Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. Show topics: Why the ETH price slumped after the Merge even though it was successful Whether the BTC security model is flawed and why Robert thinks Bitcoin will change Why Tarun thinks Bitcoin won’t change and why he’s bearish on Bitcoin development Whether the Lightning Network can succeed with so many competitors getting be...
Sep 24, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 400
Pat Toomey, U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania, talks about legislation in the crypto industry, how to determine if something is a security, the future of CBDCs, and much more. Show highlights: the structural differences between crypto tokens and securities why Sen. Toomey is demanding crypto legislation why “regulation by enforcement” does not provide clarity how to determine if a token is decentralized whether proof of stake consensus turns tokens into securities Sen. Toomey’s take on the new frame...
Sep 23, 2022•42 min•Ep. 399
In a heated debate, Eric Wall, crypto blogger and investor, and Justin Bons, founder and chief investment officer of Cyber Capital, discuss Bitcoin’s security model, whether there are fundamental flaws in its design, and which is the best consensus mechanism. Show highlights: why Justin stopped believing in Bitcoin and why he calls it “technically one of the worst cryptocurrencies” how Eric’s views on Bitcoin changed over time the problems they see with Bitcoin’s security why Eric attacks BTC ma...
Sep 21, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 398
Justin Drake, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, talks about the Merge, how this transition affects Bitcoin, where Ethereum’s road map is going, and more. Show highlights: how Justin was feeling prior to and during the Merge whether the upgrade is complete or there are other things to watch out for why Ethereum has slashing and why it is a better form of removing any attackers the concern about centralization due to liquid staking derivatives providers, like Lido or Coinbase how the Merge af...
Sep 16, 2022•41 min•Ep. 397
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Emin Gün Sirer, the emperor of Avalanche, also joined the conversation Show topics: Gün’s take on the Ava Labs conspiracy story and whether there was any truth in the videos The impact of the Merge on ETH issuance and energy usage What’s going on with the ETHPoW fork, and how the team has been messing up The TL;DR of the t...
Sep 14, 2022•57 min•Ep. 396
Kevin Zhou, co-founder of Galois Capital, and Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of Wintermute, discuss how to trade the Ethereum Proof of Work fork, what the market is telling about the Merge, and whether the Merge affects Bitcoin. Show highlights: what will happen at the time of the Merge according to Kevin and whether there’s uncertainty when the ETH Proof of Work chain will emerge and how that affects trading opportunities the mistakes of the ETHPoW team, like repealing EIP-1559 what percentage ...
Sep 13, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 395
Preston Van Loon, cofounder and Ethereum core developer at Prysmatic Labs, talks about the Merge, its impact on an environmental level, and why he is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the Treasury Department over Tornado Cash. Show highlights: what the Merge is on a technical level and what its impact will be whether the proof of stake consensus mechanism makes the network more decentralized and secure what happens if the Merge fails and whether there’s a contingency plan why Preston founded Pr...
Sep 09, 2022•40 min•Ep. 394
Arthur Hayes, cofounder of BitMex, discusses how he’s trading the Merge, the impact of macroeconomic policy in the markets, his career as a writer, and much more. Show highlights: how crypto is reconfiguring how humans do finance over the internet why Arthur initially thought Ethereum was worthless how NFTs allow users to trade human culture and will unlock trillions of dollars of value why Ethereum doesn’t even need to be deflationary whether other layer 1s can take some market cap from Ethereu...
Sep 06, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 393
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi and Tom Schmidt chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Jill Gunter, the empress of Espresso, also joined the conversation. Show topics: Whether product management is the new consulting What is going to happen with macroeconomics and whether monetary policy is data-driven Why Jill’s faith is getting renewed, especially after listening to Fed authorities The TL;DR on the Ava Labs conspiracy stor...
Sep 03, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 392
Miles Jennings, general counsel at a16z crypto, talks about its new “can’t be evil” NFT licenses and how they help to solve many problems within the NFT industry. Show highlights: what “can’t be evil” NFT licenses are and what problems they solve what can these licenses achieve for content creators which are the five rights that the licenses address whether the NFT licenses help resolve hate speech issues for creators why a16z described its licenses as “can’t be evil” how these licenses will be ...
Sep 02, 2022•37 min•Ep. 391
Show highlights: the legal meaning of the OFAC sanctions on Tornado Cash and why it is causing complications how legislation is built for the fiat world, and how in DeFi and crypto there’s no clarity how miners have changed their behavior prior to the Merge whether a proof of work chain or a proof of stake chain would be more censorship resistant whether laws apply to validators in a PoS chain the ways in which the government could provide more clarification the different entities involved in Pr...
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 390
Travis Kling, Chief Investment Officer at Ikigai Asset Management, talks about how ETH changes after the Merge, what factors are going to affect its price action, and whether it can decouple from traditional assets. Show highlights: how the supply and demand dynamics of ETH will change after the Merge why he believes the Merge is the most significant catalyst in crypto history what the risks are in terms of price action whether there is an estimate of how much ETH will be locked up and how this ...
Aug 26, 2022•38 min•Ep. 389
Stephane Gosselin, cofounder and chief architect of Flashbots, and Uri Klarman, CEO of bloXrouteLabs, joined Unchained to discuss everything about MEV, an especially important topic now with the Merge coming. Show highlights: what MEV is, how it works under Proof of Work some examples of MEV, like frontrunning and arbitrage how MEV is a rabbit hole full of monsters the role of Flashbots in the MEV industry and how Flashbots enabled a reduction of gas fees for users how MEV-geth functions and how...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 388
Ari Redbord, Head of Legal and Government Affairs at TRM Labs, talks about the sanctions on Tornado Cash, and the role of blockchain analytics tools in crypto. Show highlights: Ari’s background as a federal prosecutor and his work for the US Treasury why regulators sanctioned Tornado Cash, according to Ari why the Ronin hack was important for regulators to start taking DeFi hacks more seriously the fact that for the first time the Treasury Department sanctioned software whether the Office of For...
Aug 19, 2022•39 min•Ep. 387
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Laura Shin, host of Unchained and author of The Cryptopians, also joined the conversation. Show topics: What Tornado Cash is and why it got sanctioned by the OFAC The difference between Tornado Cash and blender.io Whether privacy is dead as a category and whether regulators are going after it How these sanctions have a negat...
Aug 18, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 386
Surojit Chatterjee, chief product officer at Coinbase, comes to talk about what products Coinbase is building, how it can thrive in such a competitive landscape, how to onboard billions of users into crypto, and much more. Show highlights: how Surojit got into crypto and ended up at Coinbase what sets Coinbase apart from the competition how to bring billions of customers to crypto Surojit’s mental model of a bridge between the fiat world and the crypto world how Coinbase is integrating its main ...
Aug 16, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 385
Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, talks about Tornado Cash, why it was sanctioned, and what this means for privacy in crypto. Show highlights: what Blender.io is and how it relates to Tornado Cash how hackers have used Tornado Cash to launder money whether the Office of Foreign Assets Control made a mistake, according to Jerry how Americans were affected by the sanctions why Jerry believes OFAC should have done an analysis to estimate how many people would be impacted by its decisi...
Aug 12, 2022•39 min•Ep. 384
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Hasu, the gourmand of governance and Rune Christensen, chief mischief maker at MKR, discuss how to manage a DAO, their respective visions for MakerDAO, and much more. Show topics: What MakerDAO is, how DAI works and whether it is the “central bank” of DeFi How the visions for MakerDAO of Hasu and Rune differ Whether Maker ...
Aug 11, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 383
Layne Haber, Co-founder of Connext Network, discusses the Nomad bridge hack, how it happened, and what can be done to prevent these exploits. Show highlights: what Nomad is and how it works how the hack occurred and what the vulnerability was how much TVL the protocol had and how much of it was drained why the Nomad hack was unique how this exploit resembled the DAO hack on Ethereum the bounty program that Nomad offered and how hackers responded to it how Nomad is working with law enforcement, a...
Aug 09, 2022•31 min•Ep. 382
Kevin Zhou, co-founder of Galois Capital, comes to talk about the possibility of a Proof of Work chain on Ethereum after the Merge, the LUNA death spiral, how he plans to play the Merge, and much more... Show highlights: how Kevin got started in crypto what Galois Capital is and what its investment thesis is why Kevin was more vocal than most about the possibility of the LUNA death spiral whether Kevin made money out of the Terra collapse and what was his strategy what the difficulty bomb in Eth...
Aug 05, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 381
Lyn Alden, founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, and Mauricio di Bartolomeo, cofounder of Ledn, discuss how inflation could affect the digital asset industry. Show highlights: how Mauricio’s upbringing in Venezuela and firsthand experience with inflation led him to Bitcoin what a “long-term debt cycle” is and why Lyn thinks the 2020s could be similar to the 1930s and 1940s the difference between inflation and hyperinflation how inflation changes consumer investing and purchasing decisions wh...
Aug 02, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 380
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Balaji Srinivasan discusses his latest book, “The Network State, how different digital tools like crypto will help empower network states, and analyzes how crypto fits into the current political environment. Show topics: why Balaji wrote a book and why he is so enthralled with a digitized future what a “network state” is, an...
Jul 31, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 379
Marisa Tashman, policy counsel at Blockchain Association, analyzes the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to name nine tokens as securities and investigate whether Coinbase lists securities. Show highlights: why the SEC named tokens as securities in an insider trading case where no exchanges or token teams are listed as defendants what happens if the Coinbase insider trading case is settled or goes to court why the SEC’s actions should be considered “regulation by enforcement...
Jul 29, 2022•32 min•Ep. 378
Two crypto law experts, WassieLawyer and Adam Levitin, analyze the bankruptcies of 3AC, Celsius, and Voyager. Show highlights: the difference between Voyager and Celsius “custody” and “earn” deposits why Celsius commingling customer custody and earn deposits could make it harder for creditors to get their money back what similarities and differences the Voyager and Celsius bankruptcies have how Chapter 11 bankruptcy works why Wassie and Adam believe Celsius might have engaged in shady business p...
Jul 26, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 377
Adam Cochran, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures, discusses the impact of 3AC’s impending liquidation. Show topics: why 3AC founders (and family members) are listing themselves as creditors what the “corporate veil” is and why it matters regarding 3AC where retail investors stand in the pecking order of creditors why Adam doesn’t believe we know the full story about 3AC’s downfall, despite liquidators leaking a 1,000-page report about it what creditors might do with 3AC’s yacht why Adam is less wor...
Jul 22, 2022•38 min•Ep. 376
Nelson Rauda, Salvadoran journalist for El Faro, comes to talk about the impact of Bitcoin in El Salvador, the needs of Salvadoran people, Bitcoin City and the Bitcoin Bond, and much more. Show highlights: Nelson’s story and how he began covering BTC what kind of politician and president Nayib Bukele was before BTC what the financial reality was for Salvadoran people before the implementation of BTC the reasons for the high rates of unbanked people in El Salvador how Bukele changed the monetary ...
Jul 19, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 375
In a highly educational conversation, Wassielawyer, a lawyer specializing in restructuring and insolvency, discusses the bankruptcy and liquidation of Three Arrows Capital, plus sheds light on similar processes unfolding with Celsius and Voyager. Show highlights: Wassielawyer’s experience as a lawyer and his professional background what the liquidation process looks like and what drives a company to get into this situation what the creditors of 3AC can expect from the liquidation process and who...
Jul 15, 2022•41 min•Ep. 374
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Anatoly Yakovenko, Tsar of Solana, joins the show to discuss the use cases of Solana, whether it’s actually a blockchain, how Solana scales, and much more! Show topics: What Anatoly thinks of Andre Cronje's opinion that Solana is not a blockchain Why Solana has had so many instances of downtime Whether Solana is the NASDAQ o...
Jul 14, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 373
Ryan Berckmans, Ethereum investor and community member, and Alexandre Bergeron, Bitcoin investor, discuss Lido’s dominance as a liquid staking provider, whether that issue can be resolved, and how it could be a centralizing force for Ethereum. Show highlights: what stETH is, what the uses cases are for stETH, and why it is important how Lido had a first-mover advantage and how that kicked off network effects whether the liquid staking derivatives system is one of a “winner-take-all” how much of ...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 372
Amir Haleem, CEO of Nova Labs and founder of Helium, talks about the use cases for Internet of Things (IoT), how blockchain and crypto help to construct a decentralized internet infrastructure, and what is the future of Helium. Show highlights: what Helium is and what it is trying to solve how, after struggling for years, introducing crypto tokens, finally helped Helium grow who the users of Helium are and how they differ from each other how Helium grew to have one million devices around the wor...
Jul 08, 2022•44 min•Ep. 371
