ROLLUP: Buy Signal? | Fusaka Launch | Polymarket Mainstream | Trump’s Fed Chair | SEC Crypto Shift

TRANSCRIPT

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:04] Bankless nation it is the first week of december it's time for the bankless deep weekly roll up david you're back in the saddle man it's so good to have you i've had to do three of these with i'm not gonna with fantastic substitute guests okay not the same as david hoffman but they are fantastic there

David Hoffman:
[0:18] Are fantastic talented podcasters out there that aren't us in in crypto um that's

David Hoffman:
[0:23] right and we found all of them actually.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:25] Yeah but i miss you man you were climbing mountains i saw the the photos looked absolutely incredible. I don't know how you're doing that, but you were telling me that it might be over for you, actually.

David Hoffman:
[0:34] I think I don't need to climb any harder mountains than what I have climbed. That one was particularly hard. And I was exhausted, like four or five hours into it. And I knew that I had more than 12 hours left to go. Yeah. And at that point I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to find something easy to do for 2026. So that's going to be my new year's resolution is do easier things.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:58] Yeah. All right. That sounds good. And you know, I think you reached your max

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:01] level, right? You don't need to level up anymore. You've done all the mountains. Now go focus on something super easy. So I can't wait to hear what that is.

David Hoffman:
[1:08] If anyone has got a good, easy hobby idea for me, let me know.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:12] Knitting. I think you should knit. especially during this bear cycle what else are you gonna do man make a little sweater for your grandma or something is it is

David Hoffman:
[1:21] It a bear cycle is that determined.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:23] I kind of feel like consensus is moving in that direction i have not quite given up hope but i'm it's a green week

David Hoffman:
[1:29] This week it's pretty green.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:29] I want to get your takes on this actually so you're coming at it with fresh eyes maybe you can tell me something i don't know or i haven't seen but we got to talk about bitcoin of course it is cheaper than ever in gold terms you know that because gold is up is that a buy signal It has been in the past.

David Hoffman:
[1:43] Ethereum got its second big upgrade of the year. Fusaka is live. How'd it go? And what does it actually bring to Ethereum? And is Vitalik happy with the progress?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:54] I hope he is.

David Hoffman:
[1:55] Yeah, Vitalik claps. Why is he inviting everyone back to the Ethereum layer one?

David Hoffman:
[2:00] Is the Ethereum layer one ready for more stuff? We're going to talk about that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:04] Also, Polymarket is going mainstream. They were on 60 Minutes, which I feel like is a mainstream moment. It's also Shane, the founder of Polymarket, becomes one of the youngest billionaires ever. They're open to US users now. Also, Kalshi, so the competitor to Polymarket, they became an exclusive partner of CNN. So this is like prediction market season. We'll talk about that because there's also some speed bumps ahead for prediction markets. Aztec token sale, it's live. There's privacy meta going on. We're going to talk about the neat little auction as well associated with that.

David Hoffman:
[2:35] And the SEC is about to roll out an innovation exemption for crypto projects. Why, Ryan, think that's a very big deal. And Donald Trump has pre-announced... We think speculation around the next Fed chair. So which Donald Trump acquiescer is being nominated to the Fed chair. And then lastly, Larry Fink and Brian Armstrong. Best bros. You know, the two male men holding hands emoji. That was Larry Fink and Brian Armstrong this last week.

David Hoffman:
[3:02] But before we get to all of that and more, we have to talk about some of our friends and sponsors over at Ryan. You know why December, one of the many reasons why December is the best month?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:11] Christmas.

David Hoffman:
[3:12] Christmas is one of them. Spotify Wrapped is also definitely one of them.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:16] It's your birthday this month, right?

David Hoffman:
[3:18] That's why December is one of your favorite months, I'm sure. Yeah, that's right.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:22] That's why it's one of my favorite months, see?

David Hoffman:
[3:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's Spotify Wrapped season. I always thoroughly enjoyed the Spotify Wrapped. We currently have the record holder of the bankless listener with the most number of minutes coming in at AVI, A-V-I-I, 10,089 minutes of bankless listened to by AVI in 2025. If you think you can be Avi I want to see your Spotify wrapped if Bankless is in your Spotify wrapped we want to see it it's the one time of the year that we actually get to really connect with the people that truly are committed to like listening to the massive amounts of podcast episodes that we release so we want to see it so tweet it out tweet at us, I'll put a threshold for me personally, Ryan, if I see somebody tweet a bankless podcast listenership of 3,000 minutes. 3,000? I think that's where I'll give them a follow. You think that's worth it? Yeah, because that means that they know what we're about. They know what I care about.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:21] I mean, that's 50 hours though, David. All right. So 10,000 minutes is 160 hours.

David Hoffman:
[4:27] That's about 50 episodes.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:29] Yeah. A little under. I guess that's worthy. 50 episodes. One out of three episodes.

David Hoffman:
[4:35] I will follow anyone who listens to one out of three episodes.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:38] Okay. I actually, I would really love to see your Spotify wrapped.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:41] And particularly, I know you got excellent music choices, but I want to see your podcast choices. Because as the podcast aficionado here, like that's the most interesting part to me. This is my list this year. Do you see this? Dwarkech number one.

David Hoffman:
[4:54] I don't listen to podcasts on Spotify is the problem.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:57] You don't? Why not? No.

David Hoffman:
[4:59] I listen. I'm a boomer. I do Apple podcasts.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:01] Oh my God. Everything I do is on Spotify. So I don't know. Maybe you could project what yours would look like. But Dwarkesh got the number one slot for me. First time ever. Yeah, that.

David Hoffman:
[5:10] Nice.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:10] Bankless premium because I got to catch up on episodes I'm not on. And sometimes I listen to good episodes again. The rest is history. Club. I love these guys. Two British guys. All they do is talk about history. Lex Friedman, of course. And I'm still on Dimitri Kofidis with Hidden Forces. That was my number five. I've got a long tail of like Sam Harris and other things. But yeah, that's my list here. What do you think?

David Hoffman:
[5:32] It's pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. I think the ones that would show up on mine are The Daily, Odd Lots.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:37] Oh, Odd Lots is good.

David Hoffman:
[5:39] Odd Lots is very good. And then Sam Harris probably doesn't make it on the list simply because he doesn't put out too many episodes, but I listen to every single Sam Harris episode.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:48] That's got to count for something.

David Hoffman:
[5:49] And also On the Brink with Castle Island. That would probably be up there for me as well.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:53] Would that be your number one crypto podcast, you would say? Apart from Bankless, On the Brink?

David Hoffman:
[5:57] I never miss a on the brink Friday weekly roundup, which maybe that name sounds eerily close to the Friday weekly rollup.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:06] Who copied who?

David Hoffman:
[6:07] Who copied who? Who came first?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:11] Well, see, we call it a rollup because that's Ethereum centric.

David Hoffman:
[6:15] Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:15] And Nick Carter would never dare to go there. You know, he's got to be a roundup.

David Hoffman:
[6:19] They do a roundup. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:21] Well, let's honor Nick Carter by talking about Bitcoin prices. How are we doing on the week? Up or down?

David Hoffman:
[6:26] We are up 2% on the week. $92,350 is where we currently are. 90K in the 90K range. Not at the highs, but God, feeling way better than the 84,000 that we were at earlier this week. So we really pumped up in the last few days.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:44] November was terrible, David. You missed a lot of November and it was absolutely terrible. So seeing any kind of green on the week actually feels pretty good to me. So I'll take that 2%.

David Hoffman:
[6:53] I'm really bummed that my climbing correlates with green markets track record is broken pretty violently too.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:00] Yeah, it's completely broken. I don't know what happened up in the mountains, but it was not good for crypto prices. Let me tell you, maybe it was good for gold prices. Here is something interesting. Bitcoin is now cheaper relative to gold than at almost any point in the last 15 years. If that sounds confusing to you, it's because this is on a ratio type score. Bitcoin gold ratio just dropped below.

David Hoffman:
[7:20] The US dollar not relevant here.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:22] That's right. Below the statistical floor of a 15-year power law model, something that's only happened once before late 2017. So you take the Bitcoin gold ratio and you power lot, because I guess we can do that because Bitcoin is appreciated so much faster than gold recently. You get kind of this correlation. You back test it, you get this correlation. The only time it's below the gray area here, the very bottom, was a brief period of time in 2017. And then it's kind of caught up. So, relative to gold, Bitcoin, from a power law perspective, might be looking cheap. And there could be some catch up here. People are saying the reasons, this is an analyst take actually, Mark Conner at Credit Suisse, formerly Credit Suisse I should say, say the reason gold is doing well and Bitcoin is not is just because of institutional preference. I would summarize this and I would say it's too early. Like the central banks and the major asset allocators, the big sovereign wealth funds, they still prefer gold for that store of value, you know, like fiat hedge versus Bitcoin. That's certainly true of China's central bank and everything that PBOC is doing lately. So that's just where we're on the cycle. I mean, Bitcoin is still a newcomer, what, 15, 16 years old? And gold is catching the bid right now for that debasement trade. Thank you.

David Hoffman:
[8:46] It's no coincidence that I think Bitcoin or gold has appreciated relative to Bitcoin over the last two and a half years during the time of higher interest rates, like lower interest rates would definitely benefit Bitcoin. And also this is a also I'll also say that's a symptom of Bitcoin's maturity. Just like eventually Bitcoin is going to stop just absolutely crushing gold year after year after year after year. And so, you know, gold's got to get get one win every now and then.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:14] Yeah, I guess you're saying like this may not hold, right? This kind of curve up, this power lock curve up may not hold completely.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:21] But it does feel like Bitcoin has some catch up to do for gold. For sure, I would agree. It will catch up at some point. Tell me about ETH price.

David Hoffman:
[9:28] ETH are $3,200 up 6% on the week.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:32] 6%. Okay, that's not too bad. I think now during these dark times, people ask themselves questions like, hey, what should Bitcoin be worth? And hey, what should ETH be worth? There's this website that came out called ethval.com, which I actually really appreciate because it has all of the different ways that people have used metrics and numbers and fundamentals, let's call it, to value ETH. It's all on one single dashboard. So if you are TradFi brained and you like discounted cash flow for measuring ETH, you can see that price to sales ratio has all that stuff. Then it also has the crypto native metrics. Like if you take a TVL multiple, all of the value, all the assets on chain, and you do that as a multiple, you get a different ETH price. Anyway, it's a composite of all of these different things. And if you add them all together, the fair value of ETH is actually 5K, not 3,000, David. So it's undervalued at this point. And you can sort and change these numbers at a whim. Maybe you don't believe in price to sales ratio like me or revenue yields. And then the price goes up to $6,200.

David Hoffman:
[10:42] I think you do believe in them, but you just don't believe in them as a main character or they're much more marginal.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:49] I think they're much more marginal. And actually, I would say I don't really believe in them. No, I'm like more of an atheist when it comes to a price to sales ratio for valuing store value assets like gold or Bitcoin.

David Hoffman:
[11:01] Do you believe in the triple point asset?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:03] I believe in the triple point asset. Yes.

David Hoffman:
[11:05] Which has capital asset, a revenue dividend paying angle as a component.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:11] That's a little bit of my staking, though. That's my staking rewards here. That's that 2% annual. It's not. Yeah, that's right. It doesn't have to be the fee revenue, basically.

David Hoffman:
[11:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:22] It's more characterized by, what are these? Staking scarcity? That's a metric that's used here. Actually, did you catch that debate with Santee and Hasib?

David Hoffman:
[11:32] I know it's out there. I'm going to go listen to it after this. Okay.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:35] Well, Santee's perspective is that Ethereum is super overvalued because he's like, hey, it's 300 price to sales ratio. And Amazon at its peak was 28 price to sales ratio. And so like, that's crazy. It can't be. And I'm like, don't use price to sales ratio.

David Hoffman:
[11:52] I saw a funny tweet. I was like, yo, this guy had like a week to prepare and he just goes with a price to sale.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:59] I mean, here's a fundamental reason besides the store of value thing. I don't like price to sales for assets like Ether. I don't like it for Bitcoin. By the way, if you did Bitcoin price to sales, it's about 17K. Very bearish. All right. Very bearish. And that's why you don't do it. It's silly. It doesn't explain how the market is actually valuing it. But the reason I think is because of something we saw even this week with the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade. We got a lot more blocks, a lot more block space and fee revenue compressed. So we got scale and the sales goes down with scale, right? Are you telling me if you believe in price to sales ratio is the one true way to value ETH, you're telling me that as Ethereum scales, you get more bearish because sales goes down?

David Hoffman:
[12:40] What we should do is we should make blocks so small that you can only put three transactions per block and price to sales would go through the roof.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:49] A million dollars per block. We could get that. We could get that for like three years until everyone moved off of Ethereum, right?

David Hoffman:
[12:55] Right. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:56] Anyway, that's why it's an indicator. It's helpful, but it can't be the only metric. Certainly not the primary metric that I use. David, tell us about the total crypto market cap. Where are we?

David Hoffman:
[13:07] Three and one quarter trillion dollars. I was looking at it like three or four days ago, and it was threatening to go below three, which I really don't like. If I saw a two-handle in front of the trillion dollar total crypto market cap number, that'd be a sad day. But that is not this day. We're at 3.25 trillion, which still wants to be higher. What's the top? 4.25 or something? We're a trillion dollars off.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:31] You don't think we're in a bear market. I can tell by the way you're saying. I think we are heading towards twos. The weight of probability to me is we're heading towards the twos before we hit the fours and the fives.

David Hoffman:
[13:43] Unfortunately.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:43] You don't want to believe this?

David Hoffman:
[13:44] I think we could be in twos for a briefer moment of time.

David Hoffman:
[13:51] Yeah, no, I'm not saying we're in a bear market. You're not calling the wincer here? I think we could grind lower, but like nothing I don't think anything is going to blow up there's no career's capital there's no FTX yeah so I think we could grind potentially down for like a quarter and people just get really like bored but I don't think there's going to be blood I don't think there's going to be blood so.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:16] A muted dip not kind of a crypto winter that we've seen in cycles past is what you think correct

David Hoffman:
[14:22] I do not think I think that if you're going into winter it's going to be a very mellow one.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:27] How about how much of your faith in that is based on the Fed? So Trump hinted this week that there would be a new Fed chair. I don't know so much as he hinted as he basically flat out kind of said it, you know, Trump fashion. The guy's name is Kevin Hassett. He is the leading candidate to replace Jerome Powell when Powell's term ends in May. And he added, he said, thank you, Kevin. Let's see. This is Polymarket. Odds of Kevin Hassett. Actually, he dipped a little bit. They're at about 70% right now, but they were above 85% earlier this week, but the clear leading candidate to replace Fed Chair Powell. What do we know about this guy?

David Hoffman:
[15:07] Not too much. He's pro-growth, strongly dovish. What we do know about Donald Trump is that he gets who he wants. He very clearly wants stuff, whether he's finding a judge to do his litigation or appointing a Fed chair. He wants certain outcomes.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:27] Litigation. Wow. Yes. He's the outcomes driven guy. Yes.

David Hoffman:
[15:30] He's an outcomes driven guy. And so, so he will find some candidate who is like, I'll give you what you want. And then Donald Trump appoints that person to do his job. And that's what I see here. And so what does Donald Trump want? He wants rate cuts. So who is Kevin Hassett? Kevin Hassett. The rate cut guy. He's the rate cut guy. He's Brady McRate cut, man. Yeah, he is. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisors in Trump's first term. He now directs the National Economic Council in the White House. Widely regarded as crypto-friendly. Wow, disclose a seven-figure stake in Coinbase. What? Yeah, wow. That's wild. Me and Ryan are reading our notes for the first time. And it has been one of the key figures shaping Trump's digital asset strategy.

David Hoffman:
[16:13] So pro-crypto guy who wants to cut rates. He's one of us.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:17] So my question is, did that factor into your decision to be bullish, basically? No. If rate cut guy's coming?

David Hoffman:
[16:25] I wasn't really thinking about that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:26] Some people think this means easy money. And what does easy money mean? It means risk on assets, means prices go up. That might not be the case this time, okay? This is Michael Nadeau. He wrote a blog post earlier this week, and he said, not so fast, what you have to look at is this right here. Did you catch that Michael Howell episode where he talked about the global liquidity index, right?

David Hoffman:
[16:44] Yes. This is my Bible now. I listened to the first half, yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:46] I don't care what the Fed's doing. Okay, I'm looking at the GLI. This is the GLI. And you see that dip there? That's the GLI. Michael Nadeau gives kind of the reason for this. And it's basically that fiscal spending is down. So the deficit is actually down on the year. Does that surprise you at all? Like we have more tariff income and government spending is down a little bit. So we're kind of down versus before. This has an effect.

David Hoffman:
[17:12] Oh, is that what Donald Trump promised?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:15] I guess he kind of did. I mean, it's not down that much. So don't get so excited. Anyway, so less spending, less liquidity. You got to look at the GLI. It doesn't, it's just not as simple to say dovish fed means money printing and this is, you know, it does lead to more bank lending, but that might not be enough to impact global liquidity.

David Hoffman:
[17:36] Yeah. Yeah. The negative catalyst that no one really ever expected is that the government actually decided to spend less money and tax more and save more.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:45] They're probably only doing that for a little while.

David Hoffman:
[17:47] You can't do that for very long.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:49] Do you see strategy? So strategy has been struggling with MNAV recently. And if you recall, strategy has some debt. So Michael Saylor has some debt. He, of course, buys Bitcoin at the market sales, right? But a lot of, like a portion of his Bitcoin is actually funded by like pretty reasonable debt, not crazy amounts of risk in the debt. But with debt, that means he has to pay interest, okay? So he has to pay interest on that debt. denominated in dollars. And if price of Bitcoin goes down, you still have the interest payment. Where does he get the money? Where does he get the money to pay?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:27] So maybe he has to sell his Bitcoin? Ah, not so fast. This is Michael Saylor's strategy to not sell the Bitcoin. He sold more of the stock, sold more of strategy in order to squirrel away, not this time Bitcoin, but dollars. So he could pay his interest payments for the next 12 months or so. That's the headline here.

David Hoffman:
[18:48] 18 to 21 months. Oh, even longer. Dividends and interest raised from $1.4 billion of Class A common shares, the MicroStrategy stock, just sold into the market. Which, finally, I think we're actually seeing some rationality show up in the MicroStrategy chart. If you want to pull over the chart, it looks not great. But also, I think people are just taking out the massive premium because people are realizing that MSTR is... Being cucked by Bitcoin. So Michael's strategy, Michael, Michael's strategy, Michael Saylor just infinitely prints the equity so he can fund the debt, fund the interest payments, fund the dividends required so he can buy more Bitcoin. And now, finally, two years later, MSCR holders are kind of realizing it's like, oh, wait, we're the liquidity here. Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:41] Yeah, it'll go back up in time, but not during a bear market, right? By the way, this is every debt strategy. It's not just, Michael Saylor's strategy.

David Hoffman:
[19:49] If Michael Saylor has to be doing some of this stuff, which is like bolstering up his defenses, you know that every other dad is under a lot more pressure. I think it's like if MicroStrategy sees this, then everyone else catches a cold.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:01] I think that is true. But also I will say, strategy has more debt than any of these other entities. So they've got interest payments to make, but they also have the brand name.

David Hoffman:
[20:11] They also have more Bitcoin than everyone.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:13] Let's talk a little bit about Larry Fink. I feel like he is proving that he is no tourist to crypto, David. So I read this article in The Economist that he wrote, Larry Fink. So you have BlackRock. Basically, tokenization could transform finance. This is in The Economist. I cannot imagine a more mainstream financial publication than The Economist and a more mainstream bellwether financial guy than Larry Fink writing an article. I want to read you a section of this. He said, if history is any guide, tokenization today is roughly where the internet was in 1996 when Amazon had just sold 16 million worth of books. And three of the rest of today's MAG7 tech giants hadn't even been founded. Tokenization could advance at the pace of the internet faster than most expect with enormous growth over the coming decades. He is all in on tokenization. He wrote this whole love story article about tokenization, and this is even when prices are down. I think he's pretty serious about it.

David Hoffman:
[21:11] When I read this article, I felt like I was a boomer being read to by Larry Fink, being like, Larry Fink is like looking at me in my eyes and he puts his hand on my shoulder.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:25] Oh my God, you saw that?

David Hoffman:
[21:27] Tokenization, my fellow boomer, tokenization is a real thing. And we are now bullish on blockchain technology. It's okay to be bullish on blockchain technology now. Wow. I've got this. So something else he said, he envisions a future where investors use a single digital wallet to buy, sell, and hold all types of all assets from equities and debt to real estate facilitated by programmable digital ledgers, a single wallet. That's pretty cool. Wow. When Larry Fink says this, this is just the shot across the bow of all boomers. It's like boomers. It's okay. We are now bullish blockchain.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:08] So the Larry Fink romance with Brian Armstrong, I think continues or maybe heats up. This is a picture of the two of them together. So they were at a meeting as well.

David Hoffman:
[22:19] Somebody put the two men holding hands emoji on the screen.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:23] Brian Armstrong and Larry Fink here. Actually, Andrew Sorkin, Ross Sorkin, interviewed both of them and asked Larry Fink about changing his mind in crypto. Let's play the clip. Called crypto an index for money laundering. BlackRock. And thieves. And thieves. Yes. Money laundering and thieves. Right. You now have the biggest Bitcoin ETF. So, what happened here? I have very strong views. But that doesn't mean I'm not wrong. But by having strong views, you have to test yourself and ask yourself. And, you know, in my role, I see, you know, thousands of clients a year. I have, you know, governmental leaders. And we have these conversations that my thought process always evolves. And this is a very glaring public example of a big shift in my opinion. Look, that's great. And what a signal. If Larry Fink can admit he's wrong, you can also admit you're wrong about Bitcoin as well. For any TradFi listeners that are still holding out here, okay? It's okay now to admit you're wrong. It's okay.

David Hoffman:
[23:34] Now, okay, so the one take, the positive take, the optimistic take is like, oh, Larry Fink just changed his mind. It took him a while, you know? He's older, so it takes him a little bit longer. Or he just had a product to sell. and it was all about money and it's just like finally found a way to charge fees on it and that's what changed his mind. You know what really does a good job changing people's mind?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:57] What's that? Yeah. Well, both can be true, David. I think both things can be true a little bit. Not just Larry Fink though. Other institutions too. As well. Who else?

David Hoffman:
[24:06] Both Bank of America and Charles Schwab are just leaning into Bitcoin more and more and more.

David Hoffman:
[24:10] Bank of America now lets its wealth advisors recommend up to 4%. Recommend 4% of a Bitcoin allocation. And then Charles Schwab says it will offer Bitcoin and Ethereum trading in early 2026. I wonder if they're going to use the whole Coinbase whitelisting program. You know how this works? This is what Coinbase is trying to do is like, instead of brokerages like Charles Schwab doing like live trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum on their exchange or through them, they just pipe into Coinbase.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:42] Oh, you mean white labeling?

David Hoffman:
[24:43] White labeling, exactly. Exactly. Maybe that's what's going on. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. So this is part of, I remember when you talked to Matt from Bitwise and he said, He was like, oh, the Bitcoin ETF is just going to age like fine wine because now that we have it launched, that's great. But it's going to just take a while for people to get comfortable with it. And it's just a slow opening of the pipes between boomer capital. I know I'm not supposed to use the word boomer.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:09] Just like disciplined older capital with like a dollar cost average in that's not as volatile. That's the argument, right?

David Hoffman:
[25:16] Yeah. And to me, this is more evidence as to why stuff like the four-year cycle is dead and also why I kind of see we're going to have a muted bear market is because globally, everywhere across Trodfi, the pipes are just widening and capital is slowly trickling in. And so, you know, while we had just a complete evaporation of liquidity in 2022 and 2023, that's not what we have today. We have an increasingly slow grind upwards of legitimacy and acceptance and capital allocation from larger and larger pools of money.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:47] I see that take. Like, the only thing I'll say to that is every four-year cycle, we always say the four-year cycle is dead. Every time this has happened, we've said this.

David Hoffman:
[25:59] Do we?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:59] Last time it was super cycle. The time before that, everyone was like, oh, my God, crypto is changing the world. ICOs, whatever. It's going to change everything. Every time we have some variation of this, I kind of think that my take is. The cycle holds, but it's going to be shallower. It's going to be a shallow bear market. And I guess maybe you could start to say that's sort of super cycle-esque and the cycles have changed.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:22] But to me, it's just like a sell-off. It's just a more shallow sell-off and then things resume. But we'll have to see how this plays out. David, a few things coming up. Polymarket has launched their mobile app. They're now accepting US customers. Call sheet in trouble in the courts? I want to find out why you're a little bullish on this. Also, Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade. It's now Live, what's next? And why does Vitalik want all the apps to come back to layer one? I shouldn't say all of them,

David Hoffman:
[26:46] But at least some of them. Did he say that?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:47] Something like this. I'm paraphrasing.

David Hoffman:
[26:49] That's what Vitalik said.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:50] We'll get into all this and more. But before we do, I want to thank the

David Hoffman:
[26:52] Long awaited arrival of Polymarket inside of the United States, along with a mobile app, because I know many of you crypto listeners, crypto participants probably do stuff on desktop because that's how we do it. Most people are on their phones. So Polymarket is now opening up to the United States with their mobile wallet. It already ranks as number four in the U.S. App Store's sports category. And the Polymarket, will Polymarket U.S. go live in 2025 is currently at a 99% chance. It hasn't resolved, but I think that just means that this is basically done.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:25] In the process of about to resolve.

David Hoffman:
[27:27] How did this happen? How did Polymarket speed run the U.S. entry after the regime changed? It actually takes quite a while to get clearances and certifications and approval to trade in the United States. Well, they just bought a couple exchanges. They bought QCX LLC and QC Clearing for $112 million. So they just bought the licenses that they needed in order to make this work. And that acquisition expedited CFTC authorization just for months. So that's how they are live so fast.

David Hoffman:
[27:59] Last month, Polymarket hit a record $4.3 billion in spot trading volume. Kalshi, just for comparison, recorded $5.8 billion over the same period and briefly topped the App Store's free sports category. So Polymarket and Kalshi have just been neck and neck in volumes, largely driven by sports, as I understand it. I need to probably check on this take, but I think Kalshi is more sports than Polymarket. Polymarket has a lot more elections.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:27] That was more true the last time we checked, I think, yes.

David Hoffman:
[28:30] Yeah. And I think the reason why is because CallShea is just the back end to Robinhood. And then Robinhood has just like dominant US retail, which are very aligned with sports stuff. But nonetheless, Polymarket Sports is also very.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:43] Very large as well. And also notable that Coinbase has not made a move in prediction markets yet yet. But there's a December 17th announcement.

David Hoffman:
[28:50] What do you mean by that, Ryan?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:52] I know nothing. I'm just connecting some dots here.

David Hoffman:
[28:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, what's pretty cool here, the nice thing about Kalshi and Plymark is we just really have, they're increasingly apples and apples. They used to be decently apples to oranges, both prediction markets, but Kalshi was inside the United States. Plymark was like this tether outside the United States, but there's increasingly convergence over the same thing. One of those two things is youngest billionaires ever. So Shane, 27 years old, is now considered the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Granted, all of that wealth is tied up in the company equity that's valued after the ICE investment in $9 billion. But he's not the only one. Luana Lopez Lara, 29-year-old, is the co-founder of Kalshi, world's youngest self-made female billionaire. Wow. After Kalshi's recent funding round that purchased Kalshi's valuation up to $11 billion.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:49] I swear, whenever you see one of them in the news, the other one's got a one-up. The other, they're always like neck and neck, no matter what.

David Hoffman:
[29:55] Yeah, so Kalshi has the youngest female billionaire. Shane is the youngest, got 27. So nonetheless, the tale of two cities continues.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:05] Yeah, Shane did secure an interview on 60 Minutes, which Kalshi has not yet. So that aired last Sunday. I was actually out with my family.

David Hoffman:
[30:13] Edge to Paulie Market for the 60 Minutes interview.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:16] I was out with my family. And then I just like, I look at the TV. There was a TV playing. And it's like, oh, pop Shane Copeland. I'm like, oh, my God, I know that guy. Like, what? It's crazy. Anyway, so it was a good interview, I think. People are starting to understand. This is the mainstream moment for prediction markets, I feel like. But Kalshi also executed a deal with CNN. So Kalshi and CNN, they're kind of integrating.

David Hoffman:
[30:40] I don't know what these deal partnership things are. Both Polymarket and Kalshi are partners with everybody under the sun right now. I don't even know what that means.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:48] Yeah. But I really enjoyed seeing Shane. I'll paraphrase a little bit from the interview. He was explaining how prediction markets work to the interviewer. He said, you make money if you're right. You lose money if you're wrong. And as a result, it creates this information that's really useful for people. The percentages next to the questions are the odds determined by other bets that have already been made as more people wager and news breaks the odds change I feel like it's pretty simple to understand and it's highly visual as well now he was also asked about taking Trump Jr. On the board of Polymarket Here's what he said.

David Hoffman:
[31:21] Three months ago, Copeland named Donald Trump Jr. already an advisor to Calci, to Polymarket's advisory board. And Trump Jr.'s 1789 capital fund invested around $10 million in the company. I think there's going to be people watching who think that you put the president's son on your advisory board to get influence, to be able to protect yourself.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:42] So it's definitely not to protect myself. I mean, look, like they invested, right? We're in this admin. And this admin is very pro-innovation and pro-crypto and pro-poly market, which is amazing. The admin administration.

David Hoffman:
[31:52] Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:53] And, you know, I need help navigating that, right? I'm a young entrepreneur. If I have people who believe in what I do, who understand how politics works and can help guide me and teach me, you know, there's nothing wrong about that. There you go. That's what he said. Not to protect himself. It's because Donald Trump Jr. Is super, I mean, it's useful as an investor, all these things. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[32:14] When I, I am not media trained, nor will I ever be. But if I was in that seat, I'd be like, what do you expect, dude? They invaded my home with a battering ram. What do you mean? Of course I need protection. They were coming after me, bro. What do you expect? For real.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:31] Yeah, that's something along the lines of what I would have said as well.

David Hoffman:
[32:35] There was actually that part where in the middle part of the interview, they asked him about like getting, so you were raided by the FBI. So they came knocking at your door. Yeah. And he goes, yeah, with a battering ram. He said that dude the thing that I really liked about this interview the most maybe I'm biased and, Like you, I know Shane just from being around crypto. I found him very relatable.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:59] Very personal.

David Hoffman:
[33:00] Very personable. Authentic. Just a guy on 60 Minutes, a kid who had a belief. Did you see the email that he wrote to the SEC when he was like a junior or senior in high school that he tweeted out about? No, I missed this. Yeah, he tweeted out a picture of an email he wrote at the SEC. It starts off with, Hi, I'm Shane Copeland. I'm a senior at some high school in America. Can't remember what it was. I am building an exchange that I think I will need to register. Can we chat? And he's in high school, bro. He's in high school, right in the SEC.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:34] More naive days, huh? No, they're going to use that against you, Shane. Okay? Gary's going to take that email and then use it against you in court. I don't think it's over yet in terms of regulatory pushback or government pushback or incumbent pushback for prediction markets. In fact, we've seen some of this with some of the lawsuits coming down the pike for Kalshi. This is one. They were hit by a nationwide class action lawsuit. This is Kalshi for operating an illegal betting platform. What's happening here?

David Hoffman:
[34:04] Yeah, so a federal class action lawsuit in New York that alleges that their event contracts for sports are actually illegal online sports bets. Two, customers are wagering against Kalshi rather than against other users, contrary to how the platform is marketed and that culture has an unfair market advantage. I might be just, what's the word, biased here, but whenever I see a class action lawsuit against someone in crypto, I just have flashbacks to the class action lawsuit against PoolTogether and Leighton Cusack, and it was just completely frivolous and dumb. And class action lawyers can be like ambulance chasers who just, you see like, oh, there are 3 million people. I can win 50 cents for, because they were harmed by 50 cents worth of harm and out of pocket $15 million of legal fees. So that's my kind of like initial reaction whenever I see class action lawsuit. Maybe there's something here. The reason why I'm bullish about this, you said, why is David bullish about it?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:03] Yeah, why are you bullish?

David Hoffman:
[35:04] Kalshi gets the opportunity to just like put this to rest. Yeah, and then hopefully set some like court precedent. So the core allegations is that they are duping their customers, that it's an illegal sports betting versus financial derivatives, and that Callsheet has an unfair market advantage because they think they're trading against their own customers. If Callsheet's trading against their own customers, that's terrible. And I would hope that a lawsuit would discover that. If they're not, then we get to know that and always just put that to rest.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:35] You know, without seeing the core, of course, it feels like it could be frivolous. I'll tell you the bigger threat, though, that I see, David, from the regulatory front is actually states fighting against this. So prediction markets right now, they're regulated under the CFTC. So it's all federal, right? So all states, you know, it's a CFTC thing. It's not a state thing. Some of the states are saying, hey, no, this is sports betting, legal sports betting. One of the states to put them on notice was Nevada. Of course, what does Nevada have? Vegas odds, Vegas sports betting. A federal judge in Nevada said it fought an injunction against Kalshi for breach

Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:10] of gaming law. And there's other states that have done this too. Massachusetts and New York and Maryland and Ohio, they have their AGs going after Kalshi. So it's not just these civil court cases. It's also the states that have something to lose. And what do they lose? They lose some tax revenue from gaming licenses and kind of gaming proceeds. And then also they lose some control. And I don't think they'll give this out without a fight. So prediction markets versus the regulators, round two, I think.

David Hoffman:
[36:41] Yes, this is a necessary, like we just have to go through this as an industry. We have to push through this part of just courts and regulation around prediction markets and we'll be better for it. It's just going to be a natural process. And so you do have to tip your hat to Kulji, who seems to be going and fighting some of these big fights.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:00] Ethereum's second hard fork of the year, the Fusaka upgrade, just went live. Anthony and I discussed all of the features last week, so we don't need to reiterate them. But it went live without a hitch.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:11] Without a hitch, David. The second one of the year. That's not true. Well, there was a minor hitch.

David Hoffman:
[37:16] Oh, tell me about the minor hitch. We lost 26% of the network, dude. That was a huge speed bump.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:22] I guess there was a hitch. Actually, do you want to start there?

David Hoffman:
[37:25] So what happened? Prism, one of the consensus clients in Ethereum, had a bug which lost 26% of the network. Thankfully, Ethereum has a multi-client architecture. So the rest of the clients held Ethereum up well, the Prism team fixed the Prism bug and got their portion of the network back online. This is just how awesome. So multi-client design is just so beautiful and elegant. So that's already in the rear view mirror. Would have been way worse if there were two bugs, but there weren't. And so that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:56] Was the one to pick up. It would have been worse, but not that bad. Okay, so I want to describe what this would have disrupted. It wouldn't have disrupted block production. It just would have disrupted finalization, finality. So if Lighthouse went down just 48%, blocks would still come, but finality would stop after about 15 minutes and the chain would enter this like slow recovery type mode until it came back. Actually, Vitalik says like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with losing finalization once in a while, in my opinion, he says. And yeah, I don't think that's code, but I think that's true in the design of Ethereum.

David Hoffman:
[38:33] Yeah, the way that I would say this is like, Like this is Ethereum, unlike every other blockchain, has redundancy. And so when Ethereum is not finalizing, it kind of just resolves back down to like what most other blockchains are, which is just only one layer of defense. And so Ethereum's multi-client architecture with finalization across clients is an extra layer of defense that no other blockchain has. And so when it's not finalizing, it's kind of just like what other blockchains are, which is totally fine.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:03] So without a hitch, right? There was no hitches.

David Hoffman:
[39:05] It just kept producing blocks. Because the multi-client architecture designed for this. So if you weren't listening to last week's episode, I'm going to talk about the two main things that came with Fusaka. PeerDAS. PeerDAS is the big thing here. That is sharding. Ethereum has always been talking about sharding since 2017. Like Vitalik and others said like, oh, we're going to scale the blockchain with sharding. Databases, that's how you scale a database. You shard it into multiple redundant copies, and that's how you scale.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:32] Does that word still make you laugh, by the way? Are you okay?

David Hoffman:
[39:35] No, only when you make me laugh, bro.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:37] Go ahead, go ahead, continue.

David Hoffman:
[39:39] And so originally we were going to do execution sharding and that plan got pivoted into data availability sharding. Data availability is blobs. Blobs are what layer twos use to post their transactions on the layer one. And now that we have PeerDAS, which is sharding, data availability sharding, we have eight times more blobs. We sharded the blobs. We're sharding blobs left and right.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:01] I am sharding myself just thinking about how great this is. Okay, so this is sharding, you're right. Vitalik says, Pirdas in Fusaka is significant because it literally is sharding, he said. It was not full sharding then, though, okay? Because we're just sharding the data availability. He continues, if we want to scale to benefit the Ethereum L1 as well, the full vision of sharding from 2017, we need to get to ZKEVMs. That's the next unlock.

David Hoffman:
[40:31] Unprocessed, yeah. Yeah, listen to Michael Dong's talk from the Bankle Summit about that. Pretty cool to have 8x more blocks on Layer 2. The Layer 1 did also get an upgrade. Got a little bump. Default block capacity went from $45 million to $60 million, which is a 25% increase in Layer 1 throughput, which is great.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:49] David, that's the reason why, I don't know if you've seen this, but look at the L1, like the gas prices. Have you seen gas prices this low?

David Hoffman:
[40:57] Layer 1 has been cheap for a while. I've never looked at an Ethereum transaction gas fee forever.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:02] Under 1 cent. Yeah. Under 1 cent.

David Hoffman:
[41:04] Yeah. Ethereum's been free for a long time.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:06] This is what I was saying earlier of the Vitalik tweet. You could just build on L1.

David Hoffman:
[41:12] Mm-hmm.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:13] That's what he said.

David Hoffman:
[41:15] I don't think we're quite there yet. Yeah. Fees are low, but this has been one of the rumblings that has happened since Fusaka. Like, we have quite a lot at scale now.

David Hoffman:
[41:27] We have more slack in the system than what apps are currently using.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:32] Well, yeah, so what's your, it's like, okay, one thing I would say is you can build on L1, you can just build on L1, asterisks. Okay, asterisks. Unless you're doing something like a high-volume purpose exchange, unless you're trying to do, like, lighter. Okay, go build that in an L2. But the difference now is there is a plan that is like a roadmap towards scaling the L1 pretty aggressively. Like, I do think 2x, 3x next year is totally possible. And I do think within three years, we might have fully sharded ZK EVMs. So why not just build on the L1? Yeah, get ahead of it.

David Hoffman:
[42:08] Yeah, get ahead of it. And in addition to all of that, like I have definitely seen some consensus around the Ethereum Foundation that faster block times are a priority.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:18] Yeah, you like this. You think this is important.

David Hoffman:
[42:20] I really like this. I really like this. So this is a tweet inception. So I'm just going to run through all the tweets. Mark Twineway from Optimism says, as a reply to Vitalik, my hypothesis is that the long transaction confirmation time is the biggest bottleneck for increasing layer one usage. Hayden Adams from Uniswap says, this is very clearly the case. Don't even need to frame it as a hypothetical. If we want to increase layer one usage, lower the block times. And I'm like, hell yeah, I love this. But then Tony, Tony Worcester, who was it, of the Ethereum, at the Ethereum Foundation, says, and retweets Hayden Adams, and says, six second slots, which is 50% faster, twice as fast, because we currently have 12 seconds, are fully specced, prototyped in Geth and Prism, and ready to ship next year. Easily one of the most impactful upgrades we can deliver in the Hecta Bogota forks, which are the incoming hard forks that will happen next year. And then he replies to someone who says, will three or six second block speeds really change anything? And he goes, yes. Three seconds is vastly better than six seconds and we shouldn't stop there. We should keep pushing inclusion times down, not cap our ambition. The if we never reach X, Y, try mindset is exactly what holds progress back and exactly the same reason why we never scaled a layer wide. Let's fucking go. I was so pumped to come back to my mountains. I saw this.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:38] I think it's less, I think it is block times for you, but it's less that it's more like builder momentum. It's more like ambition, right? It's more like the fact that Ethereum just shipped two hard forks this year. First time, I think they've done that. It almost feels like a promises made, promises kept type of thing for the EF and Ethereum. Like the momentum for building is back again for the Ethereum protocol.

David Hoffman:
[43:59] But with the focus on block times. Three second block times on Ethereum.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:02] That's yours, yeah. You like that.

David Hoffman:
[44:05] That'd be great. People can wait three seconds and still use Ethereum habitually.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:10] David, we got some Tether flood on the week we got to discuss. So, Arthur Hayes is asking questions about what happens if Tether's reserves of Bitcoin and gold drop 30%. Could they be insolvent? Also, the Aztec token sale goes live. It's pretty unique, pretty interesting. And the UK does something bullish for crypto. We'll talk about all that and more. But before we do, I want to thank it's time for Tether FUD. Again, must be bear market. Is Tether in trouble? Is it solvent? Actually, someone with more credibility here is raising this question here recently on the week. Like this is Arthur Hayes saying, a roughly 30% declining gold and Bitcoin position would wipe out Tether's equity and the USDT would, in theory, be insolvent. Okay, he's taking a screenshot of this. Yeah, so explaining the screenshot, Tether has about $181 billion outstanding. That's the bottom line number. And it backs that by a lot of different things, including about $140 billion worth of cash and cash-like equivalents, right? T-bills, et cetera. But that delta, that $40 billion delta or so, that's all like gold and Bitcoin. And Arthur is just making the point that if that value goes down, say by 30%, then we don't have enough...

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:21] We don't have enough reserves to actually back the tether that's been issued. That's the point that he's making. So I'm not going to call it fractional reserve, but it's not like genius bill stable coins that are one to one for every dollar that's minted. You know there's a treasury behind that. For tether, there's a portion of a treasury behind that. There's like, I don't know, 80% treasuries and cash equivalent. But 20%, it's other more exotic things that have volatility like Bitcoin and gold. It's pretty much gold and Bitcoin. So he's calling that into question and he's saying like, what happens if we get a crash? Then does Tether become unbacked?

David Hoffman:
[45:59] Well, it's not a binary, first off. There's 140 cash-like instruments and then there was like $20 billion of golden Bitcoin. And so the worst thing is, is like Tether would trade on like 95 cents to the dollar. But like, he says the equity of Tether would get wiped out. Like, no, it wouldn't. They could raise so much money so quickly.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:22] Did he say the equity would get wiped out? Is that what he said? Yeah, he did say that. Yeah. Would wipe out their equity.

David Hoffman:
[46:28] No, they've got- I'm not worried.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:31] Okay. I mean, there's some other analysts who kind of went through this, including Monea Supply. And I don't know if you can give kind of the TLDR. So where does this leave tether? It has 50% reserves, which is quite high compared to commercial banks, but of course, much less than the 100% required of Genius Bill type centralized issuer stable coins. so they're playing it a little bit fast and loose from a you know, reserve perspective is nowhere near what fractional reserve banks do today. Totally. So this, and they don't really have solvency risk because they have massive amounts of equity and also massive amounts of cash and cash-like instruments and other assets off balance sheet.

David Hoffman:
[47:15] They could redeem like 80% of Tether before they would have to sell their Bitcoin and gold.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:20] Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[47:21] No, 80% of Tether is not getting redeemed.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:23] Yeah. So, I don't know. It seems fine to me.

David Hoffman:
[47:28] Seems fine to me.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:28] Seems fine to me.

David Hoffman:
[47:30] They should buy even more Bitcoin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:33] I don't know. I'm like, they're taking some risk here, but it's not like excessive risk. That seems not sustainable to me.

David Hoffman:
[47:42] Into the Aztec token sale. The Aztec token sale has crossed over 16,000 Ether in bids with a mechanism co-developed with Uniswap, a continuous clearing auction. I think this is pretty in the weeds to explain how this works, but basically there's an auction over a long period of time where you can just submit your bids and you don't have to get worried about like MEV bots or anything like this. It's just an organic on-chain way of discovering price, the price of the Aztec token from the free market. And so the way that this works is as more bids come in, the price slowly ticks up with this auction mechanism. And it's pretty hardcore in the same way that like Aztec, they're a bunch of cypherpunks. Hardcore cypherpunks like privacy this is.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:27] An ICO a DeFi ICO is it not like

David Hoffman:
[48:29] Why like and Mega ETH and Monad they did their ICOs with you know Tether and you know stable coins but no ASIC did it with ETH why did they do it with ETH because they're just hardcore cypherpunks.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:40] And they did it on Ethereum they didn't use a coin list or even a coin based ICO platform it's just completely DeFi

David Hoffman:
[48:48] One of the cool stories happening right now is the different mechanisms that ICOs are using to do ICOs. And so that is a podcast episode that we are going to work on in the future. So you can learn more about that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:01] Bill Hughes also making the point, Aztec issued a legal memo analyzing the token's legal implications in four different jurisdictions. And he makes the point to, Bill is a crypto lawyer, he makes the point that this would never have happened under the Gensler administration, right? Because no project would release something like this because they'd be fearful this type of a document could be used in court against them in some way by the SEC.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:26] But Aztec is just making the strong point that no, they're a utility coin, a monetary instrument for the Aztec network. And the United States and the EU and Switzerland and the UK, this should not run afoul of any securities regulations or securities laws. So they're putting that out there. So this is another big reason that ICOs are back. It's just because the SEC is now like fine. They're like friendly or they're embracing of innovation in a way that the Gensler regime obviously was not. And by the way, David, the SEC, you know, their whole project crypto thing where some sandboxes, some clear guidelines for crypto projects. They're expected to release that in a month or so. So in January, if you're wondering where that was, hopefully it's coming in the new year in January.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:14] I guess the government shut down, slowed them down. But SEC Chair Paul Atkins said he expects the innovation exemption for cryptocurrencies to be released in a month or so. So that's good news on that side and should provide some clarity, some safe harbor, something that crypto projects can kind of bank on to know what's going to run afoul of SEC enforcement action. And what's not importantly what's not

David Hoffman:
[50:43] Last quick few things, Uniswap is teaming up with Revolut. Revolut is probably the biggest neobank in Europe. Huge DeFi mullet plus neobank movement. There's a big neobank movement going on. So there's now a fiat gateway into DeFi frontends for Revolut inside of the Uniswap web app and Uniswap wallet using Revolut. So that's just pretty cool. Pipes into DeFi are just getting way larger.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[51:06] And the last thing, something bullish coming out of the UK on crypto, actually. And this has got to be the most British thing I've ever seen. for crypto. So this is a property rights act on digital assets signed by none other than the king, the king of the UK, the king of the British Isles here, Charles III. So this is actually, it's a very short act document that was enacted by parliament, of course, given the king's seal. And it basically says that crypto assets are property, a third type of property. So before, Or the only property that the UK recognized was physical stuff you could hold or IOUs that you could sue on, say, you know, deposits in a bank that someone owed you, you could sue. And there was no real room in the property rights apparatus for digital assets for, say, crypto private keys. Well, now there is. this law is basically saying digital assets can be this third bucket doesn't have to fit in the first two and is a legitimate property recognized in the United Kingdom so that's kind of cool I know you're a property rights guy David and so this is like the biggest property rights change in probably the last century for for the UK so it's under the radar but it's actually notable that we're getting legitimacy here for self-custained crypto assets.

David Hoffman:
[52:32] Cool, cool. I just kind of think it's funny that,

David Hoffman:
[52:36] King Charles signs into law.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[52:38] Hey, that's just British stuff, man. You got to be there. Yeah, I love it, though. You know, I like the tradition. You got a meme for us on the week. What is this?

David Hoffman:
[52:48] Yeah, this is John Woo tweeting out a very early picture of Santa. We haven't done a meme in a while. A very early picture of Santa. You ever get pictures with Santa, Ryan?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[52:59] Of course.

David Hoffman:
[53:00] You got kids. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:01] I can say, though, this picture looks like a sad Santa in an abandoned mall with no visitors and no children.

David Hoffman:
[53:07] Yeah, he's kind of waiting for people to show up. And John Wu's comment is, this is how it feels to be optimistic about crypto right now. It's just a solo Santa. A little bit too early in the season.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:19] Well, if you're feeling lonely, Bankless Nation, if you're feeling early in the season, we are here with you. Of course, we'll end with this. You know, crypto is risky. None of this has been financial advice you could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

David Hoffman:
[53:37] We'll see you next time. No, let me do that again. Sorry. Because sales goes down, you get more bearish? You're sharting blobs left and right.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:06] I'm sharting myself just thinking about how great this is.