Unchained

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Crypto assets and blockchain technology are about to transform every trust-based interaction of our lives, from financial services to identity to the Internet of Things. In this podcast, host Laura Shin, an independent journalist covering all things crypto, talks with industry pioneers about how crypto assets and blockchains will change the way we earn, spend and invest our money. Tune in to find out how Web 3.0, the decentralized web, will revolutionize our world.

  1. 2 HR AGO

    The Chopping Block: The Ethereum Foundation Manifesto + Who Really Runs Crypto?

    Crypto insiders debate the Ethereum Foundation’s new “CROPS” mandate: is the EF losing touch with builders, why does Solana keep pulling startups away, and what will it actually take for Ethereum to stay ahead? Expect a candid conversation on governance, comms, and crypto culture wars. Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week we’ve got plenty of firepower with special guests Taylor Monahan (formerly of MetaMask, now a security sensei) and Bankless impresario David Hoffman. The crew digs into the Ethereum Foundation’s freshly dropped “CROPS” manifesto — a 38-page PDF full of cypherpunk values, new acronyms, and debate fuel. What does it really say about where Ethereum is headed? Is EF finally embracing “sanctuary tech,” or just giving startups another reason to choose Solana? Who deserves credit for Ethereum’s growth: the Foundation, the community, or the market? Expect sharp takes on EF’s endless comms problems, why L2s aren’t a cure-all, and whether crypto culture matters as much as the tech. It’s a spicy, insider-heavy episode — so grab your popcorn and dive in. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Ethereum Foundation’s new CROPS mandate—what it says, what it avoids, and why it sparked a vibe war   🔹 Is Vitalik’s “sanctuary tech” vision pushing builders away or just keeping Ethereum pure?   🔹 The never-ending battle between “cypherpunks” and “pragmatists” in Ethereum’s governance   🔹 Why Ethereum’s “bad comms” tradition keeps causing existential crises   🔹 Solana’s support playbook: How culture, not tech, is dominating the builder mindshare   🔹 Are new projects ditching Ethereum L1 for Base, Arbitrum, and Solana—and does platform risk even matter now?   🔹 Should EF just stick to research, or actually help grow the ecosystem? And what does “supporting builders” actually mean?   🔹 Can you keep your values if you don’t win? The hard truths of crypto capitalism   🔹 Lessons from Defi Summer, NFT mania, and what L2 drama says about ecosystem incentives   🔹 Haseeb goes “political”: Why virtue-signaling and simple narratives are killing real debate Hosts ⭐️ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️ Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️ Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly  Guest ⭐️ Taylor Monahan, Security expert & Host of Uneasy Money⭐️ David Hoffman, Host of Bankless Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:51 EF Mandate Explained 03:23 Pragmatists vs. Cypherpunks 05:13 Tay’s Middle Ground 08:54 David Reads Between Lines 13:51 Tom & Tarun Push Back 18:20 EF Factions & Solana Shadow 24:13 Does Ethereum Want Growth 31:01 Virtue Signaling 35:35 Where to Build Now 39:16 Solana Support vs Ethereum Stability 42:12 EF Promotion & Builder Support  47:54 Goldilocks Time Horizons 51:10 Ethereum Soul and Body 56:03 Does EF Leadership Matter? 01:02:45 Stewardship and Market Failures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 11m
  2. 2 HR AGO

    DEX in the City: Why the Binance Case Against the WSJ ‘Is Probably Not a Winner’

    The crew unpacks the Binance case against the Wall Street Journal. Is the lawsuit just for optics? Plus, why crypto can't turn a blind eye to one Aave user's $50 million loss. Thank you to our sponsor, Adaptive Security Binance has sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation over a report that money has flowed from its platform to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp.  DEX in the City hosts Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos and Jessi Brooks are joined by Arktouros Partner Jane Khodarkovsky to discuss the sanctions implications of the story, what is at stake in the lawsuit and the burden of proof on Binance.  Is Binance fighting a losing battle? And could the case backfire amid a parallel DOJ investigation? Beyond the Binance case, the crew unpacks recent efforts by the CFTC and SEC to provide crypto with regulatory clarity. Find out why KK says the CFTC's recent prediction markets guidance is a “nothingburger” and why a no action letter to Phantom is not a carte blanche for all crypto frontends. Plus, is it time for crypto to consider best execution rules as an Aave user loses $50 million in a DeFi swap gone wrong? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital ⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare Guest: Jane Khodarkovsky, Sanctions expert Links: Unchained: CFTC Moves to Rein In Prediction Markets as Industry Booms SEC and CFTC Move Toward Unified Crypto Rules Dueling Post-Mortems Reveal How a $50 Million DeFi Swap Went From Bad to Catastrophic Vy Le's paper on on-chain best execution: Fairness by Design: Verifiable Execution in On-Chain Markets This week's good news: Tech boss uses ChatGPT to create cancer vaccine to save dying dog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    51 min
  3. 1 DAY AGO

    Bits + Bips: Bitcoin Hits $75K as It Starts Catching Up to Gold

    Ram is bearish on equities, oil is keeping the Fed frozen, and Bitcoin is holding up anyway. The hosts debate whether crypto has bottomed or whether worse is still ahead. --- Thanks to our sponsor, Nexo! ---- Three weeks into the Iran conflict, oil is keeping inflation elevated, rate cuts are getting pushed out, and hedge funds are being forced to sell good names just to reduce exposure. So why is Bitcoin holding up?  Ram sees a market on the right shoulder of a bubble, with industrials like Caterpillar at 35x earnings and no real capitulation yet in equities or private credit. Chris is watching trading desks pick up the “short-gold, long-Bitcoin” trade, and sees Ethereum's fundamentals quietly strengthening. Austin wants to know what happens to DeFi the day a major stablecoin gets compromised on a censorship-resistant chain with no network-level controls.  And all three are asking the same question investors need answered now: does the Iran conflict end fast enough to stop oil from triggering a true inflationary regime, or is a harder correction still ahead? Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, NYU Stern professor and founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Managing Partner and President of CoinFund Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 2m
  4. 3 DAYS AGO

    Bits + Bips: Bitcoin Finally Acted Like a Hedge. Will It Last?

    For the first time in a geopolitical crisis, bitcoin held its ground while safe havens faltered. But can it keep holding if the VIX moves from yellow to red? --- Bits + Bips is spreading its wings Starting soon, new episodes will only be published on our brand‑new feeds. What you need to do: Click the links below. ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠Apple⁠ ⁠Spotify⁠ ⁠X⁠ Smash Follow or Subscribe. 🎉 Done. --- The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil is past $100 a barrel. The traditional safe haven playbook, from treasuries to gold, is failing to perform the way it should. And yet bitcoin is up 4% since the conflict started, holding steady in a tight range that Andy Baehr, newly installed as managing director of asset management at GSR, calls "base camp."  What signals should investors watch to know if the next move is up or down? Why does the VIX suggest calm when the world feels anything but? And why might the tokenization boom be built on demand that doesn't exist yet?  Baehr, who spent years constructing the crypto index ecosystem at CoinDesk, brings a structural lens to a market moment where nothing is where it should be. Host: ⁠⁠Steven Ehrlich, Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview Guest: Andy Baehr, Managing Director of Asset Management, GSR Links: Bitcoin = Safe Haven Is Bitcoin Now a Safe-Haven Asset? If So, Then It Could Be Hugely Undervalued at Just $70,000 How Bitcoin and Gold Reacted Differently to the Iran War Shock Hyperliquid Oil Perps The Hottest New Crypto Trade Is 24/7 Oil Futures Crypto Markets Track War Risk as Iran Conflict Endures Tokenization Wall Street Pushes Tokenized Stocks, but Institutions Aren’t Eager to Trade Them Nasdaq Partners With Kraken in Plan for 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    49 min
  5. 6 DAYS AGO

    Is the DeFi Mullet Strategy the Best Way to Bring Finance Onchain?

    Sid Powell and Paul Frambot on why Apollo, Cantor, and Coinbase are quietly building their financial products on DeFi rails, and what it means for lending.  Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges.  Get started at nexo.com/unchained Onchain lending used to be a crypto-native curiosity. Now Cantor Fitzgerald is extending credit facilities through it, Apollo Global Management is acquiring governance tokens, and Coinbase users are borrowing against Bitcoin to buy houses, all running on DeFi protocols operating in the background. Maple Finance CEO Sid Powell and Morpho co-founder Paul Frambot sit at the center of this shift, and they have very different reads on what it takes to make institutional adoption real.  What are the actual limits to onchain lending growth right now? Does the DeFi mullet model work for everyone, or only for specific use cases? And as DAOs across the industry stumble under the weight of public governance, what structures actually let a protocol move fast without losing trust?  This conversation gets into the mechanics, the trade-offs, and the deals that are quietly redrawing the lines between DeFi and traditional finance. Guests: ⁠Paul Frambot, Co-Founder & CEO at Morpho Labs ⁠Sid Powell, CEO & Co-Founder of Maple Finance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 13m
  6. 12 MAR

    Uneasy Money: How Hyperliquid Succeeded by Going Against Crypto's Ideology First Approach

    The crew digs into Hyperliquid's phenomenal rise. How did the perp DEX become TradFi's 24/7 casino? Thank you to our sponsors! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Fuse: The Energy Network ⁠⁠⁠ – Shift your energy use and earn rewards. ⁠⁠⁠⁠MultiChain Advisors -⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Growth & Capital Markets Partner You Need Hyperliquid is having its mainstream moment like Polymarket in 2024 and OpenSea in 2021. Amid the U.S.’s war on Iran, the platform has become a popular venue for speculators to express their market opinions. Uneasy Money hosts Kain Warwick, Luca Netz and Taylor Monahan dig into choices that have allowed Hyperliquid to succeed where many others before it have failed. In a single sentence: not putting ideology over the product's goals. Kain says the protocol may become unassailable in the future even as Luca says HYPE is bound to be a top five crypto by market cap. The crew also discusses Pudgy Penguin's new open world game Pudgy World. Luca says “crypto rails have to be a tech stack not a hook” explaining why the game relegated crypto to the background. Plus, how Across Protocol's move to pivot to only equity highlights the broken nature of tokens. Has Luca cracked the problem? Listen to find out! Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Links: Unchained: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oil Becomes the Hottest Trade on Hyperliquid Hyperliquid Launches $29 Million Policy Push in Washington Uneasy Money: Hyperliquid’s Dilemma After 10/10: Protect Itself or Its Users? The Aave DAO Is Collapsing. Is the Token Still a Good Investment? Uneasy Money: Why the AI Singularity May Already Be Out of Our Hands Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr
  7. 12 MAR

    DEX in the City: How Regulators Are Preparing for a World Without the Clarity Act

    The crew discusses whether prediction markets enable “Bloomberg terminal espionage,,” wonder how to regulate markets that could be on anything, dive into why the OCC is saying no to stablecoin yield and more. The SEC has submitted guidance on how securities laws apply to crypto to the White House. DEX in the City hosts Jessi Brooks, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos and TuongVy Le dig into what the proposal could mean for the crypto industry and whether it could be enough to provide developers regulatory clarity as anticipated market structure legislation stalls. Why is the agency submitting guidance to the White House? Plus, KK explains why current regulatory efforts could lead crypto to resort to more “come at me bro” legal tactics and Jessi covers why the industry may regret the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Chevron deference. Beyond the SEC's recent crypto regulatory move, the crew discusses the arrest of the son of a government contractor alleged to have stolen the U.S.’s bitcoin, what the DOJ's planned retrial of unresolved charges against Roman Storm suggests and why banks are up in arms over Kraken's “skinny” Fed master account. They also discuss why the crypto industry should tighten up security as Iranian groups target U.S. banking services and tech infrastructure. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital ⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TuongVy Le⁠, General Counsel at Veda Links: Unchained: ⁠SEC Sends Crypto Securities Framework to the White House Blame Exchanges for Holding Up the Market Structure Bill? - DEX in the City DOJ Pushes for Retrial of Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm Kraken Wins Direct Access to the Fed’s Payment System Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    53 min

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About

Crypto assets and blockchain technology are about to transform every trust-based interaction of our lives, from financial services to identity to the Internet of Things. In this podcast, host Laura Shin, an independent journalist covering all things crypto, talks with industry pioneers about how crypto assets and blockchains will change the way we earn, spend and invest our money. Tune in to find out how Web 3.0, the decentralized web, will revolutionize our world.

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