Unchained

A bridging bug cost NEAR Intents $3.8 million. Alex Shevchenko reveals how a coded tweet and a Signal invite encrypted with the attacker's key got the funds back.

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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

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NEAR Intents halted services after an attacker exploited a bug in its Omni bridging infrastructure and walked off with $3.8 million. Twelve hours after announcing the hack, the team tweeted at the suspect: "We have identified you, sir."

Alex Shevchenko, GM of NEAR Intents, joins Laura Shin to walk through how the attacker got the protocol to credit USDT deposits on BNB Chain that never happened, why NEAR Intents covered the loss from its own pockets, and how a Signal invite encrypted with the attacker's public key opened a private channel that ended with the funds coming back, partly in XMR.

He also lays out how Shield, NEAR Intents' detection system, kept 99% of the more than $50 million tied to the Bitget hack from passing through, and why he thinks shielded Zcash could face Monero's fate.

His argument: crypto that protects thieves can never become the economic backbone its builders want.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠Alex Shevchenko - GM of NEAR Intents

Timestamps

🚨 01:43 How an Omni bridging bug let an attacker fake deposits and drain $3.8M

🌐 02:37 What NEAR Intents is, and how it relates to NEAR Protocol and near.com

⚙️ 05:01 How the hack worked and how the identified that it had occurred

💧 09:51 1inch Aqua: Back multiple positions with one token balance at https://1inch.com/aqua

🚔 10:55 Law enforcement, and how NEAR Intents identified a suspect within 12 hours

🔐 17:51 The Penn and Teller playbook: a Signal invite only the attacker could decrypt

🏎️ 22:52 Why Alex says a bug bounty beats hacking, Lambo included

🛡️ 26:24 Shield: how NEAR Intents kept 99% of Bitget hack funds off the protocol

⚖️ 32:07 Does blocking stolen funds make NEAR Intents centralized? Alex says no

🕶️ 40:17 Can shielded Zcash stay clean, or will it follow Monero's path?
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Live from TOKEN2049 in Singapore, Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun sit down with Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week they are live on the BingX Stage at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, joined by Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes.

Balaji explains why Network School moved its headquarters to Kazakhstan, which he calls Singapore with space to build, and why courting a country works a lot like enterprise sales when half of all countries have fewer than 10 million people. Then OpenAI drops 700 AI-written math papers and Justin Drake tells crypto to go into bunker mode: Tarun separates theoretical attacks from practical ones, Balaji proposes a social smart contract that would let chains rewind after a cryptographic break, and Arthur pitches the Flop Network as food for AI agents. Finally, Blast and Abstract shut down, nobody booked Marquee this year, and the panel debates whether the L2 era was a necessary search or crypto's version of Chinese ghost cities.

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

Show highlights

🔹 TOKEN2049 is still the one retail mega conference left, even in the first year with no wrapped Lambo out front.

🔹 Balaji says crypto is M&A-ing Western institutions, and that anything holding long-dated Treasuries is wrecked.

🔹 Network School has moved its headquarters to Kazakhstan, which Balaji calls Singapore with space to build: 21 million people, a tie with China and India at the physics Olympiad, about 40% of the world's uranium, and room for 10,000 acres of Arthur Hayes City.

🔹 More than 10 countries bid for Network School. Balaji says courting governments works like enterprise sales, because half of all countries have under 10 million people and a billion dollars goes a long way there.

🔹 Why Hollywood misleads you about the rest of the world, from Borat to Squid Game, and why Balaji splits countries into a descending world and an ascending world.

🔹 The ascending world has murals of Elon and will build Arthur a statue, preferably on a horse, while blue states drive their billionaires out.

🔹 OpenAI drops 700 AI-written math papers with nothing on cryptography, and Justin Drake tells crypto to go into bunker mode by moving funds to addresses that have never signed.

🔹 Tarun says there is still a big gap between a theoretical attack and a practical one, and Haseeb asks who will even tell us when ECDSA is broken.

🔹 Balaji proposes a social smart contract that lets a chain rewind after a cryptographic break, Haseeb says cross-chain dependencies make that far harder than it was five years ago, and Balaji warns that anti-tech is the new anti-capitalism.

🔹 Tom says to watch what people do rather than what they say, and Balaji argues there are hard mathematical bounds on what AI can do.

🔹 Tarun on quantum money, Balaji on blockchains that spend their own token budget trying to hack themselves, and Arthur on the Flop Network as food for AI agents.

🔹 Blast and Abstract shut down, and Arthur reports that Marquee, fully booked all week last year with half a million Singapore dollar minimum spends, has not had a single booking this year.

🔹 Balaji says every failed L2 was part of a search worth running, Arthur jokes that it was all a search for Base and Robinhood Chain, Tarun calls the L2s Chinese ghost cities that can at least be demolished, and Haseeb tallies the middlemen that make running one so expensive.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guests

⭐️Balaji Srinivasan, Founder of Network School 

⭐️Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom & CEO of Flop Labs

Disclosures
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Justin Drake told holders not to panic. Ben DiFrancesco says if AI weakens elliptic curves, the clock is how fast Chinese models catch up.

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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

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OpenAI released 722 math papers, and Justin Drake followed with a "don't panic" tweet suggesting large holders consider moving funds, setting off a wave of speculation that elliptic curve keys might soon be easier to brute force.

Ben DiFrancesco, Founder and CEO of ScopeLift, joins Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith to separate rumor from risk. DiFrancesco puts low odds on the rumors but argues crypto would get hit first, patch fastest, and could leave traditional finance as the worse place to hold money, with Chinese open-weight models setting the clock. Monahan untangles the 0.36 ETH MetaMask staking incident that got pulled into the speculation.

They also cover ZachXBT's undercover investigation of a DPRK money launderer, the NEAR Intents hacker sending funds back, and a push for Swiss authorities to intervene at Safe. DiFrancesco closes with a warning for token teams: the regulatory excuse for skipping value return is going away.

Hosts:

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

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

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation

Guest:

⁠Ben DiFrancesco - Founder and CEO of ScopeLift

Timestamps

🔐 01:57 Why Justin Drake’s ‘don’t panic’ tweet has crypto eyeing its cryptography

🦊 06:12 Taylor on the MetaMask staking incident and the 0.36 ETH that tipped it off

🧮 14:03 Ben on why even a worst-case ECC break wouldn’t mean instant theft

🏦 20:04 Why Ben thinks TradFi, not crypto, could be the worse place to hold money

🤖 25:02 How AI models went from flubbing 2+2 to formalizing hard math

💧 30:45 1inch: See how LPs can back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🔙 31:49 How the NEAR Intents hacker ended up sending the money back

🕵️ 37:07 ZachXBT went undercover with a DPRK money launderer: what he found

😤 51:25 Why instant outrage is the tell for launderers and Sybil farmers

🏗️ 56:11 From Gnosis’s 2017 ICO to Safe, the multisig securing $100B+

⚖️ 01:02:23 The push for Swiss intervention at Safe and what it actually claims

🗳️ 01:08:12 Ben on how regulatory fear warped DAOs and why value return matters now

🧱 01:17:12 Blast and Abstract shut down: too many L2s, and never build a wallet
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In this spicypost-Bitget hack debate, THORChain co-founder Chad Barraford says the protocol can't block laundering. Taylor Monahan points to the halts it has used before.

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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

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The Bitget hack reignited a fight on crypto Twitter: should chains that can stop North Korea from laundering stolen funds actually do it? THORChain, which DPRK hackers keep using to reach Bitcoin, landed at the center of it.

Chad Barraford, co-founder of THORChain, argues the protocol cannot respond fast enough without redesigning it to be more centralized. Security expert Taylor Monahan counters that THORChain has acted before when its own protocol was at risk, and that routes made up almost entirely of stolen funds could simply be switched off.

Laura Shin presses on the closed-source signing library, four operators running 39 nodes, why validators left after Bybit, ZachXBT's undercover look at a launderer pitching THORChain, Tornado Cash-style legal risk, and fee spikes after the KelpDAO and Bitget hacks.

Barraford's answer to the biggest hypothetical is simple: if enough node operators want to block laundering, it gets blocked.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

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

Chad Barraford - Co-founder of THORChain

Timestamps

⚖️ 01:56 The Bitget debate: should chains that can block laundering do it?

🧱 04:10 Why Taylor says THORChain has been 'making this excuse' for years

⏸️ 10:48 THORChain paused for 5 weeks for itself. Why not for stolen funds?

🪙 19:15 1inch Aqua: See how LPs can back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🏦 20:15 Is THORChain an intermediary? The custody critique of its TSS vaults

🚪 24:32 Why did validators leave after Bybit? Chad and Taylor disagree

🧪 39:36 Does THORChain pass Chad's own decentralization litmus test?

🕵️ 47:59 ZachXBT's undercover probe: a launderer's 'Thor cross-chain' pitch

🏛️ 57:24 Could THORChain face a Tornado Cash-style case? Chad's legal defense

🛡️ 01:05:05 NEAR's Shield stopped $50M in laundering. Could THORChain copy it?

💸 01:05:57 Does THORChain profit from stolen funds? The fee spike debate
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SPONSORED CONTENT: This video is a paid partnership with Nexo. It was produced in collaboration with Nexo and is separate from Unchained's editorial coverage.

Nexo is a digital asset wealth platform offering yield products and crypto-backed lines of credit.

Join Nexo and get up to $5,000 in rewards. Terms apply. Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply. https://ref.nexo.com/_5MiOg41

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A new report revealed that affluent investors aren't using crypto to build wealth. Nexo US COO Neil Steinhardt explains how the platform aims to fix that.

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About two-thirds of the affluent investors Nexo surveyed own crypto, but fewer than 5% have fully integrated it into how they build long-term wealth, according to the company's new report, The Future of Digital Wealth.

Neil Steinhardt, COO of Nexo US, walks host Ryan S. Gladwin through the report's Crypto Integration Index and why he says friction, not conviction, is holding investors back. He covers why Argentina has the highest ownership but the lowest integration, and how incoming regulatory clarity has brought Nexo back to the US.

Steinhardt also details how Nexo's crypto-backed credit lines work, what he heard from advisors at a registered investment advisor conference, and why a $35 trillion to $106 trillion wealth transfer could land with a generation that has high conviction in digital assets.

He closes on why he thinks CeFi lenders, which he says outpaced DeFi lenders for the first time in Q2, are positioned for the convergence of TradFi and crypto.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ryan S. Gladwin - Freelance Journalist

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Neil Steinhardt - COO of Nexo US

Timestamps

🔎 01:04 Why Neil says friction, not conviction, keeps crypto out of wealth plans

🧮 02:48 Inside Nexo's Crypto Integration Index

🌎 05:01 Other factors preventing crypto from integrating into wealth plans

🤝 06:50 How Nexo fixes friction in wealth building

⚖️ 08:27 How incoming regulatory clarity has brought Nexo back to the US

💳 10:15 How Nexo's crypto-backed credit lines work

👵 15:06 The coming wealth transfer to a generation with high crypto conviction

🏛️ 18:03 Investment advisors aren't advocating for crypto, here's how to change that

🏎️ 19:31 Nexo's card program and why Neil says wealth means experiences

📈 22:35 Why CeFi lenders outpaced DeFi lenders in Q2
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North Korea takes $387 million from Bitget and moves it through THORChain while NEAR's Shield freezes what it can, a Consensys validator hack tests whether staking was ever the risk-free rate, a quant named Benny shows Kalshi's perps volume was cooked, and Apollo warns that AI agents are coming for your checking account.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week the three of them record from a self-serve podcast studio in Amsterdam.

Bitget loses 387 million dollars to North Korea's Lazarus Group and pays every claim from its user protection fund, but the stolen funds raise a harder question: THORChain lets them through while NEAR's Shield freezes them, so which one is actually decentralized? (Dragonfly is an investor in Bitget and NEAR.) Then a Consensys validator compromise tests staking as the risk-free rate, Robert prices insurance on US Treasuries at 35 basis points, a quant named Benny exposes Kalshi's perps volume, and the crew takes apart Apollo's warning about agentic bank runs, from Robert's one basis point checking account to Tarun's agent filing his insurance claims.

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

Show highlights

🔹 Bitget loses about 387 million dollars to North Korea's Lazarus Group, and its 460 million dollar user protection fund covers every claim, so there is no contagion.

🔹 The stolen funds run through THORChain while NEAR's Shield freezes around 500K and refuses to route more than 100 million, which reopens the question of what decentralization actually requires.

🔹 Robert wants only the two extremes, fully neutral infrastructure or deliberate censorship, and nothing in the middle. Haseeb counters that everything between a centralized exchange and Uniswap already is the middle.

🔹 Haseeb argues property rights mean more than valid state transitions, and that anomaly detection can enforce them in a way that is still neutral and programmatic.

🔹 Tarun explains why cross-chain intents, with their solvers and RFQs, are where all the fights happen.

🔹 A Consensys validator compromise forces a mass exit, and Robert says staking was never the risk-free rate, only the best possible one. He looks up US CDS at 35 basis points and puts Ethereum validation risk at about five.

🔹 Would Ethereum roll back an unfair slashing? Haseeb says it would to protect stakers. Robert says only if transactions were corrupted.

🔹 A quant named Benny exposes Kalshi's perps volume, 3 million of open interest against hundreds of millions in daily volume, and Kalshi ends its liquidity incentives as the CFTC reportedly investigates.

🔹 Robert on why market maker rebates are normal, and how paying makers in equity for volume made Kalshi's go so wrong.

🔹 On Apollo's agentic bank runs: Robert earns one basis point on his checking account, Tarun's agent finds 1,700 dollars in health insurance overcharges, and the panel argues the whole economy is about to look like DeFi.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:42 Bitget loses $387M to North Korea

07:08 Should chains freeze hacked funds?

15:35 Chains as laboratories of democracy

21:44 The hidden premium on janky chains

27:13 Consensys compromised: is staking still risk-free?

30:53 Pricing and hedging validator risk

40:24 Kalshi's perps volume

44:17 How Kalshi's rebates went awry

53:07 Apollo's agentic bank runs

56:04 A banking system built on consumer laziness

1:02:46 SVB-style runs at agent speed

1:02:46 SVB-style runs at agent speed

1:05:01 Homo economicus is back
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Taylor Monahan ties the Bitget hack to North Korea and the crew asks why THORChain still avoids the scrutiny Tornado Cash got.

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

Thank you to our sponsors!

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

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

Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for.

⁠Our listener survey⁠ takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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

Attackers took $388 million from Bitget without ever getting its private keys. Opsek founder Pablo Sabbatella explains that the way in was a zero-day in a third-party security product the exchange relied on.

Sabbatella, who now sits on Arbitrum's Security Council, joins Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith to trace the hack. Monahan attributes it to North Korea's TraderTraitor group and flags how fast the funds left Arbitrum, while the hosts ask why THORChain, which has halted its chain and reallocated balances before, still handles stolen funds.

They also cover NEAR's SHIELD anomaly detection, reports of rogue AI agents hacking outside systems, whether retail should get the upside of a $2 trillion Anthropic IPO, and Vitalik Buterin's 2030 roadmap for Ethereum.

Warwick's case: the harder the problem, the more superintelligence helps, and Ethereum is one of the hardest problems there is.

Hosts:

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

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

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation

Guest:

Pablo Sabbatella - Founder at Opsek

Timestamps

🚨 02:32 How Bitget got hit for $388M and covered the losses

🛡️ 08:24 Why Pablo says a third-party security product was the way into Bitget

🕵️ 11:22 Taylor ties the hack to North Korea and highlights their rush to exit Arbitrum

❄️ 13:34 Pablo on why security councils restart the freeze debate every time

⛓️ 14:17 Why Kain says THORChain can't claim it's like Bitcoin and Ethereum

🧭 30:24 How NEAR's Shield blocks funds using behavioral anomaly detection

📣 34:51 1inch: See how 1inch Aqua lets LPs back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🤖 36:16 Rogue AI agents are hacking outside systems as the labs eye IPOs

🔓 39:11 Why Pablo thinks the AI labs want to regulate open-source models

📈 48:55 Kain's case for letting retail take the risk on a $2T Anthropic IPO

🧱 01:05:47 Why Kain calls Vitalik's 2030 roadmap the most bullish Ethereum read in years

🏪 01:19:18 Pablo asks whether Ethereum's real challenge is commercial, not technical
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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.

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Thank you to our sponsor!

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

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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

In June, Hunter Biden replied to a small account on X that "fiat is a sham" and the banking class is corrupt. His next move was $LAPTOP, a memecoin he says has the opposite tokenomics of the $TRUMP token.

Hunter joins Laura Shin to trace his path into crypto, from the UN World Food Programme’s digital wallets for refugees (originally covered on Unchained in 2018) to The Internet of Money. He walks through $LAPTOP's first minutes, when a market maker seeded about $5,000 of liquidity and the token briefly showed a $317 billion market cap, and answers critics who call it a scam.

He also lays out the token's prediction market burn mechanism, argues the Clarity Act died because the administration wouldn't bend on ethics rules covering the Trump family, and challenges Elizabeth Warren for siding with the banks.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Hunter Biden - Artist, Author, and Recovery Advocate

Timestamps

🎨 01:26 How a blockchain-related initiative at the UN World Food Programme led Hunter to crypto

🏛️ 07:34 Why Hunter says most Democrats only know crypto through Trump's 'grift'

💧 12:47 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

💻 13:46 Why Hunter launched $LAPTOP and what he says went wrong at its debut

🔍 21:14 Hunter answers critics who call $LAPTOP the scam he accuses Trump of

🎲 23:52 How $LAPTOP's built-in prediction market burns tokens or funds charity

⚖️ 33:35 Hunter's case against World Liberty Financial and the Trump family business

🗳️ 46:47 Can Democrats revive the Clarity Act if they take back Congress?

🏦 50:01 Why Hunter can't understand Elizabeth Warren siding with the banks
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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!

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

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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

After more than a year of amplifying women's voices in crypto, DEX in the City is signing off from Unchained, and its hosts skip the week's news to share the advice they give people trying to break into the industry.

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le debate whether lawyers need to be on X, why "getting into crypto" now means learning perps, tokens, and prediction markets at once, and why Katherine believes women in male-dominated rooms have to be the adult in the room.

Vy recounts breaking down in a Senate office days after FTX collapsed, a story she says she had barely told anyone, and what it taught her about separating the technology from the people who abuse it. Jessi recalls begging the FBI around 2016 to take cases involving terrorists using Bitcoin, a measure of how far the industry has traveled since institutions laughed it off.

Host:

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

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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

Timestamps

🎙️ 01:48 Why the hosts are skipping the news for their final episode on Unchained

🧭 03:25 Jessi's case against 'getting into crypto,' and the debate over X

⚖️ 12:15 Why KK tells women in crypto they have to be the adult in the room

🪞 16:45 Jessi on 'don't lose yourself,' and Vy on why the loudest critics aren't the majority

💧 23:40 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with the same token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🌊 24:54 How the hosts keep marching through crypto's roughest stretches

💔 29:22 Vy on why crypto can't be your whole identity, and her Senate meeting after FTX

🏰 36:13 The strangest crypto moments: Versailles, a Florida offsite, North Korea

🙌 45:10 The women and allies the hosts credit for paving the way
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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!

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

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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

On September 24, attackers used a zero-day in a third-party security product to slip fraudulent withdrawal commands into Bitget's wallet system, pulling out about $388 million across chains from Ethereum and XRP to Zcash.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen joins Laura Shin to reconstruct the attack, from test transfers that stayed under risk thresholds to her team's call to switch wallets back on mid-attack and sweep hot and warm funds into cold storage. She lays out how the exchange's protection fund covered users and why reopened withdrawals showed an early net inflow.

Then comes the industry response. Tether, Circle, and NEAR Intents froze funds, THORChain declined her request, and only $632K is frozen so far. Chen also describes scammers impersonating an investment firm to target her after the hack. Her case that "permissionless doesn't mean neutral" puts a hard question to DeFi.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠Gracy Chen - CEO of Bitget

Timestamps

🚨 01:50 How attackers used a third-party zero-day to fake withdrawal commands

❄️ 07:15 Why Bitget switched wallets back on mid-attack to sweep funds to cold storage

💧 14:30 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with the same token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

⛓️ 15:37 Why the hackers were able to transact even after withdrawals were paused

🧊 19:04 How Tether, Circle, and NEAR Intents froze funds, and why recovery is harder

🕵️ 24:05 ZachXBT's shift on the Bitget hack and his earlier pump-and-dump claims

🛡️ 30:01 NEAR Intents vs. THORChain: does permissionless mean neutral?

💰 41:55 Why Bitget built its protection fund in 2022 and how it covered the loss

🎭 48:17 How scammers posed as an investment team to target Gracy after the hack

📈 01:01:32 A net ETH inflow after withdrawals reopened, and whether the IPO is still on
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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!

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

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠ Our listener survey⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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

The 10-year Treasury yield just hit its highest level since 2007, and Ran Neuner thinks Scott Bessent will answer by bringing more money to the party. Neuner, founder and CEO of Crypto Banter, makes the case to Laura Shin that this is not just another Bitcoin cycle but crypto's first real bull market.

His argument rests on two use cases. The first is social trading, which he describes as the world's biggest social network and casino "having a baby," with Hyperliquid and Pump.fun earning millions of dollars a day. The second is AI agents: he cites a study projecting one billion agents by 2029 and a new BlackRock report arguing machine-to-machine payments favor blockchain rails over ACH and card networks.

They also cover why he calls RWAs magazines moved online, whether AI IPOs will drain crypto liquidity, and why he thinks Zcash may be more useful than Bitcoin. If he's right, his own 7x altcoin projection may prove conservative.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

Ran Neuner - Founder and CEO of Crypto Banter

Timestamps

🏦 01:47 Why Ran thinks Bessent is engineering 'the ultimate short squeeze'

📊 04:45 Why an ETH/BTC breakout signals crypto's first real product-market fit

🎰 09:35 Social trading: a social network and a casino 'having a baby'

💧 14:03 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🤖 15:06 How a billion AI agents could send altcoins far past Bitcoin

⏱️ 29:14 Why Ran thinks AI agents will borrow against compute and tell time in blocks

🌐 37:01 Will AI IPOs drain crypto liquidity? Ran on why AI isn't the dot-com bubble

🛡️ 40:05 Privacy vs. social trading, and why Ran calls Zcash 'more useful than Bitcoin'
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Kalshi's ETH perp did half a billion in volume on $3 million in open interest. Kain and Taylor lay out why that isn't necessarily wash trading. Plus, Austin joins as co-host.

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

Thank you to our sponsors!

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

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

Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for.

Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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

Kalshi's ETH perpetual futures market logged half a billion dollars in 24-hour volume on just $3 million in open interest, and after its crypto hires picked a fight on the timeline, an analyst pulled the public data and alleged wash trading.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan argue that paid market makers are a likelier explanation than a back room of bots. Austin Griffith, in his first episode as a regular co-host, asks whether all that liquidity actually helps a prediction market find the truth.

The hosts also cover Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's warning that AI labs answer for their agents, Taylor's Tornado Cash parallel, Anthropic's new wet lab, Amazon blocking Meta's Muse assistant, and Jev, a classifier model that decides in 200 milliseconds.

Plus, Zcash around $1,500 and why NEAR suddenly has people paying attention. As Kain puts it, a new model is dropping nearly every day, and keeping up now takes agents of its own.

Hosts:

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

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

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation

Timestamps

🎲 02:32 How Kalshi's crypto hires started a timeline war over its perp volume

🤝 07:28 Why Kain suspects paid market makers, not wash trading, are behind the volume

🔎 09:59 Austin asks whether any of this liquidity helps markets find the truth

📚 21:41 What the price of Google teaches about liquidity and trusting a market

💧 28:14 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🏛️ 30:59 Scott Bessent told AI labs they're responsible for what their agents do

⚖️ 34:20 Taylor on the Tornado Cash parallel: which humans answer for autonomous code?

🛒 42:48 Why Amazon blocked Meta's Muse assistant from shopping on its site

⚡ 47:29 Jev: the model that makes decisions in 200 milliseconds without talking

🔒 1:00:33 Zcash around $1,500 and why NEAR has people paying attention again
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura 

When the Clarity Act stalled in Congress, the shorts expected Bitcoin to break. It dipped to $75,000 and stopped. Then came the surprise that the bill might pass after all, and Bitcoin closed its first weekly candle above its 50-week moving average in 45 weeks.

Ram Ahluwalia calls it a short squeeze, and says that doesn't make it illegitimate. Chris Perkins sees a regime change, with institutions now underwriting crypto on fundamentals. Austin Campbell asks what happens if US retail, still missing from the Coinbase premium, shows up too.

Hosts:

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

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

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

This segment is from a longer conversation on Bitcoin, the Fed, a $30 trillion debt pile, and Meta's new AI agent. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/r2Z9ooMTcZ0?si=-mncR-xhm7kUM507 

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

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

Chapters:

📊 00:34 Bitcoin's 50-week reclaim: the bull case and the bear case laid out

🐻 03:51 Why Ram thinks it's a short squeeze, and why that doesn't make it illegitimate

🔄 05:14 Why Chris thinks this is a regime change toward fundamentals

⚖️ 07:31 Austin on how Clarity's failure invalidated the short case

👀 12:26 Why retail hasn't shown up yet, and what happens if it does
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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!

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

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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

Zcash just cracked the top 10 on CoinGecko, up 32% in a week and near an all-time high. NEAR is up 69% over the same stretch, and both rallies trace back to the same catalyst: transactions nobody else can see.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to unpack why confidential transactions, not speculation, are driving the rally, and why the two networks now function as one privacy-preserving liquidity layer for real businesses and institutions, not just traders.

They cover NEAR Intents' $260 million in TVL, the multi-party computation and secure enclaves behind NEAR's confidential balances versus Zcash's zero-knowledge shielded pool, the counterfeiting bug that forced Zcash's Ironwood migration, and NEAR's Shield system, which halted transactions mid-hack during a Litecoin exploit. Zcash's next upgrade, Project Tachyon, aims to make the network quantum-proof and scale it 100x, and Mert argues privacy will not stay a competitive edge for long.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol

⁠Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius

Timestamps

🚀 01:39 Guest intros, plus why ZEC (+32%) and NEAR (+69%) are ripping this week

🌐 03:13 Illia and Mert on why NEAR and ZEC's price action is turning heads

🟠 08:34 Is Zcash and NEAR the Bitcoin DeFi dream, minus Bitcoin?

🕵️ 11:54 Why coffee-shop-level balance visibility is a real business risk

✈️ 15:06 Mert's travel hack: booking flights and hotels privately via NEAR Intents

🧠 18:12 Why privacy is a retention tool first, not just an onboarding one

📣 25:11 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🔐 26:23 Privacy vs confidentiality: ZK proofs versus NEAR's MPC-and-enclave model

🛡️ 29:26 Inside NEAR's secure enclaves, and why store-of-value needs real privacy

🔄 33:59 How a NEAR Intents swap settles across chains, and its $206 million in TVL

🐛 39:09 The Zcash counterfeit bug, the Ironwood migration, and formal verification

🤖 45:49 How NEAR's Shield AI system and MPC guardrails manage solver risk

⚡ 51:33 Zcash's NU7 upgrade: faster blocks, quantum-proofing, and private voting
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Days after Clarity failed, the SEC granted a major exemption for tokenized stocks. The Digital Chamber’s Cody Carbone explains whether agencies can replace the law.

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

Thank you to our sponsor!

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

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

The Clarity Act failed its cloture vote this week, with every Senate Democrat voting no and sinking crypto's biggest legislative shot in years.

Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, joins Laura Shin to unpack what killed the bill: an ethics fight over Trump's blind trust and digital-asset dealings, stablecoin-reward limits the banks wouldn't accept, and a Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act rewrite that stripped noncustodial developers of criminal-liability protection. Carbone argues Democrats rejected 80% of their own ethics demands rather than hand Republicans a win, and traces how crypto PAC money and the threat of Maxine Waters chairing House Financial Services shape what happens next.

Two days after Clarity died, the SEC granted an innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading, and Carbone says the SEC and CFTC are about to unleash years of rulemaking with or without Congress. The question now is whether that agency-driven momentum outlasts the next hostile administration, or gets undone with a single signature.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

Cody Carbone - CEO of The Digital Chamber

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:18 Why the Clarity Act's cloture vote failed: 'politics beat policy'

⚖️ 02:38 Scoring Trump's corruption against Nixon and Suharto fuels the ethics fight

🗳️ 06:51 Election pressure: a lame duck vote and crypto PAC money's next targets

🏦 11:57 Why Cody blames the banks' stablecoin rewards fight for killing Clarity

🌊 14:35 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

📜 15:23 The SEC's new innovation exemption for tokenized stock venues

🔓 18:28 Could 2 years of SEC and CFTC rulemaking replace a crypto law?

🧩 23:20 Why regulators are staying silent on synthetic stock tokens

🤝 26:46 What's left to negotiate: developer liability and stablecoin yield

🔮 31:14 Is the lame duck Clarity's last shot, or could agency rules become permanent?
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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.

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

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

The Clarity Act failed a Senate cloture vote 49 to 50, and Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan open by asking what crypto did wrong. Taylor thinks the Trump family's memecoins and World Liberty sank it. Kain worries the industry squandered its best shot at actual laws and is now counting on friendly SEC rulemaking instead.

Guest Tommy Shaughnessy, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, argues that OpenAI and Anthropic's calls to slow AI down are a play for a regulatory moat, because Chinese open source models like DeepSeek are getting good and cheap. He also explains why he runs Delphi Ventures on its own AI agent instead of handing its data to Claude or ChatGPT. Kain says the fear inside the labs is genuine, and that the idea of simply shutting down the data center won't hold forever.

They also cover Anthropic's report on a Chinese surveillance operation that surfaced in its logs, an $8M exploit of a Safe wallet that a 4-year-old yoink bot frontran, the SDNY charges against Robinhood engineers accused of trading tokens on Hyperliquid ahead of Robinhood listings, and why Wyoming's stable token dropped LayerZero for Chainlink.

Hosts:

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

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

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tommy Shaughnessy - Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures and Co-Founder of Delphi Digital

Timestamps

🏛️ 02:35 Why Clarity died without 50 votes and what SEC/CFTC rules might replace it

🇺🇸 19:06 Why crypto's all-in bet on Trump has Taylor uneasy about the partisan trade

💧 23:20 1inch: Back multiple liquidity positions and keep your tokens in your wallet until a swap fills at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🤖 24:08 Why OpenAI and Anthropic's own founders are calling to slow AI down

🐉 31:12 Tommy on why AI safety talk is regulatory capture against Chinese open source

🕵️ 38:17 Anthropic's own report: how a CCP surveillance job showed up in its logs

💰 51:42 Would you bet on AI safety or acceleration? Tommy makes the hosts pick a side

🔓 56:56 How an $8M Safe exploit got frontrun by a 4-year-old yoink bot

📈 01:01:46 Why the SDNY charged Robinhood engineers with trading on Hyperliquid ahead of listings

⚔️ 01:05:27 Why Wyoming dropping LayerZero for Chainlink reignited the Link Marines
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The boys get together in person as CLARITY falls short with 47 votes. They break down what comes next, Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP token collapse, the Robinhood/Hyperliquid case, Balancer winding down, and the debate over an AI pause.

The CLARITY Act fails cloture with 47 votes, not a single Democrat in favor, and the crew works out what that leaves behind: rulemaking at the SEC and CFTC, an ethics fight that was never really about market structure, and Robert's tally of everyone who walked away with nothing. Then Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses 99.85 percent, the SDNY indicts two Robinhood engineers over Hyperliquid front-running, Balancer and a wave of exchanges wind down, Robert explains why Satoshi is a time traveler, and the panel takes apart the labs' agreement to pace the frontier.

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

Show highlights

🔹 CLARITY gets 47 of the 60 votes it needed, with no Democrats in favor, and the sticking point was forced divestiture of Trump-affiliated tokens rather than market structure.

🔹 Robert tallies the losers: no ethics win for the Democrats, no GENIUS rewrite for the banks, no expanded AML hooks, and no developer protections for anyone.

🔹 Haseeb argues adoption protects crypto better than legislation ever will, because nobody takes away a product people already use.

🔹 Prediction markets are politically safe for a reason nobody says out loud: every politician already reads them as better polling data.

🔹 Tom's counterfactual for what would have flipped the vote is blunt. You never should have launched that damn memecoin.

🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token flashes to a 140 billion dollar valuation on 50,000 dollars of liquidity, then falls to twenty cents, and the chart ends up shaped like a laptop.

🔹 Two Robinhood engineers are charged over front-running crypto listings on Hyperliquid for about 50,000 dollars each, and Haseeb explains why the OpenSea conviction got overturned.

🔹 Balancer winds down and the panel asks what became of the ICO treasuries, from Golem's GPUs to Aragon's founder building a neobank.

🔹 Robert makes the case, half in jest, that a future superintelligence sent Satoshi back to 2008 to get humanity building chips early.

🔹 On the AI pause: Tarun on who evaluates the evaluators, Tom on why coordination without China is futile, and Haseeb on why a training freeze just moves the competition to another line item.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

00:43 CLARITY day

03:36 Silver linings

05:26 Was it close? Or did everybody loose?

12:23 Why adoption protects crypto better than a bill

15:00 Was DC trading on the CLARITY odds?

18:37 The one thing they would go back & undo

20:48 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses

23:50 Celeb coins never work

26:17 Robinhood engineers indicted over Hyperliquid front-running

31:35 Balancer winds down & the exchange shakeout

35:11 AI arbitration & ideas ahead of their time

37:44 Satoshi is a time traveler

39:14 The AI pause: pacing the frontier

42:57 China calls it a conspiracy

44:40 What do you buy if the doomers are right

45:50 Does an AI pause actually cut CapEx?

50:32 Futile without the Chinese labs

54:05 Harden society instead of slowing the models

56:47 Which doom vectors are real

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

In one week, OpenAI said its agents solved a Millennium Prize problem, a researcher quit Anthropic warning that both labs are "gambling with our lives," and Dario Amodei called for the industry to pace the frontier.

Jordi Visser doesn't dismiss the cyber risk, but he calls the fallout "a big midterm election story." Austin Campbell asks whether the labs are making a commercial play, Chris Perkins explains why regulation forces consolidation the way it did for banks, and Ram Ahluwalia makes the case that open weight models still have a seat at the table.

Hosts:

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

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

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

Guest:

Jordi Visser - Founder of Visser-Labs, LLC

This clip is from a longer conversation on AI regulation, frontier lab valuations, oil and the Fed. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/pNogg0vEjjs?si=Wrzh-5BJXnkkcQLr 

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

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

Chapters:

🧠 00:35 Why Jordi says Leopold's 'Situational Awareness' paper saw this coming

🗳️ 02:17 Jordi's read: this is a big midterm election story

💼 05:58 Is the AI slowdown a commercial play to cool CapEx before the IPOs?

🏦 07:28 Chris on why regulation is 'a really beautiful way of boxing out competition'

⚖️ 10:25 Jordi on who eats the liability when a model goes wrong

🔓 11:27 Could decentralization put AI liability back on the user?

📈 11:57 Ram's power law problem: capital concentration as the real story
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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.

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

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

DeFi's total value locked never reclaimed its 2021 peak, even four years and a full bull market later. That data point convinced Ethena Labs founder Guy Young the onchain dream needed a backup plan.

Young joins Laura Shin days after launching Ethena Pay, a neobank paying 6% on dollar deposits and 5% cashback in AVAX while hiding from users that their balance sits in a self-custodial stablecoin wallet, not a bank account. He argues yield, not brand loyalty, is what pulls the next hundred million users onto crypto rails.

They cover why Young shrugs off Tether-backed Plasma as a rival, how USDe's backing shifted from a basis trade toward AAA-rated real-world-asset lending, why a Revolut-style KYC breach is a risk Ethena can't fully control, and why card spend and FX fees, not USDe's own yield, are the revenue line he is actually chasing.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guy Young - Founder and CEO of Ethena Labs

Timestamps

🏦 01:25 Why Guy built a neobank after DeFi's TVL never beat its 2021 peak

🥊 07:16 Why Guy doesn't see Tether-backed Plasma as a competitor

🕵️ 17:57 How Ethena Pay hides self-custody from users who don't know it

🌍 19:10 The nearly 50-country rollout and Ethena's slow, controlled go-to-market

📣 22:30 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity platform lets LPs back multiple positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

⛰️ 23:18 Why Ethena Pay chose Avalanche, not Ethereum, for settlement

🏛️ 29:20 How USDe's backing shifted from basis trades to AAA-rated RWA lending

🔓 33:00 What the Revolut KYC breach means for Ethena Pay's own compliance risk

💳 39:55 Why card spend, not USDe's yield, is the metric Guy actually chases

🚀 47:50 The 7-figure deposits that surprised Guy in Ethena Pay's first two weeks
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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.

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

Thank you to our sponsors!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hosts:

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

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

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Thorn - Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy

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

Timestamps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

⚰️ 01:07:03 Why an Anthropic researcher's resignation has Kain and Taylor spooked
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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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Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠

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

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

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

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

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

Hosts:

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

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

Guest:

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

Timestamps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🔄 01:07:01 Cronos rolls back a $100M hack, and Moonwell gets hit again
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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."

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

Thank you to our sponsor!

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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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