Is Crypto Dead? Fed Crashes Markets. Bored Ape Land Mint. Hop Airdrop. Solana Down.

Red alert, this is an attack on DeFi. I know I'm laughing, but it's also not funny. They are coming for DeFi.

Thankless Nation is the first week of May, and it's Friday morning. So what time is it, David?

It's the Friday Banklets Weekly Roll Up Time, Ryan, where we cover it the entire week of news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere. Nonetheless, Ryan, what happened this week?

Look, man, so much happened this week. Oh, first of all, David, by the way, I'm excited to see you at Permissionless in person. That's coming up really soon. Yes. So we're gonna meet in person for the first time. We'll talk about that later. Yes. Allegedly.

I am a real person okay. I don't know where these rupers came from. But what are we gonna talk about this week? First, we gotta start with the Fed watch. All right, Jerome Powell packed his biggest punch yet, a largest interest rate hike since the year 2000. That had an impact on markets. We'll cover that in the markets section. What else we got, David?

Yeah, speaking of impact on markets, the gas wars this week were absolutely insane. The Board Ape Virtual Land Sale created $166 million of transaction fees, burned an absolute ton of ETH. There's a bunch of fiasco and bunch of drama with that, leading to a brand new ape chain. Question mark?

Oh, I don't know if that's a good idea. We'll have to talk about that. Also, Solana went down again. I don't know if this is the fourth, the fifth time, the sixth time.

Should they convert to banker hours at this point, David?

Down for down for working hours only. Oops.

Yeah, just no Saturday and Sunday hours. We'll talk about that too. What else we got?

A troll is suing pool together for a quarter billion dollars, which is ridiculous. They are put they put $10 into uh into pool together and then immediately filed a class action lawsuit against Pool Together. This person doing this has very strong connections to you guessed it, Elizabeth Warren. So this is a red alert. This is an attack on DeFi. I know I'm laughing, but it's also not funny. They are coming for DeFi. So we all need to get uh up to speed with what the hell is going on with the attack on Pool Together.

Yeah, man, I've lost some money in DeFi. Maybe there's some lawsuits I could drop. We'll talk about that.

But we also have a new airdrop that's coming. I hope you're ready for this. We're not gonna reveal what it is, but be sure to listen to this episode to find out more. What else should they do, David?

Oh, they gotta just like, subscribe, rate, and review, Ryan. If you're watching on YouTube, you gotta click that button so you can go and subscribe. This comes out every Friday, and it's the most high energy way to recap the news in crypto, also the most entertaining. But also if you are listening to this on the podcast, please rate and review the bankless podcast, the number one podcast in crypto, you know it. Uh and we want to make sure that we get to the mainstream and we need those reviews to get that done.

Look at David hyping us up, man. But you know, this is a lot of fun. I enjoy doing this every Friday. This this happens every Friday, guys. So come back for the next Friday and subscribe so you don't miss it.

Fridays happen every week.

Fridays to happen every week. That means we're recording a lot, David. You know what else we're doing? We're doing a lot of experiments in Web3. We uh have this theme on Banklist where you can join crypto and become a self-sovereign employee. You can work for a bunch of DAOs. There's massive opportunities to be sort of a self-sovereign worker, an independent contractor in this new economy. But the thing you're gonna need if you move your cushy, uh move from your cushy corporate job is health insurance. You're gonna need some benefits. You're gonna need someone to manage payroll. Opolis does all of that for you in a box. This is a way to pay yourself in crypto. They handle health insurance, they handle uh dental, they handle medical, they handle all of it. And they'll even pay your payroll in crypto. So you can start receiving your salary in crypto from a DAO. So if you are a DAO employee or want to work for DAOs in the future, you gotta investigate this. This can onboard you into crypto. David, there's uh some benefits here when people sign up, right? Some deadlines and benefits. What are those?

Oh, the Web3 always has benefits, Ryan. If you sign up with Opolis before May 25th, 2022, that is this month, as the end of this month, you get 1,000 work tokens, the native token of Opolis, and 1,000 bank tokens when you sign up and you get your first paycheck paid by Opolis. Basically, it's a collective. It's a big collective, a DAO for getting good healthcare rates, basically de risking the process of becoming a self sovereign worker in Web3. That's why we love Opolis. It's a DAO that services other DAOs.

Guys, you can go check that out. The link in the show notes is bankless.cc slash opulis. Make sure you get that capital O in there. All right, David. Let's get to the markets, man. What are the markets telling us about Bitcoin this week?

They were almost happy, Ryan, but now they're sad. We started the week at $39,700, trying to keep our head above that $40,000 level, which we definitely love, and we just never got there. We are currently down to sif $36,300. Oh wow, it's dumping as we speak. So it was down 6.5% when I wrote this, but it looks like we're down to something like seven or eight percent, down eight percent on the week so far.

It's funny, people thought we were out of the woods. Look, uh, after the Powell speech, you could see that on the charts, right? It's the kind of Powell speech around here on Wednesday, and markets were up after Powell talked. We'll talk about what he said in our Fed watch. But then a day later, bam!

Oof.

We get we we got wrecked. No, there's a big red candle down. Uh

Tried to be bullish, but we just couldn't do it.

same thing happened with ETH. What's the story on Ether this week?

Yeah, Ether started the week at $2,940. Again, the $40,000 is to Bitcoin as $3,000 is to ETH. We tried to climb above $3,000. We couldn't do it. We were uh when I wrote these numbers down, it was $2,700. We are now down to $2,720. So that's about like down 8% on the week. Big sad face. We are setting all time lows on the week as we record right now. So sad face.

Yeah, it's it's it's it's funny. It's like we thought we were out of the woods, happy times after Fed market goes up. And what this looks like to me, I don't know what it looks like to you, David, was is just whale games. The games whales play during crowd uh the dur during crab season when the market doesn't know which direction to go in, and uh suddenly we have a uh a massive uh dumpage right here.

Well, you know what's happening, Ryan? We don't have any links in here, but uh people are getting liquidated this morning, like uh because they on on margin, even though we were at these prices at that on May 1st, and so people aped into a a leverage position like yesterday

Oh yeah,

and then and then got liquidated today.

of course. Yeah, they were they got bullish after the Fed news and the market responded very favorably to that and now they're paying for that the very next day and getting liquidated. That's what's going on. I can't believe people have positions like that. But

Yeah.

what do we know? We don't trade. Uh ETH Bitcoin, the ratio, what's that looking at?

Uh oddly looking good. It was up one percent this week. Um, and so pretty cool. It's actually to uh trending in an upwards direction.

Do you ever look at this in Trading View? The technicals.

Yeah, that whole like meter thing. Yeah, it's basically a weather vein, dude. It just follows like, did it go up recently, then it's a buy. Did it go down recently, then it's a sell. It's a it's a sentiment indication, not like a technical indication.

Isn't that what technicals are though? Just sentiment indication. Is it more than that? Are the triangles more than that? Do they mean

So more than that. And the triangles are more than that. But like it it in the same uh we we recorded a podcast with um uh Jim O'Shaughnessy, and we ba like one of the big TLDRs is that narrative follows price. Uh and so, like, yeah, people are happy about their assets when they go up in price. Like crazy thought.

That's a great episode, by the way. That's coming out Monday and has a whole bunch of tips that Jim relays to us that are super useful in crypto and how not to fall prey to the the the FUD and the FOMO and all the psychological trap traps we can fall in in crypto. How about uh the total market cap of crypto? We up, we down?

Uh we're down if you go to that twenty-four hour tab, we started the w the week at one point nine trillion dollars. We are currently down to one point seven seven trillion dollars, so lost a hundred and thirty billion dollars in crypto market cap this last week.

We lost half an Elon. I think that's the measure. But let's talk about the Fed stuff because that uh is dictating some of the outcomes in the market, at least I think right now. Uh the Fed just raised rates by half a percentage point. So that's 0.5%. That's the biggest interest rate hike in two decades. The goal, of course, is to fight inflation. It's the largest since 2000, as I mentioned. It's the first time since 2006 that the Fed has increased rates in back-to-back meetings. Okay. So they did that. They also uh announced some guidance to the future. So it's not just happening in May, 50% uh 50 uh.5% increase in May. They're also planning another five 0.5% increase in June and also in July. That's what uh Powell's guidance is saying. And then he provides a a bit more guidance as well. But basically, they're they're doing some quantitative tightening. So that means you know that balance sheet that they racked up over COVID and like the last couple decades.

Debt that they've

That's about nine trillion dollars at this point. All right. So they are they're reducing it by 50 billion a month. And they they're planning to do that in June, in July, and August. So you know that's a quarter of the nealon or so. They're gonna reduce their budget by uh and then September and going forward, they're gonna get even more aggressive, and it's probably a a hundred uh billion a month. But you say

nine tr nine trillion dollar debt,

uh yeah,

whatever you said?

Charlie.

And they're reducing it, they're trying to pay it back at fifty billion dollars a month.

Yeah, you gotta do those down payments. You gotta

What does fifty billion dollars do to the face of nine trillion dollars? You know how many months that'll take, Ryan? I just I just did the math because I'm a math because I'm a math wiz. 180 months. That's fifteen years. It's do it fifteen years to pay back the debt.

oh

don't say it's not doable, David. It's doable.

I guess fifteen years. Well I guess it's shorter than the most home mortgages.

Well, well, Powell says we don't want to do things too quickly, and that's part of the thing, uh, because a soft landing is the goal. So what he means by soft landing is basically like uh we're not planning to do this until we totally until we wreck the economy. We just want a soft landing. So we're just not trying to cause a recession here, guys. All right. He said the strong economy can handle these rising rates right now and some of this quantitative tightening. And I guess we see if he's right. But what that also means to me, maybe the market responded with this, is like if there's indications of the R word recession and you know, some blood in the streets, then some of these plans could reverse. Maybe the market's anticipating that.

The story here is there is a needle to thread with can we fight inflation and also not cause a reflect a recession at the same time? And so that is the Fed's drop to thread that needle. Let's raise interest rates to fight inflation, but also let's raise interest rates not too much so that we cause the R word, the recession word. There's a bunch of debate as to whether that hole in that needle even exists, Ryan. So like we actually might just have to be chosen, choose one. Like what do we want, the recession or the inflation? It's like, you know, which which nut do you want to be punched in? Um but but basically uh what what's going on is like, you know, the Fed the Fed is saying, hey, we're gonna raise interest rates this many times throughout the future future. And it's so like, you know, to put this into a visual terms, it's just like imagine it's like, hey, we're gonna punch the market in the stomach seven times. And then the market

And then the market like braces for seven punches. Yeah. And it does that by like selling off. That's what we saw through January through now. Uh but then the Fed is like, oh, we've changed. We're actually gonna punch you guys eight times. Or perhaps they say, Oh, we're gonna only punch you guys six times. And so like the market can brace or unbrace based off of like how many times the the Fed is gonna punch it.

And to be fair, like we're calling these punches, but it's just like I mean they got us drunk first, right? Like the market's totally like drunk. And like here's a tweet. You wanted to talk about this. It says party hardy uh party hardy and then dot dot dot hangover. And what we're looking at, well, why don't you explain what we're looking at here?

Yeah, this is the disposable personal income amount over the last what like fifty, sixty years. And like during the middle of COVID, you see this uh real personal disposable income. It's like

Savings in the bank, right?

Like, yeah, just like personal savings. Like how how much cash you got, your slush fund, your personal slush fund. Yeah. And like it was it like jumped up like four times higher than it has ever been in the last like 50 years as a result of COVID because of the STIME checks, the the uh unemployment income. Uh and so that was like what everyone was talking about. Oh, they're roaring 20s, like everyone's parting, everyone's quitting. We got all this money. Uh and then uh in 2022, when they start to fight that inflation, uh it goes in the complete opposite direction. So now people have less disposable personal income than they've ever had in the last 50 years, as well. So it's just like whiplash. First we got a bunch of money, now everyone's poor. It is it is it is scary. Like people