ROLLUP: Crypto Bill | OP Wintermute | Illuvium Land Sale | PayPal Crypto | ApeCoin Ethereum

Like

I'll call it right now if that's what you want, Ryan.

I want it! The people watch

It's not going down anymore. It's not going down anymore.

it. Hey Bankless Nation, happy first full week of June. David, what time is it?

Oh, Ryan, it's the Friday Bankless weekly roll-up time where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless. What's going on this week?

Oh man, there's so much going on. And you you and I just had a debate as to whether this is the um the first week of June or the second week of June. No idea. But we compromise and call it the first full week of June, which I guess it is. Um that that is one of the central debates on uh on Bankless today. But we also have some

Is it settled, David?

Every single weekly roll-up, we have we always end up starting the week like shit, is it the f is it the second week of this month or is it the first week of this month? Like how do we uh square this? Sometimes there's five weeks in one month. So this whole like first, second, third week of the month thing. You you think that it actually works well, but it doesn't work well at all.

Yeah, I mean David and I understand crypto very well. It's just calendars. Calendars are giving us the process.

Are hard.

Anyway, topics of the week, guys. Uh, number one question, I think, in everyone's mind is is the bottom in? We're gonna talk about that, David. First thing. We're gonna talk about the takes, the data, the arguments suggesting it. A hot take from Arthur Hayes as well. And try to answer the question is the bottom in or not? At least as far as crypto. What else are we talking about, David?

Oh, of course, got to talk about the Robson test net, which is merged. The merge happened to Robson, the test net. Uh, we got two more test nets test nets to go, and then the final final actual merge happening to Ethereum. Uh we'll probably talk about the timelines because as we get closer and closer, as with one test net behind us, you can actually start to see the merge on the horizon. We have all remaining steps left. So we're going to talk about the recap, the Rupson merge, and also talk about the timeline for the actual merge coming in the future.

We're also going to talk about the 20 million optimism token fumble. Some of these tokens were apparently hacked, um, taken, and uh there there's a whole story around that. And uh also, David, do you know PayPal is allowing users to go bankless for the first time? PayPal recall they have 400 million users. This was like one of those bear market headlines that just kind of dropped. I didn't see talked about a lot, but uh, this is a pretty big deal. So we're gonna talk about that too. Of course, Friday morning, make sure you like and subscribe to this podcast. If you're listening to it on YouTube, do those two things. If you're listening to the podcast side of things, make sure you rate and review. As David says, that is how we get out of the bear market, is getting bankless to the top of the chart. So uh make sure you do that while you're listening right now. David, also got to talk about our friends at MetaMask. And there's a handy little button in the MetaMask app, either on mobile or the desktop version, that some people probably haven't clicked yet. What is this button and why should they click it?

It's called the buy button, Ryan. And I frequently forget that MetaMask actually has this buy button. And yeah, the other cool thing I learned while doing this is the buy button works for a lot of different chains. And so, regardless of what chain you're on, uh Polygon, Avalanche, BNB, Phantom, Cello, you can buy crypto uh across all of the chains with MetaMask. It's the easiest way to get Ether into your wallet or whatever gas token into your wallet so you can start doing some things. Uh and uh I think Ryan, we've been talking about the build market lately. It's not a bear market, it's also a build market, but it's also, Ryan, a buy market. At least that's what I'm doing.

Don't this is not financial advice coming from David, but you know, you want to be thinking about dollar cost averaging in, of course, as as you always do. And the another buy button inside of your wallet is an easy way to do that. So if you want to check that out, of course, you gotta have MetaMask downloaded. So go to the link in the show notes, get MetaMask if you don't already have it. If you do have it, go take a look at that buy button and how quickly you can get uh crypto directly into your wallet without having to go through the five step process of transferring from bank account to exchange, blah, blah, blah. Uh, David, let's get to the market, man. What's the market telling us? Uh, we gotta start with our friend uh Bitcoin.

It's a choppy, choppy week this week. Bitcoin is down 0.8%. Started the week at 30,400, ended the week at 30,100. I guess it went up to a couple hundred dollars since we last talked, but uh 30,300 is where it is right now. Uh choppy week. Uh barred it up, barred it down, barred it back up, barred it back down again, and overall just kind of flat. Kind of flat.

When when when you say BARTs, but people for people don't know what you mean when you say BARTS. It's kind of like uh technical trader type talk. What is a BART, David? Because I see I see I see it.

I think it's very untechnical. But yeah, so Bart, imagine Bart's head, right? Bart's head is like this like column-shaped thing, and then it's got a bunch of jagged lines at the top. Uh and then Bart Simpson, yeah, right. And so like you can see, you can see the wall it makes on the on the upside, it chops around and then it goes down. And then of course you also have the inverse Bart, which is the same thing where like it like breaks down really fast and then it chops for a little bit and then it goes back up. Uh if you if you type in like uh Bart chart pattern into Google, you'll get like actual charts with Bart's face like superimposed on it. Uh yeah, this is the Bart.

You see BARTs at all different timelines and all different levels, right? Of the market.

Bart fractals are everywhere. Yeah. So

Now you're

everywhere.

already weak. Yeah.

Apologies for that, guys. It's uh Bart Bart is now going to become part of your vocabulary. Are we seeing any BARTs on the ETH chart? Tell us the price right now, David.

Yeah. Ether took a little bit more of a hit. That seems to be the theme of the last few weeks. Uh started the week at 1830, and we are currently at 1805. So down about 2% on the week.

So we talked about Bitcoin, we talked about ETH. Now let's put them all together. Let's talk about the ETH Bitcoin ratio, up or down on the week.

Down on the week, 1.3% went from 0.0602 to 0.0594. I mean 1% in crypto. I'd call that flat, uh technically down, but yeah, uh flat, flat plus some chop this week.

David, are you ready to call a bottom on the ratio? At what at where is the bottom, do you think? Look at the bottom. Look, is it

It's either right now or a lot lower. One of those two things.

Thank you. It's either right now or a lot lower. Is there a third option even available to us?

No, I think that that makes the the I mean, we are testing the lowest that the Ether BTC ratio has been since it really broke up out of the bear market trend, the 2018 bear market trend. Uh and so like if it starts to go lower than this, like it's that's to me a signaling a long, brutal bear market, which I do not think is coming.

You think if it goes a little bit lower? Okay, so remember, recall it broke out of this back when we were full steam ahead in the um the bull run in uh April of 2021. That's where we broke above the um the ratio that we're in right now. Um but it's gotten as low in like 2020. It got as low as uh 0.018, 0.017, even. Uh has it gotten lower?

No, that's that is the lowest. Well, I mean it started lower than that, uh, but that was the lowest that it got in between the 2017 to 20

I mean, we could we fall back there, do you think?

Absolutely not. Kiss that out either. Where's your bottom? No way.

You gonna call

I always think the ETH BTC ratio is up and to the right.

over the long time range, uh, maybe so, but if we're in a bear market, it it it could be hard to tell. Okay. I won't make you call a bottom on this uh uh in this roll-up, but at some point, David, because you know, I love when you call bottoms and then we can just meme meme that it like

I'll call it right now if that's what you want, Ryan.

That's what you're

doing. I want it. The people want you to call a

It's not going down anymore. It's not going down anymore.

Come on. You gotta okay, give me a number.

Uh what's the number? Is the number.

Point.0963?

Oh, excuse me.05963 is the bottom.

That's the number right here?

Yeah.

You're not even gonna be conservative and be like 0.05 or something like this?

No, I'm also not a trader, so no one should be listening to me for trading advice e ever.

Alright, well now you know for sure it's going below 0.0596. Guys, so there's your alpha uh for today. But let's talk about the total uh crypto.

The inverse of alpha. Uh crypto total crypto market cap uh lost a little bit, lost twelve billion dollars in the last week, one point three one two trillion down to one point two nine eight trillion, uh but mostly flat. Uh flat on the week.

Billion among friends. Who cares? Pretty much flat, eh? Okay. State of the markets. Let's talk about the Fed because you know people are wondering what the Fed is going to do next. And there is actually a new set of inflation numbers that are coming out today. So we don't have them because it's prior to uh when we recorded this. And those are going to be some numbers to watch. Um, I think what's going to happen here is there's going to be a lot of scrutiny with the newest CPI inflation numbers, right? And so is it going to be down or is it going to be up? The medium median forecast apparently is a year over year CPI increase of about 8.2%.

So, if so, that would be slightly below the April 2020, which was 8.3%. So we're hoping for, and I think the Fed is hoping for, and certainly the the American public is hoping for a lower inflation. But even if it was 8.2, man, that's not a lot lower, just a like a tiny fraction lower, and we'll have to see. If CPI is higher than expected, though, David, I think you gotta assume the Fed is gonna continue to be hawkish on this market. And that means increasing yields, uh, like in their forward guidance, it means continuing the quantitative tightening that they're doing, all of its policy actions. And what that of course leads to is pretty predictable bond yields go up, stocks and crypto, maybe they go down, maybe they're on a downward trajectory. So uh be looking for that, those inflation numbers tomorrow because they are kind of the north star, I think, guiding the Fed. Any thoughts on this?

Oh, I got a ton of thoughts. Yeah, so inflation is a lagging indicator. Uh, so we are about to see uh the report for May in the early June, but May, like ultimately, inflation is still always lagging behind the markets. Like inflation is a reaction to the rest of the markets and not leading the rest of the markets, but right now the inflation report is kind of how the markets are interpreting the Fed's response. Uh and so

now Rael uh talked about this when we had our podcast with him, where he kind of thinks inflation is already dead. We're just waiting for it to show up in the reports. And so, like, if you are assets heavy, if you are waiting for the risk for the bull markets to to resume, if you are uh still into risk assets like crypto, you are just waiting for these CPI reports to come in and finally indicate that inflation has actually shown up, or the death of inflation has finally shown up in the metrics. Uh

I kind of wonder how much of a lagging indicator that is.

Problems. So it's a question of are are we lagging it by like one month, two months, four months? Like how long do we have to wait for the death of inflation to actually show up in the metrics? Because we already know that tech stocks got wrecked, right? Like uh ARC, which had billions and billions of dollars on it, is like at a six-year low, right? And so all the inflation, which came from asset price inflation, it's uh reasonable to assume that it's already dead because everyone's broke now. Uh and so like that is really the fight that's going on is the Fed is making uh all of the big gains that happened in 2020 to 2021. It's trying to eliminate those because the people that had all those gains are spending a bunch of money. Uh and so now that the markets are dead, people have stopped uh spending a bunch of money, but we're waiting for the the effect of people not spending a bunch of money to show up in inflation. And like all the all the at the people that are just gotten like whiplashed by the market and like worked by the market, they're like, We know inflation's like done because we stopped spending money. So, like just like lower the interest rate so we can start spending money again. Uh and the Fed's like, No, we gotta wait for it to show up in the metro.

Yeah, and I do think we're living with the Fed's decisions, you know, not just the Fed but fiscal policy too, of like 18 months ago, probably. Like realistically, maybe stretch as far as 24 months ago. That's what's showing.