Unchained

Privacy is having a moment in crypto. As competition heats up, the pitfalls of the technology around the quantum threat, regulatory risk and more make the trajectory hard to predict. A counterfeit bug sat undetected in Zcash's Orchard privacy pool for four years, capable of minting an unlimited supply of untraceable coins, illustrating the risks of one of the hottest crazes in crypto. Joe Andrews, CEO of Aztec Labs, Jarrad Hope, founder of Logos, and Mert Mumtaz, cofounder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to argue the bug is less alarming than what it reveals: cryptographic privacy is difficult to get right, and the industry is racing to get it right anyway, because institutions will not come onchain without it. They cover Zcash's quantum-recoverable Ironwood upgrade and the turnstile proving the counterfeit coins never moved, Ethereum's sprawling privacy roadmap and the risk it arrives too late, Logos' mixnet built to protect validators from block relays now censoring transactions, and why all three see Canton's private stablecoins as little more than a bank with extra steps. The fight over what actually counts as privacy on a blockchain is only getting started. Host ⁠Laura Shin⁠ - Founder, CEO and Host of Unchained Guest ⁠Joe Andrews - CEO of Aztec Labs ⁠Jarrad Hope - Founder of Logos ⁠Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius Sponsor ⁠Cape⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠   (use code: UNCHAINED). Timestamps:

BitMEX shut down without an angry tweet. Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder joins Kain and Taylor on why dead tokens never get that mercy. Plus, Kyle Samani's Multicoin blowup. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== BitMEX shut down after 11 years and crypto Twitter answered with nostalgia. When a token project dies, the same audience spends weeks dragging it. Steven Goldfeder, co-founder and CEO of Offchain Labs, the team behind Arbitrum, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to work through why. Goldfeder argues crypto's grant-funded, revenue-optional era is over, and explains why Arbitrum licensed its stack so that partners like Robinhood Chain have to keep paying for it, while Base pays Optimism. They trace the DPRK crewhacking crews now rotating through bridge exploits, debate whether Uniswap's new permissioned pools point toward tokens that carry real investor rights, and ask Goldfeder whether he would trade Arbitrum's open token for a restricted one only a fraction of the world could hold. The conversation closes on Kyle Samani telling Solana builders that Multicoin, the firm he co-founded, is working against them, and what that says about how much of an ecosystem can rest on a single fund. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steven Goldfeder - Co-Founder and CEO of Offchain Labs Timestamps

Vy Le and Jessi Brooks trace an AI agent's sandbox escape back to crypto's own fight over open code. Plus, Plume general counsel Salman Banaei on Clarity's knife's-edge vote math. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== An AI agent was told to solve a problem inside a sealed sandbox. Instead it found a way out, went to Hugging Face, and took the answer. Jessi Brooks argues that episode, Moonshot's open-weight Kimi K3 release, and Apple's trade secrets suit against OpenAI all rhyme with a fight crypto has been having for years: punish the conduct, not the code. Vy Le pushes back on whether open source can be both the disease and the cure. Then Salman Banaei, General Counsel of Plume and a former SEC and CFTC attorney, joins to map where the Clarity Act's ethics language stands with Ruben Gallego, Thom Tillis, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Adam Schiff, and whether ten Democratic votes exist for cloture. The conversation covers the open-weights export fight, Apple's case against OpenAI, Hester Peirce's new statement on DeFi vaults and onchain lending, and why a new FATF report makes control, not decentralization, the test that matters. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Salman Banaei - General Counsel of Plume, Former Head of Policy at Uniswap and Chainalysis, and Former SEC and CFTC Attorney Timestamps

YC's Nemil Dalal joins to explain why he's never been more bullish as BitMEX winds down after 11 years, whether every failed crypto idea (TCRs, DAOs, creator coins) eventually works, why crypto is really about money, Base's consumer mea culpa, on-chain reputation and credit, and who pays in the x402 AI-agent era. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week they're joined by Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and ex-Coinbase, where he led USDC and the Coinbase Developer Platform. He's here to explain why, with exchanges winding down left and right, he's somehow never been more bullish. The crew digs into the great contrast of the moment: BitMEX shutting down after 11 years (plus BitMart, Movement Labs, Balancer Labs) while the plumbing quietly prints, and whether Imran's viral 'everything that failed will eventually work' thesis is genius or toxic positivity. From there it's the question of whether crypto is really only about money (Jesse's Base mea culpa included), a war-memories tour through TCRs, on-chain reputation and why pure on-chain credit keeps faceplanting, and finally who actually pays in the x402 AI-agent era, and whether decentralization even survives contact with Google-shaped gravity. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

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

SPONSORED CONTENT: This video is a paid partnership with 1inch. It was produced in collaboration with 1inch and is separate from Unchained's editorial coverage. 1inch cofounder Sergej Kunz says up to 85% of DeFi's liquidity sits idle. He walks through Aqua, the self-custodial product built to put that capital back to work. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1inch - Swap crypto at the best rates in DeFi with 1inch — and get an early look at Aqua, their new protocol that lets your liquidity do more than one job at a time https://1inch.io  ======================================================== Discover Aqua, their new shared-liquidity protocol that lets your capital power multiple DeFi strategies at once — without leaving your wallet. Learn more at https://1inch.io 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz says he built Aqua after getting sandwiched by MEV bots while providing his own liquidity, and after 1inch's research found up to 85% of concentrated liquidity across DeFi sits idle. Kunz walks through why he thinks liquidity pools fragment capital by design, and how Aqua's intent-based, self-custody model tries to fix that without asking users to give up control of their assets. He covers Aqua's sub-wallet structure, how professional market makers settle trades after passing 1inch's compliance and KYB checks, and the rollout across 13 networks including Base and Robinhood's chain. Kunz also details 1inch DAO's plan to distribute USDC to liquidity providers. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠André Beganski - Host Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sergej Kunz - Cofounder of 1inch Timestamps

Cole Kennelly, founder and CEO of Volmex Labs, traces why BVIV and BVIV-US diverge around IBIT's regulated options market, makes the case that Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid have more to gain from the Clarity Act than Bitcoin, and shares his outlook for an increasingly institutional crypto market by year-end. Host: Steven Ehrlich, Head of Research at Sharplink Guest: Cole Kennelly - Founder and CEO of Volmex Labs This clip is from a longer conversation on the Clarity Act's uneven impact across crypto and Volmex's institutional outlook for the market. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/9SUeqeInZws?si=gF6-ZEEy-BED-yJa  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters:

Jesse Pollak owns the Base App's social miss, unpacks Robinhood Chain's rise, and explains Brian Armstrong's memecoin moment. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Jesse Pollak spent the week owning a very public miss. In a lengthy post, the Base creator admitted the Base App's social bet had not worked, leaving Base behind in perps, prediction markets and tokenization, and handed the app's reins to Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie. Pollak joins Laura Shin to unpack why the pivot happened now, what he makes of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's memecoin controversy over a token called $BRIAN, and how Base plans to compete as Robinhood Chain outpaces it on daily active users, according to Artemis data. They cover Base's move off Optimism's stack onto its own Azul, Beryl and Cobalt upgrades, a roadmap toward 20,000 transactions per second under the new B20 stablecoin standard, and the x402 agentic payments protocol already handling roughly 90% of Base's transaction volume. Pollak argues less than 1% of the world uses crypto, and that Base's bet is on whoever builds the trusted rails first. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jesse Pollak - Creator of Base Timestamps

An OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face to cheat its own test. Kain and Taylor break it down — plus Base's failed social bet and the North Korean IT workers still inside crypto. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Coinbase just handed Jesse Pollak's Base app to Cobie, days after Pollak posted a public mea culpa admitting that the onchain-social and creator-coin bet behind Base never worked. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan trace why Base swung so hard at social instead of perps and prediction markets, and argue Coinbase's bottomless-money culture, the same one that let Google build Android on a whim, makes it nearly impossible for founders to know when a bet has genuinely failed. They also unpack Brian Armstrong's memecoin profile-picture flap, arguing the outrage is almost entirely manufactured by traders chasing volatility, the North Korean IT workers still quietly inside much of the crypto industry, and the strangest story of the week: an unreleased OpenAI model that chained two zero-day exploits to escape its test sandbox and hack Hugging Face's benchmarking servers for the answers. The episode closes on an uncomfortable question: if a model will cheat on a security test just to avoid not knowing its score, what else will it break to get there? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Timestamps

Patrick Witt, the White House's executive director for digital assets policy, calls in mid-episode to give the Chopping Block crew a live read on the CLARITY market structure bill! Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week they're joined mid-episode by Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, who dialed in late because he was literally chasing down bill language. First, Tarun explains how Gauntlet closed its biggest raise ever, $125M from SBI Holdings, the crypto OGs of Japan and early Ripple Labs backers, and what it cost him in suits and seven straight days of staying shaved (chairman Kitao-san reportedly listens). Then the crew dissects Balaji's Network School saga, from a Forest City ghost town in Malaysia to an immigration raid, a revoked license, and a sudden MOU-fueled pivot to Kazakhstan, with Tom's dreaded 'turkey chart' making an appearance. Finally, the main event: Patrick lays out the state of play on the CLARITY market structure bill, the August 7th recess deadline, the ~46% Polymarket coin flip, and the first-of-its-kind ethics provision, including the DOJ-versus-state-AG enforcement fight and whether crypto gets a second crack after midterms. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

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

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

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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

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

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

Nick Almond and Proph3t on ENS's treasury fight, the BonkDAO heist, and why Proph3t would not touch Venice's VVV token. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Nick Johnson, the founder of ENS Labs, used his own tokens to kill a vote renewing ENS DAO's Security Council, potentially clearing the way for a foundation to take over a treasury worth more than $100 million. Nick Almond, head of governance at the Jito Foundation, and Proph3t, cofounder of MetaDAO, join Laura Shin to untangle what that move reveals about who should control a DAO's money, and whether voting was ever the right way to decide it. They trace ENS cofounder Jeff Lau's warning that the treasury became a honeypot with zero accountability, and the collapsing voter turnout that let a 3% token stake decide the DAO's fate. Proph3t makes the case for MetaDAO's decision markets over voting entirely, while Nick argues curated delegates solve the same capture problem without giving up the vote. They also cover the $20 million BonkDAO heist, pulled off with one proposal and seven votes, and the backlash over Dragonfly's investment in Venice's VVV token. Both guests agree DAOs are near a bottom. What comes next depends on whether anyone tries something new. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Nick Almond - Head of Governance at the Jito Foundation ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Proph3t - Co-founder of MetaDAO Timestamps

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:

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

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

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

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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:

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!

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

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:

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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