ROLLUP: SBF Found Guilty | Solana Dominance | Celestia Airdrop

Hey guys.

A note before the episode today. On Thursday evening, that's November 2nd, Sam Bankman Fried was found guilty of all charges. So that's all seven counts that he was charged for. Now, we've recorded this roll-up episode before the verdict dropped. David's in Europe. He's likely asleep, so we haven't had a chance to talk about this, but I'm pretty sure I speak for him when I say it feels so good to end this painful chapter in crypto. One year and five days ago, we hosted SBF on this very podcast on a debate with Eric Voorhees on crypto regulation, and it was an absolutely legendary debate. We arranged it after we heard from some friends that SBF was up to mischief in DC. Apparently, they said he was greasing the pockets of lawmakers and working with them on a crypto bill that would make DeFi front ends virtually illegal. And effectively, this would be pulling up the ladder for decentralized finance and accruing more power for his exchange, for FTX, and doing all of this under the auspice of practicality. I remember the debate well, and at times it felt like SBF was almost giving us a lecture.

We crypto natives didn't understand how to work with governments. Our values weren't practical. They couldn't win. They were too rigid.

Here was a billionaire Wonder Kid who built one of the world's top exchanges in less than four years. And what did we know about building business and getting things done in DC?

This is the tone of the conversation. Equally, I remember Eric Voorhees with eviscerating arguments and monkish precision. He argued to Sam that crypto is an open, permissionless financial system for the world. It's like the internet. It's like email. Any society that rejects this technology is a society that rejects fundamental freedom. I felt like Eric's moral clarity pierced through the bullshit like a knife through butter. And David and I watched as SBF absolutely withered under this approach. One thing struck me at the time. It seemed that crypto had made a grave mistake in entrusting so much to people like Sam who didn't share our values.

I was so happy to trade them off in some calculated game of maximum expected value. But what I didn't know at the time was how grave that mistake would be. SBF, during the time of our recording, was actually covering up one of the biggest frauds since Bernie Madoff. By that point, at the end of October in 2022, he had gambled away over $8 billion in customer funds.

I don't know what his long term plan was. Maybe he was hoping for some way to last long enough to win it all back. Maybe he didn't have a plan. Maybe it was all hubris. But eleven days later it would all start to come crashing down.

I still, to this day, have no idea why he showed up to this debate eleven days before the fall of his kingdom. In fact, I think the debate itself may have been the spark that took him down. I mean he must regret doing the podcast now, because in the hours and days after the debate, the crypto community turned on him. There was this sense of of betrayal, of high alert, and it didn't take us long to sniff out the truth of his fraud. Massive credit to Coindust for breaking the story of the Alameda balance sheet. Everything followed from there. Now, he's declared guilty in a U.S. court of law after hurting many people, doing incredible damage to this industry that we love.

I'm thankful we have a legal consensus process in the US that afforded a fair trial and due process. I'm thankful that justice has been served. The values of SBF, and many of those like him in 2022, were a stage three cancer that we had to cut out at some point, because if they persisted much longer, they would have been terminal. I'm thankful for the bear market for giving us the opportunity. I know that criminals and scammers will visit our industry again in the future, and I hope those of us who live through SBF will be wiser the next time. But above all, I think it's important that we remember the true hope of crypto.

It's not in another set of bankers like SBF. It's in decentralized finance. It's in holding our own private keys. It's in running our own validator. It's in Ethereum. It's in Bitcoin. This is the real revolution. This is the bankless revolution, and it's just getting started. Protocols, not people. Code, not kings.

Let's get back to going bankless.

Hey Bankless Nation, it is the first Friday of November. David, what time is it?

Oh, Ryan, it's the Bankless Friday weekly roll-up, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless into the frontier with coffee, but I'm not having coffee because it's 8 54 p.m. for me. That's probably the negative roll-up we've ever recorded.

Okay. Why why why is it so late? Because you're in a different time zone, right?

Oh, yeah, different time zone. Also, I took a flight. I was in Amsterdam this morning. I'm now in Lisbon for ETH Lisbon. Uh flight was delayed. Weather in Amsterdam, blah, blah, blah. New podcast setup. Here we are.

This is crazy. And we've got like a new setup today. So we've been uh tinkering around with that. So it's uh it's a lot to get the roll up to you guys. But we hope you appreciate it. We got a lot of topics to talk about. What's coming up next, David, is Gary Gensler. And uh he's coming after PayPal now. Okay, PayPal. It's not even a crypto company, but they're doing crypto things. So of course, Gary is the cop on the beat as usual. So we'll talk about that. What else?

The Celestia mainnet is out along with the Celestia token. T I A, the token. How much was dropped? What is the market cap of Celestia? We're gonna get to that. And of course, uh, it's Solana season. I don't know if you've noticed, Ryan, but the the narrative around crypto Twitter, around with uh Solana breakpoint going on, which is where I just came from. Uh the Solana people are very happy right now. Uh Solana season is in.

Well, it's because sole price is going up. So we want to talk about why that might be happening. I want to get your insight today. But before we get in, we got to shout out our friends and sponsors. David, let's talk about the markets this week. Uh, where is Bitcoin looking on the 15th birthday of the Bitcoin wipe?

We just celebrated that on October 31st earlier this week. Well, tell us about the prices and we'll get to that.

Yeah, so up 2.5% on the week, starting at 34,100. The last time I checked it, Bitcoin was 34,990. It's bounced off of 35,000 a handful of times, really trying to get up and above it and trying to hold it. Uh, it's it's flirted with being above 35,000. It's not totally ready yet, but man, it really wants to be there.

Look at this. It's it's just, you know, that big candle on, I guess that was the the 23rd of October, around that time.

Bitcoin telegraph candle.

Yeah.

I guess that's what it was, the coin telegraph candle. But we've maintained. That's what's impressive about the last week or so is that we've maintained. So we're up 2.5% on the week. And uh let's talk a little bit while we're talking about Bitcoin about this momentous occasion. So 15 years is now 15 years after the first publishing

of the Bitcoin white paper by a guy by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. He released this white paper. The title of this is Bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. And it starts like this the very first sentence a purely peer to peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. And of course

Oh, the bank.

Yeah. The first bankless money system. We got to celebrate that. And uh, of course, within I think about 60 days, 64 days, on January 3rd, the first bop block of the Bitcoin blockchain was officially pushed out to mainnet. So a short time later. And uh, you know, Bitcoin is doing its own celebration in the charts too. Uh, have you looked at this chart lately, David? This is the uh the Bitcoin dominance chart.

Okay. And I think this is really interesting to look at. We are about 53% Bitcoin dominance at this point in time. So

That's really high. The market cap of all of crypto is 53% Bitcoin.

composed of crypto.

Crypto is 53% Bitcoin. Wow. That's definitely higher than it's been in a really long time, right?

Yes. Uh, but also a lot lower than it used to be. Back in the heady days of uh 2014, Bitcoin was about 99% uh dominant. It was about 99% of all its crypto, and it's been down since then. But it's popping back up, okay? It's lows, Bitcoin dominates lows. It hit a low in 2007, late 2017.

At the last uh you know peak of the bull cycle at about 37%.

Okay, that was a low on the dominance. And then a few other lows in 2022 of about 40%. Now it's back up to 53%. So Bitcoin monetar in celebration of its uh

of its birthday.

Two and a half year high for Bitcoin. Congrats to Bitcoin.

Yeah, you know who else was can congratulating Bitcoin, David?

Oh, is this the person who was wishing Bitcoin happy birthday?

Yeah, it's our secret person. A big Bitcoin fan. Gary Gensler, he tweets out if Satoshi.

Satoshi Nakamoto went as Satoshi Nakamoto for Halloween, would we be able to tell? That's his hilarious joke. Happy 15th anniversary, Gensler says to Satoshi's favorite white paper that started crypto.

And then he says this, David. Then he says this. You're gonna love this. Any crypto companies that are tricking investors should start treating them to compliance with securities laws.

Oh, he made it about him.

Ooh, I hate this man so much.

Oh, the ultimate troll. I mean, you gotta hand it to him though. That is a pretty good troll of the industry right there.

Do you remember his uh April Fools troll?

No.

He put on the um uh the deal with it glasses on his profile picture. So the current profile picture that you're currently seeing. He put the just deal with it glasses on his and like to me, I was like, this isn't a troll. This is an admission of guilt.

It made me so mad. He's like trolling the crypto community. He's like, God, just deal with it.

Why are

bureaucrats like why are unelected like bureaucrats trolling us?

Trolling us? Yeah.

So weird. Where's that in the job description?

I mean, this this tweet is a troll. This is a trolling tweet. He is trolling us with his

Yeah. Any

crypto companies that are tricking investors should start treating them to compliance with the securities law. Okay, but of course, Bitcoin's okay, and he's celebrating uh Satoshi Nakamoto.

Uh unbelievable. This is uh Stanley Stanley Druckenmiller, though, had a good quote about Bitcoin on this celebratory week. Do you want to hear this, David?

Yes, please. All right, let me play it.

Um

finally gold and bitcoin.

Yeah, I'm 70 years old. I own gold. Um