ROLLUP: Gary Gensler Grilled at Congress Committee Hearing

The grilling of Gary Gensler. That's what happened in front of Congress this week.

Bankless Nation, it is the third Friday of April. Welcome to what, David?

Uh, the Bankless Friday Weekly Roll Up, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor. Yet we persevere. Nonetheless, no matter which regulator stands in our way,

here on the Friday Weakless Weekly Roll Up.

This week we know who it is. Uh Gary Gensler became the main character this week. Alright, and he's been doing that ever since the beginning of the year. We're gonna talk about the Gary Gensler grill sesh

in front of Congress. That happened. We got a bunch of clips. It's really like a Gary versus the people type thing, isn't it? Gary.

Be the people. Yeah. So uh if you want to get your catharsis on, we got some clips for you of just people. People just like yelling at Gary Gensler, and Gary Gensler just taking it.

It is cathartic, but it's also like so frustrating. We'll see what you guys think when we get to that section. David, what else are we talking about today?

Ethereum Capella. One week later, we will look at all the stats and the metrics as to uh the withdrawals. How many people withdrew their ether from the beacon train? How many people deposited? Uh is ether going, is security going to zero? We're gonna talk all about that, uh, as well as some other big announcements and releases of this week. Uh, an Ethereum layer two gets its first second client, so that's pretty cool. Rocket Pool uh gets the biggest protocol upgrade of any LSD protocol ever in existence. So we'll talk about the details about that. Um, thousands of wallets get their ether drained, and no one really knows why, which is concerning. And I have stuck my head in the sand on that one. Uh, all this and more. So make sure you like and subscribe. If you are listening to this on Apple Podcasts, go and rate and review so we can get bankless to the top of the iTunes charts. If you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and the like button, and overall, uh, do things that help us grow the movement.

Subscribe. Yeah, bring us up the charts. I mean, crypto needs it right now, right? Or do we? I don't know.

Yeah.

Are we in a bear market? Are we in a bull market? I don't know. We're in this midpoint. We're in this in between phase. Not really sure what to call that. We'll talk about that when we get to the markets. All right, let's get to the markets today with charts from our friends over at Kraken, our favorite exchange, the one we recommend for 2023. David, we're looking at the Bitcoin price now. What's it showing us on the week?

Uh it's shown us down, but only a little bit. Actually, a medium amount. Started the week at $33,000. Uh, ending the week down 5% at $28,000. Uh, and so kind of top-ticked it when we measured it last week. So uh 33 was like the local high. Uh, we are down now to the low low price of $28,000, back down below $30,000. Sad, sad noises.

Below 30k. Above 30k, I'm feeling good good. I'm feeling bullish. Below 30k, I'm like, oh, it's the bare zone. And we're oscillating between these two um points. It's a little

Little bear zone. It's a cute bear.

bare zone. Okay. Yeah. I feel the same way with ETH. What are we looking at in the week?

Uh down 1.5% on the week, start of the week at $2,000, ending the week at 1970. Although we had some pretty strong price action both in Bitcoin and in Ether this week. Ether got all the way up to 1,000 or 2150 almost, I'd say. Yeah. Uh, and then, but now couldn't couldn't keep up the uh the above 2,000. So we are down 1961, it looks like. So maybe down 2% in the week.

What's up with these uh green candles on the 13th and 14th? Um, is that as a result of kind of staking? Is that what we were seeing? Sorry.

Yeah, that was post Chopella. Yeah, that was post Chopella. Exactly. Yeah. Everyone realized that like people that all the Shappella withdrawal FUD was just super FUD. Yeah. And then people like, oh I'm not allocated anymore. I should probably buy

Have we retraced that? We have we

most of it. Yeah. Uh huh. The ratio's up though, which is where we're gonna go to next. Uh so uh up four percent on the week, so point zero six nine. Nice. Uh uh, so four percent gain on the ratio.

all right, four percent gain on the ratio, and total crypto market cap, gotta tell you, is one point two seven trillion dollars.

Mm-hmm.

Filling with the T. So still in the still in the bull zone. Above $1 trillion is bull zone for me.

That's the first time you've ever given the given the number. What compelled you to do that this week? That's my job.

Just because it hasn't really changed. You know, like one point. We've been it's just like look at this. Um look at this. The last

Dude, the

the crypto total.

crypto market cap chart looks yummy. It looks good.

It's like on term by the way.

Oh, the big ones. Looks yummy. The big the b the big times.

The max.

Yeah.

The zoom out to the max.

Well, I mean, just like

it's just been it's been clearly up and to the right for a while now.

Yeah, it really has.

Like we're gonna start how we're coming in on like uh we're starting to zero in. It's a little bit early to say this. We're starting in to zero in on twelve months of green. At least for ether, because ether bottomed last May.

Bitcoin bottomed in November, but Ether's almost at twelve months of green.

This is the point at which you're like, um, is this the early

And you you kind of don't know yet. You're kind of left wondering, or is this just more of kind of the crab and this is going to persist? Like, what's your best guess for 2022? We or sorry, 2023.

If we just totally extrapolate very rigidly from past bull markets, it's it was the 2016 and 2020 years that were the years of up only that no one knew were bull markets in that moment. And so like it was a modest increase of like a 2x over a modest of 2x over one year of time. So like 2016, it was like a 2x in prices. 2020, also a 2x in prices. And I remember, Ryan, like in 2020, we were all like, is this over yet? And then COVID happened, like, oh, we're we're we're still in the depths of it. And like from the Bitcoin and Ether asset prices, it was a strong performance of a year, yet no one knew, no one had realized that we were out of the bear market. And so

How does it feel like those times? Does it feel like 2016 uh or does it feel like 2020 to you right now?

uh

So if we go on the four year cycles, we are still half a year away from that, which is not far off. And also, I'm not going to pretend that like why would we rigidly project forward when things are different and change? So I mean we are within striking distance of that timing ish. It

You know that argument of why would we rigidly um project for but by the way, just to finish that thought. So, you know, it could be 2019 rather than 2020 if we were rigidly um projecting forward like right now. But I'm also actually I'm kind of still a fan of rigidly projecting forward, David.

works well.

I remember it freaking works almost every time, not just last time. It worked the time before. And it worked the time before that. It seems like

No, but the time before that, we were that was the first cycle.

I know, but it's just uh these four year types of cycles seem about right. And it has nothing in my mind it has nothing to do with the Bitcoin happening. It just has to do with these boom bust cycles that we see.

It's in

tight for tokens. Yeah.

And I remember people were like, last time in uh 2021, late 2021, 2022, when the whole super cycle idea sort of took off. It's like, why does it have to be like last time? This time it's different. We have all of this, we're not going down. We'll never see another, you know, above 50% drop from all-time highs. This is a different asset class. We've hit mainstream. Look at we have Tom Brady. We have uh, you know, our names on uh sports arenas. We're here, we made it, right? And what happened? The same exact pattern played out. That's why I think the rigid projection is like my base case still, even though it is the same.

No. All right. Well, let's go on. Let's talk about Ethereum. Okay. Because now we are one week, just over a week, past the Chappella upgrade. So all like ETH withdrawals are in. So tell us about the numbers, David. I want to know if uh how many people withdrew or how much ETH withdrew, how much ETH deposited, and what are we net gain or net loss? Now I'm expecting a net loss as we go into these charts, but tell us the story here.

Uh okay, so I want all the listeners, including you, Ryan, to think of uh think of the number. So we'll start with the number of the number of ether that was staked to Ethereum the moment that Chappella happened, which was 19 million and one quarter. So 19,250,000. That was that was how much ether was staked when Chappella went live. How much ether do you think is left in the beacon chain? How much ether we got left? How much ether got withdrawed?

How much should we go down by?

Yes, how much did we go down by?

My guess is.

Up by.

We definitely went down.