ROLLUP: Bankless Arena?! | $600M Crypto Hack | Prepare for the Merge | PoS & PoW Misconceptions

We can't wait to tell you who put their name on the next crypto sports arena. I'm super excited about this, David. I know you're smiling too. I know you're excited.

I know, I know. I kind of want to skip right there, but it it's it goes in the news section.

Happy Friday morning, Bankless Nation. It is the last week of March. Or is it the first week of April? I'm not too sure, David, but I do know one thing. It is time for what?

The Bankless Weekly Rollup, Ryan, where we cover the entire news in the last week in crypto, which is always an ambition ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless, covering everything that happened in the markets, the news, what's going on, uh the NFT shenanigans, the regulation shenanigans. We cover it all here on the Friday Bankless Weekly Rollup.

Absolutely, fastest way to get your crypto digest and some hot stuff, hot topics this week.

It's gonna be a fun week. It's gonna be a fun week.

Look, we gotta talk about more crypto companies putting their names on sports stadiums. Okay? Who could that tell me happening?

Who could that be?

April 1st, it's happening. We're gonna tell you about the biggest one yet. I think this is the b I think this is bigger than FTX. I think this is bigger than crypto dot com. This is the biggest one yet, and we can't wait to tell you who put their name on the next crypto sports arena. I'm super excited about this David, and I know you're smiling too. I know you're excited.

I know, I know w I kinda wanna skip right there, but it it's it goes in the news section. Uh it's not the biggest in terms of deals, in terms of money deals, but it's the biggest in terms of culture, I would say.

I totally agree with that. Also, uh, one of the biggest hacks maybe in crypto history, uh, the Ronin sidechain. There was an exploit. So this was a $600 million plus hack. We got to cover that. What happened? What went wrong? Are sidechains really safe? What does this mean for uh Axie Infinity, of course, because that's the Ronin sidechain. Also, David, there are so many misconceptions out there about two things. Number one, the Ethereum merge. Number two, proof of stake. We're gonna lay those misconceptions to rest and also talk about traditional finance institutions waking up to the merge, waking up to proof of stake. Lots of reports there. So a number of things to cover. I'm excited to dive in. Dave, before we get there, we should talk a little bit about uh permissionless. This is a conference and we are uh getting closer and closer. I think we're like two months away. Is that correct?

Yeah, the drum roll for Permissionless is getting louder and louder. May 17th to 19th, Palm Beach, Florida. It's just going to be insanely fun. This is gearing up to be a reunion of the Bankless podcast and also so many more guests and panelists and speakers, some insane content. All of your favorite bankless previous podcast guests are gonna be there. Justin Drake, Chris Dixon, Nick Carter, Eric Peters, who's uh a huge in the regular in the traditional finance world. We had him on the podcast. Jho from Axie, of course, Jake Shravinsky for all the people who are trying to get downloaded with the uh legal and regulatory side of the crypto industry, Ryan Selkis, of course. What would a conference be without him? Stani from Ave just had him on the show. Uh it's it's going to be the who's who of crypto events. Uh smack in the middle of the year, May 17th to 19th, at in Miami or in Palm Beach, Florida. Bankless is throwing a party. I'm gonna be there vibing. Ryan and I are gonna meet for the first time. The number of things that is going to happen at Permissionless is off the charts. There's not even enough time to talk about it here. So you gotta get your ticket. Uh, there is a link in the show notes to go get your ticket. If you are a bankless premium subscriber, you get 30% off, which pays for your entire bankless premium for the year. So there you go for that. Uh and you gotta come. You gotta come. It's gonna be a huge event. I'm really looking forward to it. Uh, Ryan, I know you're excited for permissionless. Why are you excited for permissionless?

Alright. That's really why I'm going. Well the conference is cool and everything, but like let's uh let's finally meet in person.

I guess

Um, David, something else going on. Our friends at Consensus on the NFT side wanted to give the Bankless Nation a heads up. So on April 10th, it is National Youth HIV AIDS Awareness Day, and Mac MAC, the makeup company, is actually releasing an NFT collection. This is going to be powered by Consensus NFT. It's going to be dropping on April the 10th. Uh, and it's featuring art by Keith Herring. The cool thing about this, I think, is like some of you listening have kind of dabbled around in NFTs, haven't really gotten into it, but this is an opportunity for the NFT, the first-time buyers of NFTs, to get a cool NFT and also support a great cause because all of the proceeds of this NFT actually go a hundred percent to support youth impacted by HIV and AIDS. And this is in two forms. So one, the initial purchase price of the NFT, and then because NFTs are so badass, every resale of that NFT, 2.5%, also goes to the cause of HIV and AIDS and the youth impacted by it. There's three rarity levels, so there's like a bottom tier of like just $25 NFT, uh, all the way up to an $1,000 NFT at the rarest level, only 25 of those. And all of these, of course, are uh are super scarce. The art is not released yet, okay? It's not released yet. I can't wait to see what these look like. But um, if you want to partake in this, at least check it out. What you gotta do is go sign up. Uh, I've got the the website in front of me right now, but a quick link to that would be bankless.cc slash m a c capital M, capital A, capital C. That'll get you there right away. Uh, I'm gonna pick up one of these, David, because uh it's a good cause, man.

In Vitalik's uh blog post about legitim legitimacy, he talked about ways that NFT projects can gain legitimacy, and it was through donating to causes. Uh we saw this with People Pleasers effort in her NFTs, like some portion of the proceeds going to a charity to establish legitimacy. A hundred percent of the revenue is going to this charity. So extremely legitimate, I think, is how the conclusion to that.

Yeah.

Very legitimate. Yeah, and this is cool to see companies partaking in this too. So it's it's also a crypto saturation story. Uh a lot of wins here for everyone. Um speaking of wins.

Are we getting wins in the market, David? Let's let's flip to market stuff. Bitcoin price. Any wins there on the week?

Yeah, we got we got some wins. We started the uh the started the week at $43,000, hit a high of forty-eight thousand dollars, of which it almost was at the time of recording, except in the last like hour or so.

We tanked from 47.5 down to 45.7,000. Still, though, Ryan, up seven percent on the week, maybe a little bit less, maybe like six point five percent. Uh it's a good week. It was a good week. It's been a good month. It's been a good month.

It's been a really good month. Like, look at this. Uh and I'll take it.

I have to say the the the bearish David weekly roll up, which people have definitely tapped into and have been teasing me about, uh so far. Some people has painted the bottom.

Look, some people are calling that a top signal, David. I hate to break it to you, man, but ugh.

What what's a top signal? You mean a bottom

The top signal of you uh excuse me, sorry. Bottom signal of you being bearish. I'm sorry. For the first time ever on a roll up you were bearish.

signal? You go back three to four weeks and you look at the fundamentals of the macro market and tell me how it's in how hard it was to be bullish in that moment. Like give me a break.

It was difficult. Some of us managed to do it though, okay, David.

Let's talk about ETH price. Uh hopefully we're going up too, are we?

Yes indeed. Yes indeed, yes indeed. Started the week at $3,500, hit a high of $3,450, up $400 for the peak, but also has kind of retraced in the last few hours here. We always record these on Thursday morning, Thursday, March 31st. Uh down, or excuse me, up nine percent on the week, down like two or three percent in the last hour to where we are now at roughly about three thousand three hundred. Ryan, you're showing the Bitcoin price chart uh just after I'm gonna be a little bit more.

Yeah.

There we go. There you go. Yeah. So so chopping around, had a really bullish week, uh, kind of retraced a little bit just now, but again, up nine percent on the week.

How about the ratio?

Ratio

Bitcoin ratio

Ratio up up to uh about two point uh two percent on the week. Uh started last week at point zero seven. We were up to point zero seven one seven. Uh two percent, up two percent. Um

means I am I'm two percent more bullish. How about you

That's that's about right. That's about right. Uh there's also

market segment?

We we got some some candy charts to show. Uh in the market Monday this week uh put a bunch of charts into the the the newsletter and there's just this same pattern that you see across the three most important charts in crypto in my mind, which is Bitcoin Ether and the ETH BTC ratio. Uh starting all the way back to I guess I think this this chart starts it really gets bullish in the start of 2021 where Bitcoin zoomed from like $20,000 up to almost $70,000. And it then it went from 70, went down to 36. From 36, went back up to 70, you know, ish. I'm kind of rounding these numbers here. And then after it hit like 69, the high of 69,000, it then went back down to $36,000. But now it is again retracing, bouncing off that bottom. So there's a channel here uh with higher highs and higher lows over time. That is this is a one-year-long channel. And the same channel is seen in the ether price. If you scroll down to the ether price, this is the same thing. It's the same thing. Higher highs over time, higher lows over time, over a really long time frame. This is like an 18-month-long uh channel, but we bounce right off of that bottom. And like if you can just if if this channel is something to take guidance from, like what is the current top of the channel? Like for Bitcoin, it's $75,000. For Ether, it's $55,200. And the same channel you can see in the ETH BTC ratio. And so if you scroll down once again, Ryan, uh you can see uh, yeah, just a little bit more. Uh it's it's there too. And so, like, what happens if the ETH PTC ratio bounces, which it did, off the floor of like 0.06, 0.055 as the absolute bottom. Again, higher lows and higher highs. What if it goes up to 0.09 where the top of the channel is? Like, hmm.

Hmm.

Question

What happened to bearish data, David? He's nowhere to be seen.

It it bound

It's gone.

it bound. Well, like Putin Putin is absolutely effed. He's got no options. Like Ukraine's fundamentally winning.

There's like peace talks.

There's peace talks, like commodity prices are coming down. All of the bearish reasons have dissipated. Uh and so like I I if you were the person that bought into the fear, congratulations. That worked out for you.

Look, my uh my co-host just makes decisions based on the data. And the data has changed, right? Information coming has changed. Macro looking a bit brighter. Uh I don't know about like the Fed and inflation though. I don't know if that's changed. That that data point still feels a little bit bearish, but

But the c the question there is, does that even matter though? Well sometimes it doesn't matter.

Maybe maybe heavy inflation is actually good for crypto. Do you want to store your value in in dollars or do you want to store it in uh crypto assets that have nice channels like this? Um let's talk about the bed index. So that's a third, a third, a third. We must be up on the week. It looks like we are.

Bigly. Yeah. Actually, this is up more than Bitcoin and Ether. DeFi won the week this week. Uh up 11%. Started the week at uh $107, ending the week at $128. So DeFi leading the way this week.

You ready to call a D5 season?

Oh God, no. I would not ever I'm cursed, cursed.

How about uh how about uh ETH gas? That's always fun to talk about on a weekly basis. We up or down?

Yeah, gas prices are up on the week. And the last week the average was 22 GUE for the week. We are up to 40. Up to 40 average gas for the week. So gas markets are up again, which is a bullish indicator.

It's always funny to me because I don't know how to feel about gas prices rising because uh at one level I'm like, oh man, my Ether transactions going up. And at the same time, it's like also a bull market signal. Right. ETH block space more valuable, Ethereum's not like revenue. Yeah. Yeah. R revenue going to staking in the future, bullish for ether the asset. So I'm always of uh a divided mind uh with respect to that. And I think the market is too. The market can't figure out whether high ETH gas prices are good for ether or bad for ether. Right? It's like people calling it in uh either direction. Um I say

Yeah.

Sentiment, I think market analysis is definitely when gas prices are up, ether value is going up. I think that's pretty strongly correlated.

I think that's a I think that's yes, and I think that's a that's a bankless thesis as well. That like on the main chain, gas fees have to continue to increase over time, right? In uh transaction fees will decrease in layer two, but they have to continuously increase in uh on Ethereum mainnet. And that is actually exactly thumbs up, thumbs, yeah, exactly, one one direction or the other. And that is actually the bull case for ether the asset uh when you run the numbers when it becomes a capital asset. Anyway, we'll get to more of that later. But uh let's talk about some other market news. Uh one is that Anchor, which is a DeFi protocol on Terra money market, borrowing and lending. So similar to comp, similar similar to uh Ave Compound or Ave. It just topped Ave, leapfrogged Ave with 14 billion in total locked valley. You can see it here on DeFi Llama. So there's Ave, there's Anchor. Only only Maker is higher. Lido and and Curve. Those are the three DeFi protocols that are higher than Anchor at this point. And this is all coming off of um this Terra explosion, this UST explosion.