ROLLUP: Celsius CEO Arrested & ETH CC Conference Recap

And here we are, not just just over halfway through 2023. Kwan is in jail in Montenegro, waiting to be extradited to the United States. Sam Bankman Fried is under house arrest. Can only assume he's going to jail. Mashinsky's going to jail. Suzu and Kyle Davies are still on the run, but they are completely ostracized from the West. They can't step anywhere outside of Dubai or otherwise they would be arrested. So that box is not yet checked. However, with all the other boxes checked and the complete fall from grace that is 300 capital, and probably the very likely cases and efforts going into actually grabbing those guys is probably going on behind the scenes that we don't know about.

I say that we have permission to be bullish.

Bankless Nation! It is the third Friday of July, and it is time for what, David?

Uh this is the Bankless Friday weekly roll up, Ryan, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor. Yet we persevere nonetheless into the frontier, no matter where we are in the world. As you can tell, I'm in a you know you kind of a cramped little this is the most cramped podcast recording setup I've ever had.

It looks good, actually. So uh David's in Paris. And by the way, Bankless Nation, this is the first time we are actually doing an episode in three weeks.

Alright, so

This is Ryan, Myan and Ryan's first podcast in three weeks, which is the longest time that we've gone since starting this podcast.

yeah, so we've had uh David's been off climbing mountains, and he've got some more mountains to climb, by the way.

I've got one.

Uh so we we queued up some podcasts, we we um put those out for you for the last and I've been doing some solo episodes. David's got one more mountain. How has it been so far?

Uh it's been pretty good. Let me tell you the whiplash between being on a mountain and then the next day flying to Paris to go to Ecc. So, like from mountain to crypto conference in under 24 hours was a lot. I was sitting on the plane. There's a few moments I had, like halfway up the mountain. I

was like climbing climbing right near, and we were at like 12,000 feet with 2,000 four feet more to go. And it's pretty exhausted. And I'm like, This is my first vacation.

And then I'm like, and that's what you chance.

That's what I choose to do. And then and then just a day and a half later, I'm on a flight to go to uh Paris and I'm like 10 days behind on anything crypto related. Like crypto is a new industry 10 days later. And like I was like sitting around, I was like, man,

I need to catch up on crypto. What do people do? How do people consume crypto news? What do they do when they need to catch up on the week?

Oh, I can listen to the roll up. That's what I'm listening to the weekly roll up with you and Anthony. And I was like, oh, this is so useful.

Yeah, it you know it it is really useful. I mean bank bankless, uh I think for for me and for you, David, has just been about kind of uh a journey of creating content, exploring subjects that we would have wanted to explore otherwise. So it's just kind of a chronicling of that of that journey. I'm glad you found the roll up so useful, David. That's great. That's great.

I am I was very satisfied.

Okay, very good. So

Very

informative.

remind people what Anthony

They did a great job. Huge shout out to Anthony Susano for tapping in three times over the last like five weeks or so.

Yeah, I mean he really is the third uh podcast co host. Is it yeah, even if he knows doesn't know it.

Yeah, he's he's better than us.

Okay, so what are you doing in Paris? You said a crypto conference. What conference is that?

ETH CC. So I'm at the Ethereum Community Conference. So I actually ECC is interesting because it was the super spreader event right before COVID. So it was the last Ethereum conference before we shut down conferences.

And then it was also the first conference in 2021 that started things up again. So this is the third ECC since the conference season really got started. And conference season started after like in 2021, where crypto like was dead between 2018 to 2020 from the perception of the outside world to very, very much alive.

And so this July, it's always in July, it's always in the same place. It's always the same org, like running and programming this thing. And so it always feels like uh, you know, one trip around the sun. It's like an arbitrary birthday for all the conference goers out there. It's like, oh, it's a nice landmark every single year. So this is ETH C C number six. This is my third. Uh it was great. It's been great.

I was I always like to ask because as you know, I I don't go to these things. I only go to like one uh conference a year and that is permissionless, uh, which is coming up by the way. When when is that coming? That's the next one you're doing. That's in September.

That is next. Permissionless is next. Yeah.

All right. So Bankless Nation, make sure you grab a ticket if you already haven't. But ETHCC is different. My impression, it's very, it's kind of a technical type type of tracking. My favorite question to ask people, and we'll get into some of the events, some of the um announcements that were made at ETHCC. But the question right now is because we're still in a bear market is like, what's the vibe

among the builders? So how's everyone feeling? Like, what's your assessment? Because you've been to so many ETHCCs, how does it compare to previous ones?

Yeah. I I'm since it's at the same venue every single year. I walked up to the venue this year, and there's always people like kind of just hanging out outside. If you don't people come without tickets, and so they come and just they hang out outside, and then people take a break outside. So there's always people hanging out outside the venue. And I was walking up and I see like the mass of people that's always there. And I could just tell it's like,

oh, thank God it's a calm one this year.

Because last year's was insane. And also it was 100 degrees last year. This year was only 80 in Paris. Um I would say it's calm

and

relentless. Like the building, the rate of building in Ethereum has always been like

redlining in a good way. Like at the highest RPMs possible. Whether you're in a bull market or in a bear market, that hasn't changed.

Um and specifically the building now, it really feels like

people have always been building hard, but rubber is really meeting the pavement here. And I think we'll see that as we go through this weekly roll up agenda. And you can just kind of look around this space like.

Layer twos are shipping. Like the infrastructure around layer twos are shipping hard. Entire ecosystems are transitioning. Everything is the all the hard problems,

if they are not being currently solved, they are on the cusp of being solved. And that's that's kind of how I would

share the sentiment of builders is like it's real inside of it's been real in the last like six months and like the next six months, like a lot of very real stuff. Hard problems are getting solved.

I like those words. Calm but relentless is a really interesting way to describe it. And there was a bankless uh party event as well that we had for bankless citizens. Uh, this is a photo from from one of these. Uh so how what was the vibe there?

Yeah, this is the the bankless team. So this is at the end of the party. We took a took a team photo. Party was great for all the bankless citizens. Shout out to all the the bankless citizens that were out there. I talked to uh John Iced Cool from the Dow quite a lot there and just a number of other people.

You know, uh while talking to all all the the bankless citizens,

there's like certain archetypes across crypto, of course. We know this. The different different tribes.

I would call the bankless citizens like the Athenians

of crypto.

Oh really?

They're like, yeah, they're like there's a lot of dads. We have we have a lot of dads. So shout out to all the dads that listen to banklists. But like there are a lot of people who really care and really care deeply about crypto, and they're living like they're like it's a lawyer with the two kids. Or like and the why I call this the Athenians is in the 300 movie, you have the Spartans and the Athenians talking to each other,

and the Spartan, the the Spartan guy, who's I can't remember the name. Uh the guy, the three.

Warrior society, right?

Yeah. And like he's asking the Athenians who want to join the fight and is like, what's your profession? And one guy says, like, oh, I'm a blacksmith, and like, oh, what's your profession? It's like, oh, I'm a cobbler, and like, oh, what's your profession? I'm a farmer.

We're the Athenians. Like, it's just this very diverse group of very like

humble, focused people who live in a society, live in a collective.

Uh, and so I I just it's like everyone's just really appreciative of, of course, of like the podcast, but like the diversity, I think diversity is really the word I'm going for here, is is pretty, pretty cool to see.

I really love that description of the bankless uh as the Athenians. I I feel like an Athenian myself. So uh that's that's really cool to hear, David. I see a lot of plants at this uh venue. Is that intentional, David?

Yeah. So I wish I could say I picked this place, but Rachel, who is in the middle, uh, she picked she picked this place, uh, curator of vibes. The the drinks were fantastic. Uh, I had a number of uh chinning cocktails, so I got I got a little loose. Uh and but because we had this uh beautiful event sponsored by Sega, all of the drinks for the bankless citizens were free. These are the rules. If you're a bankless citizen, you come to the bankless meetup, you get free drinks.