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Ryan, when's the last time you thought about Bitcoin ordinals?
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Oh, my God.
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It's probably been a good 12 to 18 months.
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Well, you know how the Bitcoin community just, they started to have a sort of like actual civil war about it.
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And, you know, when you say Bitcoin civil war, it stokes fears, memories of the block size wars where Bitcoin actually split into Bitcoin cash and Bitcoin.
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That actually happened.
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We had a fork of Bitcoin.
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We had Bitcoin had a fork.
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A very like a very few instances in Bitcoin's past has actually had a fork.
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This is probably the most impotent one, I think.
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Yeah.
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This was like Bitcoin's forks, but it's still notable nonetheless.
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A January 6th insurrection, like not a real insurrection.
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Wow.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Even less than that, though, I would say.
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Well, I want you to tell me about it.
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Yeah.
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We're going to talk about the fork in Bitcoin land and why Nick Carter is calling this the death of Bitcoin maximalism.
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What else we got in the news?
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Also, Saylor, he sold some more Bitcoin.
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Dude, that's like three weeks in a row.
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I know.
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He keeps selling.
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Also, Robinhood chain.
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It's the number one Ethereum L2 by revenue.
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took the crown in the first month.
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We'll talk about that.
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38% of all L2 revenue.
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And David, I want you to fill me in on this.
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Fidelity is filing to stake up to 100% of its ETH ETF, and it wants to pay holders a dividend.
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Also, I'd love for you to give me an update on what's happening with the EIP we talked about last night with the ETH issuance cap and whether that's tied into this story too.
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Yeah, hopefully the answer to that question is no, it's not tied into the story, but we'll cover it when you get there.
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First, before we get into the markets, we've got some hot market markets to talk about.
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We're going to talk to some of our friends and sponsors over at Near
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and Near.com.
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Near.com is kind of like where Near is dogfooding a lot of their products.
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It's like a first-party product that uses a lot of the Near infrastructure.
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Just launched on near.com is confidential yield with some vault technology powered by near intense.
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So you can confidentially deposit into a vault and get yield confidentially through near.com.
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You can do it.
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You can do it elsewhere in near because it's all powered by near intense.
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It's kind of like weaving together everything cross chain.
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but they're integrating confidential intents plus vaults brought by Taylor Finance.
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So you can get yield confidentially.
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I'm saying the word confidentially a lot because like I'm trying to like, what's the word?
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Manifest privacy in the rest of the crypto ecosystem.
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Like in the world of like meme coins and sailor posting AI hype videos, like I'm trying to manifest some substance here and like comes in the form of privacy.
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And so...
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Pretty cool that near.com has this built for anyone.
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I don't know if you ever use near.com, Ryan, but it's actually like they're integrating like all their first party features one by one by one is it's coming like becoming one of the most powerful wallet front ends because they keep on integrating all the features of crypto via near intense, but confidentially, it's kind of cool.
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Yeah, I keep saying this.
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One of the shippiest teams in crypto, and they keep shipping.
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David, let's start markets off with the CPI numbers.
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So consumer price index just came in at 3.4%.
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People were wondering whether we would be hot on inflation, and...
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It wasn't hot.
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It was about at analyst expectations.
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So just up 0.1% versus last month, June.
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This must be because oil prices are down a little bit, did not factor into that.
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But CPI pretty much flat and right along expectations.
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I think the S&P and the NASDAQ were like,
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up slightly on that news and certainly not down.
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But let's talk, take a look at maybe the prices around the markets.
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What about Bitcoin?
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What's the reaction on the week to Bitcoin?
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The notable thing about Bitcoin, it's been pretty flat and it's continued to be flat.
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The notable thing about Bitcoin is it fell below the 200 week moving average.
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And we were just marginally above the 200 week moving average.
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We were hovering around like 64 to 65,000.
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And we fell about two and a half percent on the week down to 63,300.
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The 200-week moving average, Ryan, is at $64,000.
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And so we are right below it.
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Even though it's like kind of the same price it's always been at.
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But the 200-week moving average has been creeping upwards.
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When we had that low, that capitulation dump, where Bitcoin went from $75,000 all the way down to $59,000, at that time, the moving average, the 200-week moving average, was $61,500.
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Now it's $63,000.
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So it's creeping upwards.
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And we're kind of writing it.
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We're writing the 200-week moving average up.
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And what's notable on top of that is Saylor dumped another clip of Bitcoin into the support, into Bitcoin support.
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And so despite Saylor, the Michael Saylor, selling at the 200-week moving average, Bitcoin is kind of holding the 200-week.
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So it's a little bit notable that the biggest buyer is selling into the 200-week moving average, and we're seemingly like not dead.
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So...
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That's my analysis of the week.
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Still under it.
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I guess like it isn't just the algorithm.
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You just buy Bitcoin under the 200 week moving average and like you're doing OK.
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I mean, it hasn't stayed there.
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We are a fingernail under the 200 week moving average.
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So I don't know if you're like a deep value buyer.
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This is not what you are looking at.
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You're looking at you're trying to get like five to 10 percent plus below the 200 week moving average.
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And we have only been under that like very briefly this cycle and not not very deep.
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So deep value may want to wait for that.
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But fair value, I mean, under the 200- We are in fair value.
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We have been in fair value.
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Yeah.
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The other price chart to look at, I think, that's been interesting and somewhat surprising, I think, for a lot of people who came out of nowhere, is gold is back up.
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So gold has been up 14% since July 17th, David.
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So gold futures now at 4,500.
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They cleared that for the first time since June 5th.
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Gold, of course, earlier this year had been a massive story.
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I think what we peaked in like January, February.
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Remember silver went on a tear?
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Yeah, definitely.
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end of January it peaked at 55,000 to 56,000 did we go to 56,000 an ounce 56 the pico the pico top yeah okay we were there briefly but we did wow yeah seeing the charge we did hit that and we went as low as what 3,800 an ounce something like this
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Yeah, it's just below $4,000 an ounce.
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And like notably, it started, but gold started the January 2024 at $2,000 an ounce.
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It started January 2025 at $2,600 an ounce.
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And then it just, you know, crescendoed for 14 months from $2,800 all the way up to $5,600.
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And this is gold.
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This is gold.
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This is number one asset in the world.
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Yeah, like a $20 trillion asset that became like a $30 trillion plus dollar asset.
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Absolutely monster move in 2025.
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So the question is, is it back?
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I mean, we're up 14, 15% right now.
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Is this the debasement trade?
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There are a few answers to that that I've seen that are good.
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I think the best answer probably comes from Michael Howell's work.
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He follows global liquidity.
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As you know, we talk about him often.
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He's been on the Bankless podcast before.
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And he just points to the PBOC, People's Bank of China.
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They are back in the market injecting liquidity.
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They have their own debasement thing going on with the yuan.
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And the proceeds from that liquidity, the liquidity that the PBOC injects, Michael Howell argues, that goes into the price of gold.
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They went on pause in terms of injecting liquidity in the market sometime February, March-ish.
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And you also saw gold price start to go down because
you lost that large marginal buyer.
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He's unclear on why they went on pause for so long.
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Maybe it's something to do with Iran, war, oil demand.
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They just didn't want to put too much liquidity in the market.
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But it seems like the PBOC is back now.
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with their own debasement trade.
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And so he forecasts gold could have bottomed and we could continue to rise from here with the PBOC throwing off global liquidity.
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I think that's probably the best story I've heard around this.
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Is this a PBOC, like, minting money to buy gold or minting money to inject liquidity and then, you know, three, four, five dominoes happen and then there's a bunch of gold buyers at the end of that?
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I think it's kind of both.
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It's a little bit of both.
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Bank of China, China is purchasing gold and also liquidity kind of sloshes around and finds its way into gold primarily in China market.
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Michael Howell argues this is because, like, crypto is banned, Bitcoin is banned, there's a lot of capital controls
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Property has burnt so many Chinese citizens over the years.
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They had been investing in Chinese real estate.
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That's no longer an asset class.
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So their store of value asset really is gold.
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And that's why gold number go up when China debasement starts to happen.
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So- You think this is taking some oxygen out of Bitcoin?
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No, I think it's actually, all right, so like, I don't think so.
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I think what's happening is it's actually giving some dry tinder for Bitcoin later.
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This is a really interesting chart from Michael Nado.
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Sounds like Cople.
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Sounds like Cople.
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No, like, I mean, look at this.
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You tell me if this is compelling.
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So this is a Bitcoin gold ratio.
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And you could see this is again the cycles.
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You know, I don't know why anyone in crypto disbelieves the cycles these days because it's in every chart I've ever seen.
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Here's another chart of the cycles.
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So you see the Bitcoin gold ratio in the 2018 bear market, we had an 82% decline in the 2022 bear market, a 75% decline.
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If you look at this chart, it seems like we may have bottomed on the Bitcoin gold ratio versus gold.
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Right.
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So Bitcoin versus gold at about a 69% decline.
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Okay.
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And we're off the bottoms.
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Yeah, it is nice.
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We're off the bottoms right now.
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And, you know, this means if gold price go up and Bitcoin can follow it and possibly will follow it, of course, if this ratio is bottomed.
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So I think maybe it's Coke, but.
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Look, Bitcoin is a scarce asset.
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Gold is a scarce asset.
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They're both store value assets.
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The reason gold is getting a pump right now is because it's PBOC liquidity.
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If we start to get Fed liquidity on the U.S. side, the rest of the world side, Michael Howell, again, argues that that's what really props up and pumps the price of crypto assets, including Bitcoin.
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Buying Bitcoin right now feels a little bit early in the sense that we still have like the doldrums of boredom to get through, like the flat part of the bear market to get through.
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But like I think it's one of those things where like you'll look back on it and you'll be very, very rewarded at these very, very good prices and you're going to be glad that you bought.
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You just have to kind of work through a bunch of bullish things happening that you would think are catalysts for Bitcoin.
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And then they don't show up in the Bitcoin price and you're going to get frustrated because you're buying it early.
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But ultimately, it's all going to play out.
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But this is how it works.
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It's like, why would you buy Bitcoin when Bitcoin is exciting?
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That's like the exact wrong time to buy Bitcoin.
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The time to buy is when it's back to boring mode again.
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And we're definitely boring.
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It does feel quite boring, however.
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It's like everyone's just watching Michael Saylor's tweets about like how much Bitcoin he sold.
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Well, speaking of which, so you mentioned earlier, Michael Saylor did sell some Bitcoin this week and he positioned himself for his reserve and SDRC preferred shares in a little bit of a healthier cash position.
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So what happened on the week?
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1,691 Bitcoin were sold over the last week, increasing the USD reserve by 650 million.
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So now, in sum, strategy has 2.7 years of yield in dollars, not Bitcoin, in dollar yield.
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This is the third week in a row that Saylor has sold like a meaningful amount of Bitcoin.
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And I do think that this is kind of why we dipped under the 200 week moving average and we kind of like dipped to this week, even though we only did like a little bit.
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Like I said, fingernails below the 200 week moving average.
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I think people are now kind of wondering, myself included, it's like, oh, OK, third week in a row.
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Like, OK, all right.
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Like how many weeks in a row?
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You're going to stop.
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You're going to stop at some point, right?
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Because when he sold the 32 Bitcoin and Bitcoin fell by like $75,000 down to $65,000, $62,000, we were like, we're all in agreement that that was the market front running all of these sales by Saylor.
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But like, did the market guess the total amount of Bitcoin to be sold by Saylor at these current levels correctly?
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Or is Saylor going to surprise us by saying?
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Week after week, clipping away another 1,700 Bitcoin week after week.
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It seems like it's not that much sell pressure to be able to be absorbed.
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And notably, Ryan, both the Bitcoin and the Ether ETFs are net buyers since June.
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So June and July and so far in August, the ETFs are net buyers.
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And so, like, you know, you can kind of count it like sailors was handing his Bitcoin to BlackRock and people are buying it up over there.
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But like, I don't know, like, is he like, just going to be selling Bitcoin for the rest of the year?
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Because that's going to be really hard as a narrative to like overcome.
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I mean, it's really clear he wanted to get STRC back into a healthy territory and now it's trading above 95.
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So it's as close as it's been in a while.
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Yeah, it is above $95.
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Yeah, to 100.
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So that seems to have been a priority, judging by what he did.
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You kind of wonder at this point in the market, I mean, does have this great, I guess, great from one perspective, credit structure now in place with STRC, but also like...
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I mean, he's taking his
eye off the ball of just buying Bitcoin cheap with cash, right?
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It's like his average cost basis is something like 75K.
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Like he is under his average cost basis.
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He's selling for a loss.
219
00:14:41.835 --> 00:14:43.858
It's like, would it have just been better?
220
00:14:43.958 --> 00:14:47.122
I mean, and he's starting to sell Bitcoin at a loss from his cost basis.
221
00:14:47.142 --> 00:14:47.302
Yeah.
222
00:14:47.422 --> 00:14:58.852
Would it have just been better for him not to do the credit instrument and get tied up there so he could continue to accumulate, at least not sell Bitcoin at these fair value depressed prices?
223
00:14:58.872 --> 00:14:59.673
I don't know.
224
00:14:59.813 --> 00:15:00.754
I mean, time will tell.
225
00:15:02.035 --> 00:15:03.136
We'll have to see what he does.
226
00:15:03.256 --> 00:15:10.323
But it's clearly his priority has been on making sure that STRC is still a good credit vehicle for him moving forward.
227
00:15:11.172 --> 00:15:17.100
Are you in the camp that Sailor needs to sell Bitcoin and get out of the way so Bitcoin can appreciate?
228
00:15:18.248 --> 00:15:32.012
Um, no, I think I think I'm still in the camp of what we talked about last week, which is sort of he was a main character because we were worried about a unorderly unwind from him.
229
00:15:32.392 --> 00:15:35.913
And now that that concern is on the back burner, he's kind of a back burner.
230
00:15:35.953 --> 00:15:41.315
And I don't think Saylor is the main factor suppressing Bitcoin prices or doing anything.
231
00:15:41.335 --> 00:15:41.835
What do you think?
232
00:15:44.007 --> 00:15:47.370
Um, I do kind of wonder, like markets are very, very intelligent.
233
00:15:47.450 --> 00:15:59.658
And so I do kind of wonder that like it's sailor keeping the price down and he still has to kind of puke up a bunch of Bitcoin for it to like kind of like awaken, reawaken, burn from the ashes.
234
00:15:59.979 --> 00:16:00.259
Yeah.
235
00:16:00.639 --> 00:16:06.383
And like the, the slow deflation is just him staying in the way for too long.
236
00:16:07.224 --> 00:16:07.384
Um.
237
00:16:09.079 --> 00:16:13.984
But then it's like, okay, can he wait this thing out until something like fundamentally bullish comes in?
238
00:16:14.885 --> 00:16:23.492
But like still to this day, I am of the belief that like the sailor needs to, it would be easier and better for everyone if he just puked up a bunch of Bitcoin, but he's not going to be doing that.
239
00:16:23.512 --> 00:16:24.453
Yeah, he's not puking it out.
240
00:16:24.493 --> 00:16:26.315
It's not a violent vomiting.
241
00:16:26.395 --> 00:16:31.339
It's more like a kind of a burp, you know, like a steady burp of Bitcoin coming off the balance sheet.
242
00:16:31.379 --> 00:16:31.519
Yeah.
243
00:16:32.668 --> 00:16:44.181
At the same time, could the Ethereum ecosystem ask for a better buyer, alternative to Michael Saylor than Tom Lee?
244
00:16:44.502 --> 00:16:48.766
This guy has not sold any ETH and he has purchased
245
00:16:49.387 --> 00:16:54.871
every single week since like this time last year, like even before that.
246
00:16:54.971 --> 00:17:00.315
I get this notification, like looks on Shane and my telegram saying, Hey, Tom Lee, here's a picture of Tom Lee.
247
00:17:00.335 --> 00:17:02.116
This man just bought $25 million of ETH.
248
00:17:02.136 --> 00:17:02.816
I get it every week.
249
00:17:03.137 --> 00:17:03.757
That's what he did.
250
00:17:03.797 --> 00:17:10.482
He just bought another $25 million of ETH last week, has not sold any, does not have this credit instrument, of course.
251
00:17:10.542 --> 00:17:15.766
So as a, a cleaner, more simple balance sheet and, um,
252
00:17:16.486 --> 00:17:22.068
Man, it's just like a total blessing for Ethereum and ETH holders, I think.
253
00:17:22.088 --> 00:17:23.909
I mean, everyone's got to be very thankful.
254
00:17:24.249 --> 00:17:26.590
Where would ETH price be without Tom Lee right now?
255
00:17:26.750 --> 00:17:28.511
I don't want to imagine.
256
00:17:28.631 --> 00:17:29.612
I do not want to know.
257
00:17:31.557 --> 00:17:32.077
Oh my God.
258
00:17:32.117 --> 00:17:33.378
I want to know.
259
00:17:33.898 --> 00:17:36.460
He was at 4.8% last time we checked in.
260
00:17:36.580 --> 00:17:38.160
I don't know how far 13,000 ETH.
261
00:17:38.441 --> 00:17:40.401
13,000 ETH doesn't really move the dial on that.
262
00:17:40.882 --> 00:17:41.542
Yeah, probably not.
263
00:17:41.762 --> 00:17:42.443
Yeah, 13,000.
264
00:17:42.463 --> 00:17:42.703
Yeah.
265
00:17:42.743 --> 00:17:45.224
So I think he's still 4.8 plus now.
266
00:17:45.844 --> 00:17:46.445
Not quite at 5%.
267
00:17:48.343 --> 00:17:55.150
Well, so the question, of course, the market section to conclude with is like, you know, Michael Nato says we're 85% of the way done.
268
00:17:55.190 --> 00:17:56.671
We've got two more months.
269
00:17:56.731 --> 00:17:58.433
That'll get us to 12 months.
270
00:17:58.473 --> 00:18:00.415
That's how long bear cycles last.
271
00:18:00.455 --> 00:18:03.518
We should see a bottom sometime in the next two months.
272
00:18:03.938 --> 00:18:05.460
David, so that means we're almost done here.
273
00:18:05.660 --> 00:18:11.482
OK, and the time based capitulation story, according to the cycles theory of everything.
274
00:18:12.042 --> 00:18:18.424
The question there, if you believe in that, is will we see another low, a lower low for Bitcoin?
275
00:18:18.684 --> 00:18:19.884
Will we get to 55K?
276
00:18:19.924 --> 00:18:21.205
Will we get under that?
277
00:18:21.265 --> 00:18:22.885
Will we get into the low 50s?
278
00:18:22.925 --> 00:18:24.806
Will we get into the 40s?
279
00:18:25.406 --> 00:18:26.146
What do you think?
280
00:18:26.286 --> 00:18:31.588
What's your take right now as you look at the market and get the sentiment and pulse of crypto?
281
00:18:31.608 --> 00:18:31.748
Yeah.
282
00:18:33.288 --> 00:18:40.115
Um, previously I have stated that I have gotten more and more bullish because like Saylor is just not FTX.
283
00:18:40.135 --> 00:18:41.216
He's not three hours capital.
284
00:18:41.256 --> 00:18:45.160
We don't have that same sort of like sins to pay for compared to last cycle.
285
00:18:45.380 --> 00:18:51.486
When last cycle, Bitcoin did meaningfully go below the 200 week moving average because of all that contagion that we had to deal with.
286
00:18:51.926 --> 00:18:53.548
And so this cycle doesn't look anything like that.
287
00:18:54.468 --> 00:18:56.789
I'm less and less bullish these days.
288
00:18:56.849 --> 00:18:59.889
I'm moderately more bearish, trending more bearish just a little bit.
289
00:19:01.230 --> 00:19:08.131
So, like, I think maybe two weeks ago I was saying I was like 60% plus we've already bottomed, and now I'm like 40% plus we've already bottomed.
290
00:19:08.852 --> 00:19:14.553
And my analysis that I'll make up on the spot this week is that –
291
00:19:15.213 --> 00:19:20.177
I do think Saylor's getting out of the way of the market, as I've said, which is what's kind of needed.
292
00:19:20.237 --> 00:19:21.358
He is doing that.
293
00:19:21.878 --> 00:19:27.203
Yet, nonetheless, like, what if the market just bottoms and pukes anyways?
294
00:19:27.563 --> 00:19:27.823
Yeah.
295
00:19:27.843 --> 00:19:29.144
Because of whatever reason.
296
00:19:29.284 --> 00:19:30.425
And again, not a huge amount.
297
00:19:31.566 --> 00:19:34.949
But just like sets a new low, calls it good.
298
00:19:34.989 --> 00:19:37.611
People get very mean and frustrated about Bitcoin.
299
00:19:37.891 --> 00:19:45.518
And they go by the top of the AI stonks in October, which is when Ben Cowan, who knows more than me, is saying that we're going to bottom around October.
300
00:19:45.998 --> 00:19:47.179
And then we're up only from there.
301
00:19:47.499 --> 00:19:51.703
And so I am keeping an open mind for that possibility.
302
00:19:51.743 --> 00:19:56.527
I am not yet a buyer of Bitcoin, but I do plan on Bitcoin.
303
00:19:57.207 --> 00:20:00.712
backing up the truck if that does happen.
304
00:20:00.732 --> 00:20:03.497
Backing up the truck, what, selling what?
305
00:20:03.657 --> 00:20:05.439
Selling AI stocks for this?
306
00:20:05.860 --> 00:20:06.441
Would you dare?
307
00:20:06.461 --> 00:20:08.564
Yeah.
308
00:20:10.099 --> 00:20:10.560
Yeah.
309
00:20:11.360 --> 00:20:11.761
Yeah.
310
00:20:11.961 --> 00:20:13.402
David plans to time it perfectly.
311
00:20:13.643 --> 00:20:15.044
You know, you get the top on AI stocks.
312
00:20:15.084 --> 00:20:15.464
Yeah, exactly.
313
00:20:15.484 --> 00:20:16.565
And you get the bottom on Bitcoin.
314
00:20:16.665 --> 00:20:18.928
I always intend on timing it perfectly.
315
00:20:18.968 --> 00:20:19.708
Perfect timing here.
316
00:20:20.890 --> 00:20:24.914
Let's talk next, after the sponsor break, about the Bitcoin fork.
317
00:20:24.934 --> 00:20:26.015
Speaking of perfect timing.
318
00:20:26.535 --> 00:20:27.776
Fork died in two blocks.
319
00:20:27.796 --> 00:20:28.937
What was going on here?
320
00:20:28.977 --> 00:20:31.300
Nick Carter called it the death of Max Flesser.
321
00:20:31.620 --> 00:20:32.221
Worst fork ever.
322
00:20:32.701 --> 00:20:33.221
in history.
323
00:20:33.601 --> 00:20:36.943
Also, the Robinhood chain, we'll discuss that, is going very well.
324
00:20:36.963 --> 00:20:38.544
We'll see if that can be sustained.
325
00:20:38.604 --> 00:20:42.205
All this and more, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible.
326
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327
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328
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329
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330
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334
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335
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336
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337
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338
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339
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340
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341
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342
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343
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344
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347
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348
00:22:12.459 --> 00:22:15.540
On Saturday, August 8th at block 961,632, Bitcoin forked.
349
00:22:20.084 --> 00:22:31.695
when a handful of Bitcoin nodes enforcing BIP-110, which is a soft fork, rejected the ant pool block that mined the normal block because it didn't carry the required signal.
350
00:22:31.715 --> 00:22:34.478
So Bitcoin forked into two forks.
351
00:22:34.818 --> 00:22:36.319
This had been planned for months.
352
00:22:36.339 --> 00:22:38.341
This is what BIP-110 was.
353
00:22:38.842 --> 00:22:41.724
And this was all of the anti-ordinal
354
00:22:42.505 --> 00:22:49.027
anti-NFT, anti-arbitrary data in Bitcoin camp created BIP10.
355
00:22:49.427 --> 00:23:07.771
So at this block, they were going to fork and all the Bitcoin purists, which is to get the data off of my backyard people, were going to fork off into their own chain and have an even more constrained version of Bitcoin that had minimized all of the surface area to add arbitrary data to Bitcoin, which allowed for the ordinals.
356
00:23:08.431 --> 00:23:10.672
And the worry was that this...
357
00:23:11.312 --> 00:23:19.541
This is like a story of weird internet culture because like the Epstein files became a relevant variable in this whole thing.
358
00:23:19.561 --> 00:23:20.442
Wait, what?
359
00:23:21.243 --> 00:23:29.852
Because these hardcore Bitcoin purists, including like some of the like hardcore religious types were like, if you allow, I can't believe this is real.
360
00:23:30.232 --> 00:23:32.414
If you allow for arbitrary data in Bitcoin...
361
00:23:33.870 --> 00:23:40.214
people might put child pornography in the blockchain as an attack on Bitcoin to censor it.
362
00:23:40.234 --> 00:23:49.059
So anyone running a Bitcoin node would have to download the CP and that would make them in violation of their laws probably, wherever they live.
363
00:23:49.079 --> 00:23:50.600
And the government would shut it down.
364
00:23:50.780 --> 00:23:57.823
And then also you as a runner of the Bitcoin node would also have some moral legal responsibility.
365
00:23:58.124 --> 00:24:01.926
And isn't that disgusting, terrible...
366
00:24:02.867 --> 00:24:16.587
And so that's why we should only allow Bitcoin transfers, essentially, in the Bitcoin blockchain, not some sort of arbitrary data that had been opened up by previous forks.
367
00:24:17.312 --> 00:24:21.895
And this whole side of the Bitcoin camp, to call it a side is like doing it too much justice.
368
00:24:21.916 --> 00:24:23.156
There's not that many of these people.
369
00:24:23.777 --> 00:24:25.738
But this is like the Luke Dash Jr. camp.
370
00:24:26.039 --> 00:24:30.282
And Luke Dash Jr. is very, he's a Bitcoin core dev, been around for forever.
371
00:24:30.482 --> 00:24:36.707
Very religious and ironically has put plenty of like Bible proverbs in the blockchain.
372
00:24:36.927 --> 00:24:37.787
Like he wrote that in there.
373
00:24:37.948 --> 00:24:38.808
A Bible verses?
374
00:24:39.309 --> 00:24:40.309
A Bible verses.
375
00:24:40.389 --> 00:24:40.910
But, you know.
376
00:24:41.350 --> 00:24:43.031
To each their own, I guess.
377
00:24:43.751 --> 00:24:53.897
Anyways, the day finally came when all of these people, which are these hardcore purists, maximalists, zealots, like religious zealots type, they decided to fork.
378
00:24:54.477 --> 00:25:00.021
And so we all got to kind of see how much consensus this fork, the anti-ordinals fork had.
379
00:25:00.841 --> 00:25:06.884
It had, Ryan, 2.5% of hash power, which I'm actually impressed that they got that much.
380
00:25:07.064 --> 00:25:07.545
Yeah.
381
00:25:09.046 --> 00:25:12.348
They had 2.53% of mining power from the fork.
382
00:25:13.008 --> 00:25:15.150
The goal was to have 55%.
383
00:25:15.510 --> 00:25:26.318
The problem when you only have 2.5% of hash power is that they forgot to change the difficulty adjustment because they thought that they were going to get more hash power, I guess.
384
00:25:26.898 --> 00:25:33.603
And so the difficulty for mining a Bitcoin block stayed where it was, but they only had 2.5% amount of hash power.
385
00:25:34.044 --> 00:25:44.171
So the typical block was supposed to be like, or is going to be mined in some time in like the next year or something rather than the next 10 minutes.
386
00:25:44.231 --> 00:25:45.912
And so it killed it on delivery.
387
00:25:45.953 --> 00:25:50.076
Like it was a, what's it called when a baby's dead on delivery?
388
00:25:50.096 --> 00:25:51.257
Oh my God.
389
00:25:52.497 --> 00:25:54.059
It's that, it's that, whatever that word is.
390
00:25:54.079 --> 00:25:54.319
Okay.
391
00:25:55.747 --> 00:25:56.267
Yeah.
392
00:25:56.307 --> 00:26:01.949
Jameson Lopp, he said, I won't be welcoming back or unblocking on Twitter any BIP10 supporters.
393
00:26:01.969 --> 00:26:07.152
I expect that Bitcoin Puritan culture will continue on its path to becoming even more unhinged.
394
00:26:07.972 --> 00:26:10.473
Anyways, that's your update and drama of Bitcoin land.
395
00:26:10.493 --> 00:26:11.253
What are your thoughts?
396
00:26:11.273 --> 00:26:13.054
There's a few other things, I guess.
397
00:26:13.094 --> 00:26:18.856
So, one, I think that's interesting is it's been a while since we've seen a fork.
398
00:26:19.116 --> 00:26:23.018
And there's always the question of who decides what is...
399
00:26:23.718 --> 00:26:26.379
real Bitcoin and what is Bitcoin.
400
00:26:26.619 --> 00:26:41.664
This is the first time, to your point, that we've actually really tested this in some way since 2017 when some big things happened in 2017 with kind of the Bitcoin Cash versus Bitcoin and individual node runners, the exchanges came in on one side.
401
00:26:41.764 --> 00:26:45.605
So kind of like an overarching question to you is just like,
402
00:26:46.425 --> 00:26:48.946
Well, who does decide what is Bitcoin?
403
00:26:48.966 --> 00:26:55.767
So in a sense, the BIP 110 supporters, they sort of forked themselves off, right?
404
00:26:55.887 --> 00:27:02.449
Because they had nodes, Bitcoin nodes, most of them being non-mining nodes, of course.
405
00:27:02.509 --> 00:27:03.909
They're not necessarily miners.
406
00:27:04.549 --> 00:27:12.851
They downloaded the BIP 110 version of Bitcoin and started running it, right?
407
00:27:13.231 --> 00:27:15.112
And there's a question of like, once...
408
00:27:15.972 --> 00:27:19.897
Some users with nodes start to run this software.
409
00:27:19.997 --> 00:27:23.020
How many other users can they get to also run the software?
410
00:27:23.160 --> 00:27:27.686
And then does the economics flow as well?
411
00:27:27.966 --> 00:27:29.007
So there are other stakeholders.
412
00:27:29.387 --> 00:27:33.973
Do the exchanges decide to list whatever the ticker might be for this?
413
00:27:33.993 --> 00:27:34.093
Yeah.
414
00:27:34.353 --> 00:27:38.054
Let's say it's like BIP, BTC or something like that, right?
415
00:27:38.194 --> 00:27:40.435
Do exchanges decide to launch that?
416
00:27:40.775 --> 00:27:44.816
If exchanges launch it, what is the market price of this relative to Bitcoin?
417
00:27:45.216 --> 00:27:51.778
If there's enough market price and value, then miners may decide to get on board.
418
00:27:52.118 --> 00:27:58.240
And that's how you sort of start to get legitimacy, enough consensus that this is a thing.
419
00:27:58.661 --> 00:27:59.581
We didn't even reach...
420
00:28:00.361 --> 00:28:01.402
nearly that threshold.
421
00:28:01.462 --> 00:28:02.763
Like no exchanges listed the thing.
422
00:28:02.783 --> 00:28:03.604
Yeah, never came close.
423
00:28:04.144 --> 00:28:05.205
Yeah, it didn't get close.
424
00:28:05.465 --> 00:28:09.268
Like miners, you know, did not mine it.
425
00:28:09.288 --> 00:28:10.549
It was like a complete failure.
426
00:28:10.569 --> 00:28:12.371
Didn't even get to a threshold to test this.
427
00:28:12.411 --> 00:28:18.535
But it goes back to the question of like, who does decide what actual Bitcoin is?
428
00:28:18.695 --> 00:28:26.281
It's kind of a squishy mix of users running their own nodes plus block producers, Bitcoin miners, plus...
429
00:28:27.543 --> 00:28:32.227
social layer in the economy of exchanges and ETF issues and everybody else.
430
00:28:32.988 --> 00:28:36.111
But I think it's changed a little bit since 2017.
431
00:28:36.852 --> 00:28:50.866
I think those are all the parties involved, but there have been some parties that have gained more influence in these types of decisions, I suppose, and others that have waned in influence now.
432
00:28:50.866 --> 00:28:52.387
At least it seems like that to me.
433
00:28:52.407 --> 00:28:58.430
I mean, Michael Saylor wasn't around in 2017 in those fork wars, for instance.
434
00:28:58.850 --> 00:28:59.451
Now he is.
435
00:29:00.151 --> 00:29:07.455
It also seems like the Bitcoin maximists, like
the hardcore Bitcoiners, are more muted, more dormant.
436
00:29:07.955 --> 00:29:10.697
I mean, Nick Carter called this the death of Bitcoin.
437
00:29:11.397 --> 00:29:34.305
of uh bitcoin maxis uh he said their most hardcore foot soldiers defect to a doomed ultra orthodox faction never to return their most purist influencers exposed by shilling cold card cold card was the hack we talked about last week that was like a bitcoin only hardware um device and that was just like that did not work out for a whole bunch of the holders um
438
00:29:35.005 --> 00:29:38.087
another purist merchant payment service hack.
439
00:29:38.107 --> 00:29:42.711
So he's listing a whole bunch of flesh wounds that Bitcoin maximalists have taken this year.
440
00:29:42.971 --> 00:29:48.775
It's interesting, back in 2017, I would have called Nick Carter a Bitcoin maximalist, right?
441
00:29:49.395 --> 00:29:55.439
So like, the social landscape has completely changed and like, yeah, I don't know, what do you make of this?
442
00:29:55.780 --> 00:30:00.783
Who is deciding what Bitcoin actually is now in 2026?
443
00:30:00.863 --> 00:30:02.004
And has that changed?
444
00:30:02.905 --> 00:30:13.854
I think always the answer to this question about who decides what is Bitcoin is like the market, which is in terms of just like efficiency and correctness.
445
00:30:13.894 --> 00:30:21.060
I feel like it hits some sort of like efficiency frontier and just like, yeah, you named a bunch of players in the Bitcoin space.
446
00:30:21.321 --> 00:30:22.041
You add them all together.
447
00:30:22.061 --> 00:30:22.762
You just get the market.
448
00:30:22.782 --> 00:30:23.563
The market decides.
449
00:30:24.223 --> 00:30:33.025
Like, even if exchanges, you can take out any one part of like all the interlocking and set of incentives that compose together, create Bitcoin.
450
00:30:33.785 --> 00:30:39.366
But like if you can take away the exchanges and leave the rest, that's, you know, the market is deciding.
451
00:30:39.386 --> 00:30:42.947
You know, you can take away the node operators, but you leave the rest, that's the market deciding.
452
00:30:43.007 --> 00:30:47.928
So to me, the answer is always just like, it's the broad nebulous idea of the market.
453
00:30:48.328 --> 00:30:52.791
And ultimately, it's really probably the price.
454
00:30:53.111 --> 00:30:57.253
The price of Bitcoin is determinant of what Bitcoin is.
455
00:30:57.313 --> 00:31:06.779
And this is why when Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin had their actual civil war, there was that one day that Bitcoin Cash almost flipped Bitcoin.
456
00:31:06.839 --> 00:31:09.601
It came within pretty close.
457
00:31:09.801 --> 00:31:11.302
I forgot about that.
458
00:31:11.342 --> 00:31:13.143
Yeah, it almost flipped Bitcoin.
459
00:31:13.183 --> 00:31:14.264
It came within 15% of flipping Bitcoin.
460
00:31:16.588 --> 00:31:22.952
And like if that if it had flipped Bitcoin and then maintained it, it would like we would not we would
just be calling that Bitcoin.
461
00:31:23.092 --> 00:31:25.734
And then the other one would be like Bitcoin classic or something.
462
00:31:25.974 --> 00:31:27.655
What a different universe that would be.
463
00:31:27.775 --> 00:31:38.882
I guess my last question on this thread to you then is if Nick Carter is right and Bitcoin maximalism is dead, he's defining it in kind of like, you know, purist, super orthodox.
464
00:31:39.022 --> 00:31:42.324
There's only Bitcoin, that level of maximalism.
465
00:31:43.485 --> 00:31:45.746
If that's dead, is that good for Bitcoin?
466
00:31:48.465 --> 00:31:52.693
kind of thinks the Bitcoin maximalist side of Bitcoin has become increasingly irrelevant over the years.
467
00:31:53.414 --> 00:31:57.181
Like, even Saylor is, like, not that max-y in the sense that, like...
468
00:31:59.111 --> 00:32:01.112
he talks positively of other chains.
469
00:32:01.672 --> 00:32:18.337
And so, yeah, in the broad scope of things, like, especially this hard fork with these, like, weird zealots who are completely unhinged, like, their logic and calculus being a part of the Bitcoin conversation is just not helpful and it's best that they're not around.
470
00:32:19.228 --> 00:32:20.328
It's a different era though, isn't it?
471
00:32:20.468 --> 00:32:22.469
I mean, the cyber hornets are kind of dead.
472
00:32:23.589 --> 00:32:26.611
Their legacy, they're back in 2017, 2018, 2019.
473
00:32:26.711 --> 00:32:28.171
It's a different group now.
474
00:32:28.211 --> 00:32:31.052
And this is kind of the last vestige of that group, I think.
475
00:32:31.092 --> 00:32:33.173
And they've just forked themselves off Bitcoin.
476
00:32:33.293 --> 00:32:34.393
So there you go.
477
00:32:34.673 --> 00:32:36.994
Bitcoin fork that no one even knew about.
478
00:32:37.054 --> 00:32:39.055
Actually, they never.
479
00:32:39.095 --> 00:32:40.095
Just kidding.
480
00:32:40.675 --> 00:32:41.516
Failure to launch.
481
00:32:42.876 --> 00:32:44.477
Tell me about the Robinhood chain.
482
00:32:45.138 --> 00:32:46.879
Yeah, back into Ethereum land.
483
00:32:47.200 --> 00:32:49.241
Okay, so Robinhood chain is now the number one.
484
00:32:49.261 --> 00:32:53.065
It has been, but the data of the last week has really cemented it.
485
00:32:53.145 --> 00:32:57.228
Robinhood chain is now the number one Ethereum L2 by blockchain revenue.
486
00:32:57.688 --> 00:33:03.894
In its first full month of being live, it has generated $3.6 million in July revenue.
487
00:33:04.294 --> 00:33:10.799
I think I was, last week I projected it to come at like $3.2 million in revenue, but this last week of time,
488
00:33:11.580 --> 00:33:12.500
Oh, we're in the second week of August.
489
00:33:12.520 --> 00:33:13.681
I don't know what's going on.
490
00:33:13.741 --> 00:33:19.804
It has crescendoed in revenue because there's like a flurry of meme coin tradings, but not just meme coin tradings.
491
00:33:20.284 --> 00:33:22.165
Some of the metrics just look really good.
492
00:33:22.385 --> 00:33:29.108
App layer protocol TVL on Robinhood chain is just shy of $1 billion.
493
00:33:29.148 --> 00:33:32.269
That's across like Morpho, Uniswap, a few others.
494
00:33:33.149 --> 00:33:36.911
There's over a $1 billion supply of stable coins on Robinhood chain.
495
00:33:37.511 --> 00:33:40.473
Dex volume is tapering off, but still pretty healthy.
496
00:33:41.353 --> 00:33:45.840
Uh, and then stock token TVL, which is like the most important metric, which is still weak.
497
00:33:46.701 --> 00:33:48.243
It's nonetheless up a three X.
498
00:33:48.304 --> 00:33:51.909
It's up from a $10 million to $30 million.
499
00:33:52.490 --> 00:33:56.115
Pip squeak numbers, but it's tripled, uh,
500
00:33:56.295 --> 00:34:00.376
So $30 million is still a good number.
501
00:34:01.196 --> 00:34:04.557
And so it's also interesting to note that base is not number two.
502
00:34:04.617 --> 00:34:08.658
It's number three behind Polygon, proof of stake.
503
00:34:08.798 --> 00:34:13.320
Other than Polymarket, what else is on Polygon putting in the transaction numbers?
504
00:34:13.800 --> 00:34:17.661
I mean, stable coins, you know, like Polygon.
505
00:34:18.261 --> 00:34:18.961
Also Polymarket.
506
00:34:19.081 --> 00:34:20.202
Yeah, you said Polymarket.
507
00:34:20.262 --> 00:34:21.122
But yeah, there's...
508
00:34:21.902 --> 00:34:24.143
Polygon is surprisingly active, I think.
509
00:34:24.163 --> 00:34:27.124
They've just been continuing here.
510
00:34:27.164 --> 00:34:29.785
But yeah, that's a surprising amount of revenue from Robinhood.
511
00:34:30.226 --> 00:34:33.627
I guess my question is, do you think it can be sustained?
512
00:34:33.667 --> 00:34:39.209
Because when I look at what's happening on Robinhood, there's an element where there's nothing really new here.
513
00:34:39.649 --> 00:34:41.110
Maybe it's a new user base.
514
00:34:41.450 --> 00:34:44.271
It definitely feels like new energy into crypto, which is great.
515
00:34:44.391 --> 00:34:47.553
But it's all of the DeFi protocols that we've already had.
516
00:34:48.233 --> 00:34:51.475
Meme coins as a use case is something we have elsewhere.
517
00:34:51.515 --> 00:34:53.696
And that's a very much a known thing.
518
00:34:54.016 --> 00:34:56.617
Tokenized stocks, maybe that's kind of a breakout.
519
00:34:56.637 --> 00:35:00.940
But like... That's the new thing, but that's why it's notable that it's so low.
520
00:35:01.400 --> 00:35:01.960
Yeah, exactly.
521
00:35:01.980 --> 00:35:04.061
Maybe that's why it's so low because it's brand new.
522
00:35:04.381 --> 00:35:06.442
Well, 30 million of the what?
523
00:35:06.562 --> 00:35:08.423
You said about 1 billion?
524
00:35:08.523 --> 00:35:10.244
A billion dollars of protocol TBL.
525
00:35:10.724 --> 00:35:14.026
So it's not like it's tokenized stock that's propelling this thing.
526
00:35:14.046 --> 00:35:17.448
So my question to you is like, do you think this can be sustained actually?
527
00:35:20.229 -->
00:35:26.415
You can look at the behavior of Vlad, and this is what a lot of the meme coin traders are looking at for Signal.
528
00:35:26.775 --> 00:35:30.759
Vlad on Twitter is really leaning into Robinhood chain.
529
00:35:31.240 --> 00:35:37.106
They listed Cash Cat, which I hate talking about this, but Cash Cat was the meme coin on Robinhood chain.
530
00:35:37.126 --> 00:35:42.712
They listed it on the Robinhood app, and so all of the meme coin people and traders are happy because they're like,
531
00:35:43.584 --> 00:35:52.767
being supportive of, yeah, they are supporting the meme coin trenchers dumping their bags on Robinhood retail.
532
00:35:52.787 --> 00:35:57.289
They're supportive of that.
533
00:35:57.469 --> 00:36:09.333
But nonetheless, I think for some reason, like the trenchers really look to the leadership and be like, is the leadership like legitimizing our hobby, our passion, our way of making money?
534
00:36:09.553 --> 00:36:10.533
And the answer is yes.
535
00:36:10.713 --> 00:36:11.854
Like Vlad is doing that.
536
00:36:12.634 --> 00:36:14.595
But Ryan, I'm going to tell you a sentence.
537
00:36:15.116 --> 00:36:16.237
You're going to tell me what year it is.
538
00:36:17.097 --> 00:36:22.000
The sentence is, an NFT mint was happening, happened on Robinhood chain.
539
00:36:22.361 --> 00:36:22.961
It sold out.
540
00:36:22.981 --> 00:36:24.862
37,000 NFTs were purchased for $17 each.
541
00:36:24.882 --> 00:36:26.984
5,000 more were sold for 117 for a total of $1.3 million.
542
00:36:27.004 --> 00:36:29.345
About almost $700 in ETH was sold for NFTs on Robinhood chain.
543
00:36:29.445 --> 00:36:30.386
What year is it?
544
00:36:39.772 --> 00:36:47.221
I mean, that felt like 2021, except you said Robinhood chain, which was like completely anachronistic for that year.
545
00:36:47.381 --> 00:36:53.628
So, but are NFTs really making a comeback or doing something on the Robinhood chain?
546
00:36:53.668 --> 00:36:55.029
Is that part of the story here?
547
00:36:55.826 --> 00:37:00.548
I mean, a sold-out NFT mint that made $1.2, $1.3 million is not from 2021.
548
00:37:00.568 --> 00:37:00.968
No, it's not.
549
00:37:01.108 --> 00:37:03.909
Because it would be like hundreds of millions of dollars.
550
00:37:03.949 --> 00:37:05.810
A hundred X that number, yeah.
551
00:37:05.830 --> 00:37:08.571
We had to down price these things appropriately.
552
00:37:09.251 --> 00:37:10.191
But this was minted.
553
00:37:10.251 --> 00:37:13.032
This whole project is called Spritehood.
554
00:37:13.573 --> 00:37:15.153
So they're little sprites, little pixel arts.
555
00:37:15.714 --> 00:37:17.074
I'm not sure if we know exactly.
556
00:37:17.334 --> 00:37:18.234
They're all kind of hidden.
557
00:37:18.314 --> 00:37:19.955
So these are not the NFTs that we're looking at.
558
00:37:19.975 --> 00:37:22.356
They're kind of the placeholders because they're going to get revealed in the future.
559
00:37:22.376 --> 00:37:23.176
Okay.
560
00:37:23.196 --> 00:37:24.457
But Coal...
561
00:37:25.017 --> 00:37:29.923
who's the guy that created Pudgy Penguins back in the day, he minted these.
562
00:37:30.204 --> 00:37:33.408
So this is Cole, like, season two, like, NFT project season two.
563
00:37:33.828 --> 00:37:35.570
He sold Pudgy Penguins to Luca.
564
00:37:35.610 --> 00:37:39.135
Everyone knows Luca is the guy behind Pudgy Penguins because he sold it to Luca in, like, 2022 or 2023.
565
00:37:39.155 --> 00:37:39.896
So, yeah, we're doing NFT mints.
566
00:37:43.180 --> 00:37:46.403
You know, it just surprised me as I didn't realize this is a link to OpenSea.
567
00:37:46.803 --> 00:37:48.204
I'm on OpenSea again.
568
00:37:48.244 --> 00:37:48.965
What year, dude?
569
00:37:48.985 --> 00:37:49.445
What year is it?
570
00:37:49.465 --> 00:37:51.747
It looks so different, but it also looks the exact same.
571
00:37:52.067 --> 00:37:58.873
So, I mean, what's the probability that NFTs make a comeback, you think, in some form in crypto?
572
00:38:01.835 --> 00:38:02.195
Teens?
573
00:38:03.436 --> 00:38:04.097
Teen percentage?
574
00:38:04.437 --> 00:38:05.478
I think it's pretty high.
575
00:38:05.978 --> 00:38:08.841
I think that at some point, NFTs will make a comeback.
576
00:38:10.028 --> 00:38:11.430
I don't know if that means the original.
577
00:38:11.450 --> 00:38:14.292
Like new NFTs coming to market or old NFTs coming back?
578
00:38:14.713 --> 00:38:25.363
New NFTs and then some of the OG NFTs will kind of do well in the afterglow of some new NFT mania of some sort.
579
00:38:26.284 --> 00:38:28.846
I mean, it could take a while still.
580
00:38:28.946 --> 00:38:29.767
This may not be it.
581
00:38:29.787 --> 00:38:35.092
I'm not saying this is it, but the NFT use case, I think it's going to come back.
582
00:38:37.397 --> 00:38:41.482
Punks are currently 31 ETH floor, which has basically been where it's at in a while.
583
00:38:41.722 --> 00:38:45.687
So it's not yet in the punk flood.
584
00:38:45.707 --> 00:38:47.269
Data is not on my side in that argument.
585
00:38:47.570 --> 00:38:48.992
We got more to discuss.
586
00:38:49.512 --> 00:38:52.175
Meme coins are on your radar, David.
587
00:38:52.196 --> 00:38:52.796
More meme coins.
588
00:38:52.816 --> 00:38:53.978
We're going to talk about meme coins some more.
589
00:38:54.318 --> 00:38:55.618
Yeah, FOMO versus POMP.
590
00:38:55.838 --> 00:38:56.879
I want you to tell me about this.
591
00:38:57.019 --> 00:38:59.179
Also, Fidelity's ETH dividend.
592
00:38:59.219 --> 00:38:59.659
What's that?
593
00:38:59.879 --> 00:39:01.359
And the Clarity vote coming up.
594
00:39:01.399 --> 00:39:03.980
What's the probability that that passes all this and more?
595
00:39:04.040 --> 00:39:07.481
But before we do, let's thank the sponsors that made this possible.
596
00:39:07.801 --> 00:39:10.561
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597
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598
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599
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600
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601
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602
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603
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604
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605
00:39:53.277 --> 00:39:55.538
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606
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607
00:39:56.419 --> 00:39:59.181
That's Coinbase.com slash bankless for more information.
608
00:39:59.382 --> 00:40:00.042
Some exciting news.
609
00:40:00.122 --> 00:40:04.866
We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it.
610
00:40:04.946 --> 00:40:07.628
The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Nato.
611
00:40:07.728 --> 00:40:08.529
He runs the DeFi Repair.
612
00:40:08.809 --> 00:40:13.591
This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 1010 price drop happened.
613
00:40:13.751 --> 00:40:16.212
His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point.
614
00:40:16.292 --> 00:40:17.633
I've been following him for years.
615
00:40:17.813 --> 00:40:21.234
And this year, we started recording weekly podcast episodes.
616
00:40:21.395 --> 00:40:29.158
Each one, we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle.
617
00:40:29.258 --> 00:40:31.659
There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday.
618
00:40:31.739 --> 00:40:32.459
They're 30 minutes.
619
00:40:32.539 --> 00:40:33.000
They're short.
620
00:40:33.040 --> 00:40:33.660
They're punchy.
621
00:40:33.780 --> 00:40:36.121
I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most.
622
00:40:36.401 --> 00:40:37.622
So let's do it together.
623
00:40:37.782 --> 00:40:39.002
Go subscribe to this podcast.
624
00:40:39.042 --> 00:40:44.765
Search The DeFi Report wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find the link in the show notes.
625
00:40:44.905 --> 00:40:46.465
There's a new episode waiting for you now.
626
00:40:46.725 --> 00:40:48.366
Ryan, are you familiar with FOMO?
627
00:40:48.866 --> 00:40:50.107
I've heard of it, not used it.
628
00:40:51.263 --> 00:40:52.484
Basically a breakout.
629
00:40:52.504 --> 00:41:03.673
I don't know if it's a breakout into mainstream, but it has certainly broken out to basically everyone who's going to trade new tokens, new meme coins on crypto.
630
00:41:04.613 --> 00:41:05.854
It's a really friendly wallet.
631
00:41:05.974 --> 00:41:12.119
It's a lot of ex-DYDX and ex-Uniswap people to come out and build a FOMO.
632
00:41:12.179 --> 00:41:14.081
It feels like the phantom of this cycle.
633
00:41:15.081 --> 00:41:19.544
where they just have like breakout adoption, really good onboarding experience.
634
00:41:19.584 --> 00:41:22.086
And so you can get money into the app pretty easily.
635
00:41:22.106 --> 00:41:23.867
And that's very much mobile first, right?
636
00:41:23.987 --> 00:41:25.347
Mobile first.
637
00:41:25.367 --> 00:41:25.648
Yeah.
638
00:41:25.688 --> 00:41:27.709
There is a desktop, but it's very, very mobile first.
639
00:41:28.429 --> 00:41:31.391
And they've just had a gargantuan rise in users.
640
00:41:31.411 --> 00:41:34.933
So they've had 40,000 new signups in one month.
641
00:41:35.073 --> 00:41:37.335
And one user is direct revenue.
642
00:41:37.495 --> 00:41:39.036
It's not like a two-stage thing.
643
00:41:39.896 --> 00:41:48.779
I mean, I guess it is where you can download the app and just like look at it, but people tend to convert into putting money into the app and then trading, which is where FOMO gets their revenue from.
644
00:41:48.819 --> 00:41:49.919
They get money on the swaps.
645
00:41:50.800 --> 00:41:55.361
And so for 30,000 new active traders in the last month, making about 400,000 or 500,000 trades.
646
00:41:57.722 --> 00:41:58.583
But what are they trading?
647
00:41:58.623 --> 00:42:02.325
So I'm looking at the app here and I see a bunch of meme coins on the left.
648
00:42:02.365 --> 00:42:04.466
Is it primarily a meme coin trading platform?
649
00:42:04.486 --> 00:42:05.507
It's primarily meme coins.
650
00:42:05.547 --> 00:42:06.767
You can buy everything.
651
00:42:06.787 --> 00:42:10.289
You can buy Bitcoin, you can buy ETH, you can do perps, but it's primarily meme coins.
652
00:42:10.309 --> 00:42:13.111
There's a bunch of social features built into it as well.
653
00:42:13.671 --> 00:42:18.614
And so you can follow your friends, you can see what tokens they're buying, you can see how down bad they are.
654
00:42:19.595 --> 00:42:23.217
And so it's leaning very heavily into social trading features.
655
00:42:24.138 --> 00:42:28.250
And you could say the negative take or the...
656
00:42:29.623 --> 00:42:41.108
Not negative, but just like they're wrapping up PumpFun into an app and they are the consumer front end for PumpFun because so much of their revenue is Pump tokens or other meme coins.
657
00:42:41.688 --> 00:42:45.929
And it doesn't matter what chain they're on, like you can do them on FOMO.
658
00:42:46.410 --> 00:42:54.393
But there has been a growing crescendo of tension between
FOMO and Pump because Pump has its own app.
659
00:42:55.053 --> 00:42:56.775
Because it wants to verticalize, right?
660
00:42:56.795 --> 00:43:00.778
So like Pump first off started off as just the bonding curve token launchpad.
661
00:43:00.798 --> 00:43:01.278
Right.
662
00:43:01.298 --> 00:43:08.665
And then they verticalized into PumpSwap and they kicked out Radium so that they could internalize their own fees from their AMM.
663
00:43:08.685 --> 00:43:12.088
So they built their own AMM so they would stop giving all their fees to Radium.
664
00:43:12.608 --> 00:43:13.748
And so they verticalized into that.
665
00:43:13.828 --> 00:43:16.249
And then they verticalized into the pump app.
666
00:43:16.609 --> 00:43:20.531
But FOMO is competing with them at the app level.
667
00:43:20.971 --> 00:43:27.413
And because owning the user, owning the consumer is so lucrative that that's really where you want to be.
668
00:43:27.893 --> 00:43:33.755
And so FOMO revenue is like through the roof, but it's coming out of pump's pocket because they're not owning those users.
669
00:43:33.775 --> 00:43:38.376
So now there is a fight for user acquisition between the pump app and FOMO app.
670
00:43:38.616 --> 00:43:40.997
And they're at each other's teeth on Twitter saying,
671
00:43:41.297 --> 00:43:51.041
talking about which app is the more user-friendly app, which takes less fees and which gives more tokens back to their users.
672
00:43:51.121 --> 00:43:53.562
And that's the current drama on CryptoTrader right now.
673
00:43:53.582 --> 00:43:54.723
Why can't they work together?
674
00:43:55.023 --> 00:44:01.245
So just Pomp and FOMO, they both take a cut of, I don't know, trading fees?
675
00:44:01.585 --> 00:44:02.206
Yes, they do.
676
00:44:02.226 --> 00:44:02.586
That's right.
677
00:44:02.826 --> 00:44:03.186
That's right.
678
00:44:03.366 --> 00:44:04.046
Yeah.
679
00:44:04.186 --> 00:44:07.528
It strikes me that FOMO is sort of a front end on Pomp,
680
00:44:08.068 --> 00:44:10.069
That seems like that could be very collaborative, right?
681
00:44:10.109 --> 00:44:15.472
It's like MetaMask and Uniswap or like, you know, Phantom and even Pump or some exchange on Slack.
682
00:44:16.113 --> 00:44:19.515
I think Pump just wants to own the whole entire vertical.
683
00:44:19.755 --> 00:44:25.178
You are right in that like more FOMO users will end up being like good for Pump protocol, but not the Pump app.
684
00:44:25.839 --> 00:44:31.462
And the Pump team is probably like, well, we can make the most amount of money if we own the end-to-end user relationship.
685
00:44:31.482 --> 00:44:31.702
Yeah.
686
00:44:32.048 --> 00:44:41.394
The durability of meme coins has been surprising to me, even because we are in a bear market and still like pump is throwing off a lot of revenue.
687
00:44:41.814 --> 00:44:45.336
FOMO, you said 40,000, you're like new traders in the month.
688
00:44:45.456 --> 00:44:46.757
This is all meme coin stuff.
689
00:44:46.817 --> 00:44:49.399
Even Robinhood, the life is in meme coin stuff.
690
00:44:49.939 --> 00:44:52.040
Meme coins have been very persistent.
691
00:44:52.060 --> 00:44:54.602
I mean, there's the argument that they would just go the way of NFTs.
692
00:44:55.042 --> 00:44:59.065
They were like a previous cycle thing, but they have stayed around.
693
00:44:59.745 --> 00:45:05.248
even this bear cycle, which makes me think they might have a role to play in the next bull cycle.
694
00:45:05.268 --> 00:45:06.628
I don't think they're going away, David.
695
00:45:07.289 --> 00:45:08.009
Yeah, that's a good point.
696
00:45:08.069 --> 00:45:13.852
I don't quite get it because we structurally know that meme coins take people's money away.
697
00:45:14.252 --> 00:45:15.433
Structurally, that's what they do.
698
00:45:16.213 --> 00:45:18.534
A few people win, a lot of people lose.
699
00:45:18.714 --> 00:45:23.317
Where does all of this money keep on coming from to finance all of these meme coin activities?
700
00:45:24.097 --> 00:45:33.504
And so like the level of extraction that meme coins represent, yet the level of durability that they do have, I don't know how to answer that question.
701
00:45:33.624 --> 00:45:34.684
Yeah, it's been surprising.
702
00:45:34.825 --> 00:45:36.486
People like meme coins, I guess.
703
00:45:36.586 --> 00:45:38.227
Maybe just like going to the casino.
704
00:45:39.108 --> 00:45:39.428
David.
705
00:45:39.848 --> 00:45:42.050
The Clarity Act, not looking too good.
706
00:45:42.070 --> 00:45:46.894
I think it's down below 20% probability on Polymark.
707
00:45:46.934 --> 00:45:49.756
I saw 15% at some point this week.
708
00:45:49.796 --> 00:45:56.841
I think at the time of recording, it's about 18% probability that the Clarity Act happens this year.
709
00:45:57.682 --> 00:45:59.003
What is the kind of the next step?
710
00:45:59.063 --> 00:46:04.928
What has to happen next for Clarity to actually have a shot at going to effect this year?
711
00:46:06.080 --> 00:46:08.642
Well, we're getting a vote on it in September.
712
00:46:09.343 --> 00:46:12.546
So we still see a vote probably, I think.
713
00:46:13.567 --> 00:46:16.129
The Congress is going to go on recess and then we're going to get a vote.
714
00:46:16.489 --> 00:46:21.854
But despite like getting a vote or at least being told that we're going to get a vote, people are still bearish on it.
715
00:46:22.855 --> 00:46:23.315
Because A...
716
00:46:24.355 --> 00:46:27.559
So delaying benefits both the Democrats and the banks.
717
00:46:27.739 --> 00:46:30.002
Democrats just want to delay until post-midterms.
718
00:46:30.042 --> 00:46:32.785
And this is just like, maybe they're just saying, yeah, we're going to delay until September.
719
00:46:32.805 --> 00:46:33.646
And then September comes.
720
00:46:33.686 --> 00:46:35.348
Like, yeah, we're going to delay it post-midterms.
721
00:46:35.728 --> 00:46:37.550
And then midterms come.
722
00:46:38.211 --> 00:46:41.955
And then
even if the vote were to go, there's no guarantee that it would pass.
723
00:46:42.816 --> 00:46:45.737
And so, you know, it's just the doors seem to be closing.
724
00:46:45.757 --> 00:46:53.240
You know what's kind of funny here, though, is there's a silver lining in that we may still get a lot of these provisions in the interim with the Palatkins SEC.
725
00:46:53.780 --> 00:46:56.361
I saw more headlines like this from the block.
726
00:46:56.381 --> 00:47:01.063
The SEC could propose pivotal crypto rules that may start with a token safe harbor.
727
00:47:01.083 --> 00:47:03.083
This is from TD Cowan.
728
00:47:03.103 --> 00:47:03.844
So this is like...
729
00:47:04.791 --> 00:47:10.313
Paul Atkins doing parts of the Clarity Act by regulator, and that's good.
730
00:47:10.693 --> 00:47:15.054
And then also, remember the Clarity Act for the compromise of the banks?
731
00:47:15.494 --> 00:47:20.755
We were going to lose our stablecoin yield loophole.
732
00:47:21.396 --> 00:47:28.097
So if Clarity doesn't pass with that loophole closed, we're still getting the yield on our stablecoins.
733
00:47:28.777 --> 00:47:31.358
I mean, that's kind of a silver lining, isn't it?
734
00:47:31.998 --> 00:47:33.479
The banks don't get to take that from us?
735
00:47:33.499 --> 00:47:34.199
I think so.
736
00:47:34.519 --> 00:47:35.059
I think so.
737
00:47:35.500 --> 00:47:35.720
Yeah.
738
00:47:36.100 --> 00:47:38.502
There's that, I guess, even if this doesn't pass.
739
00:47:39.302 --> 00:47:39.683
Yeah.
740
00:47:40.003 --> 00:47:41.884
I still want native stablecoin yield.
741
00:47:42.124 --> 00:47:44.746
It feels right, but I guess I'm being picky.
742
00:47:45.146 --> 00:47:45.747
Yeah.
743
00:47:46.607 --> 00:47:54.493
It is a big question of like how much can Paul and Atkins and the SEC, how much can they do and how much will stick depending on the outcome of the 2028 election.
744
00:47:55.253 --> 00:47:57.154
That's the big question, of course.
745
00:47:57.314 --> 00:48:03.677
David, Fidelity is adding staking and quarterly cash distributions to its ETH ETF.
746
00:48:04.017 --> 00:48:10.000
So it's going to give staking yield to ETH ETF holders for the Fidelity ETF.
747
00:48:10.741 --> 00:48:13.202
I think it's about a billion dollars
748
00:48:13.482 --> 00:48:16.064
in there right now in their Ethereum ETF.
749
00:48:16.705 --> 00:48:21.890
And they talked about potentially staking up to 100% of their ETH holdings.
750
00:48:22.490 --> 00:48:25.213
I guess they can do that from a risk perspective.
751
00:48:25.854 --> 00:48:27.895
That's interesting in and of itself.
752
00:48:28.376 --> 00:48:35.262
I guess I wanted to ask you, I haven't really checked in too much since we talked about it last week, but the whole...
753
00:48:36.123 --> 00:48:41.045
EIP kerfuffle around capping staking issuance.
754
00:48:41.605 --> 00:48:42.906
Has that had any movement?
755
00:48:42.926 --> 00:48:51.709
I know you talked to some people on the kind of the
anti side, you talked to Stani and others, and you're looking to talk to people on the kind of the pro side.
756
00:48:52.149 --> 00:48:54.330
But is that proposal like dead?
757
00:48:54.990 --> 00:48:56.191
Or is there still some life?
758
00:48:56.231 --> 00:49:00.813
What is the more recent debate this week on, you know, staking cap?
759
00:49:01.793 --> 00:49:12.121
It's not dead in the sense that people are still discussing it and the conversation is ongoing, but it is dead in the sense that I think it's very, very, very unlikely.
760
00:49:12.881 --> 00:49:14.742
And a lot of people don't want it to the point.
761
00:49:15.003 --> 00:49:20.367
And so what we said last week is like, you need a lot of consensus to change monetary policy.
762
00:49:20.387 --> 00:49:22.448
And we don't even have a little bit of consensus on this.
763
00:49:23.269 --> 00:49:26.351
So I record with Jerome and maybe one more person.
764
00:49:26.371 --> 00:49:26.911
Yeah.
765
00:49:29.726 --> 00:49:39.031
I have been going around to ask who from the pro-Eth stake targeting side wants to come on and discuss.
766
00:49:39.511 --> 00:49:40.212
Not a lot of takers.
767
00:49:40.232 --> 00:49:40.952
Pro arguments.
768
00:49:41.452 --> 00:49:56.601
And the general answer is that if you are inside of the Ethereum Foundation part of the world, including its recent spinoffs, you don't want to expend your social capital on arguing the pro side because my interpretation is that it's a losing cause.
769
00:49:56.641 --> 00:49:58.702
And so why bother expending social capital here?
770
00:49:59.502 --> 00:50:06.987
Um, so that's not a good sign that it has that like longevity if people aren't willing to like go up to bat and fight for it in public.
771
00:50:07.227 --> 00:50:16.753
But nonetheless, uh, Jerome, who's not inside of the EF, uh, who's been like one of the pioneers, the leaders, the pushers of this, uh, EIP, he's going to come on and maybe I'm going to get one more.
772
00:50:17.233 --> 00:50:18.114
And he's still championing this.
773
00:50:18.134 --> 00:50:20.295
Sam Jernigan is, uh, you remember Sam Jernigan?
774
00:50:20.315 --> 00:50:21.336
Like he's very pro this.
775
00:50:21.556 --> 00:50:23.457
And so maybe, maybe it's him, maybe it's them too.
776
00:50:24.035 --> 00:50:28.896
Okay, so, and Jerome's not yet backing down from this, so still publicly supportive of it.
777
00:50:28.976 --> 00:50:33.038
No, he's, like, yeah, public, he's the guy that, like, introduced it in the first place.
778
00:50:34.198 --> 00:50:34.938
Gotcha, okay.
779
00:50:35.138 --> 00:50:41.660
Well, we'll see where that goes, but I'm considering it dead and ignoring a lot of the conversation around it because I just find it...
780
00:50:42.296 --> 00:50:42.797
Yeah.
781
00:50:42.817 --> 00:50:44.239
Bear market conversation.
782
00:50:44.279 --> 00:50:45.140
It just gets me down.
783
00:50:45.160 --> 00:50:46.102
Yeah.
784
00:50:46.402 --> 00:50:46.582
Yeah.
785
00:50:46.803 --> 00:50:52.190
I do think it's interesting that there's going to be an ETH ETF with staked ETH that pays a cash dividend.
786
00:50:52.611 --> 00:50:56.937
And I am going to enjoy the data that we get from this about like how many people are
787
00:50:57.698 --> 00:51:06.723
Like the BlackRock version of this ATTF versus the Fidelity version, the BlackRock, it just accrues in the value of the underlying, whereas Fidelity pays you a cash dividend.
788
00:51:07.043 --> 00:51:10.665
So we get to run those two experiments, even though like economically they're the same.
789
00:51:11.086 --> 00:51:13.907
Tax, they're slightly different, but economically the same.
790
00:51:14.307 --> 00:51:16.909
And so we get to see like how much people really like the dividend.
791
00:51:17.789 --> 00:51:18.350
I agree.
792
00:51:18.530 --> 00:51:27.015
And this is another thing, just from a pure memetics conversation and just like a, I don't know, me market fit for the asset.
793
00:51:27.655 --> 00:51:32.818
I think Wall Street and I think investors like the idea of issuance.
794
00:51:32.998 --> 00:51:35.379
They like the idea of yield on a bond.
795
00:51:36.140 --> 00:51:40.082
And that is a distinction versus Bitcoin.
796
00:51:40.762 --> 00:51:43.584
And I think it's a useful distinction, right?
797
00:51:43.644 --> 00:51:48.027
I think this is part of the reason that Wall Street and investors...
798
00:51:49.167 --> 00:51:54.990
like prefer ETH to the extent that they do prefer ETH to Bitcoin is because it has some yield.
799
00:51:55.371 --> 00:52:04.796
So just from that perspective alone, I don't know why we would, unless there was like a really compelling ironclad reason that made a lot of sense.
800
00:52:04.856 --> 00:52:06.096
I don't know why we would cut that.
801
00:52:06.537 --> 00:52:15.401
And it's like, we want to become more like Bitcoin, even though ETH issuance is lower already and people seem to like the idea of an internet bond with yield and are getting used to
802
00:52:19.080 --> 00:52:25.182
That was my conclusion with my episode with Stani and Mike, whereas like going in the opposite direction doesn't feel correct.
803
00:52:25.242 --> 00:52:28.863
Like let's not just arbitrarily increase issuance because we like yield.
804
00:52:29.123 --> 00:52:29.523
Of course.
805
00:52:30.223 --> 00:52:32.304
But let's not delete issuance either.
806
00:52:32.344 --> 00:52:34.144
There's probably a Goldilocks zone.
807
00:52:34.924 --> 00:52:44.647
It feels like it should be in the hard money end zone, which feels like it's in the 1% to 3% yield range, which is where we're at.
808
00:52:45.638 --> 00:52:46.399
That's where we're at.
809
00:52:46.719 --> 00:52:51.863
And annualized issuance for ETH right now is just at the same or less than Bitcoin.
810
00:52:51.883 --> 00:52:55.225
It's like under, you know, 0.8% per year.
811
00:52:55.545 --> 00:52:56.946
So that's a good place to be.
812
00:52:56.966 --> 00:52:57.867
Certainly less than gold.
813
00:52:58.267 --> 00:52:59.228
David, let's end with this.
814
00:53:00.409 --> 00:53:05.753
On-chain, the VVV, Venice is still doing quite well from a revenue generation perspective.
815
00:53:06.934 --> 00:53:12.738
What's seven days straight confirmed of all-time highs in Venice revenue?
816
00:53:12.798 --> 00:53:13.359
Is that what I'm seeing?
817
00:53:14.079 --> 00:53:14.439
That's right.
818
00:53:14.479 --> 00:53:22.907
Okay, so Venice Revenue and VVV on-chain burn are like one-to-one ratio in terms of just like these are one-to-one correlated with each other.
819
00:53:23.828 --> 00:53:28.873
And we have had seven days in a row of VVV burn hitting all-time highs.
820
00:53:28.973 --> 00:53:36.179
And so the last seven days have been higher than, you know, yesterday was higher than the day before, higher than the day before, higher than the day before for seven days.
821
00:53:36.720 --> 00:53:37.521
I'm looking at it right now.
822
00:53:37.781 --> 00:53:39.402
We might not hit eight.
823
00:53:39.422 --> 00:53:39.522
Yeah.
824
00:53:40.283 --> 00:53:42.104
but today might be tied for a second.
825
00:53:42.144 --> 00:53:48.546
So August 10th is currently the number one and it burned $14,000 of VVV.
826
00:53:49.006 --> 00:53:51.747
We were looking to burn $13,000 of VVV.
827
00:53:52.307 --> 00:53:56.709
But it's notable that Venice has been crescendoing in VVV burn.
828
00:53:56.789 --> 00:54:03.071
It's been since like July, it's been hovering around $10,000, $9,000 a day of VVV burn.
829
00:54:03.091 --> 00:54:05.852
And that's been the equilibrium and seemingly we're breaking through that.
830
00:54:05.872 --> 00:54:07.993
So the new question is, where does the new equilibrium lie?
831
00:54:09.333 --> 00:54:12.455
It's just something I'm watching because like the VVV price has been going down.
832
00:54:12.515 --> 00:54:14.776
It has like kind of blow off top of $20.
833
00:54:15.396 --> 00:54:18.417
But, you know, token price goes down, revenue goes up.
834
00:54:18.437 --> 00:54:22.079
I know it happens when those two things happen at the same time.
835
00:54:22.099 --> 00:54:23.320
What should happen anyway?
836
00:54:23.460 --> 00:54:25.541
I'm not sure what ought to happen, yeah.
837
00:54:27.807 --> 00:54:30.007
All right, Bankless Nation, that is it for this week.
838
00:54:30.027 --> 00:54:31.368
We will be back in a week.
839
00:54:31.428 --> 00:54:35.869
Oh, yeah, we didn't really talk about it, but it's released a day early because of scheduling reasons.
840
00:54:36.209 --> 00:54:37.289
Should we say that at the beginning?
841
00:54:37.709 --> 00:54:38.889
Yeah, it's fine.
842
00:54:39.089 --> 00:54:39.729
People know now.
843
00:54:39.789 --> 00:54:44.810
All right, well, if you made it to the end, it's because of scheduling reasons.
844
00:54:44.850 --> 00:54:45.951
That's why you got this on Thursday.
845
00:54:46.331 --> 00:54:47.471
Anyways, crypto is risky.
846
00:54:47.531 --> 00:54:49.251
That is why we are here, however.
847
00:54:49.751 --> 00:54:52.892
The institutions have landed, so we are going even further west.
848
00:54:53.012 --> 00:54:53.792
This is the frontier.
849
00:54:54.252 --> 00:54:56.773
It's not for everyone, but we are glad you're with us on the Bankless journey.
850
00:54:56.993 --> 00:54:57.393
Thanks a lot.