Endgame with Amanda Cassatt

Serotonin

The world is changing at an accelerating pace—Endgame is here to make sense of it. Hosted by Amanda Cassatt, founder of Serotonin, this podcast brings you conversations with the visionaries driving breakthrough technologies and shaping the future. Join Amanda as she unpacks the trends, innovations, and paradigm shifts defining our time. Where is this all going? Let’s figure it out together. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen.

  1. Adam Back | Bitcoin's origins, the Satoshi mystery & why quantum won't kill it

    Jun 22

    Adam Back | Bitcoin's origins, the Satoshi mystery & why quantum won't kill it

    Adam Back invented the proof-of-work system that became Bitcoin's foundation. The New York Times says he's Satoshi Nakamoto. He says he isn't, but he was the first person Satoshi ever emailed. Every major publication is asking whether quantum computing will break Bitcoin. The consensus is nervous. Adam Back, the man who built Bitcoin's cryptographic foundation, is not. In this conversation, he explains why none of the quantum computers that exist today can perform a useful calculation, why you shouldn't expect a real threat before 2035 at the earliest, and why the institutions buying Bitcoin through BlackRock ETFs changed themselves. Not Bitcoin. They also get into the real state of building on Bitcoin, why Lightning Network channel numbers are shrinking is actually fine, how $2 billion in Mexican promissory notes ended up on a Bitcoin layer 2, and what a lifelong cypherpunk actually thinks about AI. Also in this episode - Why Lightning Network channel numbers are shrinking (and why that's fine) - How $2 billion in Mexican promissory notes ended up on a Bitcoin layer 2 - What a lifelong cypherpunk actually thinks about AI Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 0:30 Is Adam Back Satoshi? 1:37 Does the speculation bother him? 1:53 First contact: Satoshi reached out to Adam 2:53 Weirdest thing about being a Satoshi suspect 3:21 Hashcash and the CipherPunk mailing list 4:28 Why proof of work was the breakthrough 4:58 CipherPunk identity vs. BlackRock adoption 6:02 How he reconciles crypto anarchism with institutions 8:01 Are institutions changing Bitcoin or vice versa? 9:25 The case against institutional Bitcoin 10:19 Paper Bitcoin and synthetic derivatives 14:04 Why governments are buying gold, not Bitcoin 16:41 Has "build on Bitcoin" failed? 19:32 Lightning compression isn't a demand signal 19:57 Stablecoins and RWAs on Bitcoin layer 2 21:20 Why Mexican promissory notes ended up on Liquid 22:03 Adam's stance on quantum panic 23:33 The timeline skepticism  26:45 The danger of rushing a quantum solution 28:18 The security budget problem 31:13 What does a CipherPunk think of AI? Stay Connected Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440   Follow Adam Back  https://x.com/adam3us?lang=en

    36 min
  2. Your Body Is Not a Protocol. It's a Practice | Toby Shorin

    Jun 8

    Your Body Is Not a Protocol. It's a Practice | Toby Shorin

    Cultural theorist and essayist Toby Shorin joins Amanda Cassatt to explore one of the most urgent questions of the AI era: What happens to the human body and human meaning when thinking itself becomes commodified? Drawing on his essay “Body Futurism,” Toby argues that we’re witnessing a massive embodied turn in culture, from peptides and biohacking to looks-maxing and sports investment. But the real question isn’t just why people are obsessing over their bodies; it’s whether that obsession represents liberation or a new form of algorithmic hijacking. In this episode, they discuss: - Bryan Johnson’s “don’t die” philosophy and why it’s rooted in fear, not vision - The difference between a protocol and a practice, and its political consequences - Who actually benefits from the loneliness epidemic narrative - What the “AI mind virus” looks like from inside the Bay Area - Why poetry might be the only genuine escape from the optimization loop If you’re interested in the intersection of AI, culture, embodiment, and meaning, this conversation is not to be missed. Timestamps:  0:00 Introduction  2:44 Why everyone is obsessed with their body right now  7:08 The philosophy behind biohacking and morphological freedom  10:42 Why "don't die" is actually a fear-based philosophy  13:27 What AI really threatens  it's not your job  14:50 AI mastered chess. Chess adoption only grew.  18:05 Why PE firms are buying sports teams  20:41 Body as asset vs. body as practice  26:24 What is a narrative subsidy?  28:44 Who actually benefits from the loneliness epidemic  29:20 We forgot how to do the dance  31:52 Did Andrew Huberman invent seeing light in the morning?  32:44 How insurance culture took over everyday life  36:45 Two ways out of the optimization loop  38:00 The poetic way of seeing  40:29 Toby reads a poem he wrote this morning  42:09 The William Carlos Williams connection Stay Connected Subscribe to Endgame ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440   Follow Toby Shorin https://www.instagram.com/tobyshorin/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobyshorin

    42 min
  3. Ethereum Isn't Dying. It's Shipping| Binji Pande, Ethereum Foundation

    May 26

    Ethereum Isn't Dying. It's Shipping| Binji Pande, Ethereum Foundation

    Your identity, your assets, your privacy, do you actually own any of it online?  Binji Pande from the Ethereum Foundation says no. And he's spent his career trying to change that. In this episode, Amanda sits down with Binji to explore why crypto is really about redesigning human incentives, what digital rights actually mean, and what it would take to build a world where freedom online isn't a privilege. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction  03:21 How Binji got into crypto  05:17 If you can program money, you can change the world  09:53 Moloch, prisoner's dilemmas & why the system isn't evil, just indifferent  13:48 From Northwestern to Coinbase: breaking into crypto without a CS degree  15:12 The Ethereum tattoo and what it really means  18:23 Hardware. Software. Trustware.  20:05 How do you know if Ethereum is actually decentralized?  26:29 Ethereum's communication challenge  31:41 Digital rights: you can lock your bathroom door, why not online?  37:16 Privacy as dignity: data breaches, ZK, and the next frontier  43:19 CROPS: what the Ethereum Foundation actually stands for  44:44 Ethereum's roadmap: Is it shipping fast enough?  45:04 Canton, Tempo, competing chains, should Ethereum be worried? 47:00 The world worth building Stay Connected Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440   Follow Binji https://www.linkedin.com/in/binjix23/ @binji_x

    47 min
  4. TPS Is a Lie! What Actually Makes a Blockchain Worth Building On | Eunice Giarta, Monad Foundation

    May 13

    TPS Is a Lie! What Actually Makes a Blockchain Worth Building On | Eunice Giarta, Monad Foundation

    Everyone in crypto is chasing TPS Eunice Giarta thinks that's the wrong race entirely As co-founder of Monad Foundation, she spent four years building what she calls the Ethereum of high-performance blockchains  a chain with validators on six continents, in 30 countries and 58 cities, that doesn't sacrifice decentralization for speed. In this episode of Endgame, Amanda Cassatt sits down with Eunice to break down what actually makes a blockchain worth building on in 2026, what the real killer use case for Monad looks like, and why bear markets build better products than bull markets. But the most unexpected part isn't the tech it's the path. Eunice went from Merrill Lynch to Shutterstock to a pastry kitchen at Jean-Georges in New York. A Pi Day pandemic layoff sent her down the crypto rabbit hole. Four years later, she co-founded one of the most talked-about L1s in the space. Timestamps: 0:00 Why there's no solid high-performance chain yet 2:30 Monad's 200 validators across 6 continents 5:30 Placing Monad on the decentralization spectrum 9:00 Why TPS is a misleading metric 12:00 The real use case: on-chain order books 15:30 How to measure real demand vs. incentive-driven usage 19:30 What AI agents would use Monad for 22:00 RWAs and institutional adoption 24:00 Monad's token launch and the bear market 27:00 From trading analyst to pastry chef to blockchain co-founder 31:30 Favorite macaron: chocolate miso from Pierre Hermé Stay Connected Subscribe to Endgame https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440   Follow Eunice Giarta  https://www.linkedin.com/in/eunicegiarta https://x.com/0x_eunice?lang=en

    33 min
  5. Crypto Doesn’t Need to Replace Banks. It Needs to Replace Wallets. | Binance CEO Richard Teng

    May 4

    Crypto Doesn’t Need to Replace Banks. It Needs to Replace Wallets. | Binance CEO Richard Teng

    “A lot of users don’t need a bank. What they need is a wallet.” In this episode of Endgame, Amanda Cassatt sits down with Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, for a conversation about what crypto actually became and whether that’s the right thing. Richard spent three decades in traditional finance, including the Central Bank of Singapore, before joining Binance in 2021. He doesn’t argue like a convert. He argues like someone who watched the old system fail for thirty years and decided the new one had to work differently. They start at the founding question: is crypto self-sovereign freedom tech or licensed infrastructure run by a handful of platforms? Richard’s answer is that the frame is wrong. Centralized exchanges aren’t a betrayal of the movement. They’re the interface the movement needs to reach the 1.4 billion people the financial system never bothered to serve. From there they move through Binance’s regulatory strategy in markets like Dubai, why the Genius Act sent stablecoin volume past Visa in under a year, and why regulatory clarity is the unlock for institutional capital, not just compliance overhead. Amanda pushes on financialization risk, tokenization of ownership, and whether crypto has run out of native narrative. Richard’s case for the SAFU fund, recovering assets sent to wrong chains, and what a financial super app means in frontier markets is the clearest argument for why centralization isn’t just commercially convenient but structurally necessary for the thing to work at all. Timestamps: 00:00 - Is crypto still freedom tech or licensed infra? 00:55 - 1.4 billion unbanked: why the system fails them 03:00 - Why 65% quit after their first onchain transaction 05:04 - What a bank actually does  and what replaces it 07:30 - Binance as a financial super app for the excluded 09:30 - Binance does more for inclusion than governments 11:02 - China, protectionism and why countries need Binance 13:52 - The Dubai story: building a crypto hub from scratch 17:09 - Regulation as a moat vs regulation as a product 19:32 - The Genius Act and the stablecoin explosion 21:37 - Is compliance becoming incumbent protection? 24:39 - Binance's approach to the US market 26:29 - AI + Blockchain will rebuild every industry 28:42 - Will AI suck all trading value to the biggest firm? 33:11 - Binance AI Pro: what it actually does 36:46 - Crypto out of ideas? RWAs and the next narrative 39:14 - Why 24/7 trading changes everything 41:38 - Invisible crypto and the abstraction risk 45:58 - Hyperliquid vs Binance: who wins? 48:47 - Where does Binance's growth actually come from? 50:00 - The future: wallets replace banks 52:16 - The SAFU fund: $1B to protect users 54:23 - Crypto's real legacy: financial education 56:00 - Do banks really create money from a spreadsheet? Stay Connected Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440   Follow Richard  https://www.instagram.com/tengrich/ https://x.com/_RichardTeng

    56 min
  6. Does Your Blockchain Stand for Anything? | DoubleZero's Austin Federa

    Apr 27

    Does Your Blockchain Stand for Anything? | DoubleZero's Austin Federa

    “The block explorer is your x-ray machine. Open it up, and you find rooms full of people.” In this episode of Endgame, Amanda Cassatt sits down with Austin Federa, former Head of Strategy at Solana and co-founder of DoubleZero, for a rare, candid conversation shaped by shared history on opposite sides of the Ethereum–Solana divide. They unpack the real meaning of decentralization: is it a philosophy, a design choice, or just branding? The discussion moves from the Drift hack—revealing how a months-long social engineering attack exposed crypto’s underlying security culture—to broader questions about trust, control, and the human systems beneath supposedly autonomous technology. Along the way, they explore financial nihilism, the psychological impact of the internet on risk-taking, and whether blockchains should stand for anything beyond speed and efficiency. What happens to values like openness and censorship resistance once real money enters the system? And who carries the ideology when institutions drift from it? Timestamps: 00:00 Crypto values and philosophy 03:07 Speed and the evolution of blockchain design 06:05 Decentralization vs. centralization 08:58 Solana’s practical approach 11:48 FTX and Solana’s resilience 15:03 The role of decentralization in finance 17:58 Meme coins and perceived value 20:58 Financial nihilism and Gen Z 30:15 The psychology of comparison online 34:34 Roots of financial nihilism 37:41 What money actually is 41:21 The Drift hack and crypto security culture 53:00 Building the future: DoubleZero Stay Connected: Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Austin on X: http://x.com/Austin_Federa DoubleZero on X: https://x.com/doublezero Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440

    58 min
  7. Curation Is the Last Skill AI Can’t Replace | Amanda Cassatt

    Apr 8

    Curation Is the Last Skill AI Can’t Replace | Amanda Cassatt

    In this episode of Endgame, Amanda Cassatt cuts through the AI hype to explore what happens when creation becomes free. The result isn’t less competition—it’s more noise. She unpacks a web flooded with AI content, misaligned platforms, and the rising value of curation, taste, and real skill. From the future of digital work to the surprising role of crypto—where AI agents, stablecoins, and frictionless UX may finally unlock DeFi—this conversation dives into the paradox of abundance and why judgment matters more than ever. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction  02:21 What People Get Wrong About AI Right Now 04:36 Running to Stand Still: Skills and AI 08:27 AI's Sybil Attack on Content and Platforms 12:29 The Water Line Rising: Content Overload and Curation 21:08 Finding Nutritious Content in a Sea of AI-Generated Material 25:48 New Opportunities in Content Curation and Skill Sets 26:36 AI and Crypto: Future Intersections 33:14 Quantum Computing Risks and Opportunities 36:07 The Fintechization of Crypto and Narrative Shifts 38:01 Inextricable Values in Technology Stay Connected: Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440

    40 min
  8. AI Agents Are the New Economy | Animoca's Yat Siu

    Mar 25

    AI Agents Are the New Economy | Animoca's Yat Siu

    “The scammy elements of crypto are turning people off—and that’s something we need to fix.” In this episode of Endgame, Amanda Cassatt sits down with Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands, to unpack crypto’s evolution—from idealism to hype cycles—and what comes next. They explore AI agents, the open metaverse, and who actually benefits as technology scales. Yat argues blockchain was built for a future of billions of AI agents—and we’re closer than we think. The conversation also dives into creativity, education, and what it means to stay human in an increasingly automated world. At its core, this episode asks: who owns the system—and is the future being built one worth living in? Stay Connected: Yat Siu on X: https://x.com/ysiu Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast  Amanda on X:  https://x.com/amandacassatt   Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin_hq  Links to Follow: Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45B9szUxVXEwfCDA6uRxwq?si=HT9XXqF9Q2CcM9hfLbmkVg    Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440   Substack: https://substack.com/@UCInZsV3L1nDGoFjxoNUnPQQ

    57 min
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4 Ratings

About

The world is changing at an accelerating pace—Endgame is here to make sense of it. Hosted by Amanda Cassatt, founder of Serotonin, this podcast brings you conversations with the visionaries driving breakthrough technologies and shaping the future. Join Amanda as she unpacks the trends, innovations, and paradigm shifts defining our time. Where is this all going? Let’s figure it out together. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen.

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