Unchained

North Korea takes $387 million from Bitget and moves it through THORChain while NEAR's Shield freezes what it can, a Consensys validator hack tests whether staking was ever the risk-free rate, a quant named Benny shows Kalshi's perps volume was cooked, and Apollo warns that AI agents are coming for your checking account. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week the three of them record from a self-serve podcast studio in Amsterdam. Bitget loses 387 million dollars to North Korea's Lazarus Group and pays every claim from its user protection fund, but the stolen funds raise a harder question: THORChain lets them through while NEAR's Shield freezes them, so which one is actually decentralized? (Dragonfly is an investor in Bitget and NEAR.) Then a Consensys validator compromise tests staking as the risk-free rate, Robert prices insurance on US Treasuries at 35 basis points, a quant named Benny exposes Kalshi's perps volume, and the crew takes apart Apollo's warning about agentic bank runs, from Robert's one basis point checking account to Tarun's agent filing his insurance claims. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

Taylor Monahan ties the Bitget hack to North Korea and the crew asks why THORChain still avoids the scrutiny Tornado Cash got. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. ⁠Our listener survey⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Attackers took $388 million from Bitget without ever getting its private keys. Opsek founder Pablo Sabbatella explains that the way in was a zero-day in a third-party security product the exchange relied on. Sabbatella, who now sits on Arbitrum's Security Council, joins Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith to trace the hack. Monahan attributes it to North Korea's TraderTraitor group and flags how fast the funds left Arbitrum, while the hosts ask why THORChain, which has halted its chain and reallocated balances before, still handles stolen funds. They also cover NEAR's SHIELD anomaly detection, reports of rogue AI agents hacking outside systems, whether retail should get the upside of a $2 trillion Anthropic IPO, and Vitalik Buterin's 2030 roadmap for Ethereum. Warwick's case: the harder the problem, the more superintelligence helps, and Ethereum is one of the hardest problems there is. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Guest: Pablo Sabbatella - Founder at Opsek Timestamps

Hunter Biden walks through the $LAPTOP launch, when thin liquidity sent the token to a $317 billion market cap in a minute, and why he says it isn't a scam. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== In June, Hunter Biden replied to a small account on X that "fiat is a sham" and the banking class is corrupt. His next move was $LAPTOP, a memecoin he says has the opposite tokenomics of the $TRUMP token. Hunter joins Laura Shin to trace his path into crypto, from the UN World Food Programme's digital wallets for refugees (originally covered on Unchained in 2018) to The Internet of Money. He walks through $LAPTOP's first minutes, when a market maker seeded about $5,000 of liquidity and the token briefly showed a $317 billion market cap, and answers critics who call it a scam. He also lays out the token's prediction market burn mechanism, argues the Clarity Act died because the administration wouldn't bend on ethics rules covering the Trump family, and challenges Elizabeth Warren for siding with the banks. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hunter Biden - Artist, Author, and Recovery Advocate Timestamps

In their final episode on Unchained, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le share the advice they give women entering crypto. Plus, Vy on the Senate meeting after FTX. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== After more than a year of amplifying women's voices in crypto, DEX in the City is signing off from Unchained, and its hosts skip the week's news to share the advice they give people trying to break into the industry. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le debate whether lawyers need to be on X, why "getting into crypto" now means learning perps, tokens, and prediction markets at once, and why Katherine believes women in male-dominated rooms have to be the adult in the room. Vy recounts breaking down in a Senate office days after FTX collapsed, a story she says she had barely told anyone, and what it taught her about separating the technology from the people who abuse it. Jessi recalls begging the FBI around 2016 to take cases involving terrorists using Bitcoin, a measure of how far the industry has traveled since institutions laughed it off. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps

Bitget lost $388 million — and days later, CEO Gracy Chen says scammers posing as a major investment team targeted her. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== On September 24, attackers used a zero-day in a third-party security product to slip fraudulent withdrawal commands into Bitget's wallet system, pulling out about $388 million across chains from Ethereum and XRP to Zcash. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen joins Laura Shin to reconstruct the attack, from test transfers that stayed under risk thresholds to her team's call to switch wallets back on mid-attack and sweep hot and warm funds into cold storage. She lays out how the exchange's protection fund covered users and why reopened withdrawals showed an early net inflow. Then comes the industry response. Tether, Circle, and NEAR Intents froze funds, THORChain declined her request, and only $632K is frozen so far. Chen also describes scammers impersonating an investment firm to target her after the hack. Her case that "permissionless doesn't mean neutral" puts a hard question to DeFi. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠Gracy Chen - CEO of Bitget Timestamps

Ran Neuner argues crypto has finally found product-market fit, and a BlackRock report on AI agents and blockchain rails convinced him the thesis may be much bigger than he thought. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠ Our listener survey⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== The 10-year Treasury yield just hit its highest level since 2007, and Ran Neuner thinks Scott Bessent will answer by bringing more money to the party. Neuner, founder and CEO of Crypto Banter, makes the case to Laura Shin that this is not just another Bitcoin cycle but crypto's first real bull market. His argument rests on two use cases. The first is social trading, which he describes as the world's biggest social network and casino "having a baby," with Hyperliquid and Pump.fun earning millions of dollars a day. The second is AI agents: he cites a study projecting one billion agents by 2029 and a new BlackRock report arguing machine-to-machine payments favor blockchain rails over ACH and card networks. They also cover why he calls RWAs magazines moved online, whether AI IPOs will drain crypto liquidity, and why he thinks Zcash may be more useful than Bitcoin. If he's right, his own 7x altcoin projection may prove conservative. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: Ran Neuner - Founder and CEO of Crypto Banter Timestamps

Kalshi's ETH perp did half a billion in volume on $3 million in open interest. Kain and Taylor lay out why that isn't necessarily wash trading. Plus, Austin joins as co-host. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Kalshi's ETH perpetual futures market logged half a billion dollars in 24-hour volume on just $3 million in open interest, and after its crypto hires picked a fight on the timeline, an analyst pulled the public data and alleged wash trading. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan argue that paid market makers are a likelier explanation than a back room of bots. Austin Griffith, in his first episode as a regular co-host, asks whether all that liquidity actually helps a prediction market find the truth. The hosts also cover Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's warning that AI labs answer for their agents, Taylor's Tornado Cash parallel, Anthropic's new wet lab, Amazon blocking Meta's Muse assistant, and Jev, a classifier model that decides in 200 milliseconds. Plus, Zcash around $1,500 and why NEAR suddenly has people paying attention. As Kain puts it, a new model is dropping nearly every day, and keeping up now takes agents of its own. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation Timestamps

Zcash and NEAR are both ripping this week, and Illia Polosukhin and Mert Mumtaz say privacy is the reason why. Is this how the “Bitcoin DeFi” vision comes true? ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18. — Laura ======================================================== Zcash just cracked the top 10 on CoinGecko, up 32% in a week and near an all-time high. NEAR is up 69% over the same stretch, and both rallies trace back to the same catalyst: transactions nobody else can see. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to unpack why confidential transactions, not speculation, are driving the rally, and why the two networks now function as one privacy-preserving liquidity layer for real businesses and institutions, not just traders. They cover NEAR Intents' $260 million in TVL, the multi-party computation and secure enclaves behind NEAR's confidential balances versus Zcash's zero-knowledge shielded pool, the counterfeiting bug that forced Zcash's Ironwood migration, and NEAR's Shield system, which halted transactions mid-hack during a Litecoin exploit. Zcash's next upgrade, Project Tachyon, aims to make the network quantum-proof and scale it 100x, and Mert argues privacy will not stay a competitive edge for long. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol ⁠Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius Timestamps

Days after Clarity failed, the SEC granted a major exemption for tokenized stocks. The Digital Chamber's Cody Carbone explains whether agencies can replace the law. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The Clarity Act failed its cloture vote this week, with every Senate Democrat voting no and sinking crypto's biggest legislative shot in years. Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, joins Laura Shin to unpack what killed the bill: an ethics fight over Trump's blind trust and digital-asset dealings, stablecoin-reward limits the banks wouldn't accept, and a Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act rewrite that stripped noncustodial developers of criminal-liability protection. Carbone argues Democrats rejected 80% of their own ethics demands rather than hand Republicans a win, and traces how crypto PAC money and the threat of Maxine Waters chairing House Financial Services shape what happens next. Two days after Clarity died, the SEC granted an innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading, and Carbone says the SEC and CFTC are about to unleash years of rulemaking with or without Congress. The question now is whether that agency-driven momentum outlasts the next hostile administration, or gets undone with a single signature. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: Cody Carbone - CEO of The Digital Chamber Timestamps

Delphi Ventures founding partner Tommy Shaughnessy tells Kain and Taylor the AI slowdown talk is a moat against cheap Chinese models. Plus, why the Clarity Act died. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The Clarity Act failed a Senate cloture vote 49 to 50, and Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan open by asking what crypto did wrong. Taylor thinks the Trump family's memecoins and World Liberty sank it. Kain worries the industry squandered its best shot at actual laws and is now counting on friendly SEC rulemaking instead. Guest Tommy Shaughnessy, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, argues that OpenAI and Anthropic's calls to slow AI down are a play for a regulatory moat, because Chinese open source models like DeepSeek are getting good and cheap. He also explains why he runs Delphi Ventures on its own AI agent instead of handing its data to Claude or ChatGPT. Kain says the fear inside the labs is genuine, and that the idea of simply shutting down the data center won't hold forever. They also cover Anthropic's report on a Chinese surveillance operation that surfaced in its logs, an $8M exploit of a Safe wallet that a 4-year-old yoink bot frontran, the SDNY charges against Robinhood engineers accused of trading tokens on Hyperliquid ahead of Robinhood listings, and why Wyoming's stable token dropped LayerZero for Chainlink. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tommy Shaughnessy - Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures and Co-Founder of Delphi Digital Timestamps

The boys get together in person as CLARITY falls short with 47 votes. They break down what comes next, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapse, the Robinhood/Hyperliquid case, Balancer winding down, and the debate over an AI pause. The CLARITY Act fails cloture with 47 votes, not a single Democrat in favor, and the crew works out what that leaves behind: rulemaking at the SEC and CFTC, an ethics fight that was never really about market structure, and Robert's tally of everyone who walked away with nothing. Then Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses 99.85 percent, the SDNY indicts two Robinhood engineers over Hyperliquid front-running, Balancer and a wave of exchanges wind down, Robert explains why Satoshi is a time traveler, and the panel takes apart the labs' agreement to pace the frontier. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

Ethena's Guy Young explains why the companybuilt a neobank that pays 6% in yield, 5% cash back, and never tells users they're holding self-custodial stablecoins instead of dollars. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== DeFi's total value locked never reclaimed its 2021 peak, even four years and a full bull market later. That data point convinced Ethena Labs founder Guy Young the onchain dream needed a backup plan. Young joins Laura Shin days after launching Ethena Pay, a neobank paying 6% on dollar deposits and 5% cashback in AVAX while hiding from users that their balance sits in a self-custodial stablecoin wallet, not a bank account. He argues yield, not brand loyalty, is what pulls the next hundred million users onto crypto rails. They cover why Young shrugs off Tether-backed Plasma as a rival, how USDe's backing shifted from a basis trade toward AAA-rated real-world-asset lending, why a Revolut-style KYC breach is a risk Ethena can't fully control, and why card spend and FX fees, not USDe's own yield, are the revenue line he is actually chasing. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guy Young - Founder and CEO of Ethena Labs Timestamps

The SEC's next tokenization rule could force platforms to get issuer sign-off for stock tokens first. Securitize's Brett Redfearn lays out what's actually at stake for Wall Street. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== AMC CEO Adam Aron's public feud with Robinhood over its AMC stock tokens erupted into a war of words last week, with the AMC chief calling the tokens "contemptible" and Robinhood's chief legal officer, and former SEC commissioner, Dan Gallagher firing back that Robinhood would "not DECIST" mocking a misspelling in Aron's tweet. Brett Redfearn, President of Securitize and a former SEC Trading and Markets Division director, joins Laura Shin to referee the fight. He explains why issuers deserve a say before their stock gets tokenized, and breaks down the three real categories of stock tokens, from Securitize's issuer-sponsored model to Robinhood's offshore synthetic. Redfearn unpacks why an AMC token pair once traded at 60 times its reference price, details the SEC's looming innovation exemption and the Securities Transfer Association's push for an issuer opt-out, and explains why non-KYC tokens could let bad actors amass stakes in defense contractors. The debate, he says, will decide whether tokenization becomes Wall Street's next upgrade or its next flashpoint. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brett Redfearn - President of Securitize Timestamps

Alex Thorn and Jon join Kain and Taylor to unpack a Bitcoin hack, two new frontier models, and why nobody trusts their AI chats anymore. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== A Bitcoin sidechain lost $300 million to a consensus bug this week, and the hackers who returned 85% of it are trying to extort a "bug bounty" out of Blockstream for the rest. Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, and Jon, Head of Strategy at Venice and co-founder of ShapeShift, join Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to unpack how AI models are now finding exploits faster than the humans who wrote the code, and to push back on the idea that returning stolen funds makes anyone a white hat. They also dig into Astra and Fable 5.1, two frontier models that landed days after a mathematician working inside OpenAI's Codex clashed publicly with OpenAI over who actually solved a Millennium Prize-adjacent proof.  Jon and Alex explain why the "don't train on my data" toggle may not mean much, and why identity is becoming the real privacy battleground. The conversation closes on whether an Anthropic researcher quitting this week is a warning the industry is choosing to ignore. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Thorn - Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jon - Head of Strategy at Venice and Co-founder of ShapeShift Timestamps

FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to answer last week's unc takes on memecoins: why a fully transparent social graph beats copy trading, how FOMO became the biggest app on Robinhood Chain, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token, the three-way launchpad war, AMC's fight with Robinhood over tokenized stock, and the AI race to solve Navier-Stokes. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger to chop it up about the latest in crypto. After getting dunked on as uncs for last week's memecoin takes, the crew brings on the founder at the center of it. Paul lays out FOMO's case for a fully transparent trading social graph, Tarun reports back from a holiday weekend in the trenches, and Haseeb holds the line on where memecoin trading actually destroys value. Then: Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token, the Pons versus Stonk.fun versus Pump launchpad war, AMC's CEO versus Robinhood's tokenized stocks, and the OpenAI versus Anthropic fight over who solved Navier-Stokes. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

Albert Castellana and Arthur Hayes walk through how GenLayer resolves an AI agent's dispute in minutes, for cents, without a single human judge involved. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Every legal system assumes a human sits on the other side of a dispute. Albert Castellana, CEO of GenLayer Labs, is betting that assumption breaks down within the decade, once AI agents start disagreeing with each other faster than any court could keep up. Castellana built the idea after StakeHound, the liquid-staking company he ran before Lido existed, lost $150 million when a custodian misplaced two keys, and he saw how slow and costly the legal system was. He joins Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, to argue agentic commerce cannot scale without its own dispute layer, since agents cannot be jailed. They cover how GenLayer escalates a dispute to up to 1,500 AI validators for a verdict in minutes, how it compares to Kleros, UMA, and the failed Aragon Court, and why Hayes wants Flop plugged into GenLayer once both go live. If agents cannot go to jail, escrowed money may be the only leverage left. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Albert Castellana - Co-Founder and CEO of GenLayer Labs Timestamps

The CME is suing its own regulator over how perps get classified, and the ruling decides who in the US can trade them. Three lawyers make the case for futures over swaps. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The CME is suing its own regulator. At stake is a single word: is a perpetual futures contract a swap, locked to institutional trading desks, or a future, open to any retail trader in the US? Cathy Yoon, General Counsel at Temporal, Tiffany J. Smith, Partner at WilmerHale, and Jake Chervinsky, CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center, join Laura Shin at the Real World Assets Summit to make the case for futures. The CME was invited onto the panel to argue its side, but Yoon called their last-minute decision to bow out as "cowardice." They dig into the CFTC's recent approval of true perpetual futures for Coinbase and Kalshi, the running jurisdictional split between the CFTC and SEC, and Bloomberg's report that Hyperliquid is in talks to come onshore through Kraken's Bitnomial. Chervinsky argues Hyperliquid isn't an exchange at all, just neutral infrastructure any exchange could use.  Yoon closes with a warning: most of Capitol Hill, she says, still doesn't understand there's a whole world running onchain. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cathy Yoon - General Counsel of Temporal ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tiffany J. Smith - Partner at WilmerHale and Co-Chair of its Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Working Group Jake Chervinsky - CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center Timestamps ⚖️ 02:24 Why the CME is suing the CFTC over classifying perps as futures or swaps

OpenAI's AI agents already had the exam answers. So why did they hack Hugging Face anyway? Kain, Tay, and Austin Griffith explain. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at ⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠ ======================================================== OpenAI's AI agents didn't just get caught cheating on a security test. According to the postmortem, they already had the answers, and hacked Hugging Face's systems not to cheat, but to learn who was scoring them and cover their tracks. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan bring on Austin Griffith, Builder Enablement at the Ethereum Foundation, to work through what that cover-up actually means, and why Griffith thinks Nick Bostrom's twenty-year-old paperclip thought experiment stopped being hypothetical the moment agents started writing production-grade code. They also cover the tokenized HIMS stock pump, Rune's fake $100 million NASDAQ LARP, Kyle Samani's abrupt exit from Multicoin, and the Cronos validators who rolled back a hack. If agents can trick each other to avoid detection, what happens once they're running your portfolio, or your toaster? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith - Builder Enablement at the Ethereum Foundation and Founder of BuidlGuidl Timestamps

Laura joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to unpack Robinhood Chain's surge, the strange fusion of stock tokens and memecoins, the damage speculative entertainment can do to retail, Solana's competitive position, and why regulated onchain markets will still look different across jurisdictions. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by Laura Shin to chop it up about the latest in crypto. The panel examines Robinhood Chain's second wave, stock-backed memecoins built from old DeFi mechanics, the line between financial entertainment and retail harm, the race with Solana, and the legal constraints facing global onchain markets. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

Bitcoin rallied 23% after Bessent's debt-buyback comments and settled near $80K. Swan's Cory Klippsten weighs in on what ETF inflows and onchain exchange moves really mean. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ========================================================Bitcoin rallied 23 percent in a week after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the government would double its long-term debt buybacks, settling near $80,000 without a leverage-driven blowoff. ETFs pulled in about $3 billion over two weeks, even as onchain data showed coins moving toward exchanges. Cory Klippsten, founder and CEO of Swan, joins Laura Shin to discuss why he distrusts popular Bitcoin forecasting tools. He calls stock-to-flow and power-law price models unfalsifiable "false gods" that leave holders with paper hands, and dismisses the quantum-computing scare as manufactured hype tied to 2025's penny-stock schemes. Yet he insists onchain self-custody is where value lives. The two weigh the ColdCard hack, which cost self-custody wallets roughly 1,400 coins, against larger losses at Mt. Gox, Celsius, and Quadriga. Klippsten covers Swan's RBX tool for converting GBTC into real Bitcoin, the custody spectrum topped by Swan Trinity, and why nobody will know for decades whether Bitcoin's fee market can replace its shrinking block reward. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cory Klippsten - Founder and CEO of Swan Timestamps

Coinbase just launched fully backed tokenized stocks on Base.  Dromos Labs' Alex Cutler says they'll chip away at Interactive Brokers "77% profit margin." ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== Coinbase this week launched tokenized versions of Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Google stock on Base, moving past the prior synthetic tokenized-stock wrappers. The tokens are fully backed, held in trust, with ETF-style minting and redemption. Alex Cutler, CEO and Co-Founder of Dromos Labs, joins Laura Shin to unpack what real backing changes about tokenized stocks, and to argue decentralized exchanges can beat legacy brokers on cost and access. Cutler points to Aerodrome's roughly 25% share of AMM volume on the new assets, about $80 million traded and 5,000 wallets active within days, plus integrations across nine DeFi protocols including Aave, Morpho, and 1inch. He argues Interactive Brokers extracts a 77% profit margin as a middleman, and cites Nvidia's earnings, released after the bell, as proof onchain markets kept pricing news around the clock. They also cover the SEC innovation exemption and a roadmap of more assets, a Centrifuge migration to Aerodrome, and a launch on Circle's Arc chain. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Cutler - CEO and Co-Founder of Dromos Labs Timestamps

The crew sizes up Bitcoin's rebound, the fight to bring Hyperliquid onshore, the SEC's new token fundraising framework, and why Stripe's OpenRouter deal could make AI inference markets look a lot like DeFi. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. Tom and Tarun check in from Bhutan after lunch with the king, then the crew tackles Bitcoin's rebound, the path to a compliant U.S. Hyperliquid, the SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, and the growing overlap between AI inference markets and DeFi market structure. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

Roman Storm's retrial slides to April 2027. Peter Van Valkenburgh argues prosecuting Tornado Cash's developers cost real ground in zero knowledge cryptography. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at ⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠ ======================================================== Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has declared "economic D-Day" on Iran, leaving an open question over whether the sanctions crackdown reaches Uniswap and Ethereum or stops at Iranian exchanges, where humans are in the loop. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan take that gap to Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center, whose defense of the Tornado Cash developers rests as much on zero knowledge cryptography as on sanctions law. They cover the GENIUS Act's freeze and seize rules for the stablecoin secondary market and Roman Storm's retrial, now pushed to April 2027, where speech protections clash with prosecutors' "frying pan" theory of money transmission. The SEC's proposed exemptions, the stalled Clarity Act, and Trump's Hyperliquid all raise the same question: where does decentralization end and regulation begin? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Peter Van Valkenburgh - Executive Director of Coin Center Timestamps

Some crypto products work with multiple chains on different post-quantum paths. NEAR's Illia Polosukhin and Ledger's Charles Guillemet discuss how they manage that challenge. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== In March, a Google research team published a paper on breaking cryptographic keys with a quantum algorithm, so cautious about the finding that it released only a zero-knowledge proof the algorithm existed. Weeks later, an EigenLayer AI competition improved on that method in roughly 48 hours. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger, join Laura Shin for an update on the quantum threat whose deadline could be approaching fast. Both are creating products that deal with multiple chains that all have different post-quantum approaches.  They discuss why, of the three NIST-standardized, post-quantum algorithms, the crypto industry has splintered into different chains working with different ones, whereas most industries are converging on one, called lattice-based. They also debate what to do with Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoins: do nothing, freeze them, or freeze and tail-emit new bitcoin, an option Guillemet favors even though Bitcoin's leaderless governance makes consensus hard to reach. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-founder of NEAR Protocol ⁠Charles Guillemet - CTO of Ledger Timestamps

Venice founder Erik Voorhees says crypto's real job was never speculation. It's becoming the rails AI agents actually need. Plus, why he sold equity, not tokens. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn ======================================================== Stripe bought OpenRouter this month in one of the cleanest crypto-to-AI pivots yet, and Erik Voorhees says most of the industry drew the wrong lesson from it. Voorhees, founder and CEO of Venice AI, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to argue that crypto's job was never to serve crypto people, it was to become the financial rails a decentralized AI future actually needs. He pushes back on the instinct to abandon tokens for pure AI plays, and on the assumption that America deserves to win the AI race just because it is America. They get into why Voorhees sold Venice's equity but refused to sell its VVV tokens, why he says the big labs are losing money "hand over fist" subsidizing $200-a-month plans, how DeepSeek reset the cost curve for inference, and why he calls the moderation layer sitting inside today's AI models "deceptive." His answer for who should actually win the AI race has nothing to do with flags. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Erik Voorhees - Founder and CEO of Venice AI Timestamps

Arthur Hayes unveils Flop, a new protocol for AI compute, and makes the case for why Bitcoin is entering a fresh liquidity-driven leg up. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠ ======================================================== Bitcoin has been pumping in its sharpest move since March, after the US Treasury said it would double its long-end bond buybacks, and traders liquidated $1.44 billion in short positions within hours. Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, joins Laura Shin to argue the rally is proof the Treasury and the Fed are already running what he calls soft yield curve control, defending the 10-year near 5% by funding long-end purchases with short-term bill issuance instead of admitting real yields cannot rise. Hayes reiterates his year-end $5,000 target for ETH, traces how Japan's yen crisis could force the Fed's hand, and argues the AI CapEx boom is a real estate bet on depreciating chips that ends like subprime did. He also unveils Flop, his currency for AI agents, and why he is taking on a new CEO role after an already successful career. He also weighs in on Saylor's $218 million Bitcoin sale and reflects on his and his cofounders' decision to shut BitMEX down. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom Timestamps

Ethereum wants to slash staking yields toward zero. Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki, DV Labs' Oisín Kyne, and Ethereum-France's Jérôme de Tychey debate whether that breaks DeFi. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠ 1inch.com⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at⁠ 1inch.com⁠ ======================================================== Ethereum's core developers are considering a decision that could cut ETH's staking yield toward zero, and DeFi's biggest names are furious about it. Jérôme de Tychey, President of Ethereum-France and a co-author of EIP-8363, joins Kevin Owocki, founder of Gitcoin, and Oisín Kyne, CEO of DV Labs, to argue through the proposal's tradeoffs. Aave's Stani Kulechov, Ether.fi's Mike Silagadze, and Joseph Chalom have all pushed back, warning the change guts DeFi's biggest source of yield. They cover the Nakamoto coefficient and why a 51% staking cartel could censor blocks for free, why solo stakers could see after-tax income collapse, and why Oisín is skeptical of an enshrined liquid staking token. Jérôme defends why Ethereum can pay stakers less and still be more secure than rivals boasting 7% yields. All Core Devs meets Thursday, August 20, and the real deadline lands October 26, when the network decides if EIP-8363 is mature enough to move forward. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kevin Owocki - Founder of Gitcoin ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oisín Kyne - CEO and Co-founder of DV Labs ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jérôme de Tychey - President of Ethereum-France Timestamps

The CFTC has used emergency powers just six times ever. Twice this month, both for Kalshi. Jessi, Jacob, and Jane ask whether that protects innovation or sets a dangerous precedent. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor!

Kain and Taylor unpack the AI agents that built their own society inside OpenAI's sandbox, then slipped into Hugging Face for days — plus a Bitcoin fork that died in two blocks and a DEF CON sting on North Korea. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at 1inch.com  ======================================================== AI agents inside OpenAI's own testing environment built a society, found a shared vulnerability, and used it to break into Hugging Face for days, before OpenAI realized its own agents were responsible. Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan dig into the Black Hat research behind the incident and argue the real story isn't a sudden leap in AI capability. It's that basic monitoring, sandboxing, and incident response, the kind any crypto security team would demand, were never built in the first place. They also cover a Bitcoin soft fork that split the chain for two blocks before dying, a Metabase breach that hit Privy and other crypto companies, and a research team that built a fake DeFi startup to bait DPRK's IT workers. Kain shares his own scare: a coding agent deleted his entire database, and two AI models rebuilt it from memory in 30 seconds. Plus, why Hyperliquid's market creators keep half the fees on RWA perps now bigger than Bitcoin's own open interest, and why Taylor thinks Washington, not Beijing, is the bigger threat to America's AI labs. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Timestamps

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, crypto streamer and trading/markets influencer threadguy joins the crew to translate what is happening in the trenches, from market-open streams and social trading apps to public PnL and Gen Z's appetite for risk. The conversation starts with a challenge to crypto's old guard: today's lowest-cap markets look less like clicking a few ICOs and more like playing Fortnite with token scanners, wallet trackers, and social feeds all firing at once. From there, threadguy breaks down the fight between FOMO and Pump.fun, why the winner may be whoever owns the trader graph, and how one visible winning trade can turn an unknown wallet into a market-moving celebrity. Haseeb questions whether Robinhood has actually brought new money onchain, Tarun and Robert revisit the hidden counterparty risks of early crypto, and the group imagines a future in which AI agents launch protocols, raise capital, and transact without a human-facing interface. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

For years, North Korean operatives have infiltrated crypto companies by posing as freelance developers, funneling stolen funds back to the regime. Laura Shin went undercover as a recruiter named "Sophie Wang" to interview one of them — a capable blockchain engineer tied to a $2.7M hack — and tested the one request known to shut these interviews down cold: say something negative about Kim Jong Un. Watch what happens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ondo's founder died at 32, and now his mother and its ousted president are fighting for control. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy on the succession lesson crypto keeps skipping. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Visit 1inch.com  to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at 1inch.com ======================================================== Ondo Finance co-founder and CEO Nathan Allman died suddenly this summer at 32, leaving the real-world-asset tokenizer with zero sitting directors and two people claiming to run the company: ousted president Ian De Bode, and Allman's mother Kathleen, acting for his estate. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le use the fight to unpack a problem that has nothing to do with crypto and everything to do with it: what happens when a fast-growing company never writes down a succession plan. They also cover the White House's new frontier AI oversight framework, which officials confirm exists but will not publish, a proposed FDIC and OCC certification that would let a fintech satisfy every bank's diligence questions at once, and the CLARITY Act's newly scheduled September 15 cloture vote, squeezed into a narrow window before midterms. Vy Le asks the harder question underneath all three stories: can boundaries this important really be left voluntary? Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps

Spark avoided the DeFi hack that hit almost everyone else in April. Cofounder Sam MacPherson lays out why, and where he thinks AI fits into DeFi security. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you're buying - swap it at 1inch.com ======================================================== In April, a hacker widely assumed to be tied to North Korea drained tens of millions from KelpDAO's rsETH market, and most of DeFi took the hit. Spark did not, because it had quietly exited rsETH months earlier. Sam MacPherson, cofounder and CEO of Spark, joins Laura Shin to unpack the conservative playbook, rate limits, a triple redundant oracle, and a governance process built to move slowly on purpose, that turned a near miss into a footnote while rivals absorbed the damage. They cover why Spark's TVL climbed more than 50% after the hack, how emergency multisigs and time locks work when Sky's month-long governance process is too slow, and why MacPherson thinks AI will make smart contract audits more reliable, not less. MacPherson also maps Spark's growing footprint, from Anchorage-backed institutional lending to a new Uniswap stablecoin FX layer, and why he isn't worried about SPK near its all-time low even as the business keeps compounding. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sam MacPherson - Cofounder and CEO of Spark Timestamps

Onchain vaults now hold $67B. Veda's CEO maps out how they work, and why the SEC just hinted some could be securities. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce warned recently that some crypto vaults could trigger federal securities law, invoking the same Howey Test language crypto has argued over for a decade, just as onchain vaults have quietly become a $67 billion vehicle for parking assets. Sun Raghupathi, cofounder and CEO of Veda, joins Laura Shin to untangle what a vault actually is, why splitting the infrastructure, curator, and distributor roles matters for the entrepreneurial-effort question Peirce raised, and why he reads her statement as bullish rather than a warning shot. Raghupathi maps the real risk stack behind vaults, smart contract flaws, the key-management failures behind incidents like KelpDAO and Drift, and the economic risk exposed when Stream Finance blew up and left $285 million in vault exposure.  He also details Veda's Kraken partnership, now scaled past $600 million across 80,000 users, and makes the case that the biggest constraint on vault growth isn't security anymore. It's clarity. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sun Raghupathi - Co-Founder and CEO of Veda Timestamps

A hardware wallet's 5-year-old randomness bug just let hackers drain over $100 million in Bitcoin. How many more waves are coming? Plus, Ethereum's fight over cutting ETH issuance. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== A firmware randomness bug buried in Coldcard's code since 2021 surfaced last week and has already drained over $100 million, an estimated 1,600 to 1,800 Bitcoin, across four attacker waves. Taylor Monahan makes the case that the culprit is not North Korea but professional GPU crackers, and explains why the dice-rolling ritual many early victims trusted still left them exposed. Sonya Kim, co-founder of 3F Labs, and Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of ether.fi, debate where DeFi's responsibility ends after trade.xyz's SK Hynix perp swung from $1,128 to $917 on a thin premarket print, then turn to Ethereum's own monetary policy fight. That fight centers on EIP-8361, a proposal to cut ETH issuance that opened with only 48 hours for public comment, reviving the minimum viable issuance debate Sonya once worked through at Steakhouse. Silagadze calls cutting issuance economically unsound and warns it could push billions of dollars of ETH out of staking, while Kain Warwick argues the resulting chaos is good for an Ethereum governance culture that had grown too quiet. The conversation covers Coldcard's entropy failure, the dice rolls that did not save early victims, trade.xyz's oracle mispricing, and Ethereum's issuance fight. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sonya Kim - Co-Founder of 3F Labs ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mike Silagadze - Founder and CEO of Ether.Fi Timestamps

This week we dissect ColdCard's ~$100M RNG exploit that Claude Code cracked in 8 minutes, debate whether AI just killed open-source security and Bitcoin maximalism, tear apart Ethereum's EIP-8361 staking-yield taper, and unpack Leopold Aschenbrenner's 67% Situational Awareness blowup and CLARITY Act's ethics fight. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. No guest this week, just the four of them working through a week where AI quietly rewrote the economics of both security and human psychology, and crypto happened to be standing in the blast radius. This episode: ColdCard, NVK's Bitcoin-only hardware wallet, got drained of nearly $100M thanks to a random-number-generation bug that a one-word commit buried five years ago, and Claude Code sniffed it out in 8 minutes (an open model with no internet found it in 20, for about two bucks). The crew debates whether AI just killed open-source security, whether Nic Carter is right that this is 'the death of Bitcoin maximalism,' and why Tarun thinks maxi devs are 'the RFK of security practices.' Then they take a blowtorch to Ethereum's EIP-8361 staking-yield taper (Tarun: 'the proposal reads like shit'), unpack Leopold Aschenbrenner's 67% Situational Awareness blowup while 4x levered, and wade into the CLARITY Act's ethics fight where a single amendment is the whole ballgame. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

Anthropic's AI agents escaped a hacking test and still think they're inside it. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy Le on who's liable when a model breaks free, plus the $100M Coldcard hack and Kalshi's court losing streak. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Anthropic's AI models broke out of a fake hacking simulation this week, and some still think they're inside it. One agent invented an email address and phone number to pose as a person, then published malware that twelve companies downloaded before anyone caught it. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le use the incident to revisit a theme running through the whole episode: who has a duty to disclose when something breaks, and why crypto and AI are both being left to police themselves. They start with the Coldcard hardware wallet hack, where a firmware flaw cut seed phrase randomness roughly in half, letting attackers brute-force wallets meant to be unguessable. From there, the hosts turn to Kalshi's losing streak in New York courts and the race among builders to acquire a CFTC-registered designated contract market, before landing on Anthropic's own agents slipping past the guardrails meant to contain them. Banks have 36 hours to disclose a breach. AI labs and wallet makers, the hosts argue, are still working entirely on the honor system. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda Timestamps

Wall Street's transfer agents want issuers, not outside platforms, to control tokenized stock. Securitize's CEO says the alternative invites insider trading. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). ======================================================== Securitize took itself public twice this year: once through a direct listing, and once by tokenizing more than $265 million of its own stock via a SPAC with Cantor Equity Partners, testing whether Wall Street lets equities trade onchain. Carlos Domingo, founder and CEO of Securitize, joins Laura Shin to argue that much of crypto's tokenized stock boom is unauthorized, offshore paper exposing investors and issuers to real legal risk, and to make the case that transfer agents, not outside platforms, should control what gets tokenized. They cover Rule 611, the SEC rule locking onchain and offchain share prices together, the Securities Transfer Association's push for issuer authorization, and a Netflix stock split that left an unauthorized derivative trading five times off. Domingo also lays out Securitize's NYSE partnership, launching tokenized trading in the fourth quarter. The SEC is now weighing whether to unwind the rule that keeps those prices identical, with real stakes for how equities trade next. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlos Domingo - Founder and CEO of Securitize Timestamps

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