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Trading is no longer just a financial activity; it has become a spectator sport. In this episode, Threadguy explains how Gen Z’s internet-native fluency, built through sneaker markets, NFTs, and meme cycles, translates into a new kind of market intuition: attention, momentum, and mimetics. We delve into “Entertainment Finance,” where perps, prediction markets, and live trading are starting to resemble streaming and esports more closely than Wall Street. Along the way, we explore why “internet ca...
The Fed cut rates and announced $40B/month in T bill purchases. Is that the signal to buy back into crypto? Mike says no. In this episode, we explain why “QE light” is not real easing, the key indicators Mike needs before flipping risk on, and what Bitcoin’s onchain market structure suggests about where this cycle could go next. ---- 📣THE DEFI REPORT | FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE https://thedefireport.transistor.fm/ https://thedefireport.io/ https://x.com/the_defi_report https://x.com/JustDeauIt ---...
Bitwise’s Matt Hougan and Ryan Rasmussen return with 10 big predictions for 2026. From the case for $1M BTC (and why the classic four-year cycle may be dead) to a world where ETFs soak up more than 100% of new BTC/ETH/SOL supply. We get into Bitcoin volatility vs. mega-cap tech, crypto equities vs. tech equities, and why Polymarket could smash past its 2024 election-era highs. Plus: stablecoins as an “escape valve” that emerging economies may blame for currency stress, on-chain also known as “ET...
AI is becoming the most powerful surveillance machine ever built and most people are feeding it their deepest secrets without realizing who can read them. Proton founder Andy Yen joins Bankless to explain how Big Tech captures your identity, why AI chat logs are a privacy disaster waiting to happen, and what a self-sovereign, user-aligned future could look like. We explore how AI models profile you, why subscription business models don’t guarantee privacy, how Proton built Lumo without retaining...
The final Fed meeting of 2025 delivered a surprise rate cut, but the real story is how the market is reacting. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and David unpack what the new policy shift means for crypto liquidity, why regulators across the SEC, CFTC, and OCC are suddenly embracing onchain markets, and how Tom Lee’s massive ETH accumulation is reshaping sentiment. We also get into Ethereum’s growing momentum from ZK advancements and blob upgrades, the ZKsync Atlas rollout, Base’s bridge drama ...
ICOs are suddenly back, but this time the projects are real, the mechanisms are better, and retail isn’t shut out. Ryan and David break down why MegaEth, Monad, Aztec, Zama, and Infinex are launching public sales all at once, how onchain auctions are fixing 2017’s mistakes, and what regulatory clarity means for U.S. participation. They also dive into the rise of internet native capital markets on Ethereum, the shift away from airdrop farming, and why fair price discovery could be a defining them...
What was really happening inside the SEC during the Gensler years? Today, we sat down with Corey Frayer, former senior crypto policy advisor to SEC Chair Gary Gensler and now Director of Investor Protection at the Consumer Federation of America. We dig into how the agency thought about securities law, DeFi, Uniswap, stablecoins, SAB 121, and why platforms like Coinbase and Kraken ended up in the crosshairs. Corey defends the Gensler playbook while responding to the industry’s harshest criticisms...
At our Bankless Summit in Buenos Aires, four standout talks captured the frontier of crypto’s next chapter. Lincoln Murr lays out why x402 is emerging as the missing payment layer for the agentic internet. Shay Ketsdever explains how bots already run modern markets, and how programmable auctions and privacy can turn the bot economy into something that benefits people instead of exploits them. Michael Dong shows how real-time ZK proving unlocks a hundred-fold expansion of Ethereum’s computational...
Bitcoin hit a rare signal this week, dropping to its cheapest level relative to gold in nearly 15 years. Is that a buy signal or something deeper in the macro picture? Ryan and David break down what the BTC–gold anomaly really means, how liquidity, rates, and Trump’s surprise Fed Chair pick factor in, and whether the market is entering a shallow cycle instead of a true winter. We also cover Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade, Vitalik’s push to bring builders back to L1, Polymarket’s mainstream breakout a...
This episode showcases four of the most important talks from our Bankless Summit event in Buenos Aires for Devconnect, each capturing how Ethereum is evolving as it enters the real world. Tomasz K. Stańczak reveals the EF’s new priorities around developer acceleration, founder support, institutional engagement, and unifying the L2 ecosystem. Ansgar Dietrichs explains why Ethereum is shifting from long-term exploration to near-term execution, detailing the plan to 3x L1 scale annually and acceler...
Michael Nadeau called the top before the 10/10 crash. In this episode, he sits down with Ryan to explain why. They break down the onchain data that flipped him risk off, Bitcoin’s decisive break below the 50-week moving average, and why global liquidity and rate cuts may not rescue this cycle. Michael shares the price zones where Bitcoin becomes compelling again, how long-term holder behavior maps to past tops, and the framework he’s using to build a high conviction watch list for the next bull....
If crypto wins without privacy, did we actually win? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Aztec co-founders Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews to unpack their eight-year quest to build a private world computer for Ethereum, covering the Aztec ignition chain, zero-knowledge-powered “private intents,” and how you can route trades across L1 and L2s without exposing your strategies or balances. They dive into ZK Passport (turning your NFC e-passport into a proof of personhood), the coming breakdown of s...
Ethereum is transparent by design, and that’s a problem if you don’t want your entire financial life on display. Rand Hindi, co-founder of Zama, joins us to explain how fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) can turn Ethereum into an encrypted, confidential blockchain where contracts stay composable and UX feels exactly the same. We get into why blockchains were public in the first place, why “anonymous addresses” were never enough, how FHE compares to ZK and MPC, and what a world of private DeFi, e...
Happy Thanksgiving! Ethereum is heading into one of its biggest upgrades of the year. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and Anthony Sassano break down the Fusaka hard fork, what it ships for L2 scaling and gas limits, and why Justin Drake’s real-time ZK proving demo could reshape Ethereum sooner than expected. They revisit the four-year cycle debate, unpack Tom Lee’s “supercycle” conviction, and catch up on Monad’s mainnet launch, the CFTC clearing Polymarket for U.S. users, and growing concern...
Monad just launched Mainnet! That’s why Ryan sits down with Monad co-founder Keone Hon today. We ask the blunt question: do we really need another general-purpose L1? Why not just build this as an Ethereum L2 instead? Keone explains how Monad’s parallel, pipelined EVM works under tight consumer-hardware constraints (32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 100 Mbps), delivering ~500M gas/sec, 400ms blocks, and fast finality while preserving decentralization. Enjoy the episode! ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE ...
Global liquidity veteran Michael Howell joins to map out the “master variable” driving asset prices: a 65-month global liquidity and debt refinancing cycle that underpins booms, busts, and the recent “everything bubble.” He breaks down the coming debt maturity wall, rising repo stress, the shift from Fed QE to “Treasury QE,” and a new capital war between a US dollar stablecoin system and China’s gold-backed strategy. Plus, what all of this means for Bitcoin, gold, equities, and how to position a...
We analyze the crypto market's turbulence as Bitcoin falls below $90k, signaling potential bear market conditions. Also, it’s DevConnect! We discuss investor sentiment, and examine key updates like Vitalik Buterin's roadmap for Ethereum and Aave's new app. Tune in for essential market updates! ------ 📣 BLACK FRIDAY | BANKLESS PREMIUM https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, RE...
Ruchir Sharma dissects America's concentrated bet on AI, exploring its economic and market impacts, and pondering what the U.S. economy would look like without this tech boom. He also highlights global market opportunities, defensive investing strategies, and re-evaluates gold's role as a hedge. The discussion extends to specific international markets, quality stock investments, and Bitcoin's potential.
Bryan Johnson lays out “Don’t Die,” a moral framework that puts existence first and turns longevity into a shared fight against entropy. We pressure-test the hard stuff: selfishness, inequality, stagnation, and the so-called two-species future. Bryan argues these are solvable with smart societal engineering if “don’t die” is for everyone. He breaks down Blueprint as a practical on-ramp with evidence-based health, behavior, and social habits. We finish on crypto, from his Braintree days with Coin...
Market uncertainty? On this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and guest co-host Tom Schmidt dig into a jittery crypto market, Trump’s new economic ideas aimed at boosting sentiment, and whether the four-year cycle prophecy is finally catching up with Bitcoin. They also cover Coinbase bringing ICOs back to U.S. retail, Uniswap’s long-awaited fee switch moment, and JPMorgan launching a deposit token on Base. Plus: Zcash’s 4,000 percent surge, Ethereum’s renewed privacy push, Binance tightening rules on s...
Ethereum hasn’t reached full speed yet. Now it might. Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation outlines Lean Ethereum, a plan to optimise the stack so validators stop executing and start verifying. With zk proofs in under 12 seconds and on-prem provers around 10 kW, the base layer can reach gigagas capacity and roughly 10,000 TPS while getting more decentralized. Add Fossil, seconds-level finality, and post-quantum signatures, and the changes stick. We unpack the EthProofs race, the four-phase pa...
BlackRock’s Head of Crypto Robbie Mitchnick joins Ryan to unpack how institutions are actually allocating (and why correlation to “digital gold” matters), what the ETF data says about demand for BTC and ETH, and why the October leverage flush didn’t dent long-term adoption. We dig into BlackRock’s tokenization roadmap, from the BUIDL-style tokenized money market funds and the Genius Act angle to the stablecoin flywheel, plus what’s still missing: secondary liquidity and pragmatic regulatory clar...
Is the crypto bull market really over, or just pausing while AI takes the spotlight? On this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and guest co-host Haseeb break down Bitcoin’s 10/10 crash, hidden leverage, and the “Bitcoin silent IPO” thesis. They also cover the $128M Balancer hack, DeFi’s decentralization debate, L2 vanity metrics, Brian Armstrong’s prediction market stunt, and why Peter Thiel says Bitcoin’s becoming a BlackRock coin. ------ 📣UNISWAP UNO DECK GIVEAWAY | COMPLETE THE SURVEY TO ENTER http...
Payment chains are heating up. Not every “stablecoin chain” is playing the same game. Codex cofounder and CEO Haonan Li joins David to map the real landscape: what neutrality looks like in practice, why the bottleneck isn’t TPS but fiat-to-stable friction, and how on-chain FX could pull global flows. We dig into the Bear-Chain incentive trap. Why Codex chose to build as an Ethereum L2. The case for app-specific rollups that return value to ETH. And the growing split between projects that bundle ...
Micropayments were always meant to be part of the internet, but the technology never existed to make them work. Until now. David sits down with Sam Ragsdale, CEO of Merit Systems, to unpack x402, a new protocol reviving the long-dormant “Payment Required” status code to enable crypto-powered microtransactions across the web. They explore how x402 could transform how machines, AI agents, and humans pay for internet resources, reshape online business models beyond ads, and unlock a new economy of ...
Land isn’t just dirt under buildings—it’s the world’s oldest, strangest asset, worth an estimated $180T, quietly steering credit cycles, politics, and who gets to build the future. Economist editor and Money Talks host Mike Bird joins us to decode the “land trap”: why superstar cities underbuild, how mortgages turned banks into land-collateral machines, and what Japan’s 1980s super-bubble can (and can’t) teach us about China’s managed deflation today. We trace ownership from Babylonian stone led...
Luke Gromen makes the case that “debasement” isn’t a trade, it’s the new regime. We unpack why assets look strong in dollars yet stagnate in gold/Bitcoin terms, the global reserves shift back toward gold, how a U.S. gold reprice to $10k–$20k could fund a balance-sheet reset, the risks of “paper gold,” Bitcoin’s potential catch-up (and a possible East=gold, West=BTC split), AI as an accelerant, and a pragmatic portfolio framework for navigating a 100-year reset. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED ...
Markets got the treat they were waiting for with a Fed rate cut and pause on quantitative tightening, but prices still fell. Why? This week, Ryan and David break down why the markets got spooked, what Powell really said about December cuts, and what it means heading into November. We also cover MegaETH’s oversubscribed ICO, Monad’s airdrop, Polymarket’s confirmed token, and JP Morgan’s $34B Base token estimate. Plus Solana’s new ETF, Western Union’s stablecoin, Circle’s controversial L1 launch, ...
Neobanks might be the quiet coordination hack that makes Visa optional. David sits down with Frax’s Sam Kazemian to map the new payment stack: why cards today settle over Visa yet still onboard users into stablecoins, how Frax USD (payments) pairs with sFRAX USD (savings), and why Ethereum remains the “savings/issuance” base while specialized payment chains battle for flows. Sam unpacks Frax’s white-label issuance strategy and RWA plumbing, shares an institutional DD story that highlights reliab...
NBA Star Tristan Thompson and Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal break down why pro athletes are moving into Bitcoin, crypto, and onchain prediction markets. We cover stablecoin rewards after the Genius Act, Coinbase’s fight to preserve consumer yield and staking, the CFTC vs. state path for prediction markets, and Tristan’s new onchain app, basketball.fun. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, E...
