Crypto's New Normal: Cycles Broken, Memes in Power, and the Cost of Going Mainstream

welcome Bankless Nation to the Bankless Weekly Rollup where we cover everything that's been going on in the wild west of crypto today I'm joined once again by the one and only Ryan Sean Adams ryan welcome back to Banks oh my god what did I miss did I miss anything you missed nothing dude nothing happened don't worry about it okay so my big question going to this episode I was like trying to figure out after coming back so for for people who like don't know I've been on hiatus for 90 there's

probably for 90 days I've been out okay so my big question coming back to this episode and just like getting back into crypto because I've been on a complete like disconnect from almost internet detox yeah and I can talk more about that but my big question David is like okay are we still in a bull market like what is going on here because there's some like I I just don't even know this has broken the cycle in my mind so like what's the consensus around uh around crypto i don't think that there is consensus

and I think that is actually a very big signal about what crypto is now uh dispersion uh differentiation there's different sectors of crypto crypto is large there's different corners and there is no global consensus there is no one single thing about what crypto is uh and I think my opinion is that the four-year cycle is broken uh and so are we in a bull market or are we in a bare market well you can look in different sectors of crypto and have different answers to that uh so there is no one clear answer

okay so like traditionally when we say bull market or bare market we're talking about those four-ear cycles like as you said and now it seems like the consensus is sounds like it's your opinion you share this is it broadly the consensus in crypto that okay we don't get those anymore there's no four-ear cycles we've kind of we're at the adoption curve where just like stuff just happens it's like the regular market in that way and we're not going to have a repeat of like Bitcoin goes up you know like u all all the alts kind of go up and you know this

you know it's either a bull cycle or or like bare market and we just get that i don't know if it's consensus but I think that that is right all right because it's hard to have consensus when there is dispersion like people's voices are all over the place all right well it's interesting um the changing of it's a phase change of crypto there has been a phase change i will say that there's a lot more I want to get caught up with you about because I I think I missed a whole bunch of things so I hope would you just indulge me a little bit in this episode i hope bankless listeners

indulge me is like give me some highlights from the last 90 days as we get into this and like get me up to speed because I feel like there's some major things I may have missed i wasn't in the action at those times yeah and I and maybe it's also worth providing the context about like how like I'm sure you heard about the Trump memecoin yeah uh but like you have been on a media content detox and so it's worth I think laying down the impression of No Ryan has been unplugged maybe you could share how unplugged have you been very so I like the Trump memecoin right that's

something I would have like heard probably within seconds yeah right in my you know uh I caught wind of that a week later from an in real life friend a week after it launched and he asked my opinion on it because he like know knows I'm in crypto what's your opinion I was like oh that happened okay like I I don't usually shooting from the hip on an opinion on that but um I do have an opinion on that actually but like I didn't that's how disconnected I was the president seven days late to the Trump memecoin is incredibly disconnected that's my latency right now so yeah

there's a few things you're going to have to get me up to feed on also like uh some things as I'm getting plugged back in on the week there's some Zora drama these content coins um Bitcoin is decoupling like gold is on a tear that's all interesting and also Vitalic had a execution layer plan for the EVM he's talking about u maybe replacing the EVM with uh risk zero so I definitely want to talk about that with you too yeah that's definitely the the tip of the chain uh so we're going to go through I I have the four biggest things that

happened in the last 90 days and we're going to go through those all right uh and then we'll also get to the tip of the chain which is like some of the events that you just talked about before Bank list Nation we get to all of those things a message from our friends and sponsors over at Wall Connect has been used by over 255 million connections from 40 million unique users all across the internet who are simply just connecting their wallet to the applications that they want to use and Wallet Connect is entering their final form of decentralizing and protocolizing Wallet Connect uh and of course in order to do that they are releasing the last

piece of the puzzle the wallet connect token ryan if you're familiar with like you know you know the story of Visa or Swift messaging networks and how they came to be and how like it's not they they weren't like startup companies uh how would you explain the creation of those two things visa Visa was like a consortium right of all of these different kind of like uh financial like you know payment you like providers and banks and all of these things and so they're they're almost like a collection a consortium that that sort of came together together and they coordinated this consensus layer and they sort of

like just formed that way yeah exactly okay so that is exactly what's happening to the wallet connect infrastructure which I thought was pretty compelling i had a conversation with Pedro Gomez uh that that's available on Twitter so we can link that uh that's exactly what's happening to the wallet connect token and how the wallet connect token and infrastructure is being spun out so if that has you peaked banklist nation banklist.cc/walletconnect tc/walletconnect to stay ahead of what's next uh I think the first news of the week is this article Ryan that you posted uh called How a Rub reboot fixed

my burnout and upgraded my mind this is also your welcome back post to Twitter so welcome back to Twitter yeah sorry to have you back uh on that particular medium of the internet um but again like go and like lay us down on the last like 90 days of Ryan Sean Adams and what you've been thinking about and why you needed to take the break and what it feels like to be back yeah so I guess like firstly in the welcome back to Twitter like I'm going to do things differently this time I think with respect to how I engage with uh an app like Twitter and uh I can kind of get into that but I just posted this it's a

sort of a short post and I think it might resonate with people it's like nothing to do with crypto well it kind of is actually but it is to do with like life and um modern living I would say and doing uh I think it's a post for what I called like grind addicted overachievers which was like I think I don't know you tell me David we've worked together for like 5 years now it's like um that feels like my personality type like I can get in these grind cycles of just like I do the same

thing and I can like like bear the pain to like just get through it and then I also have this problem in in that like the thing that I'm doing I'm not quite satisfied like I get to the place I'm like "Oh but there's another place further out." And like I I higher peak there's always a higher peak for me and so I all of this compounding over time um in January it I I would say it like kind of snuck up on me but like I kind of knew it was happening but I I just

hit a moment in January it was after um Do do you remember our uh like the one Salana token I go like Yeah and uh it was Salana um and there was a whole like public pitchforking u you know actually we did sort of make a mistake on that but but the pitchforking was absolutely crazy and this was like the I don't know the 10th time it had happened and all of this combined I just I didn't have the the

skin thick enough to get through it and something in my mental operating system just crashed like I I just felt done i felt exhausted i felt burnt out it was this question of like when I wake up in the morning why am I doing this like why am I doing this and I think if you're listening and you're asking yourself that question about whatever you're doing in life whether it's like a relationship a job like just anything in life and there's this repeated uh question of like why am I still doing this in your mind then that might be a sign you're like in burnout territory

you've lost track of yourself and you need to do what I did which was take a reboot so um this was really hard for me David cuz like and you were the first person I I talked to about it but um it was really hard for me to come to the realization that I needed to completely disconnect from everything like kill all my commitments like all the pod we we plan podcasts like you know 6 weeks out right cancel all of those at least for me uh you know have you my business partner like take on the mantle of like

carrying all of the load of bank list where where I did nothing for 90 days like no meetings no work nothing um all opportunities that like things we could do possibilities just let those evaporate um that that was the reboot and that was the uh decision I had to make to to come to you talk to you talk to the team and just be like hey I'm going for like 90 days and by the way I can't tell you confidently if I'm going to be back or not all right and I wish I could say that was like um I rationally came to

that conclusion like this is all part of you know a process of just like upgrading and just like figuring my [ __ ] out but it wasn't like that it was it was like capitulation you know it was like I I compared it to being margin called liquidated you like it wasn't on my terms you called it an emotional margin call it was an emotional margin call and I think that that can happen if you're a you know grinding a high achiever that sort of thing can happen to you it's better i I would just say it's better for it to happen on your own terms and not be marginal called but

regardless I was margin called i needed to kind of disconnect and go figure stuff out go answer my question of like why am I doing this mhm yeah i think it's yeah worth emphasizing that there was a moment and it lasted for a while actually maybe even a couple months where you did not know if you were going to come back to crypto yeah to crypto like to bank list i just like I really didn't know and so I set this time aside for myself to go figure it out and um like once I once I

disconnected once I cleared everything I really had just the space to diagnose what was wrong right and so this is where like you reboot and you upgrade right this is the cycle and and I think for for my cycle you know life life happens in these cycles of progress right and um what I needed to do I didn't know I needed to do it but what I needed to do was sort of like end one cycle in order to begin the next and that's what the the reboot did but now the question is like what's the next cycle for me mhm and there were a few problems I had with the way I was doing

things previously in like crypto media investing this crazy world like one was just and some of this is pretty simple it's like not it's not rocket science but um you like that that that's the beauty of it anyone can kind of do these things and and apply them but for me number one I was way too online i was I couldn't go 15 minutes without checking something dude so whether it was like socials whether it was like price chart whether it was Discord whether it was Telegram it was dopamine dripped right into like my veins mhm and

I didn't even realize it i think you've told me before when you've gone on like mountain expeditions and stuff like when you completely disconnect from screens you realize how addicted you actually like were to it mhm um and so like I would find myself just kind of like when I disconnected from these things like I'm talking deleting apps everything like just complete cold turkey I would find myself like reaching for my phone i'd reach more for my phone dude i'd pick it up and I look at my like home screen there's like nothing fun on it anymore and I'd be like I put it down

i'd be like why did I even do that right uh-huh why did I pick up my phone yeah yeah why did I pick up my phone uhhuh so um that was clearly a problem um I just I got rid of that by just treating myself like a child so I went into the you know settings my phone app screen uh restrictions screen time limitations again like deleting things and it it totally it felt like detoxing from something um how long was that process like were you were you irritable how long did that last like what did that

feel like week I felt like jittery i mean it wasn't super irritable but I felt jittery um like a little bit like trying to get off caffeine and that's only like hard substance like you know I've lived a pretty clean life David so it's you know social media and caffeine for me are your are your vices yeah yeah it's it's pretty it was kind of like that but um it probably felt it took like a week and I got the first round of just like clarity just quiet in the mind and then after 30 days like a lot more

of that started to return and I found like I could focus focus i could be present i combined some of this with like you know just like some daily just quiet time like meditation type stuff um and I could think again so that was the first thing I did um the second thing I did was I felt lost like I felt like I didn't again answering that question of like why am I doing this again uh you know like the reason you and I both got into crypto and started on this bankless journey was like the word freedom we

keep returning to that right like freedom like we want to use crypto technology as an escape from all the systems that try to control us right like the banks or um you like the um the the centralized tech companies but somewhere along the road like I found myself a slave to like prices okay i you know crypto prices crypto prices but just kind of the the the

concept of um like wealth do you know what I mean like okay so this is goes back to the goalpost moving we've talked about crypto wealth so many different times on bank list over the years what I had never done before never in my history is actually defined what like enough was mhm like what's the number where like that's enough for everything I want to do in life and my family like wants to do and where I can provide for those that I love and I don't have to

look at the scoreboard anymore mhm and maybe to emphasize this is not coming from a place of of greed or greediness this is coming from a place of you love the game you love the game of like growing a business and playing that particular game investing in the right ways because totally what are you what are you going to do with your life it's a fun game it's an enjoyable game and you love the game yeah so I'm not the type of person like to do sort of the flashy status symbol thing of like you know buying the Lambo and whatever like

that's not Yeah you bought you bought a used Toyota Highlander like four years ago yeah yeah and like so that but it wasn't that for me but it was very much like the high score like the arcade game of like just like um it it was just kind of this endless cycle of you know and crypto prices rise and fall you you you never know like you know some something that starts at like one could turn into a 100 and like you just extrapolate that forward anyway I'd not taken the time to actually define with those in my life my spouse like what is enough okay so that

that was a big piece of it the other piece I was missing was my um definition of wealth was way too narrow it was like when I thought about wealth mostly I thought about like uh net worth right which is definitely a key part of wealth but that's also the part that society um it imposes on us like we're sort of taught like what is success it's net worth it's kind of number go up um a key book for me was uh Sahil Bloom's book which is kind of ironic because we

actually had Sahill I think he was like booked yeah we had him we had him booked for a for just a podcast yeah just talk about it anyway I I received the book in the mail you know because he had uh sent that book as pre-ereading material for the podcast i was like "Okay this is interesting well I'm not doing anything else i may as well read this." It was fantastic it's called the right book at the right time right book at the right time it's called the five types of wealth and it just expanded my framework so he talks about like yeah financial wealth is one type of wealth but there's also like time wealth uh relationships

social wealth uh mental wealth physical wealth and I looked at that and I was like "Oh my god I'm completely overallocated in sort of the the financial side of things." And I'm not like taking care of the other four types of wealth right like I was time poor i was relationship light i was like mentally scattered i was physically like I hadn't worked out in probably a couple of years like at least not consistently so I just felt physically like just soft mhm and I was just focusing on one type

of wealth i was missing all of the other types you know you see yes just like questions about your relationship wealth and your social like who are the people that are going to be at the front row of your funeral right are you investing in those relationships and how are you investing are you dollar cost averaging into them and so that was another key piece for me in sort of finding my new map is creating a wealth plan that was more than just stacking you know Ether Bitcoin like crypto wealth right and

that was broader and it was using money you know Naval often says this money is a tool right and so it's like using as money as a tool to also allocate to those other types of wealth and so like I'm I'm working out now i'm like eating far more nutritiously i'm like uh taking time for that i'm investing in my relationships both like my family immediate family relationships and then um just like friendships that I'd sort of let um atrophy and um I created a

whole plan of around this so it's like one thing to read the book but like what was uh pivotal for me was creating like a dashboard goals habits systems you like feedback loops you know how I work to just like grind it into a discipline right yeah you turned the other four types of wealth into processes for yourself yeah yeah which Ryan loves process let me tell you oh my god yeah yeah well it's I feel like I just need reminders right and so this is like when you have processes and systems when you drift you can just get back on course so that was the second thing and the third thing uh was I felt in everything I was

doing I was being I was stretched too thin like I was doing too many things you know when you have too many browser windows open and Chrome's like that's too much i'm eating all of your system resources crash you know uh you just had too many browser windows you know and so I needed to like it was a result of saying yes to all of these things oh that looks interesting that look I could do that i could do that i could do that and what I needed to do was like correct uh the overachiever's delusion which like for me was like three things it was

like I'm the only one who could do this that's what I thought if I don't do it it won't get done and being busy is good m those three things were like delusions basically I was feeding into myself and it turned out and this really impressed upon me like 30 days in uh everything was working still I just peaked in I had a meeting with you and and Rachel on our team I peaked in our COO I was looking at the the podcast feed all the episode shipped thank you very much David I appreciate it was not missed rollup

wasn't missed we still never miss a rollup at bank list yeah like um ETH price wasn't great but like our control great it's out of our control um like Bankless Ventures was backing deals like everything was happening the team was kind of covering the gap and so I I look at the like what I used to believe and like cuz I thought maybe I thought subconsciously that if I left I don't know the world would burn like I don't know what would happen right things would crumble yeah and this was uh hard evidence that showed me

otherwise so now I'm doing this thing where I'm just like operating on energy accounting mhm which is like if a task drains more than it pays right it's delegated it's automated or it's deleted and I'm deleting a lot of things right now for my life and I'm just focusing on core areas of competence right the zone of genius as people call it storytelling so that means doing this podcast with you telling stories about the frontier of crypto ai is something I've been rabbit holeing recently like all that

stuff and allocating capital so that is the upgrade so there was the reboot uh the system was down had some downtime you know just like Salana sorry uh had some downtime uh no Salana's doing great it's really great to see i can't wait to talk to you more about that and then also I just upgraded the software so that's what RSA 2 is um and um yeah I I don't know i I don't often share personal things like in general like I'm pretty not that way

but um I thought this might be helpful for some people so that's why I published the article yeah no and it's also it's also just good to hear the story um and good to good to see that you have invested in the other side of your life uh I was very happy to see that you followed through on not a single tweet for nine months and like the the gray icon 90 Yeah 90 days excuse me uh and then also the gray icon next to your name you know on just gray for for 90 days and it was good it was good i I've always perceived that you've been way like better balanced than me is that

like Yes uh so you you talked about how um you said uh you now operate on energy accounting if a task drains me more than it pays it's delegated automated or deleted i have operated on that i think maybe maybe as a um not like an admiral quality of me but just like if it drains me more than it pays I ignore it which is which is something I personally have to deal with because like ignoring something is not always the best solution but it has allowed me to be more sustainable like I it's a little

bit more innate in me of like if this is not fun then I'm just not doing this and I'm going to pivot into something that I do find fun and I'm going to apply my my energies that way now again like I said that has cost me um 2021 taxes let me tell you but uh but this has also made like just my being a little bit more sustainable naturally i'm not saying it's the optimum strategy uh but this is why I think uh stuff like this like the Twitter mobbings don't get me in the

same way that they get you yeah i I I think you are much more bomb-proof than me it's like just more endurance runner type quality when when you're that way and I do think that that's the ying and the yang you know sometimes you know sometimes you need a little bit of the grind and the over like what could we do like the overachieving and sometimes you just need the you know like balance uh you know finding energy actually like loving what you're doing and focusing on those things so um yeah that's uh good stuff now you have had some thoughts I think about just like bank lists

you know I read uh your tweet earlier this week as I was logging back in about um your thoughts and on like what to really focus on tell me about that yeah well so maybe this comes down on the back of like your big realization you said you know 30 days powered down proved that you know the the bankless media company would keep on shipping podcasts bankless ventures would keep on going and you know to be clear the shoes of Ryan Shawn Adams are very large and there is no there's no truly filling those shoes but yet you know the with

the void that that was left that was created you know the myelial network did fill that in like we learned to like route around the the the void like that did get filled in it's not perfect but things did keep on going and we learned to fill that gap but also that like we also learned about how to like with that gap there was an opportunity for everyone to kind of like step up and put on the new hats that uh needed to be uh dawned on uh and there's been it's been generative I would say on on the back side of the company uh and especially me

because I'm the person who who has had to fill that void the most and it was also a moment for the company to ask like do we need to do this thing like what what are we doing that we actually might not need to do we have to do things this way uh and so downstream of that has been some choices I put this out uh this tweet uh saying there are four things that um we're going to do at bank list and this is like actually maybe just uh not completely relevant to what I was just saying of filling in the void but you know choices that I think we ought to make moving forward um one

during your last the last 90 days AI has just you know been as as amazing as crypto was in 2021 in terms of hype and attention and I am AIDL i think you have mentioned that you are AI pilled uh we have a uh team member who is AI pled and then also a Jaws who is crypto and AI pilled and so we have actually have found solid podcasting talent that is AI pilled and we actually have a lot of podcasting talent that's AI pled and not just AI pled but frontier techp uh and we have been making more AI content which I think many people have enjoyed

and some people have caused like elevated frustration that like oh my crypto podcast is now an AI podcast or a frontier tech podcast and I understand that so we are creating a new podcast uh a Frontier Tech focused podcast uh that we are going to incubate you're still going to see those podcasts episodes on this feed but we're also going to incubate this new podcast we're calling it um Limitless so we have Bankless Bankless for Crypto Crypto Markets and then Limitless for Frontier Tech uh and so we're going to spin up that podcast vertical so you'll see that as well all

the Frontier Texas stuff is going to go over there also uh the next thing renewed Ethereum focus and the reason why I think this this again has nothing to do with your departure and actually has everything to do with Ethereum to me becoming interesting again whereas the last two years of Ethereum have been often a direction that hasn't felt aligned with what the universe wants or what the universe expects out of and and I and I see Ethereum in the last six months realigning itself to a new future and you know Bankos has always had

Ethereum in our DNA there's no there's no ripping Ethereum out of bankless DNA that just doesn't make sense it's our first love it always will be uh and I think we there's an opportunity now where bankless can actually support Ethereum because I don't think there wasn't supporting much to support about Ethereum in like 2023 it was it needed to al re like how you needed to go and and like realign yourself ethereum Ethereum also needed a reboot why and we are I think we are slowly watching Ethereum reboot in a way that we I think

we can support and so now that that opportunity exists once again uh I think I I want to take it i think we should take it love it um thumbnails this seems small but our thumbnails also need a reboot um and thumbnails like seem like such a small thing um but people judge podcasters YouTubers by what their thumbnails look like um no more stupid openmouth face like kind of YouTuber face we were always pushing against it but the the incentives pointed there and so we're trying to figure out how to

keep on optimizing for click-through rate you know which is what you do when you optimize for thumbnails while also um kind of like restoring uh legitimacy which you know we once had and like the podcast feed does have but we I want to go back into just optimizing for legitimacy and I think this relates to what you are thinking about with like your energy level and how to not deplete your energy level and this means like we're going to optimize for what we feel is legitimacy and legitimate conversations and like uh things that we find interesting uh rather than than

like the dopamine of of click-through rate and then of course the last one is Ryan Tron Adams returns back this week so it's all those things i I think that's really awesome i think that um the two most exciting technologies in my lifetime aside from the internet was just like growing up whatever crypto 2010s into now right that's the story and now AI 2020s and so like to be exploring both of those frontiers is like a pretty rare opportunity if you ever need a guest host on Limitless okay i'm kind I'm kind of I dabble okay i've

been using you know the tools on a daily basis uh learning about Transformers and just like the way all these systems are are structured uh so that'll be really fun i think you will be uh you've been listening to the Josh episodes on Frontier Tech and also the the AI rollups with Jaws and Josh uh Josh and Josh I'm very bullish on as podcasters and when I've stepped in into that role with the AI rollup Josh and David it's actually I'm just I just feel like the Jason Kalcanis and I say that in a

negative way cuz I and I'll leave that there uh but Josh and Jaws are uh very smart uh and I I am very bullish on them as podcasters uh and I think you will definitely enjoy being a part of that conversation cuz I walk away from those podcasts very bullish on AI and very interested in what happens next which is how I felt about crypto in like 2019 well uh Bankless listeners thanks for indulging David and I in a little catch up a little bit of housekeeping we appreciate you after the break you're going to have to fade out to sponsors

David because I don't even know who's sponsoring us anymore but uh you got to update me on some of the big things that happened while I was out because I have so many questions so let's get to that thanks for the station we're going to get to the Trump memecoin the Bitcoin strategic reserve and the Libra debacle but first a message from some of these fantastic sponsors like Uniswap uh that make this show possible unis swap is your gateway to a more efficient DeFi experience with Uniswap swapping and bridging across 13 chains is simple fast and cost effective helping you move value wherever whenever thanks to deep

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