Bankless hosts weigh cyber chaos against JPMorgan's first-ever Bitcoin call

Markets slide from "Uptober" into "Black October"

Ryan and David describe Bitcoin briefly recovering into the green on Wednesday, hitting $84,800, before three negative catalysts hit: reports that the US and Israel plan to strike Iran again, Brent crude rising to $115 a barrel, and a wave of cybersecurity vulnerabilities crashing onto the internet. Iran's state television reportedly claimed seven oil tankers caught fire after strikes, a figure the hosts say they cannot verify. They also note jitters in Asian stock markets and AI capex concerns following Meta's earnings, framing a broader risk-off mood beyond crypto.

Despite the pullback, the hosts argue crypto was "moving up under its own steam" before the negative headlines hit. David cites a report from Michael Nado's DeFi Report arguing the market remains in an early bull phase, still above the 50-week moving average, with Bitcoin up about 40% against the Nasdaq since the July 30th bottom this year. Nado's analysis of past cycles suggests buying at the 2017 bottom returned roughly 7,000% versus Nasdaq, while buying the 2021 top left an investor roughly 30% behind Nasdaq at this point — illustrating how entry timing within a cycle drives outcomes.

JPMorgan puts Bitcoin at the top of its long-term forecast

David highlights that JPMorgan included Bitcoin for the first time in its long-term capital market assumptions report, projecting a 10% annualized return over a 10-to-15-year horizon — above US real estate (8.2%), stocks (7.5%), bonds (5.6%), gold (5.5%) and cash (3.2%). The hosts contrast this with past comments from CEO Jamie Dimon, who called Bitcoin "a fraud worse than Tulips" in 2017 and "Pet Rock" at Davos in 2024. Matt Hougan is quoted reacting to the shift: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they add you to their long-term capital markets assumptions paper and predict you'll be the best performing asset of the next decade."

On ETH/BTC, Ryan notes the ratio broke above 0.33 before falling back to around 0.0293, continuing to sit within a range he estimates as roughly 0.2 to 0.4. David argues Ethereum has underperformed for three reasons: a confused narrative around fees rather than store-of-value, L2s becoming "side quests," and fewer blockchain use cases materializing than expected five years ago. Still, he says Ethereum remains "one of the best positioned digital store of values" given multisig infrastructure, privacy protocols like Railgun and 0x privacy, and a quantum-resistant roadmap, though he concedes the narrative "hasn't kicked for it."

New "fix Bitcoin" tokens and legacy privacy coins outperform

Ryan flags Pearl, up 31% on the week, as part of a wave of 2017-style "let's take Bitcoin but fix it" coins, trading at a fully diluted valuation of roughly $4.5 billion with about $750 million circulating, despite a fixed 21 million supply. He describes its design as replacing Bitcoin's proof-of-work with AI inference, likening it to merge mining. A similar token, Quantis, a "post-quantum Bitcoin" backed by Naval, trades near a $1.9 billion valuation.

Lighter rose 25% after its Q3 investor call, where the team said it will file in November for CFTC DCM and DCO licenses. David quotes a line from founder Vlad: "as soon as we have these licenses in place we'll be able to integrate it in different part of Robinhood's US offering." Venice rose 20% after 21Shares launched a Venice token ETP backed by VVV on the Swiss stock exchange with about $1.5 million in AUM. Zcash was up 14% on the week, while Monero, described by the hosts as a "dino coin," hit prior all-time highs and rose about 20%, which they attribute to its single-feature "Bitcoin plus privacy" design.

A global PHP vulnerability triggers an internet-wide scramble

The hosts describe what they call possibly "the worst week for cybersecurity maybe ever," triggered by two critical PHP vulnerabilities. The NSA tweeted that organizations using PHP should be prepared for an emergency update, warning the flaws "often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database." Japan's prime minister issued a similar public warning. David notes PHP underlies an estimated 30 to 40% of websites, including Wikipedia and WordPress, and that the exploit was reportedly found via GPT model testing, with OpenAI's "patch the planet" program having coordinated quietly with the PHP Foundation for roughly two months before disclosure.

Ryan reads a viral anecdote about a company discovering forgotten PHP servers, including one nicknamed "PHP old do not touch" running payroll, to illustrate how fragile internet infrastructure can be.

"The internet isn't held together with code. It is held together with servers everyone is afraid to turn off."

One unnamed AI researcher is cited comparing the moment to March 1st, 2020, the onset of COVID awareness. David also cites an Axios report that major US banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts attempting independent actions, and both hosts debate whether crypto's "hardened," adversarial-native infrastructure or traditional banks' KYC-based systems would respond faster to AI-driven exploits — reaching no firm conclusion.

A fusion startup's gold claim raises questions about gold's scarcity premium

David discusses a tweet from Marathon Fusion claiming it turned mercury into "real stable gold," beating CERN's 2025 record by a factor of ten. He cites Nick Carter's reaction:

"This is gold's quantum FUD, but it's way worse because you can't software update gold."

David estimates that a mid-sized 1.5-gigawatt fusion plant could produce roughly three tons of gold a year as a byproduct, and that scaling fusion to replace existing nuclear capacity could meaningfully add to, potentially even double, yearly gold supply — though he stresses this remains speculative and likely years away, possibly materializing in the 2030s or 2040s.

David draws a parallel to silver's historical devaluation after Spanish discovery of New World silver mines, arguing gold's "Lindy" status rests on scarcity that could in principle be punctured. Both hosts conclude that store-of-value investing should mean holding a portfolio of digital and physical assets rather than any single one, with Ryan joking he thinks "you can go all in on Zcash for that."

Regulators side with crypto on stablecoin rewards, and infrastructure updates land

The hosts note the OCC finalized Genius Act implementation rules, which take effect in January. They say stablecoin issuers still cannot pay interest directly but can continue offering "stablecoin rewards," a mechanism the American Bankers Association has lobbied against. Ryan reads a line describing the OCC's approach as assessing rewards arrangements "case by case" without blanket approval, calling the outcome a win for crypto because banking lobbyists are unhappy with it.

Separately, the hosts cover two infrastructure updates: Alpenglow went live on Solana mainnet, cutting finality from about 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds and raising fault tolerance from 33% to 40%, which Ryan calls a smooth rollout. On Ethereum, Aerodrome and Velodrome merged into a single token called Arrow, with existing holders needing to upgrade; both hosts say the consolidation is overdue after past confusion from multiple related tokens.