ROLLUP: Trump's Massive Memecoin | Ethereum Ecosystem Drama | Ross Ulbricht Freed | Phantom Wallet Worth $3B?

Bankless Nation, welcome to the weekly roll-up where we cover the weekly news, drama, and developments in the crypto space. This week is the fourth week of January, and today on the show I have the pleasure of being joined by Eric Connor, former ETH Maxi and now Crypto AI Bull to help me go through the weekly news with me. Eric, really happy to have you, my man. How are you doing?

Hey David, good. It's been a minute since we've recorded anything. But yeah, I've been well. Um, thanks for having me on. I know that some people were a little bit of drama this past week, but just want to be clear David and I had David had reached out to me well before that um to help kind of fill in on one of these roll ups. And I said, Yeah, of course, it's it's been a little bit. So I I don't think I've recorded anything podcast wise for a few months now. So excited to be back at it and chat with you.

Yeah, well, podcasting is like riding a bicycle. You know, you never really get off the bicycle. You always know how to do it. So let's go ahead and get right into it. We'll talk about, we'll address some of that drama later in the show. But first, before we get to that drama, we're gonna talk about Trump. Trump bursting through the doors of the Oval office with a bang, drops a $50 billion meme coin that sends Solana soaring. He also kept his promise with pardoning Ross Ulbricht and really just kind of has the crypto industry edging for what he does next. Uh then the Trump second order effects are also underway. Gary Gensler is out. Hester Peirce has launched an SEC crypto task force to right all the wrongs that the SEC has done over the last four years. A U.S. court lifted OFAC tornado cash sanctions, and Bank of America has signaled their readiness to accept accept crypto into their bank. And lastly, drama in the Ethereum ecosystem. There's been some tension over the role and direction of the Ethereum Foundation. It's kind of reached a boiling point on Twitter in the last week. Vitalik is pretty fired up. He put on a Malay PFP and is going toe to toe with some long Ethereum community members. And then a second Ethereum Foundation was launched. I'm confused about the details, so I'm going to ask Eric all about that. Before we get into all of that and more, a message from our friends and sponsors over at let's get into the markets. Bitcoin started the week at $100,300, up 5% on the week to $104,800. I believe you don't own much, if any, a Bitcoin, Eric, like me. Uh but look give me give me your takes about like the Bitcoin price action over the last week and really over the last year or so, which is only three weeks now.

That has maybe slightly changed in the last few weeks for me, but um I'll keep that to myself for now. Um yeah, it it's the Trump effect, you know, which we'll obviously get into as well. But I mean to me the Bitcoin graph just looks pretty strong overall. And I think one of the keys is it's just kind of got the strongest narrative, the strongest media play right now. Um it's translating to people. And I I think a lot of this is, you know, it'd be interesting to see if Trump does announce a Bitcoin strategic reserve, because I think a lot of I don't know if that's really built into the price, but a little bit of that hype is built into the price, right? So 100K was kind of that level for a while that you know was was resistance. It's kind of looking like that's slowly turning into support. Um, so yeah, I mean to me overall, like uh most of the crypto market looks pretty solid. And I mean, if Bitcoin can flip 100k into support, I mean, probably gonna fly a little bit from here, especially with Trump in in office now.

It was interesting. Midweek Bitcoin broke all-time high, and no one really talked about that. It hit uh over a hundred and eight thousand dollars per coin. I think it probably touched a hundred and nine thousand on some exchanges. Uh, and no one really was celebrating all-time highs. I know it's like only maybe one thousand dollars higher than the previous all-time high, but I think all-time highs are kind of normalized now. And also it dumped back down to a hundred thousand, as you said. So we're getting some volatility above the one hundred thousand dollar mark. Let's turn to uh Ether, a little bit of a different story. While Bitcoin was up 5% on the week, ether was down 3% on the week to where it is now at $3,200. Started started the week at $3,300. Uh, usually, even if Bitcoin is outperforming Ethereum, usually they're both in the same direction. They are both either green or red. It's kind of rare when one is green and one is red. Uh, and there's been a pretty big divergence. Uh Bitcoin up 5%, Ether down uh 3% for a difference of 8% on the week. Uh, any comments about Ether price performance, Eric?

I mean, it's kind of just stuck in that same lull, right? It's kind of like Bitcoin goes up, ETH lags, Bitcoin dumps, ETH seems to dump more, right? It's just been a kind of a constant bleed on the ratio. I mean, this is historically what has happened in bull runs, let's be honest. Uh Bitcoin runs up, blows past all-time highs. It takes ETH a little bit to catch up. You know, there's a lot of hope beam around Q1 for ETH. Um, we're almost a month into Q1, it hasn't moved. Doesn't mean it's not going to. Uh, nobody really has a crystal ball. I definitely don't. This isn't like too weird for historical trends. Um, sentiment just feels a little bit different, but I mean it's not out of the question whatsoever that ETH could go on a traditional Q1 catching up to Bitcoin run, right? But it's just kind of stuck in this that 4,000 range has just been very, very brutal resistance, right? So when that happens, you just kind of start to range. It seems like we're kind of stuck in this 3,000 to 4,000 range when it comes to ETH. So um, I don't know. I guess the big question is is it gonna play out like history or is it gonna be a new, you know, a new cycle and and ETH just can't get out of this this slump right now.

I do feel very familiar to this feeling of man, ETH is in this range and it just can't get momentum. But that as the longer that that goes on, when it does break through that range, uh, then you have just conviction and confidence in continuation. We're just kind of waiting for that moment. Uh I will say that we, as crypto natives, tend to compare valuations a lot, but nonetheless, the straight US dollar bid into the industry over the last week has been absolutely uh gargantuan. $2.2 billion of inflows have flowed into digital assets over the last week. This is a report according to uh to CoinShares, and you can see that show up in the Bitcoin ETF. Just yesterday, on the 22nd, $250 million went into the Bitcoin ETFs, but the day before, $800 million. And then on the 17th, which I believe was last Friday, over a billion dollars in a single day went into the Bitcoin ETFs. And before that, it was 600 million, and before that, it was 700 million. So some gargantuan numbers going into the Bitcoin ETFs. Uh the ether ETFs also positive. I wouldn't call it gargantuanly positive, but we are at about uh almost coming up on 10 days of positive inflows into the ether ETFs. Uh and like I said, here is that coin chairs report just talking about 2.2 billion dollars of uh doll, you know, dollars bidding different crypto investment products uh over the last week or so. So while you know we like to talk about the ratio, the Solana people love to dunk on the ETH people about the poor price action, but nonetheless, dollars are coming into the industry and providing a floor for all of our crypto bags.

Yeah, I mean I think this is one of the things this has to me been the biggest mystery of the ETH price action, right? We've got, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into ETH and it it just seemingly is stagnant, right? So that just break brings the question of like, I guess who's selling or, you know, why why are we bringing in so much retail flow and not going up? But um

You know, that this thing can s all this stuff can be a mystery until it just takes off, right? And you and you never really figure it out. Um, I do think ETH has had one of these interesting things where we're not as far along in the cycle as um in our cycles as Bitcoin is. So there's a lot of like early, you know, still ICO participants that have large bags that are okay selling at 3200, right? And maybe we just got to shake them out and they're the ones kind of dumping on retail flows. And then once they're out, ETH moves up. Um, but it to me, one of the greatest mysteries of this cycle so far has been that ETH got an ETF. Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into it. And I believe ETH price is the same as when the ETF was announced. Um, go figure that one out.

Yeah, yeah. That is a good point. Yeah, the ETH ETF seemingly has had no material price uh uh action in the ETH price, other than volatility. It's provided volatility without actual appreciation. Uh total crypto market cap 3.7 trillion. That is near the all-time high, which I believe is 3.9 trillion, but we are still not yet there. And then two movers of the week that I want to highlight Radium, uh, which is kind of the Uniswap on Solana, not a perfect comparison. Honestly, nothing is a perfect comparison to the uniswap of whatever chain, but Radium, uh, it's an AMM on Solana. Uh, it is up 50% on the week, and then Solana itself up 20% on the week. I would call both of these things uh a tailwind of the Trump meme coin, which we're definitely going to talk about. Uh, but the the meme coin infra on Solana and Solana itself definitely has caught a bid over the last seven days or so. And we're gonna go ahead and get to that subject. Next, Donald Trump enters the Oval Office with a bang, a meme coin, a presidential pardon, and a new host of pro-crypto cabinet positions and a task force, all tackling the crypto industry in the ways that we've always wanted to. We're gonna get to all of this and more. But first, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Eric, I think this is the tweet that was heard around the crypto industry. I think people probably thought that Donald Trump's Twitter account was uh hacked when this tweet went out, but no, it's real. This tweet reads from the official Donald Trump uh Twitter account. My new official Trump meme is here. It's time to celebrate everything we stand for. Winning. Join my very special Trump community. Get your ticker sign Trump now. Go to get trump memes.com, have fun. And there is a big picture of Trump in a frame saying fight, fight, fight. And it's get Trump Memes.com. And if you go to get Trump Memes.com, it's a big website that says the only official Trump meme. Buy now with debit card, buy now with crypto, and a Solana contract address, along with a very fit, skinny looking Donald Trump. Uh and it turned out to be real that this is a real Donald Trump meme coin called Official Trump that debuted coming in at something like a $10 billion market cap on launch, but only with a excuse me, a $10 billion fully diluted, like a $1 or $2 billion market cap. Uh and then it immediately proceeded to go from about $2 up to $28 in like half of a day, uh, adding $50 billion in market cap. Uh 80% of the token itself is locked up, which is why there's just such a big discrepancy between the market cap and the fully diluted valuation. Eric, where were you when you realized that Donald Trump launched a meme coin?

Um, I was not home. I was actually out and I kind of missed the initial few hour frenzy. I was trying to like disconnect from my phone for a minute. Of course, that's when things always happen, right? Um late at night when you're trying to disconnect a little bit. Um, and then I I had I looked at my phone, and of course I had a million texts and just messages and Telegram and Discord, and everyone was blown up about it. Um, I think when I first saw it, it was at something like I think it was like like 20 bucks, thir fifteen to twenty bucks. So it wasn't like too late in the game, but I felt like you know, it had already come on and you know, people had sniped it and already went up. Um, but yeah, I this is just fascinating. I mean, to have

the the president of the United States launching a meme coin and tweeting it from his official account and everything, right? I I didn't

I honestly I'll just be honest, I didn't think we would go this far in the meme coin game, right? This is like

I'm not saying that's like the peak of the meme coin market, but this is like the peak that you could possibly get as far as someone launching the president.

Launching a meme.

Like who's bigger? I would be bigger. Elon, maybe just hype wise, but I mean Trump's kind of at the top right now, right? So um yeah, and I kind of miss it. I did not, I did not play this game. I felt like I was a little late, a little silly, maybe, because I think it ran from like once I saw it, say 20 bucks up to the peak of I think 70, 75, um, 75 billion dollar market cap. Um, sitting around 36 now. But yeah, pretty fascinating. I mean, I I had a lot of people not really into crypto, of course, texting me like, hey, you buying this? I'm like, uh, I'm not, but you do you if you want. Um, and then of course.

It's taken off, everyone's talking about it, and they decide to drop a Melania coin, right? And I'm just like, like, why? Like this thing could have just why you dilute it like two days.

Just shot themselves in the foot

I know

so hard.

it was running. I mean, it was at 70 billion dollars. It could have run uh way higher, I think. The hype was there. Coinbase launched it, Robinhood launched it, and then you're just kind of like, wait, what? And then everyone kind of does a double take, right? And starts thinking, like, well, how are they gonna keep diluting it? Is there gonna be a barren coin? Blah blah blah. Um so yeah, that's you can.

You can see on the chart when they launched the Melania meme coin. I believe it was if you're looking at the screen, it's right here. See this big ass red candle? Excuse my language. The can the candle that drops the Trump meme coin by 55%. It goes from $75 down to $32. Uh, I mean, like the thought process, I don't understand it. Uh, we're gonna play a Trump clip, which is the only known clip that I know of of him actually addressing the meme coin. But man, Trump is the meme. Melania, she's I'm sure she's a great lady. No one cares about Melania. Like, it's just Donald Trump. Just one meme coin, and it would have gone to infinity, but they just killed their momentum, erased billions of dollars collectively. Because like the Melania meme coin is only at like two or three billion dollars. You know, like two or three.

40 billion off this cap.

Exactly. Yeah. Uh-huh. And it hasn't really recovered since. Uh, and so it's almost uh it's basically currently at the price that it was when it dumped it. Tried to recover, it did not, uh, but is currently clocking in at uh $37 billion, which is still not still plenty of money. $7 billion fully diluted. Uh, there is on the website, you can see the distribution. There is a one of the classic pie chart distributions, and all Trump collective-owned entities own 80% of the token. I think if anyone inside of the crypto industry launched a meme coin in this fashion in this way, everyone in crypto would be like, well, that's a grift. You own 80%. 100%. But when Donald Trump does it, uh and you know, it pumps Solana, the Solana price by 50%, and everyone gets wealthy, uh, then it's totally okay. Uh and like granted, it's incentive compatible. It is, you know, legitimizing the industry in some way, shape, or form, uh, is putting more attention in into the market. Uh, there are some pretty crazy stats out there uh about the sheer number of wallets that was made.

In order to uh just buy the token. Uh, here's some uh a tweet from Jason Yanowitz who says 50% of Trump and Melania holders have never bought a Solana altcoin before. Forty seven of buyers created their wallets the same day they purchased the token. 83% of holders own sub-1,000 of sole assets. This was a historic retail onboarding event. Uh and then Mike Bolito, who's you know uh Jason's co-founder, says uh the Trump meme coin is a seminal moment in crypto's history. Whether the discount rate that used to get applied to crypto for the fear of it being banned has lifted. The entire industry is about to re rate up only. So zooming out, Eric, what what would you say about just the impact on the crypto industry as a whole? Like, is this, is it, is it are we never gonna be the same? Is it gonna be forgotten? Like, what's your take?

Yeah, I think one of the most important points there. It's actually funny, I was talking with someone this morning about this, is just the sheer number of wallets that's created on Solana and for Solana, right? And I think of all the things, that's one of the better things they've cashed in on on the meme coin game is just capturing users. And these are now just active wallets with money in them, right? Um, maybe they're not going to go trade or use Solana every day, but this created a crazy amount of wallets for them. Um, I think overall it's it's bullish, it's good for the crypto industry. Um, I think no matter what, you have kind of regulation guards coming down, you have the president of the U.S. launching a meme coin. Yeah, okay, we can call this a grifts in a way. I mean, they own 80%. That's why I didn't personally buy it. And I'm sure there's just some kind of team behind this that.

convinced the Trumps to to do this and they kind of ran with it. And they're probably the ones that were like, hey, let's do Melania now. Like I don't think Donald himself is sitting there being like, hey, it's time to launch a Melania coin, right? There's like a team they're kind of working with doing this. Um I

I think I think it's fine for the industry. Um we were already launching just nonsense meme coins every day anyway. Exactly. So like let's not act like this is like, you know, worse than anything the industry's done so far this cycle. Um

But yeah, it's just it's the 80% is personally why I didn't do it. I think if it was like a hundred percent fair launch, I would have been more interested in hopping in. And I think that's probably holding a lot of people back now as time goes on as well. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, how that happens. Who knows? Maybe they're like, oh, we're gonna burn most of this, and then people will be more interested. But uh yeah, I I don't really think you can think of this as anything less than bullish in general for the industry.

I think the big question that Trump meme coin token holders uh want or was it getting insight for or wants insight for is like really how how aligned is Trump with his own meme coin, right? Is he gonna be like on Twitter pumping his meme coin or does he even know about it? We have one clip of Trump talking about his meme coin, which was from a press conference when an interviewer asked him about it. It is a hilarious clip. Trump, so you know, whatever you feel about him, he is either on purpose or accidentally hilarious. And I think this clip embodies that. So let's go ahead and listen to this clip right now.

Crypto coin the other day, do you intend to continue selling pr uh products that benefit yourself personally while you're president?

Well I don't know if it benefited. I don't know how where it is. I don't know how much about it. I heard it was very successful. I heard it was very successful. I haven't checked it.

Thanks.

How much?

Several billion dollars it seems like in the last several days.

Several billion, that's peanuts for these guys.

Yeah.

And that's how it ends. He's he actually receives from the reporters how much money he made on this meme coin because apparently he did not know. You can see uh inside of Google Trends, Solana, uh, the Solana search uh keyword in Google is about to break highs not seen since 2021, like much higher. Uh, whatever this this chart is, uh measured at 30 was what it was on the high of 2021. And currently we're clocking at somewhere around 100. So three times higher uh than the highest point it was in in 2021, is what is the Solana uh search terms. Bitcoin is not at previous all-time highs, Ethereum is not at previous all-time highs. Uh, so Solana gets a win for just optimizing for meme coins. Turns out people really, really want to launch and trade meme coins. But that is not the only thing that Trump is doing on-chain. Uh, World Liberty Financial, which is Trump's DeFi project, uh, which is kind of a fork of Ave deployed on scroll in Ethereum Layer 2, tweeted out that to commemorate the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States. World Liberty Financial is proud to announce the following strategic purchases today: $47 million of ETH, $47 million of wrapped Bitcoin, $4.7 million of Ave, Link, Tron, and Athena. Excited for the future ahead with 20,000 likes on the tweet. Uh, and then I think uh Eric, this is uh this is your tweet. Donald Trump is starting to stake his ETH. Let me say that again. The president of the United States of America is staking ETH. And this is a picture of uh uh Etherscan of $15 million of ETH being staked to the World Liberty Financial Multi Sig. Uh, he's doing all the things across all the chains. Uh, you got to give him credit to where Donald Trump is a businessman. He's got new lines, he's got NFT business, he's got a meme coin business, he's got a DeFi protocol business. How much he's involved with any of these things is probably minimal. Uh, but hey, he's doing it.

Yeah, I mean, I think this the this here is big for Ethereum because Trump's not taking the he first of all.

He's not they're not just sitting in stable coins, right? Obviously, he's the president. He's a USD maxi to an extent, right? And but he's he's buying ETH. And yeah, he's buying some DeFi, which is good to see. Um, but oh and a little bit of Bitcoin as well. But it

historically in this account, they've been buying ETH. Um what does that mean? I I don't know if it you know, I've seen a lot of speculation. Well, he's buying a lot of ETH. Like, do you think they're gonna announce something about ETH or DeFi? I

Maybe, or maybe they just think it's crypto is gonna take off in general, and maybe they think East Low versus other things, and they just want to do it. Now, some of the funniest responses I get to some of these tweets are like, Well, it's not like Donald Trump himself. Well, it it actually kind of is. If you read the terms and services on World Liberty Financial website, like it states that this LLC, um, I think it's called like the fight, fight, fight LLC or something like that, um, which is owned by the Trump family, um, has say in where the funds go and how they are invested over like a certain threshold.

Has governing power over World Liberty Financial. You've read the fine print.

Yeah, I've read the fine print. Uh Trump family, and I'm sure you know he he's he's on the top of the LLC. Uh I think some family members are on there, whatever. But um they I mean they have the say over this. If they wanted to dump all this to USDC, they could do it. They're clearly telling people to buy ETH. Um, it's all there in the fine print on the website. So um I I think this is just great for crypto. I mean, like the president's talking about meme coins, buying ETH, Bitcoin, DeFi. Uh, we're we're coming off, you know, four years of people hiding and and tucking their tails in because they were afraid in the US to do anything related to crypto and DeFi, right? And clearly that, you know, you you can't really be fearful in the US now about like being sued for launching a DeFi project or a meme coin or something legit if the president himself is doing this stuff, right? So I know that's not like an official legal stance by any means, but you feel a little bit safer now, right, than you did yeah, just a week ago or whatever. So um

Where this all kind of goes next, I don't know. Like is is the full four years of Trump's presidency gonna be, you know, DeFi meme coin related? Is this just a flash in the pan and he's gonna, you know, shift to first of all, just being the president? And second of all, more like the Bitcoin or you know, other coin uh national reserves. I don't know, time will tell, but it's been fun. Um, the engagements on those tweets are fun too. People love Donald Trump buying ETH. So uh yeah.

Dude, the Donald Trump algo is huge. Like people just want to hear about Donald Trump and what he's doing about crypto. Yeah. This this tweet that we're looking at from you has a million views. It all has almost 10,000 likes. I also just the difference in behavior of what's going on on the two respective chains, Solana and Ethereum, is also just interesting. Like, what is what is Donald Trump and Trump associated businesses doing on Ethereum? Building a DeFi protocol and buying Bitcoin, buying Ether, and buying other crypto asset tokens. And then what are you doing on Solana? Launching a 80% locked up meme coin. Like, those are the facts of the matter. There are two different types of behaviors going on two different chains. And I just kind of think that's it's interesting to see the natural behavior that emerges on the respective blockchains.

Yeah, I I fully agree with that. I I think that's I had pointed that out, not exactly that, but in a couple of tweets, kind of like, you know, I I'm okay with Solana winning quote unquote winning meme coins. I know they didn't win meme coins because there's great meme coins on Ethereum as well. Um, but like what if East Future should be a focus on like DeFi and Ether's money store value and kind of like you know, global sediment layer that people trust storing their assets on and not launching an 80% locked up meme coin. Like that there is like this divergence now and kind of what the chains are being used for. And I think we're gonna get into this topic a little more later, so I won't go too far, but this does come down to as well, though, you you need to get users on your chain, and users are buying the the gas token, and that's pushing price up. And so um, I know we're gonna talk a bit a little bit about Ethereum in general later, so I'll save some of those thoughts for now.

Yeah, let's finish up with the rest of uh Donald Trump and his crypto actions. The big thing this week, I would say even bigger than launching a meme coin, even though launching a meme coin is pretty big, is the pardoning of uh Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder of Ross Ulbricht. Here's a photo of Ross at 40 years old after being in jail for almost 12 years after he was uh imprisoned after uh operating the Silk uh Silk Road, which is the uh it's a dark web marketplace, a marketplace for everything. And then since it you know used Bitcoin and Tor, it ended up being a place where uh drugs and many other illicit activities uh would be done. Um here's Ross Ulbricht walking walking free with a little plant in his hands. I thought that was cute. Um he uh tweeted out uh truth out on truth social. I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son Ross. Uh and uh I actually met uh Eric, I don't know if if you've ever met Lynn uh Lynn Ulbricht, but she has been around the libertarian crypto conference space. I met her in uh Bitcoin 2019 uh when she was collecting signatures uh to petition the government to release her son Ross. And she had been doing this before um before like the crypto industry really adopted her as uh a symbol of libertarian rights. Uh, and she never really gave up. And uh, I can only imagine being the mother of a son who was in jail for 12 years and getting the phone call from the president saying, Hey, I'm about to pardon your son. Uh Kraken Exchange, Kraken tweeted out, all of us at Kraken want to make sure that after what you've been through, you're able to land on your feet with the support of the community that loves you the most, the Bitcoin community. That's why we've donated $111,000 in Bitcoin to you, Ross Ulbricht, from Kraken. Uh so Ross, I don't know, he he might have some Bitcoin tucked away. I don't think anyone really knows. He probably doesn't even know. Uh, but hey, at least he's getting a hundred thousand and $111,000 in Bitcoin from Kraken to Ross. Uh Eric, what are your thoughts on all this?

Yeah, I mean great to see. This was kind of rumored, right? Trump had hinted at her or talked about it. It was kind of funny, like this didn't happen on day one of Trump's presidency and all the Bitcoiners were already kind of up in arms with pitchforks. Like let's just wait like a couple days, right? Um and then I think it was on

He it was signed on the first full day of Trump's presidency.

Yeah, exactly. Second, I guess, US day, but within the first 24 hours. Uh so yeah, I mean, great to see that this go obviously story goes way back and there's a lot of nuance and stuff here. Um, but I I actually think not even commenting necessarily on the the case and what happened, I think it's a testament to how powerful Bitcoin and crypto have become, right? This is something when Ross was prisoned for this, pretty much everyone in the US, especially the government, thought Bitcoin was a scam. And Ross was kind of a champion in general for Bitcoin, right? Um, early on, and and kind of, you know, even though Silk Road was like a drug exchange and illicit exchange, like it helped put Bitcoin on the map in like a weird way. It was kind of the first big story. Um, and now people that were being jailed for, you know, accepting Bitcoin on these marketplaces, um, what was once thought Bitcoin itself was dirty and only used for drugs and all this stuff, um, is now powerful enough to get the person out of prison that went into prison for this, right? So um kind of a full circle thing. Um, just really kind of shows the power crypto has now. And it's nice to see. I mean, one of the classic things during the election was people anti Trump were saying, Oh, he's just saying this stuff, he's not gonna stick to his word. So, just in general, it's nice to see him sticking to his word on some of his crypto related promises.

Um and then yeah, I've of course been thinking, I wonder how much Bitcoin has uh been stashed away or like he opens up some old laptops and some old, you know, hardware wallets or whatever, some some cold storage written down seed phrases and oh look, uh I've got lots of Bitcoin on these. So who knows? We'll probably never know, but I I'm sure there's some sitting around.

I was thinking about this. I I'm gonna bet that he doesn't have access to any old bitcoins because for the num many number of years, you know, 10 plus years, he has been operating under the assumption that he is in jail for life. Uh and his mom has been working tirelessly to get him out of prison. Uh and if he knew that he had access to Bitcoin somewhere, he would tell his mom, hey mom, I've got these bitcoins. You can use that to fund my my to fund help. Uh so I think it was it would be likely that if there was the option for this, then he would have already tried to have have exercised that option. Uh but nonetheless, in addition to the Kraken, $111,000 in Bitcoin, I'm just pulling up the Bitcoin wallet. It seems like other people have also donated even more than that. So he is up to $276,000 in Bitcoin coming out of jail. So he's walk he's landed on his feet, landed with some funds. Uh Ross Ulbricht, I know every single podcast under the sun is probably clamoring at your doorstep trying to get you on as a guest. And I would like to include myself and the Bankless Podcast in that. Uh if you are ever uh after you are done being bored of being a free man, uh please consider coming on the Bankless Podcast. Let's get into uh some of some of the regulators. There is a statement on the departure of Chair Gary Gensler. Uh, and it starts off today is Gary Gensler's final day at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Interestingly, I think this is written by Commissioner Hester Peirce, uh, Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, and Mark Ueda, two very pro-crypto uh SEC commissioners, and one very negative one, Caroline Crenshaw. I won't read the statement. I'll leave the uh link in the show notes for anyone who is interested in reading the statement because I want to kind of skip to the punch here, where uh the White House has issued uh some executive orders naming uh chairmen and chairwomen. Uh it's in the lieu of an actual official uh uh position. We all know that Paul Atkins is likely going to be the SEC chair, but in his absence, before he is actually uh named and approved, Mark Ueda is the acting chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Uh he has been very pro-crypto, basically the other half to Hester Peirce. Uh and then also for the CFTC, we also have a pro-crypto CFTC acting chairman uh for um uh for the CFTC. There's also SEC Crypto 2.0 announced. Acting chairman Mark Ueda announces formation of new crypto task force headed by our favorite Commissioner Hester Peirce. Uh, my reading between the lines is that we need the SEC needs to go case by case by case of every enforcement action, litigation, uh wells notice that it has ever issued the crypto industry and he needs to re-evaluate every single one to see what the SEC, the new SEC, wants to do about that. And so Hester Peirce, I think, has always had the interests of the crypto industry uh at heart. Fairly, not she's not just like giving us a blank check, but she understands that her role is to uh have an SEC that uh fosters fair and efficient capital formation, and that the SEC has not been doing its job as it relates to crypto. Uh, she has said this many, many times, including in on bankless, uh, and I think Hesra Perse leading this agency wide effort could not be better for uh the SEC's relations to crypto. Eric, what are your thoughts on all this?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, be gone, Gary. Finally, man, the guy was just one of the worst actors against the crypto industry and it's all of its history, right? Um, so that's great to see. Yeah, and I I agree with you. I I think the key here, and they already announced it, like you mentioned, is just getting the clear guidance and framework, right? That was always the thing with Gary. It was just so murky and it was intentional, right? It was like their way of not really putting out guidance. It's almost worse when there's a middle ground because you're not really sure, like, can I do this? Can I not? Um

So yeah, this SEC Crypto 2.0 thing. I mean, again, just so much positive news coming in and and things that Trump had promised that are already happening on like day one and two, right? One of my one of my favorite things before the election was people acting like

the okay, the the president can't like officially fire and appoint the SEC chair, but like of course they can pressure them out.

Who he has a lot of tools that

One of these things that I was always fighting with people. I'm like, there's no way Gary's sticking around. There just is not. Um, sure. Like, maybe by the law it can't happen, but it's clearly gonna happen, and it happened. So I I think the biggest takeaway here is just allowing US crypto companies to to understand this framework and to finally flourish it a little bit, right? Because we've fallen behind the rest of the world. I mean, I've had plenty of friends, developer friends, friends in general, that have left the US to go build stuff elsewhere, right? Um, and so I think.

This is just going to kind of bring innovation in the crypto space back to um back to crypto. And I think that age, that age of fear for crypto builders in the US, not just the US, like the US's presence reaches far, right? Um, that age of fear is kind of gone. And I think we're gonna see like uh, you know, a renaissance area era when it comes to to building and especially around DeFi and things like that.

I think one thing that I really want to highlight, uh, the CFTC has named Caroline Pham as acting chairman of the CFTC, also pro-crypto. So we are flipping from the SEC and the CFTC and the Treasury. Uh, the acting chairman can't remember the name of the Treasury. All everything is pre-flipping pro-crypto. So not only are the individual agencies uh working more collaboratively with the uh crypto industry, but they can now also work together. And so the CFTC and the SEC can work together to define what's a security and what's a commodity. So these agencies, which previously have had tension with each other, regulatory territory land grabs that they have been trying, I'm hoping that now because they are all together flipping pro crypto, that they're they can work together to uh foster correct and clear rules of the road for the entire crypto industry. Uh, I thought this video of uh Brian Armstrong being interviewed on uh Squawkbox on CNBC about uh what he's hopeful for, I thought was was pretty interesting. So let's go ahead and give this a listen.