ROLLUP: Worldcoin Launch | New Crypto Bills | Twitter X | Layer 2 Wars

The WorldCoin project is now live. It's on Maynet. The WLD, I guess it's wild. No, World. The World Token is in the wild. Orbs are deployed, and the crypto community absolutely hates it.

Bankless Nation, it is the last Friday of July. That means it's the last weekly roll up of July. Well, I spoiled it, but uh what time is it, David?

Oh, Ryan, it's the Bankless Friday Weekly Roll-Up where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, especially this week. This one's gonna be a long one, so we're gonna try to move fast, yet we persevere into the frontier, nonetheless, this time quickly. I have no coffee this time, but I'm sure you do.

Yeah, I always have coffee. Uh always. I you know, never doubt. Why why don't you have coffee? Do they not have coffee in Switzerland?

Uh, they do have coffee in Switzerland. I choose to not drink coffee at 6 41 p.m.

It's late where you are, huh?

It is late. Yeah. Tomorrow.

You're climbing a mountain. You climb

Uh yes, yes. Climbing uh Mount Pollux, which is a training mountain, and then we come back and rest, uh, and then we climb Matterhorn the next day.

Jeez man. Well, uh we'll be training.

If I open up these windows behind me, you would you would see the Matterhorn.

We've got a lot to talk about this week. Uh mountains aside. We've got a mountain of uh content to climb here. So number one, WorldCoin just launched, and most people love it, hate it.

Love it. Everyone loved it. Everyone loved the WorldCoin launch. Universally beloved launch. Everyone was so excited for it. Um, yeah. No, obviously not. Uh, we're gonna go through the takes of varying degrees of of quality. Uh Vitalik, of course, had a rational take, and then uh there's just a bunch of things to unpack, including the topic of uh Worldcoin on the Bankless podcast. We were we were a bit of main characters. I was a bit of a main character this week since you weren't on the episode. Uh so we'll talk about that.

Yeah, you know what they say about main characters, David. You gotta we gotta avoid that whenever possible. But uh we also got a main character crypto bill that's in the House. The the House of Representatives, that is. It's actually maybe a good one. So we'll talk about that. There's also a bad bill in the Senate, so we'll contrast those two things. David, we gotta also talk about this new X thing. Twitter has become X, and uh Elon wants to make it the everything app.

Does crypto have a story in there? I don't know. I want to get your take on some of the changes that are coming down the pike.

Yeah, I yeah, I it's a complete mess, but I'm I continue to reserve my judgment, but we'll talk about that when we talk about X. It's weird to call it X. It's just not gonna stick.

Yeah, I don't know. I yeah, I'm still calling it Twitter. Uh also the recession seems to be off. At least that's what Powell is saying. We'll talk about that. And also the phase of the market that we're in. Last week we gave you permission to be bullish. This week I feel like it's a phase of the market that starts with an A. We'll get to that in the market section. But could that we'll be?

Uh David, let's get to the market section this week. And we gotta start with King Bitcoin over here in the Kraken Pro charts. Thanks to Kraken for allowing us to pull this up. Um looking at well, what are the numbers for Bitcoin this week?

29,800 is where we started. 29,300 is where we ended, lost $500 on the week. We are down 1.6%, which I call flat. That is flat in cryptos.

We call it flat. How about ETH price? Same, same, same, flat, flat.

1890 to 1870, down 1%, uh, even flatter.

Even flatter.

Back in the 1800s, huh?

Yeah.

All right. Oh,

I don't like the 1800s

I don't like it. It was yeah, it wasn't it wasn't it?

a lot back then.

We'd r it would rather nineteen hundreds and then two thousands, you know, and then we're finally into the future. Uh ETH Bitcoin ratio, is that saying anything on the week?

Uh up half a percent to 0.064, just under. Um flat. It's flat.

Well, you know where the party is, David.

Elsewhere. It's elsewhere.

Yep, it's not in crypto. It's uh over in the stock land. So we are viewing the Nasdaq chart here and it's creeping even higher towards all-time highs on the week. And this is really interesting to me because you contrast that with what the Fed is saying. Uh flipping to our Fed watch, the Fed just raised interest rates again this week. And this is the highest level in 22 years. They increased the interest rate by 0.25%. This is sort of expected to a target range of 5.25% to 5.5%. And the question is, of course, will they raise again in September? Um, Powell said, I would say it's certainly possible that we will raise funds again at a September meeting if the data warranted. And I would also say it's possible that we would choose to hold steady. Anything is possible, is what uh Powell is saying. His comments on inflation, he said it's moderated since the middle of last year. And that's certainly what we're seeing in the data. Yes, moderated inflation. CPI is now at 4.8% when you exclude food and energy. I don't know if you should exclude food or energy, but the Fed still seems determined to hit 2% and still says they have a long way to go. But here was the headline news here. Powell also said that the Fed staff is no longer forecasting a recession.

No longer forecasting a recession. Recession's car is very interesting.

If it's not being forecasted, it's not happening. That's how recessions work.

How do you take that? Um

I mean,

the people who are saying that a recession is imminent, it it hasn't hit yet. And now the Fed is saying there's not going to be a recession. A lot of different ways of the case.

Yeah. Yeah, but but the GDP measurements are poor, inflation measurements are poor. Ris like recession is also something that exists in like consumer appetite and consumer confidence. Like there's so many things that go into what we're actually trying to talk about, which is like, do we have to hunker down, or are we just did we just like check a technical box saying we're in a recession? I was talking to one of my macro friends, and they uh this their hot take was that we've been in a recession. We're already in a recession. And just because the numbers that the Fed measures show that we're not in a recession on a technical level doesn't actually like sh mean anything. It's what's so qualitative.

It's so interesting though. Why would like Powell is coming out fairly strongly in saying that they're no longer forecasting recession? He's not going to be able to do that. Yeah, because

Because they want to say we stuck the landing. We threaded the needle. You're welcome.

it's

We're the f

but it would be very strange if in a quarter or two he has to eat those words and say, oops, I was wrong again.

but they're the they're the arbiters of the session.

Here was Jim Bianco's take.

But

Uh Jim Bianco's take. My take on the Fed hike statement of the presser so far, it provided the least amount of information of any meeting since they started hiking in March 2022. Powell's going out of his way to say nothing and not commit to anything.

I

hate these games. I hate it.

But this this

uh he also added to this tweet. I spoke too soon, says Jim. This headline just caused risk markets to fall. Powell, Fed staff no longer forecasting recession. This is how upside down we are. This is his comment on the Fed uh no longer forecasting recession. The Fed no longer sees a recession as thought to be bearish for stocks because it opens the door to more hikes or higher for longer. I've often joked that stocks would make a new high if the economy unemployed enough people. I was trying to be funny, but the market appears to be taking this idea very seriously.

Seriously. Uh oh.

I I just I don't know what's going on, to be honest, David. So the the recession hasn't come yet. That's one data point. Inflation seems to be tamed. Stocks are pumping. Real estate's up. Yes, bonds got a massive haircut. They got, you know, somewhat destroyed. So there's that. Wealth inequality, of course, has continued to increase. So there's that. But it feels like a lot of the macro bears have been incorrect so far.

So far. And so some of them are saying it, it sounds to you like, well, just you wait. It's coming, right? We just haven't felt the, you know, the wave uh hit us. Like, you know, there's been an earthquake in the ocean and there's a tidal wave out on the horizon. It just hasn't hit yet. We're just kind of waiting for it. But I'm I'm kind of wondering at this point, like, where is why aren't stocks down? Like, here's my big question for everyone in macro right now how is it possible that Fed interest rates have been raised to 20 year highs?

And yet the stock market is also nearing all time highs. I was told this couldn't happen, David.

Right. Yeah. That is crazy actually.

A commenter on that tweet said, I never thought it could. 5% inflation would cause a depression scenario, is what I thought. Yet here we are, and consumers are consuming away regardless. It's kind of unreal, in my opinion. That's kind of the contrast to me is like the rates have been raised to 20 year highs, and yet risk on assets, aside from crypto, but risk on assets are going back to uh all time highs.

How does that

Yeah, that's actually nuts. If you told us, if you told us back in the start of 2022 when like everyone in the crypto industry, including myself, was getting our minds wrapped around interest rates and flows and risk assets. And then halfway through 2022, we're all pummeled, and then we're all gripping the edges of our seats, saying, when's the pivot? When's the pivot? And the pivot has not come. I mean, it's it's there's been a decrease in acceleration of the of the raising of interest rates, but there has been no Fed pivot, not even after the Silicon Valley Valley banking crisis. And so after all of that, uh uh, we still at tech stocks all time highs. If you told us that, like in early 2022, we would that would have been like, oh yeah, they did thread the needle. They got it right. Look at that.