KK, Jessi, and Vy Le call out the silence from CoinDesk and industry organizations after the Consensus after-party was held at E11even. Plus: Clarity’s odds. Thanks to our sponsor! Coinbase One Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan coinbase.com/unchained The CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9, but Katherine, Jessi, and Vy Le are not popping champagne. KK puts passage odds at 35-40%. Vy Le came down from 90% after only two conditional Democratic votes ou...
May 22, 2026•58 min
Rebecca from Jito Labs joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun for a regulation deep-dive covering the CLARITY Act's stablecoin yield compromise and presidential ethics sticking points, CME and ICE's lobbying war against Hyperliquid's RWA perps, the prediction market legal battle heading to the Supreme Court, and whether the SEC's tokenized securities innovation exemption will actually matter. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshne...
May 21, 2026•1 hr 14 min
USDC became Hyperliquid's stablecoin infrastructure, and the 30-year broke 5% for the first time since 2008. Austin, Ram, Chris, and Gordon Liao of Circle work through who wins. --- Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained . 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 , ...
May 19, 2026•58 min
CME and ICE want regulators to rein in Hyperliquid, which delivers 24/7 derivatives markets that incumbents can't match. Can it be brought onshore? ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained . ======================================================== CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange have asked the CFTC to regulate Hyperliquid, the offsho...
May 19, 2026•48 min
The repo market is $16 trillion globally and most people have never heard of it — until the plumbing breaks. Craig Burchell of FalconX and Matteo Pandolfi of Pareto explain how it works and why bringing it on-chain is the next big unlock for DeFi. --- 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 ...
May 16, 2026•45 min
Coinbase just became the official USDC treasury deployer on Hyperliquid. Alex Weseley of Artemis explains how this boosts Hyperliquid’s annual revenue by 25%. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained . ======================================================== The morning this episode was recorded, Coinbase announced it was acquiring the USDH bran...
May 15, 2026•36 min
Anthropic is voiding secondary market trades. Who gets hurt — WhatsApp scammers, Forge buyers, or the founders? Plus: why continuous synthetic pricing is coming for every pre-IPO company. Thank you to our sponsors! Multichain Advisors : Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at multichainadv.com . Coinbase : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/u...
May 15, 2026•1 hr 16 min
As a new CLARITY Act draft dropped, KK, Vy, and guest Josh Riezman of GSR give their passage odds and explain the one developer protection provision that matters most. Thanks to our sponsor! Coinbase One Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan coinbase.com/unchained A new draft of the CLARITY Act just landed — all 300-plus pages of it — and Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, TuongVy Le, and guest Josh Riezman of GSR didn't wait to dig in. On this episode they break down the specifi...
May 14, 2026•49 min
Ram says the entire market is now one giant AI trade. Chris argues the boom is backed by real fundamentals. Austin asks: is AI creating value for the right companies? --- Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained . 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 , ...
May 13, 2026•53 min
Arthur Hayes sees one force driving markets right now: governments printing money to finance AI and war. He explains why that ends with Bitcoin much higher — and what could derail it. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained . ======================================================== Maelstrom CIO Arthur Hayes called the Tehran toll booth scenario in...
May 12, 2026•58 min
A legal battle over frozen KelpDAO hack funds is forcing DeFi to answer questions it has long avoided. Thank you to our sponsors! Coinbase One : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained . Multichain Advisors : Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at multichainadv.com . When the Arbitrum Security Council froze $71 million in funds tied to th...
May 09, 2026•1 hr 14 min
Coinbase's chief policy officer explains why the bank lobby failed to kill stablecoin rewards — and what 'workable compromise' actually means for crypto users. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Adaptive Security : Test and strengthen your company’s defenses against AI deepfakes and synthetic identities at adaptivesecurity.com . Coinbase One : Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained . =================...
May 08, 2026•34 min
Seven lawsuits blame OpenAI for enabling a mass shooting. Could the same legal theory come for DeFi? Thanks to our sponsor! Coinbase One Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan coinbase.com/unchained Seven families just sued OpenAI in federal court, arguing ChatGPT was a defective product that helped plan a mass shooting. OpenAI's own safety team flagged the risk eight months earlier and did nothing. The legal theory being tested here, that software developers can be held lia...
May 08, 2026•40 min
From AI agents as economic actors to quantum threats and prediction market regulation, Ali Yahya of a16z lays out the investment thesis behind a16z crypto's fifth fund. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One 20% off first year of annual plan + $50 Bitcoin bonus. Offer valid until May 31. coinbase.com/unchained ======================================================== a16z crypto just closed its fifth crypto fund at $2.2 billion — smaller th...
May 07, 2026•55 min
Missiles in the Strait of Hormuz. Brent jumps 5%. Bitcoin breaks through $80. The Bits + Bips crew reads the geopolitical tape — and explains why crypto is shrugging it off. --- Thank you to our sponsor! Coinbase One — coinbase.com/unchained 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. -...
May 07, 2026•1 hr
A prediction market trades on outcomes. An information market trades on knowledge. Fielding makes the case for the latter. --- 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. ---- What if the biggest constraint on AI is not compute or data, but trust? Ben Fielding, CEO and co-founder of Gen...
May 03, 2026•51 min
$606 million in DeFi exploits in one month. Two of the space's sharpest risk thinkers debate whether lenders are being paid anywhere close to enough. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Coinbase One 20% off first year of annual plan + $50 Bitcoin bonus. Offer valid until May 31. coinbase.com/unchained Citrea Bitcoin changed how money works. Satya changes how Bitcoin scales. citrea.xyz/unchained ======================================================...
May 03, 2026•1 hr 7 min
Pump.fun set fire to $370 million in tokens. Luca lays out the airdrop math that says they should have done the opposite. Thank you to our sponsors! MultiChain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create $50B+ in enterprise value for 80+ clients over the past 4 years. They're the partner to help navigate markets. Build real traction today at multichainadv.com Pump.fun had a choice with $370 million worth of its own tokens. It burned them. On this week’...
May 01, 2026•1 hr 15 min
Is the era of protocol bailouts upon us? The Chopping Block crew and MegaETH's Shuyao Kong debate Defi United’s community-funded rescue, the KPI vesting experiment shaking up token launches, whether DeFi yields truly underprice risk, and the first major PolyMarket insider trading bust—all delivered with the usual insider banter you won’t hear anywhere else. Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the lat...
Apr 30, 2026•1 hr 1 min
One side wins the OpenAI-Microsoft divorce, Ram calls a 19% earnings growth year 'bananas,' and Chris wants the US to hack back against DeFi exploiters. Here is the full rundown. --- 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. ---- Chris Perkins and Ram Ahluwalia cover a lot of ground this week: ...
Apr 29, 2026•58 min
Microsoft restructured its agreement with OpenAI, and Ram Ahluwalia has a clear verdict: Microsoft won. In this segment from Bits + Bips, Ram explains the three things Microsoft secured from the new deal, walks through the contract-breach context that shifted the negotiating leverage, and argues that Microsoft now holds a free call option on all of OpenAI's future model development, at no additional cost. Chris Perkins (@perkinscr97) — Co-Founder & Managing Partner, 250 Digital Asset Managem...
Apr 29, 2026•3 min
People think of Aave and Morpho as competitors. But Morpho only lost $1 million when North Korea drained $300M from a DeFi protocol. The architecture explains why. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Coinbase One 20% off first year of annual plan + $50 Bitcoin bonus. Offer valid until May 31. coinbase.com/unchained Citrea Bitcoin changed how money works. Satya changes how Bitcoin scales. citrea.xyz/unchained Ether.fi 15% cash back on food and ride ...
Apr 29, 2026•38 min
Luke Leasure and Shaunda Devens of Blockworks Research explain how three compounding failures, Kelp's one-of-one bridge signer, Layer Zero's permissive default settings, and Aave's failure to flag it as a collateral risk, set up the conditions for the exploit. Shaunda Devens then breaks down the monolithic pool design that concentrated risk, showing how 98% of rsETH collateral was backing a single leverage looping strategy. This clip is from a longer conversation on the Kelp rsETH hack and its i...
Apr 28, 2026•10 min
KelpDAO’s hackers left telltale signs pointing to one culprit, North Korea. Then, in a surprise move, the Arbitrum Security Council decided to fight back. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! As Bitcoin's application layer, Citrea gives you access to the first trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable platform and a native stablecoin for Bitcoin, ctUSD. You can now participate in Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, payments, Bitcoin yie...
Apr 26, 2026•1 hr 8 min
The $300M KelpDAO exploit became a watershed moment for DeFi, and the Arbitrum Security Council voted froze $70M worth of stolen funds. Is this a slippery slope or learning from history? Thank you to our sponsors! MultiChain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create $50B+ in enterprise value for 80+ clients over the past 4 years. They're the partner to help navigate markets. Build real traction today at multichainadv.com The largest DeFi hack of 2026 start...
Apr 24, 2026•1 hr 20 min
A $300M bridge exploit is forcing the question DeFi has been avoiding: when users lose money, who is actually responsible — the protocol, the infrastructure provider, or both? Thanks to our sponsors! * As Bitcoin's application layer, Citrea gives you access to the first trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable platform and a native stablecoin for Bitcoin, ctUSD. You can now participate in Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, payments, Bitcoin yield, trading and predictions. You get...
Apr 24, 2026•48 min
The Chopping Block crew and guest Monet Supply break down the $200M Kelp DAO bridge exploit, finger-pointing between LayerZero, Kelp DAO, and Aave, the wild “reverse hack” Arbitrum bailout, and what it all means for DeFi lending protocol risk, L2 trust, and the future of socialized losses in crypto. 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’re joined by Monet Supply, DeF...
Apr 23, 2026•1 hr 2 min
Digital Asset’s CEO faces pointed questions about Canton’s core claims and admits something surprising about the network’s architecture. ======================================================== As Bitcoin's application layer, Citrea gives you access to the first trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable platform and a native stablecoin for Bitcoin, ctUSD. You can now participate in Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, payments, Bitcoin yield, trading and predictions. You get expanded...
Apr 22, 2026•1 hr 26 min
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 lates...
Apr 22, 2026•1 hr
Bitcoin's spot-led rally looks healthy on the surface. But derivatives say conviction is thin. Josh Lim from FalconX on what the market structure is actually telling you right now. --- Thank you to our sponsors! MultiChain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create $50B+ in enterprise value for 80+ clients over the past 4 years. They're the partner to help navigate markets. Build real traction today at multichainadv.com As Bitcoin's application layer, Citrea gives you ...
Apr 19, 2026•45 min
