ROLLUP: Merge Alpha | Optimism Token?! | Ethereum Foundation Report | Coinbase NFT Beta | Beanstalk Exploit

All we know is this this space is going up. Crypto, Bitcoin, ETH, they are going up and to the right over the long-term time horizon.

Bankless Nation, it is the third week of April. David is in Amsterdam. I'm in the US, uh, and we are getting ready to present you with the weekly roll up. David, how you doing, man? How's Amsterdam going?

Dude, Amsterdam is absolutely manj majestic. Uh something that has complete consensus with everyone here is that Amsterdam is a great city. Uh it's so walkable, it's so pretty, the the weather's beautiful. Uh sun is out, but it's cold and crisp. There's canals. I went on a boat ride yesterday.

Well,

Uh it was also 4 20 in Amsterdam yesterday, so uh

a lot of some people got up to some shenanigans.

that's like the 420 capital of the world, see, right?

That's exactly right. Yeah. Uh-huh.

That's cool, man. Uh so but what were you there for? It was like a crypto conference, right? Dev Connect?

Oh yeah, maybe that's relevant.

DevConnect, yeah. So this is uh an Ethereum. The EF's uh basically what they did, really genius model, is they uh hired uh they rented out the uh convention center in the middle of the city, uh and it's now just a co-working space, and so the everyone who signed up uh can just co-work there. So I've just been hanging out there. Uh, and that's all that they did. On theme with a modular structure, uh all the EF did was rent out this center space for us to converge upon, and then many, many, many other entities made other uh like short-term like daylong panels or day-long talks or day-long events. Uh so uh there's the Shelling Point from Kevin O'Walkie. I was at Obalfest from Colin Myers, uh, there was also uh well, what is it, Trust X, where I had a uh I was on a panel with uh some gigabrains, Danny Ryan, Preston Van Loon, Dank Rad. Uh, and so it's just like everyone is appending their own uh conference, their own day of talks.

Kind of like an unconference, right? Where everyone sort of just, you know, c creates their own event and and brings their peace to the party. Uh so um is this like a mini devcon then, would you say?

Yeah.

I'd say so. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a sub it's just something brand new. Um all of the core Ethereum researchers, like the client researchers, they all got into a room and pow-wowed. Uh and so like actually made some progress. Uh and that is actually the big uh theme, I would say, of this particular uh event where like people are busy, like people are getting work done. Uh and so like it's not like the it's not like NFT NYC or it's not like uh like Eath Denver, which was more of like a festival, like Building's building. We're here to build, right? And you can actually see that in some of the nightlife where people are going out to parties at like 10 p.m. But then the parties kind of shut down between midnight and and 1 p.m. because people got stuff to do the next day.

Builder culture, badass. That's awesome. Well, uh, we'll talk more about that because I want to hear uh if you got any updates on like Ethereum research, like when merged, David. When merge can you be the

merge guy? Um

I will tell you what people have been saying about the merge. That was I di I actually met Justin Drake for the first time. And so I got a beer with Justin Drake and uh he was just like lovely to hang out with. And of course, we talked about the merge. Um so more on that at the end of the show.

Okay, merge alpha. We'll see what uh Drake thinks about the merge. Of course, we got some other topics of the week because crypto can't stop, won't stop. Sneak peek into the Coinbase NFT platform launch. We have the beta. We have our hands on a copy. I've given it a trial run. I want to hear what you think about it too, David. We'll go through that. Also, North Korea apparently was the attacker of the Ronin sidechain. That massive $600 million plus exploit. That was actually North Korea. That's what the US government is saying. So what does that mean? We are now nation state attacked uh blockchains after a fashion. Uh also Arthur Hayes, BitMEC's CEO, founder, thinks we're headed for a bear. I think we had to talk about that in the market section. See if he's right. See what the bear case is for crypto right now. Uh, Andre Cronier, also, he's a DeFi developer, of course. He had some spicy takes this week, David, about regulation in DeFi. It seems to be the anti Andre move, and he wants to incorporate some regulation in DeFi, so we're gonna weigh in on that.

And there were also some spicy takes about his spicy takes. A lot of people called called some BS on Andre Cronier's take uh uh article, very short article. So that was uh very hot in the Twitter sphere this week.

Let's start with the Bitcoin charts. As we get to markets, what what's Bitcoin looking like?

Uh we are certainly not discounted this week, Ryan. We started the week at $39,700, just below that forty thousand dollar number, which we do not want to be below at, and we are currently above that number at $42,640, up about 7% on the week.

Amazing. Look man, uh last week I said I was bullish. I didn't exactly know why, other than like a good

I'm not! Look, man! Yeah, I'm claiming victory.

I was right from last week to this week. I will never claim uh when I'm wrong, but when I'm right, I'm happy to claim that, David, on short term price action. But seriously, guys, don't listen to me on anything short term price related. All we know is this this space is going up. Crypto, Bitcoin, ETH, they are going up and to the right over the long term time horizon. It's my cap.

Speaking of up and to the right, Ryan, Ether started last week at $3,000. It hit a low of $2,900. We do not like that $2,900 number. We want to be above that $3,000 number, of which we are currently clocking in at $3,150. Overall, up 4.5% on the week. So Bitcoin takes a week for this week.

Look, Bitcoin outperformed ETH this week. It hasn't done that for a while, and that reflects in the ETH Bitcoin ratio. That's got to be down this week.

Yeah, down about a percent and a half down to 0.074. Um, down a little bit. Down a little bit.

What are we are people getting Bitcoin bullish uh off of Bitcoin Miami, do you think? Or why do you think why do you think this happened? We just can't read too much into the this data.

Yeah, one part noise. Let's not read uh into it too much, but also one part if we are bullish, like it is traditional to let Bitcoin go first.

As is tradition.

After you. After Bitcoin.

Let's take a look at the total uh crypto market cap and can compare Bitcoin and ETH to that. So looks like we are up on the week for total crypto market cap, but not by a ton. What's that up on the week?

Up up 5%, brother. 1.96 trillion last week to 2.07 trillion this week.

But Bitcoin outperformed. Total

Outperformed. Yeah, which which is

it hasn't done that in

Bitcoin. Yeah. Outperformed the the the market by like 3%. And Ether on underperformed the market by 0.5%.

Or Pratty Bitcoin. Well done. Yeah. We'll we'll see. We'll track it next week. I I make no more predictions. I'm just uh you know, but one thing to watch, I think, in the backdrop of this crab market, whether are we in bull territory, are we in bear territory, we're kind of somewhere in between, is the DXY, which is the dollar index. And the dollar's been breaking out, man. Right. So this is kind of weird. It's like when when we say breaking out, it's appreciating relative to other fiat uh coins, cryptocurrency.

Strength.

Yes, dollar strength relative to other fiat, not not relative to to crypto, of course. And it's up. Like look at this chart, man. It's up to like

above any level since uh since COVID. And people are like wondering, maybe, why does the dollar go up?

When we are uh being faced with eight and a half percent inflation. Uh just like the dollar went up in value in the early days of of COVID, if you recall. And I think the reason for this, largely, is the dollar is still a flight to safety asset. And people are uncertain. They don't know what the Fed is going to do. They don't know how that's going to affect other asset classes. And so what do they do temporarily? They retreat into the dollar for a while, wait for other assets to fall, and then redeploy their dollars into those assets. It's kind of like what you know traders do. Sometimes you and I might do this if we're rebalancing. We might um rebalance back into stable coins out of crypto for a period of time, wait things out, and then buy lower. What are your thoughts on this?

Well, okay, so the general correlation is that as the the DXY, as the Dixie they call it, goes up, crypto is correlated, inversely correlated. So crypto goes down. Crypto didn't go down too much. I mean it's gone down since like January or so as the DXY has gone up. Not like

COVID, the other time the dollar was on a tear, like crypto died.

Yes. Yeah. What I'm seeing, Ryan, and maybe I'm just spinning it to talk my own books, but when I see the dollar going up, I just see more for it to fall. So

David, not bullish on the dollar, long run. Um,

but this is kind of the the big question. Arthur Hayes, the CEO of BitMEX, who is um you know big crypto trader, obviously monitors these things from a macro perspective. He made the case that a crypto correction is uh incoming. This is a block.

crash, Ryan. It he said crash in his RB.

Did he? I'm gonna say I'm gonna go search the word crash.

Yeah, no, it was

Yeah,

a crash.

well no, he said that

Nope.

yeah, crypto crash helmet.

Helmet. Yeah.

Put it on your crypto crash out. Okay. Colorful language. Uh love Arthur, um, you know, in in his predictions. And basically his rationale was crypto is correlated with tech stocks. He gives all these examples of of how crypto is correlated with tech stops stocks, lots of charts. Tech stops stocks are going down, right? Like, do you see Netflix this week, by the way?

Oof. Big oof.

Lost $50 billion, right? Netflix subscriptions are down. So tech stocks going down as a result of the Fed policy tightening. And so, what does that mean?

Yeah, Arthur's just putting one and one together, and he's just like, well, that equals crypto is also going down. Crypto is also classified as a risk-on asset, just like tech stocks. So if tech stocks are going down, of course crypto has to follow it. And uh put on your crypto crash helmet is what he's saying here. That's the bear case.