ROLLUP: Coinbase Crashes DC | Gary Grilled By Congress | Vitalik Deepfakes

Miss Wagner is like, yo, uh, MIT version of Gary was pro-blockchain, but uh SEC Gary is anti-blockchain. And then Richie Torres is like, yo, is it Pokemon Carto Security? These people are listening to Crypto Twitter. They are like these are our dialogue. They uh we that the power of crypto Twitter is like getting into Congress.

Well, it's because it's distilled logic. I mean

Thankless Nation, it is the last Friday of September. David, what time is it?

It's 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 this week with a bunch of clips of Gary getting grilled. So everyone, everyone, prepare for that one. If you're not listening to this with coffee because it's too late in the day, well then you should get your popcorn because that is what you will need.

I was saying, I mean, this is uh catharsis, I think, for many of you in this episode. You you'll enjoy this very much. Also, crypto was present in Washington this week. Yeah, Coinbase's stand with crypto day was held at Capitol Hill the same day that Gensler was giving tent testimony in front of Congress.

Convenient.

What about the timing of that? David

What else we got? After that, we'll talk about Pudgy Penguins in Walmart landing a huge deal, a ton of distribution for Pudgy Penguins. Also, which with each toy purchased having an on-chain identity on ZK Sync. So we'll talk about that. And then after, also, not only are penguins getting identity, but citizens of Buenos Ares perhaps also getting some on-chain presence as well. We'll talk about that. And then of course we're gonna do the uh the PSA of uh deep fakes and fishing attacks that are out there. We got a Vitalic deepfake that we want to show you. It's pretty hilarious, um, but not if you believe it. Uh notable, notable VC uh Fred Wilson got fished for 40 NFTs uh this week. So if Fred Wilson can get fished, so can you. Uh we will talk about this and more. Uh what else we got, Ryan?

You know, the usual Bitcoin ETF stuff. Uh ETH might be getting futures. There's a ton to talk about every week. This is a bullish week, I think. I'm declaring it such, David. It is a bullish weight. And we got some green candles when we get to the markets. But before we get in, David, we got a message from our friends and sponsors over at Well, you know what I want to learn more about this week, David, is uh markets.

Yeah,

Okay. Tell tell me about the old markets. I think I think I haven't looked at this yet, but I think we got some green on the week.

we got some green, dude.

Let's look at the Bitcoin charts first. What's Bitcoin showing us?

Some single digit green. Look at that green right on the right on the right. Yeah, that that that's your dare your dose of dopamine for this week. It's like whoo! Bitcoin up two percent. So at 26,600, and uh ending the week at well, Thursday morning, if you call that the end of the week. It's not the end of the week. 27,150, up 2%. Uh ether price up a little bit more, starting the week at 1660, up four and a half percent to the current price. Uh excuse me, starting the week at 1560, ending the week at right around 1660, where we are right now. 1660. I mean, it's still low. That is a low price.

We are getting excited about very little right now.

Yeah, it's it's up such a small degree you shouldn't even be excited about this. Four and a half percent are yeah, we are four four and a half percent on the week. I'll tell you it's better than four

When's the last time we had a double digit week, man?

double digit up or down.

Oh.

I can't remember either, actually. We've been we've been in the flatlands for so long. It's just like kind of a little bit of a bleed out all the way from nineteen hundred. Weren't we over two thousand a few weeks ago?

Yeah, we have touched we have touched over 2,000 in this bear market, but man, it's

Now on the crack in July.

Last time we were at two K was uh July. In July, briefly.

We went

remember July. Um I was I was in the mountains. It's been downhill ever since I've been in I caught back for the mountains.

Yeah, it really was. It's been all downhill since you guys so you got the the only thing you can do, David, is go go to the mountains. Bad things happen to Gary Gensler when you go to the mountains. Although I guess nothing bad happened to him this week. Anyway, I I'm skipping too far ahead. We'll we'll have our Gary later in the episode.

ETH Bitcoin up 2%, total crypto market cap $1.11 trillion. Uh layer two scaling factor touched 6% uh this week down to 5.5%, still at all time highs. Layer zero or scaling.

What to what touch six percent?

Excuse me, not 6x4.

Value lost

6X. 6X is what I mean. Six X.

city.

Yes. Layer two activity touched 6X of Ethereum's. And so but now it's at 5.69. Nice.

Sixty transactions per second. Sixty-four transactions per second. Um yeah, that's where we get the six X. So, you know, we got we got more transactions per second left in this tank, I think.

Oh yeah.

Uh David, you want you want to talk about the general markets, like all the TradFi markets? You want to talk about macro really quick? Because it's been super confusing to me.

It's been

And I

a we're all we're also doing a macro show on Tuesday as well. So a mac a macro show uh so talking about the state of macro from a crypto person. So it's a crypto person who understands macro. So I'm really excited for that show.

okay. Are you a crypto person that understands macro, David? Do you understand macro?

When I have a smarter macro person with me, then yes, I understand macro.

My question to you is does anybody really understand macro? Particularly right now.

Snapshot.

Definitely not. All right, so here's the tweet. Current situation, one, stocks are falling like a recession is coming. Yeah. Two, oil prices are rising like there's no recession in in sight. Hmm, that's contradictory. Three, interest rates are rising like we have 10% inflation. Yes, they are. Four, gold is falling like inflation is gone. Five, housing prices are rising like rates are falling. And six, commercial real estate is falling like it's 2008. Nothing adds up here.

That's the way I feel about macro right now. It's very confusing. There is a confusing set of signals going on and it's not adding up in my head. What do you think about this?

Yeah, they they follow through and they say it's the beginning, it's beginning to feel like a pivot point in sentiment. I don't know if um I'm about to say what I think they are meaning by this, but when there's a bunch of confusion, people I think brace for something, brace for clarity, and then whatever that clarity is will define sentiment. Like where are we going? We don't know. As soon as we find out, we'll know how we feel about it, but we know it's gonna be different.

From here. Different

Good or different bad? Those are the only two

directions. Right. Yeah, I guess that's the yeah, reductive stake take about it.

Well so but i it it's basically like we don't really know.

We don't know.

I mean that that's why I'm very interested in doing this episode, this macro episode next week to see what the you know the the the newest macro person kind of knows. I I will say one thing though. I I think volatility is back on the menu. I think that's what this means. Because when the market doesn't know what direction it's gonna go in, then it can kind of like lurch in one direction or the other. Uh so weird macro climate right now. On the back of stimulus, on the back of money printing? Like what what's going on here?

And j just to be clear about something, we've previously talked about stocks being at all time highs. That's been like kind of the theme of the last mm two months or I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Uh well, so from looking at the SPY, you don't have the chart up, but it has declined by seven percent since um July. So the SP the SPY is down seven percent, which is more yeah. Stocks are

That's the first bullet point. Stocks are falling like a recession is coming.

I don't know. It's down seven percent just doesn't feel like a lot to me. It's it's

Well, in the trad market, 7% is a lot historically, but not recently. 7% in the trad market is actually that's just like trad markets are also volatile.

Okay. Well, we'll try to make sense of this, but uh let's get let's get back to crypto. This is a negative report from JP Morgan who said Ethereum's activity post-Shanghai, that was the last hard fork back in March, uh, has been disappointing. JP Morgan calling Ethereum's progress disappointing. They've got some reasons for this. While the shift from proof of work to proof of stake meant that the energy consumption from Ethereum collapsed by 99%, the Ethereum supply is shrinking, and staking rose sharply by 50% since the Shanghai upgrade. While that happened, the increase in network activity has been rather disappointing. Ethereum's daily transactions, daily active addresses, and total value locked on DeFi protocols on the network have all experienced declines since the last hard fork. So JP Morgan, their analyst expressing uh expressing some uh bearishness here the last six months or so. Yes. I'm not mad, just disappointed with that.

My response to that is who the hell are you?

JP Morgan doesn't know how to analyze these things. Well disappointing with Ethereum post-Shanghai activity, bruh, it's just the broader crypto downturn. And also, he they're just wrong, he. JP Morgan, he is wrong. Uh they say layer twos have displayed mixed results. Well, no, TVL and economic activity on a layer twos across the board are all up. I don't know where the hell they're getting their data from, but not only is their data wrong, but their analysis is poor.

Okay, well let's go to the actual numbers, David. La layer two beat provides a g good source for value locked on layer two, so what are we looking at?