Top 20 Crypto Events of 2021
22 Dec 2021 · 1:16:27
David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams of Bankless count down the twenty biggest crypto stories of 2021, then add honorable mentions such as Loot and Facebook becoming Meta. The list runs from new ETH and Bitcoin highs, meme stocks and the arrival of Ethereum layer 2 networks through China's crypto ban, Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador, Beeple's $69 million NFT sale, profile picture NFTs, Axie Infinity and Coinbase going public. They criticise SEC chair Gary Gensler, celebrate ConstitutionDAO and the EIP-1559 fee burn, and weigh high Ethereum gas fees against rival layer 1 chains. The crypto broker rule in the US infrastructure bill ranks second, and inflation comes first, which Hoffman argues drove much of the year.
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that gets us to number one david number one do we have a drum roll ryan buys a cr uh turtle all right no okay actual drum roll all right number one roll yeah i kind of heard it okay something we'll add it in post we'll put it in post sound effects and post production number one coming in at number one hey guys welcome to another bankless estate of the nation episode this one's gonna be a fun one i got my christmas hat on david you know i'm in the i'm in the holiday spirit and i'm also in the spirit of like recapping everything we did in 2021 so what are we doing on this episode we're going through the top 20
things top 20 big things that happened in crypto in 2021 going down starting from 20 going down all the way down to number one because that's how countdown works and then we will of course finish off with some honorable mentions as well uh these are loosely ranked in some kind of combination of uh chronological order but also with significance so as we go down the the list the things get bigger and bigger in deal but also later and later in the year so there's some sort of some sort of method to the madness there guys you know the uh spotify yearly wrap-up will you know tells you what music you listen to how many hours you spend all that sort of thing that's what we're doing these are all stories that we we we talked about on the weekly roll-ups and so this is like a a wrap-up
of the year in crypto a roll-up of the roller coaster gated it's a roll-up of the roll-ups this is sharded roll-ups right now i think did you know ryan you're quadratic roll-ups actually settle a roll-up onto another roll-up that's actually a technically a thing you can do and that is what we are doing with the yearly roll-up my braid's not ready for that okay i was just getting modular block chains and playing in my brain now you're talking about like roll-ups on top of roll-ups uh i'll leave that for 2022 okay guys um hey before we get in we got to talk about cash flow though david so cash flow is a d5 otc desk people know what defi is but what's an otc desk yeah an otc desk otc stands for over the counter if you are a big trader trading a lot of
volume and you just want your price to be optimized uh then you go to an otc desk but as we all know if you can do it in c5 you can do it even better in defy and so that's what cash flow is cash flow is your d5 otc desk for big trades with zero slippage mev protection and a bunch of other cool features as well a ton of liquidity and so you can check them out at app.hashflow.com if you are high volume trader or just making a big purchase cash flow might be the place for you tight spread zero slippage liquidity mev protection also soon they'll provide a way to grant yield on top of this liquidity so you can actually be a
liquidity provider on cash flow and there is a google form if you want early access to that you can check that out we'll post that link in the show notes as well alright so david i usually ask you what's the state of the nation this week but today is different because this is the last date of the nation episode of the years the last podcast you and i are recording for the year we're gonna go on holidays uh so tell us you gotta tell us what's the state of the the entire year in crypto not just the week sum up the year for us in one word it's pretty it's a tall order ryan but i think the state of 2021 is proven we are proven crypto has proven itself in so many different ways inflation we got a solution for that uh terrible culture we got a solution for
that uh terrible culture web two gargantuans that are consuming all of our data we got a solution for that all of the use cases that we've always dreamed of in crypto are finally proven out in 2021 so ryan the state of the year in crypto is proven i think it's true man we uh we definitely had a lot to prove coming into 2021 and we uh we we proved it to mainstream so i'll plus one that and i think um one of the things that uh we've proven most is that crypto can be a home for new new forms of institutions right and uh you know the old institutions better get on board or get out of the way so we are about to get to the 20 biggest events that happened in 2021 but before we do that we want to thank the
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their ledger hardware wallet which makes proper private key management a breeze but the ledger ecosystem is much more than just a secure hardware wallet ledger is the combination of the ledger hardware wallet and the ledger live app and if you're used to seeing all of your crypto services and favorite defy apps all in one spot ledger live is where you want to be not only does ledger let you buy your crypto assets straight from the app but it also hooks into all of the defy apps and services that you're used to using ledger live you can stake your ethan lido swap on dexes like paraswap or display your nfts with rainbow you can also use wallet connect inside of ledger live to connect to all the other defy apps that keep coming online defy never stops growing and the ledger live
app grows alongside with it so click the link in the show notes to see all of the defy apps that ledger live has and stay tuned as more apps come online and if you don't have a ledger hardware wallet what are you even waiting for go to ledger.com grab a ledger download ledger live and get all of your defy apps all in one space all right bankless nation here we are now we are counting down the top 20 biggest events the marquee events news items from 2021 and what a year it's been just an incredible year for crypto hard to summarize all of these things but we are going to attempt to do that so what are we doing dave we're doing a countdown from 20 all the way to one and what's the rank ordering here uh it's a little bit chronological a little
bit by significance so as things progress down the list they happen later and later in the year but they are also more and more significant as well uh ryan are you ready to get started yeah let's get started man what's number uh let's start with number 20. what is number 20 on our list of top 20 biggest events yeah number 20 is ether and bitcoin break all-time highs and this happened at the very beginning of the year in fact bitcoin actually broke its all-time highs in 2020 so technically that did not happen in 2021. uh bitcoin broke its all-time high on the 14th of december 2020 and then ether broke its all-time high on the 18th of january 2021 after three years of depressed bearishness throughout a
very long and drawn out bear market after defy summer happened which brought in a ton of new energy bitcoin finally broke its all-time highs on december 14 2020 at 21 000 and then ether followed suit a little over a month later breaking through that 1400 mark on the in the first few weeks of january so that's really how we started off this year is breaking new all-time highs so we started this year bullish i feel like we ended it bullish but also we're in kind of this weird crap territory david uh and uh we'll see what's in store for 2022. i think both you and i are still bullish going to the new year but uh that remains to be seen what's going to happen but let's get to number 19 on our list so number 19
gme and the rise of meme stock so gme of course is the famous gamestock stock they had a little debacle with hedge funds that happened earlier in the year and we covered it significantly on bank list i think it proved out the use case for defy in a big way but what was the story what happened here and there's so much packed into this story it's the story of uh a stimulus checks the downstream effects of stimulus checks which definitely were a big theme of 2020 going into the hands of retail traders and the retail traders showing the power of all of you know apes aping together ape strong together or apes together strong that one uh and then
also going up against institutions it was the apes versus citadel the the hedge fund uh and then also showing the power structures of the world where when a bunch of retail traders band together to short squeeze a big hedge fund the big hedge fund calls up robin hood and says yo stop trading uh and so this has so many different stories like wrapped in it inside of it the stemi checks uh retails retail traders banding together uh the inflation and uh pushing out on the risk curve that people have as a result of increasing printing of dollars the power structures of the world the hedge funds connected with the infrastructure to make sure that the hedge funds can't lose oh man so much wrapped into this and this really kicked
off the meme stonk revolution amc happened right after this dogecoin mooned from below a penny up to 25 cents right after this uh and so it really just kicked off so many things in 2021. what do you think about this energy do you think it's a healthy energy or do you think it's a little bit unhealthy i know definitely no traditional mainstream media's view on on this which is pretty negative but what's your take on this oh i think it's definitely an indication of something that crypto very much stands for which is power going back into the hands of the individual and the individuals having and realizing they have more power than what they previously discovered uh and so no i'm i'm very very optimistic about this also just like again individuals taking more
control over their own personal finances granted meme stocks is kind of okay like whatever i'll i'm not going to fight that fight but yeah i think it's a just emblematic of of the year at large yeah another story wrapped up in that is of course like how reddit analysts are better than the best analysts in wall street and how if we band together and like research these uh these uh stocks and these various assets these opportunities um we can uncover things that that wall street doesn't uh it's really cool example there that's number 19. let's get to number 18. so this is michael saylor buying bitcoin he did it all year we'll also wrap up tesla buying bitcoin in the mix here both of those things happened
in uh q1 of course for michael saylor it's happened the entire year why is this number 18 on our list yeah this also michael saylor also bought a bunch of bitcoin in 2020 but it was really michael saylor and microstrategy buying bitcoin in 2020 and then also continuing to do it all throughout 2021 and then actually convincing other companies like tesla to follow suit so yeah 2021 was the year that tesla the biggest one of the biggest uh public companies out there puts bitcoin on the balance sheet uh and also really when elon musk as an individual starts just participating in crypto discourse and uh we'll talk about that in the honorable honorable mentions category later but yeah michael saylor tesla and a few
other public companies putting bitcoin on the balance sheet was a big theme in 2021 still kind of contrarian though because even though like uh microstrata is doing it um you know a handful of other firms are doing it it didn't maybe get as widespread as people thought it was at the beginning of 2021 there was this idea that all fortune 500 companies or many of them their cfos were going to like i guess ape into bitcoin and start adding it on the ballot sheets and uh that didn't happen yeah no that's people thought that this was going to be a snowball that just rolls and it kind of stopped with tesla after tesla like no big significant company put it on the balance sheet and i perhaps people just looked at like the volatility of both elon musk and michael saylor as individuals and be like oh
well that's that's it i'm not so sure about this one right yeah exactly well let's get to number 17 so that was 18 but number 17 is the rise of layer twos david you and i called for layer two summer to happen it kind of happened ish at the end of summer which is the launch of uh all of these new layer twos but there were definitely some massive successes on the layer two front this year particularly in these application specific layer twos like dydx right here we're looking at uh layer two beat why was the the rise of layer twos a big story this year number 17 on our list well because the conversation about layer twos and ethereum has been happening since you know 2017 we've talked about layer twos and so
yeah plasma state channels yeah payment channels yeah all like raden all these like layer twos technical and technically count as layer twos but they weren't the layer twos that we really really you know hoped or dreamed for and so after 2017 2018 2019 2020 layer twos are coming layer twos are coming layer twos are coming ryan we started this podcast saying layer twos are coming in 2021 layer twos actually came fully fled layer twos evm compatible smart contract enabled trustless layer twos arrived on ethereum after years and years of research and development and experimentation main nets are actually deployed onto the ethereum layer one uh and that's that's huge it's been many
many years coming didn't really have the blowout you know if you know here the blowout like adoption that we hoped that they would have turns out it was a little bit of a slow roll it turns out these things do not go are not when you deploy them onto mainnet they are not in their final form they are still like relatively constrained and limited but they are in their last phases of just research development and in the last phases of just actually being tested by the real world market which is of course the last thing so 2021 actual l2s with actual smart contract capabilities with actual trustlessness came to ethereum this kind of bleeds into our next uh item on the list number 16 clocking in number 16 d5
bigger than c5 and this is a story i think in in two parts the first is this uh we're looking at a tweet from hayden adams from february 15th 2021 earlier in this year uniswap just became the first decentralized trading platform to process over 100 billion in volume an exciting milestone for d5 that on some days was larger than the volume on coinbase also there were some days in 2021 that uh stable coin liquidity and volumes on uniswap v3 dwarfed that of coinbase as well so kind of a flipping in progress there the second part of this story is antonio from dydx and this
dovetails into what you were saying about scalable layer twos uh with with number 17 he said five years ago i left coinbase and i eventually funded a founded dydx today for the first time dydx is doing more volume than coinbase oh my god this d5 protocol deployed on layer 2 now doing more volume than the coinbase exchange uh d5 grew bigger than c5 in a few cases in 2021 and that's a big deal what are your thoughts i i think just having days and weeks where defy is doing more volumes just of course the first step to doing months and years uh so i think it's it's days and weeks in
2021 and 2022 and beyond it starts to be like oh we're like d5 exchanges are doing more volume than coinbase on a monthly basis and then it's not many months after that until it's a yearly basis and then after that it's just forever and now defy has completely just eaten cf's lunch and that is what so just bullet bullish on that and we got the first tastes of that in 2021 bolus the the bankless thesis which of course says that d5 protocols will be at the very bottom layer for uh the entire financial ecosystem okay we just breezed through five of these we're getting to number 15 now uh number 15 is clocking in china actually banned bitcoin this time crypto
this time not just bitcoin but all of crypto all right so this has been like common fud in crypto circles for many years oh my god yeah couple months china's banning bitcoin china's banning crypto something like that is happening well this year it felt like they actually did it how do we know that there was a mass exodus of proof-of-work mining machines and companies out of china into other regions of the world we've never seen that before why is that number 15 on our list david because it's a going to be very indicative of global shifts of power if you believe the crypto thesis that open permissionless public networks are going to be the dominant form of just financial activities and then you see china pushing out not just bitcoin
mining but all crypto infrastructure like websites exchanges out or out of china and not only do we know that from from the hash flow migration hash rate migration but we also just know this from uh the data of uh holdings of crypto assets inside of chinese exchanges have also gone to zero uh so we know that china is actually pushing out basically everything about crypto uh and so this might be the thing that finally ends china's like significant dominance if this might be the the thing that costs them significantly in growth and just you know integration into the real world economy in the future it's also really truly helped the bitcoin narrative as cash flow goes from the east into the west where u.s
regulators are feel much more comfortable about it it's helped bitcoin mining proof of work mining go from coal heavy to green energy friendly uh and so that's also helped with its narrative tailwinds uh and so there's a lot a very significant number of positive second and third order consequences as a result of china actually banning crypto this time uh except uh sad for the actual chinese citizens because they are now uh only have the option of the chinese central bank digital currency which while it is doing fantastic things to unbank the or bank the unbanked uh it's also putting them even further under control of the chinese authoritarian government that that last point i i think merit some uh repetition as well we did a
fantastic podcast on the chinese central bank digital currency and their plans around blockchain earlier uh this year with a book called cashless somebody wrote about what's going on in china and so if you want to dig in deeper into the story which i encourage you to do go check out that podcast we'll include a link to it in the show notes but that's exactly what china is is teeing up so step one get crypto out step two replace crypto with this centralized pseudo crypto type of system that is completely controlled by the chinese government and you have to wonder what other nation states will do in reaction to this right there's kind of a a fork in the road will they follow china and
pursue that path or will they follow the open permissionless cryptopath and continue to develop on top of those rails that's something we'll be monitoring into the next year all right that's 15. number 14 this was big man a central bank finally adopted bitcoin bitcoin became legal tender in el salvador they started purchasing it on el salvador a nation state balance sheet why is this number 14 david this has been part of the bitcoin unofficial road map for forever like you know first individuals then companies then countries uh you know after countries there's not much more beyond that there's only bigger and bigger countries uh and so el salvador small country
small gdp uh but the first and so bitcoin is now officially a cryptocurrency the first ever cryptocurrency is now legal tender in an entire country um there this did not uh this also drew a bunch of criticism uh you know the the dictator nature of uh of the president of uh el salvador uh navy buchelli uh and also the kind of the the forcing of bitcoin upon uh individuals and businesses in el salvador didn't always wasn't always received with positive uh feedback from both the the citizens of el salvador and from others as well this has also drawn the attention of in institutions like imf who feel very very threatened by this by the independence of el salvador from the global financial
system uh and overall has been just a huge narrative tailwind towards alternative uh currencies that aren't just fiat currencies printed out of thin air by central banks uh so just a very powerful story and uh you know hopefully the first of many to come if countries that are choosing alternative assets as legal tender in their countries yeah i think it's an extraordinary uh story and i like that you called it part of bitcoin's unofficial roadmap because that's exactly what it is it's now bitcoin is on an adoption roadmap there not too many you know technical plans and improvements uh in in the works but definitely a lot of adoption things to take and the imf's response on this has been like let's quarantine the contagion let's make sure this doesn't spread
to other places in uh central america other places in the world it was definitely a shot across the bow of the nation states and existing institutions of the world so that in itself is fascinating and uh i think worthy of being on our list here this year um let's get to number 13 though unlucky number 13 i guess it's a meme number in itself and uh 69 million dollars is also a meme number that was the price at which this beeple artwork sold 69 million dollars uh the highest crypto art sale in history making beeple the creator of this art one of the top three most valuable living artists
absolutely incredible this happened in march of this year we're still in q1 of nft mania which uh we'll cover i think on this list in in some more detail but what uh what are your thoughts on this one yeah this this i think is really emblematic of many of the things that make nfts so cool um uh beeple was famous for making digital art one digital art per day for years like didn't miss a day and digital arts not easy to create in a short amount of time uh and so the and as a result of just the nature of digital art before crypto he never really had any way to monetize his artwork monetize his his you know creations nfts gave people uh the ability to actually monetize his digital art uh and
so just from going from a guy who kind of an indie guy with a cult following of just like making weird digital art things every single day in a decent sized instagram and then going to actually being able to sell those things because of the power of it slapping a token onto a jpeg that made people the number one uh or one of the top three most valuable living artists so this this is the story of nfts at large a lot of digital art news forms of art and don't have a way to be monetized and nfcs offer that for so many people people was just like a a signal of things to come and you know a lot of digital artists will be funded by nfts in ways that they weren't previously able to monetize their their art uh so
this was just the first of what turned into a whole entire movement and now we have uh photography nfts other digital like music nfts uh you know audience has a whole entire platform for example and so this is just a great example of the power of nfts putting money into the hands of artists that previously did not have such an opportunity i think if you're measuring the timeline of the creator economy right this 69 million dollar people sell is going to be a key milestone in that right it's like this is an artist's connection directly to fans and a way to monetize um his art pieces without any third parties and uh the creator economy is definitely a big theme that carried forward through the rest of the year uh but so were nfts and that brings us to
number 12 on our list only a dozen more to go number 12 crypto punks board apes and profile nfts pfp nfts what a crazy year for this asset class uh let's talk a little bit about um you know board apes crypto punks breaking sotheby's estimates where do you want to start with this one david yeah the profile picture nft movement really just prove it really helped the whole broader nft movement because you could see uh profile picture nfts in your twitter handles and now i have them also in my instagram and facebook handles and when i uploaded it to my linkedin account i was like hahaha now everyone on linkedin has to look at my crypto you put a
crypto punk on your profile and so i'm gonna add my turtle i i think this is really just a breakout use case of the metaverse like actually putting a digital representation of yourself as your digital avatar on your all your social media accounts as it turns out as the definition of the metaverse has expanded it's expanded into platforms like instagram and into platforms like tick tock like turns out that's what the metaphors is so having digital representations unique digital representations uh just was an extreme use case and also the dollar value of things like crypto punks and board apes the sticker shock of these things allows people to flex and people love flexing especially with art and and also just a combination of just
like a a cohered community like there's all the crypto punks there's all the board apes but also have unique people inside of those cr in those uh communities so like you have you know ten thousand crypto punks ten thousand individuals but you know only one of them is the albino smile with the hat right so i'm a i'm a crypto punk but i'm only this crypto punk it allows for communities to form with individuality also inside of those communities and so not only was it a way to flex in the metaverse flex your nfts but also a way to you know signal that you're a part of a tribe you're a part of a community but you're a unique part of a community as well uh so just a really big movement uh this year with the whole profile picture nft phenomenon
this is new wave flex new wave rolex uh for sure and i i think you're right about something about the the profile it was like it's a perfect fit for all of our existing social media platforms that we know and love like you could just glue it directly into your avatar image and it sort of became a representation of you in the metaverse also from a price perspective david what what are some of the prices that we're talking about with crypto punks and board apes like what what are the floor prices or some of the big sales over the course of the year well crypto punks recently had that over 10 million dollar sale for a single crypto punk making it the highest profile picture nft sale ever um the floor price of crypto punks i believe are is uh low at 60 right now
the highest i think it got to was like 160 yeah the highest it got to was 144. i believe board apes are clocking in at 45 east for the floor there's a big conversation about uh board apes flipping crypto punks in terms of the the floor price um uh but uh overall just a generalized adoption the board apes have been like the story of an nft profile picture adoption hands down i think it's specifically because they got launched in 2020 or or early 2021 so they had some of that early momentum jimmy fallon's got it i bought it got a got a board eight the chain smokers has a board ape really board apes have kind of won the pop culture meme but we've just really seen that is it true that board apes launched i think i've got uh something in my notes like uh april 20th
oh yeah yeah it before 2020 such a new project right right yeah so huge just huge victory by by board apes for how much mainstream adoption they've happened they've gotten in such a short amount of time uh and so yeah we've got got the headline up collection of board and mts breaks sotheby's estimates with three days to go also crypto punks also sold on sotheby's and so really just making their way into traditional art sales all our sale auction houses um and so they they aren't the only ones as well other art blocks made their way here um uh also shout out to cool cats definitely deserves to be up here as well cool cats nfts uh of which i gave mine away um so slight slight regret on that one but okay it's fine it's fine well you got someone else into crypto
right i did yes that's number 12. all right guys number 11. getting closer to the top 10 not quite there yet but getting closer number 11 axi infinity of course just two words breakout game absolutely crushing it some stats this is a a tweet um from uh let's see august 6th the first nft project actually infinity to hit one billion dollars in all-time nft trading volume history in the making 2.5 million monthly active players in october the axs token was about 30 million dollars in market cap this time last year
we got to highs of like eight maybe nine billion dollars in the course of a 12 month time span absolutely the breakout uh token the breakout price appreciation maybe the breakout app of the year combining nfts and crypto games what's uh why does this make number 11 on our list besides everything i just said yeah just to help listeners frame the context of one billion in all-time nft volume that happened in august so not even counting the rest of the year open c hit 10 billion dollars in nft trading volume in november and open seas a platform for trading nfts actually infinity is a specific nft project and that one nft project did 10
bit 1 billion dollars in august so that is absolutely insane uh the slp token the strange love potion that is the medium of exchange token in axionfinity has also become a medium of exchange token in the philippines in stark contrast to bitcoin as legal tender in el salvador we now have strange love potions as the unofficial medium of exchange token in the philippines which is just crazy the absolute just insane amount of reach that this application got entire like investment and funds and re as uh funds have been spun up as a result of axiom infinity right like oh actually infinity did did that thing where they went from you know 30 million to 8 billion like funds have started as a result of
that to invest in crypto gaming and so just blow out success and just absolutely just move the needle with what it means to be a crypto game and has really just redirected a ton of capital into crypto gaming to people trying to emulate that sort of success absolutely and also all of the the rise of all of these um gaming guilds as well has been another story and these gaming guilds themselves receiving investments as well to sort of marshal the gaming workforce in gaming communities uh so super exciting stuff guys we are going to be back with the top 10 biggest items from 2021 but before we do we want to thank the sponsors that made this
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liquidity when you trade your crypto assets all right guys we are back with the top 20 cr biggest crypto items of 2021 this is a roll-up of roll-ups all right so we're we're hitting them quick we're going through and we went through 10 already now here we are with the top 10. we're going to come back and start with number 10 here the story is open c open c the platform the ebay of nfts crossing 10 billion in all-time sales volume david you just mentioned that earlier from a benchmark perspective they had months that were bigger than entire quarters for etsy okay etsy which has been in existence for for years in the physical
space getting up there with ebay type volumes not quite passing it but getting up there this year what an incredible breakout application for crypto uh openc what else do you want to talk about definitely one of the things that surprised you and me ryan in 2021 is the just insane amount of adoption that nfts got um turns out people like to trade pictures uh and so all all that open seas does is facilitate that sort of behavior oh would you like to trade pictures well you must go to open c and it seems it makes a ton of sense that open c had these just the insane amount of success that it did in the same year that meme stonks became a really big thing and the retail trader just buying into memes
became a really big thing retail traders buying into memes that is exactly what opens the enables it's like here david go for it do you know you know that domino's meme right where like the first arm domino starts and then like it collapses and then it's like yeah i feel like some of the first dominoes are are you know back to like central bank stuff right checks inflation easy monetary policies stimulation you know stimulus checks right which cause meme stocks which causes retail fomo phenomena which causes like the entire bull case of nfts and kind of it meets where you get open c volume crossing 10 billion this year right it's like all of these things are connected mm-hmm 100 no that's exactly right yeah uh you get your 1400 stimming check and then at the
end of that domino is is open c crossing 10 billion dollars in in all time sales volume and you're stuck with a bunch of liquid jpegs i'm stuck with a bunch of turtles that's at the end of the domino is that where you got your turtle ryan on openc uh yeah of course right alt all turtles come from the open c thanks for that uh up david wow number nine the coinbase ipo that was a long expected ipo we thought it was going to happen we hoped it was going to happen and it happened in 2021 that was a big event though direct listing on nasdaq april 14th was the plan why is this significant why is it number
nine on our list yeah coinbase is crypto's biggest company uh most employees biggest revenue uh is our flagship it's kind of a signal for the rest of the industry now having our biggest company as a public company on you know the on the nasdaq on the on the new york stock exchange is just very very legitimizing uh and it actually allows people to invest in the world of crypto uh in ways that they are used to through selling selling shovels uh and and also doing it through in inside their brokerages with centralized exchanges they again the pre-crypto world is just used to exposure like this and so it's good for the rest of crypto because it's legitimizing to our industry it also
allows coinbase to get the funding from the the legacy world that they need uh and allows people to have exposure in ways that they're they're more comfortable with one interesting fact about uh the coinbase uh direct listing which i think people forget uh even though it made a big deal at the time is that coinbase gifted a hundred shares to every single one of its employees ahead of the direct listing and i think that directly came as a result of the whole airdrop culture airdrop phenomenon specifically uniswap the retroactive airdrops like hey employees we are retroactively rewarding you for your contributions to coinbase with a hundred shares and i remember ryan when union swap did their airdrop we talked about how unit swap has shifted the overton
window of capital what it means to have a relationship between capital and labor and allowing labor to cr earn capital not just currency as a way to solve wealth inequality and wealth distribution and i think coinbase is taking a leap out of the ethos of crypto by gifting out 100 coinbase shares to all of its employees uh and so not only was it one of the biggest direct listings to biggest public events of all time or excuse me in 2021 but it also did it in a very crypto ethos way so uh congratulations to the coinbase and tip of the hat yeah so i i guess one one thought on that too is right so overall i think it was a great move and i think it's like net uh very legitimizing to the space to have a crypto bank a crypto company
listed on the nasdaq i think there's a lot of value there where you have wall street analysts now pouring through uh coinbase documentation and as a byproduct learning about ethereum and bitcoin and like d5 right that's super cool and i think that's fantastic but also part of me even though they did things like the uh the employee gift of shares part of me feels like this is also a missed opportunity right um so part of me is a little bummed out that we didn't uh there wasn't a token at the end of this for actual users because that would have been the completion of your thought right so like there there's some value in in air dropping equity or tokens stocks in this case to employees but the next step would have been some sort of
token some sort of a appreciation some sort of value dropped to the actual liquidity providers and users of coinbase and we weren't able to make that happen and i i think part of that is like goes to number eight on our list actually so it's it's a brilliant segue from number nine to number eight and that is the story of gary gensler okay gary gensler uh and the articles down bad gateway for for gary gensler let me try to reload this uh gary gensler was confirmed by the u.s senate as the chairman of the sec he had previously served in other administrations he was previously people
forget this the cftc chair as well did a stint at uh mit actually taught courses on blockchain taught courses on crypto good courses as well i saw some of these lectures uh very knowledgeable about this the space and i think some people in crypto thought hey this is a good thing somebody knowledgeable about crypto is coming in in one of uh you know one of the us's primary regulatory bodies they actually know what they're doing actually talking about but wow what a disappointment like saying gary you were the chosen one and you failed us uh blocking the coinbase earned product no clarity and the difference between uh utility
tokens and securities and when a network becomes decentralized enough to be you know become a commodity harsh crackdowns on many areas that seem like heavy-handed um rather than collaborating with the industry it's a very antagonistic approach and some of that has leaked into you know uh senate meetings where gary gives testimony gary gensler his testimony and you know senators press him on various things and uh he just seems very anti-crypto in posture and in agenda and a tremendous disappointment i almost wonder if that is part of the reason we didn't get a coin based token right if the u.s had
leaned into that pressed into uh clarifying rules and regulations with respect to what's a security and what's not maybe we would have gotten that but david why is gary gensler number eight on our list yeah he just exactly what you said has really influenced the rest of the industry really spooked a lot of people it's moved a lot of projects and teams and capital outside of the us because the the threat or and restrictions of operating in the us has just become when you know people do their cost benefit analysis they say the u.s not a good spot just because of the posturing and the messaging and the lack of clarity coming out of the sec um we we were all told to be cautious i
think we were the sentiment going into gary gensler was cautious optimism about his like oh somebody that finally knows about crypto that's not going to be just a dunce about how this industry works finally you know any clarity any sort of you know good clarity is is exactly what this industry needs and turns out uh the incentive the need to be cautious was the thing that was the right thing to be rather than optimistic because not only did we get uh even though gary gensler knows exactly how crypto works the clarity that we've gotten is is absent right so even though he knows everything like we know nothing uh and so the signaling out of sec has been basically empty and has really shifted how the whole entire
market works right now because everyone is is really cautious to be inside the us we got airdrops that did not go to us investors we have coinbase products that are not going to us uh us citizens uh and overall like the us is starting to fall behind in terms of market adoption um a lot of people going to things like uh just europe and almost anywhere in europe or canada and mexico as well yeah absolutely definitely proven to be kind of an institutionalist and we should qualify this by saying it's not everyone in the sec true this is uh you know gary's take but it's certainly not other chair members as well uh yeah hester purse for example has pushed back against this agenda and um you know she she is a a member of the sec as well but um we'll have to see
what happens in uh in 2022 gary gensler was number eight on our list getting into number seven now david it's a story of constitution dao this this dow that formed what in like 10 days or something maybe maybe a shorter time period in order to buy something in order to form capital to bid against a billionaire or many billionaires to purchase a copy an original copy of the us constitution a lot of symbolism in this movement also a living breathing use case of the power of dow capital formations the sorts of things you can do in a crypto crypto economy that you couldn't do
in a traditional meat space what is what is the story why is this significant why is this number seven yeah the story is that over 17 000 people contributed a collective 47 48 million dollars into constitution doubt to collectively buy the the constitution 17 000 people with the average contribution size of 206 dollars per person so this was a fantastic grassroots event i think like half of the people that signed up to be part of the constitution down and send in again an average of 206 dollars this was their first time using metamask this is the first time using ethereum they were just they just saw some headline group internet group of people wants to buy the constitution and
also you can be a part of this and apparently that was enough for people to learn how to use ethereum how to use metamask how to get ether into metamask and then also join a dao and so an insane example of just like adoption for a specific use case and this was just one dow and so hopefully constitution dao is a is a harbinger of things to come in 2022 with the power of taos and the power of capital coordination and the same theme of uh you know apes strong together this is the same energy like join it out get something done just buy buy something that you want i think we're gonna see a lot of this in 2022.
definitely a theme like it definitely goes back to uh you know the the gme um conversation with meme stock conversation we're having earlier and all that said with all of the success constitution dow didn't actually wasn't able to actually purchase the constitution was ironic is a hedge fund manager bought it out from under them the citadel one the one the one that called up robin hood to tell him to stop trading exactly like what a full story what a way to bookend the year and kind of the way it started and that that was interesting the other story that was interesting that i think we'll get to a little bit later was um you know uh some people were pretty upset disappointed by ethereum gas fees when they were trying to withdraw some of their funds
when they were trying to deposit uh for a lot of people wasn't even worth the gas fee in order to withdraw from their funds so that caused some growing pays pains and consternation as well but constitution now definitely deserves to be in our top ten and that's why it was number seven let's get to number six moving closer to this top five can't wait eip1500 okay i say 1559. 1559 is what many of you say uh this is the improvement proposal for ethereum that started burning eth improved the fee mechanism for the way everyone pays gas fees on the ethereum network it went into play august 4th i
believe in the ethereum london hard fork this was a long awaited eip and a very important one from an economic perspective and also from a user experience perspective why is this worthy of number six david well this was the big this is the biggest upgrade to any public blockchain ever let alone a blockchain that is settling billions and billions of dollars of value like every single week um so this is this is an example of so many different things uh the ethereum core developers the the client developers actually being able to coordinate around a spec on eip155 implement that into their into their client software after going through a rigorous research phase which brought in uh you know
tim rufgarden who is a game theory and economist professor at some very prestigious school uh just brought in a bunch of debate from the ecosystem this was one of the most uh probably the the eip that had the most eyeballs on it ever and like you said like long awaited two years of communities just drumming saying hey we want eip1559. we want eip1559 and then it actually arriving on mainnet without a hitch by the way completely just seamlessly integrating into ethereum and starting to make ether the the asset ultra sound money uh and so to me when i saw eip1559 get integrated this is uh already after the beacon chain launched um but the beacon chain actually was a
new blockchain separate from the current ethereum l1 that everyone touches all the time and so eip159 was the biggest change to the actual live ethereum blockchain and so to me this was the biggest signal that the rest of the ethereum roadmap was absolutely going to get executed upon because of how big of a lift that it was how complicated it was and how well it went off without a hitch uh and it has so many uh important points to bring up with regards to ethereum network security the the hardness of money the relationship between the money and its economy and the ability for a community to rally around something that it wants and the developers that support that community to actually listen and implement it uh and so i think everything everybody was
surprised with how much ether eip1559 would actually burn inside of the same year when this got launched in august we would burn over a hundred thousand ether no excuse me yes a hundred thousand ether uh and and just a lot more than people what people thought it would burn when we were daydreaming about it years ago uh and so eip1559 formerly in the rear view mirror for ethereum absolutely and uh you know we couldn't leave it with just one slot on the top 20 list we have to touch it again uh because number five clocking in at number five is the ultra sound money narrative and that dovetails nicely with eip 1559 but uh isn't the only aspect of eip 1559 right so when we talk about
ultrasound money david and this narrative taking hold as i think exemplified by this fantastic website the community came up with ultrasound dot money what are we talking about here why is this worthy of number five why is this a major narrative and proof point that came out of 2021 also correction run if you go down and hit all it is 1.2 million ether that has been burnt since uh the implementation of eip1559 so yeah 10x larger than how i thought it was ultrasound money is the first significant like meme for ether the asset uh which ethereum and ether in the asset really struggled to actually get a grasp on like hey like why is ether valuable once upon a time people
just thought it was gas it was going to have a very high velocity it wouldn't really store any value but slowly over time d5 got built out and ether as a collateral became a very viable use case then eip1559 happened and the scarcity of ether turned into a function of the demand for the ethereum block space aka the ethereum economy meanwhile in the background we have proof of stake happening which will be eventually merged and overall when you tie all these things together we finally came up with the meme ultra sound money and so there's a lot a lot baked into what ultrasound money actually means uh and turns out that that is actually good enough meme to
get into mainstream adoption so you can now read about ultrasound money and like bank spanx finance reports about ethereum and and uh you know just investigative deep dives into the economics of the ethereum network and so now people understand when once upon a time where ether people thought ether was just this velocity utility token now people understand it to be what it really is which is ultrasound money yeah i remember talking with people back in you know 2018 2019 saying things like and even 2020. the one thing ethereum is missing is a uh monetary policy right it's like it's just like a cohesive understandable monetary policy of what supply looks like in the future and that monetary policy is ultra sound money right and
you can kind of see this on the on the website if we look at you know projecting the supply into the future we've got two parts of three components in place already that make ether ultrasound money that is the beacon chain launch the ability to stake eth that happened december of 2020 and then eip 1559 which happened in august and then next year going to 2021 we have the proof of work chain going offline and being replaced fully by proof of stake which will decrease issuance by another 4.1 percent so that's going to be next year is going to be the true ultrasound money era for uh ethereum issuance and the cool thing about this is i feel like david we no longer have to talk about it
or meme it very much because now people can just see it in the data and in the numbers and um you know these numbers are continuously reported block by block ethereum becomes more scarce ether becomes more scarce and uh you know the the the meme propagates so it's kind of taken a life on its own and that's why it's number five on our list a big year for ethereum's monetary policy now we get to number four which is kind of the downside of this as well some bumps along the the road that uh ethereum hit and uh that is um gas fees ethereum gas fees being too damn high okay so there's a good side of that of course because high gas fees
means high block space demand which is product market fit for ethereum that's the thing it's trying to drive towards it's like more demand for its block space but the flip side of this is it prices a lot of user activity off of mainnet off chain and users get upset about this right why should a uniswap trade cost fifty dollars i mint an nft and it costs 250 dollars i can't even afford to move it from one account uh to another it's not even worth that much so there's kind of a almost like a populist uprising from a user perspective saying fees are too damn high i'm going to side chains i'm going to alternative layer twos ethereum is broken this cannot this
cannot persist and of course i'm not gonna i'm not gonna tease number three we'll get to number three in a minute but uh that that leads to number three on our list too but let's talk about for a minute ethereum fees being too high and what are the ramifications and implications of this that played out over 2021 yeah there's there's a friction with ether as ultrasound money and ethereum as a utility network to do d5 smart contract stuff and uh bitcoiners have actually like had this criticism of ethereum for forever now it's like either you can have a smart contract platform or you can have sound money but you can't have both uh implying that like the the more the higher the value the asset is the less utility the actual smart contract chain can offer and that's true in
a world where there's only one single ethereum layer one i think in 2022 we're going to discover that the ethereum l1 is not a place for users that is not where people should find the utility the utility is discovered in execution environments in the where transactions actually get executed and while that does happen on the l1 it also happens on layer twos and so while we're watching this graph of eth price eath gas feeds go up and up and up and up and up i think we are also simultaneously being seeing users pushed out into the layer twos more and more and more and more the incentive to go to layer twos goes up as gas feeds go up that's what l2s are for uh and so that we are in this limbo period this weird awkward phase of ethereum where everyone's still on the
layer one gas fees are really really high people haven't migrated to layer two but eventually everyone will be on layer twos and they will reconstruct in their in their heads what it means to pay a gas fee and so this is how ethereum gets best of both worlds it has cheap execution on the layer two and then strong settlement assurances on the layer one and that's hopefully how we can balance these things i think uh while we're in this awkward phase the this the this idea and this concept of the ethereum main chain not big for users but now it's for chain settlement for the settlement of uh rollups which is an aggregation of all sorts of user activities while ethereum is in this awkward phase i think competitors have really taken advantage of it and that gets us to number three
on our list we're in the top three now the biggest things that happened in 2021 and that is the rise of alternative layer ones and their assets we're talking solana we're talking avalanche we're talking terra we're talking binance smart chain earlier in the year and a slew of other competitors that have locked in a tremendous amount of total locked value they have nft ecosystems they have a d5 economies and d5 projects that are not the typical ethereum projects some of these are copies things that have occurred on ethereum some of them are sort of net new they're all taking advantage of low gas fees and ethereum's high gas fees in order to uh execute their um their their
strategies of course we also have more ethereum line side chains like polygon which are moving to uh to layer two technology as well in the mix but let's talk a little bit about the rise of alternative layer ones how did this happen and why as it turns out what you wanted to sell or be selling at the start of 2021 was block space uh when it came comes time for just mainstream adoption of crypto where everyone's coming to become and start doing crypto things turns out we need a ton of block space for those people to do crypto things with and expensive block space isn't going to on board the world ethereum as a resource constrained network which constrained means is how it allows itself to maintain decentralization
having that constrained block space just doesn't create enough block space for the whole rest of the world and so layer one's other alternative layer ones have taken advantage of the of this fact that ethereum has constrained block space uh and so i think spine and smart chain avalanche solana and a few others as well have all cropped up in order to answer for the growing demand for block space uh and they actually those were the chains that actually met the demand of users and that's why it sent since uh january of 2021 when ethereum had over 95 dominance in tvl ethereum is now down to 62 and a half percent of total tvl supplies is of ethereum the rest uh the rest of the one-third of that uh total tvl is split between chains like tara binance
marching avalanche and solana it's interesting many people are calling this a new multi-chain world this is kind of the new normal and expecting ethereum's uh market share of total locked value to erode over time others will counter and say look we haven't yet seen layer twos in their the fully manifested form and wait until ethereum gets out of puberty you know and uh and comes out on the other side of this with you know big muscles and a new job and you know it's like it's got its entire roll-up ecosystem that is launched on top of it and uh that might be a different story going into 2022 so we'll have to see but david we are now to our top two uh top two items i want
listeners to pause and reflect on what they think it is before we get in there what do you think it is what what what could it be these top two things what else happened in this crazy year that was 2021 coming in at number two david buys a crypto punk all right [Laughter] that's what's number two chill in our bags that's right that's one two yeah not number two the real number two is this the infrastructure bill oh yeah etude brute okay politicians betraying us treasury betraying us this infrastructure bill is all too important in the american legislative process a very important bill to get past treasury snuck in a provision that made a whole bunch of our crypto transactions the regular things where i
send you some eth david or you purchase a crypto punk we're called brokers in these transactions kyc aml tax requirements everything that comes with it really clamping down on the space this language was snuck into the infrastructure bill a must-passed bill sometime over the summer and we got to see a lot of things play out as a result of this we got to see some conversations in congress about proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake and maybe some broader understanding of what d5 actually is some pushback as well i also feel like the crypto community woke up
and discovered some of its latent strength its ability to actually push policy decisions its ability to flex some muscle from a lobby perspective and to start educating members of congress a lot wrapped up in this one that's why it's number two what from your perspective makes it so high on our list yeah this is this is the uh the event where crypto learned that if it's not at the table in these negotiations then it's on the menu uh and that's exactly what happened here it's like no one people no one we didn't really have any crypto representation uh during when some of this infrastructure deal making was being written therefore they were like oh the crypto people will just tax them a lot so we can get a bunch of
their money uh and turns out we weren't there to defend ourselves and that's probably the last time that that's ever going to be true because now we are definitely there and so what used to be a very amount a very significant uh deficiency in our representation in capitol hill has turned into just a great amount of uh just energy uh put behind the people that are are now teaming up and there's a lot of different uh lobbying groups uh things like coin center and blockchain association that are now becoming far far better coordinated between each other there's a lot more energy and a lot more funding here new lobby groups are are coming to the table we saw andrew yang saying that he wants to make the humanity forward party the crypto party politicians are have
realized that there is money and energy inside of this uh movement and they saw that from the reaction of the crypto industry towards the infrastructure bill uh and so while it was a big l in a way it definitely was a big l like there's definitely and this wording is still in this infrastructure build by the way so like we're actually all still going to become brokers at the end of the day but uh while while it was an l i think it's really a long-term w because we're going to be able to to redirect some of the some of that that failure into what crypto people are good at and what crypto people are good at is winning uh and so we always find our way to to make lemonade out of lemons and i think that's exactly what's going on here
and this uh this doesn't go into effect until the year 2024 so we've got some time also you know there's a lot of work going on to pass an amendment to push an amendment through that would kind of nullify these problematic clauses in the infrastructure bill so that's ongoing work and i think exactly to your point right so the crypto industry and politicians realize that crypto has the two things that they really like and that's money and votes we are passionate single-issue voters when it comes to uh crypto freedoms and i think politicians are starting to wake up to that toward the end of the year david there was a uh a um i believe i forget where in congress this was what committee what organization in congress
this was do you recall somewhere in congress uh and there was a uh one of the most successful meetings we had to date about crypto um crypto items and crypto on the agenda there were actually some politicians congress members who stuck up for crypto talking about the merits of even things like web 3 in a way that we hadn't previously seen so that is this this muscle in action uh and that i i hope is the future conversation around crypto in the legislative bodies of the us that gets us to number one david number one coming in at number one inflation seven percent inflation this year
the number one item a macro item something crypto people have been predicting for years we've seen asset price inflation now here's inflation in cpi in consumer prices in energy and housing and groceries all the things you care about you spend your money on as an individual consumer showing up there they said it was transient at first earlier this year did not show itself to be very transient they're getting rid of the word recycling the word transient but let's talk about this why is this number one david of all the things we could have put as number one for 2021 we chose inflation why
i think this story just indicates why monetary policy global monetary policy is so so important because if we go and re recap the list that we just ran through so many of these things are triggered by inflation by the money printer bitcoin and ether starting at number 20 bitcoin and ether new all-time highs that definitely has to do with the money printer gme and the rise of meme stocks and the pushing out of individuals with their stemi checks into risk on trades and just yellowing their money into robin hood maybe that's because of the mini printer michael saylor and tesla buying bitcoin definitely because of inflation uh d5 bigger than c5 definitely has tailwinds because of all the money going into crypto because of the inflation bitcoin
legal tender in el salvador well the other currency that el salvador has is the dollar which is inflating so now they also have bitcoin which isn't people's 69 million dollar sale definitely because of people being pushed out on the risk curve because of inflation board apes profile picture nfts probably the same thing axi infinity maybe probably uh open c 10 billion dollars in nft volume people are trading jpegs because of the devaluing of the dollar in the same way that did you know fun fact ryan that uh rolex's are completely sold out across all rolex stores well so like open c is also doing 10 billion dollars in nft volume these are the same energies um uh coinbase ipo maybe not gary gensler
ipo uh maybe not constitution dow maybe not eip1559 ethan's ultrasound money ethereum fees are all too high not necessarily due to inflation but definitely telling the other side of the story of disinflation uh and also the rise of alternative layer one demand for block space perhaps a just a demand to do crypto things crypto being an anti-inflation uh hedge uh and so i i think the reason why we're talking about inflation here is it because it impacts everything everything is impacted by the monetary policy of the global macro reserve asset which is currently the dollar it impacts all forms of life it impacts everything we do and now the fact that it's at seven percent annualized in the last month it's only seen could only get hotter
from here uh so inflation is the most influential impactful thing that happened in 2021 in my opinion david did you just do a roll-up of the roll-up of roll-ups you know did you know ryan that you can settle a roll-up that settles on another roll-up that settles on enrollment real reason we put inflation is number one is because it was an opportunity to roll up this entire roll-up which was an aggregation of roll-ups anyway that's the real reason uh but yeah also look it affects everything it is that first domino in that domino meme to to go over and it leads to all of these things downstream i think a question going into 2022 is what is the fed going to do about it
here's a jim bianco tweet that says they don't have a lot of choices maybe they have two choices and both of them are bad you respond to inflation and hike the yield interest fields aggressively okay or you don't respond to inflation and you destroy your influence reputation as a governor of the of the system as a the democratic party in this instance and so you can't also do nothing and wait too long because you know people people are upset the price of the pump people are upset with asset prices uh rising so what do you do they're kind of in between a rock and a hard place and uh you know they'll have to make some difficult decisions but
it's not even clear that the fed is even in control at this point they're kind of a they're just going with the system and responding as needed uh to you know to what they think they should do they're sort of a product of the system at this point that's something that we will be tracking in 2022 and that's our wrap-up the top 20 things biggest things that happened in crypto for 2021 david there are some honorable mentions we should also get to that almost made our list what are those honorable mentions yeah the first one that we have again in no particular order the first one is loot the whole loot phenomenon right remember when we were buying black images with white text on them on on open screen that was fun yeah that was that was a crazy week yeah it turns out
that like this whole loot phenomenon which was an inverse of the typical uh nft jpeg phenomenon where rather than having the actual jpeg tell people what the token means you have the token tell developers what it looks like and what that means is that there's actual embedded data in this token that actually has items inside of it that allows the world around loot to come and be built around it rather than having a token just resemble a specific jpeg so it's an inverse between the the data and the token and that allows people's imaginations to go wild game developers can just go wild and that really really it was actually really at the start of
this whole kind of metaverse word the metaverse word was definitely being used but it really got kicked off with this loot phenomenon at least inside of the crypto industry and with this design of a token that is inside out that allows the imaginations of the people and its owners and the developers around it to actually bestow what the thing actually looks like so that was a huge conversation starter and still actually has a bunch of just like building and investment and trading going on to this day another honorable mention is in real life crypto events they came back a little bit this year i think there'll be more in 2022 but they came back this year and that was important for the industry what are your thoughts yeah i would say they they came back but also it was a first because the crypto in
real life crypto events of uh uh 2017 and 2018 were of a very different time and there weren't very many in real life crypto events from 2018 to 2019 because it was a bear market the crypto events that are here today are are making headlines in magazines and pop culture magazines and as it turns out dope parties are a way to onboard a lot of people into crypto uh and so crypto is not only getting its is its foundations during things on a fundamental basis or where like bitcoin is being bought by central banks but also in real life crypto people are now it's now a cultural movement uh and it's a global cultural movement uh and so this is i think really uh shifting what it means to be part of the crypto industry
because now being part of the crypto industry also implies that there's so you go to something in real life ryan ryan it's uh it's happening i'll be going to things in real life next year i promise okay not a 2021 thing it's a 2022 thing let's group these next honorable mentions together elon musk pumping doge as well that was a theme for the year pumping all sorts of things elon musk the meme lord was an honorable mention something that happened a lot in 2021 also uh shibb the price of dog coins going wild so uh somebody you know reportedly on shib turned 8 000 into 1 billion dollars i'm not sure how much liquidity was on that one billion
dollars but quite a trade on ship tokens and meme coins so dog tokens went wild this year also nfts made snl as well do you remember that snl skit david what's the significance of that again nft is just making their way into mainstream adoption at snl it's it's a cultural icon and now they're just they made us get about nfts um and so nfts are just now at the family dinner table people are gonna talk about them here at christmas they talked about them at thanksgiving if it's in snl it's in public awareness the last uh the last two honorable mentions the eve bitcoin ratio eth may be gearing up for a flipping we talked a
little bit about that uh at the outset but that looks like it's getting closer maybe a potential going into 2022 and maybe the last item on the list is uh facebook becoming meta facebook maybe co-opting the metaverse idea or maybe building an alternative to it depends on your perspective here what are your thoughts on that last one meta yeah it's definitely a sign of the how much the metaverse is in vogue and also a sign of facebook trying to run away from its previously tainted branding but i don't think it's going to be able to get too far away from that web 2 still web 2. um but the maybe 2022 is the year of the metaverse uh maybe that's too soon i don't know but the metaverse is on people's minds
be it big silicon valley companies or individuals like us the metaverse is in guys that's it top 20 items for the year plus some honorable mentions bonus items for you we hope you have a happy holiday it's been a lot of fun doing bank lists this year david i don't know how many recordings we did uh this year how many articles we wrote there's a whole bunch and um we hope you leveled up just as much as we did this year i see a meme on the of the of the year on the agenda too david i don't know if you snuck this into the list should i oh yeah i don't have too much convection conviction on that one but uh i think now we're displaying it all right meme of the year d5 mullet thesis there it is c5 in the front define the back
man i gotta say dude you look great in mullet i don't i think you should try this for real dude that looks like a real photo of you man like that looks like a college ryan that's what it looks like under here crypto wife is fantastic that's uh best memer on twitter in my opinion um guys this has been state of the nation hope you enjoyed it let's get to the financial disclaimers disclaimer is the end of the episode eath is risky bitcoin is risky crypto is risky you could definitely lose what you put in take it from the guy in the santa hat but we are 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 hey we hope you enjoyed the video if you did head over to bankless hq right now
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