ROLLUP: Crypto Bullish Again? | OpenUSD vs USDC | Robinhood Chain | Trump’s $1.4B Haul

TRANSCRIPT

David Hoffman:
[0:04] Make the station it's the first week of july and we have a huge week of news this week the world's largest financial institutions just launched a brand new stablecoin co-op to compete with circle and tether calling it open usd from open standard

David Hoffman:
[0:20] names like visa stripe mastercard blackrock Google Coinbase. 60 plus names Circle dropped 17% on the news. Is this the first USD killer to come on the scene in a while or just the world's biggest letter of intent?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:36] We also have a continuation of the Michael Saylor story. Is that whole thing going to unwind?

David Hoffman:
[0:42] Possibly a bookend?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:44] Yeah, maybe a bookend. Maybe a bookend for now. He deferred it even longer. They just raised, I don't know, one to two billion more. We'll talk about how that happened and whether that can get them out of this current predicament.

David Hoffman:
[0:58] There's also Robinhood Chain. There was an event from Robinhood in London where they announced and launched Robinhood Chain. So many things to talk about. Tokenized stocks trading on Uniswap, 7% stablecoin yield, perps via Leiter, really just the rise of Robinhood chain, and also the rise of Ethereum Institutional. That's another thing that launched this week. The second org to roll out of the EF in two weeks, specialization or talent sprawl?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:25] Nice. I like what you did there, David. We also have Venice we're going to talk about, and I want you to get me to fill me in on Trump, all the money Trump made. And we get to see, just we get to quantify how much was possibly grifted from

Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:39] the crypto industry. Big story there.

David Hoffman:
[1:42] Who would you rather be, all of crypto companies or Donald Trump who made more money? Yeah. We're going to get to all this and more. But before we do, we got to talk about, Ryan, Bitcoin started the week, $61,000, dropped to a new low. It broke through new lows of $57,800. right now at the time of recording is actually higher than it started the week at 62,000. Same story for ETH. ETH is up 2% on the week. It started the week just below 1,700. It hit a new low, new low in like years of 1,500 and is ending the week at just above 1,700. I think there's a decent probability that that was the bottom for both. For crypto, for the blue chips, I think that could have been the bottom.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:27] What probability? I agree that's a decent probability, but I'm curious what probability you'd assign versus what I would assign.

David Hoffman:
[2:35] 40% to 50% probability. That that was the bottom? That that was the bottom.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:40] Oh, interesting. Okay, that's lower than I thought you'd be because you sounded a bit more bullish. I would assign it pretty much.

David Hoffman:
[2:46] That's pretty bullish.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:47] Really? Okay. I think so. I thought from the sound of your voice, I was like, oh, David's like 80%, 90% that this.

David Hoffman:
[2:53] Is the bottom. No, you can never be that high. You can never be that high.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:58] I'm probably pretty close, 40% to 50% that that was the bottom. But that leaves 50% probability, a coin flip that it wasn't and that we're actually going to go lower. Does this sound right? Bitcoin went down in 2018, 84% from the high. in 2022 76 percent with this new low 2026 it would be 54 percent doesn't it feel like if you want these numbers to kind of line up symmetrically.

David Hoffman:
[3:30] Kind of map

Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:31] And that and the time range to line up as well 12 months of a bear in each of these that we hit the lows 12 months of a bear we hit the lows we're not yet 12 months we're nine months and doesn't it look like this instead of 54 percent Just like Squint, look at this. Doesn't it look like it should be in the 60s? 62, 63, maybe 65% from the high of the previous cycle. Like, look at it.

David Hoffman:
[3:56] It depends on whether you're a cycle maxi and you don't care about anything.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:01] There is no other choice. Historically, if you are not a cycle maxi, then you have been washed out of these markets because you've over leveraged yourself or you've been disappointed and you just like quit these markets. Most people still remaining are cycle maxis, or at least they should be if they're on their like third or fourth cycle. Like this keeps happening, guys. What do you think it means? You think it means it could happen again? Yes, I do.

David Hoffman:
[4:25] Clearly, I'm talking to a cycle maxi here. Look, Saylor, we're going to talk about this in a second. Saylor bought himself like almost 20 months of cash USD runway for dividend payments. Yeah. And so the only other bottom I could see is like when we start to, when that starts to like evaporate and we get down to like eight months of cash runway and then the market starts to really care about what Saylor does. But we got 12 months before we get to that point. Now, bear markets last about 12 months. So maybe we hit another bottom at the tail end of the bear market and that's the bottom. And then we rock it upwards because Saylor was forced to cough up Bitcoin. I would give the recent bottom a higher probability of being the bottom if Saylor coughed up Bitcoin, but he didn't. He just dumped MSTR. And so I will give you that, that like Saylor didn't cough up Bitcoin. And so, you know, he hasn't eaten his humble pie. He's still thinking that he can hold on to every single Satoshi that he ever bought. And that is what worries me.

David Hoffman:
[5:27] But Ryan, he's got 20 months of runway. That's a long time.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:32] Okay, but this isn't just about Saylor, right? There's other things that are bigger than Saylor, okay? Including Bitcoin, of course, but including macro. And there is a question as to what the Fed does next. People think that it will be maybe a in the middle type Fed, not overly dovish, not overly hawkish.

David Hoffman:
[5:55] You mean a Fed that's just balanced and responsible and does their job?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:58] Kind of. It's not just doing what Trump wants and just slashing rates, but it's like thinking whether we should raise them or not. That's still in the water. If it turns out that Warsh is a bit more hawkish than the market expects, that could turn things on a dime and that could cause equities to go down. If equities go down, let's say, David, AI, NASDAQ went down 20 to 25 percent. You think Bitcoin remains, you know, like 60K?

David Hoffman:
[6:23] No.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:24] No, there's lots. There's chum in the water for those types of things to be catalysts for us to hit the final capitulation zone and the final bottom. And I think that's that's remaining. In fact, I think we're up a little bit.

David Hoffman:
[6:36] The stock market is quite high and has a lot to fall.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:39] There you go.

David Hoffman:
[6:40] If it does decide to fall.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:41] There you go. There you go. And I do think we're up a little bit, at least on the day, because.

David Hoffman:
[6:46] We're up on the week. The SPY, the S&P 500 is up 2.5% this week. NASDAQ up 2% this week. Oil prices continue their decline. They are WTI and Brent down 3.5%. WTI traded below $70 this week.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:00] Yeah. And we had some, I guess, good news recently on the week for markets, at least. Fed Chair Warsh had a meeting at the ECB. It was just a forum and he said expectations of inflation have actually come down. You can see that in oil prices that you mentioned earlier. Inflation risks have come down, which if they're coming down, then the Fed doesn't have to raise rates, certainly could leave them where they are, could think about decreasing them in the future. And I think the market's got some bullish catalyst on that. There was also a pretty good jobs report. The Polymarket on the next Fed decision, which happens at the end of July, you know, peaked up a little bit. Like the probability of no change went from something like 75% to something like 90%. So the market is anticipating that Warsh is not going to do anything

Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:48] in the next meeting, either up or down. But let's get back to Saylor. Okay, so where we left things last week was he had this three-body problem. He has MSDR holders. He has the SDRC holders. And then he has Bitcoin. And they're all kind of orbiting one another. And, you know, which course will he take? They're all pulling on one another. So what's he going to do? So what did he do on the week?

David Hoffman:
[8:10] He released the digital credit capital framework, which is just strategy speak for we're a hedge fund now.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:19] What do you mean? What do you mean?

David Hoffman:
[8:21] With Saylor and strategy, they are such a force and they need to keep their cards close to their chest to preserve maximum optionality, that they are starting to look like the Fed when it comes to Bitcoin. And so there's like, you know, Fed speak versus like real language. So I'm going to do my best to put everything into real language.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:40] Yeah, what was the language, Elise?

David Hoffman:
[8:42] We're a hedge fund now. We're a hedge fund now.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:44] They didn't say that. They didn't say that.

David Hoffman:
[8:45] No, they said they released a digital credit capital framework. I'm saying that what they are saying, we should interpret this as, they are just a hedge fund. And so here's some of the core measures that they did. They increased their USD reserves to $2.55 billion. That's 17 and a half months of dividend coverage.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:05] That was up from last week. We said they had $1.4 billion.

David Hoffman:
[9:09] Yeah, they added a little bit more than a billion dollars. And so they more than doubled their time that they have to pay for stretch.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:14] And was that MSTR ATM sales?

David Hoffman:
[9:17] I can only imagine.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:18] He did not sell Bitcoin.

David Hoffman:
[9:19] He did not sell Bitcoin. So it had to be. But, Ryan, they gave themselves a formal authorization to sell $1.25 billion of Bitcoin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:30] Wait, they gave themselves permission to sell?

David Hoffman:
[9:33] This was always allowed. This is kind of my issue with this is like they were always allowed to sell Bitcoin. Well, it's called Ford Guidance,

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:41] Right?

David Hoffman:
[9:41] Yes, yes, exactly.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:42] Ford Guidance to everybody who.

David Hoffman:
[9:44] But they're not going to sell more than $1.25 billion of Bitcoin. So if you are worried, if you're a Bitcoin holder and you're worried that they're going to sell more than $1.25 billion, you are alleviated.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:53] Well, unless they give themselves permission to sell more at a later date.

David Hoffman:
[9:58] Yeah, right. Okay, so the funky math that they get to do with this is that you get to add $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin to their dividend coverage. So now their math is you add these things together, they have $3.8 billion of reserves. If you add the funny money, $1.25 billion of Bitcoin they haven't sold yet, but this gives them 26 months of dividend coverage. That's a lot. Because of their authorization, they are authorized to add on a fake nine months of dividend coverage because they've authorized it.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:34] Well, it was always real. They just are acknowledging that it's an option, I suppose. But yes, I get your point. 26 months is a long time, though.

David Hoffman:
[10:41] It's a long time, yeah. Yeah. And then they increased this stretch dividend yield from 11.5% to 12%. What this does is that informs the market that they are going to try and keep their capital market window open to them by trying to get stretch back up to $100 so that they can issue more stretch to buy more Bitcoin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:59] They want SDRC holders to be happy.

David Hoffman:
[11:01] They want SDRC. Yeah. Also, they're kind of backed up against the wall because of all of the promotion and marketing that Saylor has done around stretch. And so they really want stretch holders to not be unhappy in case they get sued. Sure. Yeah. And then they also have a buyback program for stretch and convertible notes or MSTR. They say like, hey, if we want to, we can buy these things back, which once again was always allowed.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:27] More punishing, I can imagine, to the MSTR holders on the week with some additional inflation of MSTR.

David Hoffman:
[11:35] Yeah, but it was above MNAV anyways. And so, I mean, MSTR, it bottomed out at $82. Yesterday, it got up to $104. Oh, wow. It's now at $99. Okay. So, it has recovered and also so has Stretch. So, Stretch is at $88. You know, it bottomed around $70 to $73. So, it's walking its way closer back to $100.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:57] Well, it was a buying opportunity last week then, STRC at least, right? I mean, that would have been a good one to lock in. For sure. Because this was... very likely what Michael Saylor was going to do. He was going to run the ATM as hot as he could. And then give some indication that, hey, we're willing to sell Bitcoin too. The thing about selling Bitcoin though, is it does, I think you made the point last week that there's this social contract that Saylor has established. I never sell. Mortgage a second home, mortgage a third home.

David Hoffman:
[12:28] Sell a kidney. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:30] Do whatever you have to to hold Bitcoin. And so he has been doing that over the past four years, and it breaks that social construct.

David Hoffman:
[12:37] He has three social contracts. Pay, stretch, dividend holders their money, Have it trade at 100. Don't dilute MSCR holders below one of MNAV and don't sell Bitcoin. And he hasn't broken any of those social contracts other than selling the 32 Bitcoin, which I don't think counts because it was so small.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:55] Yeah. Just to know about the three body problem, like all three bodies do orbit one another. It's just the orbits are unpredictable. So it's not.

David Hoffman:
[13:04] But there are there are like solutions to the three body problem. There's like 20 or 30. And like, you know, you have three in a circle. It's perfectly balanced.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:13] There's no solution. You can't, that's the whole thing with three-body problem. You can't predict the orbits.

David Hoffman:
[13:17] In a vacuum. In a mathematical vacuum, there are constructions of the three-body problem that are perfect.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:22] I'm asking a lot about this after that episode. Yeah, go for it.

David Hoffman:
[13:24] I mean, there's a graphic I can send you. But it's like one of those things where it's like such a perfect mathematical vacuum that is actually impossible.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:30] I see. So it's theoretically possible if it's not possible. Yes. Anyway, aside from that, this is not the death spiral. This is not the three-body

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:37] spinning out of control. Correct. It doesn't look like that's the case. and that's more confirmation this week. That's right. Should we talk about Robinhood chain or should we wait for the break?

David Hoffman:
[13:45] Dude, big news of the week. Let's see how far we're into it.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:47] I think we need time. I think we need more time.

David Hoffman:
[13:49] We need more time.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:49] We need more air time.

David Hoffman:
[13:50] So next, we're going to come back. We got to talk about on-chain tokenized stocks, 24-7, 365 markets, 7% APY deposits, AI agents to trade.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:59] It's pretty big.

David Hoffman:
[13:59] Uniswap on Robinhood chain. Arbitrum's a big winner here. Lighter is a big...

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:03] Well, you're already talking about it. Let's save it.

David Hoffman:
[14:04] Okay, okay.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:05] We'll be right back talking about Robinhood, talking about Venice. Also, the new stablecoin that just jumped on the scenes. Yeah, OUSD, all that. But before we do, we got to thank the sponsors that made this possible.

David Hoffman:
[14:17] Okay, Ryan, are you ready for me to once again list all of the stuff that happened?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:21] I got tokenized stocks. I knew that was coming.

David Hoffman:
[14:23] On-chain tokenized, Robinhood tokenized stocks.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:25] Okay.

David Hoffman:
[14:26] Which enables them to do 24-7, 365 marketplaces.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:29] And these are real stock? Like what, these aren't? These aren't the weird synthetics that don't have any backing. Like, are these actual stocks that can governance?

David Hoffman:
[14:36] I would like more details about how Robinhood actually tokenizes the stock. But they are a brokerage.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:41] Yeah. So if they're a brokerage.

David Hoffman:
[14:42] They just keep the stock. They're piped right in.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:44] We're going to say it is. We're going to say this is real deal stocks, not just IOUs.

David Hoffman:
[14:47] Real deal stocks, yeah. So they have Bitstamp, which they purchased, right, which has perpetual futures and the exchange. And so they get to use some of Bitstamp to do 24-7, 365 markets. But they also, LIDR, the ZKL2 on Ethereum, LIDR built a brand new instance of LIDR on the Robinhood chain, which is an Arbitrum Orbit chain. And so there's now two LIDRs. And so a lot of the Robinhood tokenized stocks will go onto their chain and get PERP access directly through LIDR right on the exchange.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:20] What's the explanation for why? I know why LIDR would be warming up to Robinhood. Why would Robinhood be warming up to LIDR? Is there anything like, whoa, we're all part of the Ethereum community? Like, why not hyperlink?

David Hoffman:
[15:32] Well, Robinhood invested in LIDR at their last round. Okay. And so they are LIDR investors. The LIDR engineering team is like straight up cracked. They have a lot of forward deployed engineers, which built this LIDR instance on the Robinhood chain. Why does Robinhood want that on the Robinhood chain? Just tons of block space consumption from LIDR.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:51] So they're kind of making a decision, hey, this is our favorite. among the DeFi perps winners rather than Hyperliquid.

David Hoffman:
[15:59] What other perp exchange would be able to build a new instance directly on the Robinhood change?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:04] I'm sure Hyperliquid could if you asked.

David Hoffman:
[16:07] I don't think they would. I don't think they would do that. They want everything to go on the Hyperliquid platform.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:11] Okay. Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[16:12] I see. Yeah. Yeah. So big win for Lighter. And then also they have just part of the announcement is like just region and jurisdiction expansion. So they're in 160 countries. A lot of stuff not in the United States, Ryan. A lot of stuff is excluded from the United States.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:28] Oh, all the tokenized stock stuff is excluded?

David Hoffman:
[16:31] Yes. The stock tokens, the perp futures, and then also non-crypto perps. Non-crypto perps were announced.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:37] Can we blame Gensler for this? Why can't we have tokenized stocks in 2026?

David Hoffman:
[16:41] Because we just don't have clarity. And I think Mike Selig from the CFTC is trying to get us clarity.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:47] Clarity, the literal act, are you saying?

David Hoffman:
[16:50] No, just more clarity from the CFTC. From regulators. Yeah, so I don't expect that to be a longstanding issue in the grand scheme of things.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:57] By the end of the year, do you think maybe we'll be clear to trade here?

David Hoffman:
[17:00] By 2027, in 2027. Okay, geez. Vlad from Leiter. So we have Vlad from Robinhood. Vlad Tenet, the CEO of Robinhood.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:06] Oh, that's why they're together. They're both named Vlad.

David Hoffman:
[17:09] They're both named Vlad. Vlad from Leiter, he is on like the CFTC advisory board. And so he talks to like Mike Selig. And so like he's in the loop. And like Leiter is explicitly going for a US license. And so that's why Robinhood chose them is like they can work with them to be compliant.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:25] Okay, so that's that.

David Hoffman:
[17:26] A lot of this was both the launch of the Robinhood chain, but also the glowing up of the Robinhood wallet. The first time we ever talked to Vlad, Ryan, was at permission list number one, where Robinhood launched Robinhood Wallet. Remember that?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:40] And that was a self-custodial DeFi type wallet, almost like a MetaMask competitor, but mobile first. And we were very excited about their ability to bring the Robinhood level UX to crypto and DeFi.

David Hoffman:
[17:52] Exactly. Still the case. It's been pretty vanilla so far. It's just like a vanilla, a very sexy vanilla self-custodial wallet. They are doing, let me just like tell you a bunch of things. and see if it reminds you of anything. So first we have Robinhood Wallet. Now we have Robinhood chain.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:09] And that's the self-custodial thing.

David Hoffman:
[18:10] The self-custodial, yes.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:11] We're not talking about Robinhood, the app.

David Hoffman:
[18:13] No, new app, brand new app. Wow. Self-custodial wallet on the Robinhood chain. Okay. 7% depositors for the Robinhood stablecoin, which is USDG issued by Paxos. Ooh, Paxos? Yeah, not USDT or USDC. So Robinhood gets the yield for all of the stablecoins on the Robinhood chain, and they are giving 7% more than 6% issued by a competitor who rhymes with Schmoinmace. And they're giving 7% using Morpho. So Morpho is hooked into the back end here.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:47] So they're making Paxos their USDC.

David Hoffman:
[18:50] Correct. Because Paxos will pass back the yield because that's how it works. Yeah. That's how it works.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:56] Okay. Go on.

David Hoffman:
[18:57] Does that just remind you of any other tech stack, maybe a blue-coated tech stack?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:04] And this is the Coinbase and Base tech stack. So we have Base and the Coinbase wallet. And then we have USDC, which is the Coinbase stablecoin equivalent. And we have an equivalent stack on the Robinhood side, but with tokenized stocks.

David Hoffman:
[19:19] Yeah, with tokenized stocks in the EU. And so you can get up to 10x leverage on gold QQQ, the Euro-USD pair, ETFs, and foreign exchange if you're in the EU. And then that all gets served to you on LiDAR. There's also an $11 million light token incentive program. So if you go and trade perps in the Robinhood wallet, you get some LiDAR tokens. This is exciting.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:42] I'm excited about this.

David Hoffman:
[19:44] So I think the big question is like, who are the big winners here? So there's a bunch of different partners. Arbitrum is literally the chain provider. There's like murmurs of just like, will the Robinhood chain be Robinhood's like 14th, $100 million revenue yearly product that they have? Will Robin Huntry be the 14th one of those? Sure. Well, if it is, Arbitrum gets 10% of that. So Arbitrum is very clearly a winner here. Let me pull open CoinGecko.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:10] I'm talking up 3% on the news.

David Hoffman:
[20:13] Well, that was yesterday. Let me look at it today. Let me look at it today. Okay. 3%. 3%. Okay, what about Uniswap? So Uniswap is deployed, and that's pretty cool because that is, there's tokenized docks on Uniswap, on Robinhood Chain. That's pretty cool.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:33] That's really cool. I'd just like to note, okay, so this is a whole thread about the total value locked that the Robinhood Chain launched with. There's a dune board for this, and it launched with some pretty big numbers, like 100 million stable coins already. That was day one launch. You know, 4.4 million index liquidity. That was from Uniswap, right? Morpho. It's like these DeFi blue chips in the Ethereum economy that are benefiting from this big launch.

David Hoffman:
[21:01] Yeah. Uniswap, what I put in my notes yesterday, was only up 2.5%, but today it is up 12%. So maybe some delayed price action.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:09] That's what I'm talking about. Double digit. Thank you.

David Hoffman:
[21:12] Chainlink is a big Oracle provider. Chainlink up 5% in the last day here. Morpho. Morpho, which is the yield supplier for that 7% of the Sablecoin and among other things, up 3%, up 3%, respectable. And then Lighter, which is the Perp Dex supplier, got a huge boost, up 17%.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:35] That's good. And I see in the notes, HUD itself was up 8% on the news.

David Hoffman:
[21:39] HUD was up 8% on the news.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:41] Crypto is bullish again?

David Hoffman:
[21:42] Crypto is bullish again. Yeah, this was a big deal. I don't think too many people saw this coming, even though Robinhood has been telegraphing this forever.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:50] So this compares to base. It's kind of a lot of equivalencies, but just with tokenized stocks, I might say. Are there other... The Arbitrum stack rather than optimism.

David Hoffman:
[22:03] Arbitrum stack rather than OP stack,

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:04] Yeah. I did see that they are actually using Ethereum for data availability, too, just in case you're an L2 beat nut.

David Hoffman:
[22:12] There's some, like, Ethereum is winning here as well.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:15] Well, it's, and you can clearly see Ethereum winning, DA, whatever, aside, right? That's some net benefit for the Ethereum ecosystem. They're believing the L2 roadmap. This is a partial, this is a victory for the L2 roadmap. We don't, yeah, we don't talk about victories in this day and age enough for the L2 roadmap.

David Hoffman:
[22:32] The way that this is a big victory for Ethereum and ETH specifically is if Robinhood tokenized stocks can migrate off the chain and onto the layer one. Yes. And that is a question I have when I record with Johan, the VP of crypto of Robinhood in like three hours.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:50] Oh, three hours. Okay. I'm looking forward to that episode then. Okay. So not just that though. It's that. But it's very clearly a boon to Ethereum DeFi.

David Hoffman:
[23:00] I would say- Which does benefit- Especially if the stocks can come off the chain.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:04] But even if not, if it is successful, Uniswap wins, Morpho wins, Ethereum blue chip wins. And then also I would say, I think Ethereum has a new wallet on the scene. I mean, Robinhood has been there, but now they're incented to make improvements in it. And Phantom has been a fantastic competitor in the Solana ecosystem. Good to have another wallet on the scene. That's right.

David Hoffman:
[23:28] That's right. And also, I think you just have to also give a tip of the hat to Paxos. Paxos doesn't trade, but they won Robinhood with a stablecoin deal. Yeah, sleeper there. So Paxos gets a dub here. Sleeper there. Overall, everyone was just pretty thrilled. No one really had any bad things. No one had anything bad to say about anything. The hyperliquid people are coping a little bit about lighter, but that's okay.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:49] Yeah, they don't like to lose, do they? Um, let's talk about the, another story this week, which is, uh, Venice AI became a unicorn. So valuation of Venice now North of $1 billion. And this was at $1.

David Hoffman:
[24:03] $1 billion. Okay.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:04] At $1 billion. This was on the back of a raise that was announced. So what happened here?

David Hoffman:
[24:09] $65 million raise series a led by Dragonfly along with North Island ventures, Coinbase ventures, uh, Morgan Creek, uh, for, for Venice. And so this was this was a hybrid equity token. There's a token warrant here, but this is also an equity deal. Eric Voorhees, the founder CEO of Venice, of course, just tweeted out some actual bangers. A line that he wrote in his article about the motivations for Venice and the importance of privacy in the world of AI is, we are going to use this capital to uphold the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution as they relate to mankind's interaction with AI. I just got shivers reading that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:51] Unrestricted intelligence, right? Self-sovereign AI. This is part of the story of Venice, and it's not completely self-sovereign AI, but it gets us a big step closer, I would say. I somewhat wonder if Voorhees is, at some point in time, going to find himself in Venice in regulator crosshairs once again.

David Hoffman:
[25:11] Once again, going toe-to-toe with the state. I think Eric is like, I know what to do here.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:16] Well, they had a problem with self-sovereign money. You think they're going to have a problem with self-sovereign intelligence? I mean, like, yeah. I mean, the U.S.

David Hoffman:
[25:26] Government already— I hope he does go toe-to-toe. That's what I'm rooting for.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:31] It's very interesting.

David Hoffman:
[25:32] If you're looking for his first state again, let's fucking go.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:34] Yeah, it's going to be—and it's, like, you can already see the state cracking down on delaying, like, Mythos, restricting that, delaying the newest chat GPT model. Anyway, go on. So that's his mission. That's what Venice is all about. That's what they're doing. So what else does he say?

David Hoffman:
[25:51] Yeah, they got an article in TechCrunch, which is what pumped the token a little bit. So the raise was announced and like the VVV token pumps like 14%. It's retraced because this has spawned a whole conversation about equity token misalignment, which is a story that we have seen before. Eric knows this and he kind of got ahead of it when he did the raise announcement. In a tweet thread, he said, to raise such capital, this $65 million, we could have either sold some of Venice's treasury of VVV directly to the market or sold equity We chose the latter.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:22] Despite the VVV token- So he sold equity, not VVV.

David Hoffman:
[26:25] Correct, yes. Despite the VVV being up 700% year to date, we don't want to sell the token. Venice, the company, remains the largest holder of VVV, owning more than 30 million out of today's 80 million supply. The company and team each hold more today than at Genesis. The company has not sold any to date. So the details of the capital raise. Series A investors, with the $65 million that they raised they bought 9% of the company and a vesting grant of 1.5 million VVV tokens so part equity, part token and they also bought a right to buy 5 million more VVV over the next 8 years

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:06] So they did buy some token too it wasn't just equity.

David Hoffman:
[27:09] Yeah, you're right it was hybrid, it was both they sold equity and tokens and also a right to buy future tokens and so I think Eric knows the equity token misalignment problem, his solution seems to be, A, the company holds a lot of tokens and also doesn't want to sell tokens, which like if the company wants to not sell tokens, that's bullish. That's bullish in my mind because they value their tokens. They consider their tokens precious, so they'd rather sell equity than tokens. That's a bullish token interpretation. And so the fact that he's like lumping everything together and he's preserving alignment by keeping a large supply of the tokens inside of the equity does align incentives more than if they were completely dislocated.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:56] But the problem is that's a fixed point in time. Sure. They're aligned now, but they're two separate instruments and they don't have to stay in that exact configuration, do they?

David Hoffman:
[28:05] Yeah. Yeah. So I take Eric's point that he's making, which is if the equity owns the token, there's alignment, which I think is correct. And that's more alignment than there's been in the past.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:14] But then also if the equity owns the token, why have a token?

David Hoffman:
[28:17] Right. So this is what this is the conversation that has spawned. Micah Bolito just tweeted out dual token equity structures do not work. Two owners, one pie. Shareholders get Delaware law. Token holders get a pinky promise. You know, tokens are junior equity.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:33] That's a hot line because the problem with tokens to date has been lack of shareholder rights that Delaware C-Corps have. The problem with Delaware C-Corps is they're not digitally native crypto native and they're kind of shitty for smart contracts and all sorts of things. And they're walled inside. So it's a worse rails, but it's better in terms of, shareholder governance. A lot better, in fact. In fact, name me a token project that has succeeded with the split ownership structure.

David Hoffman:
[29:03] With an equity split?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:05] Some of them have partially succeeded. Maybe you could point to an Aave or Uniswap, but a lot of them have failed colossally.

David Hoffman:
[29:11] Uh bnb is an example of binance the company and bnb the token but what did binance do they burned a crap ton of bnb and cz owns a ton of bnb there's one example and like venice wants to burn a bunch of vvv it's still

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:27] Like up to c like it's up to cz up to equity holders in terms of.

David Hoffman:
[29:31] How much it's up to eric voorhees and who if there was going to be one man to just like brute force alignment without any sort of elegant solution. I agree that there's no elegant solution to solving the token and equity misalignment problem. Are you sure about that?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:46] Just have a token.

David Hoffman:
[29:47] Well, yeah, but that's, yes, that is the solution.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:50] Don't have two instruments. Yes, I agree. Just kind of like force the Delaware structure into the token.

David Hoffman:
[29:55] I think the most important thing that you said, and I agree with, is that the equity alignment problem is like pseudo solved in this moment of time. But this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue, especially if Venice raises more. Like as time goes on, this is going to be a larger and larger problem.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:12] It's also, it's being kind of, it's launched in this lemon market. By lemon, I mean like a lemon car, which is just like all the kind of used cars with all the problems. Those are the ones that get kind of left over. They become the lemons in the market that no one wants to buy. I mean, tokens are kind of the lemons of assets right now. It's because even if Vortis and Venice does the right thing and keeps this thing aligned, somehow by just like brute force and kind of will and just like pushing it, the rest of the tokens in the market of other assets are all lemons and so like you're going to be grouped in with them too it's another problem.

David Hoffman:
[30:49] Plus at some point uh fiduciary duty takes over and the fiduciary duty belongs to the shareholders and not to the to the token holders so like i i think eric is going to do his best but there's something fundamental and existential about having two vehicles well

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:05] Isn't it trust in eric then here which is kind of anti what eric actually wants as a strong libertarian, you shouldn't have to trust me. You should trust in protocol. You should trust in incentives. But you're saying, if one man can make it work, it's Eric. That's kind of anti-principle almost.

David Hoffman:
[31:22] I think he can make it work for the short and medium term. For the long term, I think there needs to be a structural change.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:28] I know you're bullish. You have been bullish on VBV and certainly it's a great product. How do you feel as an owner?

David Hoffman:
[31:37] Yeah, like...

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:38] Would you rather have the token or equity or both? And are you disgruntled that you just have the token?

David Hoffman:
[31:48] I mean, like, with a token, I get liquidity, and so that's a perk that I have. Sure.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:53] So you could change your mind later.

David Hoffman:
[31:54] Yeah, I don't know if I would want to flip to equity.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:57] Well, you don't want illiquid equity, do you? You don't want it.

David Hoffman:
[32:00] I definitely don't want illiquid equity.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:03] But wouldn't you like to have the option? Like, get whatever the equity owners also get?

David Hoffman:
[32:10] Yeah, I don't know, man. There's something about tokens that I really, really like, And the fact that Eric is very loudly defending the structure, I don't know if he's... It is a good sign he's fighting. I do think it's a little bit... I would like to hear him... like agree that there is misalignment in the structure of equity versus token and and say that like over the long term there needs to be a better solution that would make me feel better um i don't know man but i like the token all right i like i still like tokens i

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:43] Know you do i know.

David Hoffman:
[32:45] I've been disappointed

Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:46] Many times but i still like them still keep coming back uh let's talk about open usd from open standard this new stable coin with like every logo my god i could read a few. Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, American Square.

David Hoffman:
[32:59] Scroll down to the section in this announcement where they just have all of the company names listed here. Oh my god.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:04] It's just like I can't fit them.

David Hoffman:
[33:05] On one page. It's a wall of text.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:07] They have Jack Henry. Who's Jack Henry?

David Hoffman:
[33:09] I have no idea. They have Cloudflare.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:11] They have Big Banks, BlackRock, BNB. This is not alphabetical. I guess it's grouped.

David Hoffman:
[33:15] BNY not BNB.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:18] BNY. They have Google. Okay, so they have all the big payment companies.

David Hoffman:
[33:23] DoorDash, Samsung, IBM, Shopify, MercadoLibre, Coinbase, Tempo, Ibit, American Express, MasterCard. They got everyone.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:36] So what is it?

David Hoffman:
[33:38] Okay. It is basically a DAO. This is a DAO.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:42] You're talking about the governance. What is the actual thing? It's just a stable coin?

David Hoffman:
[33:46] No different. OUSD. It's OUSD. It is a stable coin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:49] And this is a genius compliant stable coin.

David Hoffman:
[33:53] Genius compliance stablecoin. Stripe is at the gravitational center here. So the CEO of Open Standard is Zach Abrams, the CEO of Bridge, who you interviewed when he got acquired by Stripe. So Stripe has something to do with this. Stripe says that it's making OUSD the default stablecoin for businesses transacting on Stripe.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:14] So, they're saying we're putting our talents.

David Hoffman:
[34:17] Yeah, like, OUSD is our stable coin and we are using it. We're adopting it. Okay.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:21] But, to your point, this was launched in a institution, a nonprofit, standards body. Join openstandard.com as the blog post we're reading.

David Hoffman:
[34:31] Oh, is it a nonprofit?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:33] Well, whatever it is.

David Hoffman:
[34:34] It's not a- I don't think it's a nonprofit.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:36] I don't know what it is. But, like, it's not a- Well, what is it? What is it then?

David Hoffman:
[34:40] You know what it is? I think it's a consortium. A consortium. It's a consortium. I don't know if it's like an officially a consortium, but it was just like their strategy was to list every single partner name under the sun and like just come out swinging with like, look how legitimate this is. Look at all the launch partners that we have.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:56] But is it like equity owned by these people or is there no equity? Is it just a kind of like a shell type of, you know, like protocol structure thing that makes no money and passes off all the revenue to all of the like revenue and profits to all of the stakeholders that we just mentioned based on their level of participation?

David Hoffman:
[35:14] A single entity, a TBD, I would like to know that answer. But the latter thing that you said, like the economics of OpenUSD is exactly what you just say. So businesses can mint and redeem OpenUSD at no cost and no limits. That's different from the Tether and Circle model where there are mint and redeem fees. OUSD is designed to return most revenue generated from its reserves minus a small management fee to participants who adopt and distribute it. It's exactly like Robinhood and Paxos that I just talked about. So Robinhood issues Paxos global dollar. Robinhood gets all the yield. Paxos gets a little bit. And and so the the board of open standard is a made up of a board of open USD partners ensuring decisions are made for the collective interest, not a single entity. So this is just Dowie socialist vibes. We're like, oh, we're all going to share in the upside. And like everyone who mints gets their act, their share of the yield. And like we don't have to pay for Circle or Tether's like you're

Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:16] Saying the governance feels Dowie. and socialist vibes of like, well, it has the tragedy of the commons, like who's actually responsible, who's going to push this thing forward, that sort of problem. But it does achieve what I think I talked to Zach Abrams a year ago about, which is he's like, hey, Tether and Circle are stealing all the revenue from the apps and companies that are actually using them. And look at Tether's margins, right? It was like nine to 12 billion a year with 150 people, something like that. And they're just taking that for just being Tether. and that should be passed to apps and end users and the participants. And so that is a market force. He's just like passing this to the creators of value rather than having rent collectors kind of like take it. That would be the argument. And I remember my comment to that was like, oh, really, Zach? Like you think there'll be a world of like thousands of different stable coins? And at the time he said yes. Now it looks like he's looking for network effect with one particular stable coin.

David Hoffman:
[37:15] Thousands of different partners now once in.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:17] One stable coin, and maybe that's for network effect reasons. Yeah, yeah.

David Hoffman:
[37:21] So all the attention around OUSD evoked a response from Jeremy Allaire, who put out a pretty lengthy tweet. The first thing you notice about this tweet is how long it is.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:29] But also because Circle was down, right?

David Hoffman:
[37:31] Oh, yeah, Circle dropped like 17% on the news.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:34] Was it just this news, or do you also think it was the Paxos Robinhood news too?

David Hoffman:
[37:39] I think it was just this news. I think it was just this. So Jeremy Allaire, summarizing his response, his very long response, is that he's arguing why USCC's position is defensible and Network effects, like thousands of apps already integrate USCC, Circle's own infrastructure stack, CCTP, blah, blah, blah. Liquidity network effects, USCC is the top three most liquid digital asset after Bitcoin and Tether. Competitors are 10 times smaller. Regulatory entrenchment, it's just regulatory, like clear. And then he rebuts OUSD's three main selling points, the free mint and burn he calls naive. fee-free redemption makes you an off-ramp for every competitor's stablecoin because you can just swap uscc to ouse and use their own off-ramp for free and then it's actually just he's just that's going to benefit my network effects like my network effects win here i see everyone shares in the revenue circle already shares most of its income with distribution partners i think we are well aware of that with coinbase yep uh but giving away all of it starves infrastructure investment and guarantees a limited platform feels it's like very capitalist versus socialist to me It's like, well, we're the capitalists, we're making the money, and we are going to grow the business. A consortium where everyone has a voice, he says, has a dismal track record, misaligned incentives, poorly funded. Circle tried this in the early years at USEC, and it failed at a small scale. He says, members will publicly kiss the ring, but their operating units will still partner with a market leader.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:06] You might be right about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, consortiums have worked a few times, right?

David Hoffman:
[39:13] Visa is a consortium.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:14] Visa is a consortium. Or was.

David Hoffman:
[39:16] Now it's a company.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:17] Zelle, I believe, like the banking app. I don't know. I know you're a big Wells Fargo guy. I know you love Wells Fargo.

David Hoffman:
[39:22] Huge Wells Fargo guy.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:23] Well, Zelle, that's a consortium banking type of protocol app standard that's been somewhat successful. So there are examples that mean that consortiums can sometimes work. They deployed on, is it Tempo first as far as the chain?

David Hoffman:
[39:40] No, they're deploying everywhere. They're on Solana. They're on Ethereum. They're on Tempo. They're just not picking winners.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:45] Okay. So they're not picking winners, but yeah, except for the participants in this. So what do you think happens with this? Do you think this will... I think this is a... Do you see this from CEO of, founder of Tether? Welcome, OUSD. Player two has entered the game.

David Hoffman:
[40:02] That is so dirty. Ha ha ha ha.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:07] Obviously, player two is USCC, but he's throwing some shade.

David Hoffman:
[40:11] He's just saying, I've never had any competition before. I don't even, I just don't, I think this is a flop. I think this is a flop.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:20] You calling this a flop already?

David Hoffman:
[40:21] I'm calling this a flop.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:22] Why? Because it has no owner. No motivated party.

David Hoffman:
[40:27] If you have 5,000 board members, you have zero board members. There's like, who is going to get the upside of like really winning this here?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:35] There's it's just your problem with DAOs basically.

David Hoffman:
[40:37] It's a DAO this is a trad DAO yeah I can absolutely see that again it's like maybe if there was maybe if literally there was only tether or circle one over the other But there are literally two competitors that they have to fight.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:52] Paxos is this.

David Hoffman:
[40:53] We already have Paxos doing the same model, and they had to do this model because they're a third.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:57] Well, the second question then is, do you think that the 17%, 20% price drop on Circle is justified? Does this lower their notes? I'll just point out one thing.

David Hoffman:
[41:06] I don't even know why Circle is still as high as it is. And so I think the 17% price drop on Circle is justified anyways. If you look at the Circle chart, it's been trending down for forever now.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:16] Right. Well, I will point out that I think this is the year that they have to renegotiate their every three years with Coinbase and that deal structure. And Coinbase is named as a participant in this OUSD consortium.

David Hoffman:
[41:30] Right. Coinbase signed on with OUSD. That's so funny.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:32] Well, I mean, for Coinbase's perspective, just use it for negotiation leverage, even if you're not going to do anything with OUSD.

David Hoffman:
[41:37] Again, it's free to sign up.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:40] It's got to compress some of the margins.

David Hoffman:
[41:41] You know what? Bankless is a partner of OUSD. We'll put our logo on the board, too.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:46] All right. What do we have coming up?

David Hoffman:
[41:48] Coming up next, we're going to talk about Ethereum Institutional, another unbundling of the EF to spin out into its own different org. And also we have the exact numbers of how much money Donald Trump made from all of his cryptographs. And Ryan, I know you are just baiting your breath to talk about this, but we have the first stablecoin in like years to break a $100 million market cap.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:11] Stablecoin?

David Hoffman:
[42:12] Excuse me, memecoin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:14] Oh, those are very different.

David Hoffman:
[42:15] Those are very different. Those are very, very different. Yes, we have a meme coin to talk about. And so we're going to get to all of that and more, but first we have to talk

David Hoffman:
[42:22] to these sponsors that make this show possible. Ethereum Institutional launches as an independent nonprofit to accelerate the institutional adoption of Ethereum. There was an announcement this week. Who's the team? David Walsh, Marius Smith, and Matthew Dawson. funded by same exact setup as the ETH Labs announcement that we talked about last week, Bitmine, Charplink, Joe Lubin. This is just another spin-out of the EF. Most of this team used to be at the EF. Now they're in their own independent org, and they're funded by the DATS and Joseph Lubin.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:55] Because there was like an institutional part of the EF org that had kind of just started over the past couple of years.

David Hoffman:
[43:02] And you could imagine that Vitalik's like, I'm not going to fund you guys anymore.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:06] Yeah, it's not very craftsy. Yeah, so they spun out and now they're being, rather than looking for work elsewhere, they are now forming another nonprofit institution similarly structured as ETH Labs and also similarly funded, but with a different mission. What's the mission of this group?

David Hoffman:
[43:23] Dedicated to accelerating the institutional adoption of Ethereum, its layer twos, application, and ecosystem overall.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:29] This means, like, I think part of their case is Because if a large bank wants to use Ethereum, they just can. But who do they talk to about that?

David Hoffman:
[43:41] They need to talk to someone. They need to do CYA. They need to do cover your ass. And so they have to meet with someone and have a handshake and have a call. Do you think that's true?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[43:52] I mean, if somebody wants to use Linux, they don't have to do that. Yeah. You don't have to do any of that. They don't need, like, a Linux evangelist. I think it helps.

David Hoffman:
[44:00] Yeah, but they don't put, they don't deposit money onto Linux.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:03] Yeah. I, have you ever talked to these people or this group?

David Hoffman:
[44:07] I have not. I don't know these individuals.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:10] Is that on your quest list of things to do?

David Hoffman:
[44:12] To talk to them? Yeah. Are you going to wait? Yeah, do you want to talk to them?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:15] I mean, it wouldn't hurt to just talk to them. All right. I mean, I don't know if it's worth a podcast at this point, but, like, you could. Yeah. Wouldn't hurt to talk to them, I guess, see what's up. I mean, do you think this will move the dial, I guess, is another question.

David Hoffman:
[44:26] Yeah. Maybe phrased differently is like, is this bullish or not? Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's more bullish than had they been at the EF. But like the most bullish thing was that the EF just did all of this and was good at it in the first place. Yeah. Like, this is a solid second place to what would have been just like one single competent markets driven foundation. But again, that's not what Vitalik wants. And so in lieu of that, this is bullish. This is a bullish reaction to that. Well, it's interesting.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:57] Another option could have been for Bitmine or Sharplink to just pick up this team and push them forward. But this is another separate.

David Hoffman:
[45:06] That is what they're doing. They're just not doing it internally.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:08] I guess. So then they have the option rather than to perpetually fund it internally. Yeah. Okay. That's probably good news. Probably good news. We'll see what they do.

David Hoffman:
[45:16] Okay, are you ready to talk about Donald Trump? Always. Okay.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:20] What?

David Hoffman:
[45:23] Okay, so June 30th, 2026, the U.S. Government Office of Ethics, which wouldn't we have doged to that? Whatever.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:32] I'm glad it's there.

David Hoffman:
[45:35] They released President Donald Trump's annual financial disclosure report for 2025, a 927-page filing. Are you ready for the amount of money that Trump reported in crypto-related income in 2025? Tell me. Just fiscal year 2025, he reported $1.43 billion of income.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:56] Income.

David Hoffman:
[45:57] Income.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:58] That's not assets. That's not net worth from crypto.

David Hoffman:
[46:02] That's how much his net worth went up by from crypto-related income.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:06] He might be one of the most successful crypto entrepreneurs of all time.

David Hoffman:
[46:09] I think that's right. $635 million in royalties from Celebrity Coins slash CIC Digital, which is the issuer of Trump meme coin, and over $500 million from World Liberty Financial token sale and income from World Liberty Financial. The filing also showed, Ryan, that's the grifty part. Maybe this is the bullish part, is that he owns at least $100 million in Bitcoin and Ether.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:38] That's it? 100 million versus 1.4 in income? Yeah, yeah. Man, I guess he's keeping that money in fiat rather than recycling it back into his Bitcoin and Ether positions. Yeah. What do you think about this? I'll give you actually a clip. This is how it's being reported in places like CNN.

David Hoffman:
[46:56] Karen, I mean, obviously we know the president has been raking in a lot of money. It's amazing to see the details. Even those Bibles he's been hawking have brought in like $200,000 plus.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[47:07] Yeah he's doing very well the president's been very presidency has been very good for his bottom line and you know as i've always said this is a coin operated presidency really and you just put money in and and to give to him and then he gives you other things and this is exactly what's happening with the crypto stuff which is he's getting a fee no matter what even though the the price the value of the crypto has gone down i don't know 83 so everybody else loses so he's taking from the people who buy it and at the same time this deal with the uae is just astonishing THEY'RE GETTING WHAT THEY NEED FOR WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY, I MEAN, THEY JUST, THEY'RE PAYING HIM IN ORDER TO GET SOMETHING ELSE. AND SO HE CAN DO THIS ALL DAY LONG. THEY'RE DOING IT IN KAZAKSTAN. THE NEW YORK TIMES HAD A GREAT PIECE ABOUT THAT.

David Hoffman:
[47:49] THEY'RE DOING IT ALL OVER THE PLACE, NO MATTER WHERE THEY ARE. RIGHT. THAT'S ANOTHER DEAL THAT THEY'RE MAKING IN KAZAKSTAN THAT THE SON, FROM SONS ARE INVOLVED WITH A WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHER BUSINESSES RELATED TO IT.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:01] WELL, EVERYWHERE. I MEAN, WHAT THEY DO IS THEY GO in advance of Trump showing up and do some kind of deal with whatever country. It doesn't matter. They go around from country to country shaking people down. This is, you know, this is very, it's a vig is what's happening here. And if you know where that term comes from, that's exactly what's happening here. He's getting a vig for everything he does as president.

David Hoffman:
[48:20] Yeah, it's a loan sharking term or mafia term too.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:22] Unfair. What do you think? Is that pretty much what's going on? Coin-operated presidency?

David Hoffman:
[48:30] It is an extra big slap to the face that Trump made $1.5 billion when Bitcoin went down like 60% or something, like 50% at

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:41] The same time? I mean, I think this is pretty hard to defend. Oh, yeah, what?

David Hoffman:
[48:47] Obviously.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[48:48] But like, I don't, is anyone defending it? No. I guess. I don't think anyone, even the position on kind of in the Trump camp is, no, I've heard no one defending this.

David Hoffman:
[48:59] And, yeah, I think maybe like a lack of criticism is kind of equivalent to defending it is like we could be more critical of Trump. The Democrats are plenty critical of Trump, but they're critical about Trump about everything. And so just add this to the list. I would like to see the Republicans more critical of Donald Trump.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:17] We had said for a long time that in order to get Trump on your side, you have to pay the griff tax. Right.

David Hoffman:
[49:22] And turns out the griff tax is one point five billion dollars just this year.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[49:25] Right. Just this year. Yeah, just this year. It didn't have to be like that, but with Trump, it is like that. I mean, he has moved in positive directions in terms of what the U.S.'s position on crypto actually should be, but for the wrong reasons, right? Yeah. And the only time, it's interesting, the only time I hear crypto mentioned in mainstream media now is talking about Trump's crypto corruption, Trump's crypto schemes. That's right. And so, I mean, that's like, that's a narrative that's going to take some time to resolve and to get over. So, I feel like during the Trump presidency, we've constantly been asking ourselves, like, net good or net bad? Yeah.

David Hoffman:
[50:08] We're not going to be able to answer that question until after we have a Democrat presidency and we see their reaction. Hopefully they just kind of forget about us.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:19] Forget about going anti-crypto completely. But they could prosecute corruption. I mean, this should not be the way our government works. Can we just say that? Yes. This is insane that this is how things can work.

David Hoffman:
[50:34] Very, very true. Yes. and there's going to be some amount of blowback as a result

David Hoffman:
[50:38] of this and hopefully it's not too bad upon us and it's only bad upon criminals.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[50:42] Well, speaking of which, you wanted to talk about meme coins, David. So what's the hottest meme coin and why are they back?

David Hoffman:
[50:49] Okay, so something has been brewing in Solana land. There's just a few accounts out there that are kind of emphasizing Solana has bottomed and we need to pump it back. Okay. So, like, you know, Ansem, like, famous crypto Twitter trader, kind of spawned the whole, like, celebrity meme coins of last cycle. The meme is, like, they are CTOing Sol.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[51:14] What's CTO meme?

David Hoffman:
[51:16] I mean, it's chief technical officer. But when you CTO a meme coin, it's like a meme coin has been abandoned.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[51:23] You become an ambassador of it.

David Hoffman:
[51:25] You buy a lot of the supply and you, like, revitalize it. It wasn't yours, but if you CTO. So they're trying to CTO Solana and the part of it is just because they think Solana is oversold. Sol ETH is at a particular ratio that they think is bullish. They think Solana is bullish. They think Solana is going to have a revitalization. And so they're trying to get people back into the meme coin trenches. Like the other meme that they're saying is like, you know, return to memes, like get back into the meme coin trenches. Somebody minted a token with ticker Ansem, which is the name of Ansem, the black bull, that's the name of it, sent a very large amount of the supply to Ansem and Ansem claimed it. And then now he gets the trading fees and he has endorsed it. And this meme coin is now up to like $160 million market cap, which is pretty crazy.

David Hoffman:
[52:17] In the depth of a bear market, $180 million fully diluted valuation. Now he's taking a very significant amount of the supply that he has, and he's just airdropping it. So he's airdropped coming up on like $10 million of this token to people in the Solana ecosystem. And the ripple effects, the reason why this is news is, A, when a meme coin gets to $180 million, when we haven't seen anything like that in over a year, that's news. Another reason why this is news is that if you go to the pump dashboards, you'll see that there are tokens graduating from pump fund at a three to four times higher rate than they were prior. And so this is like a literal resurgence of meme coins growing in market cap. Downstream of all of this, Solana's sole price is up like 15% versus the 2% and 3% of Bitcoin and Ether. And so all I'm saying is there's activity happening over there. And it's all down from Ansem and his crew pumping the hell out of this meme coin and then airdropping. They're trying to give people in the trenches stimmy checks is the meme. And so they're dishing out all these stimmy checks so people can go back to the casino and go gambling again.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:33] I want to not give any kind of like take on this of whether it's good or bad or like any kind of moral case. I feel like we've said things like this.

David Hoffman:
[53:44] I still don't understand meme coins.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[53:45] Well, I guess maybe my biggest question is, do you think that this can be sustained just from a buyer perspective? You look at all the meme coins of the past. They are down. They have kind of like failed expectations in all sorts of ways. Attention is back. Will this be a sustained thing or is this just a short burst of activity and, you know, we won't be talking about this in a couple of weeks?

David Hoffman:
[54:09] Probably, probably the, well, I don't know about a couple of weeks. I'm maybe a little bit more longer term bullish than that. But like meme coins fundamentally are not sustainable. That's kind of the whole bit. But I don't think that stops anyone because everyone, if you're still in the trenches on Solana doing meme coins, that's your, I play video games.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:34] Have you ever read a report from Michael Nato on TDR about Pomp actually? Do you know he's a big Pomp bull?

David Hoffman:
[54:41] I think I did know that, yeah, because, yeah, I did know that.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:44] And it's just, like, just be neutrally objective on kind of the casino, whether it's good or bad or whatever. Pump is still, like.

David Hoffman:
[54:50] Printing money significantly in the bear market. Have you heard of the conspiracy as to why that's the case?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:56] No.

David Hoffman:
[54:56] Because it's money laundering.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[54:58] Okay, of course, yeah.

David Hoffman:
[55:00] Because, not that the Pump team is doing that, but somebody who needs to launder a bunch of money, they will make a meme coin. They will pump their meme coin. They'll sell their meme coin to themselves. and money will change hands, but it looks completely innocuous otherwise.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:15] Interesting. It does generate a lot of revenue then.

David Hoffman:
[55:17] Which generates a ton of revenue for Pump.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:19] Hmm. Okay. More to look into, but it could also be, money laundering aside, I don't have the data to make an assessment on that. It could just be people like playing with memes and they like, it's their form of video games and gambling.

David Hoffman:
[55:32] It's their form of video games and gambling. Yeah.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:35] Let's talk about something I saw this week, David, as we draw this to a close, which is Cloudflare on the Cloudflare blog. You remember the episode we did a couple of months ago now with Matthew Prince?

David Hoffman:
[55:46] Months? That was already months ago?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[55:48] I don't know. It feels like months. It could have been just six weeks or something. So he's the founder of Cloudflare, and this is a major initiative. This is essentially Cloudflare executing on the roadmap that Matt laid out in his post, which is they are now putting X402 stablecoin payments. They're integrating this everywhere inside of if you have an API, if you have a web page, if you have a data set, if you have any tool that you want to expose to an agent or anybody else and have kind of a pay per use structure, they, now allow that with stable coins. They mentioned they name check OUSD actually and USDC as settlement assets for this. So there's no sign up, no API key, nothing you really need. The payment itself is like the settlement of I just consumed some API resources. Here you go. And it's cool how they split this up, right? So like you'd see behind the scenes, if you have a different API, like objectives like put or get or delete, you can charge different monetary units for this. So this is just Matthew and the Cloudflare team executing on something massive. Remember, his core thing was like AI strip mining the web content providers. It's destroying the eyeball-centric business model that we've had.

David Hoffman:
[57:09] Destroying the user-generated content inside of the internet.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[57:11] We'll lose all the content unless, and we will inevitably adopt a pay-per-use, pay-per-crawl.

David Hoffman:
[57:18] Right, pay-per-consume.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[57:19] Yeah, pay-per-consume X402 type model. So this is something that's happening. I think it's pretty bullish. Cloudflare is like 25% of the internet, people don't know this, and they're just like adopting stablecoins and agentic payments and X402. and they really are incented to make it work.

David Hoffman:
[57:36] Yeah. Every time I see structural intertwining between AI and crypto and stablecoins... And just on the internet, I'm like, okay, I don't know how that turns into a catalyst for crypto, but that is just real good underbrush to be laying down that will one day spark.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[57:53] I mean, Matthew was very bullish on it. He was so bullish. In fact, he's like, you know, when we turn this thing on, no blockchain in existence can handle the type of scale we're going to need from it.

David Hoffman:
[58:02] Dude, my DMs blew up from people being like, please connect me to Matthew Prince. I can solve his problems.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[58:10] That's why you ignore all DMs like I do.

David Hoffman:
[58:12] Oh, no, I connected them. It was the Mega ETH team. I connected them to Starkware. I connected them.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[58:20] You are a wonderful person then. We'll see. You got a meme at the end of this episode.

David Hoffman:
[58:24] Okay. So, Ryan, yesterday in New York, did you see these two people who climbed the Empire State Building?

Ryan Sean Adams:
[58:30] My family showed me this. It sent links to me, but it's not on my radar.

David Hoffman:
[58:34] So, two stunt performers, people just doing a publicity stunt. They climbed the Empire State Building with a flag.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[58:42] You didn't see them, did you? I didn't see them.

David Hoffman:
[58:44] Actually, I can see it, but it's too far away. I'm in Brooklyn. And so go to the video. There's a video of a helicopter circling them. Oh, my God. And they had a flag, and the flag was like, you know. Love? Love, love.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[58:58] When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace.

David Hoffman:
[59:02] Wow, that's great. Yeah, so it just makes sense. It's a guy and a girl, and he proposes. A couple, yeah. He proposes to her on top of the Empire State Building. They got down. They got arrested. A judge just let them go free.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[59:15] Are you about to tell me there's a meme coin involved associated with this?

David Hoffman:
[59:18] There's probably a meme coin, but that is not what I have to associate. So people, the internet is now obsessed with these two people, these two sun performers. And so they were crawling through the ladies' history. And if you go to the meme of the week, Ryan, she was, in the years past, wearing a Bored Ape Yacht Club tank top.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[59:39] This is her.

David Hoffman:
[59:40] This is her. This is her. And I just think it's hilarious. One of us? I don't know, dude. Not you. I didn't expect Bored Apes to become relevant downstream of this story. Oh, my gosh.

Ryan Sean Adams:
[59:50] It's all attention economy, like, all the way down from NFTs to stunts to meme coins. Let's end with this. David, I almost gave this sign off, but it's you. You sign off.

David Hoffman:
[59:59] Yeah, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the Bankless Journey. Thanks a lot.