Bankless

Rory Johnston, the “oil quant,” joins us to explain why the Hormuz crisis could become the biggest oil shock in history.

Oil markets are already screaming. Supply is trapped, inventories are being drained, and the market may still be underpricing the scale of the disruption. 

If the Strait stays closed, Rory says the path to $200 oil is no longer crazy. It may be the next stop.

This is oil, geopolitics, inflation, and markets all colliding at once.

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💰NEXO | YIELD + CREDIT LINE

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🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:17 What is a Barrel of Oil?

7:04 How is Oil Transported?

8:24 Is Oil Fungible?

13:25 Oil Then Vs Now

17:10 Peak Oil?

24:59 Hydrocarbon World Distribution

29:32 What is Spare Capacity?

32:14 Inventories in the Buffer System

35:04 Oil Futures

38:59 Oil Curve

44:51 Economic Implications of Oil Markets

48:48 Straight of Hormuz

55:30 Future Oil Price Action

1:03:53 Steelmanning the Market Reaction

1:13:23 When will the Straight Open?

1:21:57 Is the USA Winning?

1:27:49 Pressuring Iran

1:31:48 Signals to Watch

1:33:36 Fast Forward to 2050

1:38:38 Closing & Disclaimers

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RESOURCES

Rory Johnston

https://x.com/Rory_Johnston 

Commodity Context

https://www.commoditycontext.com/ 

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Has Bitcoin already bottomed, or are investors still looking at the wrong signals? Jordi Visser joins Bankless to argue that AI is destroying software moats, reshaping inflation, and pushing capital toward scarce assets, with Bitcoin at the center of that shift. We get into his “AI is the new QE” thesis, the scarcity-versus-abundance portfolio, why the S&P may struggle in an AI regime, what a more muted Bitcoin cycle looks like, and where he still sees upside across the rest of crypto.

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💰NEXO | YIELD + CREDIT LINE
https://bankless.cc/nexo

🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY
https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro
2:07 Jordi’s bold Bitcoin call
4:18 The AI endgame lands at Bitcoin
9:26 Bitcoin as the purest AI trade
12:49 SaaSpocalypse, quantum fear, and the private credit risk
20:49 AI is the new QE
26:55 Inflation, deflation, and the scarcity squeeze
34:28 What happens to stocks from here
44:24 Is AI a bubble?
48:17 The Bitcoin IPO and muted cycles
1:01:01 Has Bitcoin already bottomed?
1:09:03 The broken social pact
1:13:21 The rest of crypto, from ETH to stablecoins
1:17:29 Inside the scarcity portfolio
1:20:42 Jensen vs. Dwarkesh, China, and the chip war
1:27:42 Jordi’s AI stack and where to follow his work

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RESOURCES

Jordi Visser
https://x.com/jvisserlabs

Jordi’s Substack
https://substack.com/@visserlabs

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Markets are hitting new highs, but crypto just took a major hit. Ryan and David break down the $300M KelpDAO exploit and why it exposed deeper flaws across DeFi and Layer 2s, including Arbitrum’s controversial decision to freeze funds. They also explore whether AI will drive deflation or inequality, unpack a new bullish ETH thesis, and debate why the biggest risks in crypto may be building beneath the surface.

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🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY

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💰NEXO | YIELD + CREDIT LINE

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🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS

https://thedefireport.io/bankless

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TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES

0:00 Intro

1:57 Markets Still Bullish?

https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/2047282771664453641

https://thewolfden.substack.com/p/strategy-owns-more-btc-than-blackrock

https://x.com/SecScottBessent/status/2046703137541837285

https://polymarket.com/event/us-x-iran-permanent-peace-deal-by/?via=bankless?

https://x.com/danielisdizzy/status/2047037188500554010 

https://x.com/MikeZaccardi/status/2045855067710914995

https://polymarket.com/event/kevin-warsh-confirmed-as-fed-chair-by-may-15/?via=bankless?

https://polymarket.com/event/fed-rate-cut-by-629/?via=bankless?

https://x.com/ylecun/status/2045610129119117574

https://x.com/pdmsero/status/2046943519101661561

https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2045675498529808886

https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2046071375446606125

27:32 KelpDAO $300M Exploit & DeFi Fallout

https://www.galaxy.com/insights/research/kelpdao-layerzero-exploit-defi

https://defillama.com/protocol/aave-v3

https://x.com/LayerZero_Core/status/2046081551574983137

https://x.com/0xdoug/status/2045988844718453186

https://x.com/arbitrum/status/2046435443680346189

http://l2beat.com/scaling/projects/arbitrum

https://x.com/TheCryptoNexus/status/2046569510442787209

https://x.com/0xfluid/status/2046971208550486244

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/spark

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/aave

50:26 Productive Money ETH Thesis

https://thewolfden.substack.com/p/the-250k-eth-thesis-sounds-great

55:28 Prediction Markets & Perps Expansion & Tether $344M Freeze

https://x.com/polymarket/status/2046653304810156283/?via=bankless?

https://polymarket.com/perps/?via=bankless?

https://x.com/aaronjmars/status/2047017251270734309

https://polymarket.com/event/highest-temperature-in-paris-on-april-23-2026/?via=bankless?

https://tether.io/news/tether-supports-freeze-of-more-than-344-million-in-usdt-in-coordination-with-ofac-and-u-s-law-enforcement

1:00:11 MegaETH & New Chain Activity

https://x.com/bread_/status/2047336293462589788

https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/monad

1:01:52 Device-Level KYC / Surveillance State

https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2044491861125996617

https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/2045232433197695392

1:06:58 Closing & Disclaimers

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

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A $280M DeFi exploit exposed the hidden fragility of crypto’s most trusted systems.

Dan Elitzer and Odysseus break down how the attack happened, why bridge risk and protocol composability made the damage so severe, what Arbitrum’s intervention means for immutability, and why DeFi now needs an aerospace-grade security mindset to survive the AI era.

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🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY

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💰NEXO | YIELD + CREDIT LINE

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🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS

https://thedefireport.io/bankless

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:57 Worst DeFi Hack Ever?

7:01 What Happened?

10:11 How Sophisticated?

11:42 Explaining the Hack to TradFi

16:51 Who’s to Blame?

22:13 L2 Architecture Consequences

28:17 How Does it Get Resolved?

31:46 Circuit Breakers & Rate Limiters

34:05 AAVE V4

34:51 Arbitrum Intervention Implications

42:02 Code is Law vs Human Governance

51:59 Stage 1 vs Stage 2 Rollups

55:29 Post-Hack DeFi

1:03:05 Aerospace Level Security

1:09:49 Will DeFi Survive?

1:14:33 Closing & Disclaimers

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RESOURCES

Dan Elitezer 

https://x.com/delitzer 

Odysseus

https://x.com/odysseas_eth 

Odysseus Article

https://x.com/odysseas_eth/status/2019833220431507504 

Phylax Systems

https://phylax.systems/ 

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Ethereum may be one of the most underappreciated assets.

In this conversation, Michael McGuiness and Vivek Raman lay out the case for ETH as “productive money”, a monetary asset with the store-of-value properties of gold and Bitcoin, plus the ability to compound through network activity.

We unpack the $250K ETH thesis, why traditional DCF models miss the bigger picture, and why Ethereum’s role as the settlement layer for a tokenized economy could unlock massive monetary premium.

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💰NEXO | YIELD + CREDIT LINE

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🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY

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🌐BRIX | EMERGING MARKET YIELD

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

4:45 $250K ETH?

6:04 How to Price ETH

8:15 ETH’s Monetary Premium

10:25 What Differentiates ETH

13:54 The Path to $250K ETH

16:35 Menger’s Monetary Attributes

20:28 Scarcity

24:58 Fungibility

26:43 Divisibility

27:45 Portability

28:28 Durability

34:30 Verifiability

35:27 Censorship Resistance

37:00 ETH is Productive Money

41:39 How is ETH Productive?

46:40 Ethereum’s Tollbooth

51:28 Counterparty Risk

53:48 Productive Money vs Dead Capital

58:03 Pitching Productive Money to Wall Street

1:00:08 Why is ETH Underappreciated?

1:04:19 Wall Street ETH Investors

1:11:28 Other L1s

1:14:06 Why Not Just Buy the S&P?

1:15:00 Ethereum Technical Risks

1:17:20 How Does ETH Get to $250K?

1:23:18 Closing & Disclaimers

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RESOURCES

ETH is Productive Money

https://www.productivemoney.org/ 

Michael McGuiness

https://x.com/mikemcg0 

Vivek Raman

https://x.com/VivekVentures 

Etherealize

https://www.etherealize.com/ 

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠