ROLLUP: OpenSea Arrest | Optimism OP Airdrop | Kanye West NFTs | OpenSea Arrest | Solana Halted | ETH 2.0 Merge | Velodrome

Yet we persevere nonetheless. Through the beer the no The beer market?

Bankless Nation, it is the last week of May. David, what time is it?

It's the Friday Bankless weekly roll up time, Ryan, where we cover the entire news uh in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless. Through the beer the no The beer bucket?

No, I was gonna say bear market, but then I remembered it's actually a build market, uh, and it's it'll always will be a build market. Uh and so uh yeah, we're we're persevering, Ryan.

What a great intro, David. Guys, we come out with these every Friday. This is the fastest way to get your fix in crypto, get your ingestion on what's going on in the markets, the releases, the news, the price action. We cover it all here. Remember, grab your morning coffee and enjoy this with us because it comes out every Friday morning. David, we got some hot topics this week. What are we going to cover?

Yeah, some stuff happened this week, Ryan. Uh and we're we're gonna talk about it 'cause that's what we do every Friday. Uh the optimism token is live in trading, and that's what gets everyone super excited. So of course is what we're going to talk about. Did you get your OP tokens? Did you get your OP tokens, Ryan?

I did. Uh as many as I could find. I'm still scouring wallets.

I still have a couple extra balls to check. Yeah. So we got the metrics comparable to the uni airdrop in size. So we're going to compare the optimism airdrop to previous airdrops, as well as some other airdrops that have come hot on the heels of Optimism. So there's not only the Optimism token airdrop to check, there's another one which we're going to talk about after that. After we get done having riding the highs of the Optimism token, we're going to ride some lows of a former OpenSea employee who got arrested for insider trading. This is the same story that came out like months and months and months ago, but this individual actually got arrested and faces up to a maximum of 20 years in jail, which is ridiculous. What's your quick take on that one, Ryan?

Uh well, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna tease my take. Uh okay. So you'll have to listen to my take

midway through the roll-up to hear what I think about this issue. Uh so I'm not I'm I'm not no spoilies. All right, David? No spoilers. We're also gonna talk about the uh the merge update. Are we there yet? Everyone in the backseat of the car that Justin Drake and Vitalik are driving asking, are we there yet, guys? When are we gonna get the merge? Is it coming in August? Is it coming in September? We're gonna talk about that too. Uh also Kanye West doing some trademark stuff with NFTs. Kanye West has entered the

On your

chat.

Yeah, he's coming. Uh as always, make sure you like or subscribe to this. Of course, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe. Hit that like button. If you're listening on the podcast, thank you for doing that as well. Rate and review. Don't forget to do that, whether it's Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen to your podcast, leave those rates, ratings, and reviews. Ideally, like five stars, you know, as high as you want to get bankless. But I feel like, you know, we put these on every Friday. So we deserve something. We deserve at least above four.

At least above four.

There's only one option above four.

There you go. All right, guys. Uh, before we get in, wanted to tell you a little bit about our friends at MetaMask. Of course, everybody uses the MetaMask wallet. I use this on the day on a daily basis, right? Just used it to claim my OP airdrop tokens. But did you know, David, this is a button I hadn't seen very often in uh MetaMask just because I'm doing other things. But there is a big blue buy button in the middle of MetaMask where uh you can actually refill your wallet with ETH, with any crypto asset you so desire.

It's much faster way to get crypto directly into your MetaMask wallet because you don't have to do the thing where you got to connect your bank account to an exchange like Coinbase and then transfer all of that back to MetaMask. That's like a three, four-step process, and it gets really costly. Once you you know, go the ACH transfer, uh, it takes days, and then you like do the Coinbase exchange, and then by the time you're in MetaMask, like you didn't even know why you wanted the ETH in the wallet in the first place. So this is a handy buy button. I'm gonna click this here. You can use a transact, you can use Moon Pay, you can use Wire. I'm told this also works in mobile. I have not used it. Look at this, David. Put in your credit card, put in your Apple Pay, put in your Google Pay, and uh just get your ETH right embedded in MadMask.

And I actually use this a lot when I want any when I just need some gas, uh especially for like claiming airdrops on old wallets that I haven't touched in years, but like I gotta go claim an airdrop and I need to get gas into that wallet, but I don't want to dox my wallet. Uh so this is actually when I use this. Also use Apple Pay to get that 2% cash back on your ETH buy, which is nice.

You know what's crazy, David, is I've haven't even noticed that button, which is probably why MetaMask wants us to spread awareness that the buy button exists. Super handy for wallets, old wallets, reclaiming airdrops. Uh, you don't have any ETH, and and yet you need like, you know, $20 worth of ETH in order to make that claim. So uh one click, buy in MetaMask. Of course, you can navigate to MetaMask at banklist.cc slash buy, download the MetaMask app, and use that buy button next time you need some ETH in your wallet. David, let's get to markets, man. What's Bitcoin price telling us?

Bitcoin up just a smidge, up 2% on the week, started the week just below 30,000 and is ending the week just above 30,000. So 29,500 ending at 30,270. Sweet.

Okay.

Anything above anybody anything above 30k? I'm uh I'm feeling okay, I guess. ETH price. I'd rather be able to do that.

That that that was forty K.

I know. It's just is it gonna hold? And the last time I said it about ETH it was above 3K. I'm feeling good. So I I'm still not I'm I'm not feeling good under three K. It's definitely a B market, right? Build market uh below. But what are we hitting on ETH this week? Are we up or down?

Uh ETH took a took a little bit of a hit this week, started the week at 1950, uh, ended the week at 1820. Uh, so sad ETH noises uh this week. So down six percent versus Bitcoins up two percent on the week. Um some kind of funny counting just on the timing of these things. Uh if it was like a one-day shift it, it would be a different number. Um, so that's how I'm coping this week.

Well, uh how are you coping with this ratio? What are we

Yeah, on

at?

the week. Keep it like yeah, so like we got the 30,000 line for Bitcoin, we got the 2,000 line for for ETH, and we got the 0.06 line for the ETH BTC ratio, which is where we are at right now.06033, keeping its head above water. Um

Allegedly.

This is look, this is a great bear market uh predictor. I feel like are are we in a bull? Are we in a bear? If if the indicator is if uh the ratio's down, if it's low, we're more likely to be in a bear market. If it's if it's high, we're look more likely to be in a bull market. And look, this is off of May. We've certainly dropped uh quite a bit from 0.076 range all the way down to 0.06. So I guess that tells us everything we need to know about the current market conditions, David.

Sad ETH noises.

Uh total crypto market cap is uh flat at point 1.3 trillion last week to 1.3 trillion this week. So overall the market did nothing.

Nothing. Uh I'll take it. I mean, a flat week is better than a down week, right?

They'll take it.

Uh, did you know this? FTX just surpassed Coinbase as the second biggest centralized crypto exchange. That just happened last month. FTX was always gunning for number two. Binance, of course, in first place. But now it's Binance, FTX, and Coinbase in third. What are your thoughts on this? You think this will last?

Uh yeah, yeah. I mean FTX's trajectory has always been gaining more and more and more market share. And to be honest, I kind of don't really count Binance. Uh maybe that's just like my Western United States citizen bias. Um, but like Binance is not gonna like play nice with regulators in the long term. And so I kind of have discounted the value of Binance in my head. Like that's definitely probably bias. But uh for all all the regulated onshore exchanges that are US regulator approved, now FTX is number one. Uh and so that's kind of how I count things in my head.

Yeah, you get really gotta hand it to SBF, right? I mean, he's built this business like over the past three years. I mean, it's not very old. FTX is not very old at all. And here it's taking the number two slot from Coinbase. Look at that, look at that chart.

Chart like going from July twenty nineteen, that blue line just going up, up, up, up, up, up, up. That's crazy.

Yeah, look at this market share of legitimate volume spot exchange stuff.

Uh I'm not

I'm not the only one with this stuff.

Yeah, right. Uh how about this next

Wait, also, yeah, for the record, they did not have Binance. Uh they only had Binance US in there. Uh they did not have actual Binance in there. Uh and so it looks like the block shares my opinion as to the illegitimacy of Binance.

let's see. The dominant player in the market is still Binance by far, which is 64%, followed by FTX 10% and Coinbase 9%. Look at how dominant Binance is 64%.

4%. Yeah, that has got to be watch trading, right?

I don't look, man. Binance is a juggernaut outside of the US. Like, it is absolutely massive. And uh, so I mean, I discount some of this as maybe watch trade or you know, something different, but like not all of it. Binance is definitely a juggernaut in the space and expanding everywhere, too. Um, coin, uh, excuse me, Gemini, another exchange. I guess they would come in number, like, would they come in number four, number five, something to that effect?

Light blue. Uh that is yeah, I think that's third.

The Winkelvoss twins, Gemini, they are laying off 10% of staff right now. And the headline is to prepare for crypto winter. Here's the quote on Gemini's blog The crypto revolution is well underway and its impact will continue to be profound, the Winkelvoss brothers wrote, but its trajectory has been anything but gradual or predictable. These are seasoned vets who've been through a few bear markets in crypto.

And they're getting ahead of this by actually cutting some of their staff now. What do you what do you make of this, David?

Yeah, so um Gemini is a very like saturated company, right? It's been around. Uh and so it's not like any of these like newer projects that are still have a ton of growth potential. Uh so it makes more sense for it its staffing to like follow the whims of the market, right? Just because like it's already hit like its saturation point. So when the bear market does come, that there does have to be cutbacks. Um I mean it there should be cutbacks all the time. Like we got to cut out the fluff of of all companies. So I mean, only 10% uh in comparison to 2018 is a big improvement.

Yeah, uh I I do think we are seeing some belt tightening in specific areas in crypto. Certainly there's a ton of hiring still happening, but in other locations we're starting to see belt tightening uh

Hiring and newer stuff, layoffs

Exactly.

stuff.

We've got a lot more to cover, guys. Coming up next, we're going to talk about that Optimism Airdrop. It feels like that airdrop is kicking kicking off airdrop summer, uh, which is uh happening now. Also, the OpenSea Insider Trading Story. I want to cover that. Does the crime fit the punishment? It's the big question in our mind. We're gonna get to both of those stories, but before we do, we want to talk about the sponsors that made this episode possible.

And we're back. And also diving into Optimism Airdrop Summer. People got their tokens. Ryan, you're showing an address. Banked.eth got 827 optimism tokens for being a donator to Gitcoin grants on layer one and also a DAO voter. So good job, Ryan. Uh, congrats on your tokens. Uh, so the optimism token is launched with a total supply of 4.3 billion tokens inflating at 2% a year. Uh, and the airdrop of 215 total million tokens went to almost a quarter million addresses, 248,699 addresses. For comparison, Ryan, Uniswap was just 2,000 more addresses larger, eligible addresses larger than Optimism, coming in at 251,500.

That is fantastic. That's great distribution, right? To get half a million ETH addresses in this thing. It's just like, you know, second in size to to Uniswap in from a distribution perspective.

Yeah, and so people who checked their addresses a couple weeks ago might notice that they actually got more than they uh were previously quoted because Optimism went through the whole airdrop uh or excuse me, the airdrop farming, they scalped the farmers. So like oh, they identified all the farmers just like Hot Protocol did. They pruned them. Uh and so then they redistributed what was uh going to be given to the farmers to the rest of the community, which just makes sense. You got to reward the actual true humans, not the farmers. Uh and so uh as of right now, 62% of all OP tokens have been claimed, with 120,000 addresses uh having claimed. Uh okay, this happened in the last like day, right? In the last 24 hours from the time of recording. 120,000 addresses, not necessarily people, but like probably a hundred thousand people, give or take.

Definitely owned. They've claimed tokens. So like the participation rate is crazy. And so if we wanted to compare the the claiming of Optimism versus Uniswap, Uniswap has had 90% of all addresses that were eligible claimed the Uniswap airdrop. So 10% were like lost to history, probably. And so if Optimism uh were to reach 90%, that would be 223,000 airdrop claimers. Right now we're at 120,000, so we have a lot to go. But where Uniswap beat Optimism by 200 or 2,000 eligible addresses, Optimism still has room to be the largest airdrop by how many actual people claimed the token. So that's a good number I'm going to be watching moving forward.