Unchained

Alex Thorn and Jon join Kain and Taylor to unpack a Bitcoin hack, two new frontier models, and why nobody trusts their AI chats anymore.

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A Bitcoin sidechain lost $300 million to a consensus bug this week, and the hackers who returned 85% of it are trying to extort a "bug bounty" out of Blockstream for the rest.

Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, and Jon, Head of Strategy at Venice and co-founder of ShapeShift, join Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to unpack how AI models are now finding exploits faster than the humans who wrote the code, and to push back on the idea that returning stolen funds makes anyone a white hat.

They also dig into Astra and Fable 5.1, two frontier models that landed days after a mathematician working inside OpenAI's Codex clashed publicly with OpenAI over who actually solved a Millennium Prize-adjacent proof.

Jon and Alex explain why the "don't train on my data" toggle may not mean much, and why identity is becoming the real privacy battleground.

The conversation closes on whether an Anthropic researcher quitting this week is a warning the industry is choosing to ignore.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Thorn - Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jon - Head of Strategy at Venice and Co-founder of ShapeShift

Timestamps

🔓 01:15 How a consensus bug let hackers mint $300M in fake Bitcoin

📜 7:50 Why the Liquid hackers are no white hats

🤖 17:16 Did an AI agent find the Liquid exploit?

⚖️ 28:10 Taylor on why there’s no excuse for the hackers’ actions

💧 32:08 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity layer works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

🧠 32:54 Astra and Fable 5.1 land, and one is writing eerily compressed code

📐 35:19 The Millennium Prize proof fight between OpenAI and an Anthropic researcher

🧬 44:48 Kain on fast takeoff, recursive self-improvement, and paperclipped kids

🕵️ 55:18 How to keep your novel research out of an AI's training data

⚰️ 01:07:03 Why an Anthropic researcher's resignation has Kain and Taylor spooked
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FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to answer last week's unc takes on memecoins: why a fully transparent social graph beats copy trading, how FOMO became the biggest app on Robinhood Chain, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token, the three-way launchpad war, AMC's fight with Robinhood over tokenized stock, and the AI race to solve Navier-Stokes.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger to chop it up about the latest in crypto.

After getting dunked on as uncs for last week's memecoin takes, the crew brings on the founder at the center of it. Paul lays out FOMO's case for a fully transparent trading social graph, Tarun reports back from a holiday weekend in the trenches, and Haseeb holds the line on where memecoin trading actually destroys value. Then: Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token, the Pons versus Stonk.fun versus Pump launchpad war, AMC's CEO versus Robinhood's tokenized stocks, and the OpenAI versus Anthropic fight over who solved Navier-Stokes.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Paul explains why FOMO refuses to build copy trading and bets on full transparency instead: trade well and the feed follows you.

🔹 Tarun spent his holiday weekend trenching, finished up a respectable 10 percent thanks to Hunter Biden copycat coins, and says it felt more like a video game than trading.

🔹 FOMO had 94,000 active wallets on Robinhood Chain, three times the next largest app, and its users no longer know which chain they are on.

🔹 Haseeb draws the line: buying Doge is harmless, but the memecoin production function is where retail reliably loses money.

🔹 Paul and Haseeb converge on churn: an app that lets customers incinerate themselves flames out fast, so FOMO rewards holding and theses over launching.

🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token launches on Base with airdrops to Trump token losers and a scraped Channel 5 subscriber list.

🔹 Pons, Stonk.fun, and Pump fight over launchpad revenue while Paul stays agnostic and pitches Team Tags as the highest-intent distribution channel ever built.

🔹 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile, and the panel debates whether one-to-one backed equity tokens fix the fundraising objection.

🔹 Tarun explains Navier-Stokes and why math academia is depressed after OpenAI's $15 million compute run at a Millennium Prize problem.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guest

⭐️Paul Erlanger, Co-Founder of FOMO

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:06 Paul vs. the uncs

03:37 From dYdX to FOMO

05:14 Tarun's weekend in the trenches

08:40 Transparency vs. copy trading

12:27 FOMO's distribution power on Robinhood Chain

17:52 Where memecoin trading destroys value

21:10 Churn, theses, & traders as the next celebrities

27:08 Shaming, sidewallets, & clans

32:35 Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token

37:15 Stock coins, bond ETF fees, & how long the meta lasts

42:52 AMC's CEO vs Robinhood's tokenized stock

47:51 One-to-one backed equity & earnings calls as TV shows

52:20 OpenAI, Anthropic, & the Navier-Stokes drama

58:49 Is math research over?
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

AMC's CEO spent the holiday weekend calling Robinhood's tokenized AMC shares "contemptible" and "vile."

Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins break down what a "reverse ADR" actually is, why Ram thinks most of this is derivatives repackaged as innovation, and why Chris pushes back using Robinhood Chain's own financials.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell

Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97

This clip is from a longer conversation on tokenized stocks, meme coins, frontier AI, and the Fed. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/cDFv4OCihgU?si=qdPWALHcmHc97SEc

We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live.

👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

Chapters:

🥊 00:20 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile: what it actually is

📊 06:36 Ram: stock tokens are "derivatives for the sake of derivatives"

🔍 11:17 Why Austin says the AMC fight reveals microstructure ignorance

🏗️ 14:40 Ram: real innovation looks like CDO Square 2.0, not this

💰 21:41 Chris defends Robinhood Chain's financials
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Albert Castellana and Arthur Hayes walk through how GenLayer resolves an AI agent's dispute in minutes, for cents, without a single human judge involved.

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Every legal system assumes a human sits on the other side of a dispute. Albert Castellana, CEO of GenLayer Labs, is betting that assumption breaks down within the decade, once AI agents start disagreeing with each other faster than any court could keep up.

Castellana built the idea after StakeHound, the liquid-staking company he ran before Lido existed, lost $150 million when a custodian misplaced two keys, and he saw how slow and costly the legal system was. He joins Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, to argue agentic commerce cannot scale without its own dispute layer, since agents cannot be jailed.

They cover how GenLayer escalates a dispute to up to 1,500 AI validators for a verdict in minutes, how it compares to Kleros, UMA, and the failed Aragon Court, and why Hayes wants Flop plugged into GenLayer once both go live.

If agents cannot go to jail, escrowed money may be the only leverage left.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Albert Castellana - Co-Founder and CEO of GenLayer Labs

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:20 Albert Castellana on the $150 million custody failure that led him to build GenLayer

🤖 05:20 Why Flop needs GenLayer's dispute layer to make agentic commerce work

⚖️ 07:26 The kinds of disputes AI agents will actually have with each other

📣 13:38 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

📜 14:29 How an intelligent contract escrows funds and calls in AI validators

🔗 18:51 Inside GenLayer's architecture: the L2 chain and 1,500 validators

💵 27:21 What an AI verdict actually costs: 50 cents to $100, minutes to hours

🔒 34:30 Why AI agents can't go to jail, so escrow is the only enforcement

⚔️ 40:14 How GenLayer compares to the AAA, Kleros, UMA, and the failed Aragon Court

🕵️ 49:29 Can the validator network be gamed or bought off?

🚀 54:34 What's next for GenLayer's token launch and Flop's Q4 airdrop
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The CME is suing its own regulator over how perps get classified, and the ruling decides who in the US can trade them. Three lawyers make the case for futures over swaps.

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The CME is suing its own regulator. At stake is a single word: is a perpetual futures contract a swap, locked to institutional trading desks, or a future, open to any retail trader in the US?

Cathy Yoon, General Counsel at Temporal, Tiffany J. Smith, Partner at WilmerHale, and Jake Chervinsky, CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center, join Laura Shin at the Real World Assets Summit to make the case for futures. The CME was invited onto the panel to argue its side, but Yoon called their last-minute decision to bow out as "cowardice."

They dig into the CFTC's recent approval of true perpetual futures for Coinbase and Kalshi, the running jurisdictional split between the CFTC and SEC, and Bloomberg's report that Hyperliquid is in talks to come onshore through Kraken's Bitnomial.

Chervinsky argues Hyperliquid isn't an exchange at all, just neutral infrastructure any exchange could use.

Yoon closes with a warning: most of Capitol Hill, she says, still doesn't understand there's a whole world running onchain.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cathy Yoon - General Counsel of Temporal

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tiffany J. Smith - Partner at WilmerHale and Co-Chair of its Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Working Group

Jake Chervinsky - CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center

Timestamps

⚖️ 02:24 Why the CME is suing the CFTC over classifying perps as futures or swaps

🌍 13:00 Why RWA perps overtook crypto perps, and who ends up regulating them

📣 18:03 1inch: See how Aqua's shared liquidity platform puts idle capital to work at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🌐 20:42 Is Hyperliquid an exchange or neutral infrastructure? Jake makes his case

🏛️ 26:10 If you were the regulator: how each panelist would design fair rules for perps
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