Unchained

The boys regroup after TOKEN2049. Ledgers sold through CryptoBilis, an authorized reseller in Malaysia, came with an LTE implant that read seed phrases off the screen, an OpenAI engineer was caught with a listening device, Papertrade launches 1000x perps where losing money mints you tokens, and the hosts argue over Nikita Bier's claim that technical moats are dead.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week is a late-night episode recorded right after TOKEN2049.

The hosts compare notes on a TOKEN2049 with zero Lambos and a quiet Marquee, then get into the CryptoBilis hack, where Ledgers sold by an authorized reseller in Malaysia came with a hidden chip and an eSIM that sent seed phrases home over LTE. Robert calls it a software supply chain attack made physical, Tarun explains it to a bar owner as North Korea buying the liquor distributor, and an OpenAI engineer caught with a listening device has Haseeb arguing that the choke points of a high-trust society are breaking down. Then Tom and Haseeb unpack Papertrade, the 1000x perps exchange where losing trades mint PAPER, and Tarun asks how long anyone will keep losing money for a token. Finally, Nikita Bier says technical moats are dead: Tarun half agrees, Haseeb calls it a fake story, and he explains why AI still writes investment memos like a growth investor.

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

Show highlights

🔹 TOKEN2049 felt more institutional this year: Marquee was a normal nightclub all week, Franklin Templeton and Nasdaq took the stage, and Tarun saw zero Lambos.

🔹 Tarun says nothing in crypto feels like frontier tech anymore outside of Zcash and quantum, and remembers the robotic shrimp farm that pivoted into an L2.

🔹 Normal people have the Big Mac index; crypto people have the nightclub index.

🔹 Ledgers sold through CryptoBilis, an authorized reseller in Malaysia, carried a hardware implant with an eSIM that read the seed phrase off the screen and sent it over LTE. About $80 million was stolen.

🔹 CryptoBilis' founders say they sold the company to a Chinese buyer months ago and were under a confidentiality agreement until October 20th. Trezor has already cut off its authorized resellers.

🔹 Robert says someone has now prototyped buying a vendor to run a supply chain attack, and Tarun explains it to a bar owner as North Korea buying the liquor distributor.

🔹 Haseeb's PSA: buy hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer. Tom is skeptical of see-through cases and points to Ledger's honeypot problem.

🔹 An OpenAI engineer allegedly hid a recording device behind a TV in a conference room, and ChatGPT searches about how to build one gave it away.

🔹 Haseeb says the choke points of a high-trust society are breaking down as AI makes complex attacks easier, and Tom asks why nobody has tried to steal a frontier model's weights.

🔹 Papertrade offers 1000x leverage at Hyperliquid's mid-market price with zero slippage, losing traders mint PAPER, and it is doing about $32 million in weekly revenue.

🔹 Tom explains how Papertrade's house works and how one trader moved Hyperliquid's price to farm it. Tarun says everything hangs on the PAPER token.

🔹 Nikita Bier says technical moats are dead. Haseeb calls it a fake story: AI can one-shot a compiler, but nobody uses the one-shotted Photoshop clones.

🔹 Haseeb says the incumbents have AI too, Tarun says the superstar-engineer advantage is gone, and Robert explains why models never see the real investment memos.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Disclosures
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ARK Invest's Lorenzo Valente says quantum fears and the Ledger hack are speeding up the death of self-custody, that Ethereum has to pick a lane, and buybacks are “crazy.”

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients.

Find out more at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn.

Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply.

========================================================

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

========================================================

Justin Drake warned that ECDSA, the cryptography securing Bitcoin and Ethereum, could break before Q-Day, in the worst case "in months, not years," and an attack on Ledger devices sold through a third-party reseller has led to about $100 million in losses. Lorenzo Valente, Director of Research, Digital Assets at ARK Invest, says both threats speed up a trend ARK already saw: self-custody is slowly dying.

He tells Laura Shin why ARK favors a barbell of exchanges that own the user and infrastructure like Solana, Uniswap, and Aave, and why he would point a first-time Bitcoin buyer to an ETF. They also cover Satoshi's coins, why Ethereum's L1 accrues so little while Robinhood makes millions, and why he calls the buyback craze irrational.

Plus: ARK's tokenized venture fund, Cloudflare's agentic commerce plans, and why Binance has never swapped out its USDT despite earning no yield. If he's right, crypto's next wave of users may never hold their own keys.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Lorenzo Valente - Director of Research, Digital Assets at ARK Invest

Timestamps

🔭 01:27 Why Lorenzo says crypto investing is moving from '0 to 1' to '1 to 100'

🧮 08:41 Justin Drake's ECDSA warning and why RIAs keep asking ARK about quantum

💸 16:42 Nexo: Generate daily interest on your crypto or borrow against your assets at https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-yt

🏋️ 17:31 The barbell: why Lorenzo favors exchanges and core crypto infrastructure

🪙 24:34 Satoshi's coins and why Lorenzo is less worried about Bitcoin's quantum fix

🔐 26:28 Ledger, Bitget, and why Lorenzo sees 'nowhere to hide' in hardware wallets

🍔 30:11 Ethereum's 'franchise model' and why Lorenzo says L1 value accrual is broken

🔥 38:04 Why Lorenzo thinks crypto has gone 'crazy' over token buybacks

📈 45:17 Why ARK thinks tokenized equities could pass stablecoin supply in 3 years

🤖 51:04 Cloudflare, AI bots, and why L1s are still orders of magnitude too slow

💵 54:05 Why Binance never dropped USDT, and what that says about Tether and Circle
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A bridging bug cost NEAR Intents $3.8 million. Alex Shevchenko reveals how a coded tweet and a Signal invite encrypted with the attacker's key got the funds back.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

========================================================

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

========================================================

NEAR Intents halted services after an attacker exploited a bug in its Omni bridging infrastructure and walked off with $3.8 million. Twelve hours after announcing the hack, the team tweeted at the suspect: "We have identified you, sir."

Alex Shevchenko, GM of NEAR Intents, joins Laura Shin to walk through how the attacker got the protocol to credit USDT deposits on BNB Chain that never happened, why NEAR Intents covered the loss from its own pockets, and how a Signal invite encrypted with the attacker's public key opened a private channel that ended with the funds coming back, partly in XMR.

He also lays out how Shield, NEAR Intents' detection system, kept 99% of the more than $50 million tied to the Bitget hack from passing through, and why he thinks shielded Zcash could face Monero's fate.

His argument: crypto that protects thieves can never become the economic backbone its builders want.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠Alex Shevchenko - GM of NEAR Intents

Timestamps

🚨 01:43 How an Omni bridging bug let an attacker fake deposits and drain $3.8M

🌐 02:37 What NEAR Intents is, and how it relates to NEAR Protocol and near.com

⚙️ 05:01 How the hack worked and how the identified that it had occurred

💧 09:51 1inch Aqua: Back multiple positions with one token balance at https://1inch.com/aqua

🚔 10:55 Law enforcement, and how NEAR Intents identified a suspect within 12 hours

🔐 17:51 The Penn and Teller playbook: a Signal invite only the attacker could decrypt

🏎️ 22:52 Why Alex says a bug bounty beats hacking, Lambo included

🛡️ 26:24 Shield: how NEAR Intents kept 99% of Bitget hack funds off the protocol

⚖️ 32:07 Does blocking stolen funds make NEAR Intents centralized? Alex says no

🕶️ 40:17 Can shielded Zcash stay clean, or will it follow Monero's path?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Live from TOKEN2049 in Singapore, Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun sit down with Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week they are live on the BingX Stage at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, joined by Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes.

Balaji explains why Network School moved its headquarters to Kazakhstan, which he calls Singapore with space to build, and why courting a country works a lot like enterprise sales when half of all countries have fewer than 10 million people. Then OpenAI drops 700 AI-written math papers and Justin Drake tells crypto to go into bunker mode: Tarun separates theoretical attacks from practical ones, Balaji proposes a social smart contract that would let chains rewind after a cryptographic break, and Arthur pitches the Flop Network as food for AI agents. Finally, Blast and Abstract shut down, nobody booked Marquee this year, and the panel debates whether the L2 era was a necessary search or crypto's version of Chinese ghost cities.

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

Show highlights

🔹 TOKEN2049 is still the one retail mega conference left, even in the first year with no wrapped Lambo out front.

🔹 Balaji says crypto is M&A-ing Western institutions, and that anything holding long-dated Treasuries is wrecked.

🔹 Network School has moved its headquarters to Kazakhstan, which Balaji calls Singapore with space to build: 21 million people, a tie with China and India at the physics Olympiad, about 40% of the world's uranium, and room for 10,000 acres of Arthur Hayes City.

🔹 More than 10 countries bid for Network School. Balaji says courting governments works like enterprise sales, because half of all countries have under 10 million people and a billion dollars goes a long way there.

🔹 Why Hollywood misleads you about the rest of the world, from Borat to Squid Game, and why Balaji splits countries into a descending world and an ascending world.

🔹 The ascending world has murals of Elon and will build Arthur a statue, preferably on a horse, while blue states drive their billionaires out.

🔹 OpenAI drops 700 AI-written math papers with nothing on cryptography, and Justin Drake tells crypto to go into bunker mode by moving funds to addresses that have never signed.

🔹 Tarun says there is still a big gap between a theoretical attack and a practical one, and Haseeb asks who will even tell us when ECDSA is broken.

🔹 Balaji proposes a social smart contract that lets a chain rewind after a cryptographic break, Haseeb says cross-chain dependencies make that far harder than it was five years ago, and Balaji warns that anti-tech is the new anti-capitalism.

🔹 Tom says to watch what people do rather than what they say, and Balaji argues there are hard mathematical bounds on what AI can do.

🔹 Tarun on quantum money, Balaji on blockchains that spend their own token budget trying to hack themselves, and Arthur on the Flop Network as food for AI agents.

🔹 Blast and Abstract shut down, and Arthur reports that Marquee, fully booked all week last year with half a million Singapore dollar minimum spends, has not had a single booking this year.

🔹 Balaji says every failed L2 was part of a search worth running, Arthur jokes that it was all a search for Base and Robinhood Chain, Tarun calls the L2s Chinese ghost cities that can at least be demolished, and Haseeb tallies the middlemen that make running one so expensive.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guests

⭐️Balaji Srinivasan, Founder of Network School

⭐️Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom & CEO of Flop Labs

Disclosures
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin Drake told holders not to panic. Ben DiFrancesco says if AI weakens elliptic curves, the clock is how fast Chinese models catch up.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsors!

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-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

========================================================

Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for.

⁠⁠Our listener survey⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

========================================================

OpenAI released 722 math papers, and Justin Drake followed with a "don't panic" tweet suggesting large holders consider moving funds, setting off a wave of speculation that elliptic curve keys might soon be easier to brute force.

Ben DiFrancesco, Founder and CEO of ScopeLift, joins Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Austin Griffith to separate rumor from risk. DiFrancesco puts low odds on the rumors but argues crypto would get hit first, patch fastest, and could leave traditional finance as the worse place to hold money, with Chinese open-weight models setting the clock. Monahan untangles the 0.36 ETH MetaMask staking incident that got pulled into the speculation.

They also cover ZachXBT's undercover investigation of a DPRK money launderer, the NEAR Intents hacker sending funds back, and a push for Swiss authorities to intervene at Safe. DiFrancesco closes with a warning for token teams: the regulatory excuse for skipping value return is going away.

Hosts:

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

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

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation

Guest:

⁠Ben DiFrancesco - Founder and CEO of ScopeLift

Timestamps

🔐 01:57 Why Justin Drake’s ‘don’t panic’ tweet has crypto eyeing its cryptography

🦊 06:12 Taylor on the MetaMask staking incident and the 0.36 ETH that tipped it off

🧮 14:03 Ben on why even a worst-case ECC break wouldn’t mean instant theft

🏦 20:04 Why Ben thinks TradFi, not crypto, could be the worse place to hold money

🤖 25:02 How AI models went from flubbing 2+2 to formalizing hard math

💧 30:45 1inch: See how LPs can back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🔙 31:49 How the NEAR Intents hacker ended up sending the money back

🕵️ 37:07 ZachXBT went undercover with a DPRK money launderer: what he found

😤 51:25 Why instant outrage is the tell for launderers and Sybil farmers

🏗️ 56:11 From Gnosis’s 2017 ICO to Safe, the multisig securing $100B+

⚖️ 01:02:23 The push for Swiss intervention at Safe and what it actually claims

🗳️ 01:08:12 Ben on how regulatory fear warped DAOs and why value return matters now

🧱 01:17:12 Blast and Abstract shut down: too many L2s, and never build a wallet
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices