Bankless
Explore the frontier of crypto money systems and web3.
Recent episodes
ROLLUP: Bitcoin to $57K? | Wall Street Bets on Hyperliquid | The Tokenization War | Zcash Drama
- Bitcoin price predictions ranged wildly this week, from Jason Kalkanis's bear case below $57K to Bitwise's bull case of $1.6M by 2036; Willy Woo's Monte Carlo simulations showed a 2028 median of $1.5M with a base case range of $240K–$413K. - Hyperliquid secured a major partnership with ICE (parent of NYSE) and TradeXYZ to launch a CFTC-regulated U.S. perpetual futures venue; Stanley Druckenmiller and Elon Musk publicly endorsed the move, sending HYPER up ~17% to near all-time highs. - Over 30 companies including Microsoft, Alphabet, and Goldman Sachs requested to be delisted from OKX/ICE's tokenized stock offerings after a coordinated Wall Street Journal ad campaign warned of "unregulated venues." - Robinhood Chain revenue collapsed 99.6% from peak—from ~$8.3M daily in September to ~$32K last Saturday—despite the network generating $50M in Q3 revenue; chain community demanded support for native meme coins. - Zcash's **$125M developer fund** sparked DAO governance drama after a $550K grant to an adult-event promotion organization surfaced; proposals range from slowly winding down the 8% allocation to ending it immediately. - Venice broke $1M VVV monthly burn rate with burns accelerating at 1% daily (34% month-over-month), funded by subscription tiers, API credits, and discretionary founder buybacks.
Wall Street, Regulation, and the Future of Money | J. Christopher Giancarlo
- Former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo discusses his new book *The New Adventures of CryptoDad*, arguing that crypto represents a fundamental restructuring of finance, not just a new asset class, with potential to reshape banking and money itself by 2040. - The politicization of crypto: Giancarlo traces how crypto shifted from bipartisan to hostile Democrat territory after Sam Bankman-Fried's collapse and subsequent campaign finance embarrassment, enabling Donald Trump to capture political momentum via FairShake funding. - Gary Gensler's SEC weaponization: Giancarlo details how the SEC under Gensler abused enforcement procedures (Wells Notices, debanking, refusal to write rules) to effectively prosecute crypto without legislation, framing it as norm-breaking institutional misconduct rather than personal criticism. - Bitcoin futures and derivative markets: The CFTC's 2017 approval of Bitcoin futures launched a well-regulated, transparent derivatives ecosystem now spanning CME options, Ethereum futures, perpetuals, and other products—demonstrating regulatory competence in managing novel instruments. - The 2008 financial crisis as crypto's origin myth: Giancarlo traces his own entry into crypto to working at GFI Group during the crisis; opacity over derivatives exposure (Lehman's real net payout was ~$9 billion, not $400 billion) could have been resolved by blockchain transparency, motivating his vision for distributed ledger finance. - Privacy versus surveillance in digital finance: Giancarlo warns that the U.S. risks losing competitive advantage if CBDCs and stablecoins replicate surveillance regimes (like China's digital yuan or Europe's model) rather than encoding democratic values and Fourth Amendment protections into a modernized dollar.
What Is Bitcoin Telling Us? | Michael Howell, Macro Analyst
- Bitcoin may be signaling an early turn in the global liquidity cycle, earlier than Michael Howell's previous base case of a 2027 trough; holding above $70,000 would be meaningful evidence of this shift. - The Federal Reserve and Treasury are operating in a new "Treasury QE" regime, jointly managing bank reserves, repo collateral volatility, and short-dated debt issuance rather than relying solely on Fed funds rate policy. - Yields are rising due to strong nominal GDP growth and rising rate expectations, not fiscal deterioration or loss of confidence in US Treasury assets; term premium remains flat or falling globally. - Global liquidity is cyclical (5–6 year spans) while debt grows exponentially; the economy currently experiences tight liquidity despite strong real growth—a hallmark of late-cycle speculation phase. - Bitcoin is 5× more sensitive to global liquidity changes than gold (40–45% of Bitcoin's drivers vs. 8.5% annually for gold); both serve as monetary inflation hedges in a credit-money world. - Asset allocation should rotate through four liquidity cycle regimes: rebound (equities, credit), calm (equities, commodities), speculation (commodities), and turbulence (government bonds, avoid equities/commodities).
ROLLUP: Black October | Uptober Lasted 4 Hours | JPMorgan's Bitcoin Forecast | Gold Alchemy
- Black October cybersecurity crisis: Two critical PHP vulnerabilities affecting ~30–40% of all websites; NSA and Japanese PM urging immediate patches; AI-discovered exploits enabling remote code execution without authentication. - Bitcoin's early bull-market positioning: Bitcoin up 40% since July 30 bottom vs. NASDAQ up 1%; historically, early bull phases see Bitcoin outperform by 7,000%+ (2017 bottom), 900%+ (2021 bottom), and 310%+ (2025 baseline). - JPMorgan adds Bitcoin to long-term capital markets report: First inclusion since 1999; Bitcoin ranked #1 with 10% annualized return forecast over 10–15 years, ahead of real estate (8.2%), stocks (7.5%), and gold (5.5%). - Fusion-powered gold alchemy: Marathon Fusion targeting mercury-to-gold conversion; potential 3-ton annual gold production per mid-sized fusion plant; poses long-term threat to gold's monetary scarcity premium similar to Spanish silver influx. - Stablecoin rewards regulatory clarity: OCC finalizes Genius Act rules; banks lose fight to ban stablecoin rewards; issuers can continue reward programs case-by-case, creating loophole favoring crypto platforms over traditional banking. - Token consolidation wins: Aerodrome and Velodrome merge into single Aero token; Solana's Alpenglow upgrade reduces finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds.
The CFTC’s Proposed Rules to Reshape US Crypto Markets | CFTC Chair Mike Selig
- CFTC Chair Mike Selig discussed two proposed rules—Regulation CTX (crypto asset transactions) and Regulation CAM (crypto asset markets)—designed to bring federal oversight to retail spot margin trading and establish a unified framework for crypto exchanges. - The regulatory "trilogy" harmonizes SEC guidance on crypto asset classification (digital commodities, collectibles, tools, securities, stablecoins) with the CFTC's market structure proposals and the SEC's Reg Crypto for offerings. - Current spot Bitcoin trading is regulated patchwork across 50 state money transmitter regimes, creating barriers like New York's BitLicense that prevent feature parity with offshore exchanges and traditional brokerages. - Regulation CAM creates a federal alternative to state licensing, eliminating the need for exchanges to obtain licenses in all 50 states if they register with the CFTC and comply with margin/leverage requirements. - Business line segregation is mandated: the CFTC framework requires separation of broker (customer-facing), exchange (order book), and clearinghouse (settlement), mirroring TradFi protections that were absent at FTX. - Prediction markets remain in legal limbo with a Supreme Court split among circuits; the CFTC is defending its exclusive jurisdiction over derivatives contracts offered on registered exchanges.
ROLLUP: Redtober Is Here | AI Debt Fears | $102M Ledger Attack | Richard Heart Arrested
- Bitcoin down 2.5% to $82,500 on the week amid crypto selloff; altcoins hit harder with ETH down 7.5% and NEAR/SOL down 10%+ as market flushed leverage and speculative positions. - Inflation printed hot at 3.7% versus expected 3.6%, driven by energy costs tied to Iran/Middle East tensions; Fed rate hike expectations increased, pushing long-duration bond yields higher. - AI sector showing revenue growth deceleration—Anthropic Q3 revenue growth slowed to 45–50% quarter-over-quarter versus prior 140%+ rates; CoreWeave bonds trading at 78 cents on the dollar signal debt stress. - Ledger suffered $102M supply-chain attack via spy chips installed by compromised reseller CryptoBillis; seed phrases intercepted and transmitted to attackers across 324 wallets. - France proposed mandatory self-custody wallet declaration for holdings over 5,000 euros; governments escalating surveillance on private keys amid debt pressures. - Bank of America fined $1.2B by FinCEN/OCC for failing to flag $5B in suspicious transactions (money laundering, drug cartels, terrorism); no banker imprisoned, contrasting sharply with CZ's jail sentence.
ROLLUP: AI Threatens Crypto Security | Tom Lee Stops Buying ETH | Ethereum L2s Shut Down | Zcash ETFs
- Justin Drake warned the crypto industry to plan "bunker mode" due to AI potentially breaking ECDSA cryptography faster than previously expected (weeks to months, not years), not just quantum threats. - OpenAI solved 377 unsolved math problems; cryptographers including Matthew Green cautioned that public-key encryption could be compromised if AI advances sufficiently in mathematical problem-solving. - Tom Lee announced he will stop buying ETH after reaching 5% supply (nearly 98% complete), shifting Bitmine's $600M+ cash to buybacks, staking infrastructure (Maven), and outside investments like MrBeast's Beast Industries. - Blast and Abstract L2s shut down citing unsustainable economics; Starknet announced plans to become an L1 by 2027 citing quantum-resistance requirements, signaling major disruption to the Ethereum L2 roadmap. - FinCEN withdrew proposed unhosted wallet rules requiring identity verification for self-custody transfers and mixer bans, removing a major threat to on-chain privacy. - Zcash saw significant momentum with Grayscale's ZEC ETF surpassing $1B AUM and the Winklevii filing for a spot Zcash ETF (ticker: WINK).
Is Variational the Next Hyperliquid? | CEO Lucas Schuermann and Justin Bram
- Variational operates as a **broker-like model** rather than an exchange, taking the counterparty side of trades and hedging against aggregated global liquidity instead of relying on order books. - The platform offers **zero-fee trading** and access to hundreds of assets by directly routing to traditional finance liquidity sources, particularly beneficial for real-world asset (RWA) derivatives. - Swaps are a new derivative instrument—similar to perps but with predictable carry costs and flat funding rates—that align with how institutional traders operate and enable RWA listings without rebuilding on-chain liquidity. - Variational uses **Arbitrum as settlement and clearing layer** for all capital movements, liquidations, and P&L adjustments, with each user's USDC held in segregated on-chain pools. - The **OLP (Omni Liquidity Provider)** system intelligently aggregates hedging liquidity from crypto exchanges, DEXs, and traditional finance to provide best execution while generating protocol revenue through flow intermediation. - Token launch planned for **Q4 2024** with a **32% airdrop**—the largest in crypto history proportional to points holders—and points program extended through Q4 to include new users.
ROLLUP: The Bull Market is On? | Zcash & NEAR | Kalshi Wash Trading | BlackRock Goes Onchain
- Early bull market confirmed: Bitcoin reclaimed the 50-week moving average (78.8K), triggered a golden cross, and both Ben Cowen and Michael Nadeau shifted from bearish to bullish, citing holder rotation resets, leverage flushing, and KPI alignment with cycle bottoms. - Bitcoin may not lead this cycle: Revenue-generating tokens (Aave, Uniswap, Ondo, Jupiter, Arbitrum) outperformed majors by 30–50% this week; Bitcoin dominance sits at 59%, challenging the historical pattern where Bitcoin leads then alts follow. - Zcash reaches $26B market cap in under a year: Zcash achieved a 10-year price high and $26B market cap (up from $7B), positioning it as the first viable store-of-value competitor to Bitcoin since Ether, likely driven by Bitcoin holder rotation. - Kalshi caught wash trading: Nearly 1 million identical $5,500 trades accounted for over 50% of ETH perpetual volume; Jump Trading, an equity holder in Kalshi, received fee rebates creating perverse incentives; CFTC status unclear. - Rising treasury yields (5.15% 10-year, 5.44% 30-year): Howard Marks attributed yields to inflation persistence, zero fiscal discipline, and $5T AI capex competing with $2T Treasury issuance; debasement trade favors equities and crypto over bonds. - Institutional crypto expansion: BlackRock launched machine-native-money thesis; Ondo partnered with BlackRock on tokenized-asset vaults; Binance bought $100M Circle stake; Coinbase expanded retail IPO access and equity trading.
FOMO, Meme Stocks and Robinhood Chain | Andy8052 & Eric Conner
- Meme coins remain durable as a sector despite individual coins failing, with the meta cycling between DeFi, NFTs, and now stock-paired tokens on Robinhood Chain. - Stock-paired meme coins (like Artificial Inu paired with NVIDIA) are bootstrapping liquidity for tokenized equities without requiring traditional market maker capital. - FOMO app introduces social accountability through holder visibility and public trading graphs, reducing some opacity around early dumpers and cabal coordination. - AI tooling (e.g., Jev, Claude) can surface red flags in meme coin contracts—bundle detection, holder concentration—making discovery less information-asymmetric. - Long.xyz launchpad enforces ticker locks and prevents duplicate launches, creating stronger Schelling points and reducing vampire attacks common in earlier meme cycles. - Public company CEOs may eventually embrace meme communities for marketing and fandom, though current tokenized stock volumes remain tiny relative to market caps.
How Robinhood is using the SEC's New Innovation Exemption | Johann Kerbrat
- Robinhood launched tokenized stocks on its own Layer 2 blockchain, achieving $2.1 billion in total tokenized assets with 70% of trading volume occurring on weekends and after-hours, unlocking 24/7 market access. - The SEC's new innovation exemption for tokenized securities provides a regulatory pathway for on-chain tokenization in the U.S., though it includes a five-year sunset clause and volume/asset limits. - Robinhood stock tokens are backed one-to-one with actual purchased equities; the company is exploring upgrades including voting rights and in-kind redemption to enhance DeFi composability. - Price divergence between weekend crypto trading and traditional market opens is managed through market maker liquidity pools and arbitrage rather than a novel mechanism. - Robinhood is expanding tokenization beyond stocks to include gold, silver, real estate, private equities, and commodities; the company also operates a licensed perpetual platform in the EU with crypto, commodities, and ETFs. - The company chose Ethereum as the settlement layer for its L2 to leverage Ethereum's decentralization and security; AI agent-based trading was recently launched on the platform.
ROLLUP: The Bull Market Test | Clarity Dies | SEC Opens the Door | Hyperliquid Comes Onshore
- Bitcoin and altcoins posted gains despite the Fed rate hike (first since 2022) and failure of the Clarity Act, signaling early-stage bull market dynamics where good news matters but bad news does not. - Privacy-focused tokens like Zcash hit all-time highs above $1,500, while NEAR approached $3 as confidential trading and cross-chain activity accelerated adoption. - The SEC released an innovation exemption enabling tokenized stocks to trade on permissionless blockchains and DEXs like Uniswap, with KYC and voting rights included—a major regulatory breakthrough for onshore tokenization. - Options emerged as the next major crypto derivative frontier, with Derive leading in volume after demonstrating advantages over perpetuals (no liquidation risk, time decay protection). - Kraken is bringing Hyperliquid perp trading to US customers via a compliant CFTC-regulated front end, representing decentralized derivatives going onshore. - Bond yields surged past 5% (10-year) as the US economy remained hot; debate continues whether this reflects inflation fighting or debasement via Treasury QE.
Arc Mainnet, AI Agents, and Tokenized Markets | Nikhil Chandhok, CTO of Circle
- Circle launched Arc Mainnet, an L1 blockchain positioned as an "economic OS" with fast settlement, stablecoin gas, and privacy features designed for institutional and emerging economic actors. - Arc's technical differentiators include half-second payment finality, USDC-denominated gas (eliminating need for native tokens), permissionless contract deployment with permissioned validators, post-quantum signatures, and TEE-based private transactions. - Agents are expected to become independent economic actors on Arc, requiring infrastructure for reputation, nano-payments, credit access, and provenance tracking to transact trustlessly with users and other agents. - Agentic commerce is emerging beyond trading—agents now execute real-world purchases (flea medicine, plane tickets, clothing) and will manage services and specialized labor on decentralized markets. - Arc aims to unlock new economic activity (not just migrate Ethereum dapps), including RWA issuance, tokenized stocks with 24/7 trading, cross-border FX via Stable FX, and meme culture apps rather than competing head-to-head with Ethereum on DeFi. - Circle intends to partner with regional stablecoin issuers globally rather than issuing in all 190+ countries; Arc's Stable FX and RFQ-based liquidity pools will connect fragmented fiat-to-crypto on-ramps.
ROLLUP: Is Altcoin Season Here? | Treasury’s Bond War | Robinhood Chain Mania | OpenAI’s Math Controversy
- Altcoin speculation surge: Tokens like NEAR (up 30%), Arbitrum (up 40%), LIDAR, VVV, and Zcash hit all-time highs; hosts debate whether this constitutes genuine altcoin season or a "degen debasement trade" driven by macro easing rather than Bitcoin leadership. - Treasury bond market conflict: Besant tripled long-term bond buybacks to $6 billion per week, yet yields continue rising (30-year at 5.3%, highest since 2007); hosts frame this as QE-style intervention that may be backfiring as inflation concerns grow. - Robinhood tokenized stocks: Robinhood Chain generated $30 million in weekly revenue; tokenized stocks paired with meme coins (including Boner, which hosts traded profitably) capture significant volume; AMC CEO Adam Aron denounced the practice as "contemptible" and "vile," but Vlad Tenev defended it as legitimate financial access. - OpenAI math prize controversy: OpenAI published a solution to a Millennium Prize Problem (Navier-Stokes) around the same time mathematicians who had used OpenAI Codex nearly solved it; raises data sovereignty and front-running concerns, though OpenAI denies directly accessing their chat logs. - MetaMask spinout from ConsenSys: MetaMask (100 million downloads) is separating into an independent entity focused on consumer products, with Joe Lubin as CEO; ConsenSys retains institutional infrastructure, L2s, and Infura. - Frame transactions (account abstraction) confirmed for Ethereum 2027: Vitalik announced that frame transactions—programmable smart wallets enabling gas-free transactions, key rotation, and quantum resistance—will debut in the Hogata hard fork; Ethereum Foundation targets full quantum resistance by 2029.
ROLLUP: Robinhood’s Meme Economy | Solana Cuts Issuance | Saylor’s Comeback | AI Alarm
- Bitcoin bounced 5% in 24 hours as Fed rate-hike odds dropped following dovish signals; macro conditions remain tight between Treasury QE (Bessent) and Fed independence (Warsh). - Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy repurchased 4,603 Bitcoin at ~$80K after selling 7,000 at $62K; both trades justified by MNAV management, though the strategy remains pro-cyclical (buying high, selling low). - Robinhood Chain surged to #1 L2 by revenue (~$108M in one day), driven by meme coin and tokenized stock pairings; the meta pairs real stocks with meme coins, causing depeg arbitrage losses for retail participants. - Solana passed a binding governance vote to reduce issuance from the original ~2% to 1.5% by 2029, cutting inflation by ~19M SOL; vote barely passed at 67.33% due to validator concerns over staking yield models. - Twenty-one banks plan a regulated stablecoin consortium launching in 2027, but Haseeb dismisses it as unlikely to threaten Tether or Circle given consortium governance speed and complexity. - OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, defeating Claude's Fable on benchmarks; the model showed improved safety on impossible tasks (less cheating) but Haseeb flagged the recent HuggingFace attack as a major AI safety wake-up call.
FWA and the New Market Structure for NFTs | Adam (Rhynotic) and Eric Conner
- Fake World Assets (FWA) is an Ethereum protocol that lets users deposit NFTs backed by ETH into a liquidity pool, then randomly purchase NFTs from the pool—returning unsold assets for 90% of their ETH backing. - The protocol addresses severe NFT liquidity drought by providing a universal buyer and consistent exit mechanism for illiquid collections that have no bids on OpenSea. - FWA replicates the "gacha" or collectible card pack experience, where random pulls and the possibility of rare items create engaging consumer behavior and dopamine-driven repeat participation. - FWARE is a new NFT launch mechanism where artists don't need to post ETH; instead, community backers stake ETH alongside NFTs, earn fees while the collection sits in the pool, and artists receive payouts through accumulated protocol fees. - The FWA token has no buy option at launch—only earned through protocol participation—aligning early holders with actual users rather than speculators or snipers. - Future roadmap includes custom pools (single-collection or themed pools), multi-chain deployment via Layer Zero, integration of real-world assets (Pokemon cards, watches, property deeds), and permitting FWA token holders to vote on which collections join the main pool.
"We Want to Be Bigger Than the CME" | Kalshi's John Wang
- Kalshi is a regulated prediction market and perpetual futures exchange operating in 140 countries, with crypto as its second-largest business line and 90% market share in crypto predictions. - Kalshi's regulated, onshore strategy contrasts with offshore competitors like Polymarket; the company leverages partnerships with Coinbase, Robinhood Crypto, and other major platforms to embed prediction markets and perps. - Kalshi's perpetual futures platform is the first US-regulated perp exchange available on app stores for retail and compliant institutional access; crypto perps include Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Doge, XRP, and others with self-certification authority following Bitcoin perp approval. - Gold and silver perp markets are pending CFTC approval, with higher leverage limits planned for non-crypto assets; the company aims to expand into real-world assets (RWAs) where Hyperliquid already captures significant volume. - Insider trading prevention and market integrity are central to Kalshi's growth strategy; the company defines insider trading per market, prevents certain persons (e.g., politicians) from trading political markets, and uses surveillance infrastructure to detect violations. - Kalshi's roadmap unifies predictions and perps into a cohesive platform with social features, market expectation insights, and simplified UI; institutional block trades and weather hedges demonstrate enterprise adoption beyond retail sports betting.
ROLLUP: The Debasement Trade is Back | Bessent Put | Tokenized Stocks | AI Capital Crunch
- Bitcoin has entered a new cycle with sellers exhausted after months of bear market pressure; price action reflects reflexivity rather than just macro catalysts. - The "Bessent Put" involves Treasury buybacks of long-duration bonds to suppress yields, with potential use of the $950 billion Treasury General Account; this is yield curve control by another name and faces skepticism from markets. - Stan Druckenmiller publicly rebuked Treasury Secretary Bessent in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that high yields are a disciplinary "invoice" on fiscal excess, not a crisis to suppress. - The debasement trade has returned: rising government debt, yield suppression, and crowding-out by hyperscaler debt issuance for AI capex is driving demand for scarcity assets including Bitcoin and gold. - Coinbase launched tokenized stocks on Base; adoption remains limited because traders prefer perpetuals derivatives and savers are not yet on-chain, making this a long-term rather than near-term opportunity. - Hyperliquid launched Elysium, an EVM L2 co-located with Hypercore, but most EVM layer twos have underperformed; skepticism prevails on whether builders will migrate there. - Ethena executed a major token reset: bought out early VC sellers, eliminated monthly unlocks, unified token and equity, and activated governance-controlled fees; this model may help resurrect other tokens suffering from sell pressure.
Ethereum Privacy for Institutions | Mo Jalil and Oskar Thoren
- ETH Systems, a new for-profit spinout from the Ethereum Foundation, focuses on bringing institutions onchain through privacy solutions tailored to their specific regulatory and business constraints. - Institutional privacy differs fundamentally from individual privacy; banks and asset managers need confidentiality around positions, trades, and business operations to comply with existing legal frameworks and competitive concerns. - The team is pursuing both bespoke solutions for high-value institutional use cases (e.g., inter-dealer compressions, multi-party payment schemes) and open-source generalized building blocks that can scale across industries. - Privacy on Ethereum is largely an engineering problem rather than a research problem; the cryptographic tools exist but require careful integration with institutional workflows and compliance requirements. - A parallel institutional ecosystem will likely develop on Ethereum before deep integration with core DeFi (Uniswap, Aave, Morpho); institutions will learn the system, build confidence, then seek interoperability with mainstream protocols. - The path forward requires bridging cypherpunk values (decentralization, privacy, open-source security) with institutional needs (compliance, counterparty reduction, capital efficiency)—showing these goals often align.
Coinbase Launches Tokenized Stocks on Base | Jesse Pollak
- Coinbase launched tokenized stocks on Base blockchain, starting with Nvidia, Meta, Apple, and Google, with plans to expand to thousands of equities globally. - Tokenized stocks are one-to-one representations with real claims on underlying shares, including dividend rebasing and governance rights. - Stocks are permissionless and globally available on-chain but restricted at the UI layer for US users; they're fully composable with Base's DeFi ecosystem including Aerodrome, Morpho, and Aave. - Neo-banks are evolving into neo-brokerages by combining crypto rails (stablecoins, payments) with equities, lending, and yield-generation products to offer comprehensive financial services. - Jesse Pollak is focusing on Base as the blockchain for global finance, emphasizing multi-currency stablecoins (22–23 live currencies), portfolio lending infrastructure, and local fiat on-ramps. - The long-term vision is an "everything exchange" enabling trading, payments, and credit seamlessly across stocks, currencies, commodities, and other assets on a single global platform.