ROLLUP: Kamala Crypto Pivot? | USDC iPhone Tap-to-Pay | WBTC Drama? | Superchain Soon?

David, I think there's two questions that people are really asking right now is number one, can crypto get Kamala Harris to pivot? Can crypto advocacy be bipartisan? And number two, if she hasn't pivoted yet, is it too late? I mean, we are less than 90 days from the next election.

Bankless Nations, the third week of August. It is time for the Bankless Weekly Roll Up. David, what do we have?

The Kamala pivot to crypto or lack thereof, could it happen? Or is it too late? It might be a little bit more important these days as Kamala has hit 10% likelihood of winning above Donald Trump, 55% to 45%. So the Kamala pivot becoming more important than ever. Are we getting any closer to it? We're gonna we're gonna talk about that.

Also, sometime soon, could you be using tap to pay using stable coins, maybe USDC on your iPhone? Jeremy Alaire says yes. We'll talk about that. There's some drama going on too in the tokenized Bitcoin space. So Bitco has this wrapped Bitcoin product. It's called Wrapped Bitcoin, Wrapped BTC, and uh it's going through some uh growing phases, some transformation here. Actually, David, you gotta update me on this, but maybe it has opened the door for Coinbase. They are looking at rolling out a tokenized Bitcoin product. We'll talk about that

Optimism is super chain is about to be real and not just a meme. Eric Trump's digital real estate project and crypto's growing list of political prisoners, the splattering of topics that we're gonna get through all of this and more. But first, I want to talk about where I am, because I am back in Argentina. Yes, yeah. There is a pop-up city here in Buenos Aires called ALIF, uh, part of the crecimiento movement, which is Crecimiento is uh the Spanish word for growth, focusing on sponsoring, supporting, growing the crypto movement here in in Buenos Aires. Uh, and uh so it's the it's like this meeting point of crypto startups, Argentine crypto startups with Argentine crypto founders, uh, regulators, government officials, many part of uh Miley's administration, perhaps Miley himself, and then a bunch of just like, you know, capitalists, venture capitalists trying to support the the crypto movement. Uh,

on. Like, who's organizing it?

It's a large part of just like a grassroots bottom-up effort by the local Argentine community. And then a lot of support from uh the protocol labs team, uh, the the Filecorn people. So like Juan Benay is leading this, uh, just a few other like shakers and movers who are just like relentless at making things happen. Uh and it was just like so there's this co working spot with a bunch of Argentine startups where like if you were an Argentine startup, you would apply to join Alif and become part of the community, get like some of the support, the network. It's kind of like an accelerator as well.

This is

And just talk with

the co working place.

the other.

Yeah, I'm just I'm just there like being an imposter. Like I'm not in a startup and just hanging out at the uh at the the co-working spot and just like talking to the Argentine founders and the problems that they're working on and the things that they are focusing on. It's such a breath of fresh air from what I'm like kind of previously surrounded by, which is like, you know, North American, United States, European, crypto Twitter talking about like, you know, the 17th like restakes roll up alt VM that is like getting deployed, or like the bajillionth meme coin.

These like Argentine crypto founders, like it's not like speculative fun and games for them. They have like Argentina has a very urgent and pressing need to like build real products in crypto. And you know what I've learned in uh while like spending here? There's like three Argentine, there's probably more. There's three Argentine crypto products, uh projects that I'm gonna talk to uh on a podcast. I'm gonna bring them all on a podcast that each have millions of users, like millions of local Argentine users.

That's awesome.

And like we don't talk about them, so then like crypto Twitter.

You're saying crypto users are actually using crypto to like do things, like do real.

Real world quote unquote things.

They are they are like normal, well-adjusted w adults who like go to a nine to five job, and they are also users of like Lemon Pay, Bello, uh, BNBit, like some sort of like crypto startup in Argentina. I wouldn't even call it a startup now. It's like a legitimate business, and they're just using crypto to like facilitate their daily lives.

I for I for one, speaking as on behalf of uh bankless listeners, I am a bankless listener. I would love an episode on that. I would also love an episode if you can get 'em with uh Malay.

Yeah. Do you think that could happen on bankless?

Okay. I think there is like somewhere around a 10 to 15% chance that I can get Javier at Malay uh here on the episode, on the show. Sure.

Uh a polymarket then?

Is it make our own odds here?

I would actually just rather people spend their effort like trying to help me on this because like I'm like kind of kind of close. Uh and it's because uh like Javier's Malay's administration has a lot of crypto presence. Yeah. And so there is just literally just some like logistics things. He's not in Argentina at this moment. He is in like I think Korea for some reason. Uh but he'll be back. And when he comes to Argentina, like we like there's there's there's people who are in his administration who are also here at ALIF who are like knocking on Malay's doors, like, hey, by the way, like there's like crypto things happening and you should pay attention. So we're like not far away from like there's also just a big regulatory day on the 22nd or 23rd of August that I'm pretty stoked for.

That's like kind of the big day where, like, can we get Javi or Malay here in like this crypto like startup incubator thing?

My impression, this is a super vanilla, I know nothing impression, but that is he has he has uh uh expressed uh crypto openness to crypto sentiment and even positive crypto sentiment, but has not yet had the time or like for whatever reason, it hasn't been on the top priority list to here's what I'm doing in crypto and here's the policy. Is that about right?

That's right. His pro-crypto policies are more about like removing restrictive regulation than in instigating like positive crypto regulation. And that's one of the big goals here of ALF is to get like startups the assurances, like long 20 year long assurances that their crypto business is going to be like sound and stable and not like rugged away from like future administrations.

Yeah.

He's a big libertarian, so like crypto ideals are like part of him. But you're right, he just hasn't had like the time or energy to be able to like really narrow down on crypto.

Step one, Democrats take note. The first step is to fire all your Gary Genslers. Okay, that comes first. So hopefully we did do that.

David, before we get in, we got a message from our friends over at let's talk about the numbers for the week. Uh Bitcoin, where are we at? Up or down?

Uh we are flat. Bitcoin start of the week 59,400, ending the week 59,600 up like 0.3% on the week. ETH up six percent on the week. ETH, what? Not sucking eggs this week. Yeah, like start of the week at $2,590, currently at $2,670. Nice job, ETH. You didn't you didn't blow it this week. Well done.

We just need another uh, you know, I guess 10 weeks of that, and then we'll be back to something that's more.

Not one.

Well, shall we check in on our ETF inflows? This is Bitcoin right now. Just I guess by way of recap, this is all a uh Dune analytics born that we're looking at. There is now 4.7% of all Bitcoin supply contained in these things called Bitcoin ETFs, and that is since January. Uh all of that has happened. So it's been a supply sink for 4.7% of Bitcoin supply. Right now, for Ethereum, if you're keeping track, you're looking at the two horse, two horses in the ETF race. Uh Ethereum ETFs have 2.3% of ETH supply. Um, yeah, what do you make of that? We got some ketchup there, too.

Definitely. We uh e the ETH outflows is currently in like its deepest trough. We are starting to climb out of the hole that the grayscale ETH E has put us in.

Like the very expected hole, but like still kind of big nonetheless. Uh there are like a total net outflows of something like $350, $360 million of ETH out of the Grayscale ETFs. Out of all of the ETFs, uh there's been plenty of inflows into like BlackRock Fidelity um bitwise, uh, but we're still in the hole. Uh but the grayscale ETHE uh flows have stopped. Uh they've been like basically flat uh or just overwhelmed by inflows to other ETFs for the last like three days. We've had three days of positive flows. Uh I would like 30 more, please.

Yeah, we could do another 10 weeks of that too. Just positive flows. That's all we want. I mean, we're chipping away at that number. You're right. It's uh 366 net outflows. So we're still in the the negative territory on on uh that income statement, but chipping away at it week by week. I mean, a couple weeks ago, David, this was closer to 400 million, and now we're at 366. So that's uh that's progress, right? Uh I guess.

That's progress.

Anthony Sasano calling out there was there was actually one day last week that the Ether E, the grayscale, had no outflows. So we like maybe that's starting to to slow down, which would be healthy.

That's something.

Global crypto market cap, where are we?

Total crypto market cap 2.2 trillion right on the dot. Uh slight incline from last week as we are pulling out of a hole that the uh yen trade unwind put us in.

Lots of holes that we're climbing out of.

Yeah. Yeah. Digging our way into holes and then trying to climb back out of them, I guess. Um, let's talk about a hole that Jerome Powell has found himself in. That's this inflation hole. He's been working his way out. He's been trying to dig out. That's what that's why all the rate hikes uh were happening over the last uh couple of years. So we're above 5%. We're at 5.25 to 5.5%. Uh some good news if you are a central banker named Jerome Powell. Annual inflation

to three year lows. Uh so that's good news.

Three year lows. It rose just we got the numbers in, it rose just point two percent from June to July. So that means year over year prices are uh two point nine percent, and that's down down from three percent. So

Year over year prices has starts with a two.

yeah

Target is two. We are at two point nine. We're in the

twos.

Exactly. So all of this may mean Jerome Powell gets to go make a victory lap. And the re the way that affects markets is Jerome Powell can say, Hey, I did the thing I said I would do, which is break the back of inflation through these rate hikes. And now we're done that. That phase is over. That movie has concluded. And now I'm going to go be a hero in this other area and I'm going to go hit the unemployment numbers because those spiked up a little bit. Remember the numbers in August that caused some of the maybe the early August sell-off were due to recession fears and unemployment fears. And so in September, likely this all tees up him putting in another rate cut. Whether it's a 0.5% rate cut or is something lower, we don't know yet. But I think that the market is basically saying that's what it's expecting is Powell to cut rates in September.

My question, I think everyone, the right questions to ask are is the Fed going to try and like front run the timing on this like they did not do during COVID, where they hiked rates way too late and they had to do it really fast because they were so late. Now are they going to try and like be a little bit more, uh, have a little bit more foresight and lower the rates ahead of any like you know, uh overshooting of having too high rates for too long? Um I th I think it would like that's a big question. And also I'm guessing that they're not just going to like, they're not gonna send these rates to zero like overnight. Like they are slowly, incrementally going to lower these rates over a very long period of time. Uh I think I think they learned their lesson from the whiplash of like going up 5.5% inside of a year. They're not gonna go down 5.5% in a year. I bet you like we have like positive interest rates. We're not going to zero.

Maybe we go to zero, but if we do, it's gonna take years to get there.

Yeah, and I think uh Kamala Harris, if you're Kamala Harris, you'd certainly appreciate a Jerome Powell rate cut in September, maybe a big juicy one going into uh the November election season. Uh Dave, there's there's another thing we've been looking at. Uh

Hole that we've been in. This is a more recent hole.

this is crypto's not going up as much as stocks, man. You know the SP, the Nasdaq hitting all time highs, and crypto were just kind of lagging behind.

What's what's the take here?

Yeah, this is uh Kelly Greer from Galaxy who put out um a tweet analysis that I thoroughly enjoyed. Uh and she's just calling out the four recent horsemen of just dumpage into the Bitcoin markets and therefore the rest of crypto. Germany, Mt. Gox, Genesis, and the United States government. Um, wow, all four G's. Wow. Uh Germany sold almost 50,000 bitcoins between June 19th and July 30th. So, like almost a straight month of dumpage. Uh, the Genesis bankruptcy put $33,000 of Bitcoin into the market. Mt. Gox distributed 110,000 bitcoins in July into the market. And then the US government has ongoing transfers into Coinbase. We can only assume that that's actually currently hitting the market. Uh 4K was transferred on June 26th, 10K Bitcoins were transferred, transferred on August 16th. Uh, and so like we're just like having some like idiosyncratic large G named Bitcoin dumpers that all happened all at once. Uh and so like while stocks, stocks had the big pullback of the Japanese uh carry trade, uh, that's already over, like climbing out of that hole. Like they're almost done because it's you know it's stock season. Um, but like crypto has this like idiosyncratic cell pressure that like hopefully people just like.

also bet on there being a reversion to the mean and we actually are due for a pump