Bankless
Bankless is a podcast that serves as a comprehensive guide to crypto finance, covering topics such as DeFi, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies. It aims to help listeners level up their understanding and go bankless.
Episodes
ROLLUP: Crypto Bullish Again? | OpenUSD vs USDC | Robinhood Chain | Trump’s $1.4B Haul
Crypto looks bullish again, but the receipts are complicated. David and Ryan unpack OpenUSD’s USDC threat, Robinhood Chain’s tokenized stocks, Saylor’s hedge-fund pivot, Venice’s token dilemma, Cloudflare’s stablecoin payments, and Trump’s $1.4B crypto haul.
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How Ondo Is Bringing Stocks and Perps Onchain | Ian De Bode
The stock market is starting to move onchain, and Ondo is one of the teams building the rails. Ian De Bode joins David to explain how Ondo brought tokenized SpaceX stock to Ethereum minutes after trading began, why tokenized equities need real market liquidity instead of shallow DEX pools, and how Ondo Perps could unlock a new generation of RWA trading by using tokenized stocks as collateral.
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Strategy is Trapped & in Crisis — "It's Basically a Hedge Fund Now" | Jeff Dorman & Matt Walsh
Michael Saylor’s Strategy bought itself time, but did it actually solve the problem? David sits down with Jeff Dorman and Matt Walsh to unpack Strategy’s increasingly complex capital structure, why $STRC and MSTR are now fighting for oxygen, whether Saylor may need to sell Bitcoin, and why the company is starting to look less like a levered BTC play and more like an actively managed hedge fund.
Ethlabs: The New Org to Make Ethereum Win | Ansgar & Caspar
Ethereum has a new R&D lab, and its mission is blunt: make Ethereum and ETH win. In this episode, David sits down with Ansgar and Caspar, two co-founders of Ethlabs, to unpack why the organization exists, how it complements the Ethereum Foundation, and what it means to put Ethereum back on offense.
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ROLLUP: Bitcoin Breaks Below $60K | Saylor’s Three Bad Options | ETH Labs | The Quantum Clock
Markets are bleeding as Bitcoin breaks below $60K and Strategy faces its biggest test yet. Ryan and David unpack Saylor’s three-way squeeze, ETH Labs vs. the EF reset, quantum timelines moving up, and Illinois’ new crypto tax.
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AI, Surveillance, and the Fight for Digital Sovereignty | Near's Illia Polosukhin
What happens when powerful AI requires an ID, governments can restrict access by country, and your most private data flows through centralized systems? NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin joins David to explain why AI export controls could fracture the internet, how nationalized AI could become a surveillance layer, and why decentralized, user-owned AI may be the only real alternative. They also unpa
"The Fed Can't Print Moore's Law" - How the AI Crash Sends Bitcoin to $1M | Arthur Hayes
Arthur Hayes is back on Bankless, and he’s taking the W off the table. After selling HYPE, NEAR and ZEC, Arthur walks through why the AI trade started to look less asymmetric, why oil and geopolitics may still be the bear case no one wants to price, and why ETH may offer one of the cleaner setups in crypto today. Then the conversation turns bigger: AI capex, circular revenue, China’s cheap models,
ROLLUP: Saylor Risk? | Warsh’s New Fed | SpaceX IPO | Coinbase’s Everything Exchange
Equities are rallying, but Bitcoin is breaking down. David and Tom unpack Saylor’s STRC stress, Warsh’s first FOMC, SpaceX’s mega-IPO, Jito’s breakout, Coinbase’s Everything Exchange, and why perps may be crypto’s next real growth engine.
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How Re is Rebuilding the $1T Reinsurance Market with Stablecoins | Karn Saroya & Avichal Garg
Re is bringing the $1T reinsurance market onchain. Founder Karn Saroya and Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg join David to unpack how stablecoins can become a new capital source for insurance, why real-world reinsurance may offer crypto’s missing “real yield,” and how Re is using Ethereum, smart contracts, and AI to compete with legacy giants like Lloyd’s of London, Munich Re, and Swiss Re. They als
Why The Pokémon Card Market Is Blowing Up | Andy8052
Pokemon cards are suddenly one of the hottest markets in collectibles. But why now, and what does it have to do with crypto? Andy8052 joins David to break down the rise of digital pack-opening platforms, the nostalgia-driven bull case for Pokémon, why grading companies have a stranglehold on the market, and how millions of dollars of real-world cards are slowly moving onchain. Are tokenized collec
Perps Are Coming Onshore | CFTC Chairman Mike Selig
Perps are coming onshore. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig joins David to unpack the first U.S.-regulated Bitcoin perpetual futures contract, the end of regulation by enforcement, and what comes next for Coinbase, Kalshi, Kraken, Gemini, Hyperliquid, Lighter, and the broader U.S. perp market. They also discuss which assets could list next, how U.S. leverage will differ from offshore exchanges, and why equ
ROLLUP: One More Dip? | Saylor Sold | IPO Season | Ethereum vs ETH
Bitcoin is back at Biden-era prices, ETFs are bleeding, and Saylor just did the thing he said never to do: sell. Ryan and David unpack whether crypto has one more drop left, what trillion-dollar IPOs reveal about broken capital markets, and why their ETH debate may be the real fight for Ethereum’s future.
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Is $LIT Cheap? | Will Price and Flip
Hyperliquid has become the breakout perp exchange of crypto. But is the market missing its biggest competitor? Delphi’s Flip and DeFi investor Will Price join David to make the case for Lighter, a ZK-powered Ethereum L2 with zero-fee retail trading, white-glove distribution, real-world asset perps, and a token buying back revenue at a surprising rate. Is LIT just a Hyperliquid beta trade, or is it
Venice is Here to Win: How a Private AI Company Plans to Take On OpenAI and Anthropic
AI is quickly becoming the interface through which people think, work, and make decisions—but most users have no idea how much personal data they're handing over in the process. Jon and Jesse from Venice join David to make the case for privacy-first AI, explain why Venice is aiming to become a mainstream consumer AI brand, and explore how $VVV and DIEM transform inference into a crypto-economic pr
ROLLUP: Bitcoin’s Confidence Game | Bitmine’s ETH Bet | Token Rotation | U.S. Perps
Bitcoin is bleeding, STRC is off peg, and Saylor’s “never sell” machine is facing its first real confidence test. David and Haseeb unpack whether Strategy can survive without selling BTC, why Bitmine’s ETH play may be stronger but riskier, and what select token strength, U.S. perps, and Coinbase’s Ethena deal reveal about crypto’s next phase.
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Capitol Hill War Stories from a DC Lobbyist Who’s Seen It All (SBF, Gensler, Elizabeth Warren)
Crypto policy in Washington has gone from punchline to power center. David sits down with Ron Hammond, Head of Policy and Advocacy at Wintermute, for a rare inside look at how crypto actually moves through DC: the SBF era, Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto army, Gary Gensler’s SEC, bank lobby pressure, Trump’s crypto conflicts, the Clarity Act fight, and why privacy and self-custody may be the next m
"ZODL is to Zcash What Coinbase Was to Bitcoin" | Josh Swihart on ZEC’s Awakening
What happens when every payment, wallet, and onchain interaction becomes searchable by governments, companies, adversaries, and AI? Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, joins David to explain why Zcash is having a major privacy comeback, how ZODL and the Zashi wallet helped unlock real shielded adoption, why the shielded pool may be the most important ZEC metric, and what i
ROLLUP: False Strength? | ETH Crisis | Altcoin ATHs | Satoshi’s Coins
Crypto is splitting in two: Bitcoin and ETH look weak, while HYPE, ZEC, NEAR, and VVV keep breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the strange market divergence, Ethereum’s crisis of faith, and whether this rally is real or false strength.
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NEAR’s AI Money Thesis: Intents, Privacy, and Tokenomics | Sal Ternullo
NEAR keeps showing up in strange places: cross-chain wallets, privacy apps, AI infrastructure, and now the emerging agent economy. Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN, joins us to explain why he thinks this is not another NEAR pivot, but the original thesis finally coming into focus. They dig into NEAR Intents, AI money, tokenomics, privacy, fee capture, agentic commerce, and why SVRN is trying to commercia
Cloudflare Needs 100M TPS from Crypto to Fix the Internet | CEO Matthew Prince
The internet is about to be flooded by machines, and Matthew Prince thinks the old business model is not ready. The Cloudflare co-founder and CEO joins Bankless to explain why AI agent traffic could overtake human traffic by 2027, how crawlers are changing the economics of content, why ads and subscriptions may not survive in their current form, and how x402, stablecoins, and pay-per-crawl could c
ROLLUP: David Sold His ETH | EF Exodus | Hyperliquid’s Breakout | Stagflation Fears
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.
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Bitcoin’s $300T Credit Market Opportunity | Jeff Walton
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 e
"Crypto Without Privacy Isn't Crypto" - The Zcash Bull Case | Tushar Jain & Mert Mumtaz
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 ris
Clarity Act Odds Jump to 75% After Surprise Senate Vote | Alex Thorn
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 e
ROLLUP: Is the Bull Back? | The Clarity Act | Wall Street on Ethereum | Anthropic Nukes Perps
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.
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The $200 Billion Shadow Market Behind Anthropic's Stock | Dio Casares
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 repr
Will AI Populism Decide the 2028 Election? | Jasmine Sun
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.
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How Long Will the AI Boom Continue? The #1 Question for Crypto Investors | Michael Nadeau
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.
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Why North Korea Is Winning Crypto Crime and How to Fight Back | Ari Redbord, TRM Labs
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
ROLLUP: Crypto’s Nasdaq Problem | The CLARITY Act | Saylor Selling? | ETH L1 Scaling
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.
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“Finding Satoshi”—How a Private Investigator Solved the Mystery of Bitcoin’s Creator | Bill Cohan & Tyler Maroney
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
ROLLUP: $120 Oil vs New Highs | AI Boom Masks War | IPO Top Signal | DeFi Bailout
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.
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MegaETH Token Launch with Co-Founders Shuyao and Lei
$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.
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$200 Oil by June?—The Biggest Oil Shock in History | Rory Johnston on The Hormuz Crisis
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, geo
Has Bitcoin Bottomed? Jordi Visser on AI, Inflation, and Moats
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
ROLLUP: $300M DeFi Hack Fallout | Arbitrum Freezes Funds | AI Deflation Debate | Productive ETH
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 $280M DeFi Exploit That Changes Crypto Forever | Dan Elitzer & Odysseus
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.
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Productive Money: The Most Bullish Case for Ethereum ($250K) | Michael McGuiness & Vivek Raman
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
Can AI Agents Build Real Businesses? | Kelly Claude creator Austen Allred
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.
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ROLLUP: Markets at ATHs | Saylor’s STRC Bid | Trump DeFi Scandal | SEC Clears DeFi
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 De
Why Hasn't The Dollar Fallen? | Lessons from Currency Historian Barry Eichengreen
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,
Up or Down from Here? Bears vs. Bulls
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 navigat
"Fix the Money, Fix the World" — Michael Saylor's Master Plan (plus questions on Quantum and Ethereum)
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, a
ROLLUP: Iran Ceasefire Rally | Anthropic’s “Mythos” Model | Q-Day Divide | Stablecoin Yield Debate
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
Will The Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) Rebuild $ETH Dominance? | Gnosis Martin Koppelman & Friederike Ernst
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.
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The Largest Securities Exchange in the World is Coming Onchain | Michael Blaugrund of NYSE and Carlos Domingo of Securitize
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
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Bitcoin Has 3 Years to Survive | Nic Carter on Bitcoin’s Quantum Vulnerability
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.
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ROLLUP: Google’s Quantum Warning | Trump’s Iran Speech | Ethereum Economic Zones | Drift Hack
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 exp
3 Megatrends Every Investor Needs to Know: Demographics, Wealth Inequality, & the End of Labor (with Jeff Park)
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.
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ROLLUP: The World is On the Clock | The Clarity Act | Crypto Mortgages | Bitmine Staking
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
The Economics of AGI: Why Verification Is the New Scarcity w/ Christian Catalini
MIT economist Christian Catalini joins Ryan and David to unpack his new paper, "Some Simple Economics of AGI," which argues that the scarce resource in the AI economy is no longer intelligence but verification: the human capacity to check, judge, and certify that AI output is correct. Christian walks through the two cost curves reshaping every industry (cost to automate vs. cost to verify), explai
Illia Polosukhin: Why AI Agents Are Still Useless (And What Fixes Them) | NEAR Founder on IronClaw
NEAR founder and Transformer co-author Illia Polosukhin joins us to break down why today’s AI agents still fall short, what’s missing to make them actually useful, and how IronClaw could unlock secure, private, autonomous AI.
We also explore Illia’s bigger thesis: AI becomes the interface, blockchains become the backend, and both reshape how humans, agents, and digital markets interact.
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Ethereum’s Quantum Strategy with Justin Drake
Quantum used to be crypto’s distant sci-fi problem. Justin Drake says it now has a clock. In this episode, we unpack what “Q-Day” actually means, why Justin thinks 2032 is the date the entire industry should be planning around, and why Ethereum is targeting 2029 to get post-quantum ready.
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ROLLUP: Crypto Momentum | Regime Shift? | Payments War | Prediction Boom | SBF on Netflix
Ryan and David break down a historic week for crypto as the SEC and CFTC finally deliver long-awaited clarity, classifying major tokens and reshaping the market. At the same time, Bitcoin is outperforming stocks and gold amid global tensions, raising the key question: is this a real regime shift or just a relief rally? They also cover the rise of prediction markets, the emerging battle for agentic
Tempo Mainnet: The Race to Agentic Commerce
Tempo Mainnet is live, but this episode isn’t really about just another chain launch. It’s about a bigger claim: that AI agents are about to need native money, and that the internet may need a new payment layer to support them. Georgios Konstantopoulos and Brendan Ryan join Bankless to unpack why Tempo launched with agentic payments front and center, what MPP actually is, how it compares to x402,
Trump's Grand Strategy: Iran, China & The New World Order | Kamran Bokhari
A deep dive into Trump’s emerging grand strategy and the geopolitical logic behind the Iran conflict.
Kamran Bokhari joins Bankless to unpack how the U.S. is trying to reshape the Middle East, manage tensions with China and Russia, and transition from direct intervention toward a new model of burden-sharing, regional power balancing, and global restraint.
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Ethereum Foundation's New Mandate Has The Community Divided | Bankless Takes
The Ethereum Foundation’s new mandate has reignited one of Ethereum’s oldest debates:
Should it stay laser-focused on cypherpunk values, or lean harder into adoption, product, and market share?
Ryan and David debate CROPS, self-sovereignty, ETH as money, and whether the EF is protecting Ethereum’s soul or holding it back.
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Robinhood CEO: "Gen Z Is the Most Retirement-Savvy Generation Ever" | Vlad Tenev
The next great battle in finance may not be over stocks, crypto, or even payments. It may be over where the $90 trillion great wealth transfer actually lands. In this episode, Robinhood founder and CEO Vlad Tenev returns to Bankless for a fast-moving conversation on how Robinhood wants to position itself for that generational handoff, why he believes 24/7 markets and tokenization are inevitable, a
ROLLUP: Chaotic Era | Oil, Jobs, Credit | Nasdaq x Kraken | BlackRock Staked ETH | Roman Storm Retrial
Ryan and David break down a week where war hit markets, and the safe-haven playbook broke down. Oil spiked, gold failed, bonds sold off, the dollar caught the flight to safety, and crypto somehow bounced right through it. Then they unpack Trump’s public pressure campaign against banks over stablecoin yield, Kraken’s historic Fedwire breakthrough, and why crypto is starting to look less like an out
Where is ETH in the cycle? | Michael Nadeau
Ethereum underperformed this cycle, and investors are asking the big question: did ETH just skip a cycle, or is something deeper going on? Michael Nadeau joins Ryan to break down where Ethereum sits in the market cycle today, why several of his key indicators suggest ETH is entering a fair value zone, and whether the true macro bottom could still lie ahead.
They also unpack why ETH struggled d
Making America the Crypto Capital of the World | New CFTC Chairman Michael Selig
A conversation with new CFTC Chairman Mike Selig on the policy shift behind America’s push to become the crypto capital of the world.
We cover the CFTC’s evolving role in crypto, prediction markets, and perpetuals, the end of regulation by enforcement, how the agency is thinking about DeFi and software developers, and why market structure legislation like the Clarity Act could reshape the future
ROLLUP: Wartime Markets | Kraken Gets Fedwire | Trump vs Banks | AI vs Pentagon | NYT Says Crypto Is Dead
Ryan and David break down a week where war hit markets, and the safe-haven playbook broke down. Oil spiked, gold failed, bonds sold off, the dollar caught the flight to safety, and crypto somehow bounced right through it. Then they unpack Trump’s public pressure campaign against banks over stablecoin yield, Kraken’s historic Fedwire breakthrough, and why crypto is starting to look less like an out
AI Finds 70% of Smart Contract Exploits | Alpin Yukseloglu
AI is getting dangerously good at smart contract security. Faster than crypto is ready for. Alpin Yukseloglu joins Bankless to break down EVMBench (built with OpenAI), a benchmark testing whether AI agents can detect, patch, and exploit real fund-draining bugs and why the jump from ~12–13% exploit-finding to 70%+ could rewrite today’s security assumptions. We unpack what that “70%” really means, w
Building a Million Dollar Zero Human Company with OpenClaw | Nat Eliason
Nat Eliason joins to show what it looks like to build a “zero human company” with OpenClaw agents. — led by Felix, an AI CEO that ships products, runs ops, and even manages other agents for support and sales.
We unpack how Felix went from an overnight info product to a full marketplace for agent “skills” (Clawmart) and a bespoke service that deploys custom OpenClaw employees for real business
Haseeb Quereshi: Crypto’s Not Made for Humans—It’s for AI
Crypto still feels like a minefield for humans:
Haseeb Qureshi argues that’s a clue, not a bug: blockchains and smart contracts are machine-readable systems that AI agents can parse, simulate, and execute far more reliably than people, shifting crypto’s core user from humans clicking through wallets to agents acting on our behalf.
We also dig into the two-track future of agent commerce (safe,
ROLLUP: Extreme Fear | Tariff Whiplash | Citrini AI Crash | Jane Street vs Terra | Pentagon vs Anthropic
February ends with peak FUD. Ryan and David unpack why crypto is stuck in historic “Extreme Fear” even without a major blowup, and why markets feel like they’ve entered an uncertainty bubble. They break down the Supreme Court striking Trump’s tariffs, Trump immediately finding new legal doors to bring them back, and the looming $150B+ refund fight. Then the “Citrini Crash”: AI doomer scenarios goi
Zero Crypto at Home: Bankless in the Age of Wrench Attacks and Phishing | Jameson Lopp and Beau
Crypto’s newest threat isn’t a smart contract exploit, it’s a knock at your door. In this episode, Ryan sits down with Jameson Lopp (Casa) and Beau (former CIA, now safety at Pudgy Penguins) to map the real security landscape for crypto holders in 2026: the phishing traps you’ll see daily, the physical “wrench attacks” that terrify the community, and the practical systems that can make both dramat
Ethereum's Last Big Upgrade: The zkEVM | Ansgar Dietrichs
Ethereum’s next big leap might not look like a single “flip the switch” moment—but it could change how the chain verifies everything. In this episode, Ansgar Dietrichs comes back to unpack the ZK EVM: why “re-executing every block” has been Ethereum’s hidden scaling tax, how real-time proofs finally make a different verification model viable, and what it would take to transition safely without sac
ROLLUP: Prediction Market War | Base Leaves Optimism | Tomasz Exits EF | Clarity Act Lives | Harvard Buys ETH
A legal war over prediction markets just went public. Ryan and David break down the CFTC’s claim of exclusive authority, the backlash from state officials and lawmakers, and why this fight is really about whether markets or politics get to define truth. They explore why AI-powered prediction markets may be crypto’s strongest product-market fit yet, and why that scares regulators. Plus: Harvard rot
Lyn Alden: How to Survive The Gradual Print Era — Fed Chair Warsh, Gold & Bitcoin
Lyn Alden joins us to make sense of the “everything, everywhere, all at once” macro moment.
A fourth-turning-style unwind of the long-term debt cycle, rising fiscal dominance, and a rare, headline-level clash over Fed independence—plus what a Kevin Warsh Fed might actually do under real-world constraints.
We dig into the “gradual print” era, why gold is ripping, how a more multipolar monetar
ROLLUP: Crypto Pain Market | Coinbase Super Bowl Rug Pull | IBIT Liquidation Cascade | Prediction Markets Explode | BlackRock x Uniswap
Crypto feels cooked in 2026, and the Super Bowl proves it. Ryan and David unpack Coinbase’s Backstreet Boys rug pull ad and what it reveals about crypto’s collapsed public narrative. Then they dig into the brutal selloff, why IBIT’s record volume hints at forced TradFi liquidation, and what Polymarket is pricing for Bitcoin under $50K. From Robinhood’s prediction markets exploding into a real reve
What’s the Story? AI Stocks, Crypto Downturn, Metals Selloff, SaaSpocalypse | Jim Bianco
Last week felt like four different crashes happening at the same time: AI software stocks melting down, crypto capitulating, gold and silver whipping around, and markets suddenly panicking about AI CapEx. Jim Bianco returns to Bankless to explain what actually changed: why AI is collapsing the cost of building software (and threatening SaaS pricing models), how “synthetic Bitcoin” in TradFi can am
Robinhood Chain Takes on NYSE/Nasdaq | Robinhood Crypto GM Johann Kerbrat
Robinhood isn’t just adding another crypto feature—it’s assembling a new exchange stack: stock tokens, an Ethereum L2 built for real-world assets, and a wallet that can plug into DeFi. Johann Kerbrat (GM of Crypto at Robinhood) joins Bankless to unpack what “24/7 markets” actually requires, why liquidity and routing are the hidden battleground for tokenized equities, and how “Certified by Robinhoo
MegaETH Mainnet is Live! — The Next Era of Ethereum Scaling
MegaETH mainnet is live, kicking off a new frontier for Ethereum scaling: ultra-low latency, massive throughput, and an execution environment built to unlock apps that can’t exist on L1.
Lei Yang & Namik break down why Vitalik’s latest L2 framing validates “barbell” scaling, what users actually inherit from Ethereum (censorship resistance, exit guarantees, and fraud-proof security assumptions),
Vitalik Signals the End of the Rollup-Centric Roadmap: What's Next?
A single Vitalik tweet just snapped Ethereum’s scaling narrative into focus: the rollup-centric roadmap is over, and a new path is here. Ryan and David break down what Vitalik actually said (and what he didn’t), why stage 2 plus rollup interop proved far slower than anyone hoped, and why L1 scaling, powered by ZK, may be Ethereum’s real reset button in 2026. Along the way, they unpack the quiet de
ROLLUP: Crypto in Free Fall | Vitalik’s L2 Pivot | Warsh Fed Pick | Clarity Act Showdown
Crypto enters a full-blown pain market as Bitcoin, ETH, tech stocks, and even gold sell off together. Ryan and David break down why crowded trades are unwinding across markets, what the Warsh Fed chair pick means for rates and risk assets, and whether crypto has become uniquely fragile in this cycle. They dig into Vitalik’s L2 pivot and what it signals about Ethereum’s next era, unpack massive ins
AI on Ethereum: ERC-8004, x402, OpenClaw and the Botconomy | Austin Griffith & Davide Crapis
AI agents aren’t “coming” to Ethereum—they’re already here, spinning up on dedicated machines, clicking through wallets, deploying contracts, and even building apps for themselves. In this episode, Ryan and David sit down with Davide Crapis and Austin Griffith to map the emerging agent stack: ERC-8004 as a decentralized identity + reputation layer, x402 as payment rails for agent-to-agent commerce
Where Do We Go From Here? | Michael Nadeau
Michael Nadeau went risk-off in October and has been targeting Bitcoin's fair value near $65K. In this episode, he joins Ryan to unpack what changed after BTC broke below $80K, why he does not think this is the macro low yet, and what a real bottom typically looks like (capitulation, then apathy).
They also dig into the new wild card: incoming Fed chair Kevin Warsh, and why “rates down” could
Capitalism’s Endgame: The Last Companies That Will Ever Exist
Capitalism may be heading toward an “event horizon,” where a handful of firms become so entrenched they’re effectively the last companies standing.
We break down the four “Infinity Gauntlet” pillars: intelligence, energy, capital, and labor. And why collapsing costs in AI and robotics could make abundance, and monopolies, the default outcome.
From Google’s data + compute flywheel to the Tesla/
ROLLUP: Gold & Silver ATHs | Fidelity’s Stablecoin | Ethereum’s Quantum Pivot | Tether Buys Gold
Markets wobble as gold and silver hit all time highs, raising the big question of what comes next for crypto. Ryan and David unpack the macro shock driving the move, from Fed independence and shutdown risk to a weaker dollar narrative, and why Tether is quietly becoming one of the world’s largest gold holders. They make the case for Ethereum’s comeback, from surging usage to serious quantum resist
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