Unchained

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<a href="https://cape.co

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

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</

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 hande

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 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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 th

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 on

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 compare

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 despe

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-link

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 r

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 p

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 th

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 restru

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 📣

Carmen Li thought it was a joke when a perpetual futures marketplace asked her to become the market maker for her own index. It wasn't. In this segment from Bits + Bips: The Interview, she walks Steven Ehrlich through the requests that alarmed her, a daughter analogy for why trading your own benchmark destroys neutrality, the manipulation risks she sees in crypto's index practices, and why she insists any perp venue on her index be regulated and guardrailed. Host: Steven Ehrlich - Host of Bits + Bips and Head of Research at Sharplink Guest: Carmen Li - CEO of Silicon Data and Compute Exchange This clip is from a longer conversation on GPUs, compute markets, and crypto. Full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/live/rYDiPneJv20?si=fjS7bSd-bJ6c6tYb  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 perp venues circling her index, and the request that immediately felt off 🚩 01:27 The ask she thought had to be a joke: become the market maker of your own index 👧 02:47 Carmen's daughter analogy that nails why trading your own index breaks neutrality 🛡️ 04:47 The guardrails that keep it honest: external audits and hard internal trading rules 🔀 05:36 Why you can't just swap one index for another and keep on trading ⚖️ 06:26 Her one demand for any perp venue building on her index: regulated and ring fenced Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A regulated exchange suing its own regulator almost never happens. The hosts trace why CME did it, and why the CFTC may have better odds than crypto Twitter thinks. Thanks 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: ⁠https://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 https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). CME has sued the CFTC, its own primary regulator, a rare move for a regulated exchange, landing the day after longtime CEO Terry Duffy announced he would step down. The trigger: the CFTC's approval of a narrowly tailored Kalshi Bitcoin perpetual, the first true perp cleared onshore. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le untangle CME's two arguments, that perps are swaps rather than futures, and that the agency acted arbitrarily by skipping notice and comment and reversing its own prior position in a single day. They weigh whether the case can win, and why the process may matter more than the outcome. From there, the panel digs into Cboe's prediction-style S&P 500 contracts headed to Schwab's customers and the binary-option-versus-swap line. With a recent poll finding 43% of Americans believe AI could "literally end the human race," Jessi argues crypto can't afford to dismiss the people who become its juries, judges, and voters. The conversation covers the CME lawsuit, prediction markets arriving on Wall Street, a viral $1 to $5 million crypto legal job, and the growing public backlash against AI. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare. 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 🏛️ 01:59 Why a regulated exchange suing its own regulator almost never happens ⚖️ 04:38 CME's two arguments, and why "future delivery" cou

Vinny Lingham warned 18 months ago that Michael Saylor would harm Bitcoin more than FTX. Now he maps how the Strategy empire breaks and the one move that could slow the bleed. ======================================================== 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's stock has fallen over 80% from its November 2024 high, its STRC preferred trades well below par, and a fresh $335 million raise has done nothing to restore confidence. Vinny Lingham, co-founder of Praxos Capital, tweeted in October 2024 that Michael Saylor would do more damage to Bitcoin than FTX. On Unchained, he argues the collapse was always predictable, and that this is not a Ponzi but what he calls a 'Saylor scheme.' Lingham maps how the empire breaks once MSTR trades at a discount to mNAV, why the 32-Bitcoin sale and the $1.5 billion buyback of 2029 converts blew Saylor's runway, and why $6.7 billion in convertible notes raises default risk by 2028. He also weighs a Soros-style attack theory and the switch to bimonthly dividends. His fix is the one thing Saylor won't do: stop buying, stop diluting, wait it out. The question is who removes the biggest buyer of Bitcoin, him or the market. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vinny Lingham - Co-founder of Praxos Capital Timestamps 📉 01:11 Strategy in free fall: why Vinny says the collapse was always coming 🪤 06:24 Why buying back 2029 debt blew Saylor's runway ₿ 07:36 The '32 years of dividends' claim and what a deeper bear market does to it 🏚️ 10:23 How the MSTR empire actually breaks: the discount-to-mNAV trap 🎯 13:35 Why is Strategy faltering? Is it leverage or a So

An anti-MEV activist spent weeks building 66 fake contracts to trap the sandwich bot jaredfromsubway.eth. Then jared's operators did the one thing nobody expected. ======================================================== 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 new R&D lab called Ethlabs has split from the Ethereum Foundation, backed by Bitmine and Joe Lubin. Its first stated goal is solving a '15 minute finality problem' that none of the hosts can quite explain the point of. Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Luca Netz ask whether a breakaway staffed largely by ex-EF people can really escape the EF's habits, or just rebuild a smaller version of them.  Then the conversation turns to fomo's $75M raise from non-crypto VCs, and why a trading app that never calls itself a wallet may have cracked the onboarding flow the rest of crypto keeps getting wrong. The hosts also trace a CryptoPunks judge ordering a self-represented plaintiff to handwrite filings to stop the AI slop, the anti-MEV activist who trapped sandwich bot jaredfromsubway.eth with 66 fake contracts, and the WSJ's claim that Polymarket paid creators to stage fake winning bets. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Timestamps 🧪 02:06 Ethlabs breaks from the EF: what the new R&D lab is actually for 🤔 03:57 Why the 'fifteen minute finality' framing baffles the hosts 📈 15:40 fomo's $75M raise and why a no-token trading app pulled it off 🧱 21:45 The wallet lesson: why building for trading beats building for custody 💙 30:48 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained ⚖️ 31:44 The CryptoPunks lawsuit where a judge ordered AI-slop filings handwritten 🥪 41:04 What a sandwich bot is and why jaredfromsubway.eth became infamous 🪤 45:34 How an anti-MEV activist trapped Jared with 66 fake token contracts 🏛️ 50:46 Why Jared running to

The crew debates whether Saylor's STRC preferred shares are "Luna for suits," unpacks the ETH Labs spin-out and Ethereum Foundation layoffs, breaks down the CME's lawsuit against the CFTC to kill domestic perps, and weighs whether Meta's leaked prediction market Arena is a real threat to Polymarket. 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, Saylor's STRC preferred shares, which have broken below their $100 target. Laura argues it's a confidence crisis, Tarun calls it "Luna for suits," and Haseeb pushes back — there's no death spiral, Saylor can just defer dividends and "burn the boat." Then the Ethereum Foundation shakeup: ETH Labs spinning out with seven senior EF members while the EF lays off 20% of its headcount. The back half covers the CME suing the CFTC to block domestic perps — which Haseeb frames as "suing for the right to not compete" — and Meta's leaked prediction market Arena, where Tom reveals this is Meta's third or fourth attempt at prediction markets. 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 🔹 Saylor's STRC preferred shares break below $100 target — Tarun calls it "Luna for suits" 🔹 Haseeb pushes back: no death spiral, no margin calls — Saylor can defer dividends and "burn the boat" 🔹 Tom reveals Strategy execs are cold-calling crypto funds to sell them STRC — "very Luna" 🔹 ETH Labs spins out with 7 senior EF members as the Foundation lays off ~20% of headcount 🔹 CME sues CFTC to block domestic perps — Haseeb: "suing for the right to not compete" 🔹 Haseeb proposes 100-year futures as a workaround to route around the lawsuit 🔹 Meta leaks prediction market Arena — Tom reveals this is Meta's third or fourth attempt at prediction markets 🔹 Tarun argues prediction markets will be viewed as information social networks within five years Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Ma

Three years ago, Chris Perkins sat across from Terry Duffy in Congress and made the case for perpetuals. Duffy pushed back — hard. Now Duffy's CME is suing the very regulator that finally allowed them. The CME argues Bitcoin perpetual futures are really swaps and should carry far more collateral. Chris traces the Dodd-Frank history that created the swap-versus-future divide, and Austin Campbell lays out why picking this fight in a post-Chevron court could backfire on the incumbent. Is a perpetual a swap or a future, and who gets to decide? 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 tokenization, the AI trade, and the CME's lawsuit against the CFTC. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/oSiOeWq_pKE  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 The incumbent sues its own regulator: what the CME is actually claiming 📜 01:22 Chris on Terry Duffy, and the testimony fight that set this up 🏛️ 02:12 The Dodd-Frank origin story, traced back to the 2009 G20 ⏱️ 03:12 Why a 'swap' costs five days of margin and a future costs two 🌊 04:42 Constrain leverage onshore and watch it flee offshore ⚠️ 05:15 Austin: why the CME should be careful what it wishes for 🧨 06:26 The Dodd-Frank footnote where Congress admits it punted 🤝 08:20 ICE, OKX, and Kraken: where the dance partners line up 🎯 09:12 What the market really needs out of all this Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Was Michael Saylor wrong to sell Bitcoin? Matt Cole breaks from his fellow critics on Strategy, S&P's junk rating on MSTR, and whether the model is breaking. ======================================================== 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). ======================================================== Strive's Matt Cole had just lived through what he called the most difficult day in the history of digital credit when he sat down to defend it. STRC had touched $82.50, SATA had slipped into the low nineties, and the Bitcoin treasury trade was suddenly the most argued-over corner of crypto. Cole came from a pension background and built Strive into one of the largest Bitcoin treasury companies around a single conviction: that structured credit can solve an income problem fiat can't. The critics, he argues, can't even agree with each other on what is actually wrong. Was last week a leverage liquidation or a crack in the model? Did Michael Saylor quietly change his story? And is wrapping Bitcoin in preferred stock a betrayal of its ethos or the bridge most people actually need? Laura Shin pressed on all of it. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matt Cole - Chairman and CEO of Strive Timestamps 🎙️ 02:07 What Strive is, and why Matt calls SATA the company's main product 🏦 10:16 Could Strive cut SATA's 13% yield without breaking par? 👥 15:45 Who is actually buying SATA, and the one buyer Matt says he's never met 📣 25:15 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers and make the decision that could change your future at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com 🔒 25:58 Cape: Use code unchained for 33% off at https://cape.co/unchained

Kalshi just brought crypto perps to the US, targeting a $90 trillion offshore market. Its Head of Crypto, John Wang, explains the bet, the risks, and who Kalshi is actually competing with. ======================================================== 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 $90 trillion offshore market for crypto perpetual futures just got its first US-regulated entrant. Kalshi — the prediction market exchange that raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation — launched the first CFTC-approved crypto perps, becoming the only domestic exchange approved on launch day. John Wang, Kalshi's Head of Crypto, joins Laura Shin to map how perpetual futures work, why Kalshi's guarantee fund and segregated accounts differ from what offshore venues provide, and how the exchange plans to compete with Hyperliquid, Coinbase, and Kraken. Wang pushes back on CME Group CEO Terry Duffy's claim that crypto perps are "a disaster waiting to happen," noting CME's own futures carry higher leverage than Kalshi's platform. He covers the ARCA and Galaxy block trades on Kalshi's prediction markets, insider trading protections built around athlete and congressional staff lists, and the regulatory filings separating Kalshi from perps on equities. Wang estimates only 0.2% of the US has adopted perpetual futures — the real growth has barely started. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠John Wang - Head of Crypto at Kalshi Timestamps 🎯 02:51 Why Kalshi chose crypto perps as its first product outside prediction markets 🔧 05:15 What a perpetual future is and why traders prefer it over options and standard futures 🤓 11:14 The metric that reveals real demand: Kalshi's ratio of trading volume to open interest 🛡️ 14:19 How Kalshi plans to onboard

The government export-controlled Anthropic's best model. Kain, Luca, and Taylor debate whether Dario talked his way into it and what the shutdown means for every AI lab. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠Multichain Advisors⁠⁠: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at https://multichainadv.com. ======================================================== A reported jailbreak of Anthropic's most powerful model, Fable, triggered US government export controls, and the Uneasy Money hosts argue Dario Amodei's response on the call with the administration made it inevitable. Kain, Taylor, and Luca dig into what Dario got wrong, why a company about to go public had no one in Washington who could speak the government's language, and what it means that the shutdown drew no public backlash. Porter Stowell, CEO of W3.io and a Coinbase alum, joins for the first half with his read on the exchange's big announcement day: agentic payments on Base, tokenized stocks, and a ground-up trading rebuild. Midway through, Luca drops something unannounced: Igloo has built a financial instrument to list crypto tokens directly on the NYSE as securities, with protocol revenue flowing back to holders. The episode closes on Strategy, and why Kain thinks selling 32 Bitcoin, then buying back 1,587 two weeks later, exposes the structural risk of a belief-based asset with one dominant buyer. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Porter Stowell - CEO of W3.io Timestamps 🏦 03:16 Porter Stowell on why Coinbase's announcement day signals a real shift in how the exchange competes 💬 06:26 Luca on why Coinbase's core trading product still lags: charts that won't load and page refreshes to buy Bitcoin 🤖 17:40 Porter on why agentic payments on Base is the real sleeper from Coinbase's announcement day 📋 25:10 What "real" means in Coinbase's tokenized stocks launch and whether the custody approach actually differentiates it 💡 34:15 Luca reveals Igloo's instrument to list crypto t

Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale Investments, argues that speculative retail flows, not geopolitical fundamentals, drove the recent gold and Bitcoin selloffs. His read: momentum chasing built gold from $4,000 to well above $5,000, then rotated out to chips and pre-IPO trades. The underlying deficit-and-debt case for both assets hasn't changed, and he's calling the dip a buy for longer-horizon investors. He closes with Grayscale's H2 DeFi revenue thesis. Hyperliquid is the clearest proof of concept: a protocol with a clear use case, real revenue, and value returned to token holders. Grayscale applied a discounted cash flow model to Aave and published a price target on the token. Host: Steven Ehrlich, Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview and Head of Research at Sharplink - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich Guest: Zach Pandl - Head of Research at Grayscale Investments - https://x.com/LowBeta This clip is from a longer conversation on the Fed's hawkish pivot, the SpaceX IPO, crypto winter, and Strategy's preferred equity. Full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/live/WIlLtRQidQg?si=ONIIkcPElZFgpa8l  We go live every Thursday at 12:00pm ET - 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 Steve on gold and Bitcoin's worst quarter - what happened during the Iran war 📊 00:57 Why Pandl argues speculation, not fundamentals, drove both the run-up and the selloff 🥇 02:42 The buy case - Pandl on what to do when speculative excess washes out 💡 03:25 Steve asks about second-half assets and Standard Chartered's Uniswap call 💰 03:50 Why Hyperliquid and Aave anchor Grayscale's H2 DeFi revenue thesis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The federal government pulled Anthropic's Fable 5 offline with no public process — and Jessi Brooks makes the case it's a crypto chokepoint story, not just an AI one. Thanks 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: https://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 https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). The federal government forced Anthropic to take Fable 5 offline last week, and the justification is still murky. Jessi Brooks makes the case that what began as a cybersecurity story is really a chokepoint story, one crypto has seen before. With no transparent process, no technical experts cited, and no clear legal authority, she argues the administration has effectively invented KYC for AI, raising questions far beyond Anthropic. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le work through two regulatory moves with real market-structure stakes. The CFTC released a near-300-page proposed rule on prediction markets, amending Rule 40.11 and clearing political event contracts. The SEC moved to repeal Reg NMS Rules 611 and 610E, two-decade-old market pillars. Vy Le argues the repeal is crypto's real opening: stop forcing AMMs to fit the old rules and start building the replacement, where solver auctions and cryptographic attestations let investors and regulators verify execution in real time. The throughline across the week is the same: when Washington moves this fast and quietly, is crypto the cautionary tale or the fix? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare. 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 🤖 03:04 Why the Fable 5 shutdown is a chokepoint story, not just a security one 🔑 09:36 Jessi on why inventing KYC for AI with no process echoes the

The crew breaks down the SpaceX IPO's crypto-like low float dynamics and Hyperliquid's price prediction, debates accredited investor laws and failed tokenized stock allocations, dives into Fable 5's export control shutdown after Amazon flagged a jailbreak to the Treasury Secretary, and argues whether open source AI models will eat frontier pricing. 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. Robert is back after a brief hiatus recording his own podcast, The Pop, for Superstate — and the crew wastes no time roasting him for it before diving into the biggest week of news in recent memory. First up: the SpaceX IPO, the largest in history, and why it looks eerily like a crypto token launch — 4.2% float, retail getting cut out, and Hyperliquid perps predicting the first-day pop almost to the dollar. The crew debates TradeXYZ's winner-take-all dominance of HIP3 and why building on top of Hyperliquid might be a terrible startup environment. Then they unpack Elon's financial engineering genius — the Cursor acquisition as all-stock crypto playbook, XAI's pivot from failed AI lab to compute reseller, and why Grok is (unanimously) an embarrassing piece of shit. The conversation shifts to accredited investor laws, SPV dentists, and why every crypto platform failed to deliver SpaceX IPO allocations. From there, Coinbase's massive system update — tokenized stocks, an SEC-registered AI chatbot, combos, and 15-minute markets. Then things get spicy: Robert asks Claude about SBF on air, Sonnet gets it hilariously wrong, and everyone roasts him for not using Opus. The back half is all about Fable 5 — Amazon's jailbreak discovery, Andy Jassy calling Dario (who didn't pick up), and the export controls that shut down the most powerful commercial AI model ever released. Robert drops his most surprising take: "I am EAC, but this is a dry run of pressing the pause button." The episode closes with a heated debate on whether Chinese open source models will eat frontier AI pricing and a bet that may or may not have been agreed upon.  Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 SpaceX IPO breaks records with a 4.2% float — the clos

For the tenth anniversary of Unchained, Laura reflects on the SBF question she never asked, the Charles Hoskinson beef, and why she may be done with strict neutrality. ======================================================== 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). ======================================================== Unchained started as a side project by Laura in 2016, with two interviews recorded on Necker Island. Ten years later, it’s become a network of podcasts and newsletters. Haseeb Qureshi of one of most beloved podcasts on the network, The Chopping Block, chats with Laura about everything from its origins to biggest regrets to her interview style and more.  Plus, she reveals the one regret she has over a question she never got to ask Sam Bankman-Fried after the collapse of FTX. Haseeb, managing partner at Dragonfly and an effective altruist himself, traces whether EA's moral framework enabled SBF's fraud, or whether SBF simply had ordinary delusions of grandeur.  The conversation also moves through Charles Hoskinson's disputed PhD claims, the Brian Armstrong interview that never happened, and Laura's emerging conviction that ten years of institutional disillusionment may be pushing her away from the neutrality that built her career. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Haseeb Qureshi - Managing Partner of Dragonfly - https://x.com/hosseeb Timestamps 🎙️ 1:46 How Unchained started: Necker Island, first guests, and the year-one sponsor 📰 6:46 Why Laura sold her crypto for journalism ethics and why she bought back in years later 😳 10:45 Why the SBF collapse was Laura's biggest shock in 11 years of covering crypto 🧠 14:24 Laura's 'license to play God' critique of effective altruism and Haseeb's rebuttal ❓ 23:32 The question Laura would have asked SBF after the FTX Collapse and why nobody did 🎤 25:16 Why Bri

The US government issued a Friday-night export control directive against Anthropic's Fable 5, citing a jailbreak that could expose advanced cyber capabilities built into the underlying Mythos model. No statutory authority was publicly disclosed. No comment period was given. Sam Enzer, Partner and CahillNXT Co-Chair at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, joins Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins to assess the directive's legal standing. Enzer draws a parallel to Gensler-era regulation by enforcement: familiar government power applied to new technology, with no transparent framework. His central question: if export controls can reach an AI model's API, can the same authority reach a US-based DeFi protocol serving foreign nationals? Austin raises the Choke Point parallel and asks where the limiting principle actually is. Ram argues that restricting software is restricting speech under the First Amendment. Chris warns that national security will always be the trump card unless the industry makes a credible counter-argument. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Consulting, 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 CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management - https://x.com/perkinscr97 Guest: Sam Enzer, Partner and CahillNXT Co-Chair at Cahill Gordon & Reindel This clip is from a longer conversation on AI export controls, national security, and the First Amendment. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/pEh1zr1pj90  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsors 👉 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: https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com  Chapters 🤖 00:00 Austin on the Fable 5 export directive: what the ban said and what Anthropic disputes ⚖️ 02:09 Sam Enzer's initial take: a familiar overreach pattern with unfamiliar stakes 📜 05:03 Sam on what's missing from the directive: no public letter, no statutory basis, no comment period 🏛️ 07:06 Austin on the Choke Point parallel and the question the government hasn't answered 🔒 08:40 Chris on national security as the regulatory trump card and what the ind

OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceXand the AI IPO cycle face a structural problem: a cheap, capable open source exit is already drawing enterprise users away before either company goes public. ======================================================== 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). ======================================================== A viral tweet by Tom Shaughnessy, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, identified the most basic way AI could blow up: a 40x subsidy gap between consumer AI subscriptions and enterprise API costs quietly pushing businesses toward open source inference providers at 1% of the price. Citadel Securities published a near-identical thesis shortly after. Shaughnessy joins Laura Shin to map the implications for the AI IPO wave, starting with SpaceX. Low floats and passive index demand should lift these stocks out of the gate, but public market disclosures will force OpenAI and Anthropic to reveal payback periods, margins, and subscriber numbers for the first time. He also argues OpenAI's reported price cuts target Anthropic's growth metrics before the IPO, not user demand. The episode also covers the China model wildcard, whether AI model restrictions amount to big brother fearmongering, and whether crypto's tools for capital formation could keep the AGI flywheel from stalling. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠Tom Shaughnessy - Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures and Co-Founder of Delphi Digital Timestamps 💸 01:10 Why over $600B left crypto in 30 days: AI deal outflows, the SpaceX IPO. and quantum concerns 🧵 04:46 Tom's viral tweet: the 40x subsidy gap hidden in AI subscription pricing 📊 07:51 Why AI IPO filings will force the financials nobody has seen 💡 10:16 Why open source inference will compete with the frontier labs 🏗️ 13:06 Why frontier labs need to own what they create, not collect $200 per month 📣 15:55 Cape: Get 33% off you

Claude Fable 5 refuses security work, Kain Warwick pulls $5,000 of compute from a $200 plan, and Humanity Protocol loses its bridge, token, and treasury to one infected device. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠Multichain Advisors⁠: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at https://multichainadv.com. ======================================================== Anthropic promised Mythos and shipped Claude Fable 5 instead. The model found a four-year-old bug in Zcash's shielded pool that survived multiple expert audits. But when Anthropic shipped the model days later, it was no longer willing to audit smart contracts, bailing the moment a prompt smells like security work.Jailbreakers are already turning a jailbroken Opus 4.8 against it, while white hats sit locked out. Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Luca Netz weigh the defender's dilemma: builders cannot point the model at their own code, but nobody can prove black hats have not jailbroken their way in —  and, the hosts warn,North Korean threat actors have spent more than six months harvesting AI API keys. Then Kain runs the numbers on the subsidy: roughly 200 million tokens in four hours on a $200 plan, about $5,000 at API rates, and on the 22nd Fable goes API only as the first unsubsidized frontier model. Plus Pump.fun's bounty marketplace and the Humanity Protocol hack, which left the hosts asking why a 3-of-6 multisig existed at all. When the subsidies stop, who still gets the frontier? Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Timestamps 🤖 00:40 Why Kain says Fable 5 should have been named Fable zero 🛡️ 03:50 Taylor on how Fable downgrades the second anything touches security 🕵️ 10:42Taylor on stolen AI keys,tokens and North Korea's new favorite loot 🧠 15:48 Does Fable reason like a senior engineer? Kain's 100-doc planning test 💸 20:06 How Kain pulled $5,000 of API value from a $200 Claude plan in four hours 🐧 ~33:45 How Igloo budgets $50K a month on AI, and the bot "brain" running the org 📊 44:00 Multichain Advisors: start building real traction with the team behind $50B at https://multichainadv.com 🎪 44:41 Pump.fun's bounty circ

Mert and Illia autopsy a brutal weekend in crypto: Saylor's $3M test sale that taught him there's no sell button, the Zcash bug Claude found that could've minted unlimited counterfeit ZEC, formal verification as the bulwark against AI attackers, and whether NEAR's agentic commerce vision is real. 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 we've got two heavy hitters: NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin and Helius founder Mert Mumtaz. We kick things off with the weekend market meltdown -- Saylor sold 32 BTC for the first time in four years, STRC is trading below par, and Mert argues the real damage is that Saylor sucks all the air out of the room for actual crypto innovation. Then we get into the biggest story of the week: a critical bug discovered in Zcash's Orchard ZK circuit using Claude Opus 4.8 that could have allowed infinite counterfeit minting inside the shielded pool. Mert walks us through the emergency soft fork, the Ironwood migration, and why formal verification is about to become table stakes. Illia makes the case that AI-powered attackers have a permanent asymmetric advantage and that we need real-time on-chain detection systems to survive. Tom coins the analogy of the episode: we're moving from building boats to building spaceships. We close with Illia's pitch for NEAR's agent commerce vision – $240M in single-day volume, private intents, and the claim that agent-to-agent trustless commerce is already live – while Mert remains a friendly skeptic. 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. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly  Guest ⭐️ Mert, Co-founder & CEO at Helius ⭐️ Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR Protocol Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:17 Weekend Crypto Meltdown & Bitcoin Crash 02:52 Saylor, STRC & the DAT Death Spiral Fears 11:51 "No Sell Button

For three years, a counterfeiting bug sat live inside Zcash's shielded pool, and no one noticed. Then Taylor Hornby pointed a custom Claude Opus 4.8 agent at the code, and it surfaced the flaw in Orchard that had gone undetected since 2022. Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins debate what that means for privacy protocols, the rotation away from dead-protocol alts, and why Bitcoin's simplicity may be its strongest security argument yet. The conversation closes on quantum risk and whether the Lindy effect holds up under the new threat environment. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Founder of Zero Knowledge Consulting and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell Ram Ahluwalia, CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia Chris Perkins, President of CoinFund - https://x.com/perkinscr97 This clip is from a longer conversation on AI, security, and the Zcash counterfeiting bug. Full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/live/oSUVTmC3wZo?si=zTopwWKi3ETPD5Rz  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET - 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 cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters 🤖 00:00 Chris on AI, security vulnerabilities, and the Zcash counterfeiting bug 💰 02:28 Should you rotate into Hyperliquid over dead protocols? 🔍 05:53 Claude Opus 4.8 finds Zcash's live shielded-pool bug 📉 08:16 The Enron analogy for a confidence crisis in privacy coins ⚛️ 12:30 Bitcoin's Lindy effect meets the quantum risk tension Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About 80% of STRC holders are retail investors. Glenn Cameron walks through the prospectus, how Saylor's public claims differ from the reality, and why Strategy has no good options. ======================================================== 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's sale of 32 Bitcoin last week came with unusual framing: Saylor said the purpose was to "inoculate the markets." Glenn Cameron, Global Head of Institutional at Onramp Bitcoin, reads that word as preparation for larger Bitcoin sales ahead. Glenn traces the pressure points. Strategy is trading at 84% of its Bitcoin value, making new equity issuance dilutive rather than accretive on a Bitcoin-per-share basis. Its cash reserve has been cut to roughly seven months after the company redeemed a 0%-interest convertible note. And STRC, the perpetual preferred stock Saylor has marketed as "a high yield bank account," carries a dividend the board can suspend for any reason. The episode's sharpest argument: 83% of STRC holders are retail investors sold a product that resembles a bank account but behaves like junior equity on a volatile Bitcoin company. No maturity, no FDIC protection, no right to redeem. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: Glenn Cameron, CFA - Global Head of Institutional at Onramp Bitcoin Timestamps 📊 1:04 Risk vs uncertainty: why Glenn won't predict Bitcoin's price but will name every structural pressure point 🔑 4:07 What 'inoculate' means: why Saylor's word choice signals a larger Bitcoin sale may be coming 📉 6:38 Strategy below NAV: why buying Bitcoin with new stock now dilutes Bitcoin per share for existing holders 🗣️ 12:13 Glenn’s response to people who say that the criticism of Strategy is FUD: STRC has to raise the dividend if bitcoin lowers 👥 19:37 Strrategy’s section option: suspend the dividend, but 83% of holders are retail who think STRC is a bank account

Steve Sosnick on the ratchet effect in equities, the AI bandwidth parallel, Kevin Warsh’s impossible first week, and why crypto is the unsexy trade right now. --- Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained. Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts. ---- Equities are near all-time highs, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge just hit a multi-year peak, Iran ceasefire talks are producing a familiar ratchet effect in markets, and Bitcoin is quietly underperforming tech stocks on a nine-month volatility low. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, joins Steve Ehrlich to map what’s actually driving these unique market dynamics. They cover the two vulnerabilities that could change things, the uncomfortable parallel between today’s AI capex and the 1999 bandwidth buildout, what $120 billion in money market inflows says about where retail cash is actually sitting, the challenge Kevin Warsh faces walking into an already-skeptical FOMC, and why crypto is currently losing the competition for momentum-chasing money to AI stocks, upcoming IPOs, and even a memory chip ETF. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Ehrlich, Head of Research at SharpLink and Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Sosnick — Chief Strategist at Interactive Brokers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Circle froze $12M in a DeFi pool on a Friday court order, trapping users who had nothing to do with the dispute. . Polymarket couldn't resolve a Strategy market. And MegaETH's apps are defecting. Nothing is simple. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Multichain Advisors: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at https://multichainadv.com. ======================================================== Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin before the May 31 deadline. It just didn't disclose it until June 1 — and that one-day gap is why a $50M Polymarket market resolved "no," even though Strategy's own 8-K shows the sale happened inside the window.Kain Warwick, Luca Netz, and Taylor Monahan trace why Polymarket keeps writing resolution criteria that break under edge cases, and why handing oracle duties to UMA is a liability for a $20 billion platform. They also get into the third proposal to cut Solana's staking inflation, and what it would take to spark an "ultrasound money" moment for SOL. The most consequential story is Circle. A Friday-afternoon ex-parte court order froze a $12M commingled USDC pool all weekend, trapping innocent users' funds inside the Zama privacy protocol. Taylor’s warning: Circle's policy of complying with any court order without retaining a final say creates a replicable attack template for any pool with USDC exposure. The episode closes on MegaETH and Monad: Kain on whether the "Mega Mafia" approach was adverse selection from the start, and Luca on what chains actually owe their builders. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Dudas holds zero ETH and sees Hyperliquid as crypto's Tether moment. He also has a clear framework for what makes a token worth buying. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Fidelity: Explore crypto careers and make the decision that could change your future at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com ======================================================== Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin, worth just $2.5 million, and the market didn't miss it. For Mike Dudas, Managing Partner at 6th Man Ventures, the sale broke the "never sell" promise that sustained the company's premium. He doesn't see how the narrative gets rebuilt. Dudas applies the same unsentimental read to the rest of the L1 landscape. His firm holds zero ETH — five years of contradictory narratives have left the market unable to value it. In his view, Solana's decline is simpler: memecoin activity peaked and hasn't recovered. Hyperliquid, in his view, is closer to Tether than a competing L1: the no-KYC international market is enormous, and asset quality is the moat. His framework for tokens worth owning: programmatic buybacks and consistent communication from leadership. On AI, he argues agentic trading will far outpace agentic payments — Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are moving too fast for new entrants to displace them. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mike Dudas - Managing Partner of 6th Man Ventures - https://x.com/mdudas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeff Dorman on why Strategy's four stakeholder classes are all losing, and why Saylor should have sold $2B of Bitcoin at once instead of $2.5M. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Fidelity: Explore opportunities at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com ======================================================== Strategy’s late-May Bitcoin sale has turned a long-running investor concern into a sharper question: how sustainable is the company’s capital structure if its Bitcoin accumulation strategy now comes with large cash obligations? Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca, joins Laura Shin to discuss why the sale changed his view of the risks around Strategy. After months of pushing back on fears of forced selling, Dorman says the company’s preferred-share financing has altered the analysis. He points to roughly $15 billion in preferred shares carrying 10% to 12% dividend rates, which he estimates could mean about $1.7 billion in annual cash obligations for a company without operating revenue. Dorman also breaks down the stakeholder groups shaping Strategy’s choices, the tradeoffs each path may create, and the Polymarket dispute over whether Strategy sold Bitcoin in May. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jeff Dorman - Chief Investment Officer at Arca - https://x.com/jdorman81 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joe Lubin makes the bull case for Ethereum amid a sea of bearishness. The panel dissects Saylor selling Bitcoin for the first time in four years, the meaning behind 9 senior EF departures, Justin Drake's Q-Day call (50% by 2032), Manuel Araoz declaring all of DeFi unsafe, the ThorChain hack fallout, the Zama/Overnight Finance USDC freeze saga, and the CFTC greenlighting the first US perpetual futures product. 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 Joe Lubin is stepping in to make the bull case for ETH on what he admits is a tough day to be bullish. We open on Strategy's first Bitcoin sale in four years and whether the STRC preferred stock structure is "an algorithmic stablecoin with too many steps," as Tarun puts it. Joe pivots to pitching Ether DATs, then we get into the Ethereum Foundation's brain drain -- nine researchers gone, CROPS as the new mandate, and a mysterious new developer organization taking shape behind the scenes. The episode's meatiest block covers DeFi security: Justin Drake warns Q-Day is 50% likely by 2032, Manuel Araoz says all of DeFi is unsafe, ThorChain's been offline for two weeks post-hack, and the panel debates whether we're entering a rough 12-24 months where attackers outrun defenders. We close on Hyperliquid's all-time highs and the CFTC opening the door to US perps.  Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Strategy sold 32 BTC for the first time in four years as STRC falls below $100 par – Tarun calls it "an algorithmic stablecoin with too many steps" 🔹 Joe Lubin pitches Ether DATs as a safer model than Strategy – ~3% staking yield, no leverage, and "permanent capital" for the ecosystem 🔹 Nine senior Ethereum Foundation members departed in 2026 including Tim Beiko and Barnabe Monnot as Vitalik reframes EF around CROPS mandate 🔹 Joe reveals SharpLink, BitMine, and ConsenSys in talks to become Ethereum's "decentralized commercialization engines" – "there's only one foundation" but new nodes are forming 🔹 Justin Drake puts Q-Day at 50% by 2032 and calls NIST's 2035 timeline "a joke" after Google's quantum circuit breakthrough 🔹 Crowdso

The CFTC reclassified perps as futures. Katherine and Jessi parse what the ruling actually permits and what it means for Hyperliquid. Plus: if your AI agent gets scammed, who pays? Thanks to our sponsor! Explore crypto careers that could change your future at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com The CFTC approved a perpetual Bitcoin futures contract for KalshiEX, and crypto Twitter immediately got it wrong. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos untangles what actually changed, why the switch from swap to futures classification matters for retail access, and what the ruling leaves wide open on leverage and decentralized exchanges. Jessi Brooks and Katherine explore the fact that AI agents can now place orders, not just give advice. They revisit their paper "The Agents at the Gate" and make clear why Robinhood's move to let agents charge your Gold Card raises liability questions that existing consumer protection law was never built to answer. In the strangest segment, they also dug into a New York lawsuit where an anonymous plaintiff is claiming legal ownership of nearly 40,000 dormant crypto wallets. Jessi explains why the lost-property theory will probably fail — and why even a partial win could force centralized exchanges into an impossible spot. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Strategy sold BTC. Can its preferred dividend stack survive without Bitcoin growing at least 11.5% year? Plus, they cover Jamie Dimon calling Brian Armstrong “full of shit.” --- Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts. ---- Strategy sold Bitcoin for the first time since 2022 — 32 BTC to cover preferred stock dividends. Ram, Austin, and Chris discuss whether that small sale signals a deeper structural tension between equity holders, preferred holders, and Bitcoin itself. They also covered the news that Anthropic filed for an IPO at a valuation approaching $1 trillion. The hosts lay out the bull and bear cases  and ask whether retail investors can realistically get a 10x out of a company already priced like a finished product. Unpacking a spicier moment, they also discussed the moment when JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon called Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong “full of shit” on live TV over the Clarity Act. Ram says crypto's window of peak political power is closing fast, while Austin gives crypto lobbyists a great idea for how to turn the banks’ stablecoin yield crusade against them. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell — Founder, Zero Knowledge Consulting; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve Sosnick on the ratchet effect in equities, the AI bandwidth parallel, Kevin Warsh’s impossible first week, and why crypto is the unsexy trade right now. --- Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained. Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts. ---- Equities are near all-time highs, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge just hit a multi-year peak, Iran ceasefire talks are producing a familiar ratchet effect in markets, and Bitcoin is quietly underperforming tech stocks on a nine-month volatility low. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, joins Steve Ehrlich to map what’s actually driving these unique market dynamics. They cover the two vulnerabilities that could change things, the uncomfortable parallel between today’s AI capex and the 1999 bandwidth buildout, what $120 billion in money market inflows says about where retail cash is actually sitting, the challenge Kevin Warsh faces walking into an already-skeptical FOMC, and why crypto is currently losing the competition for momentum-chasing money to AI stocks, upcoming IPOs, and even a memory chip ETF. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Ehrlich, Head of Research at SharpLink and Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Sosnick — Chief Strategist at Interactive Brokers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A co-founder of OpenZeppelin said he’s urging friends to exit blue chip DeFi. Isaac Patka and Mike Silagadze explain what he got right, what he got wrong, and what needs to change. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Coinbase One⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠coinbase.com/unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ======================================================== A co-founder of OpenZeppelin set off a firestorm on Crypto Twitter this week by declaring that he now considers all of DeFi unsafe, citing superhuman AI coding agents and the asymmetry between attackers and defenders.  Isaac Patka, certifications lead at Security Alliance, and Mike Silagadze, CEO of Ether.Fi, join Laura Shin to push back on that framing — and to make the case that the real problem isn’t AI finding sophisticated zero-days, it’s that 90% of hacks are still embarrassing opsec failures.  They cover the full threat taxonomy: opsec and parameter mistakes, contagion from bridge failures, AI-enabled social engineering, and the decentralization theater that leaves protocols unable to protect their own users.  Mike makes a pointed argument for why every serious DeFi protocol needs a hard pause button and a blacklist mechanism, while Isaac explains the three-multisig architecture that should be the minimum standard. Plus, both lay out the practical question every user should ask before putting money into any protocol. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Isaac Patka (@isaacpatka) — Certifications Lead at Security Alliance & Co-founder of Shield3 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Mike Silagadze (@MikeSilagadze) — CEO of Ether.Fi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Illia Polosukhin, founder of NEAR and co-author of 'Attention Is All You Need,' on why confidentiality will let crypto become daily commerce — plus, some Near lore. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠Multichain Advisors⁠⁠: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at ⁠⁠multichainadv.com⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Coinbase One⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠coinbase.com/unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ======================================================== Before co-founding NEAR Protocol, Illia Polosukhin was on the eight-person Google Brain team that wrote the transformer paper — the architecture behind every large language model running today. He never mentioned it. When Kain Warwick found out two weeks ago, via a crypto AI chatbot, his reaction was: you have to be kidding me. That backstory sets the tone for a conversation that moves from how transformers actually came together, to why confidentiality is what unlocks on-chain commerce for real businesses, and what NEAR is doing to keep criminals off its network without becoming a surveillance layer. The hosts also get into the Ethereum Foundation's identity crisis, why Illia thinks decentralization is a tool and not a goal, and what the economy looks like when AI handles execution and blockchain handles coordination. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Illia Polosukhin — Co-Founder, NEAR Protocol - https://x.com/ilblackdragon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices