gm Bankless Nation, Happy New Year's Eve! It's been a big year for crypto, and today we're going through some of our favorite articles and podcasts of 2024.
gm Bankless Nation, Happy New Year's Eve! It's been a big year for crypto, and today we're going through some of our favorite articles and podcasts of 2024.
Bankless publishes a handful of podcasts and articles every single week covering what's hot in the moment, what we're bullish on for the future, and what cool things are going down that could really only happen in crypto.
2024 was a huge year for crypto, and a massive year for Bankless.
We talked to some of the industry's leading builders, investors, and thinkers on the podcast. In the newsletter, we engaged with some of the most fascinating concepts bubbling up across the cryptosphere.
Today, we're breaking down our five favorite podcasts and articles that we published in 2024 👇
🏆 Top 5 Podcasts
▪️Tornado Cash Developer on What’s at Stake
with Roman Storm
Our episode with Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, who is currently on trial and facing decades in prison over his development of smart contracts, showcases that crypto is more than an investment class, it's a movement for financial freedom that has high-powered enemies. In this episode, we dug into all of the big questions surrounding whether code is speech, if developers are liable for bad actors, and if Americans have a right to digital privacy.
▪️Ethereum vs. Solana: Which Blockchain Wins?
with Justin Drake and Anatoly Yakovenko
We always love a good Bankless debate, especially when the debaters are some of the brightest minds in crypto. Our conversation with Justin and Toly was wide-ranging and took the unique approach of allowing each to frame the good, the bad, and the ugly of each other’s blockchain – something which led to one of the best debates we've ever hosted on Bankless.
▪️Is the Ethereum Roadmap Off Track?
with Max Resnick
Bankless was at the center of Ethereum scaling controversy after publishing our interview with Max, which pulled no punches as he questioned Ethereum's rollup-centric roadmap and advocated for Ethereum taking a more aggressive approach to scaling its L1 execution capabilities to keep pace with Solana.
▪️You’re Not Bullish Enough!
with Justin Drake
This year, Bankless brought firepower to DevCon in Bangkok with our own one-day speaker series, and attendees hailed it as an event jam-packed with alpha from crypto's top thinkers. This 35-minute walkthrough from Justin Drake tackled Ethereum's future and his much-hyped Beam Chain proposal, and left attendees with plenty of ideas to chew on related to the future of the chain.
▪️A Guide to Survive the U.S. Dollar Collapse
with Lyn Alden
One of our most listened to episodes of the year was our conversation with repeat guest Lyn Alden, who walked us through The Era of Fiscal Dominance in yet another masterclass that showcased Lyn's extensive expertise on fiscal and monetary policy and charted a path for what's coming next for the global economy.
🏆 Top 5 Articles
▪️What Crypto Built in this Bear Market
written by Jun
If you've been here since FTX, you've been here through some tough times. At the beginning of the year, we showcased what builders accomplished during a very challenging 2022 and 2023. The article was more than a laundry list of technical upgrades, instead showing a diverse space with numerous wildly ambitious efforts to scale crypto's role in the world.
In a year full of memecoin riches, we spent a lot of time at Bankless dialing in how we thought about “fundamentals” and what biases we had that were worth challenging. In what oddly proved to be one of our more controversial pieces of the year, David C. dug into the profitability of the top chains and crypto and made some judgment calls on which ones were actually cash flow powerhouses.
One of our most-read articles of the year aimed to answer a very simple and divisive question, when is it time to take profits? It's as much a personal question as it is a tactical one, but the reader response to the article showcased that crypto investors not only come to Bankless to see what's happening on the cutting edge of crypto but to learn about investing concepts with applicability outside of blockchains.
Ethereum's biggest upgrade of the year brought us blobs, but it also brought along plenty of conversation around what lower transaction fees really enabled in the grand scheme of things. This conversation continued on throughout the year, but this essay highlighted what was at stake and what was enabled by the Dencun upgrade.
When we're right, we're right. Bankless was about as early as could be to zeroing in on the AI Agents meta. We had written several articles about the trend earlier this year (including this other piece from Jun) but David Hoffman's essay on the massive potential hiding in plain sight was our most explicit piece highlighting the sector.
Want to make an impact? Apply for a grant! The Cartesi Grants Program Wave 2 is accepting proposals over the next 6 months, with a funding budget of $500,000 in CTSI to support builders. Not a dev but know talented devs? Refer them to the program and become eligible for a DevDrop reward!
Not financial or tax advice. Bankless content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Disclosure. From time to time, we may add links in this newsletter to products we use. We may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless team holds crypto assets.
