ROLLUP: Voyager Bankrupt | Solana Phone | ENS Domains | Facebook NFTs | Reddit NFTs | EU Crypto Regulation

The sky is starting to clear. Like we the all all the trash has already floated up to the surface and we've already started to like start doing a lot of that cleaning. I'm feeling pretty good.

Banglades Nation, it is the second week of July. I hope you are enjoying your Friday morning because it's time for the weekly roll up. I said it this time, not you, David, but how are you doing, man? On the second week of July. Crypto's still being kind of crazy. We're getting some liquidations, we're getting some bankruptcies, some consolidation on the market. How are you feeling about things?

You know, pretty pretty good, I'd say. Uh successful Sapoilia test net merge. Two of three test nets ready to go is Gorly next. Uh and like meanwhile, the Block Fi story has, I think, concluded. That story is over. We're gonna recap the conclusion of that story. Uh Voyager goes bust, but we already knew that. Uh the final death of Three Euros Capital, we kind of already knew that too. And also Reddit and Facebook doing NFT things, and no one really noticed it. And so, like, Ryan, like, we're we're also like a little bit great. We're actually more than a little bit green right now. Uh again, positive news on the merge. No more contagion. Uh, I feel pretty good.

Things are getting cleaned up.

I think yeah, like

yeah. The skies are

the skies starting to clear. Like we the all all the trash has already floated up to the surface and we've already p started to like start doing a lot of that cleaning. Uh I'm feeling pretty good. How how are you feeling?

Yeah, you know what? I I think that uh the contagion might be over, at least this first pass, and this unless we get another big leg down, right? Um so I'm always uh cautious to say that, but we've had a lot of crypto banks go under, and that's been the story, and we're gonna continue talking about it uh this week as well as everything that is else that is going on in crypto, including uh macro stuff. If as always, if you guys enjoy these weekly roll ups and bankless in general, make sure you like and subscribe. All right, on the podcast. That means making sure you're subscribed on YouTube, hitting that click uh subscribe button, and also giving us comments, throwing comments uh our way and five star reviews. We always appreciate that. David.

W have we told them to get their morning coffee yet?

Uh yeah.

Yeah, your morning coffee. Second morning coffee. Second cup.

Yes.

You probably already drank your first cup tonight.

It should be a two cup roll-up.

Let's talk about Juno though, David. This is a crypto bank that we actually do like and we do recommend because it is an easy way to bridge onto layer two. What is Juno doing for us?

Oh my gosh, so much. The coolest thing about Juno is it's a normal checking account. It's a bank. You know, fun fact, I actually do have a bank account. That's how I pay that's how I pay rent. So we all need our checking accounts. It's the place that, you know, the money goes before you buy Ether or Bitcoin. Uh but with Juno, you can get from your checking account to a layer two on Ethereum directly. Goes checking account to layer two in like immediately in seconds. So that's kind of crazy. Uh free withdrawals. Uh and so you don't have to deal with like layer one gas fees, you don't have to deal with like the bridge wait times. Uh so that's already crazy. It's optimism, arbitrum. Uh, I think uh what what else is there? Uh I think uh and then the ZK rollups are also coming out soon. Yep, yep. ZK sync and starware. Uh and then you can you can also trade crypto with zero fees. Uh we like zero fees and we like crypto assets. And then if you so choose, you can get six percent on your USDC and three percent on your Bitcoin and Ether.

What I also love is they'll convert your paycheck. You can get your direct deposits into this and they'll convert your paycheck into crypto. And then you can like immediately withdraw that to layer two. And some people are saying, well, you guys are bankless. Well, we still also live in the real world. It's a process. I still have a Wells Fargo account, sadly. Haven't been able to get rid of that. But I do also have a Juno account because that is a DeFi-friendly crypto bank. Doesn't mean you have to keep all of your funds on Juno, right? Keep the minimum necessary in the banking system. But these fast withdrawals to layer two and all of this crypto native and DeFi native support is super useful. So go ahead and get your Juno account. There's a link in the show notes. Also, if you go to bankless.cc slash capital J for Juno, you will be able to uh get that link and earn $10 when you deposit. David, let's talk about markets, man. What are the markets doing? We actually have uh a little bit of sunshine.

It's a green week, a little bit of sunshine. Yeah. So Bitcoin started the week at $20,000. We are currently at $20,730, about 3.5% in the green, Ryan. 3.5%.

Above 20K is a good day. Alright, how about Eve Price? Uh that's up even more.

Yeah. Are you ready for this one, Ryan? Uh Ether started the week at $1,030. We are currently at $1,215. That is 18%. That is 18% green week. That's a big, that's a big green week.

What is this? Are people bullish suddenly?

I don't know. I don't I didn't know that that was allowed in this market.

Well let's look at the ratio because that's also bullish. That must have gone up with the numbers you just quoted me.

Yep, up 8%. We are currently at 0.058, where we were down to 0.054 or 53 earlier this week.

You still believe this is a reliable bull market, bear market indicator. So it's a little bit

Yeah.

bullish on the week.

I mean it's not it's a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator, but I mean it's been it's been up since June. Uh the bottom was like June 10th or June 12th or something. So like it's been slowly grinding up ever since June 12th, which was like when this contagion started. So like a month of contagion in the rear view mirror, which is bullish.

Important to note though in these bear markets, there's always these fake outs, right? So what'll happen this happened in 2001? How many times did it happen where like we'd go for a steep drop and then we'd recover and everyone's like, oh, here's a ray of uh hope. There's the sunshine. Like maybe we're out of it, and then boom, we get hit by another major drop. Happened a lot. And uh, you know, I cloud

No idea what the hell I was doing with in 2018. I was like, yeah, you're you're you're the elder millennial here.

Yeah, well, man, I uh I remember and I thought a few times I was like, okay, this this has got to be it. This has got to be the end. We're still on our road to recovery. Although I will say that the feeling is a little bit different this time, David. I feel like a lot of people are have already capitulated to the fact that we are dead in a bear market and we might be in a bear market for years at this point in time. And that to me is a good signal because we didn't see that in the first mega drops of 2018. People were still in denial and they spent more of this phase in in denial in that, like, oh, maybe the bear market, maybe the bull market's not over. Maybe we'll just recover and things will shoot back up. Maybe this is another big dip. Um, but what is the cryptocurrency chart telling us from a global perspective? How much value in crypto right now?

Yeah, total crypto market cap up from 934 billion to nine hundred and seventy-six billion. So

What's going up too?

yeah.

Um the sentiment though, from a macro perspective, doesn't feel so great. In an economic update.

Here's uh a tweet. Could you read this one out, David?

Yeah, 58% of Americans now living paycheck to paycheck, consumer confidence lowest since 1950, stock market having its worst year since 1970, mortgage demand lowest since 2001, credit card debt up 20% in one month. And then they followed this tweet, uh, this uh these metrics up with the recession is just getting started. This is where I always go back and forth. It's like, okay, these are all like lagging indicators, right? These are telling us of well, you know, the zeit guy saw the times, everyone feels bad because the stock market's down, no one's buying homes, everyone feels price out of homes. Not only are homes still pretty highly priced, but the mortgages are really, really high. Uh, and you can see this choice of these the economic conditions showing up in impacting consumers because they're having to load up on credit card debt. You know, credit card debt up 20% in one month. Uh and so, but these are all as a result of the last like three months. And I don't think they are indicative of the future three months, um, but they could be.

Yeah, this is uh I I think it's a good marker of of sentiment. And I do think some of these data points are probably like um selected, right? So, you know, for instance, this stock market having its worst year since 1970. Well, you know, at the beginning of January, stock market was like close to like all-time highs, right? So there's some data sampling here that is definitely skewing towards um the bearish side. But definitely this R-word, I'm I'm seeing that everywhere now. The recession, recession, recession is just getting started. And I feel like sentiment from an economic perspective has shifted towards everyone's now expecting a recession, even though that hasn't formally hit yet. Um but what's the US dollar doing? Because I mean, US dollar is still strong, it's looking good. In fact, it is pumping.

Yeah, yeah, for the first time ever, I think there's parity between the Euro and the dollar at the moment. Not the first time ever, but first time in in like as far as I can remember. Uh yeah, so the headline here, euro tumbles to a 20-year low, putting parity with a dollar in sight. Uh the Dixie, the DXY, which is a chart that we don't have up, but uh it's the basket, it's basically measures dollar strength versus a basket of other currencies, is continuing to increase. Uh, and this I think this is um relevant to the dollar milkshake theory. If people are familiar with that, we had Brett Johnson on the podcast forever ago to talk about what the dollar milkshake theory is. Basically, it's the general theory that in economic hardship conditions, there's a flight to dollars, which is what you would expect in a downturn. People just flight to flight of dollars. But also because there's so much debt pent up in the system that when it comes time to pay the debts, it basically there's a squeeze on the dollar supply because everyone's trying to get their hands on dollars to pay back their debts. Uh and so in bear markets, uh, as we've seen in crypto, everyone when time when numbers go down, people have to pay back their debts.

This is why there's a discount on staked ETH because people sell staked ETH for Ether because they need that liquidity. People are just selling assets for dollars because they need liquidity, and therefore the dollar is really, really strong right now. Sadly, this is also an indication of a future recession because as dollar strength goes up, corporate profits go down, like real rates go down, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's it's it's it slows growth. High dollar value slows growth, and that triggers a recession in addition to all the other things that trigger recessions.

The basic idea is the dollar drinks every other fiat currency's milkshake. That's why it's called the dollar milkshake theory. And uh we're seeing the euro at its lowest level since 20 uh since 2002, and yen is down even worse to its lowest level since 2001, which is pretty crazy. Another sign of recession, it feels like, is oil. So remember we were very concerned about oil. I mean, economists were very concerned about the price of oil shooting up for all sorts of different re reasons. Of course, you know, war in Ukraine, other reasons as well. Uh now oil has just tumbled as much as 10%. I don't know about you, David, but around me, gas prices were just down on the week, down like 40 cents a gallon or something like that, 40 45 cents a gallon. And uh it's it's incredible how fast that is happening. But of course, oil demand being down is another sign of recession. It could be a sign of waning inflation too. Yes. We don't know because inflation itself is is also a lagging indicator. What are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, so this is this is a mixed uh data signal, right? Uh oil prices are down because people are buying less oil, because people are buying less in general because of you know the quote unquote recession that we are currently in. You know, still debated whether we're in a recession or not. Um so dollar, like demand for oil is down. Uh, but that's good because we need prices to go down because oil price goes down, means food prices go down, which means inflation comes down, which is literally the only way out of this recession is if we get inflation to come down. So, like, mixed signal here. Uh, and it's kind of the signal that you want to see. We want to see oil prices come down as a result of killing demand. Uh, and so, like, you know, it kind of sucks that like we're having to quell inflation by having a recession, but that's kind of the bargain that we made when we printed a bunch of stimmy checks two years ago.

This is definitely the bargain that um Jerome Powell in the central bank explicitly wants to make. If you want more info on that, go tune into our Jim Bianco episode that we did a couple weeks ago, where he's basically like the the Fed has one big stick and it has to beat inflation over the head with it. And that stick is called recession. That stick is called making everyone feel bad so that they don't spend as much money and decreasing demand. That's the stick that we're getting beaten over the head with. So this is expected, uh, as you'd say. A few interesting crypto numbers in the midst of all of this is David. Did you know that USDC, Circles USDC, is now on track to topple Tether, USDT. I thought this would happen a couple of years ago. Right. Right? Because just Circle is a regulatory, like from a um assurances perspective, it's a it's a more transparent uh dollar, stable coin, than tether. Um looks like it's happening now.

I actually think it makes sense that Tether took such a long time to dethrone, hasn't be been dethroned yet, but like the regulatory gray area that Tether lives in actually is one of the reasons why it's got adopted by so many people outside of the United States. But as soon as like the United States takes a leadership position, uh, which is being helped by Circle, like eventually the regulatory, once once the regulatory uh arm comes in and like we all start to have regulatory fears, people go from tether to USEC. So, I mean the writing's been on the wall for a while a while. Eventually, crypto was gonna become big enough where regulatory reasons are can are concerned. So you would naturally see that flow out of Tether and into USEC, which is what happened by the way. Like Tether has seen a decrease in total supply, but USDC's market cap has grown by 8.27% since May. Uh, highest level ever hit of total USC supply, 55.9 billion was hit on July 2nd. In contrast, UST suffered a 19% drop in total market cap and is currently at 66.14 billion. So USDC at basically 56 billion and UA and Tether at 66 billion. So not far away.

You know what? All the crypto um bulls that I know, even if they're exiting some of their, you know, positions, their core crypto holding positions, unless they need the money to go pay bills, they're not exiting to fiat, to like dollars in a bank account. They're exiting to something like USDT or USDC or die, right? To these stable coins. So it's always interesting to me in these, in these, even these bear market cycles, you do tend to see stable coin grow. Uh stable coins uh appreciate in terms of uh total market cap because that's where people are parking their money.

Isn't USDC like if you own buy USDC and put it in your Ethereum wallet, which is which by the way, Ethereum is called a cat an account-based ledger system as opposed to Bitcoin's UTXO unspent transaction output system. Anyways, when you buy USDC and put it in your Ethereum wallet, your Ethereum account, aren't you just using it? Isn't that like a proxy for a bank account? Yeah. Because like USCC is one

Totally

on crypto rails.

Yeah, it's USCC is one massive bank account, and then all USC account owners on Ethereum are one micro bank account. Totally. It's just another proxy for it. That's kind of cool.

It's on better rails, right? So like I could send you as much as I want at any point in time. There's no like banking hours. I don't have to go like show up with my ID to my bank in order to wire you funds. I can send it to any ETH address. So it's like it's still like USDC and stable coins are still a crypto superpower, guys. This is still a use case the world hasn't woken up to. It's so much better than trying to wire money in the stupid traditional banking system.

Ryan, I I had to send a $10,000 wire to this angel investment this week and no one knows where it went. It's just lost. It's lost. I have to go call my bank. They have to go call their bank and they're like, all right, like who where'd this money go?

Did you see like do you know of any mistake that was made? Like

I have no clue. I have no clue. I have to go find that out. But it's just like, how do we just lose money? It's like it's like where'd it go? It's like I can still tracking. I can see, I can send a uh 10,000 USDC transfer on Ethereum, and I can watch it penned in real time and it's wherever it's going. The fact that it just like disappears and then it's like, oh, we lost it. Like, this is ridiculous.

it's funny. It's like, to be honest, David, even ignoring all the hassle, which is a massive hassle, show up in a bank, present your ID, do the wire thing, the cost, five days it takes to get something internationally. Ignore all of that, okay? Just like I am now more nervous to transfer a wire from one place to another than I am to send a uh crypto transaction. I it used to be reverse to me. That's another like minor flipping. I used to be terrified to send crypto. Like, double check. Let me send like the test transaction. We checked this 10 times. Now

I'll send $1, then I'll send $10. And then

And now I still obviously check everything and make sure like user experience has gotten a little bit better. And like the fact that I can see it instantly. Right. I mean, if you're wiring money, who knows where it's going? Yeah. And that is way more risky in my mind. That's been interesting, uh, you know, flip that's happened in the last uh, you know, two or three years for me personally.

We're out of track.

back to

200k ETH staked. That's a big milestone too. Another crypto number we are looking at. Uh and then also ENS is still on a tear. What's happening with ENS? They just released their uh June stats. That is a bright spot in the NFT market.

Yeah, so ENS June numbers, $122,000 new.eth registrations, uh, $3.3 million in protocol revenue, all going to the Dow. Uh that's $2,500 ETH in revenue. Uh 25,000 new ETH accounts with at least one new ENS name. So that's 25,000 Ethereum wallets with a new ENS name. And Ryan, that's that was just June. We're one week into July. And you can see that tiny little bar chart down in the bottom right corner. Uh so far, seven days into July, we are basically where all of June was. So the last seven days, you know, we still have three more weeks. So the June, the July numbers finish. We're basically on par. The first week of July is basically on par with all of June.