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[funky music] Welcome back to Bitcoin Season 2, the live stream weekly update.

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This is where we don't do a typical interview, but rather I go over some metrics and review the ecosystem at large. That is the Bitcoin Season 2 ecosystem, kind of a fluid moving target. I'm Charlie Spears.

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Bitcoin Season 2 is produced by Blockspace Media. Make sure to check out our other content and podcasts, the Gort Show, the Mining Pod, and our newsletter, blockspace.media, for the website to get all of that.

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Um, today, uh, w- I'm gonna be, uh, reviewing some of the l- roadmaps of the current Bitcoin layer twos. Again, layer two, it's a bit hand-wavy here. I'm using it as a catch-all term.

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But I think I'm gonna pivot the, this kind of, uh, this weekly content here to, uh, at the top of the, uh, show, talk a little bit more about what the landscape of these Bitcoin abstractions, side chains, uh, security protocols, s- uh, you know, federations, state channels, whatever.

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Uh, we'll be hitting some of that. Um, this is a more visual and, uh, graphics-heavy, uh, episode.

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So if you are listening, I'll try to describe it, but I would recommend you head to the YouTube or live stream on X to view it in entirely. So, let's take a look. Um, this is mempool.space.

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We're gonna start out with what, uh, the familiar homepage of mempool.space. Fee rates in the low teens. Um, fee rates have been languishing a bit. Uh, this is no surprise.

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We've seen on-chain activity on Bitcoin, um, decrease significantly post-halving. The runes generated a huge fee event, but haven't a ton recently. Um, in the interest of getting onto kind of the meat of what I'm,

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uh, the, the subject today of Bitcoin L2s, I'll just point out that, um, we are headed towards a downwards difficulty adjustment of negative six point four percent.

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So in about three days, so Wednesday or Thursday this week, we're looking at a, um, a decent-sized downward difficulty adjustment that'll, um, relieve some of the pressure and poor economic conditions that a lot of Bitcoin miners are facing.

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And, um, just the state of the pools, it's kind of what we've already seen. Um, uh, Foundry with twenty-eight percent of the hash rate, uh, Antpool with twenty-six point six.

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Then it's this who's who of Via, F2, um, Binance, Mara, Spider, Brains, Luxor. You know what's interesting is that, um, they've actually, mempool.space has added more classifications on pools on this page.

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So I'd encourage you to go check it out. So let's go, and let's start with this dashboard, this Dune dashboard from Thesis, um, which hits three of the Bitcoin L2s, and I'll just go through this, uh, sequentially.

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So the first one is Bob from Interlay, uh, Mergemine, side chain, EVM.

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Uh, kind of the, the main narrative I think right now is that most of these L2s are in the kind of early launch phase, the, um, farming, the testnet, the, uh, draw-in testnet liquidity, uh, for an imminent, uh, twenty twenty-four mainnet launch.

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That's kind of the main theme going on here. So Bob here has, uh, three hundred million TVL. They're currently doing their, uh, Spice farming program, which is interesting.

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Um, you can see that according to the roadmap here, they're- they've completed phase one, bootstrapping Bob, optimistic ETH rollup, um, with, uh, uh, the target to move to phase two soon.

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But right now they are currently in the, uh, Spice farming phase. This means you can mint NFTs. They have this kind of summer of NFT Spice program going on.

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Um, so three hundred million dollars TVL, depending on which site you look at, it's three hundred million or something like two eighty billion. I haven't actually dived into the specifics here. Um, the next one is Meso.

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Um, Meso, uh, if you-- They've got a whole leaderboard program. You bridge assets to Meso, um, using I believe their TB- TC bridge, and, uh, you can farm, you know, points. Again, it's like a points meta right now.

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Uh, farm points, uh, accrue, uh, tokens on these other chains, uh, as they roll out either a mainnet or a kind of exit bridge option.

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I think the interesting thing that I saw from Meso this week is that they, uh, uh, quote, "Continue to build Bitcoin Fi with Curve Finance's Curve USD."

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So you can bridge over more like the primary kind of DeFi stablecoin, uh, structures over there. So you can bridge your Curve. Maybe that Curve guy who bought that house will want to go use Meso.

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Um, and then the other one, uh, Merlin, the bottom of this, uh, uh, the bottom of this, uh, dashboard here, twenty-two thousand staked Bitcoin, a h- hundred thirty-three thousand staked ETH.

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Again, not much has changed since the last week. We saw a, about a third of the assets leave when they opened up the exit bridge. Um, but Merlin is kind of like a who's...

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Uh, not even a who's who, but it's, it's kind of just like this massive list of all these apps which-Again, in kind of finger quotes, plug into Merlin.

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Um, this will be a good opportunity for me to point to our friends over at Bitcoin Layers who are going through and classifying, like, trust assumptions, uh, risk models, and classifications for these. Um, uh,

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I will just point out, Merlin, uh, is considered to be high risk, uh, among pretty much all measured categories here. But Merlin is also the biggest. I mean, one point five billion dollars equivalent on, um...

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Sorry, one point three billion dollars equivalent in TVL on this chain. So let's go to stuff that's not on this dashboard. Botanix Laz. Botanix, theee, uh, the, the implementing Spider chain. Last month, uh, in May...

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Well, I guess that was two months ago. May, it crossed over a million testnet transactions. They've been doing, again, some deal flow, like, uh, some runes projects, particularly RuneMine.

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Um, some content across the space. Uh, strategic partnership with Lorenzo. Lorenzo seems to be making strategic partnerships with a lot of people.

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Um, I think the other interesting thing is, so, you know, I look at, like, how these different side chains or these different L2s communicate their roadmap going forwards.

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And so Botanix, uh, has been in their testnet v0 for a while, and currently, uh, in the testnet v1, uh, evolution, uh, towards their mainnet launch. Um, they did have to delay their mainnet launch a little bit.

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It was targeted, I believe, in September. Now it's gonna be targeted... Uh, it was, uh, originally targeted, uh, this summer, but now is targeted in early September, just due to their audit taking a little bit longer.

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But you know what's interesting? And I, I do point out, again, disclosure, I'm an angel investor in Botanix.

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Um, they have a pretty clearly communicated, like, uh, roadmap of, uh, of increasingly decentralized, uh, structuring and, uh, reduced trust assumptions with kind of each, uh, stage along their roadmap.

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Um, the next one is Babylon. Um, I'm not gonna be able to cover everything this one obvious- this time, obviously. But, um, uh, Babylon is kind of the other... one of the, the big, uh, Bitcoin layer twos.

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Still in the testnet phase. Babylon is kind of a deal flow machine right now. Um, I think also, again, a Lorenzo protocol, uh,

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uh, announce, you know, pa- uh, work, uh, announcement as they're, as they're integrating these, uh, these partnerships.

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Um, I think my favorite, uh, my favorite, uh, thing that Babylon is doing, uh, is that they're hiring a chief of memes.

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So if you've made it this far, ten minutes into this Bitcoin Season 2 episode, and you don't really care about Bitcoin L2s, but you like memes, maybe you go hit this up. They're hiring a chief meme officer.

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Um, you'll have to be a little technical. You have to, uh, craft ex- an exquisite meme on, meme on the Bic- Babylon self-custodial staking, slashing, and extractable one-time signatures.

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So extractable one-time signature meme enthusiasts, go check this out. [chuckles] Um, the Babylon staking dashboard, I think it looks like they have, uh, seven hundred staked, uh, Bitcoin on Signet.

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Um, I'm kind of breezing through this. If you think that this is an interesting topic to, for me to do a little more, uh, research and updates on the Bitcoin L2 ecosystem, let me know, because I think this is...

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I'd like to start covering this more in depth. Um, and then, uh, last on Bitcoin L2s, uh, I'm, uh, is the Lightning Network.

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I'm just gonna show a simple chart here, which is just, um, Bitcoin, which we estimate the total Lightning Network capacity.

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Um, Bitcoin on the Lightning Network, Li- Lightning Network is estimated to be over five thousand, which is a TVL of over three hundred million dollars on the Lightning Network.

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Um, compare that to this other dashboard on Meso here, where you got, again, three hundred million on Bob, uh, a hundred thirty on Meso, um, one point three on Merlin. So,

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um, three hundred million on Lightning, it's ki- it's, it, it's what most people would say is the strongest def- uh, L2 by definition. Again, this is a broad, hand-wavy term here.

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I'm using it just to communicate that I'm talking about things which abstract from Bitcoin. Um, let's move on to Ordinals and Runes.

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Um, I'm just gonna do this really quickly. Uh, we're just gonna go just to Domo's dashboard here for the Ordinals. Um, we're closing in on three million trades, four point two million...

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billion, I'm sorry, in total, uh, volume across all these secondary marketplaces. And, um, transactions are flat from last week. So transactions and volume are pretty flat from last week.

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Not a lot of change in the, like, landscape of who is, uh, you know, in the, in the volume or activity on who's trading Ordinals, inscriptions back and forth. Um, it's again, a similar story as last week.

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Um, we see Magic Eden kind of eating the, uh, dominance of the marketplaces. OKX, uh, in a close second right now. Uh, user growth, unique users, has, uh, slowed down a bit.

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Again, Ordinals and Runes have felt pretty dead for the past two months, um, with a couple events where they maybe sneak back, poke their head back in, and a little bit of volume comes back.

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So on that note, um, let's go to Runes. Geniè Data's Runes market cap. This is just a simple chart here. Total Runes market cap, again, is flat from last week, one point three billion.

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But you know what the difference is?

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The difference this time is, and we go to the Magic Eden dashboard here-The seven-day price, the, the weekly price of the top 10 ord- uh, Runes are up, and they're up pretty tremendous actually.

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We're looking at Billion Dollar Cat, the, the Billy, uh, Billy if you will, with the sunglasses which you put o-over your PFP, up 42%.

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Dog Go To Moon, the largest one, you know, about half, over half, I think, the entire Runes, uh, t- uh, Runes market you have, uh, up 15%. Um, Lobo, Decentralize, Gob up 34%. They released a claiming dashboard as well.

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Wanko Manko down 20%. [laughs] Um, you saw, uh, things like the Runes state machine again. If you were around September of 2023, you saw this goofy BRC-100, like EVM madness. Um,

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uh, this is, uh, just the Runes version of that. It's, uh, just gonna throw it out there, it's vaporware, [laughs] but, uh, you can buy the token, and if you did, you're up tremendous.

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So, um, again, I'm not gonna stay too much longer on that. Um, also just in the... Oh, I forgot to mention the Bitcoin L2 ecosystem. eCash mints are kind of the hot thing in the hardcore Bitcoiner circle.

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Um, it's just a, it's just a Chaumian cash structure where you have a, a custodian who runs the mint... Not a custodian.

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A, a pi- or an operator who runs the mint and issues tokens, and, uh, you can self-custody the tokens, but the mint operator kind of controls the mint and exchange there. So,

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um, I see in the comments I got an ask about no DriveChain.

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I probably would cover DriveChain, but there is not a, you know, this is still in the BIP 300, BIP 301 stage of, are we going to start merge mining DriveChain or not?

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So I, I might cover that if, if, if you feel that that is something I should cover. Moving on, uh, gonna keep this pretty short.

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Um, just in the news this week, uh, I think the news this week is almost all related to, uh, the seminal Bitcoin event in North America, Bitcoin Nashville from Bitcoin Media and Magazine.

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Um, Blockspace Media will be there. We will also be, uh, directly partnered with the Inscribing Nashville conference preceding Bitcoin Nashville. It's kind of the Ordinals-related, uh, conference on Wednesday, July 24th.

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But back to Bitcoin Nashville, um, I don't know if it's officially announced, but you can kind of tell that Donald Trump is probably gonna be at this conference.

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Love him or hate him, he is now back front and center of the narrative. Four years later, you can't get rid of him.

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So, uh, you-- I would expect Bitcoin Nashville to lean a little more political this year and, 'cause David Bailey, you know, the Bitcoin Magazine, BC Media guy, is being very, very vocal about, um,

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about advocating for Bitcoin at the national level.

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So, um, yeah, you've got RFK there, you've got Snowden, you've got some obviously crossover people like Russell Brand or, um, some senators, so that's gonna be interesting to watch.

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And, um, otherwise, uh, I'm gonna wrap it up there.

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If you liked this Bitcoin L2 review, again, I kinda breezed through it, if you'd like me to focus more on this going forwards, let me know in the comments and, uh, I can perhaps structure this in a...

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and package this in a better way. So otherwise, thank you so much for tuning in to Bitcoin Season 2. Check out the other Blockspace Media podcasts, Gort Show, Mining Pod, and our newsletter at blockspace.media.

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Otherwise, catch you later.

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[outro music]