Crypto’s old leaders are struggling, but new winners are breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the rise of HYPE, Zcash, and Venice, the macro bear fuel markets are ignoring, the EF talent exodus, and why David selling his last ETH may mark a new era for Ethereum and Bankless. --- 📣METAMASK | $100,000 ONDO GM CHALLENGE https://bankless.cc/OndoOnMetaMask --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🟦 COINBASE ONE | MEMBER MONTH https://bank...
May 22, 2026•1 hr 11 min
Bitcoin may be outgrowing the “digital gold” narrative. David sits down with Strive Chief Risk Officer Jeff Walton to unpack how Bitcoin-backed credit products like SATA and Strategy’s STRETCH could turn BTC into digital capital, why Jeff says the “Ponzi” framing misunderstands the balance sheet, how 13% yield and daily dividends could disrupt credit markets, and why this new financial layer may expand Bitcoin’s TAM far beyond gold. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://bankless.cc/OKXapp --- BA...
May 21, 2026•1 hr 18 min
Zcash is having its first real narrative moment in years. David sits down with Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain and Mert Mumtaz to unpack why privacy may be crypto’s missing store-of-value primitive, why Zcash is being framed as “private Bitcoin,” how institutional adoption could normalize shielded money, what AI and onchain surveillance change about the privacy debate, and why quantum risk could become a real catalyst. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankles...
May 19, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Two surprise Democrat votes just rerated the entire crypto policy timeline. After the Senate Banking Committee advanced the Clarity Act on a bipartisan basis, Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn moved his odds of the bill being signed this year from a coin flip to 75%. He and David map the seven-week sprint to the president's desk, the ethics-provision standoff that could still sink everything, the bank lobby's quiet obstruction game, and why the stablecoin yield compromise leaves the rea...
May 18, 2026•51 min
Markets are ignoring every warning sign as stocks hit new highs, but crypto may finally have its catalyst. Ryan and David break down the CLARITY Act’s key vote, Wall Street’s Ethereum push, Bitcoin’s $80K test, and why private AI stocks are creating chaos onchain. --- 📣GALAXY | INSTITUTIONAL DIGITAL FINANCE https://bankless.cc/Galaxy --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🟦 COINBASE ONE | GET 20% OFF https://bankless.cc/coinbase-o...
May 15, 2026•1 hr 5 min
Anthropic's secondary market is tens of billions of dollars deep, stacked with SPVs on top of SPVs charging 10% fees plus carry, and almost entirely opaque. Dio Casares of Patagon breaks down how it actually works: which deals Anthropic blesses and which get cease-and-desists, why fake share certificates show up in 10-20% of executed deals, what tokenized equities and pre-IPO perps actually represent, and the mess of lawsuits and stuck shares coming when Anthropic finally IPOs. ------ 📣SPOTIFY ...
May 14, 2026•44 min
AI is no longer just a technology story. It is becoming a political fault line. Jasmine Sun joins Bankless to unpack the rise of AI populism, why backlash against data centers and AI labs is spreading across strange political coalitions, and whether jobs, inequality, and SuperPAC money could turn AI into a defining 2028 election issue. --- 🎬 DEBRIEF | RYAN & DAVID BREAKDOWN THE EPSIODE https://www.bankless.com/podcast/debrief-will-ai-populism-decide-the-2028-election --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TO...
May 13, 2026•1 hr 22 min
AI stocks are ripping, crypto is following, and the question is whether this is the next leg higher or the final frothy phase before a reset. Ryan and Michael Nadeau break down why Bitcoin is so tied to the NASDAQ right now, how today’s AI boom compares to 1999, and what investors should watch if the bubble keeps inflating or finally starts to burst. Michael Nadeau & The DeFi Report: https://x.com/JustDeauIt https://bankless.cc/BTDR-RSS --- 📣THE DEFI REPORT | 20% OFF ANNUAL PLANS https://ba...
May 12, 2026•1 hr 6 min
North Korea isn’t just hacking crypto anymore, it’s studying it, infiltrating it, and turning DeFi’s weakest links into a state-run revenue machine. This time around, Ryan and David sit down with Ari Redbord of TRM Labs to unpack the Drift hack, the $6B DPRK crypto crime machine, how stolen funds move through THORChain, Bitcoin, OTC desks, and Chinese laundering networks, and why the fightback may require everything from better DeFi security to real-time Beacon alerts and offensive cyber. --- 🎬...
May 11, 2026•1 hr 34 min
Stocks and AI are ripping to new highs, and crypto is getting pulled along for the ride. Ryan and David break down whether this rally is real or too frothy, what the CLARITY Act still needs to survive, why Coinbase layoffs are colliding with billion-dollar crypto raises, and what Saylor selling Bitcoin would actually mean. 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polyma...
May 08, 2026•1 hr
Spoiler alert: This episode contains spoilers for the documentary Finding Satoshi. Bill Cohan and Tyler Maroney unpack their new documentary Finding Satoshi, a four-year investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. They explore why Satoshi’s identity still matters, the cypherpunk roots of Bitcoin, the public interest behind the mystery, and what the search reveals about privacy, money, power, and the mythology at the heart of crypto. ------ 🔎 FINDING SATOSHI | USE CODE: BANKLESS (20% OF...
May 04, 2026•1 hr 16 min
Markets are ripping despite $120 oil and an escalating war. Ryan and David break down why the AI boom is drowning out macro risks, whether a wave of trillion-dollar IPOs could mark the top, and how DeFi just bailed itself out after its biggest hack ever. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🟦 COINBASE ONE | GET 20% OFF https://bankless.cc/coi...
May 01, 2026•1 hr
$MEGA token is live, but the bigger story is what the launch says about the future of L2s. Co-Founders Shuyao and Lei join Bankless to unpack why MegaETH tied its TGE to app milestones, why USDM and proximity markets could become core revenue streams, and how the team is thinking about appchains, AI agents, security, and Stage 2 decentralization. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKE...
Apr 30, 2026•1 hr 14 min
Rory Johnston, the “oil quant,” joins us to explain why the Hormuz crisis could become the biggest oil shock in history. Oil markets are already screaming. Supply is trapped, inventories are being drained, and the market may still be underpricing the scale of the disruption. If the Strait stays closed, Rory says the path to $200 oil is no longer crazy. It may be the next stop. This is oil, geopolitics, inflation, and markets all colliding at once. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SP...
Apr 29, 2026•2 hr 10 min
Has Bitcoin already bottomed, or are investors still looking at the wrong signals? Jordi Visser joins Bankless to argue that AI is destroying software moats, reshaping inflation, and pushing capital toward scarce assets, with Bitcoin at the center of that shift. We get into his “AI is the new QE” thesis, the scarcity-versus-abundance portfolio, why the S&P may struggle in an AI regime, what a more muted Bitcoin cycle looks like, and where he still sees upside across the rest of crypto. --- �...
Apr 27, 2026•2 hr
Markets are hitting new highs, but crypto just took a major hit. Ryan and David break down the $300M KelpDAO exploit and why it exposed deeper flaws across DeFi and Layer 2s, including Arbitrum’s controversial decision to freeze funds. They also explore whether AI will drive deflation or inequality, unpack a new bullish ETH thesis, and debate why the biggest risks in crypto may be building beneath the surface. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premi...
Apr 24, 2026•1 hr 30 min
A $280M DeFi exploit exposed the hidden fragility of crypto’s most trusted systems. Dan Elitzer and Odysseus break down how the attack happened, why bridge risk and protocol composability made the damage so severe, what Arbitrum’s intervention means for immutability, and why DeFi now needs an aerospace-grade security mindset to survive the AI era. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankles...
Apr 23, 2026•1 hr 14 min
Ethereum may be one of the most underappreciated assets. In this conversation, Michael McGuiness and Vivek Raman lay out the case for ETH as “productive money”, a monetary asset with the store-of-value properties of gold and Bitcoin, plus the ability to compound through network activity. We unpack the $250K ETH thesis, why traditional DCF models miss the bigger picture, and why Ethereum’s role as the settlement layer for a tokenized economy could unlock massive monetary premium. ------ 📣SPOTIFY...
Apr 21, 2026•1 hr 24 min
Austen Allred joins Bankless to unpack Kelly Claude, the AI agent he has given an LLC, bank accounts, a token, and even a human employee. They explore how Kelly finds software opportunities, ships apps to the App Store, learns through orchestration and factory-style workflows, and why crypto rails may be the missing layer for agent-to-agent commerce. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION M...
Apr 20, 2026•1 hr 15 min
Markets are ripping back to all-time highs, but crypto still isn’t following suit. Ryan and David break down the V-shaped recovery driven by Iran de-escalation, why Bitcoin is still stuck in range, and the growing bull vs bear divide across macro and onchain data. They also unpack Saylor’s STRC “money printer,” the World Liberty DeFi controversy, and the SEC’s surprise ruling that just gave DeFi a major win. Plus: the Bitcoin community’s plan to freeze Satoshi’s coins and what it means for the f...
Apr 17, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Why has the dollar remained dominant despite rising debt, geopolitical strain, and growing challengers? Barry Eichengreen joins Bankless to trace the history of global reserve currencies. From Spanish silver and the Byzantine solidus to sterling and the modern dollar, Barry explains the conditions that make a currency rise, endure, and eventually fall. We explore fiscal discipline, rule of law, military power, gold, China, and crypto to understand what history suggests about the dollar’s future....
Apr 16, 2026•1 hr 17 min
Has crypto already bottomed, or is more pain still ahead? Mike and Ryan break down the bull and bear case in full, from Bitcoin fair value and market structure to global liquidity, AI demand, and the macro risks still hanging over markets. Mike explains why he thinks the setup still looks more like a bear market than a new uptrend, even if the odds are close. It’s a sharp episode on how to navigate a market that could break either way. Michael Nadeau & The DeFi Report: https://x.com/JustDeau...
Apr 14, 2026•1 hr 1 min
Michael Saylor thinks Bitcoin is headed to $21 million, but the real story in this conversation is how he believes it gets there. In his first appearance on Bankless, Saylor breaks down Strategy’s evolving capital machine, why STRC may be the most ambitious instrument the company has built yet, how he thinks about quantum risk without panic, why his view on Ethereum has become more constructive, and what he means when he says the endgame is giving the world an 8% bank account forever. --- 📣SPOT...
Apr 13, 2026•1 hr 38 min
Markets are rallying on a fragile Iran ceasefire, but the real risks may be getting closer. David and Haseeb break down Anthropic’s secretive new AI model and why it could expose vulnerabilities across crypto, from smart contracts to core blockchain infrastructure, plus the growing divide around “Q-Day” and how urgent the quantum threat really is. They also unpack Iran’s unexpected use of Bitcoin in global trade, the White House’s stance on stablecoin yields, and why the market feels stable on t...
Apr 10, 2026•1 hr 7 min
Can Ethereum become one economic zone again? Martin Koppelmann and Friederike Ernst from Gnosis explain how real-time proving and the Ethereum Economic Zone could reconnect fragmented rollups, unify liquidity, and give specialized chains seamless access to Ethereum’s settlement and security. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🪐GALAXYONE | SOLANA STAKING http...
Apr 09, 2026•58 min
NYSE and Securitize are laying the rails to bring real, issuer-backed securities onchain. Michael Blaugrund of NYSE and Carlos Domingo of Securitize break down how blockchain-native equities could work in practice: transfer agents, tokenized issuance, interoperable trading infrastructure, 24/7 markets, and what it will take for public stocks to move from legacy rails to crypto rails. T They also explore how onchain equities could unlock faster settlement, better shareholder utility, and new DeFi...
Apr 07, 2026•1 hr 5 min
What if Bitcoin’s biggest strength becomes its fatal weakness? Nic Carter joins Bankless to unpack why the latest quantum papers changed the threat model, why a 2029 migration window could leave Bitcoin dangerously behind, what a real post-quantum transition would require, and why the fight over Satoshi’s dormant coins may become the most explosive governance battle in Bitcoin history. --- 🎬 DEBRIEF | RYAN & DAVID UNPACKING THE EPISODE https://www.bankless.com/podcast/debrief-bitcoin-has-3-...
Apr 06, 2026•1 hr 14 min
Google just dropped a major quantum warning for crypto, claiming a breakthrough that could accelerate the timeline to breaking Bitcoin and Ethereum’s core security. Ryan and David unpack what changed, how real the threat is, and why the industry may need to act sooner than expected. Plus: Trump signals three more weeks in the Iran conflict and markets shrug it off, a $285M Solana DeFi hack exposes critical flaws, Ethereum’s new plan to unify L2s, and why crypto wallets are rapidly turning into f...
Apr 03, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Three macro forces are converging that almost no one is pricing in correctly. Jeff Park returns to Bankless to lay out what he calls the "certain truths" shaping markets for the next two decades: collapsing demographics across every major economy, wealth concentration that now exceeds even the Gilded Age, and a labor market being structurally hollowed out by AI before robots even arrive. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR...
Mar 30, 2026•1 hr 28 min
We examine the proposed Clarity Act and its impact on stablecoin yields and crypto finance. Ryan and David discuss geopolitical tensions in Iran and their effects on global markets. Highlights include Tom Lee's ETH staking venture, the NYSE's stock tokenization, and emerging quantum computing developments. We also touch on Coinbase’s stock dip, Tether’s auditing, and Fannie Mae's acceptance of crypto as collateral. --- 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- BA...
Mar 27, 2026•1 hr 1 min
