Unchained

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.

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AMC CEO Adam Aron's public feud with Robinhood over its AMC stock tokens erupted into a war of words last week, with the AMC chief calling the tokens "contemptible" and Robinhood's chief legal officer, and former SEC commissioner, Dan Gallagher firing back that Robinhood would "not DECIST" mocking a misspelling in Aron’s tweet.

Brett Redfearn, President of Securitize and a former SEC Trading and Markets Division director, joins Laura Shin to referee the fight. He explains why issuers deserve a say before their stock gets tokenized, and breaks down the three real categories of stock tokens, from Securitize's issuer-sponsored model to Robinhood's offshore synthetic.

Redfearn unpacks why an AMC token pair once traded at 60 times its reference price, details the SEC's looming innovation exemption and the Securities Transfer Association's push for an issuer opt-out, and explains why non-KYC tokens could let bad actors amass stakes in defense contractors. The debate, he says, will decide whether tokenization becomes Wall Street's next upgrade or its next flashpoint.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brett Redfearn - President of Securitize

Timestamps

🥊 00:54 Brett unpacks the AMC-Robinhood spat and who has the stronger legal argument

📣 10:15 1inch Aqua: See how the new shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🧩 11:12 The 3 types of stock tokens, from issuer-sponsored to Robinhood's synthetic

🔐 21:33 Why Brett wants KYC before permissionless DeFi meets tokenized stocks

🏛️ 28:32 The Securities Transfer Association's push for an issuer opt-out

🗳️ 33:38 What Robinhood should do with the voting rights on its collateral shares

🏢 35:29 How many public company CEOs actually want their stock tokenized
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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.

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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

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A Bitcoin sidechain lost $300 million to a consensus bug this week, and the hackers who returned 85% of it are trying to extort a "bug bounty" out of Blockstream for the rest.

Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, and Jon, Head of Strategy at Venice and co-founder of ShapeShift, join Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to unpack how AI models are now finding exploits faster than the humans who wrote the code, and to push back on the idea that returning stolen funds makes anyone a white hat.

They also dig into Astra and Fable 5.1, two frontier models that landed days after a mathematician working inside OpenAI's Codex clashed publicly with OpenAI over who actually solved a Millennium Prize-adjacent proof. 

Jon and Alex explain why the "don't train on my data" toggle may not mean much, and why identity is becoming the real privacy battleground.

The conversation closes on whether an Anthropic researcher quitting this week is a warning the industry is choosing to ignore.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Thorn - Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jon - Head of Strategy at Venice and Co-founder of ShapeShift

Timestamps

🔓 01:15 How a consensus bug let hackers mint $300M in fake Bitcoin

📜 7:50 Why the Liquid hackers are no white hats

🤖 17:16 Did an AI agent find the Liquid exploit?

⚖️ 28:10 Taylor on why there’s no excuse for the hackers’ actions

💧 32:08 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity layer works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

🧠 32:54 Astra and Fable 5.1 land, and one is writing eerily compressed code

📐 35:19 The Millennium Prize proof fight between OpenAI and an Anthropic researcher

🧬 44:48 Kain on fast takeoff, recursive self-improvement, and paperclipped kids

🕵️ 55:18 How to keep your novel research out of an AI's training data

⚰️ 01:07:03 Why an Anthropic researcher's resignation has Kain and Taylor spooked
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FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to answer last week's unc takes on memecoins: why a fully transparent social graph beats copy trading, how FOMO became the biggest app on Robinhood Chain, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token, the three-way launchpad war, AMC's fight with Robinhood over tokenized stock, and the AI race to solve Navier-Stokes.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger to chop it up about the latest in crypto.

After getting dunked on as uncs for last week's memecoin takes, the crew brings on the founder at the center of it. Paul lays out FOMO's case for a fully transparent trading social graph, Tarun reports back from a holiday weekend in the trenches, and Haseeb holds the line on where memecoin trading actually destroys value. Then: Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token, the Pons versus Stonk.fun versus Pump launchpad war, AMC's CEO versus Robinhood's tokenized stocks, and the OpenAI versus Anthropic fight over who solved Navier-Stokes.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Paul explains why FOMO refuses to build copy trading and bets on full transparency instead: trade well and the feed follows you.

🔹 Tarun spent his holiday weekend trenching, finished up a respectable 10 percent thanks to Hunter Biden copycat coins, and says it felt more like a video game than trading.

🔹 FOMO had 94,000 active wallets on Robinhood Chain, three times the next largest app, and its users no longer know which chain they are on.

🔹 Haseeb draws the line: buying Doge is harmless, but the memecoin production function is where retail reliably loses money.

🔹 Paul and Haseeb converge on churn: an app that lets customers incinerate themselves flames out fast, so FOMO rewards holding and theses over launching.

🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token launches on Base with airdrops to Trump token losers and a scraped Channel 5 subscriber list.

🔹 Pons, Stonk.fun, and Pump fight over launchpad revenue while Paul stays agnostic and pitches Team Tags as the highest-intent distribution channel ever built.

🔹 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile, and the panel debates whether one-to-one backed equity tokens fix the fundraising objection.

🔹 Tarun explains Navier-Stokes and why math academia is depressed after OpenAI's $15 million compute run at a Millennium Prize problem.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guest

⭐️Paul Erlanger, Co-Founder of FOMO

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:06 Paul vs. the uncs

03:37 From dYdX to FOMO

05:14 Tarun's weekend in the trenches

08:40 Transparency vs. copy trading

12:27 FOMO's distribution power on Robinhood Chain

17:52 Where memecoin trading destroys value

21:10 Churn, theses, & traders as the next celebrities

27:08 Shaming, sidewallets, & clans

32:35 Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token

37:15 Stock coins, bond ETF fees, &  how long the meta lasts

42:52 AMC's CEO vs Robinhood's tokenized stock

47:51 One-to-one backed equity & earnings calls as TV shows

52:20 OpenAI, Anthropic, & the Navier-Stokes drama

58:49 Is math research over?
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

AMC's CEO spent the holiday weekend calling Robinhood's tokenized AMC shares "contemptible" and "vile."

Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins break down what a "reverse ADR" actually is, why Ram thinks most of this is derivatives repackaged as innovation, and why Chris pushes back using Robinhood Chain's own financials.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell

Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97

This clip is from a longer conversation on tokenized stocks, meme coins, frontier AI, and the Fed. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/cDFv4OCihgU?si=qdPWALHcmHc97SEc 

We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live.

👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt  

Chapters:

🥊 00:20 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile: what it actually is

📊 06:36 Ram: stock tokens are "derivatives for the sake of derivatives"

🔍 11:17 Why Austin says the AMC fight reveals microstructure ignorance

🏗️ 14:40 Ram: real innovation looks like CDO Square 2.0, not this

💰 21:41 Chris defends Robinhood Chain's financials
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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.

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Every legal system assumes a human sits on the other side of a dispute. Albert Castellana, CEO of GenLayer Labs, is betting that assumption breaks down within the decade, once AI agents start disagreeing with each other faster than any court could keep up.

Castellana built the idea after StakeHound, the liquid-staking company he ran before Lido existed, lost $150 million when a custodian misplaced two keys, and he saw how slow and costly the legal system was. He joins Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, to argue agentic commerce cannot scale without its own dispute layer, since agents cannot be jailed.

They cover how GenLayer escalates a dispute to up to 1,500 AI validators for a verdict in minutes, how it compares to Kleros, UMA, and the failed Aragon Court, and why Hayes wants Flop plugged into GenLayer once both go live.

If agents cannot go to jail, escrowed money may be the only leverage left.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Albert Castellana - Co-Founder and CEO of GenLayer Labs

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:20 Albert Castellana on the $150 million custody failure that led him to build GenLayer

🤖 05:20 Why Flop needs GenLayer's dispute layer to make agentic commerce work

⚖️ 07:26 The kinds of disputes AI agents will actually have with each other

📣 13:38 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

📜 14:29 How an intelligent contract escrows funds and calls in AI validators

🔗 18:51 Inside GenLayer's architecture: the L2 chain and 1,500 validators

💵 27:21 What an AI verdict actually costs: 50 cents to $100, minutes to hours

🔒 34:30 Why AI agents can't go to jail, so escrow is the only enforcement

⚔️ 40:14 How GenLayer compares to the AAA, Kleros, UMA, and the failed Aragon Court

🕵️ 49:29 Can the validator network be gamed or bought off?

🚀 54:34 What's next for GenLayer's token launch and Flop's Q4 airdrop
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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.

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The CME is suing its own regulator. At stake is a single word: is a perpetual futures contract a swap, locked to institutional trading desks, or a future, open to any retail trader in the US?

Cathy Yoon, General Counsel at Temporal, Tiffany J. Smith, Partner at WilmerHale, and Jake Chervinsky, CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center, join Laura Shin at the Real World Assets Summit to make the case for futures. The CME was invited onto the panel to argue its side, but Yoon called their last-minute decision to bow out as "cowardice."

They dig into the CFTC's recent approval of true perpetual futures for Coinbase and Kalshi, the running jurisdictional split between the CFTC and SEC, and Bloomberg's report that Hyperliquid is in talks to come onshore through Kraken's Bitnomial.

Chervinsky argues Hyperliquid isn't an exchange at all, just neutral infrastructure any exchange could use. 

Yoon closes with a warning: most of Capitol Hill, she says, still doesn't understand there's a whole world running onchain.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cathy Yoon - General Counsel of Temporal

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tiffany J. Smith - Partner at WilmerHale and Co-Chair of its Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Working Group

Jake Chervinsky - CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center

Timestamps

⚖️ 02:24 Why the CME is suing the CFTC over classifying perps as futures or swaps

🌍 13:00 Why RWA perps overtook crypto perps, and who ends up regulating them

📣 18:03 1inch: See how Aqua's shared liquidity platform puts idle capital to work at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🌐 20:42 Is Hyperliquid an exchange or neutral infrastructure? Jake makes his case

🏛️ 26:10 If you were the regulator: how each panelist would design fair rules for perps
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OpenAI's AI agents already had the exam answers. So why did they hack Hugging Face anyway? Kain, Tay, and Austin Griffith explain.

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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

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OpenAI's AI agents didn't just get caught cheating on a security test. According to the postmortem, they already had the answers, and hacked Hugging Face's systems not to cheat, but to learn who was scoring them and cover their tracks.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan bring on Austin Griffith, Builder Enablement at the Ethereum Foundation, to work through what that cover-up actually means, and why Griffith thinks Nick Bostrom's twenty-year-old paperclip thought experiment stopped being hypothetical the moment agents started writing production-grade code.

They also cover the tokenized HIMS stock pump, Rune's fake $100 million NASDAQ LARP, Kyle Samani's abrupt exit from Multicoin, and the Cronos validators who rolled back a hack.

If agents can trick each other to avoid detection, what happens once they're running your portfolio, or your toaster?

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith - Builder Enablement at the Ethereum Foundation and Founder of BuidlGuidl

Timestamps

📈 01:09 How degens pumped BONER and HIMS on Robinhood Chain

📱 11:39 Austin calls FOMO's tokenized-stock UX crypto's smoothest onboarding yet

💧 25:51 1inch Aqua: See how it works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🎭 26:37 Rune's fake $100M NASDAQ short squeeze LARP

🍄 33:39 The Chinese mushroom stock trading at an on-chain premium

🤖 34:46 OpenAI agents already had the answers and hacked to hide it

⚠️ 51:04 Bostrom's paperclip problem, 20 years later

🧠 54:20 Kain on the Claude 5.1 mixup that proved he can't tell the models apart

💸 01:04:13 Kyle Samani's $100 million 'line' with Multicoin

🔄 01:07:01 Cronos rolls back a $100M hack, and Moonwell gets hit again
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Laura joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to unpack Robinhood Chain's surge, the strange fusion of stock tokens and memecoins, the damage speculative entertainment can do to retail, Solana's competitive position, and why regulated onchain markets will still look different across jurisdictions.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by Laura Shin to chop it up about the latest in crypto.

The panel examines Robinhood Chain's second wave, stock-backed memecoins built from old DeFi mechanics, the line between financial entertainment and retail harm, the race with Solana, and the legal constraints facing global onchain markets.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Robinhood Chain's activity spikes as FOMO, tokenized stocks, and memecoins converge in one retail product.

🔹 Tarun explains how Ohm-style mechanics can pair a memecoin incentive with an underlying stock token.

🔹 The crew compares the new speculation to DeFi summer, GameStop, and what they call financial Jackass.

🔹 Haseeb argues that traders should ask an AI whether a supposed retail short squeeze can work before handing over their keys.

🔹 Laura separates the cultural appeal of speculative entertainment from the real damage repeated losses can do to retail confidence.

🔹 The panel asks whether Robinhood captured the tokenized-stock opportunity that Solana pioneered too early.

🔹 Tom and Tarun compare American FOMO culture with the more explicitly profit-driven social-trading pitches they heard in Asia.

🔹 The group explains why KYC is only one part of bringing HIP-3 markets onshore, alongside clearing, surveillance, collateral, and local law.

Host

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guest

⭐️Laura Shin, Foun of Unchained and CEO of the Show

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro 

00:58 Robinhood Chain's big wave

04:00 Ohm forks & stock-backed memecoins

10:50 Financial Jackass & generational speculation

15:13 DeFi code gets a second life

19:10 Does memecoin trading entertain or destroy retail?

34:37 Dream stock-memecoin pairings

36:12 Is Robinhood Chain overshadowing Solana?

44:19 Building FOMO for Asian markets

50:35 Hyperliquid in talks with Kraken parent 

52:59 What regulated HIP-3 markets would require

58:26 Why global onchain markets still face local law
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 

A Ninth Circuit panel ruled 3-0 that Nevada can enforce its gambling laws against Kalshi's sports contracts, directly conflicting with an April ruling that put Kalshi under CFTC oversight instead.

Andy Ross, Head of Institutional at Kalshi, joins the panel to make the case that prediction markets are nothing like sportsbooks, that Kalshi wants its winners to keep winning, and that its fastest-growing customers are not hedge funds but ice cream shops, kayak renters, and boat charter operators hedging ordinary business risk.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern

Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto

Guest:

Andy Ross - Head of Institutional at Kalshi

This clip is from a longer conversation on Kalshi's clash with state regulators over prediction markets. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/c5qwxUlaKQ4?si=9vIZPp0imIyuJIs3 

We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live.

👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn. 

Chapters:

⚖️ 00:20 Ninth Circuit rules 3-0 that Nevada can enforce gambling law against Kalshi

🎯 02:16 Andy on why prediction markets are not sportsbooks

🏛️ 04:44 Chris asks whether the CFTC believes it has federal preemption

🍦 06:21 Andy on ice cream shops, kayak renters, and boat charters hedging with Kalshi

📊 08:10 Ram asks where Kalshi's real trading volume actually comes from

🔬 09:21 Andy unveils Kalshi's 2.2 million-data-point calibration study 
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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.

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========================================================Bitcoin rallied 23 percent in a week after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the government would double its long-term debt buybacks, settling near $80,000 without a leverage-driven blowoff. ETFs pulled in about $3 billion over two weeks, even as onchain data showed coins moving toward exchanges.

Cory Klippsten, founder and CEO of Swan, joins Laura Shin to discuss why he distrusts popular Bitcoin forecasting tools. He calls stock-to-flow and power-law price models unfalsifiable "false gods" that leave holders with paper hands, and dismisses the quantum-computing scare as manufactured hype tied to 2025's penny-stock schemes. Yet he insists onchain self-custody is where value lives.

The two weigh the ColdCard hack, which cost self-custody wallets roughly 1,400 coins, against larger losses at Mt. Gox, Celsius, and Quadriga. Klippsten covers Swan's RBX tool for converting GBTC into real Bitcoin, the custody spectrum topped by Swan Trinity, and why nobody will know for decades whether Bitcoin's fee market can replace its shrinking block reward.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cory Klippsten - Founder and CEO of Swan

Timestamps

📈 01:00 Cory Klippsten ties Bitcoin's $80K rally to Bessent's Treasury buyback move

📊 04:20 Laura asks about $3B in ETF inflows versus Bitcoin moving to exchanges

🔮 06:23 Cory debunks stock-to-flow and power law models for Bitcoin's price

🌊 14:23 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one token balance and cover more pairs at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

🔐 15:13 Cory reacts to the ColdCard hack that drained over 1,000 Bitcoin

🔄 20:10 Swan's RBX lets holders convert GBTC shares into real Bitcoin tax efficiently

🗂️ 25:20 Cory maps a 5-step custody spectrum from self-custody to multi-institution

⚛️ 31:34 Cory calls the Bitcoin quantum threat panic 'manufactured bullshit'

🪙 35:19 Cory rejects freezing or tail-emitting Satoshi's coins, backs the fee market
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Coinbase just launched fully backed tokenized stocks on Base. 

Dromos Labs’ Alex Cutler says they’ll chip away at Interactive Brokers "77% profit margin."

========================================================

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========================================================

Coinbase this week launched tokenized versions of Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Google stock on Base, moving past the prior synthetic tokenized-stock wrappers. The tokens are fully backed, held in trust, with ETF-style minting and redemption.

Alex Cutler, CEO and Co-Founder of Dromos Labs, joins Laura Shin to unpack what real backing changes about tokenized stocks, and to argue decentralized exchanges can beat legacy brokers on cost and access.

Cutler points to Aerodrome's roughly 25% share of AMM volume on the new assets, about $80 million traded and 5,000 wallets active within days, plus integrations across nine DeFi protocols including Aave, Morpho, and 1inch.

He argues Interactive Brokers extracts a 77% profit margin as a middleman, and cites Nvidia's earnings, released after the bell, as proof onchain markets kept pricing news around the clock.

They also cover the SEC innovation exemption and a roadmap of more assets, a Centrifuge migration to Aerodrome, and a launch on Circle's Arc chain.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Cutler - CEO and Co-Founder of Dromos Labs

Timestamps

🪙 01:15 How Cutler splits tokenized stocks: real backing vs synthetic wrappers

📈 04:44 Cutler's launch numbers: 25% of AMM volume, $80M traded, 5,000 wallets

💧 13:10 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-x

🧩 13:59 Why composability across 9 DeFi protocols is Dromos' biggest draw

🌙 19:11 Cutler on 24/5 oracle risk: weekend price gaps are a feature, not a bug

🏛️ 24:23 Cutler on the SEC exemption bid and Armstrong's 10%-of-GDP vision
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The crew sizes up Bitcoin's rebound, the fight to bring Hyperliquid onshore, the SEC's new token fundraising framework, and why Stripe's OpenRouter deal could make AI inference markets look a lot like DeFi.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto.

Tom and Tarun check in from Bhutan after lunch with the king, then the crew tackles Bitcoin's rebound, the path to a compliant U.S. Hyperliquid, the SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, and the growing overlap between AI inference markets and DeFi market structure.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Tom and Tarun report from Bhutan after discussing Bitcoin mining, AI, and tokenization with the king.

🔹 Bitcoin pushes back toward $80,000 as ETF inflows and the debasement trade revive crypto sentiment.

🔹 The panel explains why a U.S. Hyperliquid would probably require KYC, surveillance, and separate liquidity.

🔹 Robert argues the SEC's $5 million startup exemption could reopen token crowdfunding for smaller projects.

🔹 Tom asks whether Regulation Crypto Assets solves an ICO-era problem that today's builders no longer have.

🔹 Tarun predicts financial engineers will try to scale the small-offering exemption through many token launches.

🔹 AI could overwhelm government processes by removing the bureaucratic proof-of-work that quietly rationed access.

🔹 Stripe's OpenRouter acquisition turns model routing, inference providers, and cached tokens into a DeFi-style market.

🔹 The hosts debate whether data rebates and inference tokens could finally revive crypto's 2017 data-ownership dreams.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Disclosures

Links

SEC Regulation Crypto Assets: https://www.sec.gov/rules-regulations/2026/08/s7-2026-27

OpenRouter is joining Stripe: https://openrouter.ai/blog/announcements/openrouter-is-joining-stripe/

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:22 Tom & Tarun meet the King of Bhutan

04:13 Bitcoin rebounds and crypto gets hot again

08:10 What a compliant U.S. Hyperliquid could look like

13:14 The SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets

23:53 Are the new token rules eight years too late?

28:23 AI removes the government's bureaucratic speed bumps

31:12 Why AI inference tokens could power the next cycle

34:13 Stripe buys OpenRouter and AI starts looking like DeFi

43:28 Router economics, data markets, and new security risks

51:01 Bull-market vibes from Bhutan and Asia
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Roman Storm's retrial slides to April 2027. Peter Van Valkenburgh argues prosecuting Tornado Cash's developers cost real ground in zero knowledge cryptography.

========================================================

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========================================================

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has declared "economic D-Day" on Iran, leaving an open question over whether the sanctions crackdown reaches Uniswap and Ethereum or stops at Iranian exchanges, where humans are in the loop.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan take that gap to Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center, whose defense of the Tornado Cash developers rests as much on zero knowledge cryptography as on sanctions law.

They cover the GENIUS Act's freeze and seize rules for the stablecoin secondary market and Roman Storm's retrial, now pushed to April 2027, where speech protections clash with prosecutors' "frying pan" theory of money transmission.

The SEC's proposed exemptions, the stalled Clarity Act, and Trump’s Hyperliquid all raise the same question: where does decentralization end and regulation begin?

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Peter Van Valkenburgh - Executive Director of Coin Center

Timestamps

🎯 01:26 Bessent brands Iran sanctions 'economic D-Day', DeFi not exempt

🏦 11:15 Van Valkenburgh explains the freeze-and-seize rules coming for stablecoins

💰 15:18 Bessent claims a $1B Iranian crypto rug, but the receipts don't add up

🌊 25:08 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

⚖️ 25:50 Roman Storm's retrial slips to April as an acquittal motion looms

🔐 38:24 Why Van Valkenburgh calls Tornado Cash's developer a hero, not a villain

📜 47:22 SEC's 'Reg Crypto' plan opens two new paths to raise ICO-like capital

🏇 58:07 Trump name-drops Hyperliquid, raising hard questions for the CFTC
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 

Bitcoin is pushing toward $80,000 after Scott Bessent's Treasury long-end buybacks flipped spot ETF flows positive and rattled the bond market.

Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins are joined by Bitwise's Gordon Grant to unpack why rising Treasury volatility, and bizarre stress signals building in the TIPS market, are becoming a tailwind for Bitcoin's momentum trade.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern

Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto

Guest:

Gordon Grant - Portfolio Manager and Head of Derivatives at Bitwise

This clip is from a longer conversation on the CFTC's prediction-market brawl, parametric insurance, and a mystery AI model. Full episode here:https://youtu.be/tLKZl37uZ2g?si=Vp_6Y7PvXeDh_iJ8 

We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET — subscribe to catch it live.

👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com.

Chapters

💰 00:20 Market snapshot: Bitcoin near $80K as ETF inflows flip positive

🌊 03:32 Gordon on how Bessent linked Treasury vol to Bitcoin's own vol spike

📈 05:32 Ram on the 'extraordinary' price action and Bitcoin's momentum

🎙️ 07:39 Chris on the Bitcoin/gold chart and the Fed-Treasury accord

🧮 09:30 Austin on the fiscal-dominance divergence between the front and long end

🔒 10:54 Gordon on the 'buyer strike' driving Treasury illiquidity

🔄 15:19 Chris on why the basis trade's return is bullish for crypto
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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.

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========================================================

In March, a Google research team published a paper on breaking cryptographic keys with a quantum algorithm, so cautious about the finding that it released only a zero-knowledge proof the algorithm existed. Weeks later, an EigenLayer AI competition improved on that method in roughly 48 hours.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger, join Laura Shin for an update on the quantum threat whose deadline could be approaching fast. Both are creating products that deal with multiple chains that all have different post-quantum approaches. 

They discuss why, of the three NIST-standardized, post-quantum algorithms, the crypto industry has splintered into different chains working with different ones, whereas most industries are converging on one, called lattice-based. They also debate what to do with Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoins: do nothing, freeze them, or freeze and tail-emit new bitcoin, an option Guillemet favors even though Bitcoin's leaderless governance makes consensus hard to reach.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-founder of NEAR Protocol

⁠Charles Guillemet - CTO of Ledger

Timestamps

🔐 02:18 Illia and Charles map Shor's algorithm leap and EigenLayer's 48-hour crack

🧠 12:43 Why Matt Corallo's Bitcoin core skepticism reveals NEAR's design edge

📢 18:18 1inch Aqua: see how the shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

🔀 23:28 How lattice vs hash based crypto split Ethereum from Bitcoin's plan

🌐 34:46 Charles: why this crypto fight is unique to blockchain, not elsewhere

🛠️ 37:04 Charles walks through Ledger's SDK and hardware wallet quantum roadmap

🔑 44:22 Why 'wrench attacks' expose the physical risk in quantum signing

🕵️ 46:11 Charles debunks the harvest now decrypt later myth for blockchains

₿ 54:52 The Satoshi's coins dilemma: three options and Bitcoin's security budget
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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.

========================================================

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========================================================

Stripe bought OpenRouter this month in one of the cleanest crypto-to-AI pivots yet, and Erik Voorhees says most of the industry drew the wrong lesson from it.

Voorhees, founder and CEO of Venice AI, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to argue that crypto's job was never to serve crypto people, it was to become the financial rails a decentralized AI future actually needs. He pushes back on the instinct to abandon tokens for pure AI plays, and on the assumption that America deserves to win the AI race just because it is America.

They get into why Voorhees sold Venice's equity but refused to sell its VVV tokens, why he says the big labs are losing money "hand over fist" subsidizing $200-a-month plans, how DeepSeek reset the cost curve for inference, and why he calls the moderation layer sitting inside today's AI models "deceptive."

His answer for who should actually win the AI race has nothing to do with flags.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Erik Voorhees - Founder and CEO of Venice AI

Timestamps

🤝 01:51 Why Stripe buying OpenRouter is one of crypto's cleanest AI pivots

🪙 04:02 Why Erik says he can't pivot out of crypto even while building an AI company

⚖️ 12:43 Crypto has principles, AI didn't: unpacking the two industries' DC playbooks

💧 27:58 1inch Aqua: See how shared liquidity keeps LPs' tokens in their wallet at https://1inch.com/aqua

💰 28:44 Why Erik sold Venice's equity but refuses to sell its VVV tokens

🧩 42:51 Inside Venice's strategy for aggregating every major AI model in one app

📉 49:15 Why Erik says labs are bleeding money on $200 plans, and how DeepSeek reset AI pricing

🌐 57:30 Why Erik says America doesn't deserve to win the AI race by default

🔓 01:02:41 Why Erik has 'zero faith' in politics and trusts decentralized tech instead

🕵️ 01:09:56 Why Erik calls the moderation layer inside AI models 'deceptive'
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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.

========================================================

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========================================================

Bitcoin has been pumping in its sharpest move since March, after the US Treasury said it would double its long-end bond buybacks, and traders liquidated $1.44 billion in short positions within hours.

Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, joins Laura Shin to argue the rally is proof the Treasury and the Fed are already running what he calls soft yield curve control, defending the 10-year near 5% by funding long-end purchases with short-term bill issuance instead of admitting real yields cannot rise.

Hayes reiterates his year-end $5,000 target for ETH, traces how Japan's yen crisis could force the Fed's hand, and argues the AI CapEx boom is a real estate bet on depreciating chips that ends like subprime did.

He also unveils Flop, his currency for AI agents, and why he is taking on a new CEO role after an already successful career. He also weighs in on Saylor's $218 million Bitcoin sale and reflects on his and his cofounders’ decision to shut BitMEX down.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom

Timestamps

🏛️ 00:47 Why Arthur says the Treasury's buyback move is 'soft yield curve control'

📈 04:14 Why ETH is Maelstrom's largest position outside Bitcoin

🇯🇵 07:02 The yen quake: how Japan's repatriation could force the Fed's hand

📣 13:41 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more at http://1inch.com/

🤖 13:58 Why Arthur calls the AI boom 'just another boring real estate play'

💽 22:29 Inside Flop: Arthur's new currency for paying AI agents to compute

⚙️ 29:34 How Flop's miners and validators actually work

🪙 41:16 Flop's halving schedule and why Floplabs only takes a cut for two years

📉 45:45 Why Arthur says don't buy MicroStrategy anymore

🔌 48:37 Why Arthur shut down BitMEX on his own terms
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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.

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========================================================

Ethereum's core developers are considering a decision that could cut ETH's staking yield toward zero, and DeFi's biggest names are furious about it.

Jérôme de Tychey, President of Ethereum-France and a co-author of EIP-8363, joins Kevin Owocki, founder of Gitcoin, and Oisín Kyne, CEO of DV Labs, to argue through the proposal's tradeoffs. Aave's Stani Kulechov, Ether.fi's Mike Silagadze, and Joseph Chalom have all pushed back, warning the change guts DeFi's biggest source of yield.

They cover the Nakamoto coefficient and why a 51% staking cartel could censor blocks for free, why solo stakers could see after-tax income collapse, and why Oisín is skeptical of an enshrined liquid staking token. Jérôme defends why Ethereum can pay stakers less and still be more secure than rivals boasting 7% yields. All Core Devs meets Thursday, August 20, and the real deadline lands October 26, when the network decides if EIP-8363 is mature enough to move forward.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kevin Owocki - Founder of Gitcoin

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oisín Kyne - CEO and Co-founder of DV Labs

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jérôme de Tychey - President of Ethereum-France

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:38 Jérôme lays out EIP-8363's validator reward burn curve

🔥 08:02 Oisín on why a 51% cartel could censor blocks for free

⚖️ 10:39 Jérôme's rebuttal: finality security versus censorship risk

📣 14:38 1inch: See how Aqua's shared liquidity pools work at https://1inch.com/aqua

💼 16:13 Kevin on Aave, Bankless, and DeFi's backlash to the burn

🧾 33:18 Why solo stakers could see after-tax income near zero

🏦 45:39 Does killing ETH's yield scare off institutional buyers?

⚛️ 51:03 Ultrasound money versus productive asset: ETH's identity fight

🔐 56:41 Why Oisín is skeptical of an enshrined liquid staking token

🥇 59:34 Can ETH's shrinking yield compete with Solana and stablecoins?

🔮 01:05:27 Post-quantum costs, and when All Core Devs decides EIP-8363's fate
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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.

========================================================

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The CFTC has invoked its rarely used emergency authority just six times in its history. Twice in the past month, it did so to shield Kalshi. Jessi Brooks argues that's normalizing a dangerous kind of agency overreach.

With KK Bos and Vy Le away this week, Brooks welcomes Jacob Robinson, host of the Law of Code podcast, and Jane Khodarkovsky, a financial integrity and sanctions expert, to debate whether shielding Kalshi from state regulators protects innovation or tramples states' rights.

They also unpack the SEC's abruptly canceled 400-page market-structure proposal, Anthropic's new EU-mandated watermark on Claude's outputs and the First Amendment questions it raises, and a presidential memorandum letting vetted private companies run offensive cyber operations against foreign criminal groups under DOJ and DHS oversight.

Robinson makes the case for treating the fight against crypto hackers like modern-day privateering — arguing what the industry really needs is its own letter of marque.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jacob Robinson - Host of the Law of Code podcast

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jane Khodarkovsky - Financial Integrity & Sanctions Expert

Timestamps

🏛️ 02:40 Why Jacob calls the CFTC's Kalshi rescue inevitable, and Jessi disagrees

⚖️ 17:45 Why the reasons behind the SEC's shelved 400-page crypto rulemaking stay murky

💧 21:48 1inch Aqua: See how shared liquidity works at https://1inch.com/aqua

🤖 22:34 Why Claude's new EU-mandated watermark reads as compelled speech to Jacob

🔪 23:24 Jane's take on the watermark rule: a hammer when you need a scalpel

🛰️ 35:21 Jessi previews the CFTC's first public meeting on AI in markets

🔐 36:41 Jane unpacks Trump's memo letting private firms fight cybercrime abroad

🏴‍☠️ 46:24 Why Jacob wants a modern "letter of marque" for crypto's hackers
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 

Austin Campbell runs through the strongest legal objections to Trump’s privateering memo, from claims it violates international law on piracy to warnings that private hackers could be treated as non-uniformed combatants.

The segment ends with a pointed question: if privateering is where critics draw the line, why did nobody blink at Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran?

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97

This clip is from a longer conversation on Trump's executive order deputizing private firms to hack foreign cybercriminals. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/FxQCMAJ9GBU?si=tVqmGwizLzv2BAk6 

We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live.

Sponsor

👉  Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com

Chapters:

⚖️ 00:20 Paul Rosenzweig's claim: privateering violates international law on piracy

💰 01:39 Chris on why no better solution exists: cost, talent, and scale

🎯 03:14 Erica Lonergan and Michael Garcia: the slippery slope and attribution risk

🌍 05:31 Does this go beyond crypto? The pig butchering scam question

🪖 07:21 Jake Williams: are American privateers non-uniformed combatants?

🏛️ 09:47 Isn't privateering a congressional power, not a presidential one?

🔥 12:05 Why Austin says critics need to propose a better solution first
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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.

========================================================

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========================================================

AI agents inside OpenAI's own testing environment built a society, found a shared vulnerability, and used it to break into Hugging Face for days, before OpenAI realized its own agents were responsible.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan dig into the Black Hat research behind the incident and argue the real story isn't a sudden leap in AI capability. It's that basic monitoring, sandboxing, and incident response, the kind any crypto security team would demand, were never built in the first place.

They also cover a Bitcoin soft fork that split the chain for two blocks before dying, a Metabase breach that hit Privy and other crypto companies, and a research team that built a fake DeFi startup to bait DPRK's IT workers. Kain shares his own scare: a coding agent deleted his entire database, and two AI models rebuilt it from memory in 30 seconds.

Plus, why Hyperliquid's market creators keep half the fees on RWA perps now bigger than Bitcoin's own open interest, and why Taylor thinks Washington, not Beijing, is the bigger threat to America's AI labs.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Timestamps

🍴 00:40 Why Luke Dashjr's OP_RETURN fork split Bitcoin, then died in two blocks

💧 12:03 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions from one wallet at https://1inch.com/aqua

🔓 12:51 How a Metabase breach exposed Privy and a wave of other crypto apps

🇰🇵 18:32 A DPRK hacker's botched $500k laundering job, then a DEF CON fake-hire sting

⚖️ 24:45 Why Bybit is suing DPRK over its 'billion dollar' 2025 hack

🐜 30:30 The AI agents that built their own society inside OpenAI's sandbox

🕸️ 46:16 How a single shared repo let every sandboxed agent talk to each other

💾 47:44 Kain's coding agent deleted his database. Two AI models rebuilt it in 30 seconds

🏛️ 58:06 Why Taylor says the US government, not China, is AI's biggest risk

📊 01:03:12 Why Hyperliquid's RWA market creators keep half of HIP-3's fees
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 

Bitcoin has done almost nothing for weeks, and Katie Stockton says that stillness is exactly what a long-term bottom looks like on the charts. 

She walks Steven Ehrlich through the monthly stochastic oscillator that has stayed oversold for months, the DeMark indicators showing downside exhaustion, and what history says has to happen for that setup to become an actual buy signal.

Host:

Steven Ehrlich - Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview and Head of Research at Sharplink

Guest:

Katie Stockton - CMT, Founder and Managing Partner of Fairlead Strategies

This clip is from a longer conversation on Bitcoin's technical setup and Katie Stockton's read on crypto markets. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/35ZHRajBJ5E?si=d6ycx66p2Tz1fSma 

We go live every week - subscribe to catch it live.

Sponsor:

👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained  (use code: UNCHAINED) 

Chapters:

🕐 00:21 Why Bitcoin's usual volatility has gone quiet even as AI stocks rip

📉 01:27 Bitcoin's monthly stochastic oscillator: the long-term oversold read

🔍 03:16 Fibonacci levels, the cloud model, and the case for a major low

🔁 04:45 What history says about oversold setups turning into real bottoms

🎯 05:34 The exact signal Katie needs to call an 'oversold buy signal'
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Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, crypto streamer and trading/markets influencer threadguy joins the crew to translate what is happening in the trenches, from market-open streams and social trading apps to public PnL and Gen Z's appetite for risk.

The conversation starts with a challenge to crypto's old guard: today's lowest-cap markets look less like clicking a few ICOs and more like playing Fortnite with token scanners, wallet trackers, and social feeds all firing at once. From there, threadguy breaks down the fight between FOMO and Pump.fun, why the winner may be whoever owns the trader graph, and how one visible winning trade can turn an unknown wallet into a market-moving celebrity. Haseeb questions whether Robinhood has actually brought new money onchain, Tarun and Robert revisit the hidden counterparty risks of early crypto, and the group imagines a future in which AI agents launch protocols, raise capital, and transact without a human-facing interface.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 threadguy says modern onchain trading looks like Fortnite, with token scanners, social feeds, and wallet alerts all competing for attention.

🔹 Robert argues that crypto was never simply easier or harder. The tools, assets, and attack surfaces have continually evolved.

🔹 Tarun explains how stablecoins and reliable off-ramps replaced the counterparty and FX risks that defined early crypto trading.

🔹 FOMO and Pump.fun are fighting for social traders as exchanges, wallets, and launchpads race to own the next trading graph.

🔹 threadguy says traders are becoming crypto's new celebrities because public wallets make PnL visible and influence measurable.

🔹 Haseeb argues that the latest memecoin revival may be crypto-native capital front-running Robinhood demand that has not arrived yet.

🔹 The panel rejects the idea that AI agents are already managing meaningful memecoin portfolios, but sees that changing as capabilities improve.

🔹 Haseeb predicts the next onchain inflection will come when AI agents create, govern, and use protocols that humans never designed.

🔹 A crypto wallet cannot be switched off like an agent's credit card, which gives autonomous software a uniquely durable financial rail.

🔹 threadguy believes active investing and public risk-taking are permanent cultural shifts for Gen Z and the generations behind it.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Guest

⭐️threadguy, Crypto streamer and trading/markets influencer

Links

threadguy on X: https://x.com/notthreadguy

threadguy on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/threadguy

Disclosures

Timeline

00:00 Intro

01:00 threadguy's New Purple Era

03:58 Could Crypto OGs Survive Today's Trenches?

16:05 FOMO vs Pump.fun: The Social Trading War

24:37 Traders Become Crypto's New Celebrities

31:25 Why Memecoin Volume Is Rising Again

36:57 Is Robinhood Really Bringing New Money Onchain?

40:04 Can AI Agents Trade Memecoins?

43:23 AI Agents and Crypto's Next Capabilities Jump

54:15 Is Gen Z's Risk Appetite Permanent?
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Under a fake name and a fake Zoom account, Laura Shin interviewed one of North Korea's state-sponsored crypto developers.

Laura Shin went undercover as a recruiter named "Sophie Wang" to conduct a job interview with a state-sponsored IT worker going by the name “Justin Lim.” 

Lims’s online presence showed he had technical chops, multiple crypto dev gigs under his belt, and a privileged location. He had also allegedly stolen $2.7 million from MetaPlay in 2022.

The interview shows the quirks of chitchatting with a North Korean “IT worker,” how adept they can be with blockchain technology, and what questions give them away as henchmen for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Crypto companies Consensys to Sushi have unknowingly hired North Korean state hackers for years. This is what it looks like to ask the one question that gives them away.

Host

Laura Shin - Founder, CEO and Host of Unchained

Sponsor

Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com  

Timestamps:

🇰🇵 00:10 Why Laura Shin went undercover to interview a North Korean crypto hacker

📁 02:44 The dossier: GitHub handles, stolen wallets, and a $2.7M MetaPlay heist

💻 06:26 The Zoom call begins: meeting 'Justin Lim,' the DPRK developer

💰 09:15 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at https://1inch.com/aqua 

🛠️ 10:12 How Lim forked Velas Network and sped up The Graph's indexing

🔐 11:38 Lim's answers on multisig wallets, reentrancy attacks, and Bybit's $1.5B hack

🎯 14:01 The holy grail question: can he say something negative about Kim Jong Un?

💔 17:01 Why the interview left Laura with sadness and gratitude
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Ondo's founder died at 32, and now his mother and its ousted president are fighting for control. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy on the succession lesson crypto keeps skipping.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

Visit 1inch.com  to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com

========================================================

Ondo Finance co-founder and CEO Nathan Allman died suddenly this summer at 32, leaving the real-world-asset tokenizer with zero sitting directors and two people claiming to run the company: ousted president Ian De Bode, and Allman's mother Kathleen, acting for his estate.

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le use the fight to unpack a problem that has nothing to do with crypto and everything to do with it: what happens when a fast-growing company never writes down a succession plan.

They also cover the White House's new frontier AI oversight framework, which officials confirm exists but will not publish, a proposed FDIC and OCC certification that would let a fintech satisfy every bank's diligence questions at once, and the CLARITY Act's newly scheduled September 15 cloture vote, squeezed into a narrow window before midterms.

Vy Le asks the harder question underneath all three stories: can boundaries this important really be left voluntary?

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda

Timestamps

🤖 01:40 Jessi on why AI agents are getting great at goals, bad at intent

🏛️ 08:12 Why the White House's new AI framework is finished, but secret

📣 13:42 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity layer works at https://1inch.com/aqua

⚖️ 14:30 Ondo's board hits zero directors after founder Nathan Allman's death

🚌 20:08 KK's 'hit by a bus' rule: the succession plan every startup skips

🏦 27:06 The FDIC's plan to let one fintech certification satisfy every bank

📜 37:51 Why KK is nervous about the CLARITY Act's September cloture vote

🦥 46:16 Crypto good news: robot sloths saving an endangered species
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 

A new Ethereum proposal would burn staking issuance to zero once roughly half the supply is staked, and the community had about 48 hours to respond.

Austin Campbell, Chris Perkins, and Seth Ginns of Franklin Crypto discuss whether it is a necessary check on runaway staking or an academic overreach that ignores how institutions actually think about the network.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto

Guest:

Seth Ginns - Chief Investment Officer of Franklin Crypto

This clip is from a longer conversation on Ethereum's staking yield fight. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/MhhJAIhkgVM?si=hqg5R4b3rVBNdNlJ 

We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live.

Sponsor:

Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com.

Chapters:

🔥 00:20 Austin on the proposal to burn ETH issuance to zero, and who wrote it

⏱️ 02:02 Why a 48-hour comment window has critics saying the process is broken

🎓 03:33 Seth calls the proposal an academic push that skipped real coordination

🍳 04:48 Chris predicts the plan fails because the EF does not control Ethereum

💴 07:13 Chris's yen carry trade warning about messing with ETH's risk-free rate

⚖️ 09:10 Austin's verdict: 48 hours is too short no matter how the vote goes

🗣️ 13:57 Dapplion's pushback from inside the camp: 'you can't bribe me like this'

💰 15:23 Seth defends the $10 billion in institutional ETH flows
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Spark avoided the DeFi hack that hit almost everyone else in April. Cofounder Sam MacPherson lays out why, and where he thinks AI fits into DeFi security.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com

========================================================

In April, a hacker widely assumed to be tied to North Korea drained tens of millions from KelpDAO's rsETH market, and most of DeFi took the hit. Spark did not, because it had quietly exited rsETH months earlier.

Sam MacPherson, cofounder and CEO of Spark, joins Laura Shin to unpack the conservative playbook, rate limits, a triple redundant oracle, and a governance process built to move slowly on purpose, that turned a near miss into a footnote while rivals absorbed the damage.

They cover why Spark's TVL climbed more than 50% after the hack, how emergency multisigs and time locks work when Sky's month-long governance process is too slow, and why MacPherson thinks AI will make smart contract audits more reliable, not less.

MacPherson also maps Spark's growing footprint, from Anchorage-backed institutional lending to a new Uniswap stablecoin FX layer, and why he isn't worried about SPK near its all-time low even as the business keeps compounding.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sam MacPherson - Cofounder and CEO of Spark

Timestamps

📣 00:26 Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com 

🏦 01:08 What Spark does and how it plugs into the Sky protocol's balance sheet

🛡️ 05:07 Why Sam says Spark's conservative design let it dodge the KelpDAO hack

⚖️ 11:24 How the rsETH exit exposed the tradeoffs in Sky's onchain governance

🎙️ 13:52 Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com 

💰 17:41 Why Sam thinks DeFi yields are converging toward SOFR, not higher

🤖 20:47 Why Sam says AI cuts both ways for DeFi security after the hack wave

🏛️ 23:26 Why Sky built the subDAO model, and whether it can survive politics

💵 26:58 The stablecoin land grab: Robinhood, Coinbase, and Spark's role in it

📊 30:50 Why Sam isn't worried about SPK trading near its all time low

🚀 32:39 Spark's next chapter: institutional lending and Spark Savings USDT growth
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Onchain vaults now hold $67B. Veda's CEO maps out how they work, and why the SEC just hinted some could be securities.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED).

========================================================

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce warned recently that some crypto vaults could trigger federal securities law, invoking the same Howey Test language crypto has argued over for a decade, just as onchain vaults have quietly become a $67 billion vehicle for parking assets.

Sun Raghupathi, cofounder and CEO of Veda, joins Laura Shin to untangle what a vault actually is, why splitting the infrastructure, curator, and distributor roles matters for the entrepreneurial-effort question Peirce raised, and why he reads her statement as bullish rather than a warning shot.

Raghupathi maps the real risk stack behind vaults, smart contract flaws, the key-management failures behind incidents like KelpDAO and Drift, and the economic risk exposed when Stream Finance blew up and left $285 million in vault exposure. 

He also details Veda's Kraken partnership, now scaled past $600 million across 80,000 users, and makes the case that the biggest constraint on vault growth isn't security anymore. It's clarity.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sun Raghupathi - Co-Founder and CEO of Veda

Timestamps

📣 00:41 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained

🏦 00:57 What is a vault, and why DeFi needed the primitive

🎢 02:25 Sun's path from an ML PhD to launching Veda

⚙️ 04:43 The three things vault infrastructure must solve: access, control, verifiability

💰 06:45 Where vault yield actually comes from, and how it differs from TradFi

📣 10:57 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained

🏗️ 11:03 Veda's role as infrastructure vs. curators and distributors

⚠️ 13:06 What happens when a vault loses money, in the worst case

🛟 16:31 Why Sun is skeptical of vault insurance until a real claim gets paid

🔑 18:08 How to vet vault partners on key management, not just smart contracts

📉 20:28 The Stream Finance blowup and how curator risk-taking has changed since

📊 23:00 The metrics Sun uses to evaluate vault curators

🏛️ 24:31 Why Sun reads Hester Peirce's vault statement on vaults as bullish, not a warning

🦑 28:46 Kraken's $600M vault partnership, and Veda's competitive edge
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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.

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A firmware randomness bug buried in Coldcard's code since 2021 surfaced last week and has already drained over $100 million, an estimated 1,600 to 1,800 Bitcoin, across four attacker waves. Taylor Monahan makes the case that the culprit is not North Korea but professional GPU crackers, and explains why the dice-rolling ritual many early victims trusted still left them exposed.

Sonya Kim, co-founder of 3F Labs, and Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of ether.fi, debate where DeFi's responsibility ends after trade.xyz's SK Hynix perp swung from $1,128 to $917 on a thin premarket print, then turn to Ethereum's own monetary policy fight.

That fight centers on EIP-8361, a proposal to cut ETH issuance that opened with only 48 hours for public comment, reviving the minimum viable issuance debate Sonya once worked through at Steakhouse. Silagadze calls cutting issuance economically unsound and warns it could push billions of dollars of ETH out of staking, while Kain Warwick argues the resulting chaos is good for an Ethereum governance culture that had grown too quiet. The conversation covers Coldcard's entropy failure, the dice rolls that did not save early victims, trade.xyz's oracle mispricing, and Ethereum's issuance fight.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sonya Kim - Co-Founder of 3F Labs

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mike Silagadze - Founder and CEO of Ether.Fi

Timestamps

🔓 01:17 Coldcard's 5-year-old entropy bug resurfaces, over $100M in BTC stolen

🕵️ 10:26 Taylor argues it's not North Korea: this hack needs compute, not scams

🎲 21:00 The dice roll debate: why 50 rolls barely saves your seed phrase

📱 27:14 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code 'unchained' at https://cape.co/unchained

📉 27:39 SK Hynix oracle glitch on trade.xyz reignites the platform-responsibility fight

🔗 42:24 Aave retreats from multichain sprawl as EIP-8361 issuance fight erupts

🧠 51:26 Mike on why cutting ETH issuance would push billions of dollars of ETH out of staking

🔥 53:05 Sonya's fix: burn fees for the same effect without cutting issuance

🌀 01:05:20 Kain's take: fragmenting the EF into chaos is actually healthy for ETH
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This week we dissect ColdCard's ~$100M RNG exploit that Claude Code cracked in 8 minutes, debate whether AI just killed open-source security and Bitcoin maximalism, tear apart Ethereum's EIP-8361 staking-yield taper, and unpack Leopold Aschenbrenner's 67% Situational Awareness blowup and CLARITY Act's ethics fight.

Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. No guest this week, just the four of them working through a week where AI quietly rewrote the economics of both security and human psychology, and crypto happened to be standing in the blast radius.

This episode: ColdCard, NVK's Bitcoin-only hardware wallet, got drained of nearly $100M thanks to a random-number-generation bug that a one-word commit buried five years ago, and Claude Code sniffed it out in 8 minutes (an open model with no internet found it in 20, for about two bucks). The crew debates whether AI just killed open-source security, whether Nic Carter is right that this is 'the death of Bitcoin maximalism,' and why Tarun thinks maxi devs are 'the RFK of security practices.' Then they take a blowtorch to Ethereum's EIP-8361 staking-yield taper (Tarun: 'the proposal reads like shit'), unpack Leopold Aschenbrenner's 67% Situational Awareness blowup while 4x levered, and wade into the CLARITY Act's ethics fight where a single amendment is the whole ballgame.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 ColdCard's Bitcoin-only hardware wallet drained of nearly $100M after a five-year-old random-number-generation bug silently fell back to weak software RNG.

🔹 A single dev swapped C++ macros with a one-word commit message, seemingly just to get NVK's code to compile, and doomed years of keys.

🔹 Claude Code found the ColdCard bug in 8 minutes; open model GLM 5.2, no internet, found it in ~20 for about $2.

🔹 Tarun calls Bitcoin maxi devs 'the RFK of security practices' who 'don't do audits,' branding ColdCard's lack of hardening 'incredibly delinquent.'

🔹 Haseeb warns AIs 'are much less diverse than humans,' so security now scales with AUM while North Korea spends thousands in compute.

🔹 Nic Carter calls it 'the death of Bitcoin maximalism' as Haseeb reads posts from holders who scrimped for three Bitcoin and woke up wiped.

🔹 EIP-8361 from Pintail and Justin Drake tapers ETH staking yield toward zero above 50% staked; the community is 'vomiting all over' it.

🔹 Tarun torches EIP-8361 as 'a truly horrendous post,' arguing constantly changing policy means Ethereum is never credible hard money.

🔹 Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness AI hedge fund blew up ~67% while 4x levered, with Robert drawing Archegos comparisons.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:03 ColdCard's $100M Exploit

05:46 AI, Audits & Bitcoin Maxi Security Failures

12:07 Open Source vs Closed Source in the AI Era

23:21 EIP-8361: Ethereum's Staking Yield Taper

30:34 Hard Money, Post-Quantum & Central Bank Chaos

35:54 Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blowup

44:41 Robinhood Prediction Markets Boom as Hyperliquid RWAs Flip Crypto

51:54 Korea's Bloodbath & the Death of Retail Volatility

55:17 CLARITY Act: Ethics Provisions Are the Linchpin
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