ROLLUP: Goerli Merge | Tornado Cash Ban | Coinbase BlackRock Deal | Fake Solana DeFi?

Merge is scheduled, inflation down, no, hopefully that continues. Uh L2 tokens are up, fee tokens are up. Like not only is ETH bullish and proof of stake bullish, but tokens are also bullish.

Bankless Nation, happy second Friday of August. David, what time is it?

Oh Ryan, it's the Friday Bankless Weekly Roll Up Time where we cover the entire week of news and crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless. Ryan, it was a good news week this week. Well, actually, it was very mixed. It was very week started on a bad note, ended on a very, very high note.

Yeah, exactly. And so like I missed a lot of the week. So I was over in uh the UK with my family for vacation. And uh, you know how I usually say grab your morning coffee? In the UK, David, I discovered that coffee means something different than it does in the US.

What?

Uh at least it was like it was more like uh when I would ask for a coffee, it'd be like, okay, what type of coffee would you like? And the options are like espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, like it's like an array of coffee beverages.

That's

normal.

Not for me though. Like in the US, if if you're like, hey, I want a coffee, then it's okay, regular coffee. It's not an espresso Americano. Yeah, Americano was was generally the only opposite. Maybe this was just like where I was in um the in in kind of the UK, or I don't know. Well, you're from Seattle. That's coffee capital of the US. Is that what coffee really is?

Okay.

Yeah, I think well, I think if you go into a coffee store in Seattle and you ask for coffee, then they will continue like, yeah, what what kind of coffee do you want? Yeah, I think I think that's normal.

It's probably actually definitionally cracked, but like uh here on the East Coast, David, you can go into any place in the US and be like, I'll take a coffee, and they won't ask you like if you want an Americano or an espresso.

Black burnt black drip coffee.

Yeah, Bert. And then they will make it a beverage by putting cream and sugar in it. If you'd like

to do it, anyway, bankless station. Grab your bankless coffee beverage, if you will, uh, and uh join us for some topics of the week. Number one, David, the merge, the Ethereum merge. It has a date. Woo!

Woo! It has

a date.

We're merging. We're merging. It's what's the date gonna be? Oh, we'll tell you later. We're not gonna tell you right now.

Yeah, we're not gonna spoil that. Uh also, there's some uh big stuff going on with uh Tornado Cash.

Yeah, that's that's a bad part of this week.

What do they do? What's happening there?

Tornado Cash, the first ever smart contract on Ethereum is now illegal. There is now an illegal smart contract for US citizens. So if you are a US citizen, congratulations. There's like 40 or 50 smart contracts uh all associated with Tornado Cash that is illegal for you to touch. I didn't know that smart contracts could become illegal, right? That's that's news to me.

Yeah, it doesn't feel like they could do that constitutionally, but we'll get into the arguments there. Uh the last thing is Coinbase base just landed a $10 trillion client. Wow. We'll tell you who that is. But of course, you're gonna do the roll-up with us. And if you like these roll-ups, you gotta make sure you like, subscribe, rate, and review. So like and subscribe if you're looking on YouTube, watching this on YouTube, or rate and review in your podcast player. If you're on Spotify, by the way, this comes in video form now. So you can get bankless via video, which is the best way to do a roll up is to watch a roll up, not just listen to it. Um but of course with Spotify now you can do both. So that's pretty cool.

Ryan, did you know that uh this last week we uh received our 2000th five star review, and then this same week the merge gets a date? This is not a coincidence, sir.

It's it couldn't be. Who is that uh 2000th reviewer?

I don't know. It probably said something green.

Vitalik himself. It's probably Vitalik. Thanks, Vitalik. David, let's get to markets, man. What are the markets saying to us today? Let's talk to Big Daddy Bitcoin.

Markets are happy. Bitcoin's happy. Up a very impressive 8.3%. Started the week at $22,400. Where we are currently is $24,300. So almost up $2,000.

Okay, so we're happy. Up $2,000 in a bear market. That's feeling good. And tell me about ETH. Wow, this chart's looking bullish.

Yeah, that's a that's a 18.7% up in one week for Ether. Started the week at just under $1,600, $15,092. And we are currently at $18,090. Yesterday, Ryan, right after the uh Gorally merge, which was a success, uh, we hit $1950. $1,950. Wow. Uh

The gor the Gorley merge, by the way, is a testnet merge, the last remaining testnet. We're gonna talk about that in in a little bit. So do you think the market is just responding to the merge news? If so, that makes me bullish because like the market actually responding to fundamentals is a thing that is relatively rare in crypto. At least I found it rare. Maybe that's my cynic point of view. The market just generally responds to stupid things all of the time, narratives or like fake partnerships or just dumb stuff that happens. It's rare that you actually have a market event that's affecting fundamentals and the market digests that and immediately responds with upward or downward price movement. What do you think?

Yeah, the the thing I've noticed about the market lately is that it's been responding positively to positive news and it's not been responding negatively to negative news, which is generally indication of w what the mind shift, mind like the mental mental state of market participants

That's not a bear market.

market. That is not a bear market.

Because bear market, even when there's really good news, it can be fundamentally good news, nothing happens. Right. Or it could continue to drop down. But now we're seeing good news and good things are happening to price. And that's following fairly rapidly after the good news in a timely, orderly way. Smart market now. And not a bear market. Maybe.

Yeah, I don't think you can say a nineteen hundred dollar ether is a bear market. I don't think that's

Right to say that.

Yeah. I don't think so.

All right, but like uh still, I I think most people, if you ask the average crypto investor, they would still say we're in a bear market, but this is starting to feel a little bit different. Uh I guess we'll see what happens. But you know, when ETH is doing things relative to Bitcoin, uh, we start talking about the flipping again. And uh let's let's take a look at the ETH to Bitcoin ratio, and then I'll go back to that uh that that flipping chart to see where we are. So, what's the ratio showing this today?

Yeah, the ratio is up 10% in the last week, uh, going from 0.0705 to 0.7777. Uh actually on screen at 7796. Uh, but you know, a lot of sevens and sevens are lucky. I've heard sevens are lucky. Which means your boy's back in the green in his ETH BTC trade. Look at that, look at that spike down and then back up. It's like, oh yeah. It's like if you just erase those months and like act like nothing happens, like, look, we're at we're back in that trend line. This is great.

Yeah.

That's great too. I think we made some uh bankless purchases around the $1,900 range too. And I was like, David, it's gonna drop further.

And

It's like, no, no, no, dude. We got I'm so bullish. The merge is coming. We gotta buy it 1900 right now.

buy again. $1,900. Let's go back to that opportunity that uh ETH afforded us two months ago. But anytime the ratio is going this direction, like it's it starts to be a good time to look at the actual flippening metrics. And this is uh ratiogang.com. We are 50% of the way to the flipping. 48.9. 48.9. So, what is the definition of the flippening, by the way? That is ETH's market cap exceeds Bitcoin's market cap, and that has never happened.

Never happened

in it came very close in twenty

in 2017. I

there was a prophecy, right? It was like in twenty seventeen it got us to like seventy percent, something I think

think higher than that. I think it was above like 85%.

did it? Okay. So it was really and it maybe a brief spike. It was

Oh it was very it was like a spy.

All right. So so what do you think? There are there are various events that have been predicted for a possible flippining. I know you are a believer in the eventual flipping at some point in time. I am also a believer in uh the flipping at some point in time. The difference, I think, with uh hardcore Ethereum bulls, of which David and myself would would call ourselves for sure, is when they think that will happen. One of the catalyzing events, people have said, could be the actual merch on the back of the Ethereum merge. Maybe the flippining happens, you know, somewhere in the next in the next few months, potentially. What do you think?

I think if it happened in 2022, that would be way faster than expected. Although crypto is known for doing things faster than expected, uh like recovering out of that bear market, allegedly, knock on wood. Um, I think the odds that it happens in 2023 are over 50%.

Wow. In 2023. That's next year. So not 2020. What do you think? What are the the odds that it happens this year, 2022?

10 to 5 10. 15% seems really high.

Odds that it happens uh twenty by twenty twenty five.

Oh gosh. Uh okay. Well, see, the the the time is always in Ethereum's favor because of the significant reduction of issuance and the significant ETH burn, which we've talked about on the show an infinite number of times. But there's like Ethereum at that point, and a post-merge Ethereum, Ethereum just has to wait it out. And eventually, unless some other blockchain is generating more block space demand than Ethereum, which has never been any no one's gotten anywhere close. Ethereum is just a waiting game in Ethereum's favor to take the number one spot. So like as we go beyond 2023, it just the up the the percentage that it becomes the number one asset in the world in crypto is like approaches 99%.

Are you ignoring the bull catalyst for Bitcoin though? Of which there are there's at least one happening there. So 2024, there's gonna be happening. Yeah, but

It's the same bull c like the havening and the merge are the same catalysts and the merge is objectively more powerful by like three orders of magnitude.