Bits + Bips

Unchained
  • 4.0 (13)
  • BUSINESS NEWS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Exploring how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. Hosted by Ram Ahluwalia, Austin Campbell and Chris Perkins. Livestream: Every Monday at 4:30 pm ET.

  1. 55M AGO

    Paul Tudor Jones Says Bitcoin Is the Best Inflation Hedge. Is He Right?

    Paul Tudor Jones called Bitcoin the best inflation hedge the same day it broke through 80 while equities sold off. The Bits + Bips crew debates whether he’s right — and what comes next for the store of value. Ram Ahluwalia sees quantum-resistant successor coins on the horizon. Chris Perkins argues the next backed asset may rely on energy or compute — not gold or Treasuries. Featuring Austin Campbell (@austincampbell), Ram Ahluwalia (@ramahluwalia), and Chris Perkins (@perkinscr97). Full episode: https://youtube.com/live/7MTkawyMU8o  Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One — coinbase.com/unchained If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts.  🔥 Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bits-bips/id1827931786   🔥 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuKiSkbYrUOOEEiYQEVPniQ   🔥 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6aSBMrOyi33aVDCULJ9mjN?si=NTLk-jl5QGeytA6-2kxMVQ&nd=1&dlsi=42f0b13dd53c4ba0

    8 min

  2. 3D AGO

    On Polymarket, You Can't Pose a Question. On Delphi, Anyone Can

    Why does Delphi call itself an information market instead of a prediction market? Ben Fielding, CEO of Gensys, says the difference is the direction of the question. On Polymarket, users cannot create markets — only suggest them. On Delphi, anyone can pose a question and pay for the world to answer it. Ben walks through the full thesis: the orange farmer who can finally hedge drought risk without going to JP Morgan, the flywheel that pulls machine learning models into markets as faster and more accurate information traders than any human, and why the long tail of markets nobody has thought to create yet is where the real opportunity sits. He also addresses the hardest question: how do you prevent a decentralized market platform from being used for markets no society should allow? His answer is the Uniswap vs. Coinbase distinction. Guest: Ben Fielding @BenFielding [confirm], CEO & Co-Founder, Gensys. Host: Steve Ehrlich @Steven_Ehrlich. This clip is from a longer conversation on decentralized AI infrastructure, information markets, and the AI token. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/cUz1PU8O3_8  We go live every Wednesday at 10 AM ET — subscribe to catch it live. Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts.

    12 min

  3. 3D AGO

    OpenAI Is Building an AOL. Here Is Why That Limits AI's Scale

    How does a decentralized AI network compete with companies spending hundreds of billions on data centers? Ben Fielding, CEO of Gensys, says the question misunderstands what scale actually means. The big AI labs are building walled gardens, exactly the way AOL built one in the early internet era. They will attract users, extract value, and make great products, but they will not reach the scale of an open system running on every device in the world. Ben traces the pattern through the early internet, through social media, and into machine learning, and explains why the window is still open for a decentralized alternative that can get to internet-level scale rather than Meta-level scale. Guest: Ben Fielding @BenFielding, CEO & Co-Founder, Gensys. Host: Steve Ehrlich @Steven_Ehrlich. This clip is from a longer conversation on decentralized AI infrastructure, information markets, and the AI token. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/cUz1PU8O3_8  We go live every Wednesday at 10 AM ET — subscribe to catch it live. Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts.

    9 min

  4. APR 26

    How the Kelp rsETH Hack Left Aave With $193M in Bad Debt

    The Kelp hack exposed a flaw at the center of monolithic DeFi lending. What comes next for Aave, for looping traders caught underwater, and for users who never knew the risk. A single compromised signature was enough.  When an attacker exploited Layer Zero's DVN network to mint 116,000 unbacked rsETH on Ethereum mainnet, Aave's unified pool design did the rest: within minutes, a $193M loan was originated against fraudulent collateral, ETH borrow rates went to 100% utilization, and thousands of leveraged looping positions flipped from positive carry to deeply negative.  Now Kelp faces a decision with no clean answer: socialize losses across all rsETH holders at a 17% haircut, or isolate the damage to the Layer 2 and blow through lenders on mainnet. Meanwhile, Aave's $250M umbrella module, designed precisely for moments like this, looks critically undercapitalized for a tail risk of this magnitude.  Blockworks researchers Luke Leasure, Shaunda Devens, and Carlos Gonzalez Campo walk through the mechanics of the exploit, the design choices that amplified it, and what the resolution scenarios mean for DeFi's future. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steven Ehrlich⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Head of Research, SharpLink Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luke Leasure (@0xMether), Head of Research at Blockworks Shaunda Devens (@shaundadevens), Research Analyst at Blockworks Carlos Gonzalez Campo (@0xcarlosg),  Researcher at Blockworks

    49 min

  5. APR 22

    DeFi's Security Ceiling: Why Lending Can't Be Like Uniswap

    After Bybit, the CDS hack, and Kelp DAO, Austin Campbell argues that DeFi's foundational assumption — that incoming transactions should be treated as legitimate — may no longer hold. Ram Ahluwalia pushes back: change that assumption and you risk giving up immutability and finality. Austin draws the distinction: an immutable chain and a skeptical transaction queue aren't mutually exclusive.   Michael Bentley, who built the Euler lending protocol, explains why the problem runs deeper than resources or audits. AMMs like Uniswap are self-contained; they don't care about the outside world. Lending protocols are structurally dependent on external prices, liquidity conditions, and third-party oracles — making true immutability unreachable. The question isn't whether to add centralizing safeguards; it's how many, and which ones, and whether DeFi can survive the trade-offs.   This clip is from a longer conversation on DeFi security, the $290M Kelp DAO hack, and the future of yield-bearing stablecoins. Full episode here: ⁠https://youtube.com/live/tB5_2lUy4fs⁠ We go live every Monday at 4:30 PM ET — subscribe to catch it live. Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠, ⁠YouTube⁠, ⁠Spotify⁠, ⁠X⁠, ⁠Unchained⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts.

    13 min

  6. APR 22

    Who's Really to Blame for the $290M Kelp DAO Hack?

    North Korea's Lazarus Group drained $290 million from Kelp DAO by compromising two RPC nodes feeding Layer Zero's single DVN, swapping the binary for a malicious one, and DDoSing clean nodes to force a failover. In 46 minutes, Kelp DAO managed to stop the bleed — but not before $290M was gone and DeFi TVL dropped $13 billion in 48 hours. Now Layer Zero and Kelp DAO are fighting publicly, with third-party analysts largely blaming Layer Zero for a default setup that left 40% of protocols exposed to a one-of-one verifier configuration.   Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins sit down with Michael Bentley, builder of the Euler lending protocol, to work through who bears responsibility, what a whole-government response to Lazarus Group actually looks like, whether AI can close the security gap, and what it would take for DeFi to finally price and transfer its own risk.   This clip is from a longer conversation on DeFi security, the $290M Kelp DAO hack, and the future of yield-bearing stablecoins. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/tB5_2lUy4fs We go live every Monday at 4:30 PM ET — subscribe to catch it live. Heads up!If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts.

    17 min

  7. APR 22

    Strategy's Preferred Stock Is Now a Stablecoin. And DeFi Has a Security Problem.

    The $290 million Kelp DAO hack, attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, has DeFi TVL down $13 billion in 48 hours. Do DeFi's foundational assumptions need to change? --- Heads up! If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠, ⁠YouTube⁠, ⁠Spotify⁠, ⁠X⁠, ⁠Unchained⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts. ---- DeFi TVL fell from $99.5 to $86.3 billion in 48 hours after the $290 million Kelp DAO exploit — the latest nine-figure attack attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, this time via a compromised Layer Zero bridge.  Meanwhile, a new class of yield-bearing instrument is staking a claim on capital fleeing private credit: Apyx's APY USD, backed by Strategy's STRC preferred stock, launched on Kraken this week with a 12% yield target and $180 million in supply after just seven weeks. Is STRC-backed yield a legitimate financial primitive, or a Bitcoin derivative with extra steps?  And as DeFi absorbs yet another devastating security failure, is the industry's core assumption — that incoming transactions should be treated as legitimate — finally due for an overhaul? Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins dig in with Parker White of Apyx and Michael Bentley of Euler. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of Bits + Bips, Zero Knowledge Consulting ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Parker White — @TheOtherParker_ — Founding Contributor, Apyx. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Bentley — @euler_mab — Former CEO, Euler Labs

    1 hr

  8. APR 20

    The Miner Sell Wall and Why Saylor Is Absorbing It

    FalconX global co-head of markets Josh Lim explains what's keeping Bitcoin range-bound near $75-76K: miner selling to fund high-performance compute transitions, breakeven retail holders looking for an exit, and an options market oversupplied with calls.  He also covers why the negative funding rates and low vol environment are less bearish than they appear when spot is cash-funded, not levered.  This clip is from a longer interview covering Bitcoin macro, altcoin rotation, Hyperliquid, and quantum risk. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/rDN5IHVhjfg  We go live every Monday at 4:30 PM ET — subscribe to catch it live.

    10 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Exploring how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. Hosted by Ram Ahluwalia, Austin Campbell and Chris Perkins. Livestream: Every Monday at 4:30 pm ET.

Information

  • Creator
    Unchained
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    28
  • Show Website
    Bits + Bips

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