Podcast
Unchained
Hosted by Laura Shin · EN
Crypto assets and blockchain technology are about to transform every trust-based interaction of our lives, from financial services to identity to the Internet of Things. In this podcast, host Laura Shin, an independent journalist covering all things crypto, talks with industry pioneers about how crypto assets and blockchains will change the way we earn, spend and invest our money. Tune in to find out how Web 3.0, the decentralized web, will revolutionize our world.
247episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Bits + Bips: The Interview — The $16 Trillion Repo Market Is TradFi’s Central Nervous System. Its Finally Coming Onchain
2d ago00:45:25Summary readyThe 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 get your podcasts. ---- The repo market is $16 trillion globally and it is, as Craig Burchell puts it, the oil that makes everything go. It is also almost entirely absent from on-chain finance — and that gap is creating real problems for RWA liquidity, stablecoin swap desks, and DeFi protocols trying to manage redemption queues. Steve Ehrlich sits down with Craig Burchell, head of lending at FalconX, and Matteo Pandolfi, CEO of on-chain credit infrastructure provider Pareto, to map exactly how repo works, what broke in 2019, why it translates extremely well into onchain finance. Matteo puts a $1 trillion figure on where on-chain repo gets in five years. Craig gives you one reason it gets there and one very honest reason it might not. Host: Steve Ehrlich, Head of Research at SharpLink and Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich Guest: Craig Burchell — Head of Lending, FalconX; previously Head of Lending at Membrane Finance. @_CraigBirchall Matteo Pandolfi — CEO & Co-Founder, Pareto (on-chain credit infrastructure). @pan_teo_ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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How Hyperliquid Benefits From Its New Deal With Coinbase Over USDC
3d ago00:36:21Summary readyCoinbase 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 brand and becoming the official USDC treasury deployer on Hyperliquid — a deal with $150 million in annual revenue implications for a platform that previously earned nothing from its $5 billion USDC float. Alex Weseley, institutional data lead at Artemis Analytics, walks through the math on the HYPE price move, explains why the deal had to be bilateral between Circle and Coinbase, lays out his $300 billion Coinbase thesis built on X402 and agentic commerce, and takes on the question Laura's been asking all week: is the Circle–Coinbase relationship heading for divorce? Host: Laura Shin, Host / Unchained Guests: Alex Weseley — Institutional Data Lead, Artemis Analytics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Uneasy Money: Why the Broken Pre-IPO Secondary Markets Won't Be Fixed Anytime Soon
4d ago01:16:11Summary readyAnthropic 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/unchained. Anthropic and OpenAI are moving to void secondary market trades — and Kain, Tay, and Luca think that's only going to work if they're serious about it, which means a lawsuit is probably coming. This week on Uneasy Money they trace the full anatomy of the pre-IPO SPV fraud wave, explain why synthetic perpetual markets will eventually price every in-demand private company continuously whether founders want it or not, and dig into the latest AI hacks. Tay breaks down how attackers are now using local on-device Gemini APIs to construct malware on the fly, and Kain shares the story of an agent that caught a slow-drain attack in 90 seconds that humans missed for 12 hours. Luca explains why Circle's Arc token is a brilliant move for Circle equity holders even if it changes nothing for ETH or Solana. Plus: the Aave/Kelp court update and why the Gerstein lawyers' argument that every victim needs to show up in court is fundamentally incompatible with how onchain recovery works. Hosts: Kain Warwick, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix Taylor Monahan, Security Expert Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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DEX in the City: Will the CLARITY Act Pass? Three Crypto Lawyers Give Their Odds
4d ago00:49:22Summary readyAs 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 specific developer protection provision in the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act that introduces a specific intent standard for charging developers, debate passage odds, and explain why Circle releasing a token as a public company signals a real shift in how the SEC thinks about the security/token distinction. They also unpack Chair Atkins' remarks at the SEC's AI+ Expo — a speech Vy argues shows the SEC and Congress are now in lockstep on modernizing securities regulation for on-chain infrastructure — and why, for the first time, that infrastructure includes vaults. Hosts: Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel at StarkWare. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. TuongVy Le, General Counsel at Veda Guest: Josh Riezman — Chief Legal and Strategy Officer, GSR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Bits + Bips: Why the AI Rally Keeps Growing — and Why Circle Launched Arc
5d ago00:53:02Summary readyRam 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, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts. ---- Circle just made history as the first publicly traded company to run a token presale, raising $222 million from BlackRock, Apollo, ICE, and a16z at a $3 billion valuation — and the stock went up. At the same time, Coinbase reported a $394 million loss, cut 700 jobs, and suffered a five-hour outage. Ram, Austin, and Chris work through what's really happening: whether Circle's Arc is the institutional payment rail the industry has been waiting for or a financial engineering play, whether Coinbase's troubles are cyclical or structural, and whether the AI-driven market rally is a bubble forming or a fundamental shift that makes the dotcom comparison wrong. Hosts: Austin Campbell (@austincampbell) — Founder, Zero Knowledge Consulting; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Why Arthur Hayes Thinks the AI Bubble Bursting Could Spark a Crypto Bull Market
6d ago00:57:53Summary readyArthur 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 writing — and now it's playing out. Sovereign nations are waking up to the fact that dollar assets don't buy oil when the strait is closed. On this episode, Hayes joins Laura Shin to explain why the structural unwinding of petrodollar recycling forces the Fed to print, why an AI deflationary bust could rival 2008 in severity before central banks step in, and why that path ends with Bitcoin substantially higher. He also breaks down his current highest-conviction positions: Hyperliquid, Zcash, and NEAR, and explains why he's deploying into what he calls maximum disillusionment in private crypto equity. Host: Laura Shin, Host / Unchained Guests: Arthur Hayes — CIO, Maelstrom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Uneasy Money: Who Owns Stolen Crypto? The $71M Fight Testing DeFi Limits
1w ago01:14:09Summary readyA 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 the KelpDAO hack, it was hailed as vigilante justice. Now lawyers representing families of North Korea's victims are claiming that same money in a New York federal courtroom, as if theft transfers title. Meanwhile, an AI agent running on Base got robbed via a prompt injection hidden in Morse code, and Coinbase cited artificial intelligence when announcing 14% layoffs. Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, Luca Netz, and Kelsie Nabben, author of Decentralised Digital Security, work through what DeFi's security layer actually is, who gets to decide when to act, and whether any of it survives the arrival of autonomous agents. Hosts: Kain Warwick, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix Taylor Monahan, Security Expert Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Guest: Kelsie Nabben, Research Fellow at RMIT University — Author of 'Decentralized Digital Security: Code, Community, Crisis' (2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Coinbase's Chief Policy Officer on Why He Believes the Clarity Act Will Pass
1w ago00:34:18Summary readyCoinbase'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. ======================================================== The Genius Act established that stablecoin issuers could pay rewards to users. The banks said no. For months, the American Bankers Association used the Clarity Act as a pressure point to reverse that decision — tying up a bill that was supposed to govern an entirely different corner of crypto. Now there's compromise language. Coinbase's chief policy officer, Faryar Shirzad, says it's workable. The banks say it doesn't go far enough. Meanwhile, the Clarity Act itself is racing toward a July 4th deadline, with a Senate Banking Committee markup expected the week of May 14. Ethics provisions around government officials holding crypto assets remain the hardest open question — and, as Shirzad puts it, one entirely above his pay grade. This is where the biggest crypto legislation in US history actually stands. Host: Laura Shin, Host / Unchained Guests: Faryar Shirzad (@faryarshirzad) — Chief Policy Officer, Coinbase Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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DEX in the City: With the Stablecoin Yield Compromise, Can the Clarity Act Get Passed?
2w ago00:39:52Summary readySeven 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 liable for foreseeable misuse of their tools, is the same theory that has been circling DeFi for years. Meanwhile, April ended as the most hacked month in crypto history, with over $600 million stolen in roughly 30 exploits, most of them linked to North Korea and its weapons programs. DeFi United, a $300M relief coalition led by Aave, emerged as the industry's response. KK, Vy, and Jessi unpack what it means when the 'code is law' defense starts to crack, why basic operational security is still not standard practice, and how close the Clarity Act actually is to crossing the finish line. Hosts: Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel at StarkWare. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. Jessi Brooks, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital TuongVy Le, General Counsel at Veda Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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A16z Crypto Raised $2.2 Billion for Fund 5. Here's How They Plan to Deploy It
2w ago00:55:08Summary readyFrom 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 than its previous fund, but the firm says that's deliberate. General Partner Ali Yahya argues we are entering a different phase of crypto's development: one where infrastructure is ready, regulatory clarity is arriving, and the competition for real users has begun in earnest. Two themes sit at the center of a16z's thesis — the collision of crypto and FinTech, and the emergence of AI agents as economic actors. But Yahya's most striking claim may be about blockchains themselves: that performance is no longer a moat, privacy is. And that the chains which get privacy right will accrue stronger network effects than anything the industry has built before. What does a world of privacy-dominant blockchains do to DeFi composability, to security, to the ability to track hackers? And where does the quantum threat actually stand? Host: Laura Shin, Host / Unchained Guests: Ali Yahya, General Partner, a16z crypto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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