ROLLUP: ETF Final Countdown | Polymarket's Huge Breakout | Chevron Defense | SEC Sues Metamask

Bankless Station, it is the first week of July and it is one day early. It is time for the Bankless weekly roll up. David, we got a lot to talk about. Prices are down a little bit, but uh we are still bullish because what's about to happen?

Uh, the ETH ETF. This might be the last weekly roll up without an ETH ETF. That is the new expectations for the date. Uh, we'll talk about the expectations for the date. We don't know for sure, uh, but we think that this is gonna be the last roll up. Uh, so what are people's expectations for how it will trade? When is it gonna trade and how it's gonna trade? These are what we're gonna talk about.

Also, the Supreme Court just struck down something called the Chevron Deference uh rule set in a landmark uh Supreme Court case. But like, what does that mean? What is Chevron Deference? And uh, is this good for crypto? We'll talk about that.

The SEC has officially filed lawsuits against Consensus and MetaMask after it said that it wouldn't. It also named Lido staked ETH and Rocket Pool RETH as investment contracts, therefore securities. Is there anything new here? Or is Gary just shooting the same shot that he's already shot before? ZK Sync announces the new upgrade for the ZK Sync's network stack, and of course, Crypto might actually have a mainstream breakout app this cycle is one you already know. You already know the name. We'll talk about that as well. But right, July 3rd

is today. July 4th is tomorrow, the day of listeners. Uh, probably not super relevant for anyone outside of the United States because they don't have the freedom that we have. Oh my god.

How's your July 4th? I'm I'm doing great. Wow, that was the probably the most uh American think uh thing I think uh I've heard you ever say. Um so this is why we're doing this episode a day early, because we're actually gonna, you know, shoot some fireworks on the 4th of July, spend some time with family.

Hold roaming candles in my hands as they go off.

You just disclosed to me you're a big fireworks guy, which I didn't know that about you.

You're a fireworks kid and also like a little bit of uh Pyro playing with fireworks. It went a little bit too

Too far into my adult life. Yeah.

Are you still that kid? Are you gonna have to do it?

Perusing the fireworks as we go up to a family cabin, yeah.

Wow. All right. Well, David's gonna have a fantastic Fourth of July. And like we should say happy Fourth of July to our American listeners. And uh why why we celebrate? This is uh about the the uh adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was uh America's breakup letter to uh to a king over there in England and um

There's a few lines from that that really like I think are embodied in the layer zero of the US that I think are worth calling out. One is this line about men having unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Also, another line I love from the Declaration governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. I love these ideas because I think they are very adjacent to crypto and why we're here. Um the right to fork, the consent of the governed, an opt in network. These are all powerful ideas, and the idea that we have civil liberties on our blockchains, the ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness uh and maybe gains in crypto. Uh I think these are fundamental. And um, yeah, it's a good time to celebrate and reflect uh for our American listeners on the 4th of July.

Yeah, uh I think we had the same idea about this Fourth of July episode because I have also prepared some some statements.

Oh wow. Okay. So uh for for everyone who's listening, there's a link in our agenda and it just says David Prepared Statements. And when I go to click that link, it says you're blocked. He has not shared this document with you.

So I've got to be a good thing.

Um strap in, bankless listeners. Uh we'll see how this goes. But but say it, David. I know it's on your heart, so uh let's hear.

Okay, so here we go. As bankless listeners know from our Fourth of July episode two years ago, Fourth of July actually began in the 1400s when technology allowed man to wake up and see the world through a new lens. This is the printing press and double entry bookkeeping. We've we've pounded this drum so many times. But these two things, these two technologies, created the renaissance and allowed man and woman to become self-dependent and self-sufficient. These technologies allowed us to see the permissioned world around us and gave us the tools that we needed to break free from it. By the time the 1700s came around, these ideas had become so large that they became larger than the monarchy state containers that they were born in. And so a bunch of people decided to go west to live in a land that was as free and as big as the ideas that drove them there. They did not ask for permission. They saw a blank slate on which they could build a better future, and they went for it. On July 4th, 1776, these ideas of freedom and individualism were codified into the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal, that they were endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is, however, never ending. As technology advances, tools become available to vote both advocates and adversaries of freedom. The pendulum between free and open societies and authoritarian nation states is never at rest. It is always in flux. After the 2008 crisis, we began building the walls around our closed source permissionless financial permissioned financial system. After Snowden whistle blew in 2013, we realized that we were walking into an internet enabled surveillance state.

Now in 2024, we have the foundation, the ideas, and the motivation on how to escape these freedom suffocating pressures. But in 2024, we are not yet ready to sign our declaration of independence from TradFi and Web 2. We have left Europe for the brave new world of the digital age, but we have not yet had a digital July 4th. There's still work to be done, which is why he we are here today talking about the news on today's weekly roll-up.

Dang.

Wow, David. I I feel like uh David Hoffman 2024. That felt like a political speech to me. And uh I enjoyed it immensely. That was great. What a great way to begin the roll up today.

That's about as patriotic as I will ever get.

Except when there's fireworks involved. David, let's talk about winning. Are we winning in the markets this week? I'm feeling like things are going down. We're gonna crunch on that winning thing. Uh tell me about the price of Bitcoin on these Kraken charts here.

Yeah, down 2.7% on the week this week, start of the week 61,300, currently just above $60,000 this week.

David, do you think these uh down percentages are are justified? I mean, you we'll talk about it later, but we got some uh pretty positive Supreme Court rulings with uh Chevron deference. We've got the Ethereum ETF next week. Is that what we're calling? Which is like this is the last roll up, hopefully, without the Ethereum ETF. So you like we're on the brink of that.

We don't rug our listeners, yeah.

Why are we going down?

Um, I th I think we are at capacity with how much new money has gone into crypto. Like the last big like upswing in price uh was first first to summarize the entire state of this like crypto cycle, if you can even call this a cycle, it was people reweighting Solana in December 2023 and had the Solana season summer, uh winter, uh, and Solana like repriced, and that was bullish. That was a bull market for Solana, and then there was a global industry bull market with the Bitcoin ETF.

Because new money came into the industry with the Bitcoin ETF. Like people bought Bitcoin, it recycled down the market cap stack. Like $15 billion came into the industry. No new money has come in in the same ways that it happened in 2021 with NFT mints or like any of this other stuff. And so with the ETH ETF, we will get net new money coming in, just like we did with Bitcoin. It'll be smaller than Bitcoins. It'll be like maybe a more Ethereum specific price rise.

But the great thing about the Ethereum ETF is that that is the promise of new inflows and net new buyers, right? That aren't crypto natives. And that's what's so exciting about them. So I I want to ask you, you know, our episode that we did with Alex and Matt earlier this week, where we went through kind of like I went through a scenario. And I I want you to tell me what you think the chances of this happening. Is this pure hopium? But basically, quiet summer, Ethereum ETF launches. It's sort of a sell the news event at first. Price goes down. There's flood about, you know, like grayscale exiting, not as much institutional demand for ETH, all of this. We go down maybe into the 2000s for uh the price of ETH, like under under 3K could be possible, could be on the table, or maybe it's just stagnant. But then we start seeing these inflows in the weeks after, in the months after. People come home from their summer vacations. They have already sold in May, but now they're coming back. It's September. We get a glorious fall into the early stages of winter, and before the end of 2024, we are above all time highs ETH with 10k ETH price in sight because the inflows have surprised people on the upside. They weren't counting for this. What do you think about that scenario? Could it happen? Or is this pure hopium?

We just copy and paste what happened to Bitcoin and apply it to ETH.

Yes, literally, this just happened within the last year to a different asset.

Mm hmm.

And it sounds as I'm saying it, because the markets are in the doldrums, it sounds unbelievable. Right. But yes, it's just a copy and paste of Bitcoin.

Yeah. No, that checks out. I feel I feel like that is the default scenario, and anyone else uh would have to prove otherwise.

All right. Well, that's where we're going with. This is the uh the the shakeout, a buying opportunity before uh you like new all time highs.

So let's get into actually like when when is this gonna happen? When ETF. Uh July 8th has emerged as the date to walk. This is a tweet from Nate Jirarsi. I need to DM him and ask him actually make sure I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. Uh he says that all of the S1s have been handed back with light comments. The issuers have been asked to address the comments and refile them by July 8th. So maybe end of day, July 8th, July 9th.

Sometime after 4th of July.

It's filed and approved that we get it.

Is that

Yeah, well, so like they all the approvals will happen under a certain condition. The the way that the works is like the SEC wants all these issuers to file their S1s in a particular way. And the issuers are free to file them differently, but then the SEC will make comments and be like, hey, address these comments. And because they want something different, they want a certain outcome. Uh, but then the so that it's a little bit of just like tug of war between the issuers and the

but this is um J July 8th is the day to watch, and that's the date that the issuers have been asked to resubmit, but that's not necessarily the date of trading, right?

Could there be

a

Okay. So this is not like this could happen later in July then still.

It could hap yeah, i the m first day it could happen is July eighth.

So this might not be the last roll up.

I think people are assuming that like once they get these final comments addressed, then the SEC is like, great, green light. So it's the next day, sort of thing. Yeah, it could be the next day. But we'll see. It could be, I don't know. It could be whatever the hell the SEC wants, to be honest. Uh, but yeah, people are expecting. Gary Gensler said it's being a smooth process. Uh so when he says that, that's like the only positive thing I've ever heard come out of his mouth. Uh again, another Nate Jurarsi tweet about the uh bullishness of the ETH ETF. He goes early and easy prediction, he says. Spot ETH ETFs will be the second most successful debut in ETF history, only behind spot Bitcoin ETFs, which were the number one, obviously. So, two most successful ETF launches in 30 year ETF history will occur this year Bitcoin and Ether. Are you paying attention yet? Just saying that ETH is gonna follow on show. It's gonna be great.

He's really he's already calling it as the second most successful uh ETF in history then.

And so like hit his analysis was like, we'll just copy and paste Bitcoin and get that. Your analysis on the price action was we'll just copy and paste Bitcoin.

Yeah.

The Bitwise and Galaxy episode that we did with Matt Hogan and Alex Thorne was like just market cap weight average, just copy and paste Bitcoin, just control for the market caps. Everyone is just like, just don't overthink this.

Yeah, I I I sort of fall down on that too. David, there's some good news coming out of South America with respect to crypto adoption. Look at this chart here. This is uh crypto ownership by continent. We've got Asia, we've got North America, Africa, Europe, South America, Oceania, and we have total crypto ownership by continent. Interestingly, um uh North America ranks number two with uh 72 million, Asia's number one with 326 million. I'd I'd love to find more details on the source of the charts, but like let's let's assume that these numbers are are correct.

Directionally correct, yeah.

What's interesting here, David, is from 2023 to 2024, South America got a 116% increase change.

More than doubling.

Just doubled. So in 2023, 25.5 million people owned crypto. 2024, 55.2 million people own crypto. And that was the largest percentage change of any continent. Very bullish on South America crypto adoption. I know you've spent some time recently in South America and Argentina and uh in some other places. Yeah, like um what what what does what do these numbers say to you?

Yeah, the the big drivers are here are just high levels in inflation across Argentina and Venezuela, alongside um Brazil has recently warmed up to the crypto ecosystem and inside of its banking apparatus as well. Uh so there's just like meaningful like crypto adoption in uh South America, which is also highly motivated to like just global inflation. Like pick a country there's like inflation there. Argentina has it like kind of the worst in Venezuela, and so you've seen a lot of outsized adoption there. Um I might be going back to Argentina in uh August for this thing called Cracimiento, uh, which is just like a glob like a block of crypto founders in Buenos Aires and in Argentina, of which there are many, uh, and they're trying to just make like make Buenos Aires into like a crypto, uh a crypto like sanctuary, a crypto haven. Uh Milay is like really approximate to this movement. So like the idea is like get Malay's um administration on board and just like really enshrine crypto entrepreneurship inside of Buenos Aires. Um you can actually apply to go to Cracey Miento. Um uh there I'll put a link in the show notes as well if you're interested in that.