ROLLUP: Trump Pump | ETH ETF Next Week | Mt. Gox & Germany | Crypto Wars 2.0

This episode discusses significant political developments in the crypto space, the upcoming approval of the Ethereum ETF, the distribution of Mt. Gox coins, and the ongoing Crypto Wars 2.0.

1. Trump's nomination of JD Vance, a pro-crypto senator, could bolster the crypto market and influence future legislation.
2. The Ethereum ETF is set to launch next week, with multiple major financial firms participating.
3. Mt. Gox coin distribution is not expected to significantly impact the market due to existing liquidity and prepared absorption.
4. The Roman Storm case in Crypto Wars 2.0 has a favorable judge who is asking the right questions, suggesting a positive outlook for the crypto community.
5. Uniswap has launched a new browser extension wallet that integrates seamlessly with users' browsing experience.

1: Political Developments

Discussion on Trump's nomination of JD Vance and its implications for the crypto market.

• Ryan: "Trump chose a pro-crypto vice president. His name is JD Vance."
• David: "JD Vance has previously drafted a bill to overhaul the SEC and CFTC stance on crypto."

2: Ethereum ETF Launch

Details on the upcoming Ethereum ETF and its potential market impact.

• Ryan: "This is the last roll up before the ETH ETF gets approved."
• David: "Eric Balchunis on Tuesday around 03:00 p.m. and you're live streaming."

3: Mt. Gox Coin Distribution

Exploration of the Mt. Gox coin distribution and its minimal market impact.

• David: "Kraken says they have successfully received funds from Mt. Gox trustees."
• Ryan: "Even if Mt. Gox 3 billion is sold on Kraken, it's just 1% of the realized cap increase in this bull cycle."

4: Crypto Wars 2.0

Update on the Roman Storm case and its broader implications for the crypto industry.

• David: "The judge mused on what the tipping point should be for when a service ought to be shut down."
• Ryan: "This is the only money laundering case ever where the defendant didn't have control over the funds."

5: Uniswap Wallet Extension

Introduction to Uniswap's new browser extension wallet.

• David: "Uniswap wants you to say goodbye to pop ups."
• Ryan: "This sidecar, think of it like a motorcycle sidecar, is the Uniswap wallet."

1. Stay Informed on Political Developments: Keep an eye on political changes and nominations, as they can significantly impact the crypto market.
2. Monitor ETF Launches: Watch for the launch of the Ethereum ETF and consider its implications for your investment strategy.
3. Evaluate Market Liquidity: Understand the liquidity in the market to better predict the impact of large coin distributions like Mt. Gox.
4. Follow Legal Cases: Stay updated on key legal cases in the crypto space, such as the Roman Storm case, as they can set important precedents.
5. Utilize New Tools: Explore new tools like Uniswap's browser extension wallet to enhance your trading experience.

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup

People

Donald Trump, JD Vance, Vitalik Buterin, Eric Balchunis, Gary Gensler, David Bailey, Peter Thiel

Companies

Uniswap, Kraken, Mt. Gox, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, Bitwise, 21Shares, Fidelity, iShares, Grayscale, ProShares, Invesco

Books

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Ryan
Bankless nation is the third week of July. It's time for the bankless weekly roll up. I feel like in this roll up, David, I gotta get you up to speed, because you've been out climbing mountains again, haven't you? I feel like that's been that way for two weeks in a row. Last week I was at ETH CC, and then this week I just got down from a mountain, like, 12 hours ago.

David
And so these episodes are actually. Ryan just gets David up to speed with crypto. We got a lot to talk about, man. It was a bit political out here in crypto, David, so I got to get you up to speed. So Trump chose a pro crypto vice president.

Ryan
I'm gonna give you his name. And he says he wants to, quote, beat China to crypto. Also, all of Silicon Valley is aligning behind Trump, and many in the crypto space are as well. And Vitalik gives a rare glimpse into some of his politics and his take on all this. What else we got?

David
The market fell out of Gox and Germany. Is it all over? Gox coins are finally getting distributed to people this week. What happens next? And this is the last roll up before the ETH ETF gets approved.

How do I know that? Because I just went and got the Horcrux. So this is the last time you're ever going to hear that statement come out of this podcast, I promise. Thanks, man. We appreciate that.

Ryan
So this is definitely the last week. Definitely the last one. Okay, I'm coming in. We climbed a mountain to make this happen. I got the Horcrux.

David
I'm bringing it back home. Also, Uniswap has a big new wallet extension. We'll talk about that. And an update on Cryptowars 2.0. I think this is the most important case, court case in Crypto's history is the roman storm case.

Ryan
And there's been a pretty big update on the week, so we'll talk about that. But first, politics. Yeah, so I was gone for four days, and so it had a great, fantastic, like, phone, social media, Twitter cleanse for four days. That feels good. And then I was able to, like, kind of look at Twitter, look at, like, all my feeds with fresh eyes when I came back, and it is just politics on politics.

David
It's crazy, right? All, like, my podcast feeds, which are both crypto and non crypto, are politics content. The crypto Twitter timeline feed is all politics. Granted, we just had an attempted assassination of what might be the next president. So, like, of course people are gonna be talking about politics.

But politics has just swarmed. Everything just left and right. Yeah, I mean, you can't say it's not justified. This is a pretty massive election and assassination. Okay, so where were you when you heard about this, the assassination attempt?

I was on my way out of Brussels to head to Chamonix, France. Okay. Was it the end of Ethan? You see it pop up on Twitter, and you're like, what is going on? Was it one of those situations?

Yeah, it's like, it was right as I was about to go to bed, because I was 6 hours ahead of United States time. And it's just like, one of those things where, like, I'm already aware that we're on the craziest timeline ever. And so, like, I guess, like, okay, here we go. Like, there's another weird thing that's unfolding. How close it came.

Ryan
That that was crazy for me. It's like, when I first saw the news, it just flashed and, like, what happened? Like, is he okay? And then, fortunately, it didn't take long for me to, like, tell that he was okay. It's like, thank God.

But in the aftermath of that, looking at how close we came, like an inch, a tilt of the head away, like, the wind blowing in, like, a different, different way. In a different direction would have been a completely different outcome. And I just feel like, what timeline are we living in here? I mean, it could have been completely different roll up today. Could have been a completely different country, could have been a completely different reality.

David
Yeah. There's some reference to Schrodinger here, where, just, like, we have chosen a particular fork of the universe, and it was very clearly a choice that happened. Apparently, we're in the universe in which Trump gets a clip off of his ear and crypto prices start rocketing. I remember just noticing that watching the videos, going through the Twitter feeds, looking at the Trump assassination, and then looking at the crypto prices, which all immediately jumped, like, two, three, 4%. But it was very noticeable right after the failed assassination crypto markets pump, and the stock market was closed, if I'm remembering correctly.

And it was just, like, such a strong correlation of just failed assassination, crypto prices pump. Can you imagine? So, assassination attempt, that would be absolutely horrible. I imagine the markets would go in the other direction, probably amplified by, like, a massive amount, because just like, a massive amount of uncertainty. So that happened Saturday, David.

Ryan
Uh, Trump didn't get assassinated. And then, I believe this was Monday, he announced his vice president pick a gentleman by the name of Senator JD Vance. This is, uh, his post after lengthy deliberation thought, considering the tremendous talents of others, I've decided that the best person suited to assume the president of VP of the United States is Senator JD Vance. So the question is, who is JD Vance? You did some research on this while you're out?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was actually, like, prepping for the show, and since I'm 6 hours ahead of you, I actually did have time to actually catch up on the news. People might know this book, Hillbilly Elegy, which was a big book that kind of catalyzed a lot of the populist sentiment right before the 2016 election. It's this book that is set in this, like, in the appellation about this highly educated appalachian lawyer, and Appalachia is known to be not educated for. And it was kind of like a rallying cry for a lot of the conservative right, of the lower class conservative right that ended up just.

David
It put a lot of sentiment into words about the right's feelings towards the social elite and the coastal elite. And so this was kind of an influential book that helped catalyze what came to be a very populist ran election. Like, even Bernie Sanders, a populist president, was still very, very relevant back then. And so JD Vance is the author of Hillbilly Elegy. He is also a republican senator.

And so it's kind of an interesting pairing where you have Trump, the media man, with this republican us senator who wrote this book, who also understands culture and media. And it's another step away from just the traditional lifetime politician. Uh, interestingly, as it relates to crypto, JD Vance has previously drafted a bill that would completely overhaul the SEC and the CFTC stance on crypto. So this is a, this is a populist right wing senator who has explicitly made pro crypto legislation and try to get it pushed through Congress. Uh, and so this, in addition to the, uh, sentiment that the markets felt positively towards the failed assassination attempt, which I think markets are just pricing, and like, oh, they failed assassinate in the assassination attempt is probably going to, like, lock in the Trump election.

So that was bullish. And then on Monday, we get this JD Vance guy who's going to be Trump's vice president, who is explicitly very pro crypto and has tried to push through positive pro crypto legislation. So we get this, like, one, two punch in, like, the positive direction. Yeah. So JD Vance is very pro crypto.

Ryan
Actually, I was on with Representative French Hill, who you just mentioned, JD Vance in passing. I asked him about him, and apparently JD Vance may be taking the lead on some legislation. You remember, fit 21 was going to the Senate. JD Vance is the Senate. He may be catching the ball right now and actually working on his version of legislation of fit 21.

So I don't know all the details yet, but Representative Hill mentioned this in passing. We do know a few other things. So he's young, particularly for a us politician and senator in these times. So he's, like, 39 years old. So he's a millennial generation, and that's interesting.

He also has voted for the SAB 121 repeal. As you can imagine, he's a crypto holder. So as of 2022, he owned at least $250,000 worth of bitcoin. Likely has more now. He slammed Gary Gensler in open letters.

We have a clip we're going to play coming up. It's basically further evidence that he is a pro crypto candidate and that the Trump White House will be pro crypto. Right. And this. He gets an a on stand with crypto, uh, the standard crypto.org website.

David
I think the big question right now is, uh, is this JD Vance election as Trump's vice president? Is it the fact that he is pro crypto? Is that a coincidence? Or was that, like, an explicit influence in Trump's selection of him as well? Uh, and I'm kind of thinking it might be the latter.

Uh, yeah, I'm gonna. We're gonna, um. I'm gonna go ask David Bailey, who is the founder, operator, owner of, um, Bitcoin Media, Bitcoin magazine, who is the policy advisor to Trump, who's the. He's the guy, like, kind of steering the ship in terms of, like, Trump's crypto policy. Uh, so I'm going to see if we can get him on the podcast and get his perspective.

Ryan
I think he's sort of, like, have to broaden it, too. So I also didn't mention he's a VC under the Silicon Valley. VC under the tutelage of Peter Thiel. I don't know if you saw that this morning as well. Also very conservative pro Trump.

There's, like, a tech play here, which is very interesting. Right. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. It says, Silicon Valley has really rallied around Trump in the past week, and I think JD Vance is all part of that. So that's JD Vance.

This is him. Maybe we should play a clip surfaced by crypto Twitter of previous statements of Senator Vance. He's actually talking about Gary Gensler and crypto Twitter surfaced this. I think it's pretty interesting. If there's a candidate for worst person, in my view, at least in terms of my substantive disagreements, I'm sure he's like a nice guy is Gary Gensler.

JD Vance
Ok, so Gary Gensler is sort of the complete opposite of my view. And there are two problems that I have with Gary, one of which is that I think he wants to inject politics way too much into the actual business of securities in the United States of America. But in some ways, the more fundamental issue, or at least the most relevant issue for this particular conference, is the approach that Gary has taken to regulating blockchain. And crypto seems to be almost the exact opposite of what it should be. And I'm oversimplifying a little bit.

But the question the SEC seems to ask in regulating crypto is, is this a token with utility? And if it's a token with utility, then they seem to want to ban it. And if it's token without utility, they don't seem to care. I almost think we should be the opposite here. I worry about financialization.

I worry about, frankly, whether a lot of the crypto stuff is fundamentally fake. But if a token actually has utility, that's the sort of thing that by all means regulate it. By all means be careful about how consumers interact with it. But you don't want to just get rid of this stuff. And here's where I really, really worry about this is a lot of the newest challengers to social media.

The social media incumbents of 2024 are going to require. He seems to be opening the door for tokens that do more than just represent memes, like tokens with cash flows, tokens that are real. And opening the door to that. Yeah. And expressing a pretty, like, deep knowledge about what's going on in the industry.

David
Like, beyond, just like, oh, money on the Internet. Like he's talking about, like, he's alluding to social platforms and underlying blockchain technology, beyond just sending tokens around. Another win for crypto related to politics was an actual app. People say, where the apps. Here's an app that works.

Ryan
It's called polymarket. Okay? And the great thing about polymarket is a prediction market. It actually predicted that JD Vance was the best predictor, that JD Vance was going to be Trump's vp pick of any prediction market. It was the most accurate and it reflected the probability, like, you saw it spiking up right before the announcement to like 70% odds.

And if you go to the poly market page right now, it is doing a fantastic job predicting some of these political outcomes. I even heard on the relevant. It's extremely relevant. Yeah. And it's getting, starting to get mentioned, referenced in mainstream.

I even heard Sam Harris podcast mention prediction markets is like, like, you know, just in the context of what's going to happen. Is Biden going to drop out? Well, right now, Pauly Market says there is a 76% chance that Biden drops out. And given, given its previous performance. Right.

I actually rate that as probably pretty accurate with respect to probability. So this is particularly these political decisions. Well, I don't think you know more than polymarket, Ryan. I don't. Nobody does.

Right. But, like, that's the beauty of it. That's what prediction markets should do. And, like, it's just a great use case for crypto here. It is very refreshing seeing polymarket either explicitly or implicitly alluded to on all of my non crypto media feeds.

David
Prediction markets are being referenced. And I know they're all talking about polymarket because I can go and reference the numbers, but also because polymarket has 85% of all market share, of all prediction market volume, this is where liquidity and accuracy are actually intersecting. Uh, and liquidity kind of actually matters. And like, what is more of a, like a downstream market, uh, to place bets on is like, who's Trump's vice president going to be? There's at least four more markets, five more markets that are ahead of that anyways, on other things that are about politics.

And also bullish crypto, Donald Trump is apparently considering Jamie Dimond as treasury secretary. And not just that, but I will also add that a Forbes headline reads, Trump reveals JP Morgan CEO's sudden bitcoin and crypto flip. And I want to emphasize, Donald Trump is saying that Jamie Dimon is now bullish crypto. Like, the fact that Donald is the harbinger of this message is crazy, right? I mean, what, what happened?

Ryan
I'm sure it was like, hey, you want the job, treasury secretary, you got to be pro crypto. You got to be crow pro bitcoin. This is like part of the criteria. 110%, really. And it's just like, not hard for Jamie Dimon to flip.

I mean, Larry think, like, admits it on crypto as well. Like, at first he hated it, and then he flipped. Flipped on it because he did more investigation, had some products to sell. I mean, this is exactly what's going on. When it's opportunistic.

Wall street will kind of like, flip towards crypto. And this is what we're seeing here. Also this week, Trump says he wants the US in charge of crypto before China. It's a crypto race, I suppose, he said, if I throw it aside, it's going to be picked up by another country, most likely China. They're pretty advanced in this sphere, so you have to look at it.

What I want, again, is what is good for the country. And so again, he's talking, he's putting crypto in the geopolitical context and said this is another reason for why he is pro crypto and wants to foster innovation here. I think Trump's pro crypto stance and other things, as well as the nomination of JD Vance as his vice president, has really kind of won him a lot of hearts and minds. It's been slowly crescendoing in the last, like month or so. But I think in the last week and especially since the assassination, assassination attempt, just like so many tech giants have just lined up behind the Trump administration.

David
Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz came out as pro Trump. Brian Armstrong, Elon Musk, the Winklevie, Kathie Woods, Jesse Powell, Eric Torenberg. Like, Silicon Valley is just like lining up behind Trump, which is kind of funny because Silicon Valley once upon a time used to be a pretty, like, liberal bastion, but now they're all kind of like seeing that, like, Trump is just pro innovation and pro markets, and they're all kind of like lining up. That's it. You know how we've said about the Democrat platform with respect to crypto, it's just they're, they're leaving free real estate open, right?

Ryan
That's exactly what they're doing with crypto. And the Republicans are taking, and Trump's taking it. But more broadly, they're leaving free real estate open. When it, when it comes to tech, big tech, AI, this sort of thing, they don't have a strong platform. And Trump is saying, hey, I'm the pro tech, pro crypto, pro market, whatever you want me to be pro markets president, right?

And so they're like lining up behind them. There was a podcast, I haven't listened to it yet, but, you know, Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz on just like, why they're supporting Trump, basically, it's still in my cue to read. But, like, all of Silicon Valley is kind of lining up behind this candidate now. There is a counter to all of this, and there's another discussion at play in crypto. So, David, you might have been seeing a lot of pro Trump takes in the crypto sphere, for sure, but there was another take with a bit more nuance.

You know, Vitalik style. Take. In fact, Vitalik wrote a blog entitled. Yeah. Against choosing your political alliance based on who is, quote unquote pro crypto.

Did you read this article? Did you get the gist of what he's saying? Yeah, it's actually the first thing I read this morning. And the way I would just summarize this is that Vitalik is advocating for a notion of crypto values or crypto politics in of themselves, cypherpunk values. And he said, he's saying, instead of simply supporting pro or anti cryptocurrency politics, we should instead view politics from a crypto ethos and decide on the merits of candidates based on their alignment with the values that crypto as an industry tries to enshrine, you know, freedom, censorship, resistance, the ability to express freedom of speech and freedom to transact.

David
Uh, and so he's, like, kind of differentiating, just, like, politics and policies that will, like, make more tokens legal and allow more ETF's to happen and do things that are good for our bags and, like, kind of reminding, like, why are we here in crypto in the first place? Like, why do we value centristive, resistant, uh, technologies? Uh, what about, like, other facets of crypto that aren't cryptocurrency but cryptography? And he's basically saying, like, hey, let's kind of view these candidates as, like, who they are as humans, rather than the policies and the things that they are trying to promote and judge some on their character, which I thought was, like, refreshing, but also needed further unpacking, which is kind of what crypto Twitter did. Yeah, it does need further unpacking, but it's interesting.

Ryan
The way he opened this article was a picture of him with Vladimir Putin in 2018, I think. I recall him saying he actually regrets this meeting. He sort of felt sort of used at the time. Many in the Russia government expressed willingness to become open to crypto, and then it turned out they really weren't, like, it turned out Russia was maybe open to it from a government perspective to evade. Exactly.

But they weren't open to it to give, like, crypto free citizens their people. Yeah, it wasn't Russia's not pro crypto for the people. It's pro crypto for the oligarchs. Exactly. And so that, you know, I think Vitalik is citing that as an example of a disalignment here where somebody could have a stand with crypto binary.

Yup. They're an a plus because they, like, fit, you know, 21. But really, behind the scenes, they maybe they disapprove of privacy on chain. Maybe they don't actually support custody, self custody of assets. Maybe they don't support the other freedoms associated with crypto.

David
Things like, you can imagine, like, you can own bitcoin in the ETF, but not with a private. Exactly like a policy like that. Oh, and could you imagine Jamie Dimon being pretty excited? Yeah, Jamie diamond would love that. I mean, that's so, so there's a lot of nuance when it comes to pro crypto.

Ryan
This is the way I've kind of stated it, because, David, you noticed we've had to make some decisions on, on bankless lately with respect to what guests we have on the program. Right. And so we've been having republican guests. We've had democrat guests in the past. So the question is, like, should we have someone like JD Vance on the podcast?

Should we have someone like even Trump on the podcast? And I think our platform has always been like, we're open to any guest, regardless of party that wants to talk about crypto so we can hear their stance. So I kind of articulated this. I want to see if you agree with this. This is just, like, not the bankless editorial policy, but it's kind of like my personal editorial policy, because I felt like people would say, oh, like, they want you to pick a side.

Team Red, team blue, you got to pick a side. Right. Of course. And even, even pro crypto people, there's, like, Republicans are clearly pro crypto. So, David Ryan, why aren't you guys, like, voting on the republican administration?

David
They're the pro. Clearly the pro crypto ones. Yeah. Yeah. And first of all, I don't.

Ryan
I just, like, don't want to disclose who I'm voting for. Like, I don't feel like people come to bankless for political insights, and I. Don'T want them to either. This is kind of how I've articulated it, and I want see how far off or close this is to you. But my lane is pro crypto and anti authoritarian.

I'm not a single issue voter. Personally, though, I understand people who are. I support pro crypto policy from both political parties. And at bankless, give voice so the voters can hear transparently where the politicians land. I avoid dishing strong opinions on areas.

I have limited expertise. My deep wish for America is that avoids 21st century trap of authoritarianism. And my contribution to this task is propagating crypto, and in doing so, restore some power to the people. There's this question that has come up of, you know, sure, you've got some pro crypto candidates, but they're authoritarian. All of these other ways, and they present a list.

Right. That's. That's a challenge, because maybe they are. It's just, like, outside of my lane, I just, like, don't have the expertise to kind of, like, do the deep dive analysis. So what I have decided to do from an editorial perspective is bring various politicians on and basically just talk about crypto, because in that lane, I have, like, enough expertise to understand what the pro crypto, like, anti authoritarian policies are and, like, what, where, position where politicians should be on this issue.

What do you think about this? Yeah, I will reflect upon your take with my take after I read everyone else's take. So I'll summarize at the very end, because I think other people had some useful takes. Um, starting with a more favorable and agreeing to Vitalik moving and moving away from that as we go along, starting with Peter van Valkenberg from coin center. He says another headline for Vitalik's article could have been, don't sacrifice your cypherpunk ethos for a particular pro crypto politician or policy proposal.

David
I agree with that entirely. Without principle, politicians will come and go. Privacy, speech, and the rule of law must be preserved. So, Peter, totally agreeing with Vitalik. Tushar Jane from Multicoin says, I believe that Vitalik fundamentally misses, misunderstands the real politic on how most patellar politicians pick their policies.

Policy choices are rarely based on some deep beliefs that they hold. They pick policies based on what will win them elections. In my opinion, the job of a politician is to reflect the will of the constituents, not, quote, be in it for the right reasons. And then lastly, Jake Stravinsky says, too many people will read this headline as vote Biden and miss the rest. That said, overall, much of this seems too clever by half.

Good crypto policy requires electing pro crypto candidates, period. Political reality beats idealism every time. So, like, a splattering of responses and, like, I think my. My first takeaway after reading the Vitalik piece was that this is very idealistic. I would ideally enjoy to have candidates that I know had, like, wore their values on their heart, on their sleeves.

It was very open and transparent, and I would agree with those values and I would vote for them, but that's simply not how things work. I kind of resonate with Tushar's take of just like, well, at the very worst, being pro cryptocurrency is a trojan horse for crypto values. If you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. And so this is just the way that elections work. No one votes on their deep rooted morals.

They vote on who gets elected and how they get elected. And at the same time, with what you're saying is, I think the way I would interpret your tweet, which is if I see a candidate, a presidential candidate policy of something, I'm going to view that policy. I'm like, does this make people like me more free or less free? And that's kind of how I view both the left and the right. And honestly, neither the left or the right makes me feel very good about that lens of viewing things.

And so I kind of have to view like, which of these two camps are going to make me more free. Um, and that's why I'm generally become like pretty like politics agnostic, but now, like, all of the crypto industries shedding its political, political agnosticism, because there's now an administration that is like explicitly good for our bags. And I think that's a problem that Vitalik is like, having a problem with. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's pick a team season, uh, for sure. And, and I will say many of the positions in the GOP right now are just like, uh, pro crypto and pro freedom with respect to crypto in that lane.

Ryan
I don't know if I can say that about the broader, uh, republican platform. And I don't know that, um, like, our expertise is commentary on all of that either. And that bankless nation is the last time we will talk about politics in this entire weekly roll up. We just front loaded all of that. So welcome to the rest of the weekly roll up.

David
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Ryan
I love matcha. I'm a, I'm a power user of matcha. I guess that makes me a serious trader. My serious trader, David, serious holder. But when I trade, I'm serious about that button that I clicked, that one trade that you're.

David
When you trade, you're serious about that trade. High conviction hold for a long time. Trade. Speaking of that conviction, let's see where the markets are in terms of conviction on the week. Bitcoin price, what are we looking at?

10% more convicted this week. Started the week at 57,300, ending the week at 63,700, which is a pretty good week. 10%. Yeah. The Trump.

The Trump bump. Nice. I don't know, is that a thing? Eth price starting the week at $3,100, up eight and a half percent. Touched $3,500.

Well done, Eth. And now currently that 3401 and $10 total crypto market cap, $2.46 trillion. Coming into our layer two update, brought to you by Mantle, who's not just a layer two, but also an entire ecosystem of an LRT, and it's layer two. And also on defi apps, two big things I want to bring out on this layer two update. Scroll.

TVL has jumped by 22% in seven days. That's impressive. 22% in seven days, becoming the 8th largest layer two by TVL. 80%. 87% of that is ETH, 11% of that is stable.

Coins, scroll. If you don't know what scroll is, it's a bytecode equivalent. Zkevm is one of the first big Zke EvMs. That's by code equivalent. And so congrats to scroll for getting $200 million on your layer two.

Ryan
Yeah, and you know what's also notable here, David, is in addition to achieving all of that in a short period of time, they also crossed a major threshold. So they now have over a billion dollars in total value locked. So this makes them the 8th chain, the 8th layer two, to achieve that on Ethereum. So there's seven other layer twos that have that. They're basically TVL unicorns, of which now scroll is one of those.

So a big milestone achieved here as well. Second big layer two update, base is now 30% bigger. So base had a hard fork, one of the good ones, where things improve, instead of one of the bad ones, where we have two different tribes. Improved transaction compression by 20% to 30%, which means that base uses 20% to 30% less blobs base for every transaction. Uh, also reduced smart wallet fees, smart contract wallet fees by 90% as well.

David
Uh, and so, uh, definitely as the. Even the Ethereum layer one is getting into the smart smart contract wallet world, so are layer twos, uh, which I think is going to be very needed by the time we actually do have like a retail driven bull market because this is going to be the way like retail presses more buttons that they want to press and less buttons like approve and uh, also like abstract gas. Uh, and so when I, when I hear that we are reducing smart contract wallet fees by 90%, I'm like, okay, this is, we're going to remove an entire just like logistics transaction from retail, which is like having to pay for gas. Imagine that. More updates on the week to talk about mount Gox coins.

Ryan
They're on the move. So how is this impacting markets? Are we done with the dumpage? Also some ETF updates, both for bitcoin. But most of ETF updates, yeah, most of the time.

Ethereum, I feel bad that we don't have the ETF this week, but we will the next week. This will be the last roll up promise. So that's what we said. And Larry Fink is getting real bullish. We'll play the clip.

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Visit Arbitrum IO and get your journey started in one of the largest Ethereum. Communities, Kraken says they have successfully received funds from Mount Gox trustees and they will now distribute those funds within seven to 14 days. And so if you are a Gox creditor with your a Kraken account, bitcoins are magically just going to show up in your Kraken account because Kraken actually has the bitcoins. Yeah, this is also going to be true for a number of other exchanges that also are like, signed up for this program, which this is how bitcoins from Mount Gox are going to be distributed. David, should we just say, also, if you're a recipient of Mount Gox, if you're part of that group, congratulations.

David
Yeah, congrats for holding. You are one of the ogs in the original. That's kind of sick, actually. That started it all. There are some people who, I mean, I'm sure they have made plenty of money because they were in crypto in 2013, but like, that's going to be a massive windfall for a lot of people, 100%.

Ryan
Well, and that's the question. Will this result in some selling pressure? So this windfall, this locked bitcoin that people have been forced hold for like ten years, are they just going to sell it? Are they going to dump it? And what's the impact on the market?

David
Yeah, so whether or not it's a forced hold, I don't really think it counts as a force hold because the liquid supply of Mount Gox claims has been, and it's been pretty liquid for a number of years now. So it's technically not a force hold. Uh, it's just been a forced lockup of a supply of bitcoins. Uh, so like, people who really wanted to sell, if they were truly motivated to sell before this bitcoin distribution, they had that option. So this is one of the many reasons why people don't think the Mount Gox bitcoin distributions again impact the markets that much.

In addition, uh, there's just like, apparently we have the data that there's just meaningfully sufficient liquidity to absorb any meaningful amount of sell pressure. So even if people were materially selling their bitcoins from the Gox distribution, it's just not going to impact the bitcoin price that much, because bitcoin is pretty liquid and there's just actually not that much to be sold. I think some hedge funds might have just bought the mount Gox claims because they are directionally long bitcoin, so they'll buy discounted bitcoin anyways no matter what. And maybe that's kind of similar to the grayscale GPTC trade that happened, that resulted in GPTC outflows. So maybe there's some cell pressure that.

But I think overall, like the, everyone has, everyone generally has to take that this is not going to impact the market that much. So we've got the liquidity, we've got the buying pressure to absorb all of this. This is a tweet that corroborates what you said. Even if Mt. Gox 3 billion is sold on Kraken, it's just 1% of the realized cap increase in this bull cycle.

Ryan
Manageable liquidity. Of course, we have a new pool of buyers, uh, which is the, the bitcoin ETF buyers, which we'll get to in a minute, and they keep buying. David, it's also worth noting that, like, if you are a bitcoiner in 2013 and you're still holding these like Mount Gox claims, like, what else has come around since 2013 that you haven't been able to buy because your bitcoin has been locked up. Uh, ethereum, Solana, literally, basically every other blockchain. So if we're.

David
If we're talking about, like, where will this bitcoin go? It'll either go, it'll either go nowhere, and that is going to be neutral on the price. It might take leverage on bitcoin, and that will be bullish, the bitcoin price. But I don't think a lot of that's going to happen, or bitcoin is going to be sold for Eth or Solana or anything else. And so actually, this event is bullish, the long tail of crypto assets.

And at this point, actually just not be a big deal. I might just be hypothesizing here, but, like, technically, it's actually more bullish for everything else other than bitcoin, because it's buying pressure for everything else and selling pressure for bitcoin. So it's bullish. Long tail. Spoken like a true altcoiner.

Ryan
David, I can't believe you take this position. I know Matt Gox was kind of thrown under the bus for causing some of the recent dumpage that we've seen in the markets, but I actually think it was more the other g in the room, which is Germany. The country of Germany. The german government, they dumped a whole lot of bitcoin, 1.6 billion. The good news, though, is they dumped it all.

They've got no remaining government, has zero bitcoin to dump on us. So that was resolved last week. They just quit selling their bitcoin. That's such a hilarious, like, bullish thing, is that we are stopping. The dumpage is stopping.

Yeah. And it's funny. Okay, so the german government sold 50,000 bitcoin for 2.89 billion. Oh, my God. It's more than I thought.

I thought this was less. An average price of almost $60,000 per bitcoin. I think historically, this is going to be seen as, like, a terrible trade. Yes, a terrible trade. I mean, maybe they were forced to.

I'm not sure. I haven't gone into details of, like. No one in the german government is in charge of getting of the bitcoin treasury coin. Like, there's no. There's no one who's like, make sure you like.

David
Like, yeah, but, David, should there be? Should there be? What about your central bank? So I was looking at this just because I was curious. So here are the top five countries by bitcoin holdings.

Ryan
Okay? The United States is number one. Actually, USA number one, what department is holding bitcoin? The Department of Justice. This is all from seizure.

They've seized. I'm assuming this is all from seizures other than El Salvador. FBI and. Yeah, this is all just people that have seized bitcoin. Oh, and Ukraine.

David
Ukraine for maybe, like, donations and other things. Yes. So I'll read the list. But, like, the top three are all because, like, criminal activity in the country. And the bitcoin was seized.

Ryan
So it's not like it's on. On the treasury, like, bank backing a central bank monetary policy in the way that gold is in the country. But still the United States, if it doesn't sell, has the most bitcoin. 207. Bitcoin.

Is that a bit more than Michael Saylor? 207,000. 207,000, I should say. Yeah. Number two is China.

That is not more than Michael Saylor. There's not more. Less than Michael Saylor. Okay. It's less than Michael Saylor.

Michael Saylor has more bitcoin than every single nation state on earth. Huh. Okay. The United Kingdom has number 361 thousand bitcoin. And then Ukraine, 46,000.

El Salvador, 5700. El Salvador, like, actually purchased the bitcoin. Ukraine was donated to bitcoin. The top three was all for Caesars. Now Germany.

David
I don't know if Ukraine donated, had all of that's 46,000 bitcoins. They didn't have, like, $10 billion donated to them. I don't know where that came from. Yeah, a bunch of it was donated, but maybe not all of it. Some of these numbers are a little hazy.

Ryan
By the way, this is only the assets we have public records for, so I think you could say, yeah, but all of these countries are buying in secret. They're just not. The Federal Reserve is secretly Dca'ing bitcoin. Yeah. Wouldn't you be?

Germany was number four. Now they got zero, so they're no longer number four. Yeah. Well, I don't know. By the way, you know what I learned as well?

Do you know that Canada sold all of its gold reserves? Gold reserves all of the time? Oh, that's right. Because I saw your tweet using the word rod dogging. I'm like, Ryan.

Yeah. So they sold all of their gold reserves, so they actually have no gold. And they had a ton of gold in the 1960s, and they just went complete fiat. This is the only g seven country to do this. It's like, can you explain how you ended up using the word raw dogging.

To explain they're just raw dogging their monetary policy, David, what does that mean? Just going at it alone? I don't know. Aren't the kids using this terminology? I don't know what I'm saying.

David
No protection, just straight fiat. They have no gold, they have no hard asset bond. SdRs. Like, how does that make you feel? I mean, probably nothing because you're not a canadian, but like, I'm just like, why, guys, this doesn't seem sensible anyway.

Definitely not. Let's talk about you, raw dog, your monetary policy, kids. Eric Baltunis gives us a date. Is that what we're talking about for the Ethereum ETF? What's the date?

It is sometime this coming week. And so you're listening to this on Friday next week, as soon as I get back to the United States with my Horcrux 723. What day is that? So which is four. You don't know this, David, but I'm actually out that day.

Ryan
And you're already scheduled, man. We already scheduled podcasts for you. Oh, you scheduled a podcast for me? Yeah, while I was gone. While you're going to be gone.

David
Guys. Perfect. Thank you for doing that. Eric Balchunis on Tuesday around 03:00 p.m. and you're live streaming.

Just so you know, I'm literally finding this out for the first time. And you're going to be talking about the launch of Ethereum. ETf's the Eth. Yeah, that's the plan. Right?

Because I'm going to come. I get back on Monday, past market hours. So of course it launches on Tuesday. Yeah. Well, thank you for your work in destroying.

Ryan
Okay, so. So this is a date, though, and they're all going to launch. Let's talk about who's launching on this date. Let's see. Aren't they?

Yeah, all of them. But who are they to lease? Three of the eight spot EtH ETF issuers begin trading on Tuesday. So the products will be available to trade on Tuesday. This is a whole bunch.

So Franklin Templeton, Vanak Bitwise, 21 shares Fidelity ishares. I always forget which one's Blackrock. Is that ishares? Ishares is Blackrock. Yeah, that's Blackrock.

Grayscale. Of course. They got their mini trust pro shares, Invesco, all of them. So it's another horse race to see who can grab all of the Ethereum ETF liquidity. It's also a race on fees.

David
Franklin Templeton is coming in at the cheapest fees of the ETH ETF at 19%, 19 bps with a waiver I don't know how long the waiver is, but that waiver means, like, maybe six months, I think is standard. Three months. Months. And so, like, months of no fees and then 0.19%. Fees for Franklin Templeton van Eck at Bitwise are at 0.2%.

21 shares at 0.21%. Fidelity. I share grayscale minitrust, 0.25%. Okay, now I can see why people say 25 bps. Yeah, 25 bps for fidelity.

Ryan
Yeah. Get traffic. Invesco Galaxy, also 25 bits, but no waiver. Whereas fidelity ishares and the grayscale mini trust will have a waiver, and then the grayscale eth E, 2.5%, 250 bps. But they will convert 10% of the fund into the minitrust.

David
And their money has 25 bits. Yeah, it's a lot of bips. Why are they doing this? Why are they, like, they. If they can change their fee, why are they spitting up the mini trust at all?

Why don't they just lower the fee on the 2.5%, the 250 pips? Why don't they just lower it down to their. What their mini trust is? Why do they even need a mini trust at all? I know I have my conspiracies.

Ryan
I don't think it's a conspiracy. It's probably, like, a pretty rational, short term business decision. But what is it? If you are an owner of the grayscale eth e trust paying 2.5%, and then the ETH gets converted into an ETF, you will need to do something to roll that into the minitrust. Yeah.

David
Or you will have to, like, sell it and to buy, like, one of the others. So you are going to actually have to open up your brokerage app, press that sell button, and then incur your capital gains. And so if you are one of two people, you are caught paying this 2.5% fee. Two types of people. One, I'm going to call AFK capital away from keyboard capital.

People who just aren't aware, don't know, just lazy. Like, retirement brokerage account. It's summertime vacation, man. Yeah, right. 2.5% fee.

Like, fees, whatever. Like, fine, whatever. Uh, so that's you or somebody who bought ETH at a very low price, and you do not want to pay that capital gains tax bill. So, one, both of these two populations are, like, basically cornered into paying this 2.5% grayscale fee. Well, it's a business decision that grayscale is making, I guess, and so we'll see how it plays out.

Ryan
In the, in the horse race here, uh, a question was asked by, uh, of Hester Purse. So, Commissioner Hester Purse, what about staked ETF future? So we have a regular ETF as of Tuesday of next week. How about an ETF neith ETF with staking? And her response was this, that the SEC is always open for reconsideration.

As far as I'm concerned. I think that makes sense. As far as Hester purse is concerned, I think that would also happen in a post. Gary Gensler, SEC maybe on the back of a pro crypto president. You can see all of this starting to come together.

It's not that difficult to convert this into a staked ETH ETF either. It's just some paperwork and approval. Right? And you see the path towards that actually getting, actually happening. JD Vance, the VP that Trump has nominated, Trump likely going to win the election.

David
Now, JD Vance very aware of who Gary Gensler is and disagrees with his position, and so will probably give Gary Gensler the boot if and when Trump gets elected. And we need a put in a new SEC commissioner. I don't know if it will be Hester Peirce, but I would sure love it if it was. I do know that Hester Peirce was like, kind of, like on her way out of the SEC. Like, kind of fed up with Gary's shit.

I wonder if this new administration might change her mind and maybe she could stick around. Please, Hester. And then also give a staking in the ETF. Please. Hey, this is Jake Trevinsky.

Ryan
By the way, did we just get into politics? We promised no politics, I guess markets, politics. But breaking our promise already. ETH ETF next week. We promise last roll up without it.

This is Jake Trevinsky. There's no good reason why the SEC should prevent Eth ETF's from staking. Staked ETH isn't a security. Yes, it's not. Investors can fully understand the risk of a stake product, plus decide for themselves they want to take that risk.

It'll take a while, but this is a when, not an if, in my opinion. All right, that's the ETh ETF next roll up. It'll be live, available. We'll have some episodes about it next week. I'm sure David will be doing all of them.

He doesn't know it yet fully. The question is, are people going to buy the ethereum ETF? And if we can take the playbook from the bitcoin ETF, if it plays out the same way it did for bitcoin, that is very bullish for the price of ETH and for ETF inflows. Especially when in the last two weeks, we have seen actual material inflows into the bitcoin ETF. So two weeks in a row of inflows, which is actually kind of a record since it tapered off in the first place forever ago.

David
So a new all time high in assets under management of the collective bitcoin ETF's of 887,000 bitcoins. Uh, Eric Baltunis, he also said, uh, BT bitcoin ETF's are two, are in two steps forward mode after one step back in June with another $300 million of inflows and a billion dollars for the week. Uh, and so really seeing some healthy bitcoin activity, I think, like I would like to see, like, I would like to know, like, inflows, high inflows means high bitcoin price, but also just like, pro crypto sentiment, as a result of all the politics of which I won't bring up again, will also create more inflows. So I think, like, price and inflows are actually going to be, like, more meaningfully one to one coupled than them being decoupled. So, like, any sort of, like, pro crypto sentiment that happens in the geopolitics macro world is going to result in inflows.

Ryan
Do you want to hear some more pro crypto sentiment this time from. It was a really bullish week, but yes, it hit me. Yeah. Okay, so this is Larry Fink. We were talking about Jamie Dimon earlier.

This is kind of Jamie Dimon's colleague in Tradfi, Larry Fink. This is what he's saying about crypto this week. As you know, I was a skeptic. Yes, I was a proud skeptic, and I studied it, learned about it, and I came away saying, okay, you know, my opinion five years ago is wrong. Here's my opinion.

Larry Fink
Say this is what I believe in today. I believe the opportunity today. I believe bitcoin is legitimate. I'm not trying to say there's not misuses like everything else, but it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have maybe uncorrelated, non correlated type of returns. I believe it is an instrument that you, you invest in when you're more frightened, though.

It is an instrument when you believe that countries are debasing their currency debasing their currency by excess deficits. And some countries are. I believe we have countries where you're frightened of your everyday existence and have an opportunity to invest in something that is outside your country's control, then you can have more financial control. And so I'm a major believer that there is a role for bitcoin in portfolios. I believe you're going to see that as one of the asset classes that we all look at.

I look at it as digital gold, as I said before, and I do believe there's a real need for everyone to look at it as one, one alternative to, I would say, the optimism that I have in the world. If you want to hedge hope, bitcoin is not an instrument for hope, unless you're hopeful you're going to make a lot of money on it. But I look at it as a vehicle in which you're expressing your financial acumen in something that you're more frightened of the world, you're more frightened of your existence, and I believe there's a great industrial use for it. I think a lot of people are missing that. He goes on, David, for about another like this is, this is Larry Fink, fully converted, preaching the good word of bitcoin.

Ryan
He's also, did you hear him almost leaving an opportunity, an opening for other crypto narratives and other crypto assets? I mean, this is why Blackrock is just like the largest asset manager in the entire world is because, like, he knows how the narrative game is played with large institutional investors. So he's saying this is the asset. Digital gold debasement, monetary policy. If you're concerned about the world, fear in the world leaves a space open to talk about Ethereum as tokenization.

You're optimistic about the world. Look at all that restructuring. The entire financial system, the entire world will be tokenized. That's act two. He's going to do the exact same thing months into the Ethereum ETF as he did with bitcoin.

The other thing I'll just notice is note that what a pivot that Wall street has taken. They just had to have products to sell. Now that they have products to sell. They had to have products to sell, and they needed it to be politically accepted. And I don't know, both Larry Fink's politics are, but they are markets aligned.

David
So, like, pick your base to making. Money is the politics, I think, of Tradfi also. The BlackRock digital assets team is called the digital assets team. It's not called the bitcoin team. Oh, okay, there you go.

Ryan
That's broader appeal then. And after all of that bullish sentiment content conversations, there's another bullish thing that often gets overlooked. But I think it's definitely worth paying attention to. For the first time all year, bitcoin miners are producing more bitcoin than they are selling, which means that they are able, they're profitable as companies. And when bitcoin miners are profitable and they don't sell their bitcoins, that means just more supply gets reserved for the market markets.

David
Miners. Bitcoin miners really set, like, the climate around markets. Uh, they aren't acute, they aren't acute sellers. But when bitcoin miners are not dumping because, uh, they actually are profitable, bitcoin supply gets withdrawn. And this has been actually a pretty good, like, kind of background indicator as to the health of the bitcoin markets.

And therefore the rest of the crypto markets is like, are the miners selling or are they holding? And if the miners are holding, that's bullish. And that's basically been bullish I every single cycle. So this is just another indicator of, like, we're kind of set up to, we're really healthily set up in the markets. I'm wondering if you think there's maybe I'm extrapolating.

Ryan
I don't know as much about bitcoin miners, but it feels like bitcoin miners are the absolute smart money when it comes to bitcoin, because they have to be. Because if they are dumb, if they don't do this exactly right, precisely right, they die. They go to business. So it's a matter of survival. So we've gone through the evolutionary process.

We've got like, so all of the dumb mining companies that made poor decisions with respect to should I buy or should I hold, they're all, they go out of business and they lose every cycle. So now you have the smart bitcoin money remaining, and they are holding at. This point, and this has actually been empirically proven, bitcoin miners are some of the best traders in the crypto industry. If you look at, like, when they elected to sell and when they elected to hold. Coming up next, Uniswap has a big new browser extension wallet, but you know what a browser extension wallet is, so why is this one any different?

David
Stay tuned for that. How much money is crypto spending on politics? Are we out spending big oil? Oh, you have big pharma. I'm just re invoking politics afternoon and an update on Cryptowars 2.01 of the most important cases in crypto history, Roman Storm's case.

We got an update on that as well. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, especially Mantle. And the mantle ecosystem, the vertically integrated layer two Cmeth, and all the other fun things you can do on mantle. Check them out. You're going to go hear from them right now.

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David
Uniswap wants you to say goodbye to pop ups, that little pop up browser in your browser extension wallet. Because now the Uniswap browser extension wallet is a little sidebar, and this one is unique because, well, it doesn't pop up like most other browser extension wallets. But when Ryan, when you're browsing, I'm going to assume you use chrome. Is there a little pop up bar on the right side of your window? That is the new location for the Uniswap's browser extension, and it's permanently there.

So it's permanently embedded in your browser extension. And so instead of your browser extension while popping up and taking over your screen, and if you're in full screen, you have to swipe back and it's confusing. This sidecar, think of it like a motorcycle. Sidecar is the uniswap wallet, and it's just persistently there. And if you have a web three JSON enabled website, Uniswap Wallet will just be right there, ready to go.

And so it's a new form factor for a browser extension wallet, and I think it's going to be pretty sexy. Yeah, I love it. I think it's a really smart move. It feels like a much more integrated kind of way to display a wallet inside of a browser. So it's almost like it's part of the browser.

Ryan
Seamless type of experience. Yeah, much more seamless. This opens the door for all sorts of things that we can do with crypto beyond just like the trading verb that Uniswap has been known for. Yeah, we need buttons to be closer to the action, and I think that a sidecar extension like this definitely does that. Moving into crypto Wars 2.0, we got some positive developments in roman storms, tornado cash defense.

David
There was a motion to delay the trial date, and whether that notion was approved or not doesn't really matter. What does matter is that we actually got the judge, Fahlia. Oh, God, I'm so sorry for butchering. That name is apparently asking really good questions about the details of the case and apparently appears to recognize the danger in establishing a mere negligence standard for money laundering, which is what the Dutch did to Alexei Purtsev. And so some of the arguments that were brought during this process, the judge mused on what the tipping point should be for when a service ought to be shut down when it becomes aware that criminals are using it in the process of bad actions.

And so the prosecutor, Thayne Wren, argued that any legitimate business that becomes aware of criminal activity should be required to take steps to stop it. And then the judge responds saying, that's a lot. I'm not sure what you expect Mister Storm and his colleagues to do. Should they have shut down Tornado cash? How do you saddle him with liability?

And asked whether charges were comparable to criminally charging the creators of WhatsApp before criminals used it? Which is the right question to ask. Thank you, judge. Uh, and so this case is not over. This is just like one procedural event in this case.

But we now just got an insight to judge the judge asking the right questions and taking the right perspective. We don't know how she will rule, but she seems informed to the arguments for both parties. And in my opinion, the law is on roman storm's side. And so hopefully if she's asking the right questions, we get to the right conclusion. Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan
She's asking the right questions in this kind of like pretrial, and she is thinking about this in the race the right way. This is what the defense said, by the way, about this, which kind of encapsulates the entire case. This is the only money laundering case ever where the defendant didn't have control over the funds, period. That's such a hotline, right? I mean, this is a smart contract.

Put the code out, put it in production. Right? Similar to like encryption or similar to like, WhatsApp. You can't be responsible for every criminal use of a tool that you create, can you? I mean, that's just an extension of liability that is just like unprecedented.

I think the judge might see this. So it's very bullish. So this motion to delay the trial has been approved, which means it's going to happen in September, in December, now of this year. So it'll probably be like a multi week trial. We'll talk about it then.

I think it's an absolutely massive case for crypto because it's like smart contract law autonomy, like whether code is beach, huge bellwether. Oh, yeah, it's massive. This is really, this is what we call kind of cryptowars 2.0. This is like the nineties with Zimmerman in terms of the outcome here and the precedent that this will set. And since you mentioned Alexei Pertsev, just a reminder.

So he was actually in the Netherlands. He was actually convicted for something similar. He's the co founder of the roman steward of Tornado by the Dutch. Yes, he's been trying to appeal, but that appeal has been denied. So he is in prison, basically.

His conviction was 64 months in prison. So he's serving that time now and continues to serve that time. It's a absolutely long time. Pivoting gears here back to politics, just betraying my listeners left and right. Molly White, the previous bankless podcast guest, has released her new project, followthecrypto.org, which is a website that provides real time lens into the cryptocurrencies industries to influence the 2024 elections in the United States.

David
And I would assume after the 2024 elections, it just pivots into Crypto's money in Capitol Hill. And so you can see candidates that have received donations from crypto packs, whether the candidate won that election, the list of crypto packs and where they fall, recent donations and total expenditures in various states and races. And so Molly White, if you guys remember, if you guys listen to that episode we had her on as a crypto skeptic, and so is somebody who doesn't like crypto and doesn't think it's necessarily good for the world. And so she's making this website to track cryptos influence in politics, which I think is just great. I love this website.

I think this is awesome. What do you think is great? So it's like, my reaction is, I think it's great. First of all, more transparency is good. We should see where the money's flowing, who's receiving it, how it affects outcomes, how it affects decisions.

Ryan
I think she's kind of, because she's obviously thinks that crypto is a net negative for the world. She's framing this as a bearish thing. It's just like, look how crypto is buying all of the politicians, right. I think the crypto perspective on this would be like, we have to play this game in order to survive. This is the game.

David
It's not our game. Yeah. We didn't create it. I wish money wasn't involved in politics. I wish this wasn't the way it worked.

Ryan
But if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, right? This is the. And we saw this. I mean, the administrative state is very much coming for crypto. And the way we turned it around was we organized.

We created, like, stand with crypto. So we started donating politically. We started to get involved in the way that the political like, process forces the crypto industry to get involved for our survival at this point in time. And because if we didn't, like, who knows what restrictions the US would put on crypto freedoms. It is notable, though, David, that that crypto is actually outspanning any other industry.

David
So this means, number one, or number. One, spending oil and gas, outspending the communications industry, outspending labor, outspending transportation with respect to its political contributions. Now, I don't know if tech is included in this because, like, you know, like a 16 z and those others, they're definitely spending big. Part of that goes to crypto, but part of it's more general. Anyway, that was my takeaway from this.

Ryan
It's just like, I could see how it can be corrupting influence, but, like, don't hate the player, hate the game, and, like, we've had to do this to survive. Getting money out of politics is, like, one of the few political things that I have in my history. Like, I was very motivated as that political alignment to get money out of politics. I have since given up on that effort. But I think having crypto be number one, even though when crypto is like a comparatively small industry as compared to, like, pharmaceuticals and oil, it makes sense if you understand that crypto is an industry that, like, we learned how to print money, bitcoin is the removal of the power to print money away from the nation state.

David
Like, if you disagree with nation states, like usage of the money printer, buy some bitcoin. And so it makes sense that we are punching way above our weight class because we have our own money. Our entire industry is money printers. And so we are defending our rights to use our tools. And I kind of think, if you, like, look at this, I know you know that I like to look at these things in a biological lens.

Like, this is a crypto industry, like, using its weapons, being a parasite, inception its way into the politics of nation states, and buying its way into protection and, like, a strong, healthy foundation for itself. I just think, I mean, it's an inevitable outcome. Like, don't go up against an industry that can print money. Yeah, no, I think it's good and just showcases crypto's ability to coordinate the cycle in a way that it's just never had. So it's a bullish indicator to me, although I can also see back to full circle of Vitalik's critiques at the beginning.

Ryan
I can also see how this, like, while it's net good right now, to me, I can also see how this could become a corrupting influence. Imagine there's a world. This is why I like having this website. This is a check on us. Exactly, exactly.

So you can imagine a world where like crypto exchanges or like the baddies of the world. Maybe. Maybe Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan buys up Coinbase and they become the banking establishment. And then they start to push things that aren't like citizen aligned and freedom aligned and self custodial wallets, and they start to push financial products and their banking services and start to really corrupt the process. I can totally imagine that as a possible outcome.

David
Honestly, it's probably should be the default scenario. We should be wary of that. And that's kind of what Vitalik is saying in his post. I think we need to go into this of eyes wide open and we have to play this game, I suppose, but it's a dangerous game to play. We have to be wary of the corruption that can fall out of Molly.

If you're listening to this, you should apply for a Gitcoin grant because crypto people who appreciate your effort will send you money via Gitcoin grants. 100%. Yeah, yeah. I forget Molly White was like an editor of Wikipedia. Right.

Ryan
She's very open source friendly. She's very kind of like Internet native, Internet aligned. She just hasn't made the leap to crypto. She kind of thinks, yeah, she just. Doesn'T like the financialization.

David
Yeah, yeah. David, meme of the week, what are we looking at? This is a meme that I thought was pretty funny. This is the two universes that we were referencing at the beginning. The top one is the universe in which the bullet did go through Donald Trump's head.

And as a result of that, we have a civil war. Like, honestly, something like that would have happened. Something very bad. But with the Trump head movement. The head movement where Trump just tilted his head just slightly to the left.

Stocks and crypto ripped. So these were the two universes. And we got the one where stocks and crypto rip. And also, like, we didn't have a political assassination, which is also good. Do you think there's a version of the roll up with David and Ryan living in a very different world and having a very different role?

I don't want to think about that. Yeah, forget those guys. We're in, like, bitcoin is down below 30% and, like, the left and the right are like, at each other's throats and, like, we're living in a. Where markets are just totally confused and unsure about the future. No, I'm very happy to be in this one.

Ryan
Literally. Dodged a bullet. Also, metaphorically, dodged a bullet in all possible ways. We. We dodged a bullet on this one, David, because this is the last weekly roll up without Ethereum ETF.

I think we should leave him with a moment of Zen. This is the new bit wise commercial around Ethereum. Enjoy. And I will end with some disclaimers. You know, Chris, crypto is risky.

You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey.

Thanks a lot. Hello. I'm ethereum. And I'm big tech. Hmm.

David
What's going on here? Oh, I'm all about helping people connect. It's just, uh, some of these people don't belong here. What do you mean? Well, like this guy, he said something awful.

Ryan
What'd he say? Called soccer. Football. Totally un american. Seems pretty random.

Well, this one plays accordion. Nickelback fan, only speaks with caps. Lock on. Oh, well, I didn't know. I didn't mean to do that one.

But how do you deal with this? I'm not into random deplatforming. What? You just let pickleball fans in. You're nuts.

David
What's wrong with pickleball? Everything.