Ryan and David’s Top Ten Episodes

Bankless Onchain just brought nearly the entire Bankless Podcast onchain, over 800 episodes are now available as Zora Open Editions for 60 days only. We’ll continue minting new episodes of the podcast moving forward.

But there’s more…

As a token of appreciation for your support, all Phase I collectors who previously collected one or more episodes have been airdropped Ryan and David’s ten favorite episodes from the archives. Check your wallet by connecting your wallet to Zora: https://zora.co/[insert_your_wallet_address]

Read on for RSA’s commentary below on why we chose these ten episodes!

Legitimacy | Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik comes to us as a philosopher to explain legitimacy – the hidden force that coordinates all of our social technologies from governments to religions to money systems. The scarcest asset in crypto is legitimacy. I thought about this episode for months.

Governance and Capital | Joel Monegro

“Who controls capital?” has been a driving question of our modern era and the various answers to this question have spawned the wars, revolutions, and reforms that have shaped our modern world. This episode changed the way I thought about the tokens I held.

Masterclass On Money | Lyn Alden

We’ve done many episodes with Lyn Alden but this one on her book, “Broken Money” tied them all together. No one has a better way of explaining the history of money and how it’s led the crypto revolution. One of my top 5 episode recommendations to send to your crypto-curious friends.

What’s an Etherean? | Nic Carter

This was an early episode, just months into our podcast, and our very first episode with Nic Carter. In the years to since, Nic has gone on to become our #2 most frequent guest (#1 is still Vitalik). At the time Bankless was considered an Ethereum tribe podcast while Nic was squarely entrenched in the Bitcoin tribe and Orange Coin vs Blue Coin vitriol was at all-time highs, so naturally we started with the question – “Nic, do you consider yourself an Etherean?” I love Nic.

Ultra Scalable Ethereum – Modular vs Monolithic Blockchains

One of the big ideas in crypto over the past decade is “the Modular chain thesis”. I have to credit the pseudonymous crypto writer and analyst Polynya almost entirely for helping us be so early to this – we synthesized their writing to create this episode – it was a fairly new and revolutionary concept in 2021 and I think this episode basically charts the architectural trajectory for crypto for the next decade at least.

The Psychology of Crypto | Morgan Housel

If you listen to one podcast episode on investing, make it this one. Investing is more of a personality disposition than a skill. Your own psychology will try to hijack you at every turn, so you have to counteract your monkey brain and choose wisdom. Apply these lessons with patience – this is the path to becoming a Warren Buffet of crypto.

Rise of the Network State | Balaji Srinivasan

We aren’t just building a new money system, we’re building state-level coordination systems as powerful as the Nation States that proceeded them. We’ve called these digital nations, Balaji calls them “Network States.” This concept changed everything about how I view Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Why DeFi is the Future | Mark Cuban

This makes the list because it was so huge for Bankless at the time. It was early 2021, Bankless was less than a year old, and billionaire and business celebrity Mark Cuban outs himself as a crypto supporter and DeFi user on our little podcast – live streamed. This episode has been viewed almost 1 million times.

The Power of Mimetic Desire | Luke Burgis

People want things because other people want them. That’s the concept behind mimetic desire and explains 90% of the behavior we see in crypto. Luke is a master at explaining how this works. Once you see mimetic desire, you see it everywhere. A must-listen.

5 Mental Models for Web3 | Chris Dixon

Another episode to send to your crypto-curious friends. Dixon is a legendary internet investor and master of mental models, and explains crypto through the lens of three phases of the internet. Web1: Read. Web 2: Write. Web3: Own. Much of the content from this 2021 episode was expounded upon in Chris’s 2024 book entitled “Read Write Own”. We front-ran the opportunity. 

We couldn’t be more excited to share this next chapter of Bankless Onchain with you.

Happy collecting!