ROLLUP: Bitcoin Breaks Below $60K | Saylor’s Three Bad Options | ETH Labs | The Quantum Clock

TRANSCRIPT

David:
[0:04] Bankless nation it's time for the weekly roll up it is the last week of june and for what feels like the third time this month three or three out of the four weeks there is just blood in the streets we got ryan back this week back from vacation you picked a bad time to come back from vacation you should actually just go

David:
[0:18] back on vacation i came i came to find out either way.

Ryan:
[0:22] I came to find out if michael saylor is death death spiraling because that's what i heard the whole microstrategy ecosystem.

David:
[0:28] We are currently death spiraling, but you don't really know how far it goes. Maybe it's just a baby death spiral. Anyways, Bitcoin is trading below $60,000. Microstrategy is trading below $100 for the first time since March of 2024. And Stretch is trading at $74, billions of dollars off of where it ought to be trading at $100. So strategies, they've got $1.7 billion in preferred dividends obligations and like, nine, 10 months of coverage left. So we're gonna ask the question, is it all over for Michael Saylor?

Ryan:
[1:05] I think that means just nine months and then we'll be in a bull market. I think he planned this perfectly.

David:
[1:10] Dude, I think if Bitcoin, we'll talk about this, but the easiest solution is that Bitcoin just goes up and then Michael Saylor's just free and clear.

Ryan:
[1:17] Not going to be a problem at all. Also, I saw this, David, on the week. ETH Labs has just been announced. People are asking if this is the new Ethereum Foundation. It is not quite a fork, but it is started by some former EF members. We'll talk about that. Also, the Ethereum Foundation itself reducing headcount quite significantly, like something like 20 to 40%. So is this a restructuring? Is this a crisis? What does Vitalik think about this? And there was an executive order as well coming to the White House this week. It caught my attention because they were talking about quantum. Apparently, the U.S. wants to build a quantum computer and get this, they think quantum-relevant, crypto-relevant computers might come by. Yeah, cryptography, according to Donald Trump.

David:
[2:00] We got to watch that clip later.

Ryan:
[2:02] Cryptography. The cryptography-relevant quantum computers... could come as early as 2031, and they want all systems to be ready for that. So we'll talk about what that means for the U.S., what that means for our crypto

Ryan:
[2:15] protocols as well. David, before we get in, you got a shout out to make to our friends over at OKEx.

David:
[2:21] Yeah, OKEx. So the ICE, the Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of New York. Different ICE. The markets-oriented ICE. Yes. Which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. They backed OKEx at a $25 billion valuation because they want to launch tokenized New York Stock Exchange stocks and derivatives later this year on OKEx specifically. This is TradFi on one side coming to DeFi on the other, all in the same app. This is the new money app from OKEx, trusted by over 120 million users globally. OKEx is bringing products to the United States. This is now a US company that Wall Street has been talking about for years. And so if you are not on OKEx, they are offering you a 6% deposit match using the link in the show notes. So click that and get onboarded to OKEx and get your 6%. Unless you are in New York or Texas, it is not available to you.

Ryan:
[3:15] Sad. Sorry. Sorry, New York. It's weird that it's Texas as well.

David:
[3:18] Usually you don't. Usually New York's common. Texas is not so common. Yeah, usually you don't hear that.

Ryan:
[3:22] I wonder what's going on over there. It is good to have another exchange available in the US. Like more options are better, specifically coming from the people behind the New York Stock Exchange.

Ryan:
[3:30] But David, Let's get into the blood in the streets that you were teasing about. So show us some blood. This is Bitcoin and on the U.S. price chart. I think you have a moving average line here.

David:
[3:40] Yeah, so these are four-hour candles. This blue line going across my screen is the 200-week moving average, which historically Bitcoin just does not stay below the moving average, 200-week moving average very often. We are currently 5% below the 200-week moving average.

Ryan:
[3:55] I will say it did for a while, for a good bit, several months, many months in 2021. 2023 bear.

David:
[4:02] Yeah, okay. Let's zoom all the way out. I will say, I think we talked about that last time. It has spent maybe... 5% of its time below the 200 week moving average and it's dominantly in the 300 days right after FTX. The 300 days after FTX is when it spent basically all of its time below the 200 week moving average.

Ryan:
[4:24] So how many days will we spend below the moving average? What number is that? 62?

David:
[4:31] $62,400 and Bitcoin is trading at $59,500 right now.

Ryan:
[4:36] Yeah, we're in the 50s. were officially in the 50s. Is some of that on the week due to some of the concern around the Michael Saylor universe?

David:
[4:44] This is a question I have, is how big of a deal is Michael Saylor as it relates to the Bitcoin price? Or does Bitcoin not care and Bitcoin happens to Michael Saylor, but Michael Saylor does not happen to Bitcoin? I don't know the answer to that.

Ryan:
[5:02] They're two gravitational objects, right? Bitcoin is clearly the bigger one, but Michael Saylor is maybe a planet orbiting that star. Maybe he's a really big planet. Maybe this is a binary star system, too.

David:
[5:13] If it's a binary star system, Ryan, that means that Bitcoin is dependent on Michael Saylor, which in my mind means the Bitcoin project has failed. That's sacrilege.

Ryan:
[5:20] Okay.

David:
[5:20] Yeah. I mean, they have, a strategy has 800,000, 850,000 Bitcoin.

Ryan:
[5:27] Yeah.

David:
[5:28] Quite material. Yeah. Still, in the broad schemes of things, it's, what percentage is that of total Bitcoin supply?

Ryan:
[5:35] I don't know, three? Something like that? God, that's a lot.

David:
[5:37] Okay.

Ryan:
[5:38] But like, yeah, I mean, fair point. But he is kind of the marginal buyer and he is the bull of all bulls, right? He sits on the throne of being chief bull officer of the Bitcoin ecosystem. But what's happening over in MicroStrategy? Because you teased in the intro that strategy was actually down. What is it? Down?

David:
[5:56] What chart does this remind you of, Ryan?

Ryan:
[5:59] Down? Let me see. Down 70?

David:
[6:02] 25% off of, it doesn't have a peg, but I call it par. It's supposed to trade.

Ryan:
[6:08] Oh, this is stretch you're showing. This is not stretch. This is not MSTR, right?

David:
[6:12] Yeah, well, I'll show MSTR in a second.

Ryan:
[6:15] Can you remind people what stretch actually is and why this is significant that it's down so much?

David:
[6:20] Stretch is, actually, I'll just show you this ad, Do you remember this ad, Ryan? Mm-hmm. This is an AI ad of some babe in a pool in the Bahamas or in Asia drinking a margarita. And she goes, I'm not meant to live a comfortable life. I put all of my savings into Stretch. What is Stretch? Stretch is a stock that pays me 11% a year in dividends for holding Stretch, 11.5% paid monthly. So that's what Stretch is. It's meant to trade at $100 because when it's trading above $100, strategy just gets to hammer the ATM and they mint more stretch and they pocket the cash and then they can buy Bitcoin with the cash. They pay out also with the cash that they have, they pay out the dividends and the supply of stretch has grown so large that they have annual dividend obligations of $1.7 billion a year. And then they also have in reserve $1.4 billion. dollars. And so they have, they also have debt obligations elsewhere as well. And so they have about 10 months. This is on their website. They have 10 months of dividend coverage for a stretch. But there is simply three things are going down all at once. The Bitcoin price is going down. MSTR, I'll pull up MSTR now. MSTR is going down bad, very bad. And then also stretch is going down. And so MSTR from the very tippy top is down 84%. Okay.

Ryan:
[7:50] 84% of... Whereas Bitcoin is down, what, like 50, 60%,

David:
[7:55] 60%? 53%.

Ryan:
[7:57] 53%.

David:
[7:58] Okay. So all three of these things are down, which is really cornering strategies, Michael Saylor's options. Sure. When all three go down, he just doesn't have a lot of options. He does have time. He has 9.8 months of dividend coverage. So he has time, but he does not have a lot of options right now. And I guess the reason why Stretch is trading at $75, even though it's in theory supposed to be trading at $100, is people are worried. It's like a lack of confidence of the solvency of Stretch. Because like, say, Ryan, I tell you, hey, Ryan, there's this company. It has amazing dividends. It pays you 11% dividends. But the company is going to go defunct in 10 months. Like, what's that company worth? Not $100 a share.

Ryan:
[8:48] Yeah. I think I would ask, what is the probability of the company to pay me back? So how much cash do they have? And then cash in dollars, because I'm getting paid in dollars, so same year of account. And then I would say, what else does the company have in terms of their balance sheet to be able to sell to go pay me back, right? And of course, if you look at strategy, there's a lot of things they could sell. It's called Bitcoin, and there's tens of billions of it. and they could just sell some Bitcoin and pay me back. But of course... In the three bodies that you described, a market sale of Bitcoin at some level, that kind of tanks the Bitcoin price, which isn't good for MSTR.

David:
[9:31] He did sell 32 Bitcoins. Bitcoin, the Bitcoin price, did not respond positively.

David:
[9:36] He did sell this week a bunch of MSTRs. So he sold MSTR. It was trading earlier this week at like 1.3 NAV value.

Ryan:
[9:45] Premium to NAV is just barely a premium to NAV. Barely above 1.

David:
[9:49] 30% premium is not bad. You know what's barely a premium to NAV? 1.03, which is where MSTR is today. The fact that it's still positive is actually incredible. But it was 1.05 at the time of when I woke up this morning. So it's down to 1.03.

Ryan:
[10:06] Wait, but wait. Okay. Strategy is still at a premium to NAV? It's not under?

David:
[10:11] It's a 3% premium to NAV.

Ryan:
[10:13] Okay.

David:
[10:13] So what does this mean? Is that the value of all of the Bitcoin that strategy has, which is $50 billion, is what strategy is worth, $50 billion.

Ryan:
[10:25] The stock, basically. The stock. So he can't do any more ATM. He can't mint very much more.

David:
[10:30] He can do 3% more.

Ryan:
[10:31] Well, no, no. He could go below if he wants.

David:
[10:34] He can go below.

Ryan:
[10:35] But every time he does this,

David:
[10:36] He— But that's breaking a social contract.

Ryan:
[10:38] Well, yeah. I mean, every time he does that, I mean, we've talked about the way DATs are structured, right? Every time he, like Bitcoin is scarce, but strategy stock is not scarce. So it does have a money printer and the money printer has a name. His name is Michael Saylor because Michael Saylor owns massive amounts of strategy. So he's basically governance for strategy. So he can just continue to dilute MSTR holders and MSTR can get punished. That's why MSTR is down, what, 83% and a Bitcoin is only down like 53%. Also, MSCR had a ridiculous MNAV premium previously. It was like 2, 3X, something like that. Four. Four at one time. You got up to four. It was insane. That couldn't last forever. Yeah. But anyway, now he's right on the cusp of like, what does he do next type of question, right? It's like- He's running out of tricks. He's running out of cards in the sleeve to pull out and just be like, I've got another bailout. And he also this week, make this make sense. He's still buying Bitcoin, right?

David:
[11:37] So it started the week, the MNAV of strategy started the week at 1.3. It's now down to 1.03 because they sold a bunch of strategy to finance 300 more million dollars to add to the USD reserve, which is why they're at 1.4 billion dollars. and then they also bought 520 bitcoin for 35 million so they still buying bitcoin he's still buying bitcoin not much though it's a little bit revealing that they bolster the usd reserve by 300 million and only bought 35 million dollars of bitcoin like yeah it feels a little bit like a token buy of bitcoin yeah you said you said the word the three bodies we're invoking the this three body problem idea which, i like got from twitter and this is a tweet from from pentosh He said, I kind of feel like the market keeps telling Saylor he can't keep all three things, Stretch, MSTR and Bitcoin.

David:
[12:31] There's just like three different incentives for three different groups and, you can't juggle all of them because there's three social contracts here. And in the under duress, Saylor has to break one. So what are the three social contracts? He can't sell, he can't mint new MSTR below an MNAV of one because the whole point of owning MSTR is that your Bitcoin per share always goes up. And if he mints MSTR equity, below MNAV of one, you're breaking that social contract. Why own MSCR when you can just own Bitcoin at that point? You can't sell Bitcoin because that's the social contract. That's the whole deal. You are the Bitcoin buy guy. You don't get to sell Bitcoin. That's another social contract. You only buy. And you have a social contract to pay the dividends of your stretch equity preferred offering, which he only has 10 more months of. And so under duress, a sailor has to break a social contract. And I think when Stretch trades at a 25% off of the par, off of the $100 peg, I think that is the market saying that, They think that they might get the short end of the stick.

Ryan:
[13:42] Sure. I mean, Jeff Dorman had a take, which is basically like what probably the 70% probability is Michael Saylor will continue to do what he's doing, which is continue to ATM mint strategy as long as he can every month and just hope things get better with the Bitcoin price. Yeah. And that's what he's doing. That's the course that he's played.

David:
[14:05] So far.

Ryan:
[14:06] And maybe he'll be able to build enough runway so that some of these other bodies in the three-body problem don't spin off and cause some bigger issues. But there is always the possibility here, and he knows he has this card, to rip off the Band-Aid, sell three to four billion of Bitcoin, and then just be like, hey, stretch holders, see, we have it. Maybe he could use some of that cash to actually buy some SDRC. That could be value accretive if he gets that at a discount to MSDR holders. And that's probably what's going to happen, one of those two options. I don't think he is like, I don't think, unless this goes on for a long time, I don't see a death spiral scenario here. Unless Bitcoin death spirals down, of course. or like the more probable scenario if you're kind of like bearish on market conditions is that it's just like a slow melting ice cube i think austin campbell made this remark in a recent post i saw which is just like over five years this whole thing could like melt away if bitcoin doesn't get the creative price performance that all investors expect and that quite frankly you and i expect so i don't see the tara luna death spiral still

David:
[15:18] I definitely don't see that.

Ryan:
[15:19] But like There is the possibility that he burns his bridges with the Preferred Share STRC type of instrument and that those holders get pissed.

David:
[15:31] And he loses that.

Ryan:
[15:33] I don't think they'll get wiped out, but they can't be happy. They're not happy now. No.

David:
[15:37] I mean. No way.

Ryan:
[15:38] Is anyone happy with this trading like 24% off of the principal price?

David:
[15:42] No, not when I saw this babe drinking this margarita. And she's answering the question, why is her lifestyle so good? And her answer is, I bought Streff. No. Anyone who listened to this ad is not happy.

Ryan:
[15:57] Yeah, that's right. And, of course, there's bears like Peter Schiff I see all over Twitter They're warning that this is the Bitcoin bubble, that, you know, it's going to get like basically dancing with glee that this is happening.

David:
[16:09] And I am noting that in my head is like Peter Schiff is getting lit really loud right now. I will say that like they're like, I think Michael Saylor's backed up against a corner with Stretch because he truly can't. Like the idea with Stretch is like, yeah, in theory, they have no claim on the Bitcoin. We don't have to sell the Bitcoin. In theory, they could be wiped out. They have no legal claim. But then you have like this, the AI ad of the babe drinking the margarita. I'm like, dude, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. And so he legally speaking, he probably doesn't want to go down that route, even though he might technically check out like it's still going to be messy. And the thing that he's been doing, which is minting and hammering the ATM at MSCR, seems to be the path of least resistance.

Ryan:
[16:54] Yeah. I still think it's going to work out.

David:
[16:56] I don't think. I kind of think it's still going to be okay.

Ryan:
[17:00] Maybe not. Maybe not. And it all depends on what Bitcoin price does, really. Right, right. Speaking of that, what's the Polymarket saying on the week about Bitcoin price predictions? It's been a while since we looked at this.

David:
[17:10] Bitcoin, Polymarket is giving Bitcoin a 48% chance of hitting $45,000, a 31% chance of hitting $40,000. And it basically stops there. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan:
[17:24] What about the upside?

David:
[17:25] The upside, let's see, we have a 50% chance that it hits $75,000. And this is all in this year.

David:
[17:31] This year, so 2026. So there's equal probability that Bitcoin hits $75,000 as it does $45,000.

Ryan:
[17:39] Yeah, the bearish numbers are growing. Should we check in on our little friend ETH, David?

David:
[17:43] Yeah, let's check it out. ETH is not looking great. ETH is not looking great.

Ryan:
[17:47] Is that blue line, the 200-week as well?

David:
[17:49] Yes.

Ryan:
[17:50] It's well below the blue line.

David:
[17:52] What's notable to me is that the blue line, the 200-week moving average is not going up. Like, that's just...

Ryan:
[17:58] It's an ugly 200-week.

David:
[18:00] Yeah. It's a flat. It's been flat for over a year.

Ryan:
[18:02] Missed a cycle.

David:
[18:03] ETH is now 36% below the 200-week moving average, which it's never been that low.

Ryan:
[18:09] It spent some time below, though, in 2025, right? The whole tariff thing. Right.

David:
[18:14] Right. Oh, yes. And it was here. And then Tom Lee came in and hammered $18 billion into ETH. And ETH hit all-time high. And we're kind of back to that same price range again. Okay.

Ryan:
[18:27] Well, more on Tom Lee a bit later in the episode. How are regular markets doing? How are the trad markets?

David:
[18:32] Okay, yeah. Let's look at the indices. There's been a little bit of a toppiness in the indices. You can kind of see it rolling over at the top. This is the S&P. But really, in the grand scheme of things, it's fine. We're down 3% from the top of the S&P. The NASDAQ's doing the same thing. There's definitely been a lot of market volatility. You might have noticed, Ryan, that your portfolio got absolutely obliterated in overnight trading on Tuesday of this week. Yeah. This happened because South Korea regulators made some comments about, cautioning retail investors on leveraged ETFs, apparently leveraged ETFs. I wonder what ETFs, semiconductor ETFs, leveraged semiconductor ETFs in South Korea. Regulators were warning about them. And then as a result of that, the South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index plunged 10%. They triggered a 20-minute halt. People got liquidated. People got carried out. It was a very brutal day. And So on Tuesday, that's why the Nasdaq fell 2.2% and the S&P dropped 1.4%. But then, Ryan, you know what saved the day? You know what the entire, what the new NVIDIA is?

Ryan:
[19:39] What's that, Mike?

David:
[19:40] MU. MU earnings got posted yesterday and they just obliterated earnings. So they had $41 billion in revenue, which would be an estimate of $36 billion. Incredible. Wild. and then their Q3 revenue is up 75% from Q2. Wild. This is the thing that's already trading like well over a billion dollars. This thing, if you bought MU, Ryan, on January 1st of this year, You would be up 330%.

Ryan:
[20:12] Don't tell me that.

David:
[20:13] I don't want to do that. 330%. That's amazing. Six months. So MU earnings came in yesterday and it was very, very good. And like every single day, every single week, the market is like, is the bubble popped? You know, is the memory stonks over? Like is the AI trade over? And it's seemingly every single week we have something like this.

David:
[20:33] And it's like, no, no, throw the dice again. We're back in it.

Ryan:
[20:35] We got more. We got more. Actually, I have a take on this. I have three reasons why I think crypto, the crypto market is down. When I, when I zoom out, when I've been thinking about this over the past couple of weeks, you ready for it?

David:
[20:46] Sure.

Ryan:
[20:46] All right. The first reason is basically exactly what you said. All the attention, all the auction in the markets, all the capital is in AI. And so crypto is very much an attention economy. I mean, I think a store of value asset of which like Bitcoin is the predominantly most of the crypto economy and then either another Their store of value is still the underpinning of the crypto market cap, right? And that is very much an attention asset. It's very much a memetic. Gold is too, but gold has 5,000 years of history here.

David:
[21:17] Yeah, you don't need as much attention on gold.

Ryan:
[21:20] You don't need because it's always been here. There's always the gold bugs. There always will be at some level. But crypto is really suffering from the attention shifting to AI. That's the first one. It's probably pretty obvious. Yeah, everyone's looking at Micron and NVIDIA, and they've moved their capital and attention from crypto. But I think it bears repeating. The second is the debasement trade is on pause. And- We could see evidence of this in the gold price. So gold is creeping closer to $4,000 per ounce. Do you remember?

David:
[21:52] Which is down, right?

Ryan:
[21:53] It's down, right? It was $5,300 or so at the highs when Peter Schiff was dancing on the other side. It's down significantly since. Michael Howell actually had a great post on this, and he talks about the reason why it's on pause. And it's because over the past few months, China has really paused on kind of their money printing printer. And so liquidity has actually reversed coming out of the PBOC. He's not actually sure why. People aren't sure why. He points to maybe the Iran conflict causing China to just be like, oh, pause. We don't want more production. We want to consume more oil. But for whatever reason, they have paused liquidity. The dollar is strong. The Fed isn't printing much more liquidity. So liquidity cycle has changed. And he thinks this will be temporary. But as long as that is happening, the debasement trade is not gone, but it's just on pause. It will resume because it has to resume because you've seen the charts. You've seen U.S. debt to GDP ratios. China's in a similar situation from real estate, all sorts of things where they need to print their way out to

David:
[22:57] All governments around the world. for liquidity was the trump administration doing their damnedest attempt to doge the government and then the spending just linearly increasing upwards.

Ryan:
[23:08] Yeah but people are like oh the debasement trades it's over right gold is going bitcoin's going it's not over it's just on pause right now and that's how it was always going to work it would pause and then resume so but this paused right now the the the third reason is this it's just the four-year cycle david and michael nato Four-year cycle,

David:
[23:27] Unfazed. It's unfazed.

Ryan:
[23:28] And Michael Nadeau wrote a post this week that I thought was really good. It was just talking about what we have to do every four years. He talked about the reason why. It was we have to deleverage. And so this is the realized price here, $1.9 trillion in Bitcoin. This is the valuation we got to in the last bull cycle, $2.5 trillion. That premium from the realized price, the amount everyone bought in at effectively, and the valuation, that $1.5 trillion premium, that was all a lot of credit. It was perps, you know, DeFi loans, stablecoin loans, centralized loans, all of these loans on top of that. And every single four years, we have to purge the credit, the excess credit. Is that what we're doing right now? We are purging? That's what we're doing. We're purging all of that credit.

David:
[24:12] Michael Saylor's got to cough something up, dude.

Ryan:
[24:15] Well, he took on some leverage, like leverage is sin, right? So he took on some leverage. He didn't take on a lot, but I guess he did take on much more than he has in previous markets. So maybe he'll have to cough it up. Maybe he won't. But this purple graph right here might have to get close to the blue graph, might have to even get below it. And in previous cycles, it's gotten about 20% to 30% below it. This is realized price. Oh, below it. This is 50. If you want to translate this to Bitcoin price, below 54K.

David:
[24:44] Okay.

Ryan:
[24:45] So, those three things are happening. We have AI attention dominating. Unless AI attention slows, it's hard for crypto to get a run. Secondly, debasement trade on pause. You could see this in the global liquidity. And then third, it's the four-year... de-leveraging cycle that we're seeing. So some of this has to get washed out and de-leveraged. No, I don't think crypto is over. No, I don't think it's like the end. This is just the point in the kind of the big meta cycle that we're in.

David:
[25:16] Do you listen to my episode with Arthur Hayes?

Ryan:
[25:18] Not yet, no.

David:
[25:21] He's got an interesting brand right now in crypto Twitter land.

Ryan:
[25:25] I've seen some of his brand is like Grifter, Shiller, and Dump, like Pump and Dump type of brand.

David:
[25:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there a little bit of that? That's not what I talked to him about. I kind of moved on to just like he has this broader idea of you want to sell the AI top to buy the crypto bottom. And those things will happen at roughly around the same time. Potentially. Did he say when? He gave a bunch of reasons as to why it will be a bubble. Okay. And then why it will pop. And then in like classic Arthur fashion, he's like this credit event is going to be bigger than 2008 and the government is going to start printing. And that's when you want to buy Bitcoin. But like the details of that, I'm sure are going to be incorrect. But directionally, I find it very interesting of just like there's going to be AI. The AI trade is going to get wiped out at some point. Like some people made way too much money way too quickly and they're going to get wiped out.

Ryan:
[26:19] Sure.

David:
[26:19] And it seems like there could be a timing there of like crypto can't live until AI dies.

Ryan:
[26:27] I think that's right.

David:
[26:28] I think it's a narrative.

Ryan:
[26:30] But I don't want AI to die either.

David:
[26:31] I don't want AI to die. But it's a narrative that I am interested in tracking.

Ryan:
[26:35] Yeah. Meanwhile, the only crypto asset that is pumping, you call this chart into the agenda, is something called cards. Is this a real world asset for Pokemon cards, David?

David:
[26:44] That might actually be what it is. Pokemon cards, the whole gotcha universe is pumping right now. What's the gotcha universe? That's like, it's like, I don't know why it's called that. But it's the trading card ecosystem. Okay.

Ryan:
[27:00] So this is Pokemon cards.

David:
[27:01] Pokemon cards. There's like, there's one piece cards. There's other cards out there that are trading.

Ryan:
[27:06] Okay.

David:
[27:06] But dude, these are just like alt coins for millennials, but they're real Pokemon cards. And like, there's a huge trad real world asset, like non-crypto trading card ecosystem happening. Kind of like how people are like buying and selling Rolexes and COVID. Yeah. Some of it is making it on chain and cards is that cards is like a virtual platform for buying and selling.

Ryan:
[27:31] I've never thought about this, but it'd be interesting to go deep, deep dive in the Pokemon cards ecosystem and just understand how the central fiat issuers of Pokemon cards, how they like manage supply. Like how they make sure that they don't print too many Pokemon cards or like what that because it's an economy that they've built. So that's why there is

David:
[27:52] There there is a little bit of that. And I asked Andy, Andy, 8052, he has he's running Monster and it's literally just like a virtual you can open up Pokemon cards virtually. And he literally has a treasury of Pokemon cards. and he said that like Pokemon as a brand they did a very good job maintaining the brand and preserving the value of the OG cards while still minting new cards that are different, and a brand that failed at that was Yu-Gi-Oh where they just hammered the ATM if you will and they over inflated their cards and they destroyed the value for all the collectors so there's a little bit of an art to the issuance of new additions of cards because you still need to preserve the value of all your old cards.

Ryan:
[28:35] I swear, seeing Pokemon cards go on a tear gives me some optimism for NFTs again,

Ryan:
[28:40] the rise of NFTs. These are just NFTs.

David:
[28:43] These are just NFTs. The center of gravity of Ethereum stewardship is shifting pretty formally, I would say, this week. So this week we had two announcements. The EF cut its budget by 40% and its staff by roughly 20%, which was 54 people. So 54 people no longer work at the EF, which means that the EF is like 200 people still to this day.

Ryan:
[29:04] That's pretty big still.

David:
[29:05] That's pretty big. There's a restructuring into five clusters. So there's now clusters at the EF. And the EF is now kind of just intentionally framing itself as just one node among many when it comes to like this stewardship and direction of Ethereum. On the other side of the aisle, ETH Labs was launched as a new independent nonprofit research and development lab with just kind of a different emphasis than the EF. Like ETH as an asset and Ethereum, the network being co-developed, placing Ethereum to be the settlement layer of the global economy, putting points on the board for Ethereum, trying to win. And so ETH Labs is entirely a compromise of former EF technical talent. Some very big names, Onsgar, Casper, Barnaby, Josh Rudolph, Julian Ma. If you're in the Ethereum world, you recognize these names. So there's a little bit of a tale of two cities going on here.

Ryan:
[30:02] Yeah, I guess maybe let's talk about the EF, their structure and getting smaller. So Vitalik put together a post. He actually ends this post and said this, the past years have been challenging era for Ethereum. I think a lot of ETH investors certainly feel that. A lot of people in the Ethereum ecosystem feel that too. Good to see him put that into words. He said, I personally favor when talking about, like this post is revealing because there's a number of, you know, vitalic thoughts, which are always very important for the stewardship of Ethereum. On ossification of the Ethereum protocol, he says this, I personally favor a soft lean and done approach to Ethereum. Once the straw map is completed, that's the current Ethereum roadmap. Generally stick to security fixes and small high value changes and have a much higher bar for considering new features. So I think the idea here is that the current EF structure and funding gets it crops, that's censorship, resistance, open source, privacy, security, those being kind of the priorities. And then once the straw map is done, the role of the EF shrinks even further still.

Ryan:
[31:08] And so this post was, I thought, good for Vitalik. I'm glad that somebody from the Ethereum Foundation publicly addressed this, glad that Vitalik did, because what we were seeing over the past three to six months was kind of a leakage of what we thought were key people in the Ethereum Foundation. I mean, starting with Timash, but then Choway, the other executive director, leaving a number of high-profile departures. Now, some of those have joined this new org that we're going to talk about in a second, but Vitalik has been pretty much pretty quiet on this until now so I guess it was all culminating in this

David:
[31:46] There's another post from Bastion, who is the new current executive director of the EF, making a pretty clear post about what the scope of the EF is moving forward. So he started with what the EF is not going to be for. The EF is not for going to be like important. The EF is not trying to make itself important. The EF is not for corpo.

Ryan:
[32:10] God, that's clear. I mean, I feel like that's been super clear for a long time, but OK.

David:
[32:14] The EF is not for corpo appeal or for ecosystem popularity. All right. We are not here to please short-term speculators or prop up TBTF Neo SIFIs. I don't know what that is. What is that?

Ryan:
[32:27] A TBTF Neo SIFI. Let me look that up while you're going through it.

David:
[32:30] And then also there, the EF is not for marketing every app on Ethereum. What is the EF for is eliminating Ethereum weaknesses. So they want the EF to help defensively strengthen places where Ethereum is or still can become extractive, totalizing, or vulnerable to cartel or estate capture. So croppy stuff. Like, what is the EF doing? It's narrowing its focus onto croppy stuff. Something that he said was, the EF exists to harden every surface of Ethereum. Crop is the centers of persistent privacy, security, all that kind of stuff.

Ryan:
[33:04] I was glad that they put some priorities here too, privacy being one of them. Also, quantum resistance, which is huge. We'll talk about that later. Now, with the dates continuing to, I guess, fall back for when we'll get a quantum breaking computer, that seems even higher priority. There's even some question whether Ethereum will be ready, let alone Bitcoin. But having that as a centerpiece, if the EF was just able to deliver that, that would be actually incredible. My favorite part of Bastion's post was actually this, where he talked about ETH, the asset, Glad they said ETH the asset. Making ETH normal digital cash is how he put it. And you define it like this. A private, dignity-respecting, debasement-resistant, and surveillance-resistant medium of exchange and store of value, as well as the native asset of private computation and private coordination for both humans and their agents. So good to see some emphasis on ETH or the asset and not just Ethereum, the network. something that I know you love to see, and I love to see as well. I do have a definition for TBTF, Neo-SYF. Too big to fail is TBTF, and SIF is a systemically important financial institution,

Ryan:
[34:24] so it's big banks, basically. So that was the departure from the EF, and then we had...

David:
[34:29] The downsizing and restructuring and narrowing of scope over the EF. An important point about the EF is that they were consuming 15% of their treasury per year. That was their intentional part of their treasury strategy as the run and maintain structure of the EF. And now that is going down to 5% of the EF budget per year. They're also, I think, just downsizing some mega projects. So this might be the last DEVCON, the DEVCON India, Mumbai. buy. So things like this. So they're just really leaning up and kind of hunkering down.

Ryan:
[35:02] Which needed to happen, right? Bobby Ong from CoinGecko makes the point, the organization was 270 people before they laid off 20% of their staff. And Telegram has a total team side purportedly of like 50 people. Hyperliquid, I don't know, what are they, like a dozen right now?

David:
[35:19] 14, yeah.

Ryan:
[35:19] So 270 is a lot of people for developing a crypto protocol, right? So maybe they just need to lean down as all organizations eventually do.

David:
[35:30] Should probably keep going.

Ryan:
[35:31] Timash was pretty favorable towards this too. I don't know if you saw his post on this. You read this?

David:
[35:36] Tell me.

Ryan:
[35:37] He basically said this is generally the direction that I would have wanted the EF to go into. So he's pretty supportive. But he ends it with this. He says my base worry is about execution. If you look at the diagram, you know, this diagram of all the different seven areas. He said it's still pretty messy, pretty unclear, the structure. Maybe it's too hierarchical rather than flat. And so he said this mostly likely reflects the team's challenges in controlling pressures for people to keep titles. people keeping titles, general org stuff, right? Like the EF is not immune to the bureaucratic tendencies of governments. And I think that's sort of some of the malaise that has befallen the structure over the past 10 years.

David:
[36:23] I mean, my confidence in the EF, like fixing itself and like becoming new again and being effective, like I've, I just don't think that's where it's going to happen at the EF. And so, yeah, they're leaning up, but it doesn't mean that they're, turning into this polished, well-run organization. It kind of seems to be that the lack of being well-run is a little bit intentional by design because they don't want the EF to be important.

Ryan:
[36:53] Maybe? I don't know. This seems like a step in the right direction for sure. But let's talk about what at least I am more bullish on, and I think you probably are too. Tell me about ETH Labs. So this is a net new entity. We got a blank canvas. We can do this thing right with this organization. What is ETH Labs? Who is behind it?

David:
[37:11] ETH Labs, in my mind, this is my words, not theirs. I'm recording with Onsgar and Casper tomorrow. That episode will come out on Monday.

Ryan:
[37:17] Some of our favorites from the EF.

David:
[37:21] Yes. Yeah. I don't like to pick favorites, but I really like Casper and Onsgar. Yeah. I'll say that ETH Labs, in contrast to the EF, wants to be important. Here's a line out of ETH Labs that I really like. principles do not change the world until people benefit from them, and the reason why that's important to speak through the lines is like sure a lot of ethereum's values the crops the decentralization the censorship resistance is great, it doesn't matter if those things aren't relevant and i think eat labs is trying to make ethereum as relevant as possible and so like i I said this is Onsgar, Casper, Barnaby, Julian Ma, again, some heavy hitters with funding from Bitmine, Sharplink, a handful, and like a number of other just individual contributors. And so this is where they're getting their funding from, a bunch of grants from organizations.

Ryan:
[38:18] Commercial entities.

David:
[38:19] Commercial entities. And they have a whole website. And so this is, think of this like as a small, lean, refined group of very competent protocol specialists who want to do things that the EF isn't going to do. And this has to do with scaling. I think like layer one scaling is now kind of in the realm of ETH Labs because I don't think the EF is taking on layer one scaling. And so ETH Labs is now doing layer one scaling. and they are i think they're kind of still working on exactly what like step one step two step three is but this is really about an organization that wants ethereum to put points on the board yeah, there's like this one central slot in the crypto world where their single settlement layer for all of internet finance, ethereum is the only ecosystem that fits in that slot and they want to make sure that ethereum inhabits its spots at the best of that ability and so this this is the eth is winning, Ethereum is winning org in my mind, Whereas the previous one was like, we're indifferent to Ethereum.

Ryan:
[39:26] I mean, the hopeful vision here is this is like a Bronze Age mindset, lean EF, basically, that wants to win. And I really did like their thesis, as you said, part of it. But they also said this, we believe ETH matters. The asset, it's called ETH Labs, guys. It's not called Ethereum Labs. The most valuable programmable store of values, how they define it. A decade of broad distribution, deep liquidity, maximally trustless asset on Ethereum. Yes, that's exactly it. That is something I was never convinced the EF fully believed. I know Justin Drake. I know some members of the EF believed it. It was never convinced that the EF fully believed that. Or for that matter, Vitalik fully believed it. They also said this, we believe DeFi matters. Thank you. That's the use case. That's one of the four points of the pillars of their thesis. And we believe adoption matters. I believe those three things too. I wasn't sure that the EF prioritized those three things. So it's good to see an organization spin up and do it. funded by people with commercial interests in this too. So this is a nonprofit, but commercial interests are funding it. So Tom Lee has got $300 million in staking revenue that he throws off of EF staking every year. How much does it cost to fund this team, do you think?

David:
[40:39] Not that much. A couple million? Not that much. Not that much.

Ryan:
[40:41] And so what a great ROI for him.

David:
[40:43] The salaries that they're used to getting from the EF, their expectations are probably pretty low.

Ryan:
[40:48] I'm glad. Now, the question for me is like, of course, like any new or can they execute? Will they be able to, and what parts of the roadmap will they execute on? Like if the EA, will there be conflict? Ethereum Foundation be like, no, you can't work on single slot finality or whatever they try to work on because we've got that. I don't know how this is all going to be worked together, but good to see the blood stay in the Ethereum ecosystem and for us to have a new org to actually propel the platform and vision forward. So I'm bullish. I'm cautiously bullish because it's a new org, but imagine these developers and protocol engineers leaving the Ethereum ecosystem. joining in another blockchain company or something.

David:
[41:32] Or going to AI or whatever.

Ryan:
[41:34] And they didn't. They stayed here. And so I think the net story here is actually bullish Ethereum. At least that's my interpretation of it, but we'll see.

David:
[41:42] Yeah. The timing of the EF announcing their restructuring plus the launch of ETH Labs, maybe that's coincidental, but I think it's very illustrative because now the EF is explicitly saying that they just want to be one node in a network. And ETH Labs is like, Hello, we are also, thank you for the invitation into this network, we are also a node on this network. Power dynamics, I think, are TBD to be played out.

Ryan:
[42:09] Well, the EF did not fund them. Notice, that's kind of interesting. I'm sure they had the option to fund them.

David:
[42:14] Probably, but also the EF is in potentially a funding crisis. We'll talk about that in a hot sec. Maybe it's like, oh, get Tom Lee to do it. He's got plenty of money. But who has the steering wheel? There's a huge synergy here in my mind, where the ETH Labs is looking at the EF and being like, you guys got crops and Vitalik is like, yeah. And Bastion is like, yeah, we got crops, crops. We are taking care of crops. So now ETH Labs doesn't have to worry about crops because the EF's got it. And the ETH Labs is going to worry about like market adoption, scaling, you know, commercial relevance. And those two things are synergistic. But I do imagine they're being like, who's got how many hands on the steering wheel? And the thing is like Onsgar, Casper, Barnaby, Julian, Josh, These people are very influential when it comes to the EIP process.

Ryan:
[43:09] They have some earned legitimacy.

David:
[43:10] They have earned legitimacy. And so I am hoping that we can take some of the, power the leadership power of the ef and like orient it towards eth labs and that not to be not to be like dominant but like let's give eth labs some like leadership over the direction of ethereum.

Ryan:
[43:30] I think we will i think that's exactly what's happening i think this is part of kind of a new era for ethereum that's just starting to build but you mentioned

Ryan:
[43:38] a funding problem or funding crisis. I've heard other people talk about that. Is that Trent's take here? So Trent was formerly EF of the Protocol Guild. I'm not sure if he's still in the Protocol Guild, but he had a post this week called Succession After Subtraction. What was he saying?

David:
[43:55] Yeah, it's a handful of points here. His first points, which kind of echoes what I was just talking about, is that legitimacy tends towards power law pooling, and the EF still holds quite a lot of legitimacy. There's the Ethereum brand. Vitalik is at the EF. The EF has the pre-mined treasury. They own Ethereum.org. They own Ethereum, at Ethereum on Twitter. They have a decade of just Lindy. And there's a ton of just legitimacy pooling that all kind of concentrates there. And so he's illustrating it's difficult for new nodes on the network to emerge when the EF sucks up all of the oxygen, whether it wants to suck up the oxygen or not. However, he is saying also at the same time that there is just like a funding crisis. So $30 million a year of core dev funding it costs the EF with their limited budget remaining. And so to some degree, they are giving up, There is an open window of opportunity for a new organization with new funding to come in because there's that power vacuum being set up. But I think what Trent's real point is, is that we need legitimacy to be spread away from the EF. That's the succession part, but also the difficulty in doing so. That's kind of the through line of the article.

Ryan:
[45:10] I got Trent's post. I kind of disagree with parts of it because he talks about a funding crisis, but I think there's actually an execution crisis in Ethereum. It's like a shipping crisis.

David:
[45:20] Yeah. So what's the point of funding in competent shipping?

Ryan:
[45:23] That's right. If you talk about 30 million a year, and let's take that number, let's say that that's 10% of what Tom Lee makes on ETH staking every year. 10% could fund the whole thing. You think he's not, you think that ETH stakeholders are not willing to do something like that?

David:
[45:37] Yeah.

Ryan:
[45:38] I think they would do it to a competent organization that could execute, that could actually like move the dial on Ethereum, the asset. So I think that's where the EF has fallen and short in some ways. And I think this legitimately shift will happen so long as other organizations step up and are able to execute. So this is all good. This part of the process is just like taking way longer than I hoped it would.

David:
[46:02] Can I give you a bit of a teaser for, these are Ansgar's words. That's part of the ETH Labs and a little bit of a teaser for the episode that I'm about to record with them tomorrow. Okay, yeah. ETH Labs wants to co-develop Ethereum and ETH.

Ryan:
[46:18] I don't know, co-develop Ethereum and ETH? Yeah.

David:
[46:22] Yeah, they're an Ethereum R&D lab. Yeah. I thought it was the hottest line ever. Why are you so muted?

Ryan:
[46:28] We need co-develop.

David:
[46:29] They're going to develop Ethereum.

Ryan:
[46:32] Oh, the two things together.

David:
[46:33] ETH and Ethereum together. They are going to co-develop Ethereum. Yes, okay.

Ryan:
[46:37] That's hitting me different now. Thank you. Say it like that the second time it hit me.

Ryan:
[46:41] David, we got more to discuss, including the Illinois governor signed to the worst crypto tax I've ever seen. I can't believe this is real.

David:
[46:48] I saved this part for when you were back. I didn't want to talk about this with Tom. I want to talk about it with you.

Ryan:
[46:53] No, this is going to be so fun to talk about. All right.

David:
[46:54] Ryan, I think everyone reasonable will say that the Donald Trump presidency is mixed. You know, maybe there's some good things, but there's definitely some bad things. Sure. One positive thing I will firmly say about the Donald Trump presidency is their approach to technology is serious and correct.

Ryan:
[47:16] It's much better.

David:
[47:17] Yeah, it's much better. They're taking like structurally important technology very seriously and we're hitting the gas pedal. So this week out of the White House, a tweet that said, investing in American quantum leadership like never before. President Donald Trump signs executive orders on quantum, supercharging a national effort in innovation in quantum technologies, ensuring national security and continuing American growth in a critical industry. Yes, correct. Full points. Let's listen to this clip right now. Quantum technologies represents the next generation of innovation across computing, sensing and networking with enormous significance for our country's economic growth, scientific research and cyber security. It's really a big deal that we're doing today and the country is doing really well, as you know.

David:
[48:07] In 2018, I signed the National Quantum Initiative Act into law, which led to doubling the federal government investment in quantum research and development. I think you all know about that. That helped unleash billions of dollars of private investment in America's quantum industrial base, promoting significant scientific and technological progress like progress like we've never seen before. actually. We want to keep that positive momentum going in America with the orders that I'm signing today. And these will really have a, I think, place at a big step forward. We're already the leader by a lot. And we're going to be now the leader by a lot more. Great job. Love it. Taking it seriously. That was a serious clip. Sorry, Ryan, I have one more clip that I want to play. This is a hilarious clip.

David:
[48:55] We're going to be investing in American quantum leadership like never before to stay ahead of the pack. We're way ahead right now. We'll keep it that way. The second order I'm signing directs federal agency to transition to what is called quantum, Cryptography. Does anyone know what that is? Does anyone know what that is?

Ryan:
[49:18] Quantum cryptography.

David:
[49:20] Cryptography.

Ryan:
[49:22] That's amazing.

David:
[49:22] Does anyone know what that is?

Ryan:
[49:25] That's great. Well, we know a little bit of what it is. We've been talking about it on Bankless for the past couple of years.

David:
[49:31] It's a little bit. Okay, let me summarize everything in the executive order.

Ryan:
[49:34] Yeah, what's in this thing?

David:
[49:35] Okay, so we are migrating the timeline forward for being quantum secure by four years. from 2035 to 2031. That's great.

Ryan:
[49:44] That's all agencies have to have quantum-resistant cryptography algorithms by 2031 rather than 2035. That's a massive, that's almost like, that's like a 40% increase forward in timelines here.

David:
[50:01] We're also going to build a quantum computer. And so the executive order establishes the quantum computer for application development and discovery science. And we are, we, the United States of America, are aiming to build a powerful quantum computer for scientific discovery with a planned deployment at the Department of Energy facility and potential access for the broader scientific community. reporting points to a target, a targeting a meaningful capacity by 2028. By 2028, the United States government is going to have a cryptography relevant, quantum computer for scientific discovery.

Ryan:
[50:38] Yeah, I think this is a really big deal. This is the U.S. saying this is a national priority. They're going to invest in it. I'm sure they're getting the tip off from the leading frontier labs in quantum in the U.S. and maybe in U.S. allied countries like Google. I'm sure, is just being like, hey, we're making huge progress on this. And this is all national defense type thing. Because like, imagine all the communications that could be tapped into and hacked if somebody had a quantum computer. I mean, the US absolutely has to beat China to this in order to maintain its kind of position in the world and not to be at national security risk. But this is moving faster than I think anyone thought. Remember, Justin Drake put out that post in March of this year. And he said that, what did he give it? A 10% chance by 2030? Is that it? Yeah. That we would have quantum? I now put the odds of QDay by 2032 at 50%, 10% by 2030. And I would expect his estimates have even increased, have fallen back. since then. So this is happening very fast. Not sure that Bitcoin will be able to make it in time. It's even unclear that Ethereum will be able to make it. Well, I mean, they'll figure it out. It just could be really bumpy if this happens within the next five to six years.

David:
[52:06] Yeah. Bitcoin is not ready. They're just so not ready. Even Ethereum has so much to do. It's a lot of work. We have a lot to do between now and then. I mean, at least Ethereum's taking it seriously, but man, dude.

Ryan:
[52:21] Yeah. Yeah. Let's finish with this, David. Do you see the Illinois governor? You did see this. I did see this.

David:
[52:28] I saved it for you.

Ryan:
[52:29] Okay. This is a 0.2% crypto transaction tax on everything. This was signed by the governor of Illinois on June 16th. So it's already signed. It's a law that has passed now.

David:
[52:45] Wow.

Ryan:
[52:46] It's not effective yet. So it's effective January 1st, 2027. So within six months, it's going to be effective. And this is in play for anyone in Illinois. It's the first statewide transaction tax of its kind. It is called the Digital Asset Privilege Tax Act. So implying that if you have digital assets, you are a privileged individual. And what it's doing is this is not a capital gains tax.

David:
[53:12] What an assumption. I don't feel very privileged right now.

Ryan:
[53:16] This is not a profits tax. This is a tax on movement. So if you do anything to move your crypto assets from one place to another, there's a tax on it. 0.2% is the tax. There's a tax for keeping it in custody, 0.2%. Just like touching your crypto, there's a 0.2% chance tax. Not for stocks, not for bonds, not for Bitcoin. It's unclear whether moving crypto assets from a self-custodial account that you hold to another self-custodial account that you hold also incurs this tax it could the language is unclear and vague and all of this happens in illinois like place like chicago what if you're a listener a bankless listener in chicago like how livid are you right now do you just

David:
[54:03] Have to like go and drive over the state boundary what's the state that's not sure it's.

Ryan:
[54:08] Illinois i'm sure it's a residency type thing right presidency yes you'd have to like move to florida for six months this

David:
[54:14] Has got to be illegal.

Ryan:
[54:16] It's a state tax. It passed. It's law.

David:
[54:19] It doesn't feel right.

Ryan:
[54:21] I mean, I think it will be challenged. So a repeal bill was introduced within days. I think it could be challenged in the court system. But for now, it's a law that's going into effect January 1st, 2027. And it's the worst tax I've ever heard of.

David:
[54:36] It's just so confounding. It's just like that just nukes everything.

Ryan:
[54:42] Yeah. Yeah. Let's end with this. We haven't talked about this in a while. But David, I know you are buying some things in crypto. I don't know if you're bottom ticking anything right now. What's your portfolio looking like?

David:
[54:54] I have a portfolio of Hype, VVV, Near, and Zcash, which is like kind of like... It's very trendy. It's very trendy. I will say like people were harping on me for like hopping on the trend when I tweeted that like, I tweeted this one thing. People, I was like, after I sold all my ETH, I bought those four things. and then in the tweet I said, and now I'm buying lit. But people are like, oh, David bought Zcash. All of those positions, I will say, are in the green other than Zcash. Yes, still. Wow. Still, yes. That's correct. Yeah. Lit is...

Ryan:
[55:27] In the green relative to ETH.

David:
[55:28] No, dollars, dude. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Zcash, I bought it like 550 or 80 or something. So that one's kind of down bad. But like, Nira is still up and, and, oh no, Venice might not be up anymore. Venice might be down. business might be down anyways lit lit is the token that i'm the most concentrated in just because like it seems so damn cheap to me you know lit lighter.

Ryan:
[55:52] Of course yeah it's i i think it's a great founding team it's uh basically an ethereum app you can think of it that way perps are huge the question is it's like such a power law winning game right with hyper liquid like there could be a world where

David:
[56:05] Because how many exchanges have there been that are worth many billions of dollars.

Ryan:
[56:09] Yeah coinbase you know

David:
[56:11] It's an exchange business so it is a dex it's a zk layer two on ethereum that is a dex, a perp dex it's got spot it's got perps but like it's going to it's competing it's trying to compete with the biggest exchanges out there not just hyperliquid but also coinbase and like binance and okx and it just wants to have its like internal operations be zk circuits on an ethereum layer 2.

Ryan:
[56:37] Yeah i could see it i mean the architecture makes sense the team is fantastic it's can they can they uh run faster than some of the big competitors they're they're trying to execute against right and

David:
[56:47] Did you know vlad the founder is like on the cftc like board of advisors or something.

Ryan:
[56:53] That's cool very cool i

David:
[56:54] Mean he's in the right spots so that's my most concentrated bet.

Ryan:
[56:57] Yeah well are you thinking about anything else or you just wait and see right now

David:
[57:02] And everything else is in the stock market. I'll say buying lighter has been the first time my money has flown from the stock market to crypto in a long time. You really have been going the other way.

Ryan:
[57:12] Yay. Sign of the time, sign of the time.

David:
[57:15] I think, am I eyeing anything else? I don't think I'm eyeing anything else.

Ryan:
[57:19] Yeah, I think it's an interesting time for the market. I think that I'm probably pretty convinced that we'll bottom sometime in the second half of this year. And that'll be a great time to buy.

David:
[57:30] All sorts of things. Buy what?

Ryan:
[57:31] But I'm still trying to decide. I mean, certainly store value assets will have a comeback.

David:
[57:37] You mean the majors?

Ryan:
[57:39] I'm still, you know, I still think ETH could have a run. I understand some people don't think that. Apps and crypto, big deal.

David:
[57:47] I mean, say what you will about ETH. It is at a discount.

Ryan:
[57:50] Yeah. Yeah. I think everyone will say that.

David:
[57:53] It is 30% below, 35% below the 200-week moving average. So, like, it's a deal, probably.

Ryan:
[58:01] It could be. It could be. It could very well be.

David:
[58:03] Could be a deal. It could be a deal.

Ryan:
[58:04] And it could still go down a little bit more before it goes up. But I think we're close to the bottom now.

David:
[58:08] We just, I don't know. We're still waiting for a bit more. Bankless Nation, that is it for this week. Ryan will be back next week. He is not going on another vacation. He'll be back back in pocket. Until then, though, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is Frontier. It's not for everyone. And we are glad you're with us on the Bankless Journey. Thanks a lot.