ROLLUP: Bitcoin ATH's In Sight | Coinbase Crashes | Blast Mainnet Live

Bankless Nation, happy first week of March. Welcome to the bull market. David, how are you feeling, man?

Uh I'm feeling pretty good, Brian. Yeah, it's ETH Denver week. Uh Bitcoin is pumping like it's never pumped before. Uh ETH is following on suit. Rest of the market uh is is waiting patiently. Uh but you know, when Bitcoin adds um $200 billion to its market cap in one week, yeah, yeah. Um it ten almost ten thousand dollars to the Bitcoin price in a single week. Yeah, it turns out uh the Bitcoin ETF was bullish. Who knew?

Well, we're gonna have giant smiles on our face throughout this entire episode because we are definitely in bull market territory. Gotta start with

Throwing my capitulation flag on the quiet all time highs. Uh well that did.

Yeah, Coinbase went down. Coinbase went down. It's breaking into like the top 100 on the app store. It's yeah, that that that was the that was the quiet part of Shout.

your your heart was in the right place, but I kind of felt like that was uh not gonna work out, man. The market is not going to listen to uh to be quiet when Bitcoin is almost crossing is cross 60k and all time highs are in in sight. So we've got to talk about that first. What else we got?

Uh Coinbase went down, people freaked out, and then uh it recovered and things went up again. But the point is that Coinbase went down, which is bull market. It's a bull market, it's bull market. Uh but like also like retail is here. Like people are re-downloading Coinbase for the first time in a long time. Also, Kraken making some very big moves, dropping a reverse Uno card to Gary Gensler, and launching Kraken Institutional in the same week. Just feels like once crypto starts winning, Ryan, we can't stop winning. Uh and speaking of winning, Gemini has released its settlement with Genesis.

You're never gonna guess how much money you're going to get back, Brian.

Yeah.

Me personally. You're talking about anyone who is a depositor of Gemini Earn, uh, yeah, you're gonna you're gonna be happy with the number that you're getting back.

Some good news. Unexpected news too. We got uh Uniswap is back with a feast uh switch proposal and uh prices were pumping on the Uni tokens. That was another one that caught a bid.

When a multi-billion dollar ERC20 token pumps 70% off of a proposal, like we might be in a bull market.

Lens protocol is now permissionless. Also, Blast is now live on mainnet. We got to check in with that. But before we get to all of that,

a message from our friends and sponsors. David, you know what? I I think it's time before we get into the actual numbers on the week, which we're going to get to in just a second, just to spend some time reflecting because we are on the cusp of crypto all time highs. We're almost at Bitcoin all time highs, and pretty much everything else is going to follow. So I think we should just like enjoy this moment. We should just take a minute to reflect. And uh you you wanted to share something over from Eric Wall. Uh maybe we start.

Eric Wall set set it up just so perfectly. I'm gonna read out a tweet from his. He says, So the market did really wipe out SBF, Doquan, three hours capital, and then it went shooting for all-time highs, like not as a joke, but for real. So Luna really did go to zero. SBF really is in a cell prison. Quan is really getting extradited. Sue had to drop every last one of his shitcoin logos from his display name, and Kyle is in a shed somewhere chopping wood. That is a that's a Twitter meme for those who aren't on Twitter. The cryptocurrency saga moves like poetry. How is this real? When did you experience something like this? That you need to take it in with every fiber of your body, every hair should be standing on your skin. I do want to say that this this week, particularly.

was a monument monumental week in crypto history and we don't get many like those often, so it's worth appreciating, it's w worth reflecting. And the kind of the cool thing about why it's such a big deal is because Bitcoin pumps so hard.

Like, actually, that is why this is such a monumental week. It pumped $10,000 inside of a week because of the Bitcoin ETF. We're going to get into some of the uh milestones, the new high watermarks, not just for Bitcoin ETFs, but global ETFs. And it's just a sign of just like a milestone that this entire industry has crossed over because a lot of just what or Bitcoin's destiny, its manifest destiny, has been finally achieved in this first week. Legitimacy, acceptance, adoption in TradFi with all the boomers behind the bags. Uh, and we also still get to have our own internal ecosystem where we have Bitcoin pumping $10,000 on one side, and then we have dog shitcoin meme coins also pumping on our side of things.

I I I think Eric's uh reflection is really important here because he's basically saying, look at what we just lived through. Like is com how is any of this real? It feels like we lived through some kind of simulation. Like this is just such a bizarro world show. I can't believe we went through this over the last uh 24 months. It's been absolutely crazy. Just like all of the character arcs, uh, you know, all of the the the the stories that that were closed. Uh you know, it's just such a crazy time in crypto. I don't I don't think uh I will ever forget the last two years, that's for sure. And

What sitcom that is crypto is absolutely unreal. Just to really tie off a loose end here, can you scroll down so we can see um uh Kyle Davies chopping wood?

What?

This isn't this is this is a tweet that he made where he uh he just says, Let me this is Kyle Davies. Let me share with you my newest passion chopping wood. I spent hours every day in meditation, building fires from scratch. Each swing of the axe is physical, relaxing, unless my mind explore new boundaries.

Uh

I'm sure if everyone was chopping word right now, we'd be at 1 million BTC. Just insane copy pasta.

for former crypto billionaire, I think, probably, or cl close to that, Kyle Davies, and uh one of the co-founders of Three Hours Capital, and now he's chopping wood this uh this bull cycle. Um

I'm chopping wood for heat, you know.

You know, I want to uh share another reflection. Like um to everyone who's stayed during the bear market, you guys stayed for the last 24 months. If you're you're tuning into Bankless, um, you know, like you're probably not new here. You've probably been around, you're probably listening during the dark period of the last 24 months. I just want to say this. I in the upcoming uh weeks and days, a bunch of people will tell you you didn't deserve these gains, right? Crypto, you got lucky, it's you know, like all-time high, like making money shouldn't be this easy. Let me let me tell you, it actually was really hard. And for those who stayed, you did your research, you accumulated when everybody else was running away, you resisted the overwhelming urge to believe all of the FUD that that crypto was dead. Uh, you didn't follow the the herd, they left and you stayed. And don't let anyone tell you you don't deserve these gains. Okay, because you earned it over the last uh two years of time. And that's really when you earn it is during the bear market uh season. So congrats. Just just spend a moment to to to think about that. Yeah, well done. Now don't get too high on your horse, though, right?

Yeah, not not too soon. Not too soon. We have to save some pats on the back for later, too, when we actually do cross all-time highs. Yeah. Also, just big shout out to everyone's net worth who's higher now than it was at the peak of the market last cycle. We're not at all time highs now, but you know, shout out to the people who bought $20,000 Bitcoin. Shout out to people who bought sub $1,000 ETH. Shout out to people who bought like $10 Solana. David, this means accumulating in the bear markets is like, you know, once every four years opportunity. And that last bear market won't be coming back again.

I uh I think this meme that you sent before the episode really sums it up of what the the balance we're going to have to strike during the the bull market is uh you're like two buttons to click, like two choices, and somebody saying, This is David, the past couple of weekly roll ups. One but button one is stay humble. Button two is I effing told you so. You are like we are juxtaposed between those two options. Like there's a little bit you want to stay humble, and a little bit like, ah, we were right, we stayed. It feels good.

Yeah. Surprise believing in crypto is the right answer. Who

So um one thing I was thinking as well is as you sort of zoom out, you know how often we've compared crypto to um the internet, the birth of the internet. And if you if you if you go into Google and you type, like the consensus date of the birth of the internet was 1983, actually. Okay, so 1983. It's very interesting if you extrapolate that forward. 15 years later from 1983 was about 1998. All right. And I don't know if if some people remember what the internet felt like in 1998. It was very much like new territory, it was this uh exciting technology that this horizon, and that was like right before the dot-com boom. Okay, it was just like a little bit into it. And then of course, over the corresponding years, 1999 and 2000, you got an absolute explosion in market prices, right? So that was 15 years into the internet. It's very interesting, David. If you if you uh look at crypto right now, we are 2024 is actually 15 years now into crypto. So the bit Bitcoin just celebrated its 15th birthday from the first block. We are now 15 years. And so the question is, what's gonna happen next? I feel like every cycle we talk about, well, it's like the dot com bubble, right? It's the dot com boom and the dot com bust. I wonder if we're actually going to see that this time. Do you have a take in like what year it is in in terms of the internet? Do you do you think we're in 1998 or do you think we're like after um, you know, the the dot com boom? Do you think we're in the the 2000s somewhere?

knows?

Yeah, I think really you can only uh understand patterns and I don't I don't think you can really carry it over one-to-one. Um I think the biggest evidence to say as to why crypto will experience some sort of dot-con boom-sized uh movement in the markets is A, we are actually in tapped into traditional financial markets right now, and there is the colliding particle of uh AI as well. Um, the AI crypto overlap and AI crypto retail speculation, uh, and just innovation in AI, where a lot of that value is going to be able to be much more easily expressed in crypto tokens, which are easier to mint because of the what are what is an ERC20 token other than like a printing press for financial assets. I think like it's really those two things coming together that is like A, we're redoing the internet both on the crypto side of things and on the AI side of things, but crypto is offering the financialization of the AI side. Just like crypto is going to be able to tokenize to express value of AI innovations way better than any like public listing on a stock market, unless we do like a whole ex back era again. Um, but I think the crypto AI synergy, I think, is very, very strong.

I also think it was so for me personally, it's still my take that we're going to absolutely boom and then we're going to crash. Like it's still my take that there's no such thing as the super cycle because this always happens in these fractal patterns.

gains can become very weighty.

So I think we're going to go higher than anyone thought this bull market, and then that will be followed by a crash. What what say you to that? Or are you on team super cycle?

This time it's different.

I no, like I think we uh have been in one super cycle since two thousand and nine.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. Well, we'll see how it plays out, man. We're in the bull market now. Let's get to some uh charts. What is Bitcoin like on the week? Thanks to Kraken for providing these glorious Bitcoin charts and Kraken Pro interface. What are we looking at?

Bitcoin is moving really, really fast. I have to update these prices in real time. Uh $62,150. Uh it is down a whopping $2,000 from the moment I woke up this morning. And it is still at $62,000. It is up 21% on the week. We are 9% away from all time highs. Wow. 9% away from all time highs. So

What is the number for all time highs that we got to be?

yeah, previous all time high set on what was the day? November 10th, 2021. $69,000. Nice.

Wow. 69,000. So we get above 69 and we're good. We get to 70 uh and and we're good. Do you know Bitcoin has already past all time highs as measured in the fiat currencies of about 30 countries? That that includes China and India. This is uh a tweet from Bology showing all of the countries where um Bitcoin is already at all time high in terms of their local fiat currency. We're not there with US dollars, but I mean we're getting real close, David.

I mean US dollars is the final boss, right? Like all fiat currencies are losing to the dollar and then the dollar will soon be losing to Bitcoin.

Uh one of the big stories, one of the big reasons why has been inflows. TradFi re

The big story. It has been the big story. Every for the last two weeks has been the crescendoing volumes into the Bitcoin ETF.

It I think it's safe to say beyond anyone's expectations, right?

Well beyond anyone's expectation.

Like even even the Bulls are pretty surprised about the the success that the Bitcoin ETFs have having. So so uh BlackRock and Friends, they now have over 300,000 Bitcoin. Okay, so ETFs now hold 1.5% of all Bitcoin supply currently in existence. And just a quick reminder it's been less than 60 days since these things have been released, right?

It's nuts.

It's absolutely crazy. So let's uh go into a James uh Seifert tweet here. He is um looking at inflows, record inflows, he says. What's this showing us?

Yeah. Uh BlackRock iBit took in $612 million of Bitcoin on its own. The whole net group of all Bitcoin ETFs took in $673 million. And then we had $216 million of outflows from Grayscale. Still sizable outflows from grayscale, but is just getting completely overwhelmed by inflows into everything else.

And this was just in one day. This was one day.

This is uh Bitcoin purchased by ETFs one particular day last week that was February twenty twenty eighth. The the amount of Bitcoin purchased by ETFs was about ten thousand. The amount of new Bitcoin issuance, so that is supply, was nine hundred. That's like a ten to one.

Over 10 to 1. Yeah. Absolutely nuts.

Um, and then also I this big old reminder we are in like inning two of the full might and power of the Bitcoin ETFs. So uh this platform with $30 billion in it, Carson Group, has been approved, it approved itself to offer uh the spot Bitcoin ETFs to its customers. Uh and so Carson, like who manages people's money, just allowed the the BlackRock, the fidelity Bitwise Franklin Templeton, Bitcoin ETFs to its customers. So there are wealth managers, there are platforms, there are brokerages that have not allowed their users to yet buy the Bitcoin ETF, and they are also allowing that to happen. That's going to happen like starting now, moving forward. And then later, in like, I don't know, inning four or five or six, there's actually going to be the sell side where like sales or where people go like, Hey, uh client of mine, have you considered Bitcoin in your portfolio? Like that hasn't happened yet. Yeah. And that is a lot of money.

What you're talking about is this this kind of second inning. So, like the first inning we've had sort of you could buy it directly on BlackRock, you can buy it directly in Fidelity. The registered investment advisors are now coming aboard. That's what the Carlson platform is. They are, you know, the the Charles Schwab types of uh independent registered investment advisors that advise you know retail dollars. Well, now they can have exposure to these assets. They have the option to purchase these assets on behalf of their clients. Another one, uh, just like that, David, 10 times larger, Morgan Stanley says that they are evaluating spot Bitcoin ETFs, and they have a just a massive giant brokerage um platform. So the RIAs are are starting to get involved, and that's going to unlock a whole bunch of uh capital. So the pipe, the bandwidth in this thing for liquidity inflows is just getting bigger. One other comment I'll say is like, I feel a little bit bad for some of those uh investors who are depending on their registered investment advisor, right? Because like they haven't been able to purchase this, like they've been front run by us, by crypto natives, even even by the BlackRocks infidelities of the world, not having the option to purchase Bitcoin, right? This is the case for why you should uh take some of your investment decisions in your own hands and not just like go with the the flow and go with the system.

When the crypto industry was really getting excited about the Bitcoin ETF, like November, December of last year, like Bitcoin was $26,000 to like $38,000. And so all of these institutions that are lagging their own customers' ability to buy Bitcoin are selling their own customers $60,000, $70,000 Bitcoin. This is why it pays to be bankless. It pays to run the opportunity. Touch the chain, you know, like go into the deep end, you know, get your private keys. Anyways, I think Hunter Horsley said it best. Uh Hunter Horsley from Bitwise, he says there's just so much in the works with advisors and wealth platforms. Bitcoin is arriving, not in one week, but 2024 is going to be a great year. Um, I concur. I concur. And I will say, putting on my ETH Maxi hat.

When the ETH ETF gets approved, $1 into the ETH ETF is going to move the ETH price at least three times more than it would move the Bitcoin price because of how Ethereum market cap is one third the size of Bitcoin. At least. And that's base case because also there's much less ETH on exchanges because we have DeFi. We have like ETH and Ave, we have ETH in Eigenlayer, we have ETH on layer twos. And so like the ETH price movements are going to be like 3x is like such a bare case versus Bitcoin. It's going to be like five to five to like 8x times in price movements on $1 inflows into the ETH ETF versus the Bitcoin ETF. Like I need to call a doctor sometimes when I think about this.