🏴 What the Cypherpunks Saw Coming

The cypherpunks knew that privacy had to be built, not granted. Venice is now carrying this torch for AI.

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🔒 FREE PREVIEW: Upgrade to unlock full access. Join Bankless Premium. What the Cypherpunks Saw Coming Published on May 23, 2026 View in Browser Happy Saturday everyone, In today's issue, David makes a cypherpunk case for Venice, the rising private AI inference platform built on Base. Not strictly Ethereum, sure, but the value here can expand and inspire in all directions. Plus, David and Ryan talk through the new era of Bankless (and more) in the latest Rollup episode. Catch up on everything below. Thanks for reading, — WMP p.s. Starting next week, Ethereum Weekly will be folding into the Bankless Daily newsletter, where our ETH coverage will continue as part of an everyday send! Sponsor: MetaMask - Spend crypto anywhere online and AFK with MetaMask Card. Learn about MetaMask Card .  .  . OPINION Venice AI Is Applied Cypherpunk Bankless Author: David Hoffman "Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age." "For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract." "Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace." — A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, Eric Hughes, 9 March 1993 Dear Bankless Nation, Privacy is in!  There’s a section in Grayscale’s research report on Zcash that has been ringing in my head:  "Technological and social change can put pressure on privacy systems, often triggering public debate about financial privacy and new methods to protect it. In the 1970s, the digitization of financial records and the Bank Secrecy Act brought more attention to financial privacy. Similarly, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the expansion of the internet and online banking, along with the Patriot Act, led to another wave of focus on financial privacy — and eventually broader use of encryption, 2FA, and related tools." The existence of privacy in society is perpetually at risk, due the simple reality that privacy is rarely the default mode of operation. Privacy is always extra, technically speaking.  If privacy is opt-in, the act of choosing it becomes information. Simply using privacy paints a target on your back — you've self-identified as someone with something to hide. The cypherpunks saw this early: a single envelope in a world of postcards is suspicious, but a world of envelopes is just mail... Continue with Bankless Premium FRIEND & SPONSOR: METAMASK Spend crypto online or IRL directly from your crypto wallet at over 150 million merchants worldwide—anywhere Mastercard is accepted. This is how you offramp: 3% cashback, zero foreign transaction fees, and exclusive benefits. Keep full custody of your funds until the moment you pay. Get the MetaMask Virtual Card now, free. Learn about MetaMask Card .  .  . WEEKLY ROLLUP To New Beginnings David sold his ETH, the EF is losing talent, and Hyperliquid just hit a new all-time high. What gives? Ryan and David break down the stagflation fears building in the bond market, why pockets of the crypto like HYPE, Zcash, and Venice are breaking out, what the EF talent exodus actually signals, and what a new era for Bankless looks like. Tune into this week’s Rollup! 👇 Watch on YouTube Manage your account 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. See our Investment Disclosures | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy Bankless © 2026 – Unsubscribe

A quick market update alognside all the things you might have missed from TBL this week.

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	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more TBL Weekly #170: Claude Code is taking over A quick market update alognside all the things you might have missed from TBL this week. Augustine Carrasco May 23   READ IN APP   Article brought to you by: Get Started Here Announcement Board Due to popular demand, Nik & Johan are hosting another live TBL Pulse walkthrough on Tuesday, June 2nd at 2:00 PM EST. This webinar includes a special bonus to those who attend: During the call, we will send out a one-page memo to all attendees discussing our most important charts from TBL Pulse and how we read their respective signals. Free for everyone to attend. Register Here This session will primarily focus on the bitcoin portion of our TBL Pulse dashboard, where both Nik and Johan will walk us through the latest Valuation & Trend research, which is the underlying framework for the State Quadrant. Dear Readers, Over the past few months, TBL has been building. The average start to a workday is slowly transitioning into 6-8 Claude Code instances on the screen, and reaching token limits within the first 45 minutes of work…mind you, we are a small business. Hence, why (as someone who works with Nik) I simply cannot oppose his bullish stance on AI. Ever since we started training ourselves on how to properly use Claude Code, our work weeks have become shorter. AI has made us more productive, but it hasn’t reduced our workload at all. Paradoxically (and ironically), we do not finish our workdays earlier due to higher productivity. We’re instead chasing time to keep building. To top it all off, my MacBook Pro crashed three times this week because I was running too many Claude Code instances with individual agents simultaneously, which means I am in the market for a Mac Mini (or even Mac Studio). Multiply my situation by some 800,000 more individuals working in finance in Canada alone (chart below)... …and you get an idea of just how powerful this beast is becoming. Even Jamie Dimon made headlines recently, acknowledging this monster: This reminds me of a scene I really enjoyed from the movie “Moneyball,” where Billy Beane adopts a new way of assembling a baseball team with a fraction of the capital that other fancier teams have access to. His reasoning for changing things up? Upgrade to paid Anyway, enough about the AI train. Let me now bore you with some money markets stuff to start your weekend. The Secured Overnight Funding Rate (SOFR) currently finds itself well below the Interest on Reserve Balances (IORB): Chart found on TBL Pulse here: In fact, this is the lowest the spread has been in years: Chart found on TBL Pulse here: This unsurprisingly comes as the TGA falls from its $1T level to what is now a little short of $800B: Chart found on TBL Pulse here: This isn’t necessarily surprising, as we expected TGA declines in May given seasonal tax refunds: As Jerome Powell departs, and Kevin Warsh takes the throne, this is perhaps the calm before the storm. A TBL friend (Conks) put it best in a recent post, discussing how the Warsh shakeup of reduced Fed communications and a reduced balance sheet size could bring about some unwanted vol into funding markets. For now, however, stigmatized take-ups at facilities like the SRP appear to be a thing of the past (courtesy of Powell’s RMPs): It looks to me like money markets are flush with cash at the moment, meaning the heart of the financial system is beating just fine. And we have yet to bring up talks of the Treasury potentially investing extra TGA cash into repo to keep this healthy heart going…but that’s a topic for another time. Upgrade to paid Substack This Week Nik’s weekly letter went out on Monday; Johan’s weekly letter went out on Wednesday; and, Nik’s monthly video update with Checkonchain went out on Thursday: Are Global Bond Bailouts Next? Nik Bhatia · May 18 Read full story Where are the risk takers? Johan Bergman · May 20 Read full story Video: The Generational CAPEX Boom Nik Bhatia and James Check (Checkmatey) · May 21 Watch now YouTube This Week Nik’s Free Global Macro Update went out on Tuesday And a snippet of his paywalled chat with James Check came out on Friday: For Podcast Listeners Here are the links to our latest episode: APPLE SPOTIFY Global Macro Update: Is Japan Breaking the Bond Market? The Bitcoin Layer Episode Our videos are on major podcast platforms—take us with you on the go! Apple Podcasts Spotify Keep up with The Bitcoin Layer by following our social media! YouTube X LinkedIn Thanks for reading The Bitcoin Layer — for access to all content, upgrade to paid! Upgrade to paid   Like Comment Restack   © 2026 Nik Bhatia 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe