# ROLLUP: False Strength? | ETH Crisis | Altcoin ATHs | Satoshi’s Coins *Author: Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman* *Published: May 29, 2026* *Source: https://www.bankless.com/de/podcast/rollup-false-strength-eth-crisis-altcoin-aths-satoshis-coins* --- ## TRANSCRIPT David Hoffman: [0:04] Bankless nation welcome to the last week of may it's time for the bankless weekly roll-up we got some very hot topics of the week eth sentiment perhaps as bad as it's ever been somebody wrote a post this week titled why i sold my eth that was you david and that didn't really help with the sentiment uh but there are some other things to be optimistic about standard charter says ethereum is amazon in 2021 that that is a good thing uh and then in the rest of the crypto world we got bitcoin below 73 000 largest etf outflows since january but but still a handful of coins hit all-time highs this week i think the big question ryan is can these coins that have momentum sustain momentum even if some of the majors break down which i think uh they are threatening David Hoffman: [0:53] to do so in this very moment. Ryan Sean Adams: [0:54] I think that's a no. That's a no. David Hoffman: [0:56] Oh, you have the answer. Ryan Sean Adams: [0:57] I have the answer. The answer is probably not. It's maybe verging on no. Mark Cuban also quit Bitcoin this week. Says it's worse than gold. We'll talk about that. Former DeFi security firm founder was, what firm was this? David Hoffman: [1:12] Open Zeppelin. Ryan Sean Adams: [1:12] Open Zeppelin. That's right. He's advising friends and family to exit DeFi. We'll talk about whether he's right or not. And also, David, somebody is suing to claim finders keepers laws that they actually in fact own all of satoshi's 3.7 million bitcoin this is in a new york a court case so apparently you could just do that and you can just claim David Hoffman: [1:34] Claim that satoshi lost his wallets and he's claimed they're claiming finders keepers yep. Ryan Sean Adams: [1:39] The property's old finders keepers it's like finding a wallet in a subway david same David Hoffman: [1:44] The same thing. Ryan Sean Adams: [1:45] Same rules apply same rules apply we'll talk about the validity of that case as well even David Hoffman: [1:49] Even though the majors don't look so good, Ryan, the thing that we got going for us right now is the president of the United States is pumping our bags. Ryan Sean Adams: [1:58] Is he? David Hoffman: [1:59] On Truth Social, Donald Trump tweeted out yesterday, Gary Gensler and the anti-crypto army nearly destroyed the American crypto industry by driving Bitcoin crypto perpetuals. Ryan Sean Adams: [2:10] You think he knows what a perpetual is? David Hoffman: [2:12] No, he doesn't. And innovation offshore. But Trump saved it. America is now the crypto capital of the world. And builders and entrepreneurs are coming back to the United States where they belong. Crypto prices fell 4%. And not uncorrelated to this tweet, but this tweet did nothing to do anything to the crypto industry. Ryan Sean Adams: [2:34] Did you expect it to do something? David Hoffman: [2:37] I find the juxtaposition worth highlighting. Yeah. Like Bitcoin is down, Ether is down, and then we have Donald Trump beating his chest about crypto. Ryan Sean Adams: [2:47] I guess we're getting used to this, but how absurd is it or how strange is it? You know, like if you were to tell me five years ago that the President of the United States would basically on a weekly, monthly basis be tweeting about crypto, I would have been like, oh, look, Ma, we made it. It's like, this is fantastic news. And now it happens and I just like roll my eyes. I read maybe the first sentence of this and I just like couldn't read the rest. Yeah. That's kind of my reaction to me. David Hoffman: [3:15] I actually still haven't read the rest. I stopped. That was me actually reading that tweet for the first time. Ryan Sean Adams: [3:19] I'm going to force myself to read the rest here. Here it is, the last sentence. The new frontier of finance is being built in America, and Trump will never let crypto down. President Donald J. Trump. Why does he put his name in quotes? David Hoffman: [3:32] I don't know. Trump's choice of when to capitalize words, sometimes in all caps, I've never seen that anywhere before. He has this very interesting capitalization strategy that I think is actually very intentional. Do you think this is him anymore? Ryan Sean Adams: [3:49] Or do you think somebody's like, just like, whoever runs his social accounts? David Hoffman: [3:53] No one can copy this, dude. No one can make this up. Ryan Sean Adams: [3:56] But no, he doesn't know what a crypto perpetual is, right? David Hoffman: [3:58] Sure, but yeah, he's got like Baron Trump looking over his shoulder telling him. He's like, dad, write crypto perps. Ryan Sean Adams: [4:05] You think so? You think that's how it works? David Hoffman: [4:07] Something like that. Somebody's whispering in his ear, but he's writing it, dude. He's the thumbs on the phone. Ryan Sean Adams: [4:13] How are we feeling about Bitcoin and ETH price on the week? David Hoffman: [4:16] Well, I can tell you how Chris Berniski feels. He is feeling bearish. I thought this was a pretty interesting tweet. Maybe just to kind of zoom out. All-time highs on the week for a handful of crypto coins that have a lot of momentum. Yesterday, the market really turned over. Bitcoin is down. Ether is down. We'll talk about that in a second. And so this is the tension that there has been momentum in the crypto markets, markets of the crypto markets. But Chris Berniski tweets, I don't see a new paradigm where majors are rotated out of and select up and comers. can sustain their swim against an outgoing tide for long. Instead, I think majors are telling us something and people are finding reasons not to listen. That was a bearish tweet. And I think for the last couple of weeks, you were talking about a lot of the analysis that you were doing with Michael Nadeau about this is kind of like a make it or break it where if Bitcoin goes up from here, it's pretty unprecedented in terms of bear market strength. But if it goes down from here, then the cycles are simply cycling. And right now it seems like Bitcoin and Ether are on the precipice of the cycles are just cycling. Ryan Sean Adams: [5:18] That's right. And yet, how do we explain the four horsemen pump here of these coins that we're going to talk about maybe later in the episode? But what is it? It's Hyperliquid, Nier, Venice, and Zcash. All hitting basically all-time highs. That doesn't usually happen during a bear market. So there is this juxtaposition. But I guess Brindinsky is saying, hey, if the majors aren't pumping, this is not going to be long-lasting. Let's look at bitcoin price on the week so we are in the low 70s right what's the price of the time of recording David Hoffman: [5:54] Bitcoin's coming in right at 73 000 it is uh a down down from 78 000 on the week so not not a great week down five percent uh for bitcoin uh the the iran war which bitcoin and crypto really actually performed well in we are basically approaching some of the lows the recent ranging lows. So any sort of momentum that we had has kind of been like a race in the last week here. Ryan Sean Adams: [6:20] There's a headline here that says, Bitcoin falls below 73k as BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF sees second largest outflows since Debut. There's a stat that Mike Nato put out earlier this week that the last 12 days have been the bottom 5% of worst performing days for inflows, outflows, outflows in the Bitcoin ETF. So that is bottom quartile, bottom decile, bottom 5% of performance. So ETFs not holding up at least this week. There was actually a $1.3 billion sale of IBIT from a whale. I don't know if that came across your timeline, but I noticed this. David Hoffman: [7:05] The largest single-sell event of IBIT ever, I think. Ryan Sean Adams: [7:08] Big, chunky sell. And Michael's take is this is like front-running some macro worries, right? Just Bitcoin, again, being kind of canary in the coal mine of macro troubles ahead. David Hoffman: [7:21] Yeah, it's really been like the momentum and morale, I think, in the crypto industry was somewhat higher in the earlier part of the week. And this has completely got erased. You see the same thing in Ether price. Bitcoin down 5.2 percent. Ether down 6.2 percent. Below $2,000. We're at $1,995. When the Ether price is somebody's birth year. Ryan Sean Adams: [7:42] It's not good. David Hoffman: [7:44] I don't like that. Ryan Sean Adams: [7:45] What year is it? David Hoffman: [7:47] 1995 right now. Ryan Sean Adams: [7:48] 1995. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't feel good either. David, you're telling me before the show, though, there is a way to play this market. And somebody in Hyperliquid figured it out. You can still make tons of money on crypto in this market. How do you do it? David Hoffman: [8:04] So this is a screenshot of somebody's position on Hyperliquid. They have a good number of positions. The S&P 500, they have a position on the XYZ 100, which is just the NASDAQ. So there's two long positions that this one trader has, the S&P and the NASDAQ. And then there's looking something like 12 to 13 short positions. So there's short Ether, Mega, Fartcoin, Trump, Athena, Layer Zero, ZK Sync, Bitcoin Cash, Uni, Cardano, Litecoin, and SHIB. They're short all of these things. And they have a perfect portfolio. The two things that they are long on are in the green. And the 12 things that they're short on are also in the green. And so they just crack the code. Just go long equities and short crypto. And you can make money, which is a really sad time to just be in crypto. If you can just blindly do this and it works across the board. Ryan Sean Adams: [8:56] Look at the leading short here. It's ETH. It's a $10 million position on ETH. It's a 25X position on ETH. And that is by far- David Hoffman: [9:04] 25X short position, yeah. Short position. Ryan Sean Adams: [9:06] That is by far the largest short position they have. ETH always takes the brunt of this, man. David Hoffman: [9:13] It just cannot catch a break. It's also just the largest market out of anyone here, of anything here. It's the largest market. Ryan Sean Adams: [9:19] But you could short Bitcoin. They choose not to. They skip that and they go to ETH. Let's like FU ETH especially, you know, in particular. David Hoffman: [9:26] For some reason, people feel like they can short Ether more safely than Bitcoin. Ryan Sean Adams: [9:31] I saw a clip earlier this week from Mark Cuban. David, do you remember it was five years ago now that two enterprising podcasters had Mark Cuban on the Bankless podcast. Yeah, this is children. Actually, let me play this. Yeah, hear how crappy my microphone is. Let me just play this really quick. All right, Bankless Nation. We are super excited about this extra special episode with Mark Cuban. I'm going to introduce Mark in just a minute. That is the voice of... Someone who is innocent to the crypto market, somebody who's not yet beaten down and is very enthusiastic. David Hoffman: [10:08] That is a second cycler right there. That's what a second cycler sounds like. A second cycler on the upswing. This is literally the most euphoric time to ever be in the market. Ryan Sean Adams: [10:17] If you're not seeing this, this is 2021, I should say, where David and I had Mark Cuban on the podcast. And we were shocked at how knowledgeable he was about crypto. David Hoffman: [10:27] He was writing code. He was writing solidity. Ryan Sean Adams: [10:29] Dude. Yeah. He was like, yeah, I've been messing around with Solidity on the weekends. And we're like, okay, this guy knows what he's doing. And he came on again, bankless later. And he's been very favorable about Bitcoin, crypto, Ethereum, DeFi. He was in the weeds doing loan positions on Aave. I saw this clip of somebody asked him, what do you think of crypto now? And here was his answer. David Hoffman: [10:51] Mark, let's end on this. When we last sat down and did an interview, it was all about crypto, which also had a lot of sports tie-ins. You were into NFTs at the time. Is all that stuff dead, dead and done? I don't know if it's dead, but I'd say it's disappointing. Put aside NFTs, but I think crypto is disappointed because it hasn't come up with an application for grandma. And that's really what I expected. If you looked at apps, when the iPhone came out, it was like, okay, whatever. Then the App Store came along, and now all of a sudden there's Instagram, Snapchat, everything else. Facebook came on there and grandma had a way to use it. And I always thought that there would be a way for that. So that's part one. And part two, and this might get some people upset, I think Bitcoin has lost the plot. David Hoffman: [11:36] And when I started buying Bitcoin and I've sold all of it, except not all of it, most of it, it was because when all the shit hit the fan with the Iran war and, you know, Bitcoin was always the best alternative to fiat currency losing its value. And I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up and went, you know, to $5,000. Bitcoin dropped. And every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should have gone up, you know, because if it's priced in dollars, it was cheaper. So anybody from around the world could go pay in dollars. And it just didn't do that. Not such a hedge. No, it's not the hedge that I expected it to be. And that was really disappointing. And so I'd say I'm more disappointed in Bitcoin, not as disappointed in Ethereum and the rest, you know, the token stuff, the meme coins. Garbage. Ryan Sean Adams: [12:30] David, he sounds a little bit like you, except maybe the inverse. He's more disappointed with Bitcoin, less than Ethereum, but he's disappointed in both. David Hoffman: [12:39] Yeah. Yeah, he really ascribed a belief to what Bitcoin is supposed to do. It's supposed to be an Iran war, conflict, hedge. I think people need to understand that I don't think we really know how and why Bitcoin trades the way that it trades. I still don't think we know that. Ryan Sean Adams: [12:58] You don't think, but isn't that what it's supposed to be, digital gold? Like it says what it's supposed to be in the mean. I don't think it's digital gold. That's what Cuban is saying. David Hoffman: [13:06] Yeah, I think if you over-ascribe a model onto Bitcoin, you're destined to be disappointed. Ryan Sean Adams: [13:11] He does sound a little bit like you in the, you know, I thought crypto was going to be useful for grandma, sort of the strong crypto use case. Strong crypto, yeah. Yeah, whereas we got a bit more the weak crypto side of things. And then he's looking at weak crypto and he's like, well, store of value. It's not even performing as well as gold in this type of environment. David Hoffman: [13:30] Yeah. We'll define strong and weak crypto later. Ryan Sean Adams: [13:34] Yeah. This is bear market things, though. Let's check in on the dats. How are they looking? David Hoffman: [13:40] It's worth probably taking a note of what's going on. Strategy, the average Bitcoin cost basis for strategy is $75,700. Dollar bitcoin strategy has spent a total of 63 billion dollars to acquire what is now worth 61 billion dollars of bitcoin so they are down two billion dollars on their bitcoin position which i think is like fine it's it's an explicit part of this strategy of strategy to take a an efficient amount of risk and that's going to involve being in the red from time to time if you're never in the red, then strategy is not taking enough risk is like, I think, I think the right philosophy to have, but nonetheless, it's notable when strategy is below its position because it shouldn't, it shouldn't be below its position for any, uh, ongoing amount of time. Ryan Sean Adams: [14:29] Did you see they were buying bonds on the week rather than Bitcoin? David Hoffman: [14:32] They weren't, were they buying bonds or they were buying, rebuying their, um, convertible notes, which is kind of the same thing, but they want to clear out their convertible notes and this is a part of their strategy. Ryan Sean Adams: [14:43] So I didn't up their balance sheet. David Hoffman: [14:44] Exactly. Ryan Sean Adams: [14:45] But using some of their dry powder to go shore up their balance sheet rather than buy Bitcoin, which gives you the sense that the Bitcoin buys are tapering. David Hoffman: [14:53] Yes, that. And it's also kind of like, OK, if you have excess cash, why are you paying down the mortgage on your house faster? Because like that mortgage is favorable and you can definitely use that cash to get better opportunities elsewhere. It's kind of like the same philosophy. Ryan Sean Adams: [15:09] Sure. How about Tom? David Hoffman: [15:10] A different story over with Bitmine. Bitmine down $8 billion on their position, on their much smaller position of Ether. And so much, much further in the red. Again, being in the red is part of the deal. But $8 billion, being down $8 billion on $18 billion is a very different story than being down $3 billion. But he started later. Ryan Sean Adams: [15:36] I mean, Saylor's been at this for five years, right? It's kind of surprising that his cost basis is in like the $75K range, Saylor, that is, when he's been at this for five years. It goes to show you how much he's been purchasing the last couple of years. David Hoffman: [15:49] Yeah, this Michael strategy line of credit, the ability to buy goes up when Bitcoin price goes up. Right, exactly. So the higher prices just easily wash out the lower ones. Yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [16:01] Well, with Tom Lee, I either think it's going to go one of two ways. You know, this is like a generational trade for him. Or it really wasn't. David Hoffman: [16:10] No, yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [16:11] So we'll have to see. But I mean, he's only a year in. I mean, the story is not yet written on the big line. David Hoffman: [16:17] I think it's even less than a year. There is one dat, Ryan, that is in the green. Have you heard of per? Ryan Sean Adams: [16:24] P-U-R-R. No, I saw this in the gen. And I was like, what is this? David Hoffman: [16:27] This is the hyperliquid. I don't know if it counts as official, but it's seemingly the community supported one. Ticker sign is per, it's hyperliquid strategies. Okay. It is the hyperliquid DAT. And it is the only DAT out of all of them. Like the 30 of them that I think remain that is in the green. Ryan Sean Adams: [16:46] That makes sense. Hyperliquid is doing quite well. David Hoffman: [16:48] Hyperliquid is also in the green. Ryan Sean Adams: [16:49] What doesn't make sense is why Purr? Why the name P-U-R-R? David Hoffman: [16:54] Hyperliquid. Also, Hyperliquid has, I think, an NFT that is cats. They have cat NFTs. Ryan Sean Adams: [17:01] Let's take a look at Polymarket, David. Viewer discretion is advised here, because these are some disturbing numbers. This is the question on Polymarket. What price will Bitcoin hit in 2026? What are the answers receiving the highest probability weight here? David Hoffman: [17:18] So the highest probability, we got a 55% chance that Bitcoin will hit $55,000. Yikes. There's a 42% chance that it can hit $50,000. And there is equivalently a 50% chance that it will hit $90,000. So there's about equal probabilities of Bitcoin hitting $55,000 and $90,000, which when the all-time high is $140,000... Oh, God, the majors are just not doing what the market needs them to be doing. Ryan Sean Adams: [17:51] I don't like this number. There's almost a 20% chance that we get to 35K Bitcoin at some point this year. David Hoffman: [17:58] That is wild. I cannot imagine that. Ryan Sean Adams: [18:02] 20% chance. 20%. Incredible. One in five. How about ETH? Is this going to be even scarier? David Hoffman: [18:08] ETH has a 60% chance that it will hit $1,500. A 25%, a 1 in 4% chance it hits $1,000. and a 21% chance that it hits $3,500. Ryan Sean Adams: [18:20] Give me some of the upside here. We got a 5% chance of $6,500 this year, at least at some point. David Hoffman: [18:26] A 5% chance of $6,500. Ryan Sean Adams: [18:28] I'll take those odds. David Hoffman: [18:31] Okay, let's look at the down market, because there has just been a tale of two cities in the crypto world, in the crypto industry, in the last month or so, and it's really been expressed in the last two weeks. We talked about these tokens last week. The tokens that hit all-time highs last week are the same tokens that hit all-time highs this week. Near did not hit an all-time high, but it's like a local market high. Everything else did hit an all-time high. Hype, $64.40 is the new all-time high. Since the Bitcoin has fallen off from like 80 down to 72, Hype is now down from 64 to 57. VVV, Venice hit an all-time high of just over $20. It's now at $14.88. Near hit $2.88. It's now at $2.33. And then Zcash hit an all-time high of $682. It's currently coming in at $535. So you can really see the fear in the market from Bitcoin, each third of the majors, the crypto industry as a whole, like, we're turning over. And exactly what Chris is saying is like, if Bitcoin drops, you know, $10,000, nothing is safe. Ryan Sean Adams: [19:32] I'm somewhat off Twitter these days. What's the sentiment there? Are people... Is energy back in crypto Twitter because of this kind of mini altcoin pump? David Hoffman: [19:43] I would say so. And like that's kind of like the tweet that I wrote out that caused a firestorm in the Ethereum community of just like I when you look elsewhere outside of Ethereum sentiment, you get just a vibe shift. Like people actually are making money in the crypto industry on these tokens and a few others like Railgun is also up massively. There's just a handful of other tokens, altcoins, if you will, that have pumped very strongly to all-time highs. And so people are making money for the first time in crypto in a very long time. Hopefully that time is not over. But again, this is up to Bitcoin and where Bitcoin wants to go. But yeah, there has been just like a morale vibe shift in crypto because people are making money. Ryan Sean Adams: [20:28] Interesting. A select few, a select list of assets, though. This is not globally. David Hoffman: [20:33] The tokens, HypeVVV near Zcash, like on Twitter, these are called the consensus coins. It's like what everyone kind of believes in these things. And the sentiment, the idea is that there are so few people left in crypto that it doesn't matter if these tokens are consensus because there's just like 50 people buying these things that are left and that's all of crypto Twitter. Ryan Sean Adams: [20:52] That's not great. That doesn't feel very sustainable. I think Chris might be right here. Hype got some more attention on the week, though, didn't it? Is this in TradFi circles? ETFs. David Hoffman: [21:03] ETFs, yeah. So the hyperliquid ETFs launched between one and two weeks ago. They have done very, very well. There's over $101 million of inflows since their launch earlier this month. This is mostly between the Bitwise BHYP and the 21 shares THYP ETFs. There are a few others. So Grayscale also filed for GHYP, and there's also a VanEck one, which I can't find any information on, but allegedly there is one. That's one of the big stories of the week is just the strength of hyperliquid being expressed in TradFi. And TradFi is noticing hyperliquid more and more. And this is how they would get exposure to it because they're in their brokerages and that's where their money is. And so they're not coming to crypto. They're definitely not making it all the way to hyperliquid itself because you have to go into USEC, to Ethereum, to Arbitrum, to hyperliquid. Ryan Sean Adams: [21:51] The more they notice, the more they're going to want to enter this market, right? competitors. Coinbase already has a good perp exchange competitor in the U.S., Robinhood. David Hoffman: [22:00] Not in the U.S. No one has, as I understand it, a perpetual license because there just isn't one. And so I think there's a bunch of positioning and we're actually seeing this from Polymarket. So Polymarket announced that they are building out their perpetual platform. The perps beta is live for select users rolling out access to more people. Ryan Sean Adams: [22:24] That's a good move by Polymarket. Yeah, I agree. David Hoffman: [22:27] I agree. So yeah, the United people, everyone is positioning to try and claim the United States perp market and no one has really made a move because compliance and like clarity around this is just like uncertain. Ryan Sean Adams: [22:40] But even global markets got to be somewhat up for grabs. I'm sure Polymarket is going after Hyperliquid's global market for perps right now. David Hoffman: [22:49] Probably. Well, they are also offshore, but I think it's really the regulated, compliant onshore market that is really the golden goose. I mean, United States is still the center of capital. So. Ryan Sean Adams: [22:59] Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about the center of capital versus Iran. Any moves on the week there? So I think right before we started recording, I saw another, more word of a peace deal. I have not been keeping up with Iran and Trump negotiations. What is the latest? David Hoffman: [23:18] So this week, the theme of this week was two contradictory tracks, both a re-escalation of the kinetic war and apparently a real legitimate deal inching closer and closer to being signed. The deal, as of this morning, we actually kind of have most of the terms revealed because it was leaked. I bet you it was intentionally leaked, which is why the market priced it as legitimate throughout the week. Ryan Sean Adams: [23:42] Because we have S&P all-time highs, right? David Hoffman: [23:44] We have S&P all-time highs. That's right. That's right. And it's on this news. On this news, but also the AI trade is still strong, like memory stonks still up. Gas also down, oil down. We'll talk about that in a second. So the terms of the deal is an immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the United States lifting the blockade off Iran, of course. Just travel, shipping travel is just free. A 60-day ceasefire extension. Hormuz traffic is going to be restored to pre-war levels within 30 days, so Iran stops threatening people. David Hoffman: [24:17] A mutual declaration that all military operations, including in Lamedon, will end permanently, and then Iran reaffirming that it will never build nuclear weapons. These are the broad strokes of things. Importantly, the nuclear issue, the nuclear material, Iran giving it up and suspending their nuclear program, the details of that will be hashed out within a 60-day window after this MOU, this Memorandum of Understanding, is signed. So this is firmly a peace deal and not a nuclear concessions deal because Iran really does not want to concede nuclear concessions because it's part of their identity. And so Iran is deferring that. So meanwhile, over this past week, that was all the progress on the deal. And it seems like the deal is like ready to be signed by the highest levels of power on their respective sides. So like Donald Trump could sign this literally right now. Same thing with the Iranians. But over this last week, there was also a re-escalation of the Kinetic War. So there have been just trading near daily strikes blow for blow. On Monday, the United States hit Iranian missile sites and also mine laying boats. On Tuesday, Iran set it down to U.S. drone and fired it at a U.S. jet. And so that went on. So it's still skitterish. But nonetheless, like technically, there is a deal potentially on Donald Trump's desk right now that he could sign. Ryan Sean Adams: [25:36] I mean, if they don't have the nuclear piece, I mean, like, isn't that the crux of it? Isn't that a big piece of it? You just kick that one out for 60 days with an MOU? David Hoffman: [25:44] Yeah. I mean, I don't trust the Iranians. And I think Donald Trump also knows to not trust the Iranians with regards to the nuclear deal. Like, emphasis on underscoring how existential that nuclear program is for the national purpose and identity of Iran. Ryan Sean Adams: [25:58] Well, I think neither party trusts the other party, right? That's part of the reason we're here. David Hoffman: [26:02] Part of the deal, yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [26:03] So oil, we're below 100 on the week. So oil down? David Hoffman: [26:07] Yeah. Oil is at wartime lows. You have seen it get to, I've said these words, wartime lows on the weekly rollup a handful of times between wartime highs. It's back at wartime lows. Pretty low, $93, $94 a barrel for Brent crude. It's previously been $112, which would be wartime highs. In order to really feel good in the markets, we really need oil to break down below $90 and meaningfully and move there. That would be the lowest it's been in the war sustained. 10-year yields is a slightly different story. You know, yields have tended to trade alongside oil. That is not what is happening this week. Yields, 10-year yields are up despite oil being down. And that is not good because we could settle this whole Iran war thing. And nonetheless, the impact on the global economy because of the sustained high oil prices would still show up in inflation, would still show up in yields, would still show up in economic strife domestically. David Hoffman: [27:11] The stagflation word comes to mind. And so yields are not responding favorably. But nonetheless, Ryan, the S&P 500 is at all-time highs. Ryan Sean Adams: [27:19] Just on an absolute tear. And not just all-time highs, in specific sectors, like Micron is a stock maybe to look at this week. I don't think I've seen a chart like this. David Hoffman: [27:32] I don't think I've seen a chart like this. Ryan Sean Adams: [27:33] Not even in crypto have I seen a chart like this. This is Micron technology. David Hoffman: [27:36] I think I've seen a chart like that in crypto, but not at this size. Not at this size. Ryan Sean Adams: [27:40] Not at this size. No, it's the market cap of... David Hoffman: [27:42] Over a billion. Ryan Sean Adams: [27:44] A billion. You said a billion, but I think it's a trillion. David Hoffman: [27:47] Skew. You're right. No, that's what I meant. It's $1.06 trillion. Ryan Sean Adams: [27:53] Which is also over a billion. It's also over a trillion dollars? What? I saw someone comment on Twitter that it's almost like, you know, Micron 20 years in the future has discovered like time travel or something crazy. And so somebody came back and like bought it. Bought it all. You know, in the last couple of months. Yeah. David Hoffman: [28:10] What if you had $1,000? $100,000 of micron stock a year ago, you would now have $100,000. Ryan Sean Adams: [28:17] That is insane. Yeah. I had no idea stocks could do this, David. David Hoffman: [28:23] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the AI trade is putting a ton of momentum and creating momentum trades. People are getting in on it. I mean, the revenues are real. Ryan Sean Adams: [28:34] I don't want to be like, I don't want to throw this in here because it could be different. But like, does it remind you a little bit of the euthanasia roller coaster where we sort of get these kind of rolling sectors that pump really hard? And then when we're done pumping one specific sector that's tied into the overall AI narrative, we get another sector with a set of assets and, you know, the market keeps moving from sector to sector. And now we're on Micron. David Hoffman: [28:58] Yeah. It's like the question is like when it moves from sector to sector, does the hot ball of money like snowball or does it leak and fall apart? And right now, I think you can definitely argue that it is snowballing. Like it's getting bigger. This is memory right now. We're going up. Yeah, this is memory. Ryan Sean Adams: [29:14] Where's it moving next? Do you know? Can you give me some tips? David Hoffman: [29:17] I think Leopold is the person to. Ryan Sean Adams: [29:19] Ask for that. Yeah, yeah. How about maybe Pokemon cards? David Hoffman: [29:23] You move it over there? You know, it's a viable contender, dude. The tokenized Pokemon card marketplace and Pokemon cards as a whole is up bigly. I mean, this is so far away from memory stocks, but it's worth noting that it feels a little 2021-y in that equity markets are at all-time highs and then weird shit like baseball cards and Rolexes are... David Hoffman: [29:47] Being priced at all-time high anyways pokemon cards marketplaces are also up so that's it for the market section you know what's not up ryan in fact what's down is the supply of eth in my personal portfolio um i wrote an article about it i want to get your takes about it i think people i would like to process a little bit uh and so i want to talk to that to you about that and then also why a former defi security founder says he's advising his friends and family to leave defi yikes all of that and more but first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible all. Ryan Sean Adams: [30:20] Right so david you uh posted this to twitter earlier this week um why i sold my eth it's a long form article and this gets into some of your thoughts we touched upon this last week on the weekly roll-up i think maybe you took the weekend to sort of process things and to write things down why you made the decision that you made and the result was this long form article, which is composed of a number of sections, which we could get into, but maybe talk about why you felt the need to publish this. David Hoffman: [30:52] Yeah, well, after being so pro-Eth for so long, I feel like it deserves a thorough explanation, like a complete thought. Some people are curious, some people want to know. It's a big pivot of being so pro-Eth ever since 2017, 2018, and then not having ETH in my portfolio anymore. I don't know. Do you feel naked? For my own purposes, it's worth it to go and do the writing exercise to come to like a pretty coherent conclusion. And so that's why I felt compelled to read it. Ryan Sean Adams: [31:29] Maybe, I mean, do you want to go over like what this article says? Or do you just want me to get my thoughts on it? David Hoffman: [31:35] There's two things that I'll just like summarize. The ETH is money challenge was monumental, is monumental and remains to be monumental. It's a big, ambitious challenge. challenge uh ethereum is a big ambitious project that had more ways more more challenges than like easy roads it was easy for it to fail it's easier for ethereum to fail than it is to succeed and ethereum ended up somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum uh and then also uh the whole like monetization of eth and the you know accumulating market cap of eth uh was environmentally difficult, more difficult than I originally gave credit for. And so like, despite Ethereum's like success, The environment was really just not cut out for it. That kind of goes back to this idea of strong crypto versus weak crypto. Strong crypto, I think, really had its highs, its peak in 2021, where, you know, DeFi was growing. DeFi was the epicenter. NFTs, on-chain culture, like DAOs, all this kind of stuff. David Hoffman: [32:47] Strong crypto is emblematic by, like, the cypherpunks building an alternative financial system. You know, in spite of Wall Street, not in collaboration with Wall Street, you know, something completely our own. And strong crypto has never felt weaker to me now in 2026 because weak crypto, which is just like a back end efficiency upgrade for the world's biggest financial institutions, seems to be the meta. And so the idea of like strong crypto was when Ether was the most money and that environment hasn't been around since 2021. And so there was a particular environment that Ethereum and Ether was particularly well suited for. And that environment hasn't been around since COVID. And it was COVID, dude. It was like the most assorted time and money ever. And so in addition to how challenging the Ethereum project is to achieve its maximum potential, there's also just like environmental constraints that I think also just provide some fundamental constraints to the maximum market cap of Ether. And so I feel like that's an okay summary. Ryan Sean Adams: [33:53] I actually thought the strong crypto point was probably the strongest point in the article, the one I resonated with the most. I think that's right. Like a lot of things that Ethereum had hoped would come to fruition, use cases, etc. really haven't. And the things that remain are like some hardcore DeFi type protocols and store value. It's kind of the money type of thesis things. A lot of the things we thought would happen just haven't happened yet. Not to say that they won't happen in the future, but the prospects of that feel somewhat dim. I think there were some things that I disagreed with a bit more. So one of your points you make, which is L1 assets and REV, like revenue, are tied together. And I think you make the point that there's some correlation here, right? When ETH revenue was all-time high, ETH was popping the most. You saw that with Sol. You saw that with Nier. And you're sort of doing this thing where you're segmenting out and you're saying smart contract platforms, at least the market is saying that they have to produce some revenue. When they produce revenue, price goes up. when they don't, price goes down. I, um... I think that is how the market has priced this previously, but it's not fully how the market is pricing it now. There's a couple of aberrations here, one of which, of course, is Bitcoin, which you might say, well, that's not a smart contract platform. Ryan Sean Adams: [35:19] Another, you could say, which we've been talking about in the week is Zcash. You might also say, well, that's not a smart contract platform. So you're saying, well, smart contract platforms, different rules apply for those. And from a fundamentals perspective, why? Why should they have different rules? Why should different rules apply to smart contract platforms? and I think if you were like building this from the ground up my objection would be like that's how the market sees it and that's why there's a massive opportunity in ethers because smart contract platforms don't necessarily need to have rev in fact none of them actually will because they will perpetually expand a block space if they're doing what they should be doing they will minimize mev and so no layer one blockchain will actually have sustainable fees into the future, they're all money or they're nothing. And so now you're back to a competition of which assets are the best money. So- But you've heard that pushback before, you know, like, so that's probably nothing new coming from me. David Hoffman: [36:24] My evolved thoughts on that, because I was thinking about your voice was in my ears while I was writing this section. And so my attitude on this is that, yes, what you are saying could have happened where Ethereum and the leading smart contract chain is not valued by revenue in any particular way. But in order to create that stable equilibrium, Ethereum would have needed to basically be so dominant and have such a monopoly on the smart contract ecosystem that like the second, third, fourth place to smart contracts are so distant that they're just not valued by the market. And so because something like Solana actually did nip at Ethereum's heels and actually did take away users and revenue, Ethereum is different when it's like 95% dominant versus 65% dominant. If it's 95% dominant, then it's likely that ETH is valued as money. If it's 65% dominant, then it's going to be valued as a smart contract chain. And so Ethereum losing momentum is the difference between those two realities. Ryan Sean Adams: [37:28] Yeah, I just don't understand why. Like if you're looking for the properties of money, right, which is decentralized money, it would be a different access. You wouldn't say, is it programmable or not? You would say, how censorship resistant is it? How decentralized is it? You know, what's the hardness of the inflation schedule? And on all those points, Ether and Ethereum score really well. And nothing else is really close. So I would just say, okay, point acknowledged up to this point, but it's still kind of too early. And that goes to a theme of like my rebuttal to this is a lot of I feel like what you're saying is. All right, right now, in 2026, this is what it looks like. Yeah. But it's still early. I mean, the monetary fight competition will take years and decades to actually play out. This idea that ETH is money required everything to go right. I don't quite agree with that either. And so Bitcoin, certainly not everything has gone right with Bitcoin. It's had many problems, many flaws. Imagine if you said the criteria for Bitcoin was that everything goes right. I mean, the title of the white paper is peer-to-peer digital cash. It's not used as a cash. Store of value is almost a pivot in some ways, what Bitcoin is. David Hoffman: [38:51] It was a pivot in narrative, but never a pivot in direction. Ryan Sean Adams: [38:54] Yeah, that's true. I mean, Bitcoin has had a more cohesive direction. But, like, you know, lightning didn't work out. There's so many things that just like didn't work out on Bitcoin. I think that Ethereum can make mistakes and it has made mistakes and that doesn't disqualify it. So the idea that perfection is what's required, you know, I don't quite agree with that either. The other idea that other a few other things that I felt like were I agree with, but they're kind of incorrectly framed or I would frame them differently. The idea that Ethereum is a giver, not a taker. I agree with that. And yet I would say, that's why it's a fantastic money. David Hoffman: [39:34] Like, I totally agree. And like the condition for me to think that this money is like it would have it needed to maintain market dominance for that to be perceived as money. Ryan Sean Adams: [39:44] Market dominance. So the other thing of, you know, when you say ETH is, you know, let's say it's being valued by revenue or something like that. It's not right now being valued by revenue. There's clearly a monetary premium. I mean, this is what you said later in the article where you're like, well, it was a partial win on money. And yeah, it definitely was a partial win on money. We can work with that. We can work with the first 10 years being a partial win and building on that success into a brighter future. One of the things that I do feel like I don't agree with, like this is almost a 100% disagree, which is the idea that you can be bullish on Ethereum without being bullish on Ether, the asset. I actually think this ties into the original sin that Ethereum had in the first place, which is this emphasis on the blockchain rather than the asset itself. And I think that it is paying for that sin right now, right? Like ETH effectively is skipping a cycle and it barely hit all-time highs last cycle, didn't overperform, and now we're feeling this crisis in the bear market. Part of this had to do with a roll-up centric roadmap that felt like kind of a side quest in retrospect. Yes, the weak crypto kind of winning over the strong crypto, but the original sin, this Ryan Sean Adams: [41:07] But Ethereum matters and Ether and DeFi don't matter so much. And that embedding of that idea into the culture where we talk about crops, but we don't talk about crops for what? It's like that goose meme. People are like crops. I'm like, crops for what? For what? For ETH and DeFi, right? That's what we're doing here. And culturally, we have not emphasized that use case enough. We've been distracted by other things like DAOs and like, what if we build a decentralized Uber? I know this is the early days, but almost everything aside from focusing on Ether as a store of value. David Hoffman: [41:42] Literally anything else other than Ether, the asset. Ryan Sean Adams: [41:45] And this was a fight we somewhat took up at Bankless in like 2019 and 2020, which is like, hey, guys, Ether is an asset. ETH is money. And I think we tilted the culture somewhat in that direction. But still, the original sin came back to bite us this cycle. By the way, Bitcoin has an original sin, too. I think all crypto networks really do. like Zcash does with Bitcoin's original sin They're not scaling, dude. They're going to end up with all of the Bitcoin in Michael Saylor and ETFs, and they're scaling on sidechains. They're not scaling, and they don't have native DeFi. So it all ends up and all collects in custodial institutions. And that's something. It'll still work, but it's still a sin that they will pay for. Ethereum doesn't have that. It actually is scaling. It does have DeFi. Ethereum's original sin was like a lack of focus on ETH, the asset, and crops for what? And decentralized finance. Anyway, there's an element where, David, I feel like we're paying for that now. David Hoffman: [42:49] Yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [42:50] And I knew there would be like some blood during the bear market if we quote unquote skipped a cycle. We certainly skipped a cycle. So now the blood is being paid. I guess who else is left to sell though? if one of the original like bankless guys has sold i mean i've seen a lot of bottom tick memes on the timeline right a lot like at some level look at the staking queue you know it's up there's you know 31 eth staking who's left to David Hoffman: [43:20] Sell that's not an indicator of because you can still sell after you put your eth in the staking and. Ryan Sean Adams: [43:25] You can but i mean price is holding up for what it is this is like the worst sentiment I've seen since 2019. And we're still a you know, $200 billion asset maybe and dropping. But I don't know. If we can get through this, what I go back to is I do see some of the ETH as money fundamentals still being strong. We have like privacy. We have DeFi. We have quantum resistance. David Hoffman: [43:53] Do we have privacy? Ryan Sean Adams: [43:54] We have scaling. What'd you say? David Hoffman: [43:56] Do we have privacy? Ryan Sean Adams: [43:57] Not yet. Not yet. But like it's being worked on. You can with RelGun. David Hoffman: [44:02] On the app layer, yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [44:03] On the app layer, right? Yeah. If you're looking to store your value, a Gnosis multisig with privacy, that's not a bad route to go. I mean, show me that on Bitcoin. Show me that on Zcash. Yeah. I don't know. The fundamentals, I think, are still there. It's just like really a crisis of faith. So overall, I didn't disagree completely with this article. I think it was well put. I think you put a lot of thought into it. I guess that the summary would be like, well, one, I kind of hope you're wrong. But like, two, David Hoffman: [44:37] I hope I'm wrong, too. Ryan Sean Adams: [44:39] Yeah, two, if you're wrong, it's because like, it was just, it took longer than we all thought. David Hoffman: [44:45] Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. Yeah. It's like that. I think it's like the main, I'm thinking about writing an article about why David Hoffman is telling his ETH is wrong and like just doing that exercise. And I think the leading argument would be like currencies are a centuries long battle. But at the same point, it's like, I don't got centuries, dude. Like, I need to get on with my life. Like I need to do things. Ryan Sean Adams: [45:15] Yeah, I understand. And I will say the strongest point of our article is strong crypto has not played out. David Hoffman: [45:20] Strong crypto has not played out. Ryan Sean Adams: [45:21] There have been a lot of distractions of use cases that Ethereum, the ecosystem, the culture, the community has been pursuing that have just not panned out. We got to get back to the basics, which are DeFi and ETH as a store of value. Yeah. David Hoffman: [45:33] I would like to plant a flag and make it to be known that I am not an Ether bear. I am an Ether is about tracking the market is like kind of my base case. I don't see how it gets re-rated in any direction. Hasib made a tweet that I really, really liked called Ethereum is the Microsoft of crypto, is what he said. And like, I thought this was a pretty good Rorschach test because like Microsoft is just like not cool or innovative or it has like just a boomer brand. But it's like the fourth most valuable company in the NASDAQ or in the S&P. And so like being Microsoft, it's not a bad place to be. It's just like you're not on the innovative frontier. Like you're too big to grow, but you're too existential to die. Ryan Sean Adams: [46:19] Yeah. I do think another analogy is like it's silver. I feel like it's kind of like silver right now versus Bitcoin's gold. Yeah. But yeah, I see that. But let's end this on a bullish note. Not from either of us, all right? Standard Charter is saying that Ethereum right now, ETH, the asset, is trading like Amazon during 2001 after the dot-com bubble burst. And if you look at how Amazon did, and if you project that into the price of ETH, David, you get ETH by 2030, 40K. David Hoffman: [46:55] Oh, boy, let's go. They should put some money on Polymarket. Ryan Sean Adams: [46:58] Yeah, so Standard Charter coming out and definitely... David Hoffman: [47:02] Declining. Yeah. Declining the bearishness. Ryan Sean Adams: [47:05] Yeah, and they're looking at a ratio appreciation too, So a doubling of the ratio to ETH-Bitcoin ratio. David Hoffman: [47:10] They named the Bitcoin ratio? Ryan Sean Adams: [47:12] Yep. David Hoffman: [47:13] Wow. Ryan Sean Adams: [47:13] So you know it's credible when you see that. Standard Charter ETH to 40K by 2030. David Hoffman: [47:19] Do you know what Vitalik's doing to work on Ethereum? Ryan Sean Adams: [47:24] Are you saying he's writing sci-fi? David Hoffman: [47:26] Yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [47:27] I didn't read the sci-fi. David Hoffman: [47:29] I saw this all over the place. Ryan Sean Adams: [47:29] I'm not reading the sci-fi. I'm not reading the sci-fi. He posted this on Farcaster. In lieu of the usual blog post, I decided to try my hand at decentralized governance sci-fi. I can't read it. I'm kind of done with decentralized governance for like a long time. Yeah. So we'll just let that be sci-fi. I did appreciate, however, his post on where the Ethereum Foundation is going. And so the summary is, he basically said, it's shrinking. We don't have a lot of ETH left. We have to focus on one thing. The rest of the ecosystem is going to have to focus on other things. Our focus is going to be crops. And so we're sizing the team and the foundation to support censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security. He did say this. I liked this, David, because maybe you might say this is a little late in coming. But he said this the most high value product of the Ethereum blockchain financially speaking is ETH the asset Ethereum secures 250 billion of ETH the type of properties of Ethereum that I mentioned above are very good for ETH the asset nearly 90% of my net worth is in ETH and most of the remainder 40 million of on-chain fiat of which every dollar has already been allocated that's the remainder so he's basically saying hey crops because of ETH the asset I can't recall him ever saying this so directly. David Hoffman: [48:54] Yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [48:56] In this way and i appreciate it David Hoffman: [48:58] Vitalik will just not acknowledge the existence of ether. Ryan Sean Adams: [49:01] Honestly like a long part of the original sin to me and it feels like it's 10 years kind of not too late but like i would have appreciated it maybe five years ago yeah um but nonetheless uh he's saying it now and he's saying it pretty directly yeah David Hoffman: [49:15] Yeah this is good this is good uh there's this one tweet that rocked around the ethereum community it's a founder of open zeppelin and OpenZeppelin is a premier security company, smart contract security company. He tweeted out this tweet that kind of sent shivers down everyone's spine. I've been privately advising friends and family to exit all DeFi positions, including low-risk blue chips like Aave, MakerDAO, and Compound, due to coding agents that are superhuman at finding vulnerabilities. David Hoffman: [49:45] And so when it's not a new take, AI coming to make DeFi risky is not new. But when the founder of Opal and Zeppelin says it, it kind of takes on a new meaning. This got a very mixed response from different parts of the community. Some people said that because of this background makes this warning extremely legitimate. Others called it alarmist and outdated and just disagreed with the blanketing all of DeFi. Mostly DeFi founders had the most to say about this. Stani from Aave said, this is not a good take. DeFi Infra today is materially more resilient than in prior cycles. Mark Zeller said, what a ironic thing to say. Less than 10% of the past year DeFi issues are due to code-based bugs. Jack Sanford said $630 million was lost in April 2026. Unfortunately, over 96% of those losses were unrelated to code security. And Hayden Adams from Uniswap said something pretty much to the effect, this is not a DeFi problem. This is a supply chain OPSEC problem. but nonetheless I think the conversation one of the weaknesses I think Ethereum feels uniquely is like the threat of David Hoffman: [50:48] DeFi under AI and so that conversation went around Twitter this week yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [50:53] I agree and I understand the sentiment for sure we've seen a ton of hacks this year not all of them have been AI related but you know at least some subset of them certainly have been what do we have coming up David Hoffman: [51:04] Coming up next remember Andrew King Ryan do you remember that name. Ryan Sean Adams: [51:08] I do. David Hoffman: [51:09] Yeah. Yeah. He left crypto about like a year and a half ago to invest in robotics. And now he's back. And Nick Carter is joining him. We're going to talk about what they are building over there. Somebody is using Finder's Keeper's laws in New York to claim Satoshi's coins. I don't know how that works. And then SoFi has launched a stable coin to its 14.7 million banking app users. So we're going to get to all of that and more. But first, I'm going to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. So Nick Carter has signed on for Andrew Kang's RoboStrategy. RoboStrategy is a publicly traded on the NASDAQ closed-end fund, the ticker is BOT. And it's basically a fund of all these different positions in robotics and physical AI names. So Figure AI, one of the leading companies behind Humanoid Robots, Aptronic, Dyna Robotics, Standard Bots, just a bunch of robotics companies that are not public, that are still private. And then if you want access to these, you can just buy this fund. Nick Carter, I think it's actually pretty notable that he's joining the board as an independent director. And then also, if you know Intern, former Monad ecosystem individual is now also on the RoboStrategy board. Ryan Sean Adams: [52:21] Are these just crypto people pivoting to AI? To robotics? David Hoffman: [52:25] Yes, it is. That is what's going on. Ryan Sean Adams: [52:27] No, Nick Carter isn't leaving Castle Island, right? Correct. David Hoffman: [52:29] Nick Carter is staying with Castle Island. He's like an extra set of eyes on the investment board. Ryan Sean Adams: [52:33] Independent director is what the title is. David Hoffman: [52:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the whole robo strategy is actually a direct call out to micro strategy. So the idea is that if the NAV trades above, if the asset trades above NAV, they will issue new equity to purchase more shares of the robotics company. So it's kind of doing the micro strategy ATM thing this only works at the fund trades above NAV and also new buyers are willing to pay the premium which is two very big ifs but nonetheless it's something. Ryan Sean Adams: [53:03] David, I know you've been going deep into the NIR protocol lately. There was an announcement of NIR confidential transactions. So this is actually sending ETH to the Ethereum Foundation wallet from NIR confidentially. Can you explain this? David Hoffman: [53:19] Yeah, so NIR has a NIR confidential transactions. It's like TEE encrypted magic on the NIR side of things. Ryan Sean Adams: [53:26] So it's TEE. David Hoffman: [53:27] It's TEE. It's not cryptography. It's TEE. Ryan Sean Adams: [53:30] It's not FHE. It's not ZK. I don't think so, David Hoffman: [53:32] No. Oh, it's T-E-E. Okay, yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that's a final form, but nonetheless, it's got an adoption. And so with near-intents, confidential-intents, Venice uses this. Venice uses NEO to do this. And now it's kind of just a proof of concept of you send Ether from Ethereum address A to Ethereum address B, but you route it through near-confidential-intents, and it's private. And the fact that it's in production and working, I think, is notable, because, you know, privacy apps are hard. And this is actually just not just privacy for Ethereum, but it's privacy for anyone who wants to integrate with it. And this is one of the reasons why Nier is up so much because this has actually seen adoption and has led to a bunch of Nier revenue. Ryan Sean Adams: [54:18] The adoption part matters, doesn't it? David Hoffman: [54:20] The adoption part does matter. Ryan Sean Adams: [54:21] Speaking of that, SoFi is launching at SoFi USD. Is this a new stable coin to its 15 million banking app users? David Hoffman: [54:29] Yeah, they claimed, SoFi claimed the first instance of a U.S. National bank issued stablecoin embedded directly into a retail banking app. Ryan Sean Adams: [54:37] This is all genius compliant. David Hoffman: [54:38] It's all genius compliant, yeah. And the narrative that they are saying is that this is the end of the crypto versus banking tradeoff. This is crypto and banking. Ryan Sean Adams: [54:47] Cool. David Hoffman: [54:48] They can F off. I still think it's crypto versus the banks. Something I thought was pretty funny, Solana tweeted out this clip about this one, SoFi. Guy talking about the Solana at the Solana conference about why SoFi picked Solana, If you go to the SoFi Sablecoin on Solana, there's $26,000 worth of SoFi. If you go to Ethereum, there's $100 million. Ryan Sean Adams: [55:14] Oh, my God. David Hoffman: [55:15] Yeah, it's quite the difference. Quite the difference. Ryan Sean Adams: [55:19] Oh, wow. David Hoffman: [55:20] Solana, don't draw attention to that, guys. The Ethereum account needed to tweet out that, that there was 100 million SoFi stable coins instead of the 26,000 on Solana, but nonetheless. Ryan Sean Adams: [55:28] No, no, they don't. You know, it'll just happen in the background. Credit neutrality is all you need. Cash App adds multi-chain USDC support, so blocks Cash App. Now, they have 60 million monthly active users, and rather than just sending dollars, You can send USDC, I suppose. And you can withdraw that to all the popular chains, Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Solana. David Hoffman: [55:51] Yeah. And you can also, this is Ilya from Nier, you can also do that with Nier private intents. So you can go from Cash App to Nier private intents to any other blockchain. Zcash, for example, is what Ilya's example is, through Nier intents. And so you can go from Cash App to Zcash privately with Nier. I think it's pretty cool. Ryan Sean Adams: [56:10] I'm shocked that Nier is like coming to dominate the intense space. Like there are so many other earlier movers. Now Nier is getting into all these places. David Hoffman: [56:19] No, Nier did a, I don't know if it's pivot. They just made some investments David Hoffman: [56:22] and they're working off. They're paying off. Ryan Sean Adams: [56:24] David, should we end the roll up with this story? So this was crazy. This is, someone is suing, a pseudo anonymous individual or set of individuals is suing to claim legal ownership of Satoshi's coins. So Noah Doe, that was the name, fake name, of course. David Hoffman: [56:43] I also would not want my name public if I was doing this. That's right. Ryan Sean Adams: [56:47] They filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court claiming that the 3.8 million Bitcoin in wallets that haven't moved in six plus years, so that's 18% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist, is actually his. And the way he's claiming this is through a set of laws, I believe, called finders keepers laws. This is a law from the 1958... Covers things like, hey, I found a wallet on the subway. Can I keep it? Finders keepers. David Hoffman: [57:15] Yeah. Ryan Sean Adams: [57:15] Am I good to keep this? Yeah. So Noah Doe is essentially arguing, I found these wallets. They've been dormant for six to 10 years. David Hoffman: [57:23] How did he find them? Ryan Sean Adams: [57:25] He used the blockchain to find them, David. He used a block explorer to find them. Yeah. And he's like, ah, I found it. David Hoffman: [57:32] I found Satoshi's public wallet. Ryan Sean Adams: [57:35] This is abandoned property. And so, you know, you could have found this, David. You missed your opportunity. David Hoffman: [57:42] I'm pretty sure I did find it, actually. Ryan Sean Adams: [57:45] And anyway, he sent them notice. So he dusted all the accounts, sending them some notice. I guess there was some embedded text inside the account. He got no response. He's like, hey, I told you it's abandoned property. I found it. And he got no response. So now he's going to court and saying, therefore, I own these. I own $285 billion worth of Bitcoin. And by the way, given the way the law works, I think the way he's filing this, and they're escalating this under New York law from the New York Police Department to the court system. So there's something there that somebody David Hoffman: [58:23] Needs to decide. The only way that this actually pays off for the individual, assuming Satoshi's wallets are burned, is that quantum comes, the United States, some entity inside the United States gets the Satoshi coins and then this person says, oh, those are my coins because I filed this in the state of New York. I guess if there's like a 0.01% chance to get $100 billion, it's worth the EV. Ryan Sean Adams: [58:50] Yeah. I mean, but like that's also assuming that the court like thinks this is credible at all, right? David Hoffman: [58:56] I mean, I'm factoring that into my 0.01% chance of working. Ryan Sean Adams: [58:59] Then I think it should be less than 0.01% David Hoffman: [59:02] Chance. Ryan Sean Adams: [59:03] I think it should be far less, but crazy that he's actually doing this. We'll have to follow this. Entertaining anyway. David Hoffman: [59:09] Yeah, it is entertaining. All right, Bankless Nation, that is it for the week. Thank you for being with us as we continue our journey west. This is Frontier. It's not for everyone, but it is for us. And we're glad that you're with us on the Bankless Journey. Thanks a lot.