few DeFi tokens
509
00:47:19.040 --> 00:47:24.400
are more than governance tokens today. Okay. Very few of them actually pay back token holders
510
00:47:24.400 --> 00:47:30.160
with on chain profits. Very few of them have actual solid fundamentals. So a lot of the expectations
511
00:47:30.160 --> 00:47:36.000
that was pulled forward at that time turned out to not be true. And I worry a little bit about this
512
00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:42.640
alternative layer one run up, right? Because I don't know that a block space is as valuable
513
00:47:42.640 --> 00:47:47.760
as people think it is. Or at least what's happening is a lot of future expectations are being pulled
514
00:47:47.760 --> 00:47:54.880
to the present. And I don't know that these tokens and assets will be able to sustain that over
515
00:47:54.880 --> 00:48:02.000
like the one to three period of time. So I don't know. Maybe none of that matters. And by the way,
516
00:48:02.000 --> 00:48:07.280
if you're a narrative investor or if you're a trader, it honestly doesn't matter. It totally
517
00:48:07.280 --> 00:48:12.720
doesn't matter. You should go chase these things and do well. Like God bless. Like that's a character
518
00:48:12.720 --> 00:48:17.840
class that you're choosing. So like just kill it. Crush it. I hope you crush it. But if you're
519
00:48:17.840 --> 00:48:22.880
a fundamentals investor, then you're looking around and you're kind of scratching your head
520
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:27.280
and you're wondering, well, like I'm not seeing on chain activity yet that matches this.
521
00:48:27.360 --> 00:48:33.680
I'm not seeing like total value locked increase. I'm seeing a lot of hopes and expectations
522
00:48:33.680 --> 00:48:39.520
being pulled forward. And maybe those expectations come true. But if they don't, we're looking at a
523
00:48:39.520 --> 00:48:47.600
pretty flat asset class after after the bull run. So that's my cope. And I do think I do think
524
00:48:47.600 --> 00:48:53.120
ether will have its time. Like just like in, you know, it happened actually around this time in
525
00:48:53.120 --> 00:49:00.000
2020. December 2020, ether had an absolute massive run up and people woke up to it. And it
526
00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:07.440
did pretty well. I think that will also happen this bull cycle. Yeah. I think you're right. I
527
00:49:07.440 --> 00:49:13.680
think and I guess this idea of narratives is it's kind of so much easier to buy into, isn't it?
528
00:49:13.680 --> 00:49:17.840
It's like the alternative layer one narrative. It's like always a layer one, but it's faster than
529
00:49:17.920 --> 00:49:23.280
Ethereum. That's easy to understand. Whereas kind of to go back to what you were saying, David,
530
00:49:23.280 --> 00:49:27.840
you know, Ethereum is just so sprawling, isn't it? There's so much happening on it. You know,
531
00:49:27.840 --> 00:49:32.640
there's a whole, there's a whole layer two ecosystem on it. As you said, there's however many
532
00:49:32.640 --> 00:49:38.480
EIPs being worked on. There's, there's things like blob space and dank shard in going on.
533
00:49:40.240 --> 00:49:45.120
It's kind of difficult to get your head around. You're just like, yeah, fast, you know,
534
00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:50.720
faster layer one is a lot easier to understand. You know, that's why not just go for that.
535
00:49:52.320 --> 00:49:58.960
Ethereum has its roll up centric roadmap, right? And so this Ethereum growth strategy is not to hold
536
00:49:58.960 --> 00:50:04.640
growth internally into its layer one. It's allowed, it's supposed to allow room for its layer
537
00:50:04.640 --> 00:50:11.440
twos to like take the baton and run with it the rest of the way. So when it comes time to be
538
00:50:11.440 --> 00:50:17.040
narrative season and no one cares about fundamentals anymore, now it's like the Ethereum layer one
539
00:50:17.040 --> 00:50:23.680
versus Salana, which has the stronger narrative. And Ethereum has sharded its narrative into the
540
00:50:23.680 --> 00:50:31.920
Ethereum layer one, optimism, polygon, arbitrum, ZK sync, you know, pick your next layer two,
541
00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:37.280
pick your next layer two as tech, like pick your next layer two. And so like it's Ethereum and one
542
00:50:37.280 --> 00:50:42.640
of the reasons
why I find so much resonance with Ethereum is it's it's a pluralist system.
543
00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:49.440
It's trying to make room for as many diversity of chains spawn out of its core base so that every
544
00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:54.880
single chain has its own flavor, its own autonomy, its own ecosystem, its own throughput. And when
545
00:50:54.880 --> 00:51:00.400
it comes time to be narrative season, Ethereum has actually given giving its narrative power
546
00:51:00.400 --> 00:51:06.160
away to its layer twos. And so they all have a smaller share of this grander Ethereum vision,
547
00:51:06.160 --> 00:51:11.120
but it's never contained inside of one container. And so when you have like the Alt layer one
548
00:51:11.120 --> 00:51:16.160
versus Ethereum narrative season, well, Ethereum gave up some of that power to its layer.
549
00:51:16.160 --> 00:51:20.720
It's funny, though, as I'm listening to you talk, David, it's like, you know, just to play devil's
550
00:51:20.720 --> 00:51:26.400
advocate. And I'm spinning a narrative right now. Right? Yeah, yeah. One man's narrative season
551
00:51:26.400 --> 00:51:30.880
is another man's like a fundamental season. Look, the fundamentals are finally showing up.
552
00:51:30.880 --> 00:51:35.440
So I can I can hear somebody in the listing to this in the Salona community listening to these
553
00:51:36.080 --> 00:51:40.080
old coping Eathmaxies drone on of which, by the way, we're not Eathmaxies. That's
554
00:51:40.560 --> 00:51:48.000
I'm also not coping. I don't know. No, fantastic. Everybody like I hope you make insane profits
555
00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:51.440
during during this cycle, but somebody's listing that and they're like, David, you're absolutely
556
00:51:51.440 --> 00:51:58.160
wrong. This is actually the fundamentals catching up. Okay. Sure. So this is like finally the market
557
00:51:58.160 --> 00:52:08.080
has woken up to high TPS integrated blockchain block space. And like now the it's no longer
558
00:52:08.080 --> 00:52:12.880
narrative. It's fundamentals that are actually catching up. So that's why it's very hard to
559
00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:16.720
parse, right? And you only know who's right in the long run in the very long run.
560
00:52:16.720 --> 00:52:22.560
Well, we do know as the bull market continues, real fundamentals do get thrown out the door.
561
00:52:22.640 --> 00:52:30.320
Sure. Everyone was like, oh, like Tara Luna has solves alchemy at the top of last market.
562
00:52:30.320 --> 00:52:34.800
The new central bank. Yeah. Yeah. By Jerome Powell. We don't need you anymore.
563
00:52:35.520 --> 00:52:41.760
Yeah. But it is, I mean, yeah, but I suppose from the perspective of someone new to crypto,
564
00:52:41.760 --> 00:52:46.880
you know, there's just is so much easier to buy into a relatively simple narrative, isn't it?
565
00:52:47.440 --> 00:52:53.040
Probably way more profitable guy. Probably on the upside, on the upside, on the downside.
566
00:52:53.040 --> 00:52:57.040
Well, when it's no longer narrative season, and you've been buying narratives all year,
567
00:52:57.040 --> 00:53:00.880
all of a sudden you're on the other end of the trade. Yeah. But then on the downside,
568
00:53:00.880 --> 00:53:07.360
you just trade to Staples, David. Again, this is why this is why if you got to choose your character.
569
00:53:07.360 --> 00:53:11.680
There's one thing we say on bank lists is know who you are. Choose your character class. Like you're
570
00:53:11.760 --> 00:53:16.720
entering an RPG, you know, you're playing Diablo. Are you a sorcerer? Are you Necromancer?
571
00:53:16.720 --> 00:53:20.240
Are you a barbarian? Like, what's your skill tree? What's your attribute? Like, what are you going
572
00:53:20.240 --> 00:53:25.920
to do? Are you a trader? Are you a long-term investor? Buy and hold? I'm a bard out there finding art.
573
00:53:26.720 --> 00:53:33.040
David's a bard. Is that a mix of things? No, I don't do anything. It's just a guy with a guitar
574
00:53:33.040 --> 00:53:38.240
who like sings stuff and like cheers on everyone else. Well, you guys are just happy. The bard
575
00:53:38.320 --> 00:53:40.800
may not accomplish much, but at least the bard is happy, David.
576
00:53:43.680 --> 00:53:50.560
The bard is recording it all for posterity. Right. There you go. Yeah. The songs that we'll
577
00:53:50.560 --> 00:53:56.560
be sung in the future about all the the the the the the generic characters and they're asking
578
00:53:58.800 --> 00:54:03.200
yeah, it's it is funny to talk to people. I spoke to my I spoke to my brother-in-law the other day
579
00:54:03.200 --> 00:54:09.040
who's one of the biggest DJs that I know and he was just like describing you know how he's how
580
00:54:09.040 --> 00:54:14.480
he's allocated and he's like it's a it's a pretty fine balance, but so long as everything stays
581
00:54:14.480 --> 00:54:20.720
reasonably okay, it should be fine. It's like just made me really stressed just thinking about it,
582
00:54:20.720 --> 00:54:24.800
but like yeah, everyone has their everyone has their their sort of way of doing it. It's one of
583
00:54:24.800 --> 00:54:29.680
the beautiful things about about this about this industry, isn't it? You can like you guys say,
584
00:54:29.680 --> 00:54:37.120
adopt your character. You go for it. And yeah, the rewards are amazing. The downside is
585
00:54:37.120 --> 00:54:41.680
is pretty painful, but it's a heck of a ride. I think your character class can change cycle
586
00:54:41.680 --> 00:54:47.280
to cycle. Like probably both David and myself were a bit more degen in our in our younger days
587
00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:54.160
and David is even more degen than me, right? And so on the degen scale, I'm not degen,
588
00:54:54.640 --> 00:55:01.040
but like yeah, Ryan, yes. Yeah, so so as you kind of like your life circumstances change,
589
00:55:01.040 --> 00:55:05.440
you've been through more cycles, you just
you tend to get a bit more, you know,
590
00:55:06.080 --> 00:55:10.720
grandpa wisdom, which I guess is what I at least offer the podcast.
591
00:55:10.720 --> 00:55:16.000
And I wanted to ask you as well, like I listened to I listened to your bankless takes episode
592
00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:20.080
the other week, which I which I loved because it sounded like you guys were sort of really
593
00:55:20.240 --> 00:55:26.480
really kind of letting off steam. I think you'd had some sort of interactions with the Solana
594
00:55:26.480 --> 00:55:33.520
community and you know, it all been it had been a kind of fascinating week. But I wanted to ask you
595
00:55:33.520 --> 00:55:39.760
like, do you find do you find all that kind of I think we'd call it shit houseery in in in the UK,
596
00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:45.520
but all that kind of mud slinging that goes on all the chaos of crypto Twitter. Do you do you secretly
597
00:55:45.520 --> 00:55:50.000
love all of that or do you think it's do you think it's more something that we could probably do
598
00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:55.840
without and we'd all be a bit we'd all be a bit happier and a bit richer. I mean, it's hard for me
599
00:55:55.840 --> 00:56:05.200
to know how much of this is crypto specific versus more a symptom of social media and kind of
600
00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:14.640
the algorithms and like the the different rewards that and like dopamine rewards and the different
601
00:56:14.800 --> 00:56:20.960
kind of incentives that that rest behind different influencers. And because I don't I don't know
602
00:56:20.960 --> 00:56:28.960
guy that any other area is that much different. Like if you go look at like politics, social
603
00:56:28.960 --> 00:56:36.560
media or politics, Twitter, I mean shit housery that's a good term for that too. Go look at like
604
00:56:37.440 --> 00:56:44.240
even AI, which is kind of like, you know, very technical. It's it's much of that. So the way we
605
00:56:44.240 --> 00:56:50.480
I've been thinking about social media recently is Sam Harris is another podcaster kind of describes
606
00:56:50.480 --> 00:56:57.520
it as a fun house distortion of reality. So you see all of the other humans interacting and not
607
00:56:57.520 --> 00:57:03.360
as they really are in person. It's not their true character. It's just this worked view of who they
608
00:57:03.360 --> 00:57:10.240
are and they see you the same way. And so I'm convinced that a lot of the people who get in these
609
00:57:10.240 --> 00:57:15.520
shit fest Twitter battles. Actually, if they had a conversation with one another and you remove
610
00:57:15.520 --> 00:57:20.480
them from the gladiatorial arena of social media and they weren't they didn't have an audience,
611
00:57:20.480 --> 00:57:24.960
they weren't trying to impress each other. And you just brought them together for a conversation.
612
00:57:24.960 --> 00:57:30.560
They would speak to each other like real humans like real like real adults
with empathy with kind
613
00:57:30.560 --> 00:57:36.800
of a mutual sense of understanding the way we're talking to each other right now guy. And you'd
614
00:57:36.800 --> 00:57:43.040
remove all of that. So part of me wonders how much of it is the medium. There's another element
615
00:57:43.040 --> 00:57:50.960
that is like crypto has a scoreboard. There's a top 100 market cap fortunes are made and lost.
616
00:57:51.680 --> 00:57:59.680
There is actual economic value in propaganda that can be extracted fairly immediately. There are
617
00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:09.040
a lot of scams. A lot of people got totally wrecked in 2021 and 2022 and they don't trust anybody
618
00:58:09.040 --> 00:58:15.440
and are pushing like out those feelings of distrust online. So part of it's a symptom that is
619
00:58:16.160 --> 00:58:22.640
relevant to crypto. But I don't know I like I find it kind of exhausting sometimes. And the best
620
00:58:22.720 --> 00:58:30.160
thing I can do during those times is like just turn it off like I you know it's hard when you're in
621
00:58:30.160 --> 00:58:35.840
kind of like media right because then you lose your source of information but change the way
622
00:58:35.840 --> 00:58:41.440
you're interacting you know ignore things mute if you have to set your profile on private for
623
00:58:41.440 --> 00:58:47.360
for a period of time whatever you need to do to kind of play the marathon. And it's similar to like
624
00:58:47.440 --> 00:58:52.880
playing the marathon with your investing right it's just rather than a financial volatility
625
00:58:52.880 --> 00:58:58.080
with with social media engagement you have to get used to kind of like the emotional volatility
626
00:58:58.080 --> 00:59:03.280
of like one week everyone hates you. And then you're the next week you're like a god you know
627
00:59:03.280 --> 00:59:12.160
that's just how it goes at least that's how I've experienced it. Yeah yeah it shows how badly I'm
628
00:59:12.160 --> 00:59:18.000
in the bubble doesn't it that I you know it's just oh crypto twitter is sort of my my experience
629
00:59:18.000 --> 00:59:22.800
of social media but yeah you're absolutely right I mean there's all these other all these other
630
00:59:22.800 --> 00:59:27.680
every I guess everywhere has its own you know sort of social media gathering that's probably
631
00:59:27.680 --> 00:59:33.040
you know good chances even more toxic than than some of the stuff you get with you get with crypto
632
00:59:33.040 --> 00:59:38.080
but it is it is lovely when you meet people in the flesh isn't it when you go to a when you go
633
00:59:38.080 --> 00:59:42.880
to a conference and people come up and are just you know all they want to do is just talk about crypto
634
00:59:42.880 --> 00:59:49.040
and you in I remember sort of the first time first couple of times I went to actual sort of live
635
00:59:49.040 --> 00:59:54.960
crypto events I was like am I going to get people come up and and and just
scream at me be like
636
00:59:56.320 --> 01:00:01.440
it all over this project in that you know how day and and no one did it you know everyone who came
637
01:00:01.440 --> 01:00:05.120
up and said hello is like I really I really enjoy watching your videos things you know it's great
638
01:00:05.120 --> 01:00:10.240
and then and then just talk about crypto it was it was an amazing feeling but I was so nervous
639
01:00:10.240 --> 01:00:14.880
before I went there because I was like what yeah this is Mike I that's been my experience and
640
01:00:14.880 --> 01:00:21.280
the few times I do get out but this is why my co-host David is just basically addicted to in real life
641
01:00:21.280 --> 01:00:26.800
crypto meetups and conferences I don't know you must go to like a dozen or so a year so because
642
01:00:26.800 --> 01:00:34.560
it's it's exactly it's refreshing to the soul very much people are actually reasonable like nice
643
01:00:35.280 --> 01:00:41.600
pleasant to talk to and passionate and a very similar I think that that's the thing about crypto
644
01:00:41.600 --> 01:00:48.080
is what I would say is for all of our differences there is a common core set of values that that
645
01:00:48.080 --> 01:00:54.160
we all you believe so you might believe in a you know a high transaction throughput integrated
646
01:00:54.160 --> 01:01:00.800
blockchain versus the modular vision right or you might believe in like Bitcoin over Ethereum
647
01:01:00.880 --> 01:01:05.600
as your store value or whatever vice versa right but the thing that we all believe is that
648
01:01:06.160 --> 01:01:14.080
it is a fundamental economic freedom and good for the world to hold your own private keys right
649
01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:20.960
for an individual to essentially be able to act without a bank account and to have possession of
650
01:01:20.960 --> 01:01:27.440
that we all believe in kind of a censorship resistant a global platform for the world we all
651
01:01:27.440 --> 01:01:33.360
believe in what we're trying to achieve here which is bank the unbanked and unbanked the banked
652
01:01:33.360 --> 01:01:39.840
so we don't have to go through centralized intermediaries and at the end of the day I think we don't
653
01:01:39.840 --> 01:01:46.960
probably as crypto unify on on those core values enough but they are there and you see them in particular
654
01:01:46.960 --> 01:01:54.080
when we're under attack I think that that kind of comes out it's one thing that in the in the US
655
01:01:54.080 --> 01:02:02.320
the IRS is coming out with some very anti defi anti crypto legislation we just got 120,000
656
01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:10.560
comments from the crypto community responding to the IRS comment right I mean the crypto community
657
01:02:10.560 --> 01:02:15.600
does respond and is alive and well when it's under attack and and unifies in those ways and I
658
01:02:15.600 --> 01:02:22.480
think that gives me hope yeah yeah beautifully put Ryan beautifully put
yeah it's some it's
659
01:02:22.560 --> 01:02:28.800
we're all we're all going the destination is the same we're just all kind of going there via
660
01:02:28.800 --> 01:02:34.480
different paths sometimes sometimes radically different paths but we yeah there's kind of more
661
01:02:34.480 --> 01:02:40.320
that you unite us than divides us I think at the end of the day I just there was one more thing I
662
01:02:40.320 --> 01:02:46.800
wanted to ask you Ryan because you've spoken to like every time every time I'm you know researching
663
01:02:46.800 --> 01:02:52.560
something and I want to you know I want to get I'm researching a particular person in crypto
664
01:02:53.600 --> 01:02:58.480
I always try and listen to interviews of them and every time you guys have spoken to them already
665
01:02:58.480 --> 01:03:02.960
it's like wow just I'll just go to the bankless episode I mean they just in the past sort of few
666
01:03:02.960 --> 01:03:09.600
months you've spoken to you've spoken to like Arthur Hayes, Lynn Alden, Sergin Nazarov, Vitalik, CZ you
667
01:03:09.600 --> 01:03:16.480
know kind of everyone who's everyone in in crypto and I wanted to ask you is is there anyone in particular
668
01:03:16.480 --> 01:03:22.480
on your kind of wish list for future interviews and and who was the most sort of who was the most
669
01:03:22.480 --> 01:03:30.080
kind of surprise it who surprised you the most or who was kind of like the most the most unpredictable
670
01:03:30.080 --> 01:03:37.440
off stage perhaps well I would say on the wish list we've for a very long time had actually Elon
671
01:03:37.440 --> 01:03:44.320
Musk on on the wish list as somebody who would be just a fascinating discussion like he talks about
672
01:03:44.320 --> 01:03:52.000
crypto so much but it's not it's not clear how deep he is in it and then there's also the AI
673
01:03:52.000 --> 01:03:59.280
angle that kind of thing so that would be probably close to the top of our list as far as big like
674
01:03:59.280 --> 01:04:07.120
biggest guest that was most surprising Mark Cuban you know kind of a celebrity wealthy individual in
675
01:04:07.120 --> 01:04:14.240
the US he came on the podcast in the very early days for bankless and it was an absolute shock
676
01:04:14.240 --> 01:04:20.880
to David and myself that number one he was in crypto and like using defi protocols like he could
677
01:04:20.880 --> 01:04:29.200
talk about AVE he could talk about compound he could talk about solidity yeah and the fact that
678
01:04:29.200 --> 01:04:35.360
he was willing to come on a you know crypto podcast at that time so that was incredibly surprising
679
01:04:35.440 --> 01:04:44.640
I don't know guy asked David who is the the like most surprising guest off camera that we've had
680
01:04:45.840 --> 01:04:50.560
maybe while you think about that I'll just say the person that is exactly the same way off camera
681
01:04:50.560 --> 01:04:57.840
on camera no matter what is a Vitalik buterin yeah like I um you know I we David and I've talked about
682
01:04:57.840 --> 01:05:01.200
you know you've never met Vitalik off camera not not in person but off camera
683
01:05:01.200 --> 01:05:07.360
and and I and I meet everyone through you David didn't you know everyone you've met I've also met
684
01:05:07.360 --> 01:05:14.160
um so yeah I just you know it would be top top three betrayals for me if if it turned out that
685
01:05:14.160 --> 01:05:19.920
Vitalik was not who he actually purports to be and and seems to be but I think that he actually
686
01:05:19.920 --> 01:05:26.160
is like I think that he's actually a fantastic person and he is he's the same both off camera and
687
01:05:26.160 --> 01:05:30.960
on camera I don't know David would you add any surprises weirdest guest experiences anything like
688
01:05:30.960 --> 01:05:41.040
this um I think we do a pretty good job of kind of vetting guests so that the weird we don't invite
689
01:05:41.040 --> 01:05:47.440
the weird ones on there was one episode that we did in the height of the bull market last year
690
01:05:47.440 --> 01:05:52.720
where we we had we were just getting flamed by all these other communities but like why won't you
691
01:05:52.800 --> 01:05:56.800
you guys are just dumb east maxes you guys only talk about ethereum why aren't you talking about
692
01:05:56.800 --> 01:06:04.240
other ecosystems talk about salana talk about taraluna talk about uh avalanche and so we were like
693
01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:10.800
you know effort we'll just do all of them at once and so we invited emin dokwan and uh and
694
01:06:10.800 --> 01:06:16.800
and a toly on a show just for one single podcast put them all together uh that show was also a mess
695
01:06:17.600 --> 01:06:23.360
at the end of that show I like very much realized that like dokwan's kind of an ass hat
696
01:06:23.360 --> 01:06:27.520
I would never really be friends with emin but and a toly I'll totally get a beer with
697
01:06:27.520 --> 01:06:32.080
and then like interestingly enough it's like salana that is the ecosystem that you know
698
01:06:32.080 --> 01:06:36.000
figures out how to survive through the bear market and attract a real community and I don't
699
01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:40.400
think that there's a coincidence there well there you go that's the alpha so invest in the founders
700
01:06:40.400 --> 01:06:44.320
you get a beer with uh you get the founders you get a beer with that's what we're running the show
701
01:06:44.800 --> 01:06:51.200
it doesn't drink beer but uh he's a he'll drink green tea but why why didn't gree tea that's
702
01:06:51.200 --> 01:06:56.720
he only did that once that's not a thing that invest in something where you can have a carrot
703
01:06:56.720 --> 01:07:03.680
juice with the founder yeah right exactly much more wholesome I'm I mean I'm reassured to hear
704
01:07:03.680 --> 01:07:08.080
metallics like that because I think if you know if that was an act that
would be that I mean
705
01:07:08.160 --> 01:07:12.240
it would be amazing it would be an amazing piece of beer to be the biggest
706
01:07:12.240 --> 01:07:17.440
to worry as well yeah he would be the biggest just like fraudster of all time if that he was
707
01:07:17.440 --> 01:07:23.440
able to keep up that act that would just be something unreal but no yeah yeah we don't we don't need
708
01:07:23.440 --> 01:07:29.440
that um as to Elon Musk like I think I would I would love to to hear you guys interview him
709
01:07:29.440 --> 01:07:33.200
because yeah I think Ryan as you say like he does talk about crypto a lot but it's like
710
01:07:34.000 --> 01:07:39.440
it seems to be like I mean he was kind of on it on Joe Rogan a couple of weeks back wasn't it
711
01:07:39.440 --> 01:07:44.320
and he sort of dips his toe in and he starts talking about it and then the conversation goes somewhere
712
01:07:44.320 --> 01:07:50.480
else you're like no right come back talk talk more and now he's talking about Twitter becoming
713
01:07:50.480 --> 01:07:58.160
basically a replacement for banks uh and you can do all of your banking on twitter and so we go
714
01:07:58.240 --> 01:08:03.680
and we're just like but that means crypto right like how well are you gonna do this because
715
01:08:03.680 --> 01:08:10.400
you're gonna have to use the legacy banking system unless you use crypto right and so I you know
716
01:08:10.400 --> 01:08:16.560
maybe that will draw him in uh we'll have to see he's immune to crypto Elon to crypto guy
717
01:08:18.560 --> 01:08:24.640
he's a crypto I said he needs to be better when you left David I said he was on like our number one
718
01:08:24.640 --> 01:08:32.240
I guessed like honor wish list for the longest time anyway yeah yeah yeah uh Elon frisive views
719
01:08:32.240 --> 01:08:37.840
would be the number one guess you all know a harrari for the content oh yeah yeah they're big one
720
01:08:37.840 --> 01:08:42.560
yeah oh and we'll also read all you well I think I mean I'm I'm looking forward to hearing all
721
01:08:42.560 --> 01:08:47.440
three of them I think I think we you know be great to hear great to hear those guys on the show
722
01:08:47.440 --> 01:08:52.080
before too long so if any of if any of those guys are watching you guys have to get on bankless
723
01:08:52.720 --> 01:09:00.800
ASAP because we agree with that yeah good um well guys I've taken up a lot of your time already
724
01:09:00.800 --> 01:09:05.360
I'm sure you I'm sure you've got a lot more things to do but um thank you so much this was this
725
01:09:05.360 --> 01:09:10.720
was great I've got I've got like a list of about a dozen other questions um to ask you but it'll
726
01:09:10.720 --> 01:09:16.400
have to wait until another time but um this has been fantastic you guys do amazing work I love
727
01:09:16.480 --> 01:09:22.240
listening to you um anyone watching if you're not subscribed to bankless you're missing out um we
728
01:09:22.240 --> 01:09:28.080
will leave links uh below in the description uh where you can follow um Ryan and David and yeah
729
01:09:28.080 --> 01:09:32.320
guys thank you so much I hope I hope this was fun and um I hope we can I hope we can catch up
730
01:09:32.320 --> 01:09:36.880
again soon that was an absolute blast hey David can we say that guys are a favorite crypto youtuber
731
01:09:36.880 --> 01:09:40.560
are we able to say that yeah yeah yeah I mean he's mine I'm gonna say there you go you're saying
732
01:09:40.560 --> 01:09:45.600
go guy thank you for everything you do we certainly appreciate it um but guys thank you yes thank
733
01:09:45.600 --> 01:09:50.320
you so much that was that was amazing really enjoyed it and um yeah just keep doing keep doing
734
01:09:50.320 --> 01:09:57.120
what you're doing well they'll take care thanks awesome bye yeah