Ryan Returns! What He Missed & What Happens Next?

Welcome, Bankless Nation, to the Bankless Weekly Rollup, where we cover everything that's been going on in the wild west of crypto today. I'm joined once again by the one and only Ryan Sean Adams. Ryan, welcome back to Bankless!

Oh my god, what did I miss? Did I miss anything?

You missed nothing, dude. Nothing happened. Don't worry about it.

Okay, so my big question going into this episode—I was like, trying to figure out, after coming back—so, for people who like don't know, I've been on hiatus for 90—there's probably—for 90 days. I've been out. Okay, so my big question coming back to this episode and just like getting back into crypto, because I've been on a complete like disconnect from almost internet detox, yeah, and I can talk more about that, but my big question, David, is like, okay, are we still in a bull market? Like, what is going on here? Because there's some like—I I just don't even know. This has broken the cycle in my mind, so like what's the consensus around uh, around crypto?

I don't think that there is consensus, and I think that is actually a very big signal about what crypto is now—dispersion, differentiation. There's different sectors of crypto. Crypto is large; there's different corners, and there is no global consensus. There is no one single thing about what crypto is, uh, and I think my opinion is that the four-year cycle is broken. Uh, and so are we in a bull market or are we in a bear market? Well, you can look in different sectors of crypto and have different answers to that. Uh, so there is no one clear answer.

Okay, so like, traditionally, when we say bull market or bear market, we're talking about those four-year cycles, like as you said, and now it seems like the consensus is—sounds like it's your opinion—you share this. Is it broadly the consensus in crypto that, okay, we don't get those anymore? There's no four-year cycles. We've kind of—we're at the adoption curve where just like stuff just happens. It's like the regular market in that way, and we're not going to have a repeat of like Bitcoin goes up, you know, like u—all—all the alts kind of go up, and you know, this, you know, it's either a bull cycle or or like bear market, and we just get that.

I don't know if it's consensus, but I think that that is right.

All right, because it's hard to have consensus when there is dispersion. Like, people's voices are all over the place.

All right. Well, it's interesting—the changing of—it's a phase change of crypto. There has been a phase change. I will say that there's a lot more I want to get caught up with you about because I I think I missed a whole bunch of things, so I hope—would you just indulge me a little bit in this episode? I hope Bankless listeners indulge me. It's like, give me some highlights from the last 90 days as we get into this and like get me up to speed because I feel like there's some major things I may have missed. I wasn't in the action at those times.

Yeah, and I and maybe it's also worth providing the context about like how—like I'm sure you heard about the Trump meme coin, yeah—uh, but like you have been on a media content detox, and so it's worth, I think, laying down the impression of—No, Ryan has been unplugged. Maybe you could share how unplugged have you been.

Very. So I like the Trump meme coin, right? That's something I would have like heard probably within seconds, yeah, right in my, you know—uh, I caught wind of that a week later from an in-real-life friend, a week after it launched, and he asked my opinion on it because he like knows I'm in crypto. What's your opinion? I was like, "Oh, that happened," okay. Like, I I don't usually shooting from the hip on an opinion on that, but um, I do have an opinion on that actually, but like I didn't—that's how disconnected I was. The president, seven days late to the Trump meme coin, is incredibly disconnected. That's my latency right now. So yeah, there's a few things you're going to have to get me up to speed on. Also, like uh, some things as I'm getting plugged back in on the week: there's some Zora drama, these content coins, um, Bitcoin is decoupling, like gold is on a tear; that's all interesting. And also Vitalik had an execution layer plan for the EVM. He's talking about u—maybe replacing the EVM with uh, risk zero. So I definitely want to talk about that with you, too.

Yeah, that's definitely the the tip of the chain. Uh, so we're going to go through—I I have the four biggest things that happened in the last 90 days, and we're going to go through those. All right. Uh, and then we'll also get to the tip of the chain, which is like some of the events that you just talked about before.

Bankless Nation, we get to all of those things. A message from our friends and sponsors over at Wallet Connect. Wallet Connect has been used by over 255 million connections from 40 million unique users all across the internet who are simply just connecting their wallet to the applications that they want to use, and Wallet Connect is entering their final form of decentralizing and protocolizing Wallet Connect. Uh, and of course, in order to do that, they are releasing the last piece of the puzzle, the Wallet Connect token. Ryan, if you're familiar with like, you know, you know the story of Visa or Swift messaging networks and how they came to be and how like it's not—they they weren't like startup companies—how would you explain the creation of those two things?

Visa was like a consortium, right, of all of these different kind of like uh, financial like, you know, payment you like providers and banks and all of these things, and so they're they're almost like a collection, a consortium that that sort of came together together, and they coordinated this consensus layer, and they sort of like just formed that way.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that is exactly what's happening to the Wallet Connect infrastructure, which I thought was pretty compelling. I had a conversation with Pedro Gomez—uh, that that's available on Twitter, so we can link that—that's exactly what's happening to the Wallet Connect token and how the Wallet Connect token and infrastructure is being spun out. So if that has you peaked, Bankless Nation, bankless.cc/walletconnect, tc/walletconnect to stay ahead of what's next.

Uh, I think the first news of the week is this article, Ryan, that you posted, uh, called "How a Rub Reboot Fixed My Burnout and Upgraded My Mind." This is also your welcome-back post to Twitter. So welcome back to Twitter.

Yeah, sorry to have you back uh, on that particular medium of the internet. Um, but again, like go and like lay us down on the last like 90 days of Ryan Sean Adams and what you've been thinking about and why you needed to take the break and what it feels like to be back.

Yeah, so I guess like, firstly, in the welcome back to Twitter, like I'm going to do things differently this time, I think, with respect to how I engage with uh, an app like Twitter and uh, I can kind of get into that, but I just posted this. It's a sort of a short post, and I think it might resonate with people. It's like nothing to do with crypto—well, it kind of is actually, but it is to do with like life and um, modern living, I would say, and doing—I think it's a post for what I called like grind-addicted overachievers, which was like—I think—I don't know, you tell me, David, we've worked together for like five years now—it's like—um, that feels like my personality type. Like, I can get in these grind cycles of just like I do the same thing, and I can like—like bear the pain to like just get through it, and then I also have this problem in in that like the thing that I'm doing, I'm not quite satisfied. Like, I get to the place I'm like, "Oh, but there's another place further out." And like I—I higher peak—there's always a higher peak for me, and so I—all of this compounding over time—um, in January, it—I I would say it like kind of snuck up on me, but like I kind of knew it was happening, but I I just hit a moment in January. It was after—Do do you remember our uh, like the one Solana token? I go like—

Yeah.

And uh, it was Solana, um, and there was a whole like public pitchforking—u—you know, actually, we did sort of make a mistake on that, but but the pitchforking was absolutely crazy, and this was like the—I don't know—the 10th time it had happened, and all of this combined, I just—I didn't have the the skin thick enough to get through it, and something in my mental operating system just crashed. Like, I I just felt done. I felt exhausted. I felt burnt out. It was this question of like, when I wake up in the morning, why am I doing this? Like, why am I doing this? And I think if you're listening and you're asking yourself that question about whatever you're doing in life, whether it's like a relationship, a job, like just anything in life, and there's this repeated uh, question of like, "Why am I still doing this?" in your mind, then that might be a sign you're like in burnout territory. You've lost track of yourself, and you need to do what I did, which was take a reboot. So um, this was really hard for me, David, cuz like—and you were the first person I I talked to about it—but um, it was really hard for me to come to the realization that I needed to completely disconnect from everything, like kill all my commitments, like all the pod—we—we plan podcasts like you know six weeks out, right? Cancel all of those, at least for me. Uh, you know, have you—my business partner—like take on the mantle of like carrying all of the load of Bankless where where I did nothing for 90 days—like no meetings, no work, nothing—um, all opportunities that like things we could do, possibilities, just let those evaporate. Um, that that was the reboot, and that was the uh, decision I had to make to to come to you, talk to you, talk to the team, and just be like, "Hey, I'm going for like 90 days," and by the way, I can't tell you confidently if I'm going to be back or not.

All right. And I wish I could say that was like um, I rationally came to that conclusion, like, "This is all part of, you know, a process of just like upgrading and just like figuring my [ __ ] out," but it wasn't like that. It was—it was like capitulation, you know? It was like I—I compared it to being margin called, liquidated—you like—it wasn't on my terms.

You called it an emotional margin call.

It was an emotional margin call, and I think that that can happen if you're a, you know, grinding high achiever; that sort of thing can happen to you. It's better—I I would just say it's better for it to happen on your own terms and not be margin called, but regardless, I was margin called. I needed to kind of disconnect and go figure stuff out, go answer my question of like, "Why am I doing this?"

Mhm.

Yeah, I think it's—yeah, worth emphasizing that there was a moment, and it lasted for a while actually, maybe even a couple months, where you did not know if you were going to come back to crypto.

Yeah, to crypto, like to Bankless. I just like—I really didn't know. And so I set this time aside for myself to go figure it out, and um, like once I—once I disconnected, once I cleared everything, I really had just the space to diagnose what was wrong, right? And so this is where like you reboot and you upgrade, right? This is the cycle, and and I think for for my cycle, you know, life—life happens in these cycles of progress, right? And um, what I needed to do—I didn't know I needed to do it—but what I needed to do was sort of like end one cycle in order to begin the next, and that's what the the reboot did. But now the question is like, what's the next cycle for me?

Mhm.

And there were a few problems I had with the way I was doing things previously in like crypto media, investing, this crazy world. Like, one was just—and some of this is pretty simple; it's not—it's not rocket science—but um, you like—that—that—that's the beauty of it. Anyone can kind of do these things and and apply them, but for me, number one, I was way too online. I was—I couldn't go 15 minutes without checking something, dude. So whether it was like socials, whether it was like price charts, whether it was Discord, whether it was Telegram, it was dopamine dripped right into like my veins.

Mhm.

And I didn't even realize it. I think you've told me before when you've gone on like mountain expeditions and stuff like when you completely disconnect from screens, you realize how addicted you actually like were to it.

Mhm.

Um, and so like I would find myself just kind of like—when I disconnected from these things—like I'm talking deleting apps, everything—like complete cold turkey—I would find myself like reaching for my phone. I'd reach more for my phone, dude. I'd pick it up, and I look at my like home screen; there's like nothing fun on it anymore, and I'd be like—I put it down. I'd be like, "Why did I even do that?"

Right.

Uh-huh. Why did I pick up my phone?

Uh-huh.

So um, that was clearly a problem. Um, I just—I got rid of that by just treating myself like a child. So I went into the, you know, settings, my phone app, screen uh, restrictions, screen time limitations, again, like deleting things, and it—it totally—it felt like detoxing from something.

How long was that process? Like, were you—were you irritable? How long did that last? Like, what did that feel like?

A week. I felt like jittery. I mean, it wasn't super irritable, but I felt jittery, um, like a little bit like trying to get off caffeine, and that's only like hard substance, like you know, I've lived a pretty clean life, David, so it's you know, social media and caffeine for me are your—are your vices.

Yeah, yeah. It's—it's pretty—it was kind of like that, but um, it probably felt—it took like a week, and I got the first round of just like clarity, just quiet in the mind, and then after 30 days, like a lot more of that started to return, and I found like I could focus—focus—I could be present. I combined some of this with like, you know, just like some daily just quiet time, like meditation type stuff, um, and I could think again. So that was the first thing I did. Um, the second thing I did was I felt lost. Like, I felt like I didn't—again, answering that question of like, "Why am I doing this again?" Uh, you know, like the reason you and I both got into crypto and started on this Bankless journey was like the word freedom. We keep returning to that, right? Like freedom—like we want to use crypto technology as an escape from all the systems that try to control us, right? Like the banks or um, you like the—the—the centralized tech companies, but somewhere along the road, like I found myself a slave to like prices. Okay, I, you know, crypto prices—crypto prices—but just kind of the—the—the concept of um, like wealth. Do you know what I mean? Like, okay, so this goes back to the goalpost moving. We've talked about crypto wealth so many different times on Bankless over the years. What I had never done before—never in my history—is actually defined what like "enough" was.

Mhm.

Like, what's the number where like that's enough for everything I want to do in life and my family like wants to do and where I can provide for those that I love and I don't have to look at the scoreboard anymore.

Mhm.

And maybe to emphasize this is not coming from a place of of greed or greediness; this is coming from a place of—you love the game. You love the game of like growing a business and playing that particular game, investing in the right ways, because totally—what are you—what are you going to do with your life? It's a fun game; it's an enjoyable game, and you love the game.

Yeah.

So I'm not the type of person like to do sort of the flashy status symbol thing of like, you know, buying the Lambo and whatever—like that's not—

Yeah, you bought—you bought a used Toyota Highlander like four years ago.

Yeah, yeah. And like—so that—but it wasn't that for me, but it was very much like the high score, like the arcade game of like just like um—it—it was just kind of this endless cycle of, you know—and crypto prices rise and fall—you—you—you never know like, you know, some—something that starts at like one could turn into a 100, and like you just extrapolate that forward. Anyway, I'd not taken the time to actually define with those in my life—my spouse—like what is enough.

Okay.

So that that was a big piece of it. The other piece I was missing was my—um—definition of wealth was way too narrow. It was like—when I thought about wealth, mostly I thought about like uh, net worth, right? Which is definitely a key part of wealth, but that's also the part that society—um—it imposes on us. Like, we're sort of taught like what is success: it's net worth; it's kind of number go up. Um, a key book for me was uh, Sahil Bloom's book, which is kind of ironic because we actually had Sahil—I think he was like booked—

Yeah, we had him—we had him booked for a—for just a podcast.

Yeah, just talk about it. Anyway, I—I received the book in the mail, you know, because he had uh, sent that book as pre-reading material for the podcast. I was like, "Okay, this is interesting; well, I'm not doing anything else; I may as well read this." It was fantastic. It's called the right book at the right time.

Right book at the right time.

It's called *The Five Types of Wealth*, and it just expanded my framework. So he talks about like, yeah, financial wealth is one type of wealth, but there's also like time wealth, uh, relationships, social wealth, uh, mental wealth, physical wealth, and I looked at that and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm completely overallocated in sort of the—the financial side of things," and I'm not like taking care of the other four types of wealth, right? Like I was time poor; I was relationship light; I was like mentally scattered; I was physically—I hadn't worked out in probably a couple of years, like at least not consistently, so I just felt physically like just soft.

Mhm.

And I was just focusing on one type of wealth; I was missing all of the other types. You know—

You see—yes—just like questions about your relationship wealth and your social—who are the people that are going to be at the front row of your funeral, right? Are you investing in those relationships, and how are you investing? Are you dollar-cost averaging into them?

And so that was another key piece for me in sort of finding my new map is creating a wealth plan that was more than just stacking, you know, Ether, Bitcoin, like crypto wealth, right? And that was broader, and it was using money—you know, Naval often says this—money is a tool, right? And so it's like using as money as a tool to also allocate to those other types of wealth. And so like I'm—I'm working out now; I'm like eating far more nutritiously; I'm like uh, taking time for that; I'm investing in my relationships, both like my family—immediate family relationships—and then um, just like friendships that I'd sort of let um, atrophy. And um, I created a whole plan around this, so it's like—one thing to read the book, but like what was uh, pivotal for me was creating like a dashboard, goals, habits, systems, you like feedback loops, you know, how I work to just like grind it into a discipline, right?

Yeah, you turned the other four types of wealth into processes for yourself.

Yeah, yeah, which Ryan loves process, let me tell you.

Oh my god, yeah, yeah. Well, it's—I feel like I just need reminders, right? And so this is like—when you have processes and systems, when you drift, you can just get back on course. So that was the second thing, and the third thing uh, was I felt—in everything I was doing, I was being—I was stretched too thin. Like, I was doing too many things. You know, when you have too many browser windows open, and Chrome's like, "That's too much; I'm eating all of your system resources; crash," you know—uh, you just had too many browser windows, you know? And so I needed to like—it was a result of saying yes to all of these things. "Oh, that looks interesting; that look—I could do that; I could do that; I could do that." And what I needed to do was like correct uh, the overachiever's delusion, which—like for me—was like three things: it was like, "I'm the only one who could do this," that's what I thought; "If I don't do it, it won't get done;" and "Being busy is good." Those three things were like delusions basically I was feeding into myself, and it turned out—and this really impressed upon me like 30 days in—everything was working still. I just peaked in—I had a meeting with you and and Rachel on our team—I peaked in our COO—I was looking at the the podcast feed—all the episodes shipped.

Thank you very much, David. I appreciate it.

Wasn't missed. Rollup wasn't missed. We still never miss a rollup at Bankless.

Yeah, like um, ETH price wasn't great, but like our control—great. It's out of our control. Um, like Bankless Ventures was backing deals; like everything was happening; the team was kind of covering the gap. And so I—I look at the like what I used to believe and like—cuz I thought maybe—I thought subconsciously that if I left, I don't know, the world would burn; like I don't know what would happen; right? Things would crumble.

Yeah.

And this was uh, hard evidence that showed me otherwise. So now I'm doing this thing where I'm just like operating on energy accounting,

Mhm.

which is like—if a task drains more than it pays, right? It's delegated, it's automated, or it's deleted, and I'm deleting a lot of things right now for my life, and I'm just focusing on core areas of competence, right? The zone of genius, as people call it—storytelling. So that means doing this podcast with you, telling stories about the frontier of crypto, AI—is something I've been rabbit-holing recently, like all that stuff—and allocating capital. So that is the upgrade. So there was the reboot; uh, the system was down; had some downtime, you know, just like Solana—sorry—had some downtime—

No, Solana's doing great. It's really great to see. I can't wait to talk to you more about that.

And then also, I just upgraded the software, so that's what RSA 2 is, um, and um, yeah, I—I don't know—I—I don't often share personal things like in general—like I'm pretty not that way—but um, I thought this might be helpful for some people, so that's why I published the article.

Yeah, no, and it's also—it's also just good to hear the story, um, and good to—good to see that you have invested in the other side of your life. Uh, I was very happy to see that you followed through on not a single tweet for nine months—and like the—the gray icon—

90—

Yeah, 90 days, excuse me—uh, and then also the gray icon next to your name, you know, on—just gray for for 90 days. And it was good—it was good. I—I've always perceived that you've been way like better balanced than me. Is that like—

Yes.

Uh, so you—you talked about how—you said—uh, you now operate on energy accounting: "If a task drains me more than it pays, it's delegated, automated, or deleted." I have operated on that, I think, maybe—maybe as a—not like an admiral quality of me, but just like—if it drains me more than it pays, I ignore it, which is—which is something I personally have to deal with because like ignoring something is not always the best solution, but it—

Has allowed me to be more sustainable. Like, it's a little bit more innate in me, of like, if this is not fun, then I'm just not doing this, and I'm going to pivot into something that I do find fun, and I'm going to apply my my energies that way. Now again, like I said, that has cost me, um, 2021 taxes, let me tell you, but uh, but this has also made like just my being a little bit more sustainable naturally. I'm not saying it's the optimum strategy, uh, but this is why I think uh, stuff like this, like the Twitter mobbings, don't get me in the same way that they get you. Yeah, I I I think you are much more bomb-proof than me. It's like just more endurance runner type quality when when you're that way. And I do think that that's the ying and the yang. You know, sometimes, you know, sometimes you need a little bit of the grind and the over, like what could we do, like the overachieving, and sometimes you just need the, you know, like balance, uh, you know, finding energy, actually like loving what you're doing and focusing on those things. So, um, yeah, that's uh, good stuff.

Now you have had some thoughts, I think, about just like bank lists. You know, I read uh your tweet earlier this week as I was logging back in about um your thoughts and on like what to really focus on. Tell me about that.

Yeah, well, so maybe this comes down on the back of like your big realization. You said, you know, 30 days powered down proved that, you know, the the bankless media company would keep on shipping podcasts, bankless ventures would keep on going, and you know, to be clear, the shoes of Ryan Shawn Adams are very large, and there is no there's no truly filling those shoes, but yet, you know, the with the void that that was left, that was created, you know, the myelial network did fill that in. Like we learned to like route around the the the void. Like that did get filled in. It's not perfect, but things did keep on going, and we learned to fill that gap, but also that like we also learned about how to like with that gap, there was an opportunity for everyone to kind of like step up and put on the new hats that uh needed to be uh dawned on, uh, and there's been it's been generative, I would say, on on the back side of the company, uh, and especially me because I'm the person who who has had to fill that void the most. And it was also a moment for the company to ask like, do we need to do this thing? Like what what are we doing that we actually might not need to do? We have to do things this way, uh, and so downstream of that has been some choices. I put this out uh this tweet uh saying there are four things that um we're going to do at bank list, and this is like actually maybe just uh not completely relevant to what I was just saying of filling in the void, but you know, choices that I think we ought to make moving forward.

Um, one, during your last the last 90 days, AI has just, you know, been as as amazing as crypto was in 2021 in terms of hype and attention, and I am AIDL. I think you have mentioned that you are AI pilled, uh we have a uh team member who is AI pled, and then also a Jaws who is crypto and AI pilled, and so we have actually have found solid podcasting talent that is AI pilled, and we actually have a lot of podcasting talent that's AI pled, and not just AI pled, but frontier techp, uh, and we have been making more AI content, which I think many people have enjoyed, and some people have caused like elevated frustration that like, oh my crypto podcast is now an AI podcast or a frontier tech podcast, and I understand that. So we are creating a new podcast, uh, a Frontier Tech focused podcast, uh, that we are going to incubate. You're still going to see those podcasts episodes on this feed, but we're also going to incubate this new podcast. We're calling it um Limitless. So we have Bankless, Bankless for Crypto Crypto Markets, and then Limitless for Frontier Tech, uh, and so we're going to spin up that podcast vertical, so you'll see that as well. All the Frontier Texas stuff is going to go over there also.

Uh, the next thing, renewed Ethereum focus. And the reason why I think this this again has nothing to do with your departure and actually has everything to do with Ethereum to me becoming interesting again, whereas the last two years of Ethereum have been often a direction that hasn't felt aligned with what the universe wants or what the universe expects out of, and and I and I see Ethereum in the last six months realigning itself to a new future, and you know, Bankos has always had Ethereum in our DNA. There's no there's no ripping Ethereum out of bankless DNA. That just doesn't make sense. It's our first love, it always will be, uh, and I think we there's an opportunity now where bankless can actually support Ethereum because I don't think there wasn't supporting much to support about Ethereum in like 2023. It was it needed to al re like how you needed to go and and like realign yourself. Ethereum Ethereum also needed a reboot, why, and we are I think we are slowly watching Ethereum reboot in a way that we I think we can support, and so now that that opportunity exists once again, uh, I think I I want to take it. I think we should take it.

Love it. Um, thumbnails. This seems small, but our thumbnails also need a reboot, um, and thumbnails like seem like such a small thing, um, but people judge podcasters YouTubers by what their thumbnails look like. Um, no more stupid openmouth face like kind of YouTuber face. We were always pushing against it, but the the incentives pointed there, and so we're trying to figure out how to keep on optimizing for click-through rate, you know, which is what you do when you optimize for thumbnails, while also um kind of like restoring uh legitimacy, which you know we once had and like the podcast feed does have, but we I want to go back into just optimizing for legitimacy, and I think this relates to what you are thinking about with like your energy level and how to not deplete your energy level, and this means like we're going to optimize for what we feel is legitimacy and legitimate conversations and like uh things that we find interesting, uh, rather than than like the dopamine of of click-through rate. And then of course, the last one is Ryan Tron Adams returns back this week, so it's all those things.

I I think that's really awesome. I think that um the two most exciting technologies in my lifetime aside from the internet was just like growing up whatever crypto 2010s into now, right? That's the story, and now AI 2020s, and so like to be exploring both of those frontiers is like a pretty rare opportunity. If you ever need a guest host on Limitless, okay, I'm kind I'm kind of I dabble. Okay, I've been using, you know, the tools on a daily basis, uh learning about Transformers and just like the way all these systems are are structured, uh, so that'll be really fun. I think you will be uh you've been listening to the Josh episodes on Frontier Tech and also the the AI rollups with Jaws and Josh uh Josh and Josh. I'm very bullish on as podcasters, and when I've stepped in into that role with the AI rollup Josh and David, it's actually I'm just I just feel like the Jason Kalcanis and I say that in a negative way cuz I and I'll leave that there, uh, but Josh and Jaws are uh very smart, uh, and I I am very bullish on them as podcasters, uh, and I think you will definitely enjoy being a part of that conversation cuz I walk away from those podcasts very bullish on AI and very interested in what happens next, which is how I felt about crypto in like 2019.

Well, uh Bankless listeners, thanks for indulging David and I in a little catch up, a little bit of housekeeping. We appreciate you. After the break, you're going to have to fade out to sponsors, David, because I don't even know who's sponsoring us anymore, but uh, you got to update me on some of the big things that happened while I was out because I have so many questions. So let's get to that. Thanks for the station. We're going to get to the Trump memecoin, the Bitcoin strategic reserve, and the Libra debacle, but first a message from some of these fantastic sponsors like Uniswap, uh, that make this show possible. Uniswap is your gateway to a more efficient DeFi experience. With Uniswap, swapping and bridging across 13 chains is simple, fast, and cost effective, helping you move value wherever whenever. Thanks to deep liquidity on the Uniswap protocol, you'll enjoy minimal price impact on every trade, and now UniS swap V4 takes it even further. Swappers benefit from gas savings on multihop swaps and ETH trading pairs, while liquidity providers can create new pools at 99% lower costs. The best part, you don't have to do anything extra. Each trade is automatically routed through Uniswap X, V2, V3, and V4, so you get the most efficient swap without even thinking about it. Whether you're swapping, sending, on-ramping, off-ramping, or bridging, uniswap's web app and wallet gives you the tools to unlock DeFi's full potential on Ethereum, base, arbitrum, uni chain, and more. Use Uniswap's web app and wallet for a more efficient way to use DeFi.

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Before we get into the uh the three subjects that I uh teased right before going into the break, Ryan, I just kind of want to talk about some numbers really quick. Okay, since your since your departure on on January 16th, your uh 90-day hiatus, ETHUSD is down 48% from $3,000 $3,400 to 17. That's what I remember. I remember it was in the 30,000 3,400. Yeah, well, it's it's 1750. Hopefully you weren't on margin when you left, uh Bitcoin Bitcoin USD is down 7% from 100,000 down to $93,000. Salana USD is down 30% from 20 $210 down to $150, and the total crypto market cap is down from 3.6 trillion to three trillion. And interestingly, Bitcoin gold Bitcoin is down versus gold 25%. Interesting. Yeah, since your departure, what's your reaction? What's your reflection on on these numbers? I mean, honestly, it looks Okay, so uh it looks most painful for ETH. It seems like Bitcoin's doing just fine. Bitcoin's doing just fine as of right now. I mean, like I know it was down like I I think I was looking at the charts. I think it was down like a lot more when the tariffs got announced, all that stuff, uh Salana looks like it's doing pretty well as well. It seems like the the sort of the the bare market right now is Ether, uh I don't know about the other long tale of assets. I've looked at kind of like DeFi tokens and such that I hold. I don't think that they have had a resurgence. L2 as well, so it's like the entire entire Ethereum ecosystem is kind of it's down fairly bad relative to Bitcoin and Soul. Um, like Bitcoin relative to gold is pretty interesting, only down 25%. I mean, I only down 25% 25% gold moving 25%, I think, is pretty big deal. Gold is crushing though, right? And it's all because of uh, you know, another theme that seemed to have emerged while I was out, which is like um the end of the dollar, the like end of PAX Americana. You know what I mean? Like the end of Bretton Woods? Is that seriously happening under Trump? It seems like it might be, at least it's the beginning of the end, and so I think like gold is kind of repricing that, that's the way it seems, and uh, you know, so so it's definitely been on a tear, um Bitcoin seems like it's doing really well though, um, but yeah, like it's ETH that's really suffering right now.

Bitcoin, so as as you know, I did this Bitcoin uh Bitcoin versus Ethereum podcast before uh Bankless. It was called POV Crypto. It was me, the Ethereum guy, and a Bitcoiner co-host, and we were just debating, we just yell at each other since we were college friends. It was fun, um a lot of what he said in the early days of that podcast in like the 2018 to 2019 era is coming true, where the brand and lead that Bitcoin has uh is actually large and more large than what like Bitcoin detractors say, and that eventually Bitcoin will be purchased by central banks, and we are not seeing we are not seeing Bitcoin being bought by our central bank, but I would say the Bitcoin strategic reserve is like pretty damn close to exactly what that like idea that concept was, where the Bitcoin brand is so incredibly strong and the Bitcoin story story and the immaculate conception which I like minimized back then. I was like, no, it's actually about like scale and productivity and revenue and innovation and software updates. That's actually the real thing. I think Bitcoiners have uh like old school Bitcoiners that we would debate with back in 2018 2019 uh were had more foresight than I gave credit for back then. I I think that um I I got a couple things I would say. I don't think it's um over for Ether at all. I think right now it's uh losing the Midame, and your comments about it kind of like um I think I read a tweet from you where that you know the Ethereum ship is kind of it's taking a long time, but it is turning. The big ship to turn, and it is turning. I definitely see that. I know you've got an article coming out um that you've been working on right about Ethereum and sort of the you like the shift and the signs of life that you're seeing and like maybe call it a pivot in some ways, like this emphasis on the L2.

I've been ruminating L1, excuse me. Yes, I've been ruminating on like uh another article about um uh what I think the Ethereum community kind of got wrong and what it needs to do. Interesting. Particular. Okay, so actually what the Ethereum community needs to do is actually what I would say my article is about. Okay, and I think you're probably talking about more the um Ethereum network, which is important. Yeah, I have some thoughts on ETH, the asset. Basically, the TLDDR from my perspective is holy [ __ ] ETH just got totally outplayed by the Bitcoin religion. It did not like, you know, Ethereum talks about uh building, right? It's like we're a community of builders. We build. That's what we do, right? That's our advantage. Okay, building on the technical side, but has not built the meme base layer, has not built the cult, has not built the religion, and we are seeing and it's not something even the theorem culture would kind of acknowledge, right? It's like it doesn't it doesn't do mass. Has that DNA? Well, that's the that's a problem, and that's that's where you suffer if you're trying to become a global store of value asset. Anyway, I want to take that angle and kind of uh explore that a little bit, but love it. Um, that's the other side of why you like Bitcoin's been super successful cuz it's gotten to the level of central bankers, but in order to get there, dude, you needed this cult. You needed people like Michael Sailor. You need people like Dave Bailey who's like rubbing elbows with the politicians, getting to speak at conferences about this asset. Like you have to work your way up to central bank, and uh Ethereum hasn't done uh hasn't done that on the community side. Anyway, not to say it can't cuz it's got all the raw ingredients there and some like many that we've argued are like better attributes for a store of value than than Bitcoin, but it has to really work on on that side of things. So, you know, that's what I've been thinking about.

What's your take on the story of the immaculate conception of Bitcoin leading to its very strong credible neutrality, like the elimination of Satoshi, so Bitcoin has very strong credible neutrality in that context versus the mere existence of Vitalic Buterine and is like s like more like the Ethereum foundation, while Ethereum we like we like Ethereum because it's credibly neutral compared to Bitcoin, and compared to Bitcoin as a monetary asset, it doesn't have that same story, and so it disqualifies it from central bank inclusion. What's your take on that?

My take on that is just that it's a religious proposition, and it's a fantastic religious proposition for Bitcoin, but there are different types of religions that you can form, and uh that doesn't have to be the only way a religion takes root. You know, it is one of the strengths of of Bitcoin, but that does not preclude ether from becoming a global like monetary asset. Now it feels bad because it's like not winning that midame right now, and even I was thinking compared to like 2021 2022, I feel like ETH has fallen behind on the uh global store of value reserve asset like conversation narrative, right? And like um I think that that ground needs to be re regained if we're going to see material price appreciation in the future for ETH, and it's an open open story. There's like some probability that happens, and uh there's some probability that it doesn't, and I think part of what we're seeing is the market pricing that in.

So Ryan, you uh had your departure on January 16th, and if you had left uh 3 days later on at January 19th, uh the ratio between Soul ETH would actually have gone down by 10% because that was the day that Donald Trump launched his memecoin, and that was the day that Salana broke all-time highs. Soul USD broke all-time highs. Yeah, uh I mean, Soul ETH, the ratio of Soul Solana to ETH has been going up uh pretty consistently in a pretty consistent trend since like December of 2023, which I mean it violently went up from 2023 into 2024, and it's been consistently trending up versus Ethereum, and the so the recent both dollar and ETH ratio terms has been marked at the top by the uh Donald Trump memecoin. Uh, you said that you didn't see the existence of the Donald Trump memecoin uh until seven days later, and you know, congratulations for uh, you know, being able to dodge that mess, uh, so let me let me kind of guide you through some of the conversations that um has been happening downstream of this, uh of course, Donald Trump launches the memecoin, it's on Salana, uh all memecoins in that one moment of time on Salana had their liquidity sucked out from them, and I was I was trading meme coins on Salana at the time. I had like four or five or six meme coins. I dumped all of my meme coins for the Trump coin. All of them. Did you buy Ivanka or just Trump? Uh, I did not buy Ivanka. Okay. Um, when Ivanka When the No, not Ivanka, Melania. When the Melania Okay, how dare you invoke Ivanka's name into Yeah, when the Melania memecoin came out, that caused the Trump memecoin to dump because it was dilutive, right? Like Trump is the Too many tokens, not too many tokens. I thought we Yeah, got it. Apparently, like we're going to talk about the Libra debacle, uh, but apparently the same guy that launched the Libracoin was involved with launching the Melania coin. We'll talk about what did you not know that the No, and the Libracoin was um Javier Malay, javier Malay's Javier Javier Javier Malay, but in the back end, there was this one mastermind who was trying to like find the most clouded people possible, convince them to launch memecoins, and so he got a hold of Melania somehow, uh, and then also got a hold of Javier Malay, but that that's jumping forward in the story. When the Melania coin launched, the Trump memecoin lost like 40% of value, 30% of value, billions of dollars wpped out. It was completely like unforced error because everyone wanted to speculate on this Trump memecoin. Everyone everyone was like holding a superp position of oh my god, this is so bullish for Salana memecoins versus uh oh no, this is a terrible grift, and we don't know we don't exactly know what's going. No one really knew what was real, and then when the millennia memecoin got uh launched, the superp position collapsed, and everyone was like, oh no, this is a bad it's a grift. It's a grift.

Okay, okay, can I ask you a question? All right, so so uh I know you're talking about this happening last quarter, but it's an ongoing story, so I was see reading even catching up this week right now, um the top 200 250 holders, something like this of the Trump token, they're they're now going to be invited to a a private dinner with Donald Trump. Okay, the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump, president of the United States. Okay, you buy a memecoin to get access to the most powerful man in the world. Like you like that that's a political thing. That's like lobbying. That's like Trump's adding utility to his memecoin. David, isn't that what we always dream of? It's Gary Vee. It's Gary Vee strategy, right? Gary V dinner with Gary Vee. Okay, so so my question to you is like how is this like how is this perceived when it happened and now like is this a good thing for crypto? Because the other thing I was catching up on is like all of our wildest dreams on the regulatory front are coming true. Do you remember the the the twisted world we lived in 2 years ago where Gary Gensler was god king and he was coming with this you know Thorhammer to smash everything in crypto, and the whole administration was backing him, and we had like FDIC, we had Operation, the whole you know apparatus of the government was going after crypto aggressively. Now all of that's reversed. They're all friendly. We're going to get stable coin legislation. I was watching a clip from Marua who's a commissioner of the SEC and catching up with like on Hester Pur stuff. He he basically said "Hey, you know, the Gensler regime, that's all gone now. We're super crypto-favorable, and we're doing all of these things to support the industry." It's like Trump literally fulfilled his promise on that front, right? Like the regulation regulatory winds have completely shifted in crypto's favor. Treasury secretary, commerce, Howard Lutnik, he's doing stuff with Tether now. It feels to me, David, like we no longer are at risk from the government of being squashed. We're at risk from the government of being corrupted. Okay, and so like we move to a different vector of uh the pendulum has swung. Yes, and so the Trump coin itself, like is this viewed as

Like, oh, this is what true adoption looks like—the president doing this, or is it viewed as, oh god, another vector for corruption, and this, like, long-term will not go well? It was initially uh considered the former, and it is lately considered the latter. Um, and this was what Vitalik Buterin tweeted out pretty quickly after the launch of the Trump Beamcoin. He tweeted out this tweet that said, "The risk of politician coins comes from the fact that they are such a perfect bribery vehicle. If a politician issues a coin, you do not need to even send them any coins to give them money; instead, you just buy and hold the coin, and this increases the value of their holdings passively."

And then, of course, Donald Trump announces that the top 200 holders uh get to have dinner with Donald Trump, which means like, if you hold enough of the market cap of Donald Trump, you just get to whisper in his ear directly in this dinner. Well, how's Trump—how's the Trump token doing on that news, responding to market catalyst? Uh, it pumped like 60% with the announcement of uh that. Yeah, so so here's the chart. Here, it was down 89—it was down 90%, over 92 days. Uh, and then so there was there was a three-month lockup, so the Trump team, which owned 80% of the supply of the token, had a three-month lock lock up. Uh, we are now 92 days into the issuance of the Trump coin, so the unlock happened uh 3 days ago. Uh, and now, just recently, it it pumps up—it pumps up 70, 80%, just two days after vesting unlocks.

Uh, so is someone gonna come up with, like, some analyst group going to come up with, like, uh the thesis for Trumpcoin, which is like all the lobbyists in Washington, D.C., will have to bid on this thing in order to get, you know, uh like influence, to curry favor with Trump? Not only not only all the lobbyists and corporations and such, but um other countries—like you could you could create a bull case for Trump token based on its kind of like naked uh influence with the president of the United States. Like, by the way, society—society that sounds like a complete disaster to me, like a further corruption of our political system, but I guess it's not like illegal. I like, I don't know, where do you think—like, where do you think this leads? It's not great. I to fill you in on what the crypto community has been doing in response to this—like, to go back to what you're saying about like the Gary—the uh Gary Gensler's out, and you know, now it's it's crime season again. That's that—that's the—that's the meme in crypto, but people are like actually posting like somewhat satirical but somewhat serious tweets of like Gary Gensler and being like, "I missed this man. I miss Gary Gensler." Did you—Did you see—I think I saw this in passing—again, I'm not up to speed yet—but uh Richard Hart—the case against Richard Hart was was dropped. That I haven't—I haven't tapped into the details of that. I've been waiting for someone to to synthesize that. Okay, okay. All right, so that's happening. What else? Uh, okay, okay. So the other one is the Bitcoin strategic reserve. Uh, and so Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Wow.

Around this time, there was a ton of just jostling, positioning by companies, foundations, corporations to become Trump-aligned. Uh, and so like Ripple—Brad Garlinghouse started uh what was—what's it called?—like um proximity posting. And so everyone started posting like the United—like United States, pro-USA like tweets on Twitter. Brad Garlinghouse was talking about how great Trump was. Um, Solana released this marketing video that was just like regurgitating the cultural shift from the left to the right about like the line was uh in the in the video—I don't want to invent genders; I want to like innovate on ideas or something—and the crypto community just rejected it because it was so cringe. They did, and the Solana account—it was—it was—it was too cringe—it was too cringe; they ended up deleting the video. But there was a bunch of like jostling. Did Anna totally apologize? Did he have—He did, and people—people accepted his response. It was a good response. It was a good response. Um, uh, so yeah, there was just like—like jostling—like of everyone trying to become aligned with being pro-United States because everyone wanted to be in the strategic reserve because we didn't know what would constitute being in the strategic reserve. And then Donald Trump on Truth Social—you're saying that there was actually other assets that were like—like contemplated for this—like—So Donald Trump tweeted out on Truth Social about the existence of a strategic reserve, and he tweeted out how it's going to be things like Ripple, Cardano, why Solana? I think no one knew—no one knew. And then I think one more—made in the US—was that—is that yes? I think it was like US coins, but it was also just coins that had like—I think successfully jostled their way into position to get the pro tweet from Trump. Then also there was somebody taking like a margin long position on something like uh I can't remember what it was—one of these—one of the shitcoins—like XRP hours before that Truth Social post. Nice, nice. Okay, but—but the—the—the story of the reserve is that it's just a Bitcoin reserve. It's just a Bitcoin reserve. There's also something else that I can't remember what it's called, but like—Oh yeah, digital asset stockpile, which is just the assets that the United States already has, and that includes like Tether, Ether, um, and they have a lot of Ether still, right? They have—they have a decent amount of Ether and digital in Bitcoin in the strategic Bitcoin reserve cannot be sold. That is what the Bitcoin reserve is. In the digital asset stockpile, there is discretion, and there is somebody going to be in charge of like a long-term plan for the Treasury, so they're treating the digital asset stockpile as a treasury that someone is going to sell and make strategic decisions on, but the Bitcoin strategic reserve is not going to be sold, and that's the whole point. Wow. I mean, this kind of stuff is why Bitcoin is so strong right now, right? It's like you were talking about other assets like jostling for kind of power—like you could argue that that Bitcoin did that too—the community did that in a decentralized way, and actually like they started 10 years ago, and they started 10 years ago, and they won. You know, remember that uh uh David Bailey having Trump at the the Bitcoin conference, right? It's like that whole thing—that grassroots effort to persuade the Republican party that Bitcoin was the asset. I mean, that's part of their religious victory here. Mhm. Yeah, the reason I would say—the reason why it has the Bitcoin strategic reserve and everything else has either nothing or a digital asset stockpile is like the Cardano, Ripple, Solana tried to jostle position in a top-down way—like leadership made—made decisions to try and get, you know, close to Trump, and the best that they could do was getting in the stockpile, but Bitcoin, being a bottom-up movement, won itself as a strategic reserve uh because it's bottom-up—it's grass—it's grassroots, and then too—gave them votes—gave them votes and money. Uh, and then also there's Ethereum, which is just like opting out of this whole entire thing—"We're too good for that"—we're too good for that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, okay, that's what's happening. All right, what else? What's it say? Uh, Libra, you said Li—the Libra memecoin. Okay, so this is this uh this ended the meta of the memecoin meta. This—this was the blowoff top of the memecoin—ended it permanently for everything—like all permanently because they're still memecoins, but I—I think memecoins will never be as big as they were leading up to that point. Like, the—I think the Donald Trump memecoin—what it was—the top of Solana USD—it was the top of memecoin volumes, and then the launch of Libra was like the jumping of the shark. So this was like 2017—Katy Perry with her like nails with all of the crypto assets on her nails. Okay, got it. That's right. Okay, so February 14th, um, this erupted after the Argentine president, Javier Milei, launched a memecoin called Libra with a Solana contract. This isn't all in Spanish. He has since deleted the tweet. Uh, and that—that launched off this frenzy, and I remember where I was—I was at dinner with a friend, and I got my Twitter—my Twitter blew up, and I was like, "Oh my god, Javier Milei was launching me." Uh, and this was like after I had been down in Argentina for a month at this like crypto grassroots uh just like pop-up city for that—it's like Argentina really gets it. I missed Argentine crypto. Yeah, yeah. And Javier Milei just never came, uh, and I think it was because our reputation as an industry is pretty bad, but apparently he's also—This helps—this helps, I'm sure. Uh, and so uh it hits its $4.5 billion market cap—what—like 45 minutes after launch—$4.5 billion dollars—and he's just running—running the Trump play. This is the Trump play; it's a Trump token, so he—I think Javier Milei had very low context about what was happening. He got used—he did not know exactly what he was doing; he was getting directions from people—like pulling the strings, puppeteering him. Um, at the—at the peak of a $4.5 billion uh market cap, uh this guy who orchestrated this—Hayden Davis and many other insiders uh cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars, uh and the—the price went from $4.5 billion down to less than $1 billion inside of two hours, which is insanely rapid price movements—like $4.5 billion got created, and then $3 billion got destroyed inside of two hours—kind of nuts. Uh, and this, you know, international uproar—there was an attempt to impeach Javier Milei in Argentina that didn't go through because Javier Milei's party uh controls like what is equivalently the House and Senate—like he's in control, so he's not getting impeached; he's fine. But it was very embarrassing, and if there's one thing as a politician in Argentina you do not do—you can—you can be corrupt as a politician in Argentina; you cannot be embarrassed as a politician in Argentina—that's the culture down there—cultural. Okay, and this was embarrassing. Did—did—this was incredibly embarrassing for—Did he have to apologize? What did—What did he do? Uh, he deleted his tweets. He said that he uh um he said that there were people inside—inside that corrupted him, and he's going to like oust the rats that got into his like, you know, in his like sphere. Um, there's this guy Hayden Davis. Do I have a picture of him? I don't—I need to show you a picture of him. Do you—Did you ever see Hayden Davis—the picture of this guy—who is this—oh my god—who is the—Oh, so he's the guy that orchestrated this—this guy—chief villain—this guy—this is a mastermind—this is the mastermind. All right, he looks pretty young. Yeah, he's in—how did he do this? How did he get in with like, you know, uh world leaders? I lost the picture. Uh, so apparently he found a way to—he found Javier Milei's sister and was texting his sister. Well, that's scrappy. Yes, it was—it was very scrappy. It was very scrappy. I can't get a picture to load, but you can kind of see it here. We go. All right, he—he texted his sister, and this sister was the way that Hayden Davis got his way into convincing Javier Milei to launch a memecoin, and this is what this guy does. He realizes that he can find people with clout; he can convince them to launch a memecoin, and then he can extract the memecoin because he knows the game better than anyone—except this one last thing happened, Ryan, where this uh Meteora, which is kind of like um maybe it's like a a Uniswap or Balancer or like liquidity on—liquidity launching pool on Solana—Benchow is the—the name—this came downstream of Jupiter—a Meteora, which again—the liquidity pool on um on Solana—was working with Hayden Davis to launch these memecoins, but Ben Chow was the one guy who could—me—Hayden Davis, so Hayden Davis was trying to snipe the supply, and he was working with Ben Chow, who owns and operates the infrastructure, and Ben Chow was like, "Oh, I'm going to snipe the sniper," which is what he did. Benchow realized, and people in the Meteora community realized that this had been going on—that Meteora uh Hayden Davis and like many other people had created this influencer memecoin uh infrastructure complex—like industrial complex—where they would find influencers, they would pump up memecoins, and then people earlier—earlier and earlier in the stack would snipe the supply and eat and like max extract, and this—with the launch of the Libra token—was everyone realizing that this memecoin influencer infrastructure industrial complex existed, and that's why the game was up because everyone saw how exactly corrupt it was. It was not fair at all, uh, and it all went collapsed down to the person who was able to snipe the supply quickest and earliest in the stack.

I can't help but wonder if like the things that are going on today will cause a backlash among the neutral kind of observer—the kind of the hearts and minds that like we have been trying to get on the crypto train, right? Which is like—now you have major politicians rolling out these memecoins that are that seem to be uh perfect surface area for vectors of corruption, right? Yeah, and the good—the good news about this whole story is all the regulatory winds are blowing our favor, and maybe we can use that to actually build things that are useful for the world—like a a non-sovereign store of value and like stablecoins—everything and all of the like the good things—the pure things—but I can't help but wonder if this is like just going to be super bad for our reputation long-term and that there's going to be a backlash and uh some hell to pay at some point in time. Mhm. This was my—and I—I think our concern about the whole political season and the three months leading up to the election where you and I were resistant to the idea of throwing unanimous support behind one single party—the Republican party—because we want crypto to be neutral; we would like to hedge our bets; we don't want it to just only be partisan. Uh, I think that is—that what's happening here downstream of that is vindicative of that position. Um, I know you and I both listen to—in respect to Sam Harris—I have listened to Sam Harris mention the corruptability of the Donald Trump memecoin uh three or four times. Uh, and it's focused—yeah, I think I—I—I'll go as so far to say that the current brand of crypto right now is worse than it was post-FTX collapse. Really? You think it's that bad? Among—among a certain subset—like neutral third parties—like among—among public—public non-crypto sentiment—like outsider uh sentiment of—do you know crypto? One way I—I judge this is like—how embarrassed are you to tell people that like you love crypto or you work in crypto or something like that at like a cocktail party among like normie people? Yeah, and uh I have for the first time—called—I had for—for in that context—working media—I said, "I—I run a Frontier Tech podcast," so that's where we are right now. This is previously like post-FDX—I was still beating my chest about like crypto—crypto—like yeah, FDX for the world—freedom tech for the world—the FTX is an example why we need crypto—actually not that crypto is bad—and now for the post of all of that—I was like, "No, I—I do Frontier Tech." Okay, so good news is huge regulatory progress—everything we could have wished—that is actually happening, and that counts for something. Bad news is we may have chipped away some of our soul, and I wonder if the trade-off's worth it. Uh, I—I wonder—I think it might be still, but I don't know—I don't know—we will see—we'll have to see—we will see. This is the frontier, you know. I'm glad you're with us. This is the journey. All right, just last thing—you got to catch me up on the—the news of the week, but I think we got to break for sponsors first. Yeah, okay. Yep, that's right. Uh, so okay, news of the week—content coins—Jesse Pollock, Base, Zora. Uh, you like Zora, so I want to actually get your take on Zora before you left because you were a Zora bull, and I want to get your take about like what you thought about Zora because I will update you about what Zora has transformed into as of recently, and then—and then it's all about the Ethereum pivot, and then we're also going to talk about um uh Bitcoin as well, so we're going to talk about those subjects, but first a message from some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

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Ryan, let me tell you about content coins. Okay, so content coins are what Jesse Pollock and and Jacob from Zora are talking about when they say um you can take a bit of content—you can take a 10-minute uh short—like long clip—you can take a JPEG, and you can make an ERC-20 token out of it, and generally you would do this on Zora, and this to you might sound like a memecoin, uh and I would say that it structurally is the memecoin, and Jesse's advocating for it—is it's not like different from a memecoin, but it's where it does differ is the culture and the intent around these things. Uh, and so it's where a memecoin is, you know, meant to have a super high market cap, uh content coins are really just meant to be traded more than have a high market cap, uh and they're for creators, right? They're for creators—yeah—not for—not they're not TikTok crowd or like whatever the influence—yeah. Okay, so the idea here—this is a friend of mine that who you know as well—he posts on Instagram, and he has an Instagram account that has 120,000 followers, and he makes clips that have like hundreds—hundreds of thousands of views. Uh, and so he tweeted out—"For 3 million views last month, Instagram paid me $3. In the 12 hours since Jacob and Jesse showed my Zora post some love, I have earned $28 in rewards—not dusting off the yacht yacht catalog, but it's not hard to see the vision"—very cool—and feeling thankful. Zora isn't just for crypto. So the idea here—and I would also say it's very important to open up the Zora mobile app and scroll through it because it looks and feels like Instagram and TikTok, but there is a market cap associated with a post, and the idea here is like, you know, memecoins on Pump Fund look like 4chan and are optimizing for traders and memecoin speculators, and that's great, and then Zora is optimizing for creators, and it's not trying to have like a $500 million banger; it's much more optimizing for like quantity and creators to do like what early Instagram was doing and TikTok and and just allowing people to speculate on whatever the rise of the attention—the virality of the post—which isn't too different from memecoins, uh but they're trying to make a cultural distinction between content coins and memecoins. What do you think about that? Well, so let me ask you—what—what's the reaction been to this in—you—like very negative—is that crypto Twitter—is that all circles—is that different—which tribes are saying what? You know, Bitcoiners hate it all, but um like I imagine a lot of people hate it because it's like Ethereum ecosystem-based—that sort of thing—and then some of the like more purity-focused people are like, "Why is Jesse doing this? Why is Coinbase doing this? It's a memecoin; you shouldn't like pump—pump memecoin prices." Is that kind of the reaction? Yeah, I would say that's the reaction. Yeah, Solana—a lot of people are looking over at the Ethereum camp, and they are saying that this is Ethereum doing what it's best at, which is taking stuff that is like Solana figured out and making it highbrow and like putting it in an ivory tower. These are like just highbrow memecoins, and you know, it's like—it's meme—memecoins at the end of the day, and the Ethereum community has been [ __ ] on memecoins for years, but now they've made their version of memecoins, and they're highbrow, and they're holier than thou, and now—now meme—now memecoins—rebranding it to content coins—and you're just like doing the same thing. Yeah, so that's the Solana take. I would say like—I would say more than half of the Ethereum community is not bought in on me—on content coins. It is specifically like the Jesse—Oruru—Azora—Base culturalists I would say that think that are convinced by content. Here's what I don't understand—what's wrong with the experiment? It—it doesn't have to be your thing. I mean, there's tons of things that haven't been my thing in crypto. I mean, NFTs were never really my thing, but I—I respected that it was, you know, for some people—like what's—I guess what's the—what's the harm—what's the—what's the downside in doing this experiment? I guess the—the good side—from what I see—the Zora—first of all, let me just—I know we've known Jacob uh founder of Zora from from like uh the very early days, right? I should uh disclose—I've also, you know, previously been an—I've—I'm an investor in Zora and have been since the early days as well, so maybe that—that colors my bias, but I'm trying to be super unbiased here and just say like Jacob has been trying things in this um creator economy—ownership economy vision from—for the last like I don't know six or seven years. He quit Coinbase to do this, and he—I've watched him kind of like pivot to try different things—"Does this work? Does this work? Does this work?"—continuing to build and pivot. Um, and he's stayed true to the original vision, which he actually thinks every single bit of content on the internet is mintable. He sees minting as a verb. Okay, and I've watched him try different experiments on this, right? And it takes so much time in crypto because it's taken up to now to get an actual user interface that's like comparable to something like TikTok, and that's like because he's been doing it the sort of the right way, you know, with like L2s and making sure that all the creators have like full ownership of the actual assets—not taking uh shortcuts. Anyway, this is the most recent pivot of that same vision; it's—

But it's been the same experiment that he's been playing, uh, like trying at since day one. Why not give this a shot? Like, what's the downside? I mean, if you don't want a piece of content, like don't buy any content. When I, when I see the app, I, um, I see, oh cool. I, it doesn't even feel like crypto; it feels like, like a mature app to me. I love that they're, they're, uh, they're using LTS, they're using Base. It's all quick, fast transaction times. They're actually, for, for the ETH, uh, heads out there, they're actually pricing everything in the unit of account of Ether, which is great for your ETH, like bags, if you're like an ETH is money type of advocate. Um, anyway, I see a lot to like about this project, and sometimes I just feel like the tribes are a little bit too, uh, quick to, um, shoot something down.

But again, I'm just getting, like, up to speed. I don't know, like, you know, what's, was there, like, a scam here, or is there some impropriety here? The, uh, critique of Zora and the content coins meta is that it has been very top-down pushed by Jesse, uh, and Jesse. I trust Jesse. When Jesse says something, I believe him, uh, but the critique is that, like, it's, it's, uh, in addition to that, Coinbase Ventures invested in Zora. Zora deployed the Zora app on Base, and they also have the Zora chain, which is like aligning, you know, Jesse, Base, and Coinbase Ventures to pump Zora and content coins because that's, that's the Base cabal. Uh, and then Jesse says he did not know this. I, I heard through the, apparently he said that on Twitter somewhere, but three, four, or five days after Jesse really started pumping Zora, uh, Zora the token is launched. And so this token got launched yesterday, uh, and inside of that token, it was announced that this token is for fun. It is a fun token; it is a meme coin, uh, and it's also being given to investors pro rata their investment into Zora, but it's for fun, uh, and data setting people off the wrong way. Uh, and I had a, I had a good conversation with, um, Dan from, uh, Block Works, uh, on, on Twitter here, so maybe I'll just kind of run through that. Dan says there's a very real reason to be disappointed about a for-fun token with a short investing schedule in 2025, uh, he, and he says that there are United States-based, uh, development companies that have, have launched tokens and have DAOs actively discussing doing distributions to tokens inside of the, you know, like meta context of Donald Trump and his administration.

I, I was pushing back, and, and I was saying that, you know, the SEC still hasn't, you know, delivered regulatory clarity; there's no market structure bill passed; we have a new admin, but no actual new regulation has been passed, so they could still be using that this is a meme coin as cover, as regulatory cover, and he's just declining that and saying, like, that is not actually the meta has shifted; development companies are issuing tokens, um, that aren't like that, uh, and so that doesn't really hold weight, uh, and so people are frustrated about the launch of the meme coin downstream of, you know, Coinbase Ventures investing, Jesse doing this top-down pivot, this top-down push of, of content coins in Zora, and then the Zora token just happens to go live; people are throwing, throwing flags at that. Yeah, I don't know; I don't feel like, um, like Jesse and Coinbase are kind of like, you know, uh, they can make money in other ways; they've already, like, shown that they are long-term players. I think what Jesse's probably looking at, at the end of the day, is like, um, Base, more content, more growth, more users, more activity, more things to do on Base. I think that, if I had to guess, that's where his true motivation lies; it's less about, like, the Zora token itself.

I guess, like, the other piece of it, when you just look at Zora itself, uh, it feels like sometimes in crypto we produce too many assets, like too many tokens, right? It probably makes sense for Zora to, if it even has a token, there's probably an argument for, like, why are you having, why do you have a token, right? Like, why even have a token in the first place? But if it has a token, maybe it's just a fun utility token because when I look at Zora, the, the app itself, I'm like, this is an app that doesn't need a token, right? The, the money is ETH; you don't need a utility token there; you're not staking; it's doing everything on Base; you don't need a token to secure; there's no, like, work token, right? To put a token in there is, is like, um, pointless. I mean, so maybe all you're left with is either no token or a fun, uh, token, and maybe the argument is like, then why do, why do the meme coin, why do the fun token? But, like, it's a meme coin platform. I don't know; why can't investors be happy with owning equity in Zora? Like, they can make money off of fees and revenue; why are we unhappy with equity? And I would say that that is probably where the true value, uh, accrues. If Zora takes off and is successful, it's probably just like any other startup with an app; it's like equity in an actual, like, quote-unquote security.

But understanding that, I, I understand why Twitter is pushing back, like the majority of Twitter, 85, 90%, is like saying, is rejecting the Zora token, uh, because they think it is just a, a way to just dump the token, uh, on, on, just it was just exit liquidity, like all the other, all the other reasons why, like, all the same reasons why people reject tokens in the first place. Now I put out this one tweet, uh, where somebody was basically, um, alluding to that fact, and, you know, like, the, the rejecting the token, this is the Zora token is worth zero; don't buy it, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I tweeted out, like, this, this frustration that I have with Crypto Twitter, which is that there's this meta of, if it's not your bag, destroy it, and it's insufferable, and it's, it's very tox, it's toxic, and it's frustrating, uh, but since putting out this, this tweet, I have since appreciated the idea that, uh, Anatoli replied here saying, survival of the fittest, and what I think he means by that is, yeah, the Crypto Twitter meta is so toxic and destructive of other people's bags, if the meta doesn't agree in the validity of the existence of the token, people will FUD your bags, and I do think that it is this very fast rat race, the, the queen's race, where, like, if you aren't, if you aren't swimming faster than everyone, you're, you're going to get eaten, and if that is the meta that tokens must find their existence in, you need to be the best token possible, or else you're going to get just chewed up and spit out, and people are going to reject you. Yeah, you'll be part of the 99.9% of all tokens that are heading directly to zero, right, relative to the dollar, relative to Bitcoin or ETH. Yeah, and so I do think that there is this, like, auto, like, white blood cell process that's happening on Twitter where people are rejecting low-quality tokens and telling token issuers to, you know, hold yourself to a higher standard with, and that, and that's totally fine. You know, what, the, the normal response to that would be is just don't buy it then; all you have to do is just not buy it. What, what kind of is a little bit annoying is when you have builders who are, have proven themselves kind of long-term oriented, not pump and dumpers, like, um, like Jesse and Jacob from Zora, how all of their motives are in question, how they're, like, put in the same group as that guy's name was named Hayden, Hayden Davis, who is doing the Javier, uh, like, the, the all the, the politician meme coins. I don't think that based on their reputation they should just be put in that camp, right? They're clearly doing something different, much more long term.

Yeah, I would agree with that; I would agree with that. I would also say this whole, uh, survival of the fittest is partially contributed to your burnout because that is a terrible mill to be a part of for five years straight on Twitter. Yeah, absolutely; it's like, it's like, yeah, it's, um, you know, all the turtles, you know, turtles on a beach; they have tons of turtles, and they all die; they get picked off by seagulls before they go to the ocean, and like you're watching that carnage play out, and it's, uh, it's emotionally scarring. I guess so you just zoom out; just zoom out is one thing I've learned. What else we got? There's two more topics to talk about, uh, the Ethereum strategic pivot, which is underfoot, u, this episode I put out with Donrad and Onsgar with my help of Mico to discuss what changes are happening at the core of Ethereum, uh, and my takeaway from this episode is that, you know, the Ethereum pivot has been ongoing and happening for the last like six months, uh, I think we could talk about this for, like, honestly an hour, and I also think we're going to do more episodes on this, uh, so I don't necessarily think we need to hash it out here, but, uh, like I kind of alluded to in the beginning, I'm pretty stoked about what's happening, that's more that L1 is just like, um, asserting some strength relative to L2s; we are re-prioritizing the layer one; you put, you know, you know, when you're, you're in a plane and the oxygen masks drop down and you're supposed to put it on first. Yeah, the L1 is, is putting itself first, and I think that's great.

Yeah, that's been interesting. The other thing that, that was really been happening over the last couple of weeks as the crypto market has started to repair is it looks like Bitcoin is starting to decouple from all of the risk-on assets, all the equities, all of the FAANGs, everything, you know, uh, inside your, your, your stock portfolio; it's acting a bit more like gold, and that is starting to happen, which is very interesting because I think this gold trade is going to the non-sovereign store value trade, right? The, the US dollar post-Bretton Woods kind of era trade is just heating up; we're seeing that in the price of gold, and Bitcoin is just catching a bid because it's got that narrative of, like, new digital gold, uh, so watching that will be obviously very good for, for crypto, uh, and, uh, Bitcoin as a store of value. Mhm. I think the Ethereum pivot and Bitcoin's elevation to a non-sovereign store of value is like the two most interesting stories in crypto right now. Well, we're going to talk about all of those things; I, I imagine David in the, the weeks and months to come, so, uh, why don't I just take us out? Um, you guys know crypto is risky; you could lose what you put in, but we're headed west; this is the frontier; it's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.