Unchained

Rob Hadick guest-hosts for a second week with Tom and Robert, joined by Nemil Dalal of Y Combinator. Hours before the show, Binance lost an estimated $5 billion in what looks like the largest hack in crypto history, Circle and Tether froze funds faster than anyone expected, YC lays out its crypto Request for Startups, and ICE signs with trade.xyz to bring regulated perps built on Hyperliquid's technology to US customers. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Rob Hadick is back for a second week, and Nemil Dalal of Y Combinator returns as a repeat guest. 🔹 The hosts planned to skip hacks this week. Three hours before the show, Binance was hit for an estimated $5 billion, three times the largest hack in crypto history. 🔹 Tom says the attack looks tied to how Binance managed EIP-7702 delegation, letting an attacker generate signatures and withdraw funds by proxy. 🔹 Circle and Tether froze the stolen stablecoins within hours. Nemil says the USDC team literally practiced for moments like this. 🔹 Tom compares freeze requests to social media takedown requests: Circle can't adjudicate thousands of claims a day, but a call from Binance is high signal. 🔹 Robert asks why, four and a half years after 2022, no team has shipped a genuinely different architecture for DeFi protocols, even as the forest gets darker. 🔹 Rob says his stablecoin and TradFi crossover founders barely felt the hack, and Nemil warns that every financial crisis is about interconnection. 🔹 Nemil runs through YC's crypto Request for Startups: tokenization, new financial primitives, agents that need APIs, and raising capital for AI on-chain. 🔹 Rob calls it the bull run, but not the bull run the crypto people want. Nemil says he has to steal that. 🔹 Robert asks if it's better to build pre-cool or post-cool, and rules that crypto is post-cool, which makes it pre-cool again. 🔹 Nemil says every personal agent will have a credit card, while stablecoins win where payments are global and micro, like Cloudflare's pay-to-crawl. 🔹 ICE signs a definitive agreement with trade.xyz to bring regulated perps built on Hyperliquid's technology to US customers, pending CFTC approval. 🔹 Stan Druckenmiller tweets about Hyperliquid, and Robert says nobody likes ADL, Druckenmiller least of all. 🔹 Robert argues perps are a superior form factor to dated futures for everything, and that the institutional gap is credit risk. 🔹 Robert marvels that crypto went from Byzantine generals to talking about credit risk. Hosts ⭐️Rob Hadick, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Guest ⭐️Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y CombinatorDisclosures Timestamps  00:00 Cold Open 00:30 Intro 01:42 The $5B Binance Hack 04:40 Circle's Fast Freeze 10:57 Where's the New DeFi? 19:48 YC's Crypto Wishlist 26:38 The Wrong Bull Run 36:53 Is Crypto Just AI Rails? 40:18 ICE x Hyperliquid 51:45 Perps vs. Dated Futures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Galaxy's Alex Thorn argues Bitcoin bottomed in late June. While macro funds exit, sovereign wealth funds buy and AI pushes debasement, he says now makes a good entry point. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who finishes it gets a free month of Premium, Unchained or Bits + Bips, your pick. Open through Sunday, November 8. — Laura ======================================================== Bitcoin has now traded five or six weeks above its 50-week moving average. In every prior bear market, Alex Thorn says, that signal meant the bottom was already in, and he believes this one came in late June. Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, walks Laura Shin through his essay "Why Now Is the Time to Add and Hold BTC," including 13F filings showing Millennium and D.E. Shaw cutting Bitcoin ETF exposure while Mubadala and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management added, and long-dormant coins waking up at 34,000 BTC a month in 2026, down from 67,000 in 2024. He argues a $40 trillion national debt and a credit-funded AI buildout make the debasement case stronger than at the October high, then names the tripwires that would break his thesis, from a sustained drop below the 50-week average to a quantum computer. With conferences full of tokenization panels, being long Bitcoin may be the contrarian trade. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Thorn - Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro 📋 00:29 Unchained Survey: complete the listener survey at https://unchainedcrypto.com/survey 🎙️ 01:28 Bits + Bips: search Bits + Bips and subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 🧭 01:50 Why Alex says retaking the 50-week average means Bitcoin bottomed in June 🏦 06:36 Who sold and who bought: macro funds out, sovereign wealth funds in 💳 12:19 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow funds against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt 🐋 13:09 Why fewer old coins are waking up in 2026, and what that means for supply 💵 16:42 Why Alex says the debasement case is stronger than at the October high 🕵️ 19:56 Why Alex sees Bitcoin as an exit from an AI-powered surveillance state 🧱 23:48 Why Alex sees the tokenization boom as a contrarian signal to buy Bitcoin ⚠️ 29:31 The tripwires that would invalidate Alex's bottom call 🎯 34:09 Alex's $125K target and his $250K call for the end of 2027 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthropic's S-1 shows the company is still burning cash. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan say the bigger risk is a founder voting bloc that has to vote together. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at⁠⁠ Nexo⁠⁠. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who finishes it gets a free month of Premium, Unchained or Bits + Bips, your pick. Open through Sunday, November 8. — Laura ======================================================== Anthropic has filed its S-1, and Kain Warwick stacks it up against Google's 2004 IPO: $12 billion in revenue in Q2 2026 alone and $8.7 million in revenue per employee. What jumped out at him, though, was governance: 7 founders holding 50% of the voting shares in a side pot that has to vote together. Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith say crypto has run this experiment before. Monahan calls the founders' sense of moral superiority Anthropic's biggest risk, and Griffith compares the bloc to every multisig that stalled once the incentives to coordinate faded. The hosts also cover how AI models started sending bug bounty disputes to SEAL 911, an AI result that says "ETH is false," Keystone's leaked device signing key, phishing emails sent from Foundation's own mail system, and why Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade was cancelled. In what Warwick calls one of the most dangerous times to be in crypto, the safest move may be doing less. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro 📋 00:38 Unchained Survey: complete the listener survey at https://unchainedcrypto.com/survey 🎙️ 01:40 Bits + Bips: search Bits + Bips and subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 📈 02:08 Anthropic's S-1: how $12B in Q2 revenue stacks up against Google's IPO 🗳️ 10:27 Why Kain thinks Anthropic's 7-founder voting bloc is destined to blow up 🤖 23:24 Austin on why AI answers could become winner-take-all like Google search 🚨 27:41 How AI models started sending bug bounty disputes to SEAL 911 🏦 30:50 Nexo: generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow funds against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt 🧮 31:32 'AI says ETH is false': why AI chipping away at hard math matters 🎓 46:06 Will kids still go to college? Austin, Tay, and Kain on parenting with AI 🔑 49:52 Are hardware wallets bad again? Keystone's leaked device signing key ☎️ 54:13 Why nobody legit in crypto will ever call you, and Kain's OTC scam story 📧 01:01:17 Foundation's hacked mail system and a phishing site too polished to be real 🧘 01:07:50 Don't panic: Kain's 'personal Lindy' and Tay's case for doing less ⛽ 01:11:12 Austin's 'smooth brain take' on why Glamsterdam was cancelled 🐜 01:18:33 OpenAI's Terra 6.1 and the agent armies battling on AntWars.ai Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can the US fight AI-powered hackers and North Korea by deputizing its private sector? Two government veterans explain why the answer is yes and no. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who finishes it gets a free month of Premium, Unchained or Bits + Bips, your pick. Open through Sunday, November 8. — Laura ======================================================== North Korea has stolen more than $1 billion in crypto this year, AI-driven ransomware attacks have run with no human in the loop, and a single week exposed weak keys and bugs buried in old internet infrastructure. One answer gaining traction in Washington dates to the age of sail: privateering. Chris Giancarlo, former chairman of the CFTC and author of The New Adventures of CryptoDad, proposed reviving letters of marque and reprisal in a Cointelegraph op-ed with Chris Perkins, then pitched it at a White House crypto summit. Giancarlo and Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs, join Laura Shin to unpack the August presidential memo that followed. They cover why the memo lets vetted contractors target scam compounds, cartels, and ransomware gangs but leaves Lazarus Group to the government, how the Prince Group's $15 billion forfeiture shows stolen funds can be clawed back, and how deepfake interviews put DPRK IT workers inside US companies. The final question: does hitting back make the problem bigger? Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠J. Christopher Giancarlo - Former Chairman of the US CFTC ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ari Redbord - Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro 📋 01:01 Unchained Survey: take the listener survey for a free month of Premium at https://unchainedcrypto.com/survey  🎙️ 02:02 Find Bits + Bips’ new channels and subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  🚨 02:40 Why Redbord says AI-run ransomware is now a civilization-level threat 📜 05:29 Letters of marque: how Giancarlo and Perkins proposed reviving them 💰 10:24 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow funds against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt  🏛️ 11:14 How crypto privateering went from an op-ed to a White House memo 🛑 16:50 Why the memo bars privateers from going after Lazarus Group 🕸️ 23:04 What hacking back looks like: scam compound infrastructure and clawbacks 🔓 35:24 PHP bugs and weak eMudhra keys: privateering as risks multiply 🇰🇵 42:14 North Korea: why the government, not privateers, pulls the trigger 🎭 48:59 How companies can catch North Korean IT workers using deepfakes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week Rob Hadick of Dragonfly sits in for Haseeb as part of a podcast host swap. Tom walks through Black October, 48 hours in which top-severity vulnerabilities dropped across PHP, Node, Railway, and more, and Tarun runs down the rest of the damage, from Linux kernel exploits to Finland shutting down its internet services. Robert argues the blast radius was small for the worst day the web has had, Tarun says crypto was ironically ready first and closed source is the less safe bet, and he explains why defenders had to patch with open source models. Then banks start blocking AI agents: Robert says anything that can click a button terrifies them, Tarun reads Bernie Sanders' call to pause AI, and Rob asks what happened to Occupy Wall Street. Finally, Joe Weisenthal comes around on Hyperliquid, Tom is outed as the onion futures guy, and the hosts weigh a rumored $2.5 billion Visa deal for Fireblocks, 2021's bubble valuations, and where an AI financial crisis would start.   Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.   Show highlights 🔹 Rob Hadick guest-hosts as part of a host swap with Empire's Weekly Roundup, and Tarun says the hosts are finally free of the dictatorship of Haseeb. 🔹 Black October: in 48 hours, critical vulnerabilities hit PHP, Node, and Railway, Cloudflare saw millions of exploit attempts, and European governments took sites offline. 🔹 Tarun adds Linux kernel exploits with no responsible disclosure, a QUIC zero day, a GitLab flaw, and a Chinese state-aligned agent caught exploiting the CVEs in the wild. 🔹 Robert calls it the doomsday batch of security vulnerabilities, and says not that much broke. 🔹 Tarun says crypto was ironically prepared first, and that closed source is the less safe bet because every binary can now be reverse engineered. 🔹 Defenders tried to patch with Claude and got blocked, so open source models were the only way to rotate keys fast, the same reason AI trading agents took off. 🔹 JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Schwab, and Citi are restricting AI agents in customer accounts, after a month of talk about an agentic bank run. 🔹 Robert says banks took a decade to accept read-only Plaid, so anything that can click a button is 10 times as terrifying, and the friction is deliberate. 🔹 Bernie Sanders wants to pause AI to protect your bank account. Robert says he drew the exact opposite conclusion he should have. 🔹 Tarun says everything is crypto now: banks can't tell you from your agent, and that is the point. 🔹 Robert would short health insurance companies, the industry AI should hurt most. 🔹 Joe Weisenthal comes around on Hyperliquid 11 years after blockchain, not Bitcoin. Tom points out that Hyperliquid is not TradFi in any way. 🔹 Visa is rumored to be buying Fireblocks for about $2.5 billion, down from an $8 billion valuation. Robert says January 2022 prices were bubble prices. 🔹 Character.ai burned $16 in compute for every dollar of revenue, and Tarun maps the duration mismatch where an AI financial crisis would start.  Hosts ⭐️Rob Hadick, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate   Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Traders tried to lose money fast to earn PAPER. Now the token may never be transferable, and one tracker shows staking revenue fell 93% in a day. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at ⁠⁠⁠https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn⁠⁠⁠. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who finishes it gets a free month of Premium, Unchained or Bits + Bips, your pick. Open through Sunday, November 8. — Laura ======================================================== PaperTrade drew $140 million in pre-deposits and for one day flipped Nasdaq's daily notional volume by letting traders take up to 1,000x leverage against the house, with a PAPER token as the rebate for losing. Then the team announced it no longer plans to make PAPER transferable. Jason Pagoulatos, Head of Markets at Delphi Research, joins Laura Shin to unpack how the protocol works and why the reversal landed so badly. He walks through the house pool that pays winners from losers' margin, the launch-day trader who pushed ETH around on Hyperliquid to move PaperTrade's price feed, and why a transferable PAPER would invite a larger attack. Pagoulatos says the team's reasoning holds up but calls the change a bait and switch for everyone who deposited under the original rules. With one tracker showing staking revenue down 93% in a day, the conversation ends on what makes any token worth holding: a business that would work without it. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jason Pagoulatos - Head of Markets at Delphi Research Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro ⚡ 02:01 What PaperTrade is and why it briefly flipped Nasdaq's daily volume 🎰 06:46 How PaperTrade's house pool pays winners and mints PAPER for losers 🚀 10:32 Launch week: $140M in pre-deposits and a price-feed play on day one 💰 15:12 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow funds against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt 🔒 15:59 Why promise transferability if the risk was already in the docs? 🔄 17:31 Why PaperTrade shelved plans to make PAPER transferable 📉 24:07 Is PaperTrade over after a 93% one-day drop in staking revenue? 🧱 27:52 Why Jason says tokens should be judged like equity in a real business Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A certificate authority's private key was the number 4 for over a year. Kain, Taylor, and Austin on why the internet's trust schemes are cracking. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at⁠ Nexo⁠. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who finishes it gets a free month of Premium, Unchained or Bits + Bips, your pick. Open through Sunday, November 8. — Laura ======================================================== For more than a year, the private key behind signatures from a certificate authority trusted across the internet was the number 4. Taylor Monahan walks Kain Warwick and Austin Griffith through how eMudhra passed two audits with eight weak keys, and why revoking them now runs on an email thread between Google, Mozilla, and Apple. Kain argues it fits a pattern: schemes that assumed nobody would bother trying, now facing AI agents that never stop. The hosts also cover two remote code execution bugs in PHP, Austin's $1 test that drew three competing theft transactions the moment it landed, papertrade's 1,000x leverage launch and its lose-to-earn token, and why DeepSeek keeps getting cheaper even as DHS bans it for government use. They close on Anthropic, and Kain's case that any frontier lab that turns cash-flow positive would be worth "infinity," a prospect he calls petrifying. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro 🌐 02:07 Why a burst of unrelated internet-breaking bugs landed in the same 48 hours 🔑 05:13 How a certificate authority's private key turned out to be the number 4 📧 17:47 Why revoking bad certificates runs on a literal email thread 🤖 22:52 Kain on why schemes built on human laziness are unraveling against AI 🐘 25:34 PHP to shell: two remote code execution bugs in the language behind the web 🛡️ 33:21 How Cloudflare is shielding unpatched PHP admin panels during the rollout 🎣 36:04 Austin's $1 test: how fast bots drained a weak Ethereum private key 💼 37:44 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow funds against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt 🪣 38:25 papertrade's 1,000x 'bucket shop' and the token you earn by losing 📚 48:55 The mechanism design lessons hidden under DeFi Summer's degeneracy 🐋 52:35 How DeepSeek keeps getting smarter while Kain's API bill fell to $3 a month 🏛️ 57:06 Why DHS banned DeepSeek and why Austin says local models are the safer bet ♾️ 01:05:13 Why Kain says Anthropic gives off SBF vibes and could be 'worth infinity' 🎯 01:14:23 The drained-key update: bots grabbed 10-digit keys, but 12 digits held Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin Drake says crypto should brace for AI breaking elliptic curves before Q-Day. Project Eleven's Alex Pruden and Conor Deegan weigh in on what's actually at risk. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at ⁠⁠https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn⁠⁠. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who finishes it gets a free month of Premium, Unchained or Bits + Bips, your pick. Open through Sunday, November 8. — Laura ======================================================== Ethereum researcher Justin Drake set off a debate across crypto by urging chains to plan for "bunker mode," a controlled migration of assets to addresses whose public keys stay hidden behind a hash. His concern is not only quantum computers, but AI getting good enough at math to break elliptic curves first. Alex Pruden, co-founder and CEO of Project Eleven, and Conor Deegan, its CTO, join Laura Shin to sort out what is at risk. They cover how ECDSA works, why Conor says no scheme in production is broken yet even though Hawk and McEliece fell to AI attacks, why Coinbase's Yehuda Lindell notes hash functions have broken more often than curves, and why NIST still favors lattices. Alex updates his Q-Day window to 2030 at the earliest and 2033 to 2035 as more likely than not. Both argue the post-quantum and post-AI migrations are the same work, and the chains most at risk may be those doing nothing. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Pruden - Co-founder and CEO of Project Eleven Conor Deegan - CTO of Project Eleven Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro 🛡️ 02:20 Why Justin Drake's 'bunker mode' tweet adds AI to quantum as a crypto threat 🔑 06:01 What ECDSA is and why its hidden 'trapdoor' structure worries people about AI 🧮 08:33 Why Conor says no scheme is broken yet, even as two cryptographic schemes fell to AI 🔐 13:06 Matthew Green's encryption warning and why privacy chains like Zcash are exposed 💼 17:20 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow funds against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt ⚖️ 18:04 Where Conor lands between Yehuda Lindell and Justin Drake on AI breaking curves 🏦 25:53 Can blockchains recover if ECDSA breaks? Alex on the ETH Classic fork precedent 🧩 29:59 Curves, lattices, isogenies, or hashes: why NIST still prefers lattices 📅 48:14 Alex's updated Q-Day window and why Conor says 'A-Day' may already be here 🚨 53:05 Haseeb Qureshi's 'cryptographic wartime' and Balaji's rollback idea 🏗️ 58:41 Strongpoint: Project Eleven's crypto-agile custody and pricing quantum risk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A hidden implant read Ledger seed phrases off the screen and sent them out over an eSIM. Mark Karpelès and SEAL 911's Jonty discuss what that means for self-custody. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at ⁠https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn⁠. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== An estimated $100 million or more has been drained from Ledger hardware wallets sold through CryptoBilis, an authorized reseller in Southeast Asia. The devices carried a hidden implant that reads the seed phrase off the screen and sends it out over an eSIM. Jonty, founder of Pangolin Intelligence and a SEAL 911 contributor, and Mark Karpelès, CEO of Karpelès Lab, join Laura Shin to trace how the attack was found and how far it may reach. They cover drains dating back to September 8, a tampered Ledger Flex bought from Metapod at Singapore's airport, the two MediaMarkt devices a buyer in Europe traced to distributor Aqipa, and Tether's $10 million freeze. Mark argues Ledger's manual sends mixed signals by picturing the device's insides while warning that opening it voids the warranty, then opens a Nano X on camera to show what to look for. The open question is whether self-custody's best defense against malware has become its newest attack surface. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mark Karpelès - CEO of Karpelès Lab Inc. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jonty - Founder of Pangolin Intelligence and Contributor to SEAL 911 Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro 🚨 03:50 How Jonty spotted the Ledger drains through SEAL 911 victim reports 📡 05:52 How the implant reads a 24-word seed phrase and sends it out by eSIM 🛫 11:33 Mark on the spy implant he found in a Ledger Flex bought in Singapore 🕵️ 15:16 CryptoBilis or a distributor? Mark and Jonty on who could be behind it 📣 17:38 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt 🇪🇺 18:19 MediaMarkt and Aqipa: has the Ledger implant reached Europe? 🛒 27:00 Buying direct vs. through a reseller, and why Vietnam needs resellers 🔐 31:30 Ledger's 'tamper-proof' notice and whether self-custody is dead 🔧 36:45 Mark opens a Nano X on camera to show how to check for an implant 🧊 40:33 Tether's $10M freeze and why Jonty says recovery could take years Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Ledger reseller's devices shipped with a hidden LTE modem inside. Taylor Monahan lays out how it passed the genuine check and why panicking now costs more. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at Nexo. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. ⁠⁠⁠Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Genuine Ledger devices sold through the reseller CryptoBilis shipped with an LTE chip and eSIM wired inside, intercepting seed phrases on their way to the screen. The losses are estimated at $70 million to $100 million over roughly four months. Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith trace how the implant passed Ledger's genuine check, why panicked users are now losing money to phishing and fake apps, and whether an iPhone or a DIY build makes a better hardware wallet. They also cover the recording device planted in OpenAI's office, the decade-old XRP infinite mint bug that earned a $250K bounty, and why Taylor finds Google's Chrome payouts and $40K compute bills the more interesting math. Then StarkNet's talk of becoming an L1 turns into a debate over whether Ethereum will need L2s at all. Kain's answer: the most Ethereum-equivalent chain is Ethereum itself. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Timestamps 🎬 00:00 Intro  🔐 01:32 Why a Ledger reseller became the entry point for a supply chain attack 📡 09:15 Taylor on how the CryptoBilis attack moved past fake devices and scratchers 🧯 19:01 Why Taylor says panicked Ledger owners now face the bigger risk 💸 20:17 Why Austin sees DIY hardware wallets as the future 🕵️ 30:34 How Taylor “demixed” Zcash by following the gas trail 📣 34:52 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow funds against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt  🎙️ 35:37 What the bug planted in OpenAI's office says about AI espionage 🛠️ 41:42 Austin's homemade Alexa, blood wallet, and AI-run electronics bench 🪙 48:04 Why a decade-old XRP infinite mint bug points to AI-assisted hunting 🧮 51:04 Is $250K enough? Taylor compares the XRP bounty to Google's Chrome payout ⛓️ 01:00:30 StarkNet wants to become an L1: why Kain thinks that's where L2s end up 🏚️ 01:11:03 How MegaETH shows why L2 ecosystems struggle to keep their apps Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The boys regroup after TOKEN2049. Ledgers sold through CryptoBilis, an authorized reseller in Malaysia, came with an LTE implant that read seed phrases off the screen, an OpenAI engineer was caught with a listening device, Papertrade launches 1000x perps where losing money mints you tokens, and the hosts argue over Nikita Bier's claim that technical moats are dead. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week is a late-night episode recorded right after TOKEN2049. The hosts compare notes on a TOKEN2049 with zero Lambos and a quiet Marquee, then get into the CryptoBilis hack, where Ledgers sold by an authorized reseller in Malaysia came with a hidden chip and an eSIM that sent seed phrases home over LTE. Robert calls it a software supply chain attack made physical, Tarun explains it to a bar owner as North Korea buying the liquor distributor, and an OpenAI engineer caught with a listening device has Haseeb arguing that the choke points of a high-trust society are breaking down. Then Tom and Haseeb unpack Papertrade, the 1000x perps exchange where losing trades mint PAPER, and Tarun asks how long anyone will keep losing money for a token. Finally, Nikita Bier says technical moats are dead: Tarun half agrees, Haseeb calls it a fake story, and he explains why AI still writes investment memos like a growth investor. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 TOKEN2049 felt more institutional this year: Marquee was a normal nightclub all week, Franklin Templeton and Nasdaq took the stage, and Tarun saw zero Lambos. 🔹 Tarun says nothing in crypto feels like frontier tech anymore outside of Zcash and quantum, and remembers the robotic shrimp farm that pivoted into an L2. 🔹 Normal people have the Big Mac index; crypto people have the nightclub index. 🔹 Ledgers sold through CryptoBilis, an authorized reseller in Malaysia, carried a hardware implant with an eSIM that read the seed phrase off the screen and sent it over LTE. About $80 million was stolen. 🔹 CryptoBilis' founders say they sold the company to a Chinese buyer months ago and were under a confidentiality agreement until October 20th. Trezor has already cut off its authorized resellers. 🔹 Robert says someone has now prototyped buying a vendor to run a supply chain attack, and Tarun explains it to a bar owner as North Korea buying the liquor distributor. 🔹 Haseeb's PSA: buy hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer. Tom is skeptical of see-through cases and points to Ledger's honeypot problem. 🔹 An OpenAI engineer allegedly hid a recording device behind a TV in a conference room, and ChatGPT searches about how to build one gave it away. 🔹 Haseeb says the choke points of a high-trust society are breaking down as AI makes complex attacks easier, and Tom asks why nobody has tried to steal a frontier model's weights. 🔹 Papertrade offers 1000x leverage at Hyperliquid's mid-market price with zero slippage, losing traders mint PAPER, and it is doing about $32 million in weekly revenue. 🔹 Tom explains how Papertrade's house works and how one trader moved Hyperliquid's price to farm it. Tarun says everything hangs on the PAPER token. 🔹 Nikita Bier says technical moats are dead. Haseeb calls it a fake story: AI can one-shot a compiler, but nobody uses the one-shotted Photoshop clones. 🔹 Haseeb says the incumbents have AI too, Tarun says the superstar-engineer advantage is gone, and Robert explains why models never see the real investment memos. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ARK Invest's Lorenzo Valente says quantum fears and the Ledger hack are speeding up the death of self-custody, that Ethereum has to pick a lane, and buybacks are “crazy.” ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients. Find out more at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Justin Drake warned that ECDSA, the cryptography securing Bitcoin and Ethereum, could break before Q-Day, in the worst case "in months, not years," and an attack on Ledger devices sold through a third-party reseller has led to about $100 million in losses. Lorenzo Valente, Director of Research, Digital Assets at ARK Invest, says both threats speed up a trend ARK already saw: self-custody is slowly dying. He tells Laura Shin why ARK favors a barbell of exchanges that own the user and infrastructure like Solana, Uniswap, and Aave, and why he would point a first-time Bitcoin buyer to an ETF. They also cover Satoshi's coins, why Ethereum's L1 accrues so little while Robinhood makes millions, and why he calls the buyback craze irrational. Plus: ARK's tokenized venture fund, Cloudflare's agentic commerce plans, and why Binance has never swapped out its USDT despite earning no yield. If he's right, crypto's next wave of users may never hold their own keys. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Lorenzo Valente - Director of Research, Digital Assets at ARK Invest Timestamps 🔭 01:27 Why Lorenzo says crypto investing is moving from '0 to 1' to '1 to 100' 🧮 08:41 Justin Drake's ECDSA warning and why RIAs keep asking ARK about quantum 💸 16:42 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt 🏋️ 17:31 The barbell: why Lorenzo favors exchanges and core crypto infrastructure 🪙 24:34 Satoshi's coins and why Lorenzo is less worried about Bitcoin's quantum fix 🔐 26:28 Ledger, Bitget, and why Lorenzo sees 'nowhere to hide' in hardware wallets 🍔 30:11 Ethereum's 'franchise model' and why Lorenzo says L1 value accrual is broken 🔥 38:04 Why Lorenzo thinks crypto has gone 'crazy' over token buybacks 📈 45:17 Why ARK thinks tokenized equities could pass stablecoin supply in 3 years 🤖 51:04 Cloudflare, AI bots, and why L1s are still orders of magnitude too slow 💵 54:05 Why Binance never dropped USDT, and what that says about Tether and Circle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A bridging bug cost NEAR Intents $3.8 million. Alex Shevchenko reveals how a coded tweet and a Signal invite encrypted with the attacker's key got the funds back. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== NEAR Intents halted services after an attacker exploited a bug in its Omni bridging infrastructure and walked off with $3.8 million. Twelve hours after announcing the hack, the team tweeted at the suspect: "We have identified you, sir." Alex Shevchenko, GM of NEAR Intents, joins Laura Shin to walk through how the attacker got the protocol to credit USDT deposits on BNB Chain that never happened, why NEAR Intents covered the loss from its own pockets, and how a Signal invite encrypted with the attacker's public key opened a private channel that ended with the funds coming back, partly in XMR. He also lays out how Shield, NEAR Intents' detection system, kept 99% of the more than $50 million tied to the Bitget hack from passing through, and why he thinks shielded Zcash could face Monero's fate. His argument: crypto that protects thieves can never become the economic backbone its builders want. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠Alex Shevchenko - GM of NEAR Intents Timestamps 🚨 01:43 How an Omni bridging bug let an attacker fake deposits and drain $3.8M 🌐 02:37 What NEAR Intents is, and how it relates to NEAR Protocol and near.com ⚙️ 05:01 How the hack worked and how the identified that it had occurred 💧 09:51 1inch Aqua: Back multiple positions with one token balance at https://1inch.com/aqua 🚔 10:55 Law enforcement, and how NEAR Intents identified a suspect within 12 hours 🔐 17:51 The Penn and Teller playbook: a Signal invite only the attacker could decrypt 🏎️ 22:52 Why Alex says a bug bounty beats hacking, Lambo included 🛡️ 26:24 Shield: how NEAR Intents kept 99% of Bitget hack funds off the protocol ⚖️ 32:07 Does blocking stolen funds make NEAR Intents centralized? Alex says no 🕶️ 40:17 Can shielded Zcash stay clean, or will it follow Monero's path? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Live from TOKEN2049 in Singapore, Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun sit down with Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week they are live on the BingX Stage at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, joined by Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes. Balaji explains why Network School moved its headquarters to Kazakhstan, which he calls Singapore with space to build, and why courting a country works a lot like enterprise sales when half of all countries have fewer than 10 million people. Then OpenAI drops 700 AI-written math papers and Justin Drake tells crypto to go into bunker mode: Tarun separates theoretical attacks from practical ones, Balaji proposes a social smart contract that would let chains rewind after a cryptographic break, and Arthur pitches the Flop Network as food for AI agents. Finally, Blast and Abstract shut down, nobody booked Marquee this year, and the panel debates whether the L2 era was a necessary search or crypto's version of Chinese ghost cities. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 TOKEN2049 is still the one retail mega conference left, even in the first year with no wrapped Lambo out front. 🔹 Balaji says crypto is M&A-ing Western institutions, and that anything holding long-dated Treasuries is wrecked. 🔹 Network School has moved its headquarters to Kazakhstan, which Balaji calls Singapore with space to build: 21 million people, a tie with China and India at the physics Olympiad, about 40% of the world's uranium, and room for 10,000 acres of Arthur Hayes City. 🔹 More than 10 countries bid for Network School. Balaji says courting governments works like enterprise sales, because half of all countries have under 10 million people and a billion dollars goes a long way there. 🔹 Why Hollywood misleads you about the rest of the world, from Borat to Squid Game, and why Balaji splits countries into a descending world and an ascending world. 🔹 The ascending world has murals of Elon and will build Arthur a statue, preferably on a horse, while blue states drive their billionaires out. 🔹 OpenAI drops 700 AI-written math papers with nothing on cryptography, and Justin Drake tells crypto to go into bunker mode by moving funds to addresses that have never signed. 🔹 Tarun says there is still a big gap between a theoretical attack and a practical one, and Haseeb asks who will even tell us when ECDSA is broken. 🔹 Balaji proposes a social smart contract that lets a chain rewind after a cryptographic break, Haseeb says cross-chain dependencies make that far harder than it was five years ago, and Balaji warns that anti-tech is the new anti-capitalism. 🔹 Tom says to watch what people do rather than what they say, and Balaji argues there are hard mathematical bounds on what AI can do. 🔹 Tarun on quantum money, Balaji on blockchains that spend their own token budget trying to hack themselves, and Arthur on the Flop Network as food for AI agents. 🔹 Blast and Abstract shut down, and Arthur reports that Marquee, fully booked all week last year with half a million Singapore dollar minimum spends, has not had a single booking this year. 🔹 Balaji says every failed L2 was part of a search worth running, Arthur jokes that it was all a search for Base and Robinhood Chain, Tarun calls the L2s Chinese ghost cities that can at least be demolished, and Haseeb tallies the middlemen that make running one so expensive. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures Guests ⭐️Balaji Srinivasan, Founder of Network School  ⭐️Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom & CEO of Flop Labs Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin Drake told holders not to panic. Ben DiFrancesco says if AI weakens elliptic curves, the clock is how fast Chinese models catch up. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. ⁠⁠Our listener survey⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== OpenAI released 722 math papers, and Justin Drake followed with a "don't panic" tweet suggesting large holders consider moving funds, setting off a wave of speculation that elliptic curve keys might soon be easier to brute force. Ben DiFrancesco, Founder and CEO of ScopeLift, joins Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith to separate rumor from risk. DiFrancesco puts low odds on the rumors but argues crypto would get hit first, patch fastest, and could leave traditional finance as the worse place to hold money, with Chinese open-weight models setting the clock. Monahan untangles the 0.36 ETH MetaMask staking incident that got pulled into the speculation. They also cover ZachXBT's undercover investigation of a DPRK money launderer, the NEAR Intents hacker sending funds back, and a push for Swiss authorities to intervene at Safe. DiFrancesco closes with a warning for token teams: the regulatory excuse for skipping value return is going away. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Guest: ⁠Ben DiFrancesco - Founder and CEO of ScopeLift Timestamps 🔐 01:57 Why Justin Drake’s ‘don’t panic’ tweet has crypto eyeing its cryptography 🦊 06:12 Taylor on the MetaMask staking incident and the 0.36 ETH that tipped it off 🧮 14:03 Ben on why even a worst-case ECC break wouldn’t mean instant theft 🏦 20:04 Why Ben thinks TradFi, not crypto, could be the worse place to hold money 🤖 25:02 How AI models went from flubbing 2+2 to formalizing hard math 💧 30:45 1inch: See how LPs can back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🔙 31:49 How the NEAR Intents hacker ended up sending the money back 🕵️ 37:07 ZachXBT went undercover with a DPRK money launderer: what he found 😤 51:25 Why instant outrage is the tell for launderers and Sybil farmers 🏗️ 56:11 From Gnosis’s 2017 ICO to Safe, the multisig securing $100B+ ⚖️ 01:02:23 The push for Swiss intervention at Safe and what it actually claims 🗳️ 01:08:12 Ben on how regulatory fear warped DAOs and why value return matters now 🧱 01:17:12 Blast and Abstract shut down: too many L2s, and never build a wallet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this spicypost-Bitget hack debate, THORChain co-founder Chad Barraford says the protocol can't block laundering. Taylor Monahan points to the halts it has used before. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== The Bitget hack reignited a fight on crypto Twitter: should chains that can stop North Korea from laundering stolen funds actually do it? THORChain, which DPRK hackers keep using to reach Bitcoin, landed at the center of it. Chad Barraford, co-founder of THORChain, argues the protocol cannot respond fast enough without redesigning it to be more centralized. Security expert Taylor Monahan counters that THORChain has acted before when its own protocol was at risk, and that routes made up almost entirely of stolen funds could simply be switched off. Laura Shin presses on the closed-source signing library, four operators running 39 nodes, why validators left after Bybit, ZachXBT's undercover look at a launderer pitching THORChain, Tornado Cash-style legal risk, and fee spikes after the KelpDAO and Bitget hacks. Barraford's answer to the biggest hypothetical is simple: if enough node operators want to block laundering, it gets blocked. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: Taylor Monahan - Security Expert and Co-host of Uneasy Money Chad Barraford - Co-founder of THORChain Timestamps ⚖️ 01:56 The Bitget debate: should chains that can block laundering do it? 🧱 04:10 Why Taylor says THORChain has been 'making this excuse' for years ⏸️ 10:48 THORChain paused for 5 weeks for itself. Why not for stolen funds? 🪙 19:15 1inch Aqua: See how LPs can back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🏦 20:15 Is THORChain an intermediary? The custody critique of its TSS vaults 🚪 24:32 Why did validators leave after Bybit? Chad and Taylor disagree 🧪 39:36 Does THORChain pass Chad's own decentralization litmus test? 🕵️ 47:59 ZachXBT's undercover probe: a launderer's 'Thor cross-chain' pitch 🏛️ 57:24 Could THORChain face a Tornado Cash-style case? Chad's legal defense 🛡️ 01:05:05 NEAR's Shield stopped $50M in laundering. Could THORChain copy it? 💸 01:05:57 Does THORChain profit from stolen funds? The fee spike debate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SPONSORED CONTENT: This video is a paid partnership with Nexo. It was produced in collaboration with Nexo and is separate from Unchained's editorial coverage. Nexo is a digital asset wealth platform offering yield products and crypto-backed lines of credit. Join Nexo and get up to $5,000 in rewards. Terms apply. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. https://ref.nexo.com/_5MiOg41 ======================================================== A new report revealed that affluent investors aren't using crypto to build wealth. Nexo US COO Neil Steinhardt explains how the platform aims to fix that. ======================================================== About two-thirds of the affluent investors Nexo surveyed own crypto, but fewer than 5% have fully integrated it into how they build long-term wealth, according to the company's new report, The Future of Digital Wealth. Neil Steinhardt, COO of Nexo US, walks host Ryan S. Gladwin through the report's Crypto Integration Index and why he says friction, not conviction, is holding investors back. He covers why Argentina has the highest ownership but the lowest integration, and how incoming regulatory clarity has brought Nexo back to the US. Steinhardt also details how Nexo's crypto-backed credit lines work, what he heard from advisors at a registered investment advisor conference, and why a $35 trillion to $106 trillion wealth transfer could land with a generation that has high conviction in digital assets. He closes on why he thinks CeFi lenders, which he says outpaced DeFi lenders for the first time in Q2, are positioned for the convergence of TradFi and crypto. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ryan S. Gladwin - Freelance Journalist Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Neil Steinhardt - COO of Nexo US Timestamps 🔎 01:04 Why Neil says friction, not conviction, keeps crypto out of wealth plans 🧮 02:48 Inside Nexo's Crypto Integration Index 🌎 05:01 Other factors preventing crypto from integrating into wealth plans 🤝 06:50 How Nexo fixes friction in wealth building ⚖️ 08:27 How incoming regulatory clarity has brought Nexo back to the US 💳 10:15 How Nexo's crypto-backed credit lines work 👵 15:06 The coming wealth transfer to a generation with high crypto conviction 🏛️ 18:03 Investment advisors aren't advocating for crypto, here's how to change that 🏎️ 19:31 Nexo's card program and why Neil says wealth means experiences 📈 22:35 Why CeFi lenders outpaced DeFi lenders in Q2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

North Korea takes $387 million from Bitget and moves it through THORChain while NEAR's Shield freezes what it can, a Consensys validator hack tests whether staking was ever the risk-free rate, a quant named Benny shows Kalshi's perps volume was cooked, and Apollo warns that AI agents are coming for your checking account. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week the three of them record from a self-serve podcast studio in Amsterdam. Bitget loses 387 million dollars to North Korea's Lazarus Group and pays every claim from its user protection fund, but the stolen funds raise a harder question: THORChain lets them through while NEAR's Shield freezes them, so which one is actually decentralized? (Dragonfly is an investor in Bitget and NEAR.) Then a Consensys validator compromise tests staking as the risk-free rate, Robert prices insurance on US Treasuries at 35 basis points, a quant named Benny exposes Kalshi's perps volume, and the crew takes apart Apollo's warning about agentic bank runs, from Robert's one basis point checking account to Tarun's agent filing his insurance claims. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Bitget loses about 387 million dollars to North Korea's Lazarus Group, and its 460 million dollar user protection fund covers every claim, so there is no contagion. 🔹 The stolen funds run through THORChain while NEAR's Shield freezes around 500K and refuses to route more than 100 million, which reopens the question of what decentralization actually requires. 🔹 Robert wants only the two extremes, fully neutral infrastructure or deliberate censorship, and nothing in the middle. Haseeb counters that everything between a centralized exchange and Uniswap already is the middle. 🔹 Haseeb argues property rights mean more than valid state transitions, and that anomaly detection can enforce them in a way that is still neutral and programmatic. 🔹 Tarun explains why cross-chain intents, with their solvers and RFQs, are where all the fights happen. 🔹 A Consensys validator compromise forces a mass exit, and Robert says staking was never the risk-free rate, only the best possible one. He looks up US CDS at 35 basis points and puts Ethereum validation risk at about five. 🔹 Would Ethereum roll back an unfair slashing? Haseeb says it would to protect stakers. Robert says only if transactions were corrupted. 🔹 A quant named Benny exposes Kalshi's perps volume, 3 million of open interest against hundreds of millions in daily volume, and Kalshi ends its liquidity incentives as the CFTC reportedly investigates. 🔹 Robert on why market maker rebates are normal, and how paying makers in equity for volume made Kalshi's go so wrong. 🔹 On Apollo's agentic bank runs: Robert earns one basis point on his checking account, Tarun's agent finds 1,700 dollars in health insurance overcharges, and the panel argues the whole economy is about to look like DeFi. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:42 Bitget loses $387M to North Korea 07:08 Should chains freeze hacked funds? 15:35 Chains as laboratories of democracy 21:44 The hidden premium on janky chains 27:13 Consensys compromised: is staking still risk-free? 30:53 Pricing and hedging validator risk 40:24 Kalshi's perps volume 44:17 How Kalshi's rebates went awry 53:07 Apollo's agentic bank runs 56:04 A banking system built on consumer laziness 1:02:46 SVB-style runs at agent speed 1:02:46 SVB-style runs at agent speed 1:05:01 Homo economicus is back Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Taylor Monahan ties the Bitget hack to North Korea and the crew asks why THORChain still avoids the scrutiny Tornado Cash got. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. ⁠Our listener survey⁠ takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Attackers took $388 million from Bitget without ever getting its private keys. Opsek founder Pablo Sabbatella explains that the way in was a zero-day in a third-party security product the exchange relied on. Sabbatella, who now sits on Arbitrum's Security Council, joins Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith to trace the hack. Monahan attributes it to North Korea's TraderTraitor group and flags how fast the funds left Arbitrum, while the hosts ask why THORChain, which has halted its chain and reallocated balances before, still handles stolen funds. They also cover NEAR's SHIELD anomaly detection, reports of rogue AI agents hacking outside systems, whether retail should get the upside of a $2 trillion Anthropic IPO, and Vitalik Buterin's 2030 roadmap for Ethereum. Warwick's case: the harder the problem, the more superintelligence helps, and Ethereum is one of the hardest problems there is. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Guest: Pablo Sabbatella - Founder at Opsek Timestamps 🚨 02:32 How Bitget got hit for $388M and covered the losses 🛡️ 08:24 Why Pablo says a third-party security product was the way into Bitget 🕵️ 11:22 Taylor ties the hack to North Korea and highlights their rush to exit Arbitrum ❄️ 13:34 Pablo on why security councils restart the freeze debate every time ⛓️ 14:17 Why Kain says THORChain can't claim it's like Bitcoin and Ethereum 🧭 30:24 How NEAR's Shield blocks funds using behavioral anomaly detection 📣 34:51 1inch: See how 1inch Aqua lets LPs back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🤖 36:16 Rogue AI agents are hacking outside systems as the labs eye IPOs 🔓 39:11 Why Pablo thinks the AI labs want to regulate open-source models 📈 48:55 Kain's case for letting retail take the risk on a $2T Anthropic IPO 🧱 01:05:47 Why Kain calls Vitalik's 2030 roadmap the most bullish Ethereum read in years 🏪 01:19:18 Pablo asks whether Ethereum's real challenge is commercial, not technical Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hunter Biden walks through the $LAPTOP launch, when thin liquidity sent the token to a $317 billion market cap in a minute, and why he says it isn't a scam. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== In June, Hunter Biden replied to a small account on X that "fiat is a sham" and the banking class is corrupt. His next move was $LAPTOP, a memecoin he says has the opposite tokenomics of the $TRUMP token. Hunter joins Laura Shin to trace his path into crypto, from the UN World Food Programme’s digital wallets for refugees (originally covered on Unchained in 2018) to The Internet of Money. He walks through $LAPTOP's first minutes, when a market maker seeded about $5,000 of liquidity and the token briefly showed a $317 billion market cap, and answers critics who call it a scam. He also lays out the token's prediction market burn mechanism, argues the Clarity Act died because the administration wouldn't bend on ethics rules covering the Trump family, and challenges Elizabeth Warren for siding with the banks. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hunter Biden - Artist, Author, and Recovery Advocate Timestamps 🎨 01:26 How a blockchain-related initiative at the UN World Food Programme led Hunter to crypto 🏛️ 07:34 Why Hunter says most Democrats only know crypto through Trump's 'grift' 💧 12:47 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 💻 13:46 Why Hunter launched $LAPTOP and what he says went wrong at its debut 🔍 21:14 Hunter answers critics who call $LAPTOP the scam he accuses Trump of 🎲 23:52 How $LAPTOP's built-in prediction market burns tokens or funds charity ⚖️ 33:35 Hunter's case against World Liberty Financial and the Trump family business 🗳️ 46:47 Can Democrats revive the Clarity Act if they take back Congress? 🏦 50:01 Why Hunter can't understand Elizabeth Warren siding with the banks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their final episode on Unchained, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le share the advice they give women entering crypto. Plus, Vy on the Senate meeting after FTX. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== After more than a year of amplifying women's voices in crypto, DEX in the City is signing off from Unchained, and its hosts skip the week's news to share the advice they give people trying to break into the industry. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le debate whether lawyers need to be on X, why "getting into crypto" now means learning perps, tokens, and prediction markets at once, and why Katherine believes women in male-dominated rooms have to be the adult in the room. Vy recounts breaking down in a Senate office days after FTX collapsed, a story she says she had barely told anyone, and what it taught her about separating the technology from the people who abuse it. Jessi recalls begging the FBI around 2016 to take cases involving terrorists using Bitcoin, a measure of how far the industry has traveled since institutions laughed it off. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps 🎙️ 01:48 Why the hosts are skipping the news for their final episode on Unchained 🧭 03:25 Jessi's case against 'getting into crypto,' and the debate over X ⚖️ 12:15 Why KK tells women in crypto they have to be the adult in the room 🪞 16:45 Jessi on 'don't lose yourself,' and Vy on why the loudest critics aren't the majority 💧 23:40 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with the same token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🌊 24:54 How the hosts keep marching through crypto's roughest stretches 💔 29:22 Vy on why crypto can't be your whole identity, and her Senate meeting after FTX 🏰 36:13 The strangest crypto moments: Versailles, a Florida offsite, North Korea 🙌 45:10 The women and allies the hosts credit for paving the way Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitget lost $388 million — and days later, CEO Gracy Chen says scammers posing as a major investment team targeted her. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== On September 24, attackers used a zero-day in a third-party security product to slip fraudulent withdrawal commands into Bitget's wallet system, pulling out about $388 million across chains from Ethereum and XRP to Zcash. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen joins Laura Shin to reconstruct the attack, from test transfers that stayed under risk thresholds to her team's call to switch wallets back on mid-attack and sweep hot and warm funds into cold storage. She lays out how the exchange's protection fund covered users and why reopened withdrawals showed an early net inflow. Then comes the industry response. Tether, Circle, and NEAR Intents froze funds, THORChain declined her request, and only $632K is frozen so far. Chen also describes scammers impersonating an investment firm to target her after the hack. Her case that "permissionless doesn't mean neutral" puts a hard question to DeFi. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠Gracy Chen - CEO of Bitget Timestamps 🚨 01:50 How attackers used a third-party zero-day to fake withdrawal commands ❄️ 07:15 Why Bitget switched wallets back on mid-attack to sweep funds to cold storage 💧 14:30 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with the same token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn ⛓️ 15:37 Why the hackers were able to transact even after withdrawals were paused 🧊 19:04 How Tether, Circle, and NEAR Intents froze funds, and why recovery is harder 🕵️ 24:05 ZachXBT's shift on the Bitget hack and his earlier pump-and-dump claims 🛡️ 30:01 NEAR Intents vs. THORChain: does permissionless mean neutral? 💰 41:55 Why Bitget built its protection fund in 2022 and how it covered the loss 🎭 48:17 How scammers posed as an investment team to target Gracy after the hack 📈 01:01:32 A net ETH inflow after withdrawals reopened, and whether the IPO is still on Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ran Neuner argues crypto has finally found product-market fit, and a BlackRock report on AI agents and blockchain rails convinced him the thesis may be much bigger than he thought. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠ Our listener survey⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== The 10-year Treasury yield just hit its highest level since 2007, and Ran Neuner thinks Scott Bessent will answer by bringing more money to the party. Neuner, founder and CEO of Crypto Banter, makes the case to Laura Shin that this is not just another Bitcoin cycle but crypto's first real bull market. His argument rests on two use cases. The first is social trading, which he describes as the world's biggest social network and casino "having a baby," with Hyperliquid and Pump.fun earning millions of dollars a day. The second is AI agents: he cites a study projecting one billion agents by 2029 and a new BlackRock report arguing machine-to-machine payments favor blockchain rails over ACH and card networks. They also cover why he calls RWAs magazines moved online, whether AI IPOs will drain crypto liquidity, and why he thinks Zcash may be more useful than Bitcoin. If he's right, his own 7x altcoin projection may prove conservative. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: Ran Neuner - Founder and CEO of Crypto Banter Timestamps 🏦 01:47 Why Ran thinks Bessent is engineering 'the ultimate short squeeze' 📊 04:45 Why an ETH/BTC breakout signals crypto's first real product-market fit 🎰 09:35 Social trading: a social network and a casino 'having a baby' 💧 14:03 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🤖 15:06 How a billion AI agents could send altcoins far past Bitcoin ⏱️ 29:14 Why Ran thinks AI agents will borrow against compute and tell time in blocks 🌐 37:01 Will AI IPOs drain crypto liquidity? Ran on why AI isn't the dot-com bubble 🛡️ 40:05 Privacy vs. social trading, and why Ran calls Zcash 'more useful than Bitcoin' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kalshi's ETH perp did half a billion in volume on $3 million in open interest. Kain and Taylor lay out why that isn't necessarily wash trading. Plus, Austin joins as co-host. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Kalshi's ETH perpetual futures market logged half a billion dollars in 24-hour volume on just $3 million in open interest, and after its crypto hires picked a fight on the timeline, an analyst pulled the public data and alleged wash trading. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan argue that paid market makers are a likelier explanation than a back room of bots. Austin Griffith, in his first episode as a regular co-host, asks whether all that liquidity actually helps a prediction market find the truth. The hosts also cover Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's warning that AI labs answer for their agents, Taylor's Tornado Cash parallel, Anthropic's new wet lab, Amazon blocking Meta's Muse assistant, and Jev, a classifier model that decides in 200 milliseconds. Plus, Zcash around $1,500 and why NEAR suddenly has people paying attention. As Kain puts it, a new model is dropping nearly every day, and keeping up now takes agents of its own. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Timestamps 🎲 02:32 How Kalshi's crypto hires started a timeline war over its perp volume 🤝 07:28 Why Kain suspects paid market makers, not wash trading, are behind the volume 🔎 09:59 Austin asks whether any of this liquidity helps markets find the truth 📚 21:41 What the price of Google teaches about liquidity and trusting a market 💧 28:14 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🏛️ 30:59 Scott Bessent told AI labs they're responsible for what their agents do ⚖️ 34:20 Taylor on the Tornado Cash parallel: which humans answer for autonomous code? 🛒 42:48 Why Amazon blocked Meta's Muse assistant from shopping on its site ⚡ 47:29 Jev: the model that makes decisions in 200 milliseconds without talking 🔒 1:00:33 Zcash around $1,500 and why NEAR has people paying attention again Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura  When the Clarity Act stalled in Congress, the shorts expected Bitcoin to break. It dipped to $75,000 and stopped. Then came the surprise that the bill might pass after all, and Bitcoin closed its first weekly candle above its 50-week moving average in 45 weeks. Ram Ahluwalia calls it a short squeeze, and says that doesn't make it illegitimate. Chris Perkins sees a regime change, with institutions now underwriting crypto on fundamentals. Austin Campbell asks what happens if US retail, still missing from the Coinbase premium, shows up too. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97 This segment is from a longer conversation on Bitcoin, the Fed, a $30 trillion debt pile, and Meta's new AI agent. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/r2Z9ooMTcZ0?si=-mncR-xhm7kUM507  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. 👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn    Chapters: 📊 00:34 Bitcoin's 50-week reclaim: the bull case and the bear case laid out 🐻 03:51 Why Ram thinks it's a short squeeze, and why that doesn't make it illegitimate 🔄 05:14 Why Chris thinks this is a regime change toward fundamentals ⚖️ 07:31 Austin on how Clarity's failure invalidated the short case 👀 12:26 Why retail hasn't shown up yet, and what happens if it does Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zcash and NEAR are both ripping this week, and Illia Polosukhin and Mert Mumtaz say privacy is the reason why. Is this how the “Bitcoin DeFi” vision comes true? ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Zcash just cracked the top 10 on CoinGecko, up 32% in a week and near an all-time high. NEAR is up 69% over the same stretch, and both rallies trace back to the same catalyst: transactions nobody else can see. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to unpack why confidential transactions, not speculation, are driving the rally, and why the two networks now function as one privacy-preserving liquidity layer for real businesses and institutions, not just traders. They cover NEAR Intents' $260 million in TVL, the multi-party computation and secure enclaves behind NEAR's confidential balances versus Zcash's zero-knowledge shielded pool, the counterfeiting bug that forced Zcash's Ironwood migration, and NEAR's Shield system, which halted transactions mid-hack during a Litecoin exploit. Zcash's next upgrade, Project Tachyon, aims to make the network quantum-proof and scale it 100x, and Mert argues privacy will not stay a competitive edge for long. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol ⁠Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius Timestamps 🚀 01:39 Guest intros, plus why ZEC (+32%) and NEAR (+69%) are ripping this week 🌐 03:13 Illia and Mert on why NEAR and ZEC's price action is turning heads 🟠 08:34 Is Zcash and NEAR the Bitcoin DeFi dream, minus Bitcoin? 🕵️ 11:54 Why coffee-shop-level balance visibility is a real business risk ✈️ 15:06 Mert's travel hack: booking flights and hotels privately via NEAR Intents 🧠 18:12 Why privacy is a retention tool first, not just an onboarding one 📣 25:11 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🔐 26:23 Privacy vs confidentiality: ZK proofs versus NEAR's MPC-and-enclave model 🛡️ 29:26 Inside NEAR's secure enclaves, and why store-of-value needs real privacy 🔄 33:59 How a NEAR Intents swap settles across chains, and its $206 million in TVL 🐛 39:09 The Zcash counterfeit bug, the Ironwood migration, and formal verification 🤖 45:49 How NEAR's Shield AI system and MPC guardrails manage solver risk ⚡ 51:33 Zcash's NU7 upgrade: faster blocks, quantum-proofing, and private voting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Days after Clarity failed, the SEC granted a major exemption for tokenized stocks. The Digital Chamber’s Cody Carbone explains whether agencies can replace the law. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The Clarity Act failed its cloture vote this week, with every Senate Democrat voting no and sinking crypto's biggest legislative shot in years. Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, joins Laura Shin to unpack what killed the bill: an ethics fight over Trump's blind trust and digital-asset dealings, stablecoin-reward limits the banks wouldn't accept, and a Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act rewrite that stripped noncustodial developers of criminal-liability protection. Carbone argues Democrats rejected 80% of their own ethics demands rather than hand Republicans a win, and traces how crypto PAC money and the threat of Maxine Waters chairing House Financial Services shape what happens next. Two days after Clarity died, the SEC granted an innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading, and Carbone says the SEC and CFTC are about to unleash years of rulemaking with or without Congress. The question now is whether that agency-driven momentum outlasts the next hostile administration, or gets undone with a single signature. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: Cody Carbone - CEO of The Digital Chamber Timestamps 🏛️ 01:18 Why the Clarity Act's cloture vote failed: 'politics beat policy' ⚖️ 02:38 Scoring Trump's corruption against Nixon and Suharto fuels the ethics fight 🗳️ 06:51 Election pressure: a lame duck vote and crypto PAC money's next targets 🏦 11:57 Why Cody blames the banks' stablecoin rewards fight for killing Clarity 🌊 14:35 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 📜 15:23 The SEC's new innovation exemption for tokenized stock venues 🔓 18:28 Could 2 years of SEC and CFTC rulemaking replace a crypto law? 🧩 23:20 Why regulators are staying silent on synthetic stock tokens 🤝 26:46 What's left to negotiate: developer liability and stablecoin yield 🔮 31:14 Is the lame duck Clarity's last shot, or could agency rules become permanent? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Delphi Ventures founding partner Tommy Shaughnessy tells Kain and Taylor the AI slowdown talk is a moat against cheap Chinese models. Plus, why the Clarity Act died. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The Clarity Act failed a Senate cloture vote 49 to 50, and Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan open by asking what crypto did wrong. Taylor thinks the Trump family's memecoins and World Liberty sank it. Kain worries the industry squandered its best shot at actual laws and is now counting on friendly SEC rulemaking instead. Guest Tommy Shaughnessy, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, argues that OpenAI and Anthropic's calls to slow AI down are a play for a regulatory moat, because Chinese open source models like DeepSeek are getting good and cheap. He also explains why he runs Delphi Ventures on its own AI agent instead of handing its data to Claude or ChatGPT. Kain says the fear inside the labs is genuine, and that the idea of simply shutting down the data center won't hold forever. They also cover Anthropic's report on a Chinese surveillance operation that surfaced in its logs, an $8M exploit of a Safe wallet that a 4-year-old yoink bot frontran, the SDNY charges against Robinhood engineers accused of trading tokens on Hyperliquid ahead of Robinhood listings, and why Wyoming's stable token dropped LayerZero for Chainlink. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tommy Shaughnessy - Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures and Co-Founder of Delphi Digital Timestamps 🏛️ 02:35 Why Clarity died without 50 votes and what SEC/CFTC rules might replace it 🇺🇸 19:06 Why crypto's all-in bet on Trump has Taylor uneasy about the partisan trade 💧 23:20 1inch: Back multiple liquidity positions and keep your tokens in your wallet until a swap fills at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🤖 24:08 Why OpenAI and Anthropic's own founders are calling to slow AI down 🐉 31:12 Tommy on why AI safety talk is regulatory capture against Chinese open source 🕵️ 38:17 Anthropic's own report: how a CCP surveillance job showed up in its logs 💰 51:42 Would you bet on AI safety or acceleration? Tommy makes the hosts pick a side 🔓 56:56 How an $8M Safe exploit got frontrun by a 4-year-old yoink bot 📈 01:01:46 Why the SDNY charged Robinhood engineers with trading on Hyperliquid ahead of listings ⚔️ 01:05:27 Why Wyoming dropping LayerZero for Chainlink reignited the Link Marines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The boys get together in person as CLARITY falls short with 47 votes. They break down what comes next, Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP token collapse, the Robinhood/Hyperliquid case, Balancer winding down, and the debate over an AI pause. The CLARITY Act fails cloture with 47 votes, not a single Democrat in favor, and the crew works out what that leaves behind: rulemaking at the SEC and CFTC, an ethics fight that was never really about market structure, and Robert's tally of everyone who walked away with nothing. Then Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses 99.85 percent, the SDNY indicts two Robinhood engineers over Hyperliquid front-running, Balancer and a wave of exchanges wind down, Robert explains why Satoshi is a time traveler, and the panel takes apart the labs' agreement to pace the frontier. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 CLARITY gets 47 of the 60 votes it needed, with no Democrats in favor, and the sticking point was forced divestiture of Trump-affiliated tokens rather than market structure. 🔹 Robert tallies the losers: no ethics win for the Democrats, no GENIUS rewrite for the banks, no expanded AML hooks, and no developer protections for anyone. 🔹 Haseeb argues adoption protects crypto better than legislation ever will, because nobody takes away a product people already use. 🔹 Prediction markets are politically safe for a reason nobody says out loud: every politician already reads them as better polling data. 🔹 Tom's counterfactual for what would have flipped the vote is blunt. You never should have launched that damn memecoin. 🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token flashes to a 140 billion dollar valuation on 50,000 dollars of liquidity, then falls to twenty cents, and the chart ends up shaped like a laptop. 🔹 Two Robinhood engineers are charged over front-running crypto listings on Hyperliquid for about 50,000 dollars each, and Haseeb explains why the OpenSea conviction got overturned. 🔹 Balancer winds down and the panel asks what became of the ICO treasuries, from Golem's GPUs to Aragon's founder building a neobank. 🔹 Robert makes the case, half in jest, that a future superintelligence sent Satoshi back to 2008 to get humanity building chips early. 🔹 On the AI pause: Tarun on who evaluates the evaluators, Tom on why coordination without China is futile, and Haseeb on why a training freeze just moves the competition to another line item. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:43 CLARITY day 03:36 Silver linings 05:26 Was it close? Or did everybody loose? 12:23 Why adoption protects crypto better than a bill 15:00 Was DC trading on the CLARITY odds? 18:37 The one thing they would go back & undo 20:48 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses 23:50 Celeb coins never work 26:17 Robinhood engineers indicted over Hyperliquid front-running 31:35 Balancer winds down & the exchange shakeout 35:11 AI arbitration & ideas ahead of their time 37:44 Satoshi is a time traveler 39:14 The AI pause: pacing the frontier 42:57 China calls it a conspiracy 44:40 What do you buy if the doomers are right 45:50 Does an AI pause actually cut CapEx? 50:32 Futile without the Chinese labs 54:05 Harden society instead of slowing the models 56:47 Which doom vectors are real Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips In one week, OpenAI said its agents solved a Millennium Prize problem, a researcher quit Anthropic warning that both labs are "gambling with our lives," and Dario Amodei called for the industry to pace the frontier. Jordi Visser doesn't dismiss the cyber risk, but he calls the fallout "a big midterm election story." Austin Campbell asks whether the labs are making a commercial play, Chris Perkins explains why regulation forces consolidation the way it did for banks, and Ram Ahluwalia makes the case that open weight models still have a seat at the table. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Jordi Visser - Founder of Visser-Labs, LLC This clip is from a longer conversation on AI regulation, frontier lab valuations, oil and the Fed. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/pNogg0vEjjs?si=Wrzh-5BJXnkkcQLr  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET. Subscribe to catch it live. 👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt    Chapters: 🧠 00:35 Why Jordi says Leopold's 'Situational Awareness' paper saw this coming 🗳️ 02:17 Jordi's read: this is a big midterm election story 💼 05:58 Is the AI slowdown a commercial play to cool CapEx before the IPOs? 🏦 07:28 Chris on why regulation is 'a really beautiful way of boxing out competition' ⚖️ 10:25 Jordi on who eats the liability when a model goes wrong 🔓 11:27 Could decentralization put AI liability back on the user? 📈 11:57 Ram's power law problem: capital concentration as the real story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ethena's Guy Young explains why the companybuilt a neobank that pays 6% in yield, 5% cash back, and never tells users they're holding self-custodial stablecoins instead of dollars. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== DeFi's total value locked never reclaimed its 2021 peak, even four years and a full bull market later. That data point convinced Ethena Labs founder Guy Young the onchain dream needed a backup plan. Young joins Laura Shin days after launching Ethena Pay, a neobank paying 6% on dollar deposits and 5% cashback in AVAX while hiding from users that their balance sits in a self-custodial stablecoin wallet, not a bank account. He argues yield, not brand loyalty, is what pulls the next hundred million users onto crypto rails. They cover why Young shrugs off Tether-backed Plasma as a rival, how USDe's backing shifted from a basis trade toward AAA-rated real-world-asset lending, why a Revolut-style KYC breach is a risk Ethena can't fully control, and why card spend and FX fees, not USDe's own yield, are the revenue line he is actually chasing. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guy Young - Founder and CEO of Ethena Labs Timestamps 🏦 01:25 Why Guy built a neobank after DeFi's TVL never beat its 2021 peak 🥊 07:16 Why Guy doesn't see Tether-backed Plasma as a competitor 🕵️ 17:57 How Ethena Pay hides self-custody from users who don't know it 🌍 19:10 The nearly 50-country rollout and Ethena's slow, controlled go-to-market 📣 22:30 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity platform lets LPs back multiple positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt ⛰️ 23:18 Why Ethena Pay chose Avalanche, not Ethereum, for settlement 🏛️ 29:20 How USDe's backing shifted from basis trades to AAA-rated RWA lending 🔓 33:00 What the Revolut KYC breach means for Ethena Pay's own compliance risk 💳 39:55 Why card spend, not USDe's yield, is the metric Guy actually chases 🚀 47:50 The 7-figure deposits that surprised Guy in Ethena Pay's first two weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The SEC's next tokenization rule could force platforms to get issuer sign-off for stock tokens first. Securitize’s Brett Redfearn lays out what's actually at stake for Wall Street. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== AMC CEO Adam Aron's public feud with Robinhood over its AMC stock tokens erupted into a war of words last week, with the AMC chief calling the tokens "contemptible" and Robinhood's chief legal officer, and former SEC commissioner, Dan Gallagher firing back that Robinhood would "not DECIST" mocking a misspelling in Aron’s tweet. Brett Redfearn, President of Securitize and a former SEC Trading and Markets Division director, joins Laura Shin to referee the fight. He explains why issuers deserve a say before their stock gets tokenized, and breaks down the three real categories of stock tokens, from Securitize's issuer-sponsored model to Robinhood's offshore synthetic. Redfearn unpacks why an AMC token pair once traded at 60 times its reference price, details the SEC's looming innovation exemption and the Securities Transfer Association's push for an issuer opt-out, and explains why non-KYC tokens could let bad actors amass stakes in defense contractors. The debate, he says, will decide whether tokenization becomes Wall Street's next upgrade or its next flashpoint. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brett Redfearn - President of Securitize Timestamps 🥊 00:54 Brett unpacks the AMC-Robinhood spat and who has the stronger legal argument 📣 10:15 1inch Aqua: See how the new shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🧩 11:12 The 3 types of stock tokens, from issuer-sponsored to Robinhood's synthetic 🔐 21:33 Why Brett wants KYC before permissionless DeFi meets tokenized stocks 🏛️ 28:32 The Securities Transfer Association's push for an issuer opt-out 🗳️ 33:38 What Robinhood should do with the voting rights on its collateral shares 🏢 35:29 How many public company CEOs actually want their stock tokenized Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alex Thorn and Jon join Kain and Taylor to unpack a Bitcoin hack, two new frontier models, and why nobody trusts their AI chats anymore. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== A Bitcoin sidechain lost $300 million to a consensus bug this week, and the hackers who returned 85% of it are trying to extort a "bug bounty" out of Blockstream for the rest. Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, and Jon, Head of Strategy at Venice and co-founder of ShapeShift, join Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to unpack how AI models are now finding exploits faster than the humans who wrote the code, and to push back on the idea that returning stolen funds makes anyone a white hat. They also dig into Astra and Fable 5.1, two frontier models that landed days after a mathematician working inside OpenAI's Codex clashed publicly with OpenAI over who actually solved a Millennium Prize-adjacent proof.  Jon and Alex explain why the "don't train on my data" toggle may not mean much, and why identity is becoming the real privacy battleground. The conversation closes on whether an Anthropic researcher quitting this week is a warning the industry is choosing to ignore. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Thorn - Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jon - Head of Strategy at Venice and Co-founder of ShapeShift Timestamps 🔓 01:15 How a consensus bug let hackers mint $300M in fake Bitcoin 📜 7:50 Why the Liquid hackers are no white hats 🤖 17:16 Did an AI agent find the Liquid exploit? ⚖️ 28:10 Taylor on why there’s no excuse for the hackers’ actions 💧 32:08 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity layer works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn 🧠 32:54 Astra and Fable 5.1 land, and one is writing eerily compressed code 📐 35:19 The Millennium Prize proof fight between OpenAI and an Anthropic researcher 🧬 44:48 Kain on fast takeoff, recursive self-improvement, and paperclipped kids 🕵️ 55:18 How to keep your novel research out of an AI's training data ⚰️ 01:07:03 Why an Anthropic researcher's resignation has Kain and Taylor spooked Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to answer last week's unc takes on memecoins: why a fully transparent social graph beats copy trading, how FOMO became the biggest app on Robinhood Chain, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token, the three-way launchpad war, AMC's fight with Robinhood over tokenized stock, and the AI race to solve Navier-Stokes. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger to chop it up about the latest in crypto. After getting dunked on as uncs for last week's memecoin takes, the crew brings on the founder at the center of it. Paul lays out FOMO's case for a fully transparent trading social graph, Tarun reports back from a holiday weekend in the trenches, and Haseeb holds the line on where memecoin trading actually destroys value. Then: Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token, the Pons versus Stonk.fun versus Pump launchpad war, AMC's CEO versus Robinhood's tokenized stocks, and the OpenAI versus Anthropic fight over who solved Navier-Stokes. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Paul explains why FOMO refuses to build copy trading and bets on full transparency instead: trade well and the feed follows you. 🔹 Tarun spent his holiday weekend trenching, finished up a respectable 10 percent thanks to Hunter Biden copycat coins, and says it felt more like a video game than trading. 🔹 FOMO had 94,000 active wallets on Robinhood Chain, three times the next largest app, and its users no longer know which chain they are on. 🔹 Haseeb draws the line: buying Doge is harmless, but the memecoin production function is where retail reliably loses money. 🔹 Paul and Haseeb converge on churn: an app that lets customers incinerate themselves flames out fast, so FOMO rewards holding and theses over launching. 🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token launches on Base with airdrops to Trump token losers and a scraped Channel 5 subscriber list. 🔹 Pons, Stonk.fun, and Pump fight over launchpad revenue while Paul stays agnostic and pitches Team Tags as the highest-intent distribution channel ever built. 🔹 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile, and the panel debates whether one-to-one backed equity tokens fix the fundraising objection. 🔹 Tarun explains Navier-Stokes and why math academia is depressed after OpenAI's $15 million compute run at a Millennium Prize problem. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures Guest ⭐️Paul Erlanger, Co-Founder of FOMO Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:06 Paul vs. the uncs 03:37 From dYdX to FOMO 05:14 Tarun's weekend in the trenches 08:40 Transparency vs. copy trading 12:27 FOMO's distribution power on Robinhood Chain 17:52 Where memecoin trading destroys value 21:10 Churn, theses, & traders as the next celebrities 27:08 Shaming, sidewallets, & clans 32:35 Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token 37:15 Stock coins, bond ETF fees, &  how long the meta lasts 42:52 AMC's CEO vs Robinhood's tokenized stock 47:51 One-to-one backed equity & earnings calls as TV shows 52:20 OpenAI, Anthropic, & the Navier-Stokes drama 58:49 Is math research over? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips AMC's CEO spent the holiday weekend calling Robinhood's tokenized AMC shares "contemptible" and "vile." Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins break down what a "reverse ADR" actually is, why Ram thinks most of this is derivatives repackaged as innovation, and why Chris pushes back using Robinhood Chain's own financials. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97 This clip is from a longer conversation on tokenized stocks, meme coins, frontier AI, and the Fed. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/cDFv4OCihgU?si=qdPWALHcmHc97SEc  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. 👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt   Chapters: 🥊 00:20 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile: what it actually is 📊 06:36 Ram: stock tokens are "derivatives for the sake of derivatives" 🔍 11:17 Why Austin says the AMC fight reveals microstructure ignorance 🏗️ 14:40 Ram: real innovation looks like CDO Square 2.0, not this 💰 21:41 Chris defends Robinhood Chain's financials Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Albert Castellana and Arthur Hayes walk through how GenLayer resolves an AI agent's dispute in minutes, for cents, without a single human judge involved. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Every legal system assumes a human sits on the other side of a dispute. Albert Castellana, CEO of GenLayer Labs, is betting that assumption breaks down within the decade, once AI agents start disagreeing with each other faster than any court could keep up. Castellana built the idea after StakeHound, the liquid-staking company he ran before Lido existed, lost $150 million when a custodian misplaced two keys, and he saw how slow and costly the legal system was. He joins Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, to argue agentic commerce cannot scale without its own dispute layer, since agents cannot be jailed. They cover how GenLayer escalates a dispute to up to 1,500 AI validators for a verdict in minutes, how it compares to Kleros, UMA, and the failed Aragon Court, and why Hayes wants Flop plugged into GenLayer once both go live. If agents cannot go to jail, escrowed money may be the only leverage left. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Albert Castellana - Co-Founder and CEO of GenLayer Labs Timestamps 🏛️ 01:20 Albert Castellana on the $150 million custody failure that led him to build GenLayer 🤖 05:20 Why Flop needs GenLayer's dispute layer to make agentic commerce work ⚖️ 07:26 The kinds of disputes AI agents will actually have with each other 📣 13:38 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 📜 14:29 How an intelligent contract escrows funds and calls in AI validators 🔗 18:51 Inside GenLayer's architecture: the L2 chain and 1,500 validators 💵 27:21 What an AI verdict actually costs: 50 cents to $100, minutes to hours 🔒 34:30 Why AI agents can't go to jail, so escrow is the only enforcement ⚔️ 40:14 How GenLayer compares to the AAA, Kleros, UMA, and the failed Aragon Court 🕵️ 49:29 Can the validator network be gamed or bought off? 🚀 54:34 What's next for GenLayer's token launch and Flop's Q4 airdrop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CME is suing its own regulator over how perps get classified, and the ruling decides who in the US can trade them. Three lawyers make the case for futures over swaps. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The CME is suing its own regulator. At stake is a single word: is a perpetual futures contract a swap, locked to institutional trading desks, or a future, open to any retail trader in the US? Cathy Yoon, General Counsel at Temporal, Tiffany J. Smith, Partner at WilmerHale, and Jake Chervinsky, CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center, join Laura Shin at the Real World Assets Summit to make the case for futures. The CME was invited onto the panel to argue its side, but Yoon called their last-minute decision to bow out as "cowardice." They dig into the CFTC's recent approval of true perpetual futures for Coinbase and Kalshi, the running jurisdictional split between the CFTC and SEC, and Bloomberg's report that Hyperliquid is in talks to come onshore through Kraken's Bitnomial. Chervinsky argues Hyperliquid isn't an exchange at all, just neutral infrastructure any exchange could use.  Yoon closes with a warning: most of Capitol Hill, she says, still doesn't understand there's a whole world running onchain. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cathy Yoon - General Counsel of Temporal ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tiffany J. Smith - Partner at WilmerHale and Co-Chair of its Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Working Group Jake Chervinsky - CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center Timestamps ⚖️ 02:24 Why the CME is suing the CFTC over classifying perps as futures or swaps 🌍 13:00 Why RWA perps overtook crypto perps, and who ends up regulating them 📣 18:03 1inch: See how Aqua's shared liquidity platform puts idle capital to work at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🌐 20:42 Is Hyperliquid an exchange or neutral infrastructure? Jake makes his case 🏛️ 26:10 If you were the regulator: how each panelist would design fair rules for perps Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OpenAI's AI agents already had the exam answers. So why did they hack Hugging Face anyway? Kain, Tay, and Austin Griffith explain. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠ ======================================================== OpenAI's AI agents didn't just get caught cheating on a security test. According to the postmortem, they already had the answers, and hacked Hugging Face's systems not to cheat, but to learn who was scoring them and cover their tracks. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan bring on Austin Griffith, Builder Enablement at the Ethereum Foundation, to work through what that cover-up actually means, and why Griffith thinks Nick Bostrom's twenty-year-old paperclip thought experiment stopped being hypothetical the moment agents started writing production-grade code. They also cover the tokenized HIMS stock pump, Rune's fake $100 million NASDAQ LARP, Kyle Samani's abrupt exit from Multicoin, and the Cronos validators who rolled back a hack. If agents can trick each other to avoid detection, what happens once they're running your portfolio, or your toaster? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith - Builder Enablement at the Ethereum Foundation and Founder of BuidlGuidl Timestamps 📈 01:09 How degens pumped BONER and HIMS on Robinhood Chain 📱 11:39 Austin calls FOMO's tokenized-stock UX crypto's smoothest onboarding yet 💧 25:51 1inch Aqua: See how it works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🎭 26:37 Rune's fake $100M NASDAQ short squeeze LARP 🍄 33:39 The Chinese mushroom stock trading at an on-chain premium 🤖 34:46 OpenAI agents already had the answers and hacked to hide it ⚠️ 51:04 Bostrom's paperclip problem, 20 years later 🧠 54:20 Kain on the Claude 5.1 mixup that proved he can't tell the models apart 💸 01:04:13 Kyle Samani's $100 million 'line' with Multicoin 🔄 01:07:01 Cronos rolls back a $100M hack, and Moonwell gets hit again Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laura joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to unpack Robinhood Chain's surge, the strange fusion of stock tokens and memecoins, the damage speculative entertainment can do to retail, Solana's competitive position, and why regulated onchain markets will still look different across jurisdictions. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by Laura Shin to chop it up about the latest in crypto. The panel examines Robinhood Chain's second wave, stock-backed memecoins built from old DeFi mechanics, the line between financial entertainment and retail harm, the race with Solana, and the legal constraints facing global onchain markets. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Robinhood Chain's activity spikes as FOMO, tokenized stocks, and memecoins converge in one retail product. 🔹 Tarun explains how Ohm-style mechanics can pair a memecoin incentive with an underlying stock token. 🔹 The crew compares the new speculation to DeFi summer, GameStop, and what they call financial Jackass. 🔹 Haseeb argues that traders should ask an AI whether a supposed retail short squeeze can work before handing over their keys. 🔹 Laura separates the cultural appeal of speculative entertainment from the real damage repeated losses can do to retail confidence. 🔹 The panel asks whether Robinhood captured the tokenized-stock opportunity that Solana pioneered too early. 🔹 Tom and Tarun compare American FOMO culture with the more explicitly profit-driven social-trading pitches they heard in Asia. 🔹 The group explains why KYC is only one part of bringing HIP-3 markets onshore, alongside clearing, surveillance, collateral, and local law. Host ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures Guest ⭐️Laura Shin, Foun of Unchained and CEO of the Show Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro  00:58 Robinhood Chain's big wave 04:00 Ohm forks & stock-backed memecoins 10:50 Financial Jackass & generational speculation 15:13 DeFi code gets a second life 19:10 Does memecoin trading entertain or destroy retail? 34:37 Dream stock-memecoin pairings 36:12 Is Robinhood Chain overshadowing Solana? 44:19 Building FOMO for Asian markets 50:35 Hyperliquid in talks with Kraken parent  52:59 What regulated HIP-3 markets would require 58:26 Why global onchain markets still face local law Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  A Ninth Circuit panel ruled 3-0 that Nevada can enforce its gambling laws against Kalshi's sports contracts, directly conflicting with an April ruling that put Kalshi under CFTC oversight instead. Andy Ross, Head of Institutional at Kalshi, joins the panel to make the case that prediction markets are nothing like sportsbooks, that Kalshi wants its winners to keep winning, and that its fastest-growing customers are not hedge funds but ice cream shops, kayak renters, and boat charter operators hedging ordinary business risk. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Andy Ross - Head of Institutional at Kalshi This clip is from a longer conversation on Kalshi's clash with state regulators over prediction markets. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/c5qwxUlaKQ4?si=9vIZPp0imIyuJIs3  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. 👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn.  Chapters: ⚖️ 00:20 Ninth Circuit rules 3-0 that Nevada can enforce gambling law against Kalshi 🎯 02:16 Andy on why prediction markets are not sportsbooks 🏛️ 04:44 Chris asks whether the CFTC believes it has federal preemption 🍦 06:21 Andy on ice cream shops, kayak renters, and boat charters hedging with Kalshi 📊 08:10 Ram asks where Kalshi's real trading volume actually comes from 🔬 09:21 Andy unveils Kalshi's 2.2 million-data-point calibration study  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitcoin rallied 23% after Bessent's debt-buyback comments and settled near $80K. Swan's Cory Klippsten weighs in on what ETF inflows and onchain exchange moves really mean. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ========================================================Bitcoin rallied 23 percent in a week after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the government would double its long-term debt buybacks, settling near $80,000 without a leverage-driven blowoff. ETFs pulled in about $3 billion over two weeks, even as onchain data showed coins moving toward exchanges. Cory Klippsten, founder and CEO of Swan, joins Laura Shin to discuss why he distrusts popular Bitcoin forecasting tools. He calls stock-to-flow and power-law price models unfalsifiable "false gods" that leave holders with paper hands, and dismisses the quantum-computing scare as manufactured hype tied to 2025's penny-stock schemes. Yet he insists onchain self-custody is where value lives. The two weigh the ColdCard hack, which cost self-custody wallets roughly 1,400 coins, against larger losses at Mt. Gox, Celsius, and Quadriga. Klippsten covers Swan's RBX tool for converting GBTC into real Bitcoin, the custody spectrum topped by Swan Trinity, and why nobody will know for decades whether Bitcoin's fee market can replace its shrinking block reward. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cory Klippsten - Founder and CEO of Swan Timestamps 📈 01:00 Cory Klippsten ties Bitcoin's $80K rally to Bessent's Treasury buyback move 📊 04:20 Laura asks about $3B in ETF inflows versus Bitcoin moving to exchanges 🔮 06:23 Cory debunks stock-to-flow and power law models for Bitcoin's price 🌊 14:23 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one token balance and cover more pairs at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn 🔐 15:13 Cory reacts to the ColdCard hack that drained over 1,000 Bitcoin 🔄 20:10 Swan's RBX lets holders convert GBTC shares into real Bitcoin tax efficiently 🗂️ 25:20 Cory maps a 5-step custody spectrum from self-custody to multi-institution ⚛️ 31:34 Cory calls the Bitcoin quantum threat panic 'manufactured bullshit' 🪙 35:19 Cory rejects freezing or tail-emitting Satoshi's coins, backs the fee market Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coinbase just launched fully backed tokenized stocks on Base.  Dromos Labs’ Alex Cutler says they’ll chip away at Interactive Brokers "77% profit margin." ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Coinbase this week launched tokenized versions of Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Google stock on Base, moving past the prior synthetic tokenized-stock wrappers. The tokens are fully backed, held in trust, with ETF-style minting and redemption. Alex Cutler, CEO and Co-Founder of Dromos Labs, joins Laura Shin to unpack what real backing changes about tokenized stocks, and to argue decentralized exchanges can beat legacy brokers on cost and access. Cutler points to Aerodrome's roughly 25% share of AMM volume on the new assets, about $80 million traded and 5,000 wallets active within days, plus integrations across nine DeFi protocols including Aave, Morpho, and 1inch. He argues Interactive Brokers extracts a 77% profit margin as a middleman, and cites Nvidia's earnings, released after the bell, as proof onchain markets kept pricing news around the clock. They also cover the SEC innovation exemption and a roadmap of more assets, a Centrifuge migration to Aerodrome, and a launch on Circle's Arc chain. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Cutler - CEO and Co-Founder of Dromos Labs Timestamps 🪙 01:15 How Cutler splits tokenized stocks: real backing vs synthetic wrappers 📈 04:44 Cutler's launch numbers: 25% of AMM volume, $80M traded, 5,000 wallets 💧 13:10 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-x 🧩 13:59 Why composability across 9 DeFi protocols is Dromos' biggest draw 🌙 19:11 Cutler on 24/5 oracle risk: weekend price gaps are a feature, not a bug 🏛️ 24:23 Cutler on the SEC exemption bid and Armstrong's 10%-of-GDP vision Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The crew sizes up Bitcoin's rebound, the fight to bring Hyperliquid onshore, the SEC's new token fundraising framework, and why Stripe's OpenRouter deal could make AI inference markets look a lot like DeFi. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. Tom and Tarun check in from Bhutan after lunch with the king, then the crew tackles Bitcoin's rebound, the path to a compliant U.S. Hyperliquid, the SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, and the growing overlap between AI inference markets and DeFi market structure. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Tom and Tarun report from Bhutan after discussing Bitcoin mining, AI, and tokenization with the king. 🔹 Bitcoin pushes back toward $80,000 as ETF inflows and the debasement trade revive crypto sentiment. 🔹 The panel explains why a U.S. Hyperliquid would probably require KYC, surveillance, and separate liquidity. 🔹 Robert argues the SEC's $5 million startup exemption could reopen token crowdfunding for smaller projects. 🔹 Tom asks whether Regulation Crypto Assets solves an ICO-era problem that today's builders no longer have. 🔹 Tarun predicts financial engineers will try to scale the small-offering exemption through many token launches. 🔹 AI could overwhelm government processes by removing the bureaucratic proof-of-work that quietly rationed access. 🔹 Stripe's OpenRouter acquisition turns model routing, inference providers, and cached tokens into a DeFi-style market. 🔹 The hosts debate whether data rebates and inference tokens could finally revive crypto's 2017 data-ownership dreams. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Disclosures Links SEC Regulation Crypto Assets: https://www.sec.gov/rules-regulations/2026/08/s7-2026-27 OpenRouter is joining Stripe: https://openrouter.ai/blog/announcements/openrouter-is-joining-stripe/ Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:22 Tom & Tarun meet the King of Bhutan 04:13 Bitcoin rebounds and crypto gets hot again 08:10 What a compliant U.S. Hyperliquid could look like 13:14 The SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets 23:53 Are the new token rules eight years too late? 28:23 AI removes the government's bureaucratic speed bumps 31:12 Why AI inference tokens could power the next cycle 34:13 Stripe buys OpenRouter and AI starts looking like DeFi 43:28 Router economics, data markets, and new security risks 51:01 Bull-market vibes from Bhutan and Asia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Roman Storm's retrial slides to April 2027. Peter Van Valkenburgh argues prosecuting Tornado Cash's developers cost real ground in zero knowledge cryptography. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠ ======================================================== Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has declared "economic D-Day" on Iran, leaving an open question over whether the sanctions crackdown reaches Uniswap and Ethereum or stops at Iranian exchanges, where humans are in the loop. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan take that gap to Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center, whose defense of the Tornado Cash developers rests as much on zero knowledge cryptography as on sanctions law. They cover the GENIUS Act's freeze and seize rules for the stablecoin secondary market and Roman Storm's retrial, now pushed to April 2027, where speech protections clash with prosecutors' "frying pan" theory of money transmission. The SEC's proposed exemptions, the stalled Clarity Act, and Trump’s Hyperliquid all raise the same question: where does decentralization end and regulation begin? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Peter Van Valkenburgh - Executive Director of Coin Center Timestamps 🎯 01:26 Bessent brands Iran sanctions 'economic D-Day', DeFi not exempt 🏦 11:15 Van Valkenburgh explains the freeze-and-seize rules coming for stablecoins 💰 15:18 Bessent claims a $1B Iranian crypto rug, but the receipts don't add up 🌊 25:08 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn ⚖️ 25:50 Roman Storm's retrial slips to April as an acquittal motion looms 🔐 38:24 Why Van Valkenburgh calls Tornado Cash's developer a hero, not a villain 📜 47:22 SEC's 'Reg Crypto' plan opens two new paths to raise ICO-like capital 🏇 58:07 Trump name-drops Hyperliquid, raising hard questions for the CFTC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  Bitcoin is pushing toward $80,000 after Scott Bessent's Treasury long-end buybacks flipped spot ETF flows positive and rattled the bond market. Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins are joined by Bitwise's Gordon Grant to unpack why rising Treasury volatility, and bizarre stress signals building in the TIPS market, are becoming a tailwind for Bitcoin's momentum trade. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Gordon Grant - Portfolio Manager and Head of Derivatives at Bitwise This clip is from a longer conversation on the CFTC's prediction-market brawl, parametric insurance, and a mystery AI model. Full episode here:https://youtu.be/tLKZl37uZ2g?si=Vp_6Y7PvXeDh_iJ8  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET — subscribe to catch it live. 👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com. Chapters 💰 00:20 Market snapshot: Bitcoin near $80K as ETF inflows flip positive 🌊 03:32 Gordon on how Bessent linked Treasury vol to Bitcoin's own vol spike 📈 05:32 Ram on the 'extraordinary' price action and Bitcoin's momentum 🎙️ 07:39 Chris on the Bitcoin/gold chart and the Fed-Treasury accord 🧮 09:30 Austin on the fiscal-dominance divergence between the front and long end 🔒 10:54 Gordon on the 'buyer strike' driving Treasury illiquidity 🔄 15:19 Chris on why the basis trade's return is bullish for crypto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some crypto products work with multiple chains on different post-quantum paths. NEAR’s Illia Polosukhin and Ledger's Charles Guillemet discuss how they manage that challenge. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== In March, a Google research team published a paper on breaking cryptographic keys with a quantum algorithm, so cautious about the finding that it released only a zero-knowledge proof the algorithm existed. Weeks later, an EigenLayer AI competition improved on that method in roughly 48 hours. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger, join Laura Shin for an update on the quantum threat whose deadline could be approaching fast. Both are creating products that deal with multiple chains that all have different post-quantum approaches.  They discuss why, of the three NIST-standardized, post-quantum algorithms, the crypto industry has splintered into different chains working with different ones, whereas most industries are converging on one, called lattice-based. They also debate what to do with Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoins: do nothing, freeze them, or freeze and tail-emit new bitcoin, an option Guillemet favors even though Bitcoin's leaderless governance makes consensus hard to reach. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-founder of NEAR Protocol ⁠Charles Guillemet - CTO of Ledger Timestamps 🔐 02:18 Illia and Charles map Shor's algorithm leap and EigenLayer's 48-hour crack 🧠 12:43 Why Matt Corallo's Bitcoin core skepticism reveals NEAR's design edge 📢 18:18 1inch Aqua: see how the shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn 🔀 23:28 How lattice vs hash based crypto split Ethereum from Bitcoin's plan 🌐 34:46 Charles: why this crypto fight is unique to blockchain, not elsewhere 🛠️ 37:04 Charles walks through Ledger's SDK and hardware wallet quantum roadmap 🔑 44:22 Why 'wrench attacks' expose the physical risk in quantum signing 🕵️ 46:11 Charles debunks the harvest now decrypt later myth for blockchains ₿ 54:52 The Satoshi's coins dilemma: three options and Bitcoin's security budget Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Venice founder Erik Voorhees says crypto's real job was never speculation. It's becoming the rails AI agents actually need. Plus, why he sold equity, not tokens. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn ======================================================== Stripe bought OpenRouter this month in one of the cleanest crypto-to-AI pivots yet, and Erik Voorhees says most of the industry drew the wrong lesson from it. Voorhees, founder and CEO of Venice AI, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to argue that crypto's job was never to serve crypto people, it was to become the financial rails a decentralized AI future actually needs. He pushes back on the instinct to abandon tokens for pure AI plays, and on the assumption that America deserves to win the AI race just because it is America. They get into why Voorhees sold Venice's equity but refused to sell its VVV tokens, why he says the big labs are losing money "hand over fist" subsidizing $200-a-month plans, how DeepSeek reset the cost curve for inference, and why he calls the moderation layer sitting inside today's AI models "deceptive." His answer for who should actually win the AI race has nothing to do with flags. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Erik Voorhees - Founder and CEO of Venice AI Timestamps 🤝 01:51 Why Stripe buying OpenRouter is one of crypto's cleanest AI pivots 🪙 04:02 Why Erik says he can't pivot out of crypto even while building an AI company ⚖️ 12:43 Crypto has principles, AI didn't: unpacking the two industries' DC playbooks 💧 27:58 1inch Aqua: See how shared liquidity keeps LPs' tokens in their wallet at https://1inch.com/aqua 💰 28:44 Why Erik sold Venice's equity but refuses to sell its VVV tokens 🧩 42:51 Inside Venice's strategy for aggregating every major AI model in one app 📉 49:15 Why Erik says labs are bleeding money on $200 plans, and how DeepSeek reset AI pricing 🌐 57:30 Why Erik says America doesn't deserve to win the AI race by default 🔓 01:02:41 Why Erik has 'zero faith' in politics and trusts decentralized tech instead 🕵️ 01:09:56 Why Erik calls the moderation layer inside AI models 'deceptive' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Arthur Hayes unveils Flop, a new protocol for AI compute, and makes the case for why Bitcoin is entering a fresh liquidity-driven leg up. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠ ======================================================== Bitcoin has been pumping in its sharpest move since March, after the US Treasury said it would double its long-end bond buybacks, and traders liquidated $1.44 billion in short positions within hours. Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, joins Laura Shin to argue the rally is proof the Treasury and the Fed are already running what he calls soft yield curve control, defending the 10-year near 5% by funding long-end purchases with short-term bill issuance instead of admitting real yields cannot rise. Hayes reiterates his year-end $5,000 target for ETH, traces how Japan's yen crisis could force the Fed's hand, and argues the AI CapEx boom is a real estate bet on depreciating chips that ends like subprime did. He also unveils Flop, his currency for AI agents, and why he is taking on a new CEO role after an already successful career. He also weighs in on Saylor's $218 million Bitcoin sale and reflects on his and his cofounders’ decision to shut BitMEX down. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom Timestamps 🏛️ 00:47 Why Arthur says the Treasury's buyback move is 'soft yield curve control' 📈 04:14 Why ETH is Maelstrom's largest position outside Bitcoin 🇯🇵 07:02 The yen quake: how Japan's repatriation could force the Fed's hand 📣 13:41 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more at http://1inch.com/ 🤖 13:58 Why Arthur calls the AI boom 'just another boring real estate play' 💽 22:29 Inside Flop: Arthur's new currency for paying AI agents to compute ⚙️ 29:34 How Flop's miners and validators actually work 🪙 41:16 Flop's halving schedule and why Floplabs only takes a cut for two years 📉 45:45 Why Arthur says don't buy MicroStrategy anymore 🔌 48:37 Why Arthur shut down BitMEX on his own terms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ethereum wants to slash staking yields toward zero. Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki, DV Labs' Oisín Kyne, and Ethereum-France's Jérôme de Tychey debate whether that breaks DeFi. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠ 1inch.com⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠ 1inch.com⁠ ======================================================== Ethereum's core developers are considering a decision that could cut ETH's staking yield toward zero, and DeFi's biggest names are furious about it. Jérôme de Tychey, President of Ethereum-France and a co-author of EIP-8363, joins Kevin Owocki, founder of Gitcoin, and Oisín Kyne, CEO of DV Labs, to argue through the proposal's tradeoffs. Aave's Stani Kulechov, Ether.fi's Mike Silagadze, and Joseph Chalom have all pushed back, warning the change guts DeFi's biggest source of yield. They cover the Nakamoto coefficient and why a 51% staking cartel could censor blocks for free, why solo stakers could see after-tax income collapse, and why Oisín is skeptical of an enshrined liquid staking token. Jérôme defends why Ethereum can pay stakers less and still be more secure than rivals boasting 7% yields. All Core Devs meets Thursday, August 20, and the real deadline lands October 26, when the network decides if EIP-8363 is mature enough to move forward. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kevin Owocki - Founder of Gitcoin ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oisín Kyne - CEO and Co-founder of DV Labs ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jérôme de Tychey - President of Ethereum-France Timestamps 🏛️ 01:38 Jérôme lays out EIP-8363's validator reward burn curve 🔥 08:02 Oisín on why a 51% cartel could censor blocks for free ⚖️ 10:39 Jérôme's rebuttal: finality security versus censorship risk 📣 14:38 1inch: See how Aqua's shared liquidity pools work at https://1inch.com/aqua 💼 16:13 Kevin on Aave, Bankless, and DeFi's backlash to the burn 🧾 33:18 Why solo stakers could see after-tax income near zero 🏦 45:39 Does killing ETH's yield scare off institutional buyers? ⚛️ 51:03 Ultrasound money versus productive asset: ETH's identity fight 🔐 56:41 Why Oisín is skeptical of an enshrined liquid staking token 🥇 59:34 Can ETH's shrinking yield compete with Solana and stablecoins? 🔮 01:05:27 Post-quantum costs, and when All Core Devs decides EIP-8363's fate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CFTC has used emergency powers just six times ever. Twice this month, both for Kalshi. Jessi, Jacob, and Jane ask whether that protects innovation or sets a dangerous precedent. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! 👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn ======================================================== The CFTC has invoked its rarely used emergency authority just six times in its history. Twice in the past month, it did so to shield Kalshi. Jessi Brooks argues that's normalizing a dangerous kind of agency overreach. With KK Bos and Vy Le away this week, Brooks welcomes Jacob Robinson, host of the Law of Code podcast, and Jane Khodarkovsky, a financial integrity and sanctions expert, to debate whether shielding Kalshi from state regulators protects innovation or tramples states' rights. They also unpack the SEC's abruptly canceled 400-page market-structure proposal, Anthropic's new EU-mandated watermark on Claude's outputs and the First Amendment questions it raises, and a presidential memorandum letting vetted private companies run offensive cyber operations against foreign criminal groups under DOJ and DHS oversight. Robinson makes the case for treating the fight against crypto hackers like modern-day privateering — arguing what the industry really needs is its own letter of marque. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jacob Robinson - Host of the Law of Code podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jane Khodarkovsky - Financial Integrity & Sanctions Expert Timestamps 🏛️ 02:40 Why Jacob calls the CFTC's Kalshi rescue inevitable, and Jessi disagrees ⚖️ 17:45 Why the reasons behind the SEC's shelved 400-page crypto rulemaking stay murky 💧 21:48 1inch Aqua: See how shared liquidity works at https://1inch.com/aqua 🤖 22:34 Why Claude's new EU-mandated watermark reads as compelled speech to Jacob 🔪 23:24 Jane's take on the watermark rule: a hammer when you need a scalpel 🛰️ 35:21 Jessi previews the CFTC's first public meeting on AI in markets 🔐 36:41 Jane unpacks Trump's memo letting private firms fight cybercrime abroad 🏴‍☠️ 46:24 Why Jacob wants a modern "letter of marque" for crypto's hackers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  Austin Campbell runs through the strongest legal objections to Trump’s privateering memo, from claims it violates international law on piracy to warnings that private hackers could be treated as non-uniformed combatants. The segment ends with a pointed question: if privateering is where critics draw the line, why did nobody blink at Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran? Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97 This clip is from a longer conversation on Trump's executive order deputizing private firms to hack foreign cybercriminals. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/FxQCMAJ9GBU?si=tVqmGwizLzv2BAk6  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor 👉  Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com Chapters: ⚖️ 00:20 Paul Rosenzweig's claim: privateering violates international law on piracy 💰 01:39 Chris on why no better solution exists: cost, talent, and scale 🎯 03:14 Erica Lonergan and Michael Garcia: the slippery slope and attribution risk 🌍 05:31 Does this go beyond crypto? The pig butchering scam question 🪖 07:21 Jake Williams: are American privateers non-uniformed combatants? 🏛️ 09:47 Isn't privateering a congressional power, not a presidential one? 🔥 12:05 Why Austin says critics need to propose a better solution first Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kain and Taylor unpack the AI agents that built their own society inside OpenAI's sandbox, then slipped into Hugging Face for days — plus a Bitcoin fork that died in two blocks and a DEF CON sting on North Korea. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com  ======================================================== AI agents inside OpenAI's own testing environment built a society, found a shared vulnerability, and used it to break into Hugging Face for days, before OpenAI realized its own agents were responsible. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan dig into the Black Hat research behind the incident and argue the real story isn't a sudden leap in AI capability. It's that basic monitoring, sandboxing, and incident response, the kind any crypto security team would demand, were never built in the first place. They also cover a Bitcoin soft fork that split the chain for two blocks before dying, a Metabase breach that hit Privy and other crypto companies, and a research team that built a fake DeFi startup to bait DPRK's IT workers. Kain shares his own scare: a coding agent deleted his entire database, and two AI models rebuilt it from memory in 30 seconds. Plus, why Hyperliquid's market creators keep half the fees on RWA perps now bigger than Bitcoin's own open interest, and why Taylor thinks Washington, not Beijing, is the bigger threat to America's AI labs. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Timestamps 🍴 00:40 Why Luke Dashjr's OP_RETURN fork split Bitcoin, then died in two blocks 💧 12:03 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions from one wallet at https://1inch.com/aqua 🔓 12:51 How a Metabase breach exposed Privy and a wave of other crypto apps 🇰🇵 18:32 A DPRK hacker's botched $500k laundering job, then a DEF CON fake-hire sting ⚖️ 24:45 Why Bybit is suing DPRK over its 'billion dollar' 2025 hack 🐜 30:30 The AI agents that built their own society inside OpenAI's sandbox 🕸️ 46:16 How a single shared repo let every sandboxed agent talk to each other 💾 47:44 Kain's coding agent deleted his database. Two AI models rebuilt it in 30 seconds 🏛️ 58:06 Why Taylor says the US government, not China, is AI's biggest risk 📊 01:03:12 Why Hyperliquid's RWA market creators keep half of HIP-3's fees Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  Bitcoin has done almost nothing for weeks, and Katie Stockton says that stillness is exactly what a long-term bottom looks like on the charts.  She walks Steven Ehrlich through the monthly stochastic oscillator that has stayed oversold for months, the DeMark indicators showing downside exhaustion, and what history says has to happen for that setup to become an actual buy signal. Host: Steven Ehrlich - Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview and Head of Research at Sharplink Guest: Katie Stockton - CMT, Founder and Managing Partner of Fairlead Strategies This clip is from a longer conversation on Bitcoin's technical setup and Katie Stockton's read on crypto markets. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/35ZHRajBJ5E?si=d6ycx66p2Tz1fSma  We go live every week - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor: 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained  (use code: UNCHAINED)  Chapters: 🕐 00:21 Why Bitcoin's usual volatility has gone quiet even as AI stocks rip 📉 01:27 Bitcoin's monthly stochastic oscillator: the long-term oversold read 🔍 03:16 Fibonacci levels, the cloud model, and the case for a major low 🔁 04:45 What history says about oversold setups turning into real bottoms 🎯 05:34 The exact signal Katie needs to call an 'oversold buy signal' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, crypto streamer and trading/markets influencer threadguy joins the crew to translate what is happening in the trenches, from market-open streams and social trading apps to public PnL and Gen Z's appetite for risk. The conversation starts with a challenge to crypto's old guard: today's lowest-cap markets look less like clicking a few ICOs and more like playing Fortnite with token scanners, wallet trackers, and social feeds all firing at once. From there, threadguy breaks down the fight between FOMO and Pump.fun, why the winner may be whoever owns the trader graph, and how one visible winning trade can turn an unknown wallet into a market-moving celebrity. Haseeb questions whether Robinhood has actually brought new money onchain, Tarun and Robert revisit the hidden counterparty risks of early crypto, and the group imagines a future in which AI agents launch protocols, raise capital, and transact without a human-facing interface. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 threadguy says modern onchain trading looks like Fortnite, with token scanners, social feeds, and wallet alerts all competing for attention. 🔹 Robert argues that crypto was never simply easier or harder. The tools, assets, and attack surfaces have continually evolved. 🔹 Tarun explains how stablecoins and reliable off-ramps replaced the counterparty and FX risks that defined early crypto trading. 🔹 FOMO and Pump.fun are fighting for social traders as exchanges, wallets, and launchpads race to own the next trading graph. 🔹 threadguy says traders are becoming crypto's new celebrities because public wallets make PnL visible and influence measurable. 🔹 Haseeb argues that the latest memecoin revival may be crypto-native capital front-running Robinhood demand that has not arrived yet. 🔹 The panel rejects the idea that AI agents are already managing meaningful memecoin portfolios, but sees that changing as capabilities improve. 🔹 Haseeb predicts the next onchain inflection will come when AI agents create, govern, and use protocols that humans never designed. 🔹 A crypto wallet cannot be switched off like an agent's credit card, which gives autonomous software a uniquely durable financial rail. 🔹 threadguy believes active investing and public risk-taking are permanent cultural shifts for Gen Z and the generations behind it. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Guest ⭐️threadguy, Crypto streamer and trading/markets influencer Links threadguy on X: https://x.com/notthreadguy threadguy on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/threadguy Disclosures Timeline 00:00 Intro 01:00 threadguy's New Purple Era 03:58 Could Crypto OGs Survive Today's Trenches? 16:05 FOMO vs Pump.fun: The Social Trading War 24:37 Traders Become Crypto's New Celebrities 31:25 Why Memecoin Volume Is Rising Again 36:57 Is Robinhood Really Bringing New Money Onchain? 40:04 Can AI Agents Trade Memecoins? 43:23 AI Agents and Crypto's Next Capabilities Jump 54:15 Is Gen Z's Risk Appetite Permanent? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Under a fake name and a fake Zoom account, Laura Shin interviewed one of North Korea's state-sponsored crypto developers. Laura Shin went undercover as a recruiter named "Sophie Wang" to conduct a job interview with a state-sponsored IT worker going by the name “Justin Lim.”  Lims’s online presence showed he had technical chops, multiple crypto dev gigs under his belt, and a privileged location. He had also allegedly stolen $2.7 million from MetaPlay in 2022. The interview shows the quirks of chitchatting with a North Korean “IT worker,” how adept they can be with blockchain technology, and what questions give them away as henchmen for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Crypto companies Consensys to Sushi have unknowingly hired North Korean state hackers for years. This is what it looks like to ask the one question that gives them away. Host Laura Shin - Founder, CEO and Host of Unchained Sponsor Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com   Timestamps: 🇰🇵 00:10 Why Laura Shin went undercover to interview a North Korean crypto hacker 📁 02:44 The dossier: GitHub handles, stolen wallets, and a $2.7M MetaPlay heist 💻 06:26 The Zoom call begins: meeting 'Justin Lim,' the DPRK developer 💰 09:15 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at https://1inch.com/aqua  🛠️ 10:12 How Lim forked Velas Network and sped up The Graph's indexing 🔐 11:38 Lim's answers on multisig wallets, reentrancy attacks, and Bybit's $1.5B hack 🎯 14:01 The holy grail question: can he say something negative about Kim Jong Un? 💔 17:01 Why the interview left Laura with sadness and gratitude Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ondo's founder died at 32, and now his mother and its ousted president are fighting for control. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy on the succession lesson crypto keeps skipping. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Visit 1inch.com  to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com ======================================================== Ondo Finance co-founder and CEO Nathan Allman died suddenly this summer at 32, leaving the real-world-asset tokenizer with zero sitting directors and two people claiming to run the company: ousted president Ian De Bode, and Allman's mother Kathleen, acting for his estate. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le use the fight to unpack a problem that has nothing to do with crypto and everything to do with it: what happens when a fast-growing company never writes down a succession plan. They also cover the White House's new frontier AI oversight framework, which officials confirm exists but will not publish, a proposed FDIC and OCC certification that would let a fintech satisfy every bank's diligence questions at once, and the CLARITY Act's newly scheduled September 15 cloture vote, squeezed into a narrow window before midterms. Vy Le asks the harder question underneath all three stories: can boundaries this important really be left voluntary? Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps 🤖 01:40 Jessi on why AI agents are getting great at goals, bad at intent 🏛️ 08:12 Why the White House's new AI framework is finished, but secret 📣 13:42 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity layer works at https://1inch.com/aqua ⚖️ 14:30 Ondo's board hits zero directors after founder Nathan Allman's death 🚌 20:08 KK's 'hit by a bus' rule: the succession plan every startup skips 🏦 27:06 The FDIC's plan to let one fintech certification satisfy every bank 📜 37:51 Why KK is nervous about the CLARITY Act's September cloture vote 🦥 46:16 Crypto good news: robot sloths saving an endangered species Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  A new Ethereum proposal would burn staking issuance to zero once roughly half the supply is staked, and the community had about 48 hours to respond. Austin Campbell, Chris Perkins, and Seth Ginns of Franklin Crypto discuss whether it is a necessary check on runaway staking or an academic overreach that ignores how institutions actually think about the network. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Seth Ginns - Chief Investment Officer of Franklin Crypto This clip is from a longer conversation on Ethereum's staking yield fight. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/MhhJAIhkgVM?si=hqg5R4b3rVBNdNlJ  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor: Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com. Chapters: 🔥 00:20 Austin on the proposal to burn ETH issuance to zero, and who wrote it ⏱️ 02:02 Why a 48-hour comment window has critics saying the process is broken 🎓 03:33 Seth calls the proposal an academic push that skipped real coordination 🍳 04:48 Chris predicts the plan fails because the EF does not control Ethereum 💴 07:13 Chris's yen carry trade warning about messing with ETH's risk-free rate ⚖️ 09:10 Austin's verdict: 48 hours is too short no matter how the vote goes 🗣️ 13:57 Dapplion's pushback from inside the camp: 'you can't bribe me like this' 💰 15:23 Seth defends the $10 billion in institutional ETH flows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spark avoided the DeFi hack that hit almost everyone else in April. Cofounder Sam MacPherson lays out why, and where he thinks AI fits into DeFi security. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com ======================================================== In April, a hacker widely assumed to be tied to North Korea drained tens of millions from KelpDAO's rsETH market, and most of DeFi took the hit. Spark did not, because it had quietly exited rsETH months earlier. Sam MacPherson, cofounder and CEO of Spark, joins Laura Shin to unpack the conservative playbook, rate limits, a triple redundant oracle, and a governance process built to move slowly on purpose, that turned a near miss into a footnote while rivals absorbed the damage. They cover why Spark's TVL climbed more than 50% after the hack, how emergency multisigs and time locks work when Sky's month-long governance process is too slow, and why MacPherson thinks AI will make smart contract audits more reliable, not less. MacPherson also maps Spark's growing footprint, from Anchorage-backed institutional lending to a new Uniswap stablecoin FX layer, and why he isn't worried about SPK near its all-time low even as the business keeps compounding. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sam MacPherson - Cofounder and CEO of Spark Timestamps 📣 00:26 Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com  🏦 01:08 What Spark does and how it plugs into the Sky protocol's balance sheet 🛡️ 05:07 Why Sam says Spark's conservative design let it dodge the KelpDAO hack ⚖️ 11:24 How the rsETH exit exposed the tradeoffs in Sky's onchain governance 🎙️ 13:52 Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com  💰 17:41 Why Sam thinks DeFi yields are converging toward SOFR, not higher 🤖 20:47 Why Sam says AI cuts both ways for DeFi security after the hack wave 🏛️ 23:26 Why Sky built the subDAO model, and whether it can survive politics 💵 26:58 The stablecoin land grab: Robinhood, Coinbase, and Spark's role in it 📊 30:50 Why Sam isn't worried about SPK trading near its all time low 🚀 32:39 Spark's next chapter: institutional lending and Spark Savings USDT growth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Onchain vaults now hold $67B. Veda's CEO maps out how they work, and why the SEC just hinted some could be securities. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce warned recently that some crypto vaults could trigger federal securities law, invoking the same Howey Test language crypto has argued over for a decade, just as onchain vaults have quietly become a $67 billion vehicle for parking assets. Sun Raghupathi, cofounder and CEO of Veda, joins Laura Shin to untangle what a vault actually is, why splitting the infrastructure, curator, and distributor roles matters for the entrepreneurial-effort question Peirce raised, and why he reads her statement as bullish rather than a warning shot. Raghupathi maps the real risk stack behind vaults, smart contract flaws, the key-management failures behind incidents like KelpDAO and Drift, and the economic risk exposed when Stream Finance blew up and left $285 million in vault exposure.  He also details Veda's Kraken partnership, now scaled past $600 million across 80,000 users, and makes the case that the biggest constraint on vault growth isn't security anymore. It's clarity. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sun Raghupathi - Co-Founder and CEO of Veda Timestamps 📣 00:41 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 🏦 00:57 What is a vault, and why DeFi needed the primitive 🎢 02:25 Sun's path from an ML PhD to launching Veda ⚙️ 04:43 The three things vault infrastructure must solve: access, control, verifiability 💰 06:45 Where vault yield actually comes from, and how it differs from TradFi 📣 10:57 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 🏗️ 11:03 Veda's role as infrastructure vs. curators and distributors ⚠️ 13:06 What happens when a vault loses money, in the worst case 🛟 16:31 Why Sun is skeptical of vault insurance until a real claim gets paid 🔑 18:08 How to vet vault partners on key management, not just smart contracts 📉 20:28 The Stream Finance blowup and how curator risk-taking has changed since 📊 23:00 The metrics Sun uses to evaluate vault curators 🏛️ 24:31 Why Sun reads Hester Peirce's vault statement on vaults as bullish, not a warning 🦑 28:46 Kraken's $600M vault partnership, and Veda's competitive edge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A hardware wallet's 5-year-old randomness bug just let hackers drain over $100 million in Bitcoin. How many more waves are coming? Plus, Ethereum's fight over cutting ETH issuance. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== A firmware randomness bug buried in Coldcard's code since 2021 surfaced last week and has already drained over $100 million, an estimated 1,600 to 1,800 Bitcoin, across four attacker waves. Taylor Monahan makes the case that the culprit is not North Korea but professional GPU crackers, and explains why the dice-rolling ritual many early victims trusted still left them exposed. Sonya Kim, co-founder of 3F Labs, and Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of ether.fi, debate where DeFi's responsibility ends after trade.xyz's SK Hynix perp swung from $1,128 to $917 on a thin premarket print, then turn to Ethereum's own monetary policy fight. That fight centers on EIP-8361, a proposal to cut ETH issuance that opened with only 48 hours for public comment, reviving the minimum viable issuance debate Sonya once worked through at Steakhouse. Silagadze calls cutting issuance economically unsound and warns it could push billions of dollars of ETH out of staking, while Kain Warwick argues the resulting chaos is good for an Ethereum governance culture that had grown too quiet. The conversation covers Coldcard's entropy failure, the dice rolls that did not save early victims, trade.xyz's oracle mispricing, and Ethereum's issuance fight. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sonya Kim - Co-Founder of 3F Labs ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mike Silagadze - Founder and CEO of Ether.Fi Timestamps 🔓 01:17 Coldcard's 5-year-old entropy bug resurfaces, over $100M in BTC stolen 🕵️ 10:26 Taylor argues it's not North Korea: this hack needs compute, not scams 🎲 21:00 The dice roll debate: why 50 rolls barely saves your seed phrase 📱 27:14 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code 'unchained' at https://cape.co/unchained 📉 27:39 SK Hynix oracle glitch on trade.xyz reignites the platform-responsibility fight 🔗 42:24 Aave retreats from multichain sprawl as EIP-8361 issuance fight erupts 🧠 51:26 Mike on why cutting ETH issuance would push billions of dollars of ETH out of staking 🔥 53:05 Sonya's fix: burn fees for the same effect without cutting issuance 🌀 01:05:20 Kain's take: fragmenting the EF into chaos is actually healthy for ETH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we dissect ColdCard's ~$100M RNG exploit that Claude Code cracked in 8 minutes, debate whether AI just killed open-source security and Bitcoin maximalism, tear apart Ethereum's EIP-8361 staking-yield taper, and unpack Leopold Aschenbrenner's 67% Situational Awareness blowup and CLARITY Act's ethics fight. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. No guest this week, just the four of them working through a week where AI quietly rewrote the economics of both security and human psychology, and crypto happened to be standing in the blast radius. This episode: ColdCard, NVK's Bitcoin-only hardware wallet, got drained of nearly $100M thanks to a random-number-generation bug that a one-word commit buried five years ago, and Claude Code sniffed it out in 8 minutes (an open model with no internet found it in 20, for about two bucks). The crew debates whether AI just killed open-source security, whether Nic Carter is right that this is 'the death of Bitcoin maximalism,' and why Tarun thinks maxi devs are 'the RFK of security practices.' Then they take a blowtorch to Ethereum's EIP-8361 staking-yield taper (Tarun: 'the proposal reads like shit'), unpack Leopold Aschenbrenner's 67% Situational Awareness blowup while 4x levered, and wade into the CLARITY Act's ethics fight where a single amendment is the whole ballgame. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 ColdCard's Bitcoin-only hardware wallet drained of nearly $100M after a five-year-old random-number-generation bug silently fell back to weak software RNG. 🔹 A single dev swapped C++ macros with a one-word commit message, seemingly just to get NVK's code to compile, and doomed years of keys. 🔹 Claude Code found the ColdCard bug in 8 minutes; open model GLM 5.2, no internet, found it in ~20 for about $2. 🔹 Tarun calls Bitcoin maxi devs 'the RFK of security practices' who 'don't do audits,' branding ColdCard's lack of hardening 'incredibly delinquent.' 🔹 Haseeb warns AIs 'are much less diverse than humans,' so security now scales with AUM while North Korea spends thousands in compute. 🔹 Nic Carter calls it 'the death of Bitcoin maximalism' as Haseeb reads posts from holders who scrimped for three Bitcoin and woke up wiped. 🔹 EIP-8361 from Pintail and Justin Drake tapers ETH staking yield toward zero above 50% staked; the community is 'vomiting all over' it. 🔹 Tarun torches EIP-8361 as 'a truly horrendous post,' arguing constantly changing policy means Ethereum is never credible hard money. 🔹 Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness AI hedge fund blew up ~67% while 4x levered, with Robert drawing Archegos comparisons. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:03 ColdCard's $100M Exploit 05:46 AI, Audits & Bitcoin Maxi Security Failures 12:07 Open Source vs Closed Source in the AI Era 23:21 EIP-8361: Ethereum's Staking Yield Taper 30:34 Hard Money, Post-Quantum & Central Bank Chaos 35:54 Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blowup 44:41 Robinhood Prediction Markets Boom as Hyperliquid RWAs Flip Crypto 51:54 Korea's Bloodbath & the Death of Retail Volatility 55:17 CLARITY Act: Ethics Provisions Are the Linchpin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthropic's AI agents escaped a hacking test and still think they're inside it. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy Le on who's liable when a model breaks free, plus the $100M Coldcard hack and Kalshi's court losing streak. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Anthropic's AI models broke out of a fake hacking simulation this week, and some still think they're inside it. One agent invented an email address and phone number to pose as a person, then published malware that twelve companies downloaded before anyone caught it. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le use the incident to revisit a theme running through the whole episode: who has a duty to disclose when something breaks, and why crypto and AI are both being left to police themselves. They start with the Coldcard hardware wallet hack, where a firmware flaw cut seed phrase randomness roughly in half, letting attackers brute-force wallets meant to be unguessable. From there, the hosts turn to Kalshi's losing streak in New York courts and the race among builders to acquire a CFTC-registered designated contract market, before landing on Anthropic's own agents slipping past the guardrails meant to contain them. Banks have 36 hours to disclose a breach. AI labs and wallet makers, the hosts argue, are still working entirely on the honor system. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps 🩺 02:16 Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos on joining Chainlink Labs 🔐 03:08 How a Coldcard firmware flaw let attackers guess seed phrases with AI 💙 18:32 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained ⚖️ 19:36 Why Kalshi keeps losing its fight against New York's gambling regulators 🏛️ 30:47 DCM: the CFTC license every prediction market and perps exchange needs 🤖 33:37 Why Anthropic's AI agents escaped a test and still think they're inside it 💧 45:40 Matt Damon's crypto.com ad money and the water.org donation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  A firmware bug quietly introduced into Coldcard hardware wallets in 2021 has let attackers drain an estimated 1,600 to 2,000 bitcoin, over $100 million, from cold storage addresses that sat untouched for years. Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn has been tracing the exploit in real time, and in this clip he breaks down exactly how the random number generator meant to secure private keys "failed silently" into "way too weak entropy," and lays out the wave-by-wave forensic trail he is using to track the attacker. Alex Thorn identifies three confirmed attack waves and a possible fourth, and Chris Perkins makes the case that even a "trustless, permissionless" system still requires trusting something, in this case, a hardware wallet's own firmware. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Alex Thorn - Head of Research at Galaxy Digital and host of Galaxy Brains This clip is from a longer conversation on the Coldcard hack, U.S. AI guardrails, and the case for self custody. Full episode here. https://youtu.be/0oYZGw2DSj0?si=TwubhLQ35L8cXyG_  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET. Subscribe to catch it live. 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters 🔐 00:00 Coldcard's reputation as Bitcoin's gold standard hides a deep systemic flaw 🎲 03:42 How a 2021 firmware update let key generation fail silently into weak entropy 🕵️ 09:56 Alex Thorn traces three confirmed attack waves, and a possible fourth 🤝 14:05 'They trusted Coldcard to do the right thing': what broke when a hardware wallet failed Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wall Street's transfer agents want issuers, not outside platforms, to control tokenized stock. Securitize's CEO says the alternative invites insider trading. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Securitize took itself public twice this year: once through a direct listing, and once by tokenizing more than $265 million of its own stock via a SPAC with Cantor Equity Partners, testing whether Wall Street lets equities trade onchain. Carlos Domingo, founder and CEO of Securitize, joins Laura Shin to argue that much of crypto's tokenized stock boom is unauthorized, offshore paper exposing investors and issuers to real legal risk, and to make the case that transfer agents, not outside platforms, should control what gets tokenized. They cover Rule 611, the SEC rule locking onchain and offchain share prices together, the Securities Transfer Association's push for issuer authorization, and a Netflix stock split that left an unauthorized derivative trading five times off. Domingo also lays out Securitize's NYSE partnership, launching tokenized trading in the fourth quarter. The SEC is now weighing whether to unwind the rule that keeps those prices identical, with real stakes for how equities trade next. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlos Domingo - Founder and CEO of Securitize Timestamps 🏛️ 01:09 Why Domingo took Securitize public after Circle's IPO opened the door 💹 04:12 Securitize's SPAC: tokenizing over $265M in stock with Cantor Equity Partners 📣 10:10 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 🔗 10:24 Why Securitize tokenized SECZ on Solana for trading, Avalanche for lockup 📜 14:51 DTCC entitlement vs onchain shares: what you actually own on Robinhood ⚠️ 16:46 Why owning tokenized versus traditional shares carries real risk ⚖️ 20:53 Why Rule 611 keeps onchain and offchain share prices identical 🧩 28:37 The three models of tokenized equity, and who should authorize them 🚨 34:47 Tom Farley's insider trading warning about unauthorized stock derivatives 🏦 40:10 Why institutions still fear crypto after Celsius, BlockFi, and FTX 🗽 44:02 Inside Securitize's tokenized trading partnership with the NYSE 🪙 50:01 Why Domingo calls Robinhood a partner, not a competitor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  Meta and Microsoft reported earnings on the same night, and investors sent their stocks in opposite directions. Chris Galipeau of the Franklin Templeton Institute walks Steven Ehrlich through why Meta got punished for raising its CapEx guidance while Microsoft's Azure growth held steady, then makes the case that the broader AI CapEx boom is still only in its second inning, not a bubble about to pop. Host: Steven Ehrlich - Host, Head of Research at Sharplink - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich  Guest: Chris Galipeau - Head Market Strategist at the Franklin Templeton Institute This clip is from a longer conversation on Fed policy, Iran, AI earnings, and prediction markets. Full episode here:https://youtu.be/BXWq7OPcm24  We go live every Thursday - subscribe to catch it live. Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters 🎙️ 00:00 Kicking off the Meta vs Microsoft earnings comparison 📉 00:26 Why Meta landed in the 'penalty box' on CapEx guidance ☁️ 01:25 Microsoft's Azure growth number was 'super strong' 💰 02:41 The FAANG-era CapEx inversion nobody saw coming 📊 03:41 How to actually evaluate a company's balance sheet health 🔄 04:52 The circular financing risk, and Steve's 'incestuous' tech giants question ⚾ 07:24 The baseball analogy: still early innings, and why this isn't a bubble Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Privacy is having a moment in crypto. As competition heats up, the pitfalls of the technology around the quantum threat, regulatory risk and more make the trajectory hard to predict. A counterfeit bug sat undetected in Zcash's Orchard privacy pool for four years, capable of minting an unlimited supply of untraceable coins, illustrating the risks of one of the hottest crazes in crypto. Joe Andrews, CEO of Aztec Labs, Jarrad Hope, founder of Logos, and Mert Mumtaz, cofounder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to argue the bug is less alarming than what it reveals: cryptographic privacy is difficult to get right, and the industry is racing to get it right anyway, because institutions will not come onchain without it. They cover Zcash's quantum-recoverable Ironwood upgrade and the turnstile proving the counterfeit coins never moved, Ethereum's sprawling privacy roadmap and the risk it arrives too late, Logos' mixnet built to protect validators from block relays now censoring transactions, and why all three see Canton's private stablecoins as little more than a bank with extra steps. The fight over what actually counts as privacy on a blockchain is only getting started. Host ⁠Laura Shin⁠ - Founder, CEO and Host of Unchained Guest ⁠Joe Andrews - CEO of Aztec Labs ⁠Jarrad Hope - Founder of Logos ⁠Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius Sponsor ⁠Cape⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠   (use code: UNCHAINED). Timestamps: 🔐 01:52 Why Joe, Jarrad, and Mert think privacy's crypto moment is now 💙 18:18 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained ⚖️ 19:14 Why Jarrad says the weak need privacy and the powerful need transparency 🔬 24:49 How zero knowledge proofs actually update encrypted state onchain 🕸️ 33:07 Why 43.7% of block relays now censor, and how Logos fixes it 🐛 36:32 The undetected Zcash bug that could have minted infinite fake coins 🔒 46:32 Mert explains how Zcash's Ironwood upgrade closes the counterfeit hole 🛤️ 51:44 Why Joe worries Ethereum's privacy roadmap might arrive too late 🏦 57:39 Why Mert calls Canton no more private than trusting JPMorgan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

BitMEX shut down without an angry tweet. Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder joins Kain and Taylor on why dead tokens never get that mercy. Plus, Kyle Samani's Multicoin blowup. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== BitMEX shut down after 11 years and crypto Twitter answered with nostalgia. When a token project dies, the same audience spends weeks dragging it. Steven Goldfeder, co-founder and CEO of Offchain Labs, the team behind Arbitrum, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to work through why. Goldfeder argues crypto's grant-funded, revenue-optional era is over, and explains why Arbitrum licensed its stack so that partners like Robinhood Chain have to keep paying for it, while Base pays Optimism. They trace the DPRK crewhacking crews now rotating through bridge exploits, debate whether Uniswap's new permissioned pools point toward tokens that carry real investor rights, and ask Goldfeder whether he would trade Arbitrum's open token for a restricted one only a fraction of the world could hold. The conversation closes on Kyle Samani telling Solana builders that Multicoin, the firm he co-founded, is working against them, and what that says about how much of an ecosystem can rest on a single fund. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steven Goldfeder - Co-Founder and CEO of Offchain Labs Timestamps 📣 00:47 Cape: Get 33% off six months at https://cape.co/unchained 🪦 01:47 Kain opens wondering whether crypto itself is quietly dying in 2026 📊 03:41 Steven on Arbitrum's project tracking and the 'massive consolidation' hitting L2s ⚔️ 10:03 The proxy war: Robinhood Chain and Base now fight instead of Arbitrum and Optimism 🪦 14:23 Why BitMEX's shutdown felt nostalgic while token deaths trigger real anger 🌉 26:21 Hacks of the week: the DPRK crew behind the AFX perp DEX bridge exploit 👽 32:51 Kain's take: bridges got safer until 'aliens landed' and started hacking again 🏛️ 40:32 Permissioned DeFi: Uniswap's compliance pools and Superstate's equity-like tokens 🎯 57:32 Would Steven trade Arbitrum's open token for a 5% investor-only model? 🥊 01:05:42 Kyle Samani's Multicoin tweet and Solana's VC fight over Hyperliquid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vy Le and Jessi Brooks trace an AI agent's sandbox escape back to crypto's own fight over open code. Plus, Plume general counsel Salman Banaei on Clarity's knife's-edge vote math. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== An AI agent was told to solve a problem inside a sealed sandbox. Instead it found a way out, went to Hugging Face, and took the answer. Jessi Brooks argues that episode, Moonshot's open-weight Kimi K3 release, and Apple's trade secrets suit against OpenAI all rhyme with a fight crypto has been having for years: punish the conduct, not the code. Vy Le pushes back on whether open source can be both the disease and the cure. Then Salman Banaei, General Counsel of Plume and a former SEC and CFTC attorney, joins to map where the Clarity Act's ethics language stands with Ruben Gallego, Thom Tillis, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Adam Schiff, and whether ten Democratic votes exist for cloture. The conversation covers the open-weights export fight, Apple's case against OpenAI, Hester Peirce's new statement on DeFi vaults and onchain lending, and why a new FATF report makes control, not decentralization, the test that matters. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Salman Banaei - General Counsel of Plume, Former Head of Policy at Uniswap and Chainalysis, and Former SEC and CFTC Attorney Timestamps 🌐 04:36 Jessi on why treating Kimi K3's open weights as an export could hit crypto ✍️ 07:47 Why Jessi reads Nvidia's and Anthropic's letters as punish the conduct, not the code 🕳️ 11:41 How an OpenAI agent escaped its sandbox and found answers on Hugging Face 🍎 21:55 Apple sues OpenAI over trade secrets, and one text that could cost it 📣 28:55 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained 🏛️ 30:57 Salman Banaei maps where Clarity's ethics language stands in the Senate 🗳️ 41:12 Why Banaei says Clarity's cloture vote is on a knife's edge 🔐 42:43 Peirce's vault statement, split into development, curation, administration 🌍 48:32 Why FATF and Clarity both make control the real test for DeFi regulation 🔮 54:36 What Banaei thinks happens to Clarity if it fails this Congress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  Jensen Huang had been running the world's most valuable company for years without ever posting on X. When he finally did, it wasn't a hello. It was an open letter arguing that open AI models are a national asset — and within two days the signatory list had doubled to 50 companies. Anthropic and Amazon still haven't signed. Austin Campbell walks the panel through who did, who didn't, and the fight that broke out underneath it: Nick Carter arguing the government doesn't owe the large labs a business model, an Anthropic researcher publicly needling Huang about open-sourcing CUDA, Andrew Ng calling that a false equivalence, and Joe Weisenthal asking whether any of it is more than virtue signaling. Then it gets concrete. Lorenzo Valente makes the case that cheap open models aren't actually cheap once you price them per task, and asks why the US has no answer to a DeepSeek raising at a reported $70 billion valuation. Ram Ahluwalia closes with the Wright brothers, who watched Boeing and Lockheed Martin build an industry on their patents and never saw a cent of it. So can a closed model survive being copied — or is getting copied just what happens? Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Lorenzo Valente - Director of Research at ARK Invest This clip is from a longer conversation on the open weight versus closed weight AI fight. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/lMZtZwolaeA?si=16-Z4TP227B2OUJl  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET. Subscribe to catch it live. Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 🚀 00:00 Jensen Huang's surprise letter reignites the AI open weight fight 💬 01:05 Nick Carter, Julian Schrittwieser, and David Sacks pile on 🔥 02:53 'Virtue signaling' and what happens if China's open models are permanent  ⚖️ 05:15 Lorenzo's balanced take: open models aren't a free panacea 💰 06:28 Lorenzo on DeepSeek and Moonshot AI's reported valuations ✈️ 09:53 Ram's closing case: capitalism, distillation, and the Wright brothers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

YC's Nemil Dalal joins to explain why he's never been more bullish as BitMEX winds down after 11 years, whether every failed crypto idea (TCRs, DAOs, creator coins) eventually works, why crypto is really about money, Base's consumer mea culpa, on-chain reputation and credit, and who pays in the x402 AI-agent era. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week they're joined by Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and ex-Coinbase, where he led USDC and the Coinbase Developer Platform. He's here to explain why, with exchanges winding down left and right, he's somehow never been more bullish. The crew digs into the great contrast of the moment: BitMEX shutting down after 11 years (plus BitMart, Movement Labs, Balancer Labs) while the plumbing quietly prints, and whether Imran's viral 'everything that failed will eventually work' thesis is genius or toxic positivity. From there it's the question of whether crypto is really only about money (Jesse's Base mea culpa included), a war-memories tour through TCRs, on-chain reputation and why pure on-chain credit keeps faceplanting, and finally who actually pays in the x402 AI-agent era, and whether decentralization even survives contact with Google-shaped gravity. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 BitMEX, the exchange that invented the perp swap, winds down September 23rd after 11 years, alongside BitMart, Movement Labs, and Balancer Labs. 🔹 Nemil Dalal explains why he's never been more bullish: rivals adopted BitMEX's innovations, regulatory clarity is arriving, and crypto is becoming invisible infrastructure. 🔹 Nemil rented the Chase Center for a 7,000-builder YC event with Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, and Patrick Collison, yet almost nobody's launching a token early. 🔹 Imran's viral thesis that every failed crypto idea eventually works sparks Haseeb's 'toxic positivity' pushback and a war-memories tour through TCRs and DAOs. 🔹 Instacart's Apoorva vs Webvan and Reddit vs Digg: why timing, path dependency, and the YC 'why now' question decide which failed ideas return. 🔹 Jesse's Base mea culpa: the consumer-social bet on Zora and Farcaster was wrong for now, so he handed the Base app to Kobe. 🔹 Haseeb says crypto has always been about money; Nemil counters 'money is everything,' calling the blockchain the greatest capital innovation machine in the world. 🔹 Why pure on-chain credit keeps faceplanting: address repudiation, no recourse, no wage garnishment, and old memories of Debt DAO's revenue ratchet. 🔹 The x402 AI-agent era: Cloudflare pay-per-call gating, Kimi's inference license, and whether decentralization survives Google-shaped gravity as agents become the new wallet. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures Guest ⭐️Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y Combinator Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kristin Smith walks through the vote math, the ethics fight, and what happens to crypto capital if the Clarity Act stalls before the midterms. The Senate needs 60 votes to pass crypto's market structure bill, the Clarity Act, before an August recess deadline just weeks away. Majority Leader John Thune says the votes likely will not be there in time, and Polymarket puts the odds of passage this year at roughly 30 percent. Kristin Smith, President of the Solana Policy Institute, joins Laura Shin to explain why a deal that seemed close has snagged on ethics language Trump agreed to but Senate Democrats do not trust the Department of Justice to enforce. Smith walks through the vote math behind 53 Senate Republicans and the Democrats who backed last year's Genius Act, the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act's protections for developers, and the new commodities pathway for token launches. She also maps where the sidelined capital goes, from the Middle East to Japan, if Clarity misses its window before the midterms. Host Laura Shin - Founder, CEO and Host of Unchained Guest Kristin Smith - President of the Solana Policy Institute Sponsor Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Timestamps: 🗳️ 00:51 Why Clarity's Senate timeline looks so tight before the August recess 📣 09:20 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained ⚖️ 10:16 Why Trump's ethics language deal became Clarity's toughest sticking point 🏛️ 18:34 Kristin Smith on the Clarity Act provisions that most excite the industry 🌍 23:31 What happens to crypto capital and global leadership if Clarity fails Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SPONSORED CONTENT: This video is a paid partnership with 1inch. It was produced in collaboration with 1inch and is separate from Unchained's editorial coverage. 1inch cofounder Sergej Kunz says up to 85% of DeFi's liquidity sits idle. He walks through Aqua, the self-custodial product built to put that capital back to work. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1inch - Swap crypto at the best rates in DeFi with 1inch — and get an early look at Aqua, their new protocol that lets your liquidity do more than one job at a time https://1inch.io  ======================================================== Discover Aqua, their new shared-liquidity protocol that lets your capital power multiple DeFi strategies at once — without leaving your wallet. Learn more at https://1inch.io 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz says he built Aqua after getting sandwiched by MEV bots while providing his own liquidity, and after 1inch's research found up to 85% of concentrated liquidity across DeFi sits idle. Kunz walks through why he thinks liquidity pools fragment capital by design, and how Aqua's intent-based, self-custody model tries to fix that without asking users to give up control of their assets. He covers Aqua's sub-wallet structure, how professional market makers settle trades after passing 1inch's compliance and KYB checks, and the rollout across 13 networks including Base and Robinhood's chain. Kunz also details 1inch DAO's plan to distribute USDC to liquidity providers. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠André Beganski - Host Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sergej Kunz - Cofounder of 1inch Timestamps 📣 00:19 Swap crypto at the best rates in DeFi with 1inch — and get an early look at Aqua, their new protocol that lets your liquidity do more than one job at a time https://1inch.io  💧 00:40 Sergej on getting sandwiched, and why 85% of DeFi liquidity sits idle 🔬 06:15 Why Sergej says every chain shares Aqua's idle-liquidity flaw 🧩 07:16 Sub wallets: how Aqua runs positions without creating debt 🛡️ 12:10 Why 1inch keeps Aqua self custody, and the risks Sergej flags 🏦 13:24 Who Aqua is built for, and how it isolates sanctioned funds 💰 17:03 Aqua's 13 networks and the $500K DAO incentive program Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cole Kennelly, founder and CEO of Volmex Labs, traces why BVIV and BVIV-US diverge around IBIT's regulated options market, makes the case that Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid have more to gain from the Clarity Act than Bitcoin, and shares his outlook for an increasingly institutional crypto market by year-end. Host: Steven Ehrlich, Head of Research at Sharplink Guest: Cole Kennelly - Founder and CEO of Volmex Labs This clip is from a longer conversation on the Clarity Act's uneven impact across crypto and Volmex's institutional outlook for the market. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/9SUeqeInZws?si=gF6-ZEEy-BED-yJa  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 🎙️ 00:00 The BVIV vs. IBIT options divergence — and what it's telling traders 📊 00:31 Regulated vs. offshore: how IBIT and BVIV-US stack up ⚖️ 02:16 Why Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid have more riding on Clarity than Bitcoin ⏱️ 05:11 How far out Volmex's term structure actually reaches 🔮 05:23 Cole's read on where an increasingly institutional crypto market goes next Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jesse Pollak owns the Base App's social miss, unpacks Robinhood Chain's rise, and explains Brian Armstrong's memecoin moment. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Jesse Pollak spent the week owning a very public miss. In a lengthy post, the Base creator admitted the Base App's social bet had not worked, leaving Base behind in perps, prediction markets and tokenization, and handed the app's reins to Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie. Pollak joins Laura Shin to unpack why the pivot happened now, what he makes of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's memecoin controversy over a token called $BRIAN, and how Base plans to compete as Robinhood Chain outpaces it on daily active users, according to Artemis data. They cover Base's move off Optimism's stack onto its own Azul, Beryl and Cobalt upgrades, a roadmap toward 20,000 transactions per second under the new B20 stablecoin standard, and the x402 agentic payments protocol already handling roughly 90% of Base's transaction volume. Pollak argues less than 1% of the world uses crypto, and that Base's bet is on whoever builds the trusted rails first. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jesse Pollak - Creator of Base Timestamps 🗞️ 01:48 Why Jesse Pollak feels 'fired up' despite Base App's social miss 🧭 03:58 Pollak on why the timing was wrong for Base App's social bet 💳 05:42 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained 🖼️ 06:39 Pollak on Brian Armstrong's Coinbaseman meme coin controversy 🏎️ 10:43 How Pollak plans to compete as Robinhood Chain overtakes Base in DAUs 🤝 12:53 Why Coinbase's distribution edge matters for onboarding new users 🔀 15:37 Why Pollak handed the Base App to Cobie to focus on the chain 🌉 18:20 Why Base App is expanding beyond Base to Solana and Bitcoin ⚙️ 21:05 Base's Azul, Beryl and Cobalt upgrades and its new B20 standard 🔐 24:27 Base Ledgers, agentic payments and privacy in Pollak's roadmap Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face to cheat its own test. Kain and Taylor break it down — plus Base’s failed social bet and the North Korean IT workers still inside crypto. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Coinbase just handed Jesse Pollak’s Base app to Cobie, days after Pollak posted a public mea culpa admitting that the onchain-social and creator-coin bet behind Base never worked. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan trace why Base swung so hard at social instead of perps and prediction markets, and argue Coinbase’s bottomless-money culture, the same one that let Google build Android on a whim, makes it nearly impossible for founders to know when a bet has genuinely failed. They also unpack Brian Armstrong’s memecoin profile-picture flap, arguing the outrage is almost entirely manufactured by traders chasing volatility, the North Korean IT workers still quietly inside much of the crypto industry, and the strangest story of the week: an unreleased OpenAI model that chained two zero-day exploits to escape its test sandbox and hack Hugging Face’s benchmarking servers for the answers. The episode closes on an uncomfortable question: if a model will cheat on a security test just to avoid not knowing its score, what else will it break to get there? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Timestamps 📣 01:55 Base hands its consumer app to Cobie after Jesse Pollak's mea culpa 🏛️ 04:56 Why Kain compares Coinbase's culture to Google's money-fueled delusion 📣 26:50 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code UNCHAINED at https://cape.co/unchained 🪙 28:28 Brian Armstrong's memecoin PFP sparks a very online meltdown 📈 32:58 Why Taylor says the backlash to Brian's memecoin is manufactured 🕵️ 45:15 Why nearly every sizable crypto company has quietly had a DPRK IT worker 💻 47:37 The hidden risk: IT workers who get hacked themselves and expose you 🤖 53:39 An unreleased OpenAI model hacks Hugging Face to cheat on a benchmark 🔓 01:00:26 Why Kain says the model's logic for gaming the test almost makes sense 📄 01:04:10 Hugging Face discloses the hack before OpenAI even notices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Patrick Witt, the White House's executive director for digital assets policy, calls in mid-episode to give the Chopping Block crew a live read on the CLARITY market structure bill! Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week they're joined mid-episode by Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, who dialed in late because he was literally chasing down bill language. First, Tarun explains how Gauntlet closed its biggest raise ever, $125M from SBI Holdings, the crypto OGs of Japan and early Ripple Labs backers, and what it cost him in suits and seven straight days of staying shaved (chairman Kitao-san reportedly listens). Then the crew dissects Balaji's Network School saga, from a Forest City ghost town in Malaysia to an immigration raid, a revoked license, and a sudden MOU-fueled pivot to Kazakhstan, with Tom's dreaded 'turkey chart' making an appearance. Finally, the main event: Patrick lays out the state of play on the CLARITY market structure bill, the August 7th recess deadline, the ~46% Polymarket coin flip, and the first-of-its-kind ethics provision, including the DOJ-versus-state-AG enforcement fight and whether crypto gets a second crack after midterms. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Patrick Witt dials in mid-episode after literally chasing bill language, laying out the CLARITY market structure bill and its August 7th recess deadline. 🔹 Polymarket puts CLARITY at roughly 46%, a coin flip, after passing the House 294-134 last July and stalling in the Senate. 🔹 The first-of-its-kind ethics provision bars officials and spouses from issuing digital assets, forcing existing holdings into blind trusts or divestment. 🔹 The live fight: White House wants DOJ enforcement, Democrats want 50 state attorneys general, which Patrick warns invites politically motivated lawsuits. 🔹 Tarun breaks down Gauntlet's $125M raise from SBI Holdings, his biggest ever, closed after seven straight days of suits and staying shaved in Japan. 🔹 SBI, the crypto OGs of Japan and early Ripple Labs backers, bets on capital shifting from syndicated VC toward TradFi giants funding DeFi liquidity. 🔹 Balaji's Network School goes from a Forest City ghost town in Malaysia to an immigration raid, a revoked license, and an MOU-fueled pivot to Kazakhstan. 🔹 Robert says Balaji 'picked the wrong dance partner' building a network state on foreign soil; Tom warns of the dreaded 'turkey chart.' Hosts ⭐️ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️ Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️ Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️ Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Guest ⭐️ Patrick Witt, Executive Director, President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:59 Tarun's $125M Gauntlet Raise from SBI Holdings 06:32 Balaji's Network School: Malaysia Raid to Kazakhstan Exit 13:57 Patrick Witt Joins: CLARITY Bill State of Play 16:14 The First-of-Its-Kind Presidential Ethics Provision 19:53 DOJ vs State Attorneys General Enforcement Fight 23:36 The Big Three: Ethics, Law Enforcement, and the Ag Title 30:54 Patrick's National Guard Deferral and Short-Handed Crypto Bench 33:11 Polymarket's Coin Flip and Post-Midterm Odds 39:04 After CLARITY: SBR Bill, Tax Provisions, and What's Next 42:44 Wrap: Hosts React to Robert's Hopium Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CFTC pulled a power last used in the Carter era to rescue Kalshi. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy Le on what it means — plus Japan’s crypto tax cut and DTCC’s tokenization leap. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Kalshi had a rough week. Sued by Michigan, hit with a restraining order, then rescued by a CFTC emergency power invoked only four times in the agency’s history, most recently during Jimmy Carter’s Cold War grain embargo. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le untangle how a fight over sports event contracts became a battle over federal preemption, why Kalshi also pulled its flight cancellation contracts under public pressure, and the insider-trading allegation swirling around a Trump teleprompter operator. They also cover Japan’s new financial instruments law, which cuts crypto’s tax rate from as high as 55% to a flat 20% and is already pulling Amazon Japan’s delivery drivers onto yen stablecoins. Then there’s DTCC’s live settlement of tokenized securities with JPMorgan, Goldman, and BlackRock, which Vy Le argues could end the era of synthetic wrapper tokens. And the Clarity Act, still stuck on ethics and yield disputes as the midterms eat into Congress’s calendar. The episode closes on a rare bright note: pseudonymous investigator ZachXBT turning impersonation memecoins into charity donations for Venezuela’s earthquake victims. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps 📱 00:40 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained 🎙️ 01:04 Kalshi's rough week begins: how a Michigan lawsuit over sports contracts became a federalism fight 🗂️ 06:34 Why the CFTC's break glass emergency power has only been invoked four times ever ⚖️ 14:40 Why Kalshi pulled its flight cancellation contracts under public backlash 🕵️ 18:40 The insider trading allegation involving Trump's longtime teleprompter 🇯🇵 21:39 Japan's new law cuts crypto taxes to a flat 20 percent 🏦 35:12 DTCC's live settlement of tokenized securities with JPMorgan, Goldman, and BlackRock 🏛️ 43:44 Why Clarity's odds are shrinking as the midterms eat into Congress's calendar 🤝 46:11 ZachXBT turns impersonation meme coins into charity for Venezuela's earthquake victims Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips/  Austin Campbell's claim that Claude Fable 5 cracked the decades-old Jacobian conjecture opens onto a bigger question: why AI's real-world impact on health care is still lagging. The conversation turns to battlefield drones in Ukraine, the national security stakes of AI guardrails, and why Chris Perkins thinks finance-style regulation could make AI more trustworthy, not less useful. Hosts Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Chapters: 🧠 00:36 Austin on what actually forces AI adoption in health care beyond the hype 🔢 02:02 Austin's claim that Claude Fable 5 solved the Jacobian conjecture, a 90-year-old math problem 🩺 03:21 Ram: doctors are already using AI for diagnostics, but the promise is still ahead of reality 💰 05:41 Why Ram says AI adoption is self financing, citing Eli Lilly 🛩️ 06:15 AI on the battlefield: Ukraine's drone-based warfare shift 🛡️ 07:23 Austin's national security question: is opting out of the AI race even possible 🏛️ 09:39 Chris makes the case for finance style, principles-based AI regulation ⚔️ 10:24 Austin: there is no way to opt out of the AI guardrails race This clip is from a longer conversation on AI adoption, national security, and financial regulation. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/YN0Pje70YtE?si=HVVnRCmYt3Q-G_qc  We go live every Monday at 4:30 pm ET - subscribe to catch it live.  Sponsor: Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lyn Alden raised $40M to launch Orange Juice, a holding company that buys cash-flowing businesses and layers Bitcoin on top, not another pure-play treasury bet. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Lyn Alden just raised $40 million to launch a Bitcoin-backed holding company that skips the trade most of crypto is chasing. Rather than build another pure-play Bitcoin treasury stock, Orange Juice buys cash-flowing, unglamorous businesses and layers a Bitcoin treasury on top at the parent-company level. Lyn Alden, cofounder of Orange Juice and a partner at Ego Death Capital, frames it as a countercyclical alternative to procyclical treasury companies, and she does not spare Strategy from criticism. She compares Orange Juice's structure to Berkshire Hathaway and argues Strategy let its dollar reserve fall too far, weighing in as Laura invokes Michael Saylor's 'sell a kidney' line and STRC's slide to near $85 against its $100 target. She also addresses BIP-110's inscription debate and Bitcoin's quantum computing threat, questioning whether the community’s resistance to change is a strength or a liability. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lyn Alden - Cofounder of Orange Juice and Partner at Ego Death Capital Timestamps 🍊 00:56 Lyn Alden lays out the $40M raise behind Orange Juice's core thesis 💵 08:06 Why Lyn Alden targets cash-flowing firms over VC backed startups 📱 11:17 Cape: get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 🏦 12:16 How keeping the Bitcoin treasury at the parent level avoids procyclical risk 🪖 25:37 How Orange Juice handles a bleeding company and Ruben Zweiban's Navy SEAL background 📈 32:15 Why Lyn says going public aids liquidity, retail access, and tax deferral ⚠️ 39:15 Why Lyn is critical of Strategy's capital structure and Saylor's kidney line 🗑️ 47:40 Why Lyn views Bitcoin inscriptions as spam despite BIP 110's technical limits ⚛️ 50:47 How Lyn assesses the quantum computing threat to Bitcoin's security Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips on its dedicated channels. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts. 🔥 Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bits-bips/id1827931786  🔥 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuKiSkbYrUOOEEiYQEVPniQ  🔥 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6aSBMrOyi33aVDCULJ9mjN?si=NTLk-jl5QGeytA6-2kxMVQ&nd=1&dlsi=42f0b13dd53c4ba0 🔥X - https://x.com/bitsandbips 🔥 Unchained - https://unchainedcrypto.com/bitsandbips/   A White House meeting on Clarity Act ethics is happening in real time, Polymarket's odds on passage have slid from 75% in May to under 40%, and GSR's Andy Baehr explains why he still thinks a vote would catch the market off guard. Host: Steven Ehrlich, Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview and Head of Research at Sharplink Guest: Andy Baehr - Managing Director of Asset Management at GSR This clip is from a longer conversation on whether crypto's best week in months signals a real rally or another relief bounce. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/CQGwPj9bz3w We go live every Thursday - subscribe to catch it live.  Sponsor: Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 🏛️ 00:00 Right now: a White House meeting on Clarity Act ethics, and why the stakes just got higher 🗳️ 00:24 The key math question: 60 votes means winning over seven Democrats 🚀 01:28 The August 7 deadline that could send the market into overdrive 🎙️ 02:38 Baehr's warning: the longer this drags on, the less likely it gets done 📉 03:22 Clarity Act odds have cratered from 75% to under 40% since May, what changed 💥 04:24 The market isn't pricing in passage, and Baehr thinks that's a mistake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cap's founders on shrinking their Stabledrop from $11M to $4M — plus a $23M hack traced toward North Korea, a BarnBridge governance exploit, and Kain's case to force weak L2s to become their own L1s. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Cap committed to a roughly 11 million dollar Stabledrop in February, promising early users stablecoins instead of tokens. A delayed token sale raised less than hoped, and the reward shrank to about 4 million, forcing a fast rewrite of who got paid. Benjamin Sarquis Peillard, Founder and CEO of Cap, and Weso of Cap join Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to walk through a restructuring that made yield-token holders whole, left farmers without a windfall, and argue points programs are an uncapped marketing expense many projects cannot afford. The conversation widens into EthSystems, a new Ethereum Foundation spinout backed by Joe Lubin, SharpLink and BitMine, Jesse Pollak handing Base product leadership to Cobie, Robinhood Chain's Morpho integration, and whether Ethereum mainnet undercharges L2s. They revisit BarnBridge's SEC-era DAO structure, a dormant governance exploit, a MetaMask and Revoke.cash delegation tool, and a 23 million dollar Ostium hack Taylor traced toward North Korea. Kain closes with a Three Mile Island analogy: complex systems fail not from one mistake, but from small shortcuts compounding at once. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guests: Benjamin Sarquis Peillard - Founder and CEO of Cap Weso - Co-Founder of Cap Timestamps 🪂 01:30 Benjamin and Weso explain how Cap's Stabledrop plan fell apart post-TGE 💸 08:05 Weso on why uncapped points programs turn into runaway marketing spend 🐦 21:31 Kain and Taylor on crypto Twitter's algorithm flip after a year of exile 📱 24:17 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained 🏛️ 25:09 Why EthSystems, the newest EF spinout, splits Kain on bullish or bearish 🤝 30:20 Taylor on Jesse handing Base app duties to Cobie and what it signals 🎰 36:28 Robinhood Chain's memecoin surge, Morpho ties, and the Cashcat backstory ⚖️ 41:17 Is Ethereum undercharging L2s? Kain makes the case for pushing costs to L1 🔓 55:51 BarnBridge's SEC-era DAO, this week's governance exploit, and the Revoke.cash fix that stops it ☢️ 01:11:31 The Ostium hack: North Korea-linked actor, stolen keys, oracle compromise 💥 01:26:24 Closing rapid-fire: Euler's recovery and an old Vyper compiler bug revisited Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two weeks after launch, 85% of Robinhood Chain's trading is memecoins and just 1% is RWAs. Johann Kerbrat says that doesn’t change the strategy. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told CNBC on July 2 that real-world assets, not memecoins, were the future of crypto on Robinhood Chain. Two weeks after launch, the numbers disagree: roughly 85% of daily trading on the chain is memecoins, while tokenized RWAs sit at about 1%. Johann Kerbrat, Vice President and General Manager of Robinhood Crypto, joins Laura Shin to argue the split is not a problem. He makes the case that building the chain permissionless was deliberate, and that memecoin trading through CashCat and PumpFun brings the liquidity RWAs will eventually need. Kerbrat also defends building the chain's lending and margin system on USDG over USDC or Tether, walks through the separate, unshared liquidity instance behind Robinhood's new perps product with Lighter, and addresses Robinhood's 63% quarterly drop in crypto transaction revenue. His answer: Robinhood Chain was never meant to smooth out that swing, and the real test is whether tokenization can outrun regulation. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Johann Kerbrat - Vice President and General Manager of Robinhood Crypto Timestamps 🐸 01:06 Why memecoins are 85% of Robinhood Chain's DEX volume, not RWAs 🚀 05:35 Why PumpFun listing Robinhood Chain tokens was the result of their strategy 🔐 09:33 Where Robinhood's responsibility ends and the permissionless chain begins 📣 11:12 Cape: Use code UNCHAINED for 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained ⚡ 16:17 Why Robinhood built a separate Lighter instance for its perps 💵 20:24 Why USDG, not USDC or Tether, backs Robinhood Chain's lending and margin 📉 23:23 Does the chain mitigate the 63% swing crypto can have on Robinhood's earnings? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nick Almond and Proph3t on ENS's treasury fight, the BonkDAO heist, and why Proph3t would not touch Venice's VVV token. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Nick Johnson, the founder of ENS Labs, used his own tokens to kill a vote renewing ENS DAO's Security Council, potentially clearing the way for a foundation to take over a treasury worth more than $100 million. Nick Almond, head of governance at the Jito Foundation, and Proph3t, cofounder of MetaDAO, join Laura Shin to untangle what that move reveals about who should control a DAO's money, and whether voting was ever the right way to decide it. They trace ENS cofounder Jeff Lau's warning that the treasury became a honeypot with zero accountability, and the collapsing voter turnout that let a 3% token stake decide the DAO's fate. Proph3t makes the case for MetaDAO's decision markets over voting entirely, while Nick argues curated delegates solve the same capture problem without giving up the vote. They also cover the $20 million BonkDAO heist, pulled off with one proposal and seven votes, and the backlash over Dragonfly's investment in Venice's VVV token. Both guests agree DAOs are near a bottom. What comes next depends on whether anyone tries something new. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Nick Almond - Head of Governance at the Jito Foundation ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Proph3t - Co-founder of MetaDAO Timestamps 🏛️ 01:06 Laura frames the DAO reckoning: disbandments, low turnout, and the Venice fight 📉 08:26 How ENS DAO's collapsing voter turnout let a 3% stake decide its fate ⚖️ 12:55 Proph3t on why voting is a cost, and how a 51% attack captures a DAO 🏦 19:11 Nick maps DAOs' next phase: substructures picked for expertise, not popularity 🍯 24:09 Why Jeff Lau called ENS's treasury plan a honeypot with zero accountability 📣 28:50 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained 🏗️ 29:49 Why founders like Nick Johnson get vilified for wanting DAOs to run efficiently 🗳️ 36:35 Why Nick Johnson's silent vote against ENS's Security Council reads as an attack 💰 41:34 How BonkDAO lost $20 million to one proposal backed by just seven votes 🧩 46:22 Why Proph3t would not buy Venice's VVV token despite defending its disclosures 🔮 56:45 Proph3t on MetaDAO's origin story: pro oversight, not pro governance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court just made it easier to fire SEC and CFTC commissioners. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy on why that could reset who controls crypto policy. Plus, the UK's new rulebook. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== The Supreme Court just tore up a 90-year-old precedent that kept independent-agency commissioners safe from a president's whims, and almost no one in crypto is talking about what it means for the SEC and the CFTC. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le trace how the ruling in Trump v. Slaughter changes who actually controls financial regulation. Then they cross the Atlantic to the UK's sweeping new crypto rulebook and the European Commission's move to expand MiCA just as its first version fully takes effect. They also dig into a Cambridge report showing fighters from one of the world's most brutal terror groups using chatbots to troubleshoot weapons and plan attacks, and ask why there's no Section 230 for crypto or AI, only a growing pile of civil lawsuits testing where liability lands. Jessi Brooks argues crypto's decade of learning to police neutral technology might be the only playbook AI has left to borrow. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps 💙 00:28 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months of privacy-first mobile service at⁠ https://cape.co/unchained⁠ 🇬🇧 01:05 Why the UK just published a crypto rulebook few even noticed 🇪🇺 13:15 Why Brussels wants to expand MiCA to cover tokenized assets and stablecoins ⚖️ 24:57 How the Supreme Court handed presidents new power over the SEC and CFTC 🏛️ 33:47 The legal reasoning behind the ruling, and why the Fed board was spared 🤖 39:37 The AI segment: a Cambridge report on Boko Haram's chatbot fueled weapons unit ⚖️ 47:58 Why crypto and AI both lack a Section 230, and who ends up getting sued 🦎 52:20 The good news: how TRM traced $15 million in crypto tied to wildlife trafficking Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Austin Campbell draws a parallel between the AI data center backlash and the decades-long collapse of US nuclear power, then Sam Lyman of the Bitcoin Policy Institute puts real odds on whether the Clarity Act passes the Senate before August recess. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Sam Lyman - Head of Research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute This clip is from a longer conversation on foreign funded opposition to AI data centers and the odds of the Clarity Act passing. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/-xbSniveaQU  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained  (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 🏗️ 00:00 Austin compares the AI backlash to nuclear power's collapse, citing Indian Point 🧭 01:21 Sam calls nuclear the ideal analogy: a problem we solved, then banned 🏠 02:10 Why Sam says AI's real opposition comes from inside the house 👷 02:37 The blue-collar AI boom: construction jobs, electricians, and data centers 🗳️ 04:07 Ram says political leadership, not just technology, has to show up 🎯 05:15 Sam puts Clarity's odds at 70% before August recess ⏳ 06:55 Why the August recess deadline is the real driver of momentum 📉 07:38 Sam's odds drop to 35 to 40% if Congress doesn't act in the next few weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Niklas Kunkel maps where the RWA market is heading next, from Centrifuge and Apollo's CLOs to Galaxy's first tokenized credit product, then turns to a cautionary tale: some SpaceX pre-IPO token buyers never actually owned the shares they thought they had. Host: Steven Ehrlich - Host of Bits + Bips and Head of Research at Sharplink Guest: Niklas Kunkel - Founder and CEO of Chronicle Labs This clip is from a longer conversation on crypto oracles, tokenized real-world assets, and Chronicle Labs' work verifying them. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/HW9Cu_E8DnU  We go live every week - subscribe to catch it live. Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters 🌍 00:00 Where the RWA market goes next, from the man building its plumbing: Niklas Kunkel 💰 00:44 The yield trade heating up: why CLOs like Centrifuge's JAAA and Apollo's Acred are suddenly everywhere 🌌 01:14 Galaxy's first tokenized CLO, and why it's a far bigger deal than it looks 🔍 01:56 Trust no one: how Chronicle checks Galaxy's loan book against its own custodian 🔁 03:04 The looping trick that turns a 7% CLO yield into 14% or 21%, and the risk hiding inside it 🏢 03:27 What's coming next: tokenized REITs and equities 🚀 05:28 The SpaceX pre-IPO token question Niklas keeps getting asked 📉 06:06 The catch nobody mentioned: why SpaceX token buyers never actually owned their shares Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robinhood Chain perps now run on Lighter. Vlad Novakovski maps the revenue split, the USDG collateral risk, and the race for a US perps license. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fidelity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Fidelity has been building in crypto and DeFi since 2014 — now they're hiring. Explore career opportunities at one of the most forward-thinking names in finance here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠crypto.fidelitycareers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Robinhood Chain went live last week, and the perpetual futures powering it are from Lighter, the onchain exchange Robinhood backed before Lighter launched its token. Vlad Novakovski, founder and CEO of Lighter, joins Laura Shin to unpack a partnership he says has been building since he and the Robinhood founder were high school classmates. He details a 50/50 revenue split, why USDG as collateral creates friction for market makers, and how a pending CFTC license would cover Robinhood's own front-end too. Novakovski also addresses the crowded field forming around US perps, from Kalshi and Coinbase to Kraken and dYdX, and makes the case that onchain volume keeps gaining share even as crypto native tokens lag real world asset perps. His new seat on the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee puts him in the room as regulators decide what a DEX has to look like to operate onshore. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vlad Novakovski - Founder and CEO of Lighter Timestamps 🤝 01:28 Why Vlad calls the Robinhood Chain deal "12 years in the making" and how the revenue is split 🤓 03:40 How Robinhood perps differs from Lighter's own app 💸 05:03 What if means if USDG is the quote asset on Robinhood's perps and USDC is the quote asset on Lighter 💬 11:04 Novakovski on Lighter's Telegram Wallet deal vs Hyperliquid's builder codes 📣 12:50 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained 💼 13:44 Fidelity: Explore crypto and DeFi careers at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com 📉 14:31 Why RWA perps are hitting highs while crypto native perp volume cools ⚠️ 18:00 How Lighter prices liquidation risk when tokenized stocks are collateral 🏛️ 21:14 Novakovski on the regulatory pathway DEXs need to move onshore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Austin Griffith joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to unpack  BonkDAO's $20M governance heist, and Kain's case for giving founders more control. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠Cape⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== A single wallet spent $4.4 million buying up Bonk tokens, then used that stake to push through a governance proposal that legally emptied BonkDAO's roughly $20 million treasury a week later, with almost no one watching the vote. Austin Griffith, Ethereum Foundation developer and creator of Scaffold-ETH and founder of BuidlGuidl, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to use the heist as a jumping-off point for Kain's real target: ENS. Kain argues founder Nick Johnson should retake control over building and product from the DAO, and makes the case that founder-led execution beats decentralized governance almost every time. They also cover Vitalik's Lean Ethereum overhaul and why Austin says it will barely change what he builds, the $1 AI audit he launched as a meme for x402 agent payments, Robinhood's new chain and the pay-to-play deals behind it, and why Kain now argues tokens are the wrong way to raise money. If a founder with total conviction can outperform a DAO built to stop exactly that, the DAO experiment may be further from finished than anyone wants to admit. Hosts: ⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guests: ⁠Austin Griffith - Ethereum Foundation developer and creator of Scaffold-ETH and SpeedRun Ethereum, and founder of BuidlGuidl Timestamps 🛠️ 01:32 Why Austin says Vitalik's Lean Ethereum overhaul barely changes his job 📅 08:21 Taylor on why the EF ships huge roadmaps but too little in the short term 🪓 12:56 Austin on surviving the EF's leaner reorg and the wave of departures 💵 15:43 How Austin turned a serious auditing tool into a viral meme 🤝 18:48 x402 skill files: why agents will soon pay other agents for on-tap skills 💙 25:44 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months of privacy first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained 🚨 26:41 How one wallet legally voted its way to BonkDAO's $20M treasury ⚖️ 32:57 Why Kain thinks Nick Johnson and ENS should take power back from the DAO 🤖 55:29 Robinhood's new chain and Kain's take on crypto's pay-to-play problem 🪙 58:29 Why Kain says tokens are now the wrong tool to raise money Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vladimir Novakovski of Lighter joins the Chopping Block crew to untangle one of crypto's oldest debates: what happens when tokens and equity coexist. The gang digs into the Venice/VVV controversy, breaks down Lighter's new Perps integration with Robinhood Chain and the fragmentation questions it raises, dissects the wild BonkDAO governance exploit, and reacts to the eye-popping $2.4 billion in crypto income disclosed in Trump's financial filings. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto, joined this week by special guest Vladimir Novakovski of Lighter. The crew dives deep into the resurfaced tokens-versus-equity debate sparked by Dragonfly's investment in Venice and its VVV token, with Haseeb making the case that Venice is fundamentally different from Uniswap Labs style structures. Vlad explains how Lighter has approached the same dilemma through programmatic buybacks and a single C corp structure, and the group debates fiduciary duties, Delaware law, and what a merged DeFi/TradFi future for equity and tokens might look like. From there, they unpack Lighter's big Robinhood Chain announcement, including Lighter's new role as the native Perps engine inside Robinhood Wallet, and whether running a separate instance fragments liquidity. The episode wraps with a breakdown of the BonkDAO governance exploit that let an attacker vote themselves $20 million in tokens, and a reaction to Trump's staggering $2.4 billion in pre-tax crypto income revealed in his latest financial disclosure. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Haseeb breaks down why Venice's VVV token is not equity and not a Uniswap style governance token in disguise 🔹 Vlad explains how Lighter's programmatic buybacks and single C corp structure align token holders and equity holders 🔹 The gang debates Delaware fiduciary law, shareholder primacy, and what happens when buyback capital runs dry 🔹 Vlad lays out the vision of tokenized equity merging with crypto tokens into a single on-chain asset 🔹 Lighter's Robinhood Chain deal goes live with Lighter powering native Perps trading inside Robinhood Wallet 🔹 Vlad addresses concerns about liquidity fragmentation across separate Lighter instances 🔹 BonkDAO gets exploited as an attacker buys governance tokens and votes themselves $20 million 🔹 Robert compares the Bonk exploit to the infamous Beanstalk and Compound Humpty governance attacks 🔹 Trump's financial disclosure reveals $2.4 billion in pre-tax crypto income, sparking a debate on crypto's political future Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Guest ⭐️Vladimir Novakovski, Founder of Lighter Timestamps 00:00 Intro 03:40 Tokens vs equity: the Venice VVV debate begins 06:12 Fiduciary duty, Delaware law, and Lighter's C corp structure 08:00 What happens when buyback capital runs out 12:42 Why Venice launched a token in the first place 19:18 Comparing VVV to BNB and overloaded crypto assets 25:28 Lighter's Robinhood Chain deal and native Perps launch 37:02 BonkDAO governance exploit and the $20M vote 44:02 Lessons from Beanstalk and Compound's Humpty saga 47:09 Trump's $2.4B crypto income disclosure reactions Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, Michael Saylor's Strategy was the market's most dependable Bitcoin buyer. Recently, it has done the opposite. Strategy just sold 3,588 Bitcoin for roughly $216 million, its largest single tranche yet, deepening the question of whether Michael Saylor has become a structural seller instead of a buyer. Ram Ahluwalia, Austin Campbell, and Chris Perkins break down the STRC dividend mechanics behind the sale, the bull case for a catch-up trade, and the bear case if Bitcoin never rallies back. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto This clip is from a longer conversation on Strategy's Bitcoin sale, the stablecoin wars, and the token versus equity debate. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/H3z68SYty0k  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET. Subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor: 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained  (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 💰 00:00 Strategy's record $216M Bitcoin sale: the numbers behind the disclosure 📉 01:14 mNAV falls below 1 for the first time, and the STRC dividend framework 🔁 02:31 Why Ram says selling Bitcoin beats issuing more MSTR shares ⚖️ 04:21 The bear case: what happens if Bitcoin doesn't rally from here ✈️ 05:24 Chris on Saylor's three-body problem after a week of conferences in London Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Strategy sold $260M of Bitcoin at a loss to fund dividends. Parker White of Apyx makes the case that it is smarter than it sounds. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fidelity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Fidelity has been building in crypto and DeFi since 2014 — now they're hiring. Explore career opportunities at one of the most forward-thinking names in finance here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠crypto.fidelitycareers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Strategy just made its largest Bitcoin sale ever, offloading 3,588 BTC for $260 million at a loss to fund preferred dividends. Days earlier it unveiled a digital capital framework: a 12-month coverage rule, a hiked STRC dividend, and a $10 billion buyback plan. Markets calmed, but the moves raise a question: has Strategy stopped being a Bitcoin company? Parker White, CFA, founding contributor and chief investment/operating officer at Apyx, pushes back on claims that funding dollar dividends with Bitcoin sales betrays Bitcoin's ethos, framing it as smart capital management. Shin presses him on whether investors now bet on Strategy's team, not Bitcoin. They unpack short sellers' calculus, the 2027-2029 convertible cliff Matt Walsh pegs near $6.7 billion, and Apyx's apxUSD, a tokenized yield wrapper around STRC and SATA that depegged to 72 cents in the turmoil. White defends Apyx 2.0's redemption model against 'free put option' critics and responds to critic’s contention that Strategy resembles Terra/ Luna or FTX. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Parker White - CFA, Founding Contributor and Chief Investment/Operating Officer at Apyx Timestamps 🏛️ 02:03 Parker on why Strategy's record Bitcoin sale to fund dividends is smart, not desperate 📋 06:24 How Strategy's new digital capital framework tries to calm the market's nerves ⚠️ 09:59 Laura and Parker spar over whether shorts or Strategy's own missteps sparked the selloff 💵 21:27 Whether prioritizing USD over Bitcoin marks a philosophical flip for Strategy 📣 26:28 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers at Fidelity today at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com 🔐 27:10 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code UNCHAINED at https://cape.co/unchained ⏳ 28:09 Why Parker isn't worried about Strategy's looming $6.7 billion convert cliff 🧩 34:56 Parker on how Apyx wraps STRC and SATA into a yield bearing onchain asset 📉 36:38 What caused apxUSD's drop to as low as 72 cents and the liquidity pull 🛡️ 41:10 Parker defends Apyx 2.0's redemption rules against the free put option critics 🔄 47:53 Parker on why comparing Strategy to Terra Luna or GBTC misreads the risk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ari Redbord sits down with Katherine, Jessi, and Vy to talk about SEC clarity, the onshore perps boom, and DeFi's opsec problem — plus why the U.S. should hack North Korea back. Thank you to our sponsor! Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). The hosts of DEX in the City spend every week breaking down crypto's legal fights. This time, they're the ones answering the questions. Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs, sits down with Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le for a wide-ranging conversation on where crypto's regulatory and security battles are actually headed. Vy traces her path from SEC enforcement to her case for "tech-neutral" rules: regulators should regulate outcomes, not technology. Katherine explains why DCMs have become crypto's hottest acronym, as true perps and prediction markets move onshore. And Jessi makes her push to stop calling North Korea's hacks "illicit finance" and start naming them a national security threat: Pyongyang, she notes, is funding a weapons program with stolen crypto. Ari goes further — if North Korea can steal hundreds of millions from DeFi, the U.S. should steal it back. Vy pushes back on the panic over the recent hacks: most, she argues, weren't broken smart contracts at all, just sloppy operational security. The conversation covers SEC clarity, the CFTC's moment, DeFi security, on-chain privacy, and what it really takes to keep the ecosystem safe. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ari Redbord - Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs and Host of TRM Talks Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps 🛡️ 02:29 OFAC's first IRGC-linked exchange sanctions on Zedcex and Zedxion 🧭 05:20 How Vy, Katherine, and Jessi went from the SEC, BigLaw, and DOJ into crypto 🎙️ 14:10 The origin story behind the DEX in the City name and its all-women cast 🏛️ 18:25 Vy on the SEC trading ambiguity for rules, and "tech-neutral" regulation 📈 22:36 Katherine on why DCMs are suddenly crypto's hottest acronym 💙 25:38 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 🩹 26:12 Jessi on reframing illicit finance around victims, not just enforcement 🔐 30:03 Jessi and Vy on Drift, Kelp, and why the recent hacks were ops failures 🕵️ 34:52 Katherine on why privacy is necessary for on-chain markets 🔮 40:04 Lightning round: Jessi on agentic finance, Katherine on perps, Vy on vaults Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joseph Chalom lays out why Ethereum Institutional exists, how it differs from Etherealize, and why he thinks Michael Saylor is in a pickle. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fidelity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Fidelity has been building in crypto and DeFi since 2014 — now they're hiring. Explore career opportunities at one of the most forward-thinking names in finance here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠crypto.fidelitycareers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Sharplink, BitMine, and Joe Lubin spent the past ten days launching two new organizations aimed at convincing Wall Street to build on Ethereum, backing them with commitments from more than fifty institutional supporters. Joseph Chalom, CEO of Sharplink and a board member of the new Ethereum Institutional, joins Laura Shin to make the case that Ethereum's real competition isn't Solana or Canton. It's inertia: the reluctance of the world's largest institutions to touch financial rails they don't already trust. Chalom walks through how Ethereum Institutional differs from Etherealize and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, why Robinhood building on Arbitrum still counts as a win for Ethereum, and what it would take for ETH to capture the value flowing through the network as tokenized real-world assets grow past $31 billion. He pushes back on claims that the Ethereum Foundation's culture is broken, then turns to Strategy's preferred stock drama and says plainly that Michael Saylor is in a pickle. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Joseph Chalom - CEO of Sharplink Timestamps 🚀 01:33 Why Sharplink, BitMine, and Joe Lubin launched Ethereum Institutional 🧭 05:51 How Ethereum Institutional differs from Etherealize and the EEA 🃏 10:15 Chalom says institutional inertia, not Solana, is Ethereum's real threat 💙 14:40 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 💼 15:34 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers that could change your future at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com 🧩 16:20 Why Chalom says Robinhood building on Arbitrum is still a win for Ethereum ⚡ 20:54 Does value actually flow back to ETH the token 🏛️ 24:33 Chalom pushes back on the idea that Ethereum's culture is broken 🤝 29:01 Why Chalom says Sharplink's shareholders and Ethereum's ecosystem are aligned 📉 32:18 Chalom says Michael Saylor is in a pickle over Strategy's preferred stock drama Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nick Johnson's ENS vote sparked days of backlash. He and co-founder Alex Van de Sande join Uneasy Money to explain what actually happened. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== A routine two year renewal for the ENS DAO's Security Council failed on chain this week, and Nick Johnson, founder and CEO of ENS Labs, voted against it with roughly 50% of the active supply. Some users on X have since cast him as the villain seizing a $130 million treasury. ENS co-founders Nick Johnson and Alex Van de Sande join Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to untangle what the vote means, and to defend a new proposal handing day-to-day treasury and protocol decisions to a foundation instead of the DAO. They trace how ENS's governance fight mirrors Aave's, why its treasury has trailed a savings account, why Johnson never trusted ETH-weighted voting, and why his conviction in token governance has weakened. The conversation lands on the question hanging over every well-funded DAO: once a protocol accumulates enough money to matter, can any voting mechanism decide who controls it? Hosts: ⁠Kain Warwick⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠Taylor Monahan⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guests: Nick Johnson - Founder and CEO of ENS Labs Alex Van de Sande - Cofounder of ENS Timestamps 🗳️ 02:14 Kain unpacks whether Nick really controls the ENS Security Council vote 🔥 06:37 Taylor pushes back: is the pile-on on Nick actually fair? ⚔️ 11:30 Kain calls it a DAO governance proxy war, echoing Aave's Stani fight 🍯 15:00 Nick on why a DAO treasury becomes a honeypot for capital allocation 🪙 28:01 Nick on why ETH-weighted voting would have left ENS open to a takeover ⚖️ 32:47 Nick clarifies what the ENS Labs proposal actually changes at the DAO 🏛️ 40:27 Nick argues the DAO should stop trying to run ENS day-to-day 📣 52:04 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 🍴 58:56 Could a fork let Nick walk off with ENS's treasury? Alex says no 🎤 01:13:31 Taylor asks Nick and Alex point blank: why are you still here? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Lawant, Head of Research at Anchorage Digital, breaks down why Bitcoin's lack of native yield puts constant pressure on treasury companies, and makes the case that Michael Saylor's playbook is evolving rather than breaking. Host: Steven Ehrlich, Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview and Head of Research at Sharplink Guest: David Lawant, Head of Research at Anchorage Digital This clip is from a longer conversation on Strategy's Stretch rescue plan and Bitcoin's options market. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/VwBxQTcJeXc  New Bits + Bips interviews are posted regularly - subscribe to catch the next one. Sponsor: 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 🎙️ 00:00 A new Citi report reveals why retail's crypto excitement has quietly collapsed 📉 00:17 Retail's bet on the Mag Seven just hit a multiyear low 😨 01:15 The unsettling reason retail fears Saylor becoming Bitcoin's buyer of last resort 🃏 01:44 Revisiting Saylor's infamous "sell your organs before your Bitcoin" line 🪙 02:34 The yield problem: why Bitcoin generates nothing, while Ethereum and Solana pay 📈 03:06 David on covered calls and the fast rise of synthetic yield strategies 🏛️ 04:39 Saylor, the OG who wrote the playbook on institutional Bitcoin accumulation ⚓ 06:28 Why David says Strategy is quietly weathering the storm better than anyone Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Regulators try to freeze illicit stablecoins, but the money's usually gone before the freeze lands. The hosts on why crypto sanctions keep failing. Thanks to our sponsor! 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at⁠⁠ https://cape.co/unchained⁠⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). A new academic paper from researchers across several Chinese universities makes a striking claim: a stablecoin freeze isn't really a freeze until the transaction lands in a block — which means the freeze itself can be front-run, and sanctions enforcement becomes a market-structure problem. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le — three general counsels who live where law meets code — work through what it means that Tether and Circle now do much of the government's freezing onchain. The paper's numbers unsettle them: by its count, across eight years only nine freezes caught the money midway. From there the hosts widen out: the SEC and CFTC's joint push to harmonize margin rules, your ChatGPT logs turning up as evidence in the courtroom, the Legion lawsuit testing whether export law can govern who logs in to an AI model, and the Bernstein ruling that made code protected speech. They close with a sober CLARITY Act update, a new CBDC-ban roadblock tangled in an unrelated veto fight, and why the end of MiCA's transition period in Europe might be the week's real good news. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps 🏛️ 02:32 KK on why the SEC and CFTC margin harmonization matters for crypto perps 🧊 11:39 Vy on ordering power as sanctioning power and the paper behind it ⚡ 14:43 Why a stablecoin freeze can itself be front run ⚖️ 22:09 The third party doctrine and the risk of deputizing crypto's neutral actors 📣 26:40 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained 💻 27:36 Jessi on why AI in the courtroom is really a software control story 🚪 30:13 The Legion lawsuit, export law, and the Bernstein code-as-speech fight 🔒 37:14 ChatGPT logs as courtroom evidence and why your AI chats aren't private 🏔️ 42:20 The CLARITY Act update: why KK is even more bearish on passage 🇪🇺 47:48 Why MiCA's transition deadline is the week's crypto good news Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The crew is joined by Selini Capital’s Jordi Alexander to break down Open USD, the no-fee stablecoin from a 140-firm consortium spanning Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, all aimed at the Circle and Tether duopoly. Plus Saylor’s new Digital Credit framework for MicroStrategy, the Ansem-fueled memecoin comeback, and ENS reigniting the “DAOs are fake” debate. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. Joining the panel “at the moment of max pain” is Jordi Alexander, CIO of Selini Capital. First up: MicroStrategy in crisis, with MSTR down about 30% in five days and STRC hitting $71, and Saylor’s answer, a new Digital Credit framework with an 18-month cash cushion and a jumbo dividend hike to 12%. Then the headline story, Open USD: a no-fee stablecoin from a 140-member consortium including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, built to break the Circle and Tether duopoly. The back half covers the memecoin comeback around the Ansem coin, and ENS reigniting the “DAOs are fake” debate after Nick Johnson single-handedly blocked a governance vote, before the crew debates whether consortia are just DAOs in a suit. Let’s get into it. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 MSTR falls about 30% in five days and STRC hits $71. Saylor answers with a new “Digital Credit” framework, an 18-month cash cushion, and a jumbo dividend hike to 12% 🔹 Jordi calls the death-spiral panic overblown: “Luna was worthless; you cannot print Bitcoin” 🔹 Tarun stands by “Luna for suits,” comparing STRC’s marketing to Anchor, right down to the AI ad of Saylor escaping the Titanic 🔹 Open USD launches: a no-fee, no-cap stablecoin backed by 140 firms including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, aimed at the Circle and Tether duopoly 🔹 Circle drops about 7 to 8% on the news, and Tether’s Paolo Ardoino “welcomes” a real competitor, the same bit he ran on Libra 🔹 Haseeb’s take: a 140-member consortium is “a signed petition,” good for expanding the market but not for taking Tether’s or Circle’s turf 🔹 Tarun says it all comes down to the revenue share. Set the wrong rules and someone just farms the rake 🔹 The Ansem coin sparks a memecoin revival, a roughly $100M cap the market hasn’t seen in a long time 🔹 ENS reignites the DAO debate as Nick Johnson blocks a treasury restructuring with about 50% of the vote. Are consortia just DAOs in a suit? Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures Guest ⭐️Jordi Alexander, CEO of Selini Capital Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:07 The DeSci beef and Tarun’s Ponzi crusade 03:30 MicroStrategy in crisis: Saylor’s Digital Credit reset 09:34 Is STRC still “Luna for suits”? 19:24 Open USD: 140 firms take on Circle and Tether 29:42 Why a 140-member consortium is just a “signed petition” 42:13 Coinbase’s two masters: USDC vs Open USD 47:01 The memecoin comeback and the Ansem coin 51:57 ENS blows up the DAO: Nick Johnson blocks the vote 57:26 DAOs vs consortia, and can AI save governance? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laura Shin has reported on crypto scams since the early days and wrote one of the first stories on sim swaps. That did not stop a spear-phishing attempt from getting her to download software and run a terminal command before she caught it. Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins turn her near miss into a practical defense playbook, then debate whether self-custody still makes sense for anyone with a public crypto profile. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Laura Shin - Founder and Host of Unchained This clip is from a longer conversation on crypto security and social engineering. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/yKHaE6xMZsE  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsors: 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 🎣 00:00 The fake podcast invite that nearly caught Laura Shin 💻 00:26 How far it went: a download, then a terminal command 🛡️ 05:02 Austin's hard rules for when someone puts time pressure on you 🏦 06:36 Why Ram says ETFs now beat self-custody for public figures 🥷 07:39 Chris on getting hacked and losing his Snoop Dogg NFT 🤖 10:41 Why the same playbook is coming for banks via AI voice clones 🦅 11:33 Chris on letting the private sector recover stolen crypto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it Ethereum or bust? Ansgar Dietrichs makes the case that only Ethereum can anchor the financial system, and admits ETH still lacks a clear value story. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fidelity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Fidelity has been building in crypto and DeFi since 2014 — now they're hiring. Explore career opportunities at one of the most forward-thinking names in finance here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠crypto.fidelitycareers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== The Ethereum Foundation is deliberately shrinking its role, and five former researchers have launched Ethlabs to take over the work they worry will otherwise go undone. Ansgar Dietrichs, co-founder of Ethlabs, joins Laura Shin to lay out the split: the Foundation will protect what should not change, while Ethlabs pushes the parts of Ethereum that must evolve. He makes the case that the global economy is moving onchain, and that Ethereum is the only candidate to sit at the center of it, or no one will. The conversation traces why ETH the asset has been stuck between $1,000 and $5,000 for five years, why Dietrichs thinks EIP-1559 and cheap blockspace were never intentional choices, how Ethlabs divides labor with the Foundation, Etherealize, and Consensys, and what DeFi founders like Uniswap's Hayden Adams actually need. The throughline is a single missing ingredient he keeps returning to: intentionality about what ETH is actually for. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ansgar Dietrichs - Co-founder of Ethlabs Timestamps 🏛️ 01:26 Why the Ethereum Foundation is stepping back and the gap Ethlabs fills 🌐 04:00 What Ethereum would look like if Ethlabs succeeds 🧱 07:56 Why Ethlabs is scaling the L1 and fixing interop at the same time 🤝 10:48 How Ethlabs divides labor with the EF, Etherealize, and Consensys 📣 18:34 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers that could shape the future of finance at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com 🔐 19:16 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained 💸 20:15 Why ETH has been stuck waiting five years for its next act 🔗 24:24 Does L1 activity still drive ETH's value, and why ETH's interop lags 🔥 27:25 Why Ansgar says cheap blockspace and EIP-1559 were never intentional 🪙 33:27 Why being an Ethereum L2 isn't yet the superpower it should be 🦄 36:17 The culture at the EF and what kind of culture Ethlabs will have 🏢 39:41 The accountability loop: a two to three year runway and who Ethlabs serves 🛠️ 45:33 What DeFi founders actually need from Ethereum, per Hayden and others Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices