Welcome to The Chopping Block, where Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner dissect the crypto world’s topics of the day. In this episode, we delve into the SEC's recent scrutiny of Uniswap, exploring the potential legal and regulatory impacts on the DeFi landscape. We also discuss the unprecedented flooding in Dubai and its effects on the recent crypto conference, highlighting the resilience of the crypto community in the face of natural disasters. Shifting our focus to B...
Apr 25, 2024•56 min•Ep. 636
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Jake Chervinsky, chief legal officer of Variant, discusses the current state of crypto regulation, touching on several ongoing legal and regulatory issues in the crypto space, including Uniswap’s Wells notice, the Coinbase case, the Tornado Cash case, the Ethereum Foundation investigation and more. Chervinsky argue...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 635
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Not only will April 20 (or 19, depending on which part of the world you are) mark the fourth Bitcoin halving, but also the launch of a new primitive on Bitcoin called Runes Protocol. Charlie Spears, co-founder of Blockspace Media, joined Unchained to talk about all things Runes, which is a messaging protocol that a...
Apr 19, 2024•43 min•Ep. 634
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. The Bitcoin halving is just around the corner, expected to be on April 19 or April 20. Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom, and Will Clemente, co-founder of Reflexivity Research discuss the rise in Bitcoin prices ahead of the halving, the impact of the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US, and the potential effects of the ...
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 633
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. On Wednesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a Wells notice to Uniswap Labs, the team behind the prominent decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, signaling a forthcoming enforcement action. Amanda Tuminelli, Chief Legal Officer at the DeFi Education Fund, joined Unchained to unpack what the case ...
Apr 12, 2024•41 min•Ep. 632
Welcome to The Chopping Block, where Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Robert Leshner dive into the crypto universe's hottest topics. In this episode, we have the CEO/Co-Founder of Monad to explore the fascinating world of Monad and its ambitious endeavor to revolutionize EVM scalability through innovative parallelization techniques. The discussion shifts gears to the recent turmoil in Solana, dissecting the network's congestion issues and the broader implications for blockchain efficiency and sc...
Apr 11, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 631
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron and co-founder Brendan Farmer discussed everything about the AggLayer, a decentralized protocol built by Polygon that enables fast, secure cross-chain interactions and allows different chains to use the same native bridge. This allows users to seamlessly move assets across chains in ...
Apr 09, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 630
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. This week, Ethena was in the spotlight after the airdrop of ENA, its new governance token. Ethena’s flagship product, the “synthetic dollar” USDe has amassed a $2 billion market cap in less than two months. Meanwhile, ENA’s market capitalization sits around $1.4 billion, with a fully diluted valuation of $15.5 billion. I...
Apr 05, 2024•43 min•Ep. 629
Welcome to The Chopping Block, where Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner dive into the crypto universe's hottest topics. In this episode, amidst the crypto bull market's fervor, the boys dissect the launch of Ethena and its repercussions, including a potential DeFi civil war spurred by integration disputes between MakerDAO and AAVE. The conversation then shifts to the broader implications of SBF's sentencing, exploring how this landmark legal decision could reshape the ...
Apr 04, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 628
On March 20, Fortune reported that the SEC was investigating the Ethereum Foundation and was looking for legal ways to label ETH as a security. Sam Enzer, partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and Greg Strong, partner at DLx Law joined Laura to discuss everything about the investigation and its implications. The guests speculate about the hidden motivations behind the SEC's investigation and discuss the likelihood of the approval of spot Ether ETFs. They also discuss the recent ruling in the SEC v...
Apr 02, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 627
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), FTX's co-founder, was sentenced to 25 years in prison and $11 billion in forfeiture for massive fraud, marking a historic moment in the crypto industry. Judge Lewis Kaplan emphasized the sentence's necessity due to Bankman-Fried's risk-oriented decision-making philosophy known as “expect...
Mar 29, 2024•49 min•Ep. 626
Welcome to The Chopping Block, where Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner dive into the crypto universe's hottest topics. In this episode, we're tackling pressing questions: "Are Memecoins a Good Bet for Institutional Investors?" and "Can BASE Catalyze a Shift in Ethereum's DeFi Dominance?" Amidst Ethereum's upgrades, we explore the impact on scalability and the Layer 2 landscape. The legal entanglements of KuCoin with the DOJ and Beba's lawsuit against the SEC prompt a ...
Mar 28, 2024•56 min•Ep. 625
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. In this episode, Laura interviews Meg Lister, GM of Grants Labs at Gitcoin, and Kevin Owocki, co-founder of Gitcoin. They discuss the evolution of Gitcoin from a centralized platform to a decentralized suite of protocols, Gitcoin 2.0, which allows any Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) based ecosystem to fund its pu...
Mar 26, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 624
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. On Wednesday, BlackRock, the world's leading asset management firm, announced the launch of a tokenized investment fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity (BUIDL) Fund, developed in collaboration with Securitize. Carlos Domingo, founder and CEO of Securitize, discusses the launch of the fund, which is nat...
Mar 22, 2024•40 min•Ep. 623
Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest news. In this week's episode, the squad dives into the riveting dynamics of meme coins and their undeniable sway over market sentiments, alongside a detailed exploration of BlackRock's groundbreaking leap into blockchain with its on-chain fund initiative. Is Solana redefining its role as the new haven for meme coin ventures, signaling a shift in blockcha...
Mar 21, 2024•44 min•Ep. 622
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Few crypto figures have been as vilified as Kyle Davies, the co-founder, along with Su Zhu, of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which imploded in mid-2022, losing $3 billion and bringing many pillars of the crypto industry down with it. Davies and Zhu have been accused of, among other things, lying about 3AC’s ass...
Mar 19, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 621
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Ethereum’s long-awaited Dencun upgrade finally went live this week, and many L2s immediately saw their transaction fees fall dramatically, as was the intention. Among them was the Coinbase-incubated Base, which was created by Jesse Pollak. Pollak joined Unchained to discuss the impact Dencun was having on Base; how he th...
Mar 15, 2024•41 min•Ep. 620
Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest news. In this week's episode the squad asks: Is MakerDAO setting a new precedent for DeFi protocols with its emergency rate hike? How significant is the role of meme coins in the crypto market's volatility, and what does Solana's prominence tell us about the future of blockchain platforms? Can Ethereum maintain its position as the backbone of DeFi amidst...
Mar 14, 2024•59 min•Ep. 619
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer, and Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder and CIO of Polychain Capital, an investor in EigenLayer, say that the developer ecosystem around EigenLayer is sprouting up very fast, which reminds Carlson-Wee of the developer excitement in Ethereum’s early days. They discuss the potential of...
Mar 12, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 618
Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner dive into the hot topics stirring the cryptocurrency world. Could Uniswap's fee switch revolutionize DeFi's economic model? What's the real potential of decentralized AI in blockchain, and how close are we to seeing its practical applications? And in the whirlwind of the crypto market, what makes meme coins like Jeo Boden not just viral, but influential? This episode offers a detai...
Mar 09, 2024•1 hr 17 min
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. In this episode, Eric Balchunas, senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, discussed the performance of Bitcoin ETFs since their launch two months ago. Balchunas noted that the ETFs' performance exceeded his expectations, with a faster and more intense "second wind" than anticipated. He attributed this to a combinati...
Mar 08, 2024•57 min•Ep. 616
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. In this episode of Unchained, Alex Pack, managing partner at Hack VC discusses the firm's recent $150 million fundraise, the challenges of raising capital in a bear market, and the firm's focus on early-stage Web3 infrastructure. He also shares his thoughts on the intersection of crypto and AI, the future of DeF...
Mar 05, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 615
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. After a week in which Bitcoin nearly hit its all-time high, Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy, joins Unchained to discuss the pivotal role of ETF inflows in Bitcoin's recent price surge, the nuanced behaviors of long-term versus short-term holders, and the potential impacts of upcoming halvings and...
Mar 01, 2024•48 min•Ep. 614
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Well-known white hat hacker and head of security at Paradigm samczsun recently took the wraps off a new security organization called the Security Alliance (SEAL) that offers a 911 hotline for immediate response to security threats, runs war games to simulate potential security incidents, and provides a safe harb...
Feb 27, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 613
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Fifteen years after the birth of Bitcoin, the network is now entering an era of remarkable innovation and change, according to Stacks' co-creator Muneeb Ali. On this episode of Unchained recorded at the Bitcoin Builders conference, Muneeb explores the complexities and advancements within Bitcoin's Layer 1 and La...
Feb 23, 2024•47 min•Ep. 612
Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto experts Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner bring you inside perspectives on critical topics in the crypto world. This week the boys dive deep into Starknet's airdrop controversies, the psychological toll of internet backlash on founders, and the groundbreaking Ethena project inspired by Arthur Hayes. This episode questions the effectiveness of airdrop strategies in user engagement, the resilience founders must muster against ...
Feb 22, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 611
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Celestia, a data availability layer for blockchains, was launched last October to much fanfare. The platform takes a modular approach to blockchains, allowing developers to post data onto it without the need for smart contracts or execution. This makes it extremely useful for scaling roll-ups and other layer two...
Feb 20, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 610
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Starknet made news this week for announcing what will be the largest initial airdrop by number of eligible addresses ever. But it faced heavy criticism online for many of the details of the airdrop, from the fact that Ethereum solo takers received almost 22% of the distribution to eligibility requirements that u...
Feb 16, 2024•45 min•Ep. 609
Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and special guest Dan Romero, co-founder of Farcaster, engage in a riveting discussion on decentralized social media and the burgeoning meme coin trend within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. This episode offers an in-depth analysis of Farcaster's innovative mechanisms for user engagement and its significant role in shaping the future of social interactions in the crypto domain. We delve into the mechan...
Feb 15, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 608
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. In the two weeks since Farcaster introduced its Frames feature that allows developers to easily add mini apps to users’ posts, the decentralized social network has become the talk of Twitter, now X, and increased its user base by ten times, according to co-founder Dan Romero. Romero joins Unchained to discuss wh...
Feb 13, 2024•2 hr 34 min•Ep. 607
