Unchained

Roman Storm's retrial slides to April 2027. Peter Van Valkenburgh argues prosecuting Tornado Cash's developers cost real ground in zero knowledge cryptography.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has declared "economic D-Day" on Iran, leaving an open question over whether the sanctions crackdown reaches Uniswap and Ethereum or stops at Iranian exchanges, where humans are in the loop.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan take that gap to Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center, whose defense of the Tornado Cash developers rests as much on zero knowledge cryptography as on sanctions law.

They cover the GENIUS Act's freeze and seize rules for the stablecoin secondary market and Roman Storm's retrial, now pushed to April 2027, where speech protections clash with prosecutors' "frying pan" theory of money transmission.

The SEC's proposed exemptions, the stalled Clarity Act, and Trump’s Hyperliquid all raise the same question: where does decentralization end and regulation begin?

Hosts:

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

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

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Peter Van Valkenburgh - Executive Director of Coin Center

Timestamps

🎯 01:26 Bessent brands Iran sanctions 'economic D-Day', DeFi not exempt

🏦 11:15 Van Valkenburgh explains the freeze-and-seize rules coming for stablecoins

💰 15:18 Bessent claims a $1B Iranian crypto rug, but the receipts don't add up

🌊 25:08 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

⚖️ 25:50 Roman Storm's retrial slips to April as an acquittal motion looms

🔐 38:24 Why Van Valkenburgh calls Tornado Cash's developer a hero, not a villain

📜 47:22 SEC's 'Reg Crypto' plan opens two new paths to raise ICO-like capital

🏇 58:07 Trump name-drops Hyperliquid, raising hard questions for the CFTC
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

Bitcoin is pushing toward $80,000 after Scott Bessent's Treasury long-end buybacks flipped spot ETF flows positive and rattled the bond market.

Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins are joined by Bitwise's Gordon Grant to unpack why rising Treasury volatility, and bizarre stress signals building in the TIPS market, are becoming a tailwind for Bitcoin's momentum trade.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern

Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto

Guest:

Gordon Grant - Portfolio Manager and Head of Derivatives at Bitwise

This clip is from a longer conversation on the CFTC's prediction-market brawl, parametric insurance, and a mystery AI model. Full episode here:https://youtu.be/tLKZl37uZ2g?si=Vp_6Y7PvXeDh_iJ8

We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET — subscribe to catch it live.

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Chapters

💰 00:20 Market snapshot: Bitcoin near $80K as ETF inflows flip positive

🌊 03:32 Gordon on how Bessent linked Treasury vol to Bitcoin's own vol spike

📈 05:32 Ram on the 'extraordinary' price action and Bitcoin's momentum

🎙️ 07:39 Chris on the Bitcoin/gold chart and the Fed-Treasury accord

🧮 09:30 Austin on the fiscal-dominance divergence between the front and long end

🔒 10:54 Gordon on the 'buyer strike' driving Treasury illiquidity

🔄 15:19 Chris on why the basis trade's return is bullish for crypto
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Some crypto products work with multiple chains on different post-quantum paths. NEAR’s Illia Polosukhin and Ledger's Charles Guillemet discuss how they manage that challenge.

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In March, a Google research team published a paper on breaking cryptographic keys with a quantum algorithm, so cautious about the finding that it released only a zero-knowledge proof the algorithm existed. Weeks later, an EigenLayer AI competition improved on that method in roughly 48 hours.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger, join Laura Shin for an update on the quantum threat whose deadline could be approaching fast. Both are creating products that deal with multiple chains that all have different post-quantum approaches.

They discuss why, of the three NIST-standardized, post-quantum algorithms, the crypto industry has splintered into different chains working with different ones, whereas most industries are converging on one, called lattice-based. They also debate what to do with Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoins: do nothing, freeze them, or freeze and tail-emit new bitcoin, an option Guillemet favors even though Bitcoin's leaderless governance makes consensus hard to reach.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-founder of NEAR Protocol

⁠Charles Guillemet - CTO of Ledger

Timestamps

🔐 02:18 Illia and Charles map Shor's algorithm leap and EigenLayer's 48-hour crack

🧠 12:43 Why Matt Corallo's Bitcoin core skepticism reveals NEAR's design edge

📢 18:18 1inch Aqua: see how the shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

🔀 23:28 How lattice vs hash based crypto split Ethereum from Bitcoin's plan

🌐 34:46 Charles: why this crypto fight is unique to blockchain, not elsewhere

🛠️ 37:04 Charles walks through Ledger's SDK and hardware wallet quantum roadmap

🔑 44:22 Why 'wrench attacks' expose the physical risk in quantum signing

🕵️ 46:11 Charles debunks the harvest now decrypt later myth for blockchains

₿ 54:52 The Satoshi's coins dilemma: three options and Bitcoin's security budget
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Venice founder Erik Voorhees says crypto's real job was never speculation. It's becoming the rails AI agents actually need. Plus, why he sold equity, not tokens.

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Stripe bought OpenRouter this month in one of the cleanest crypto-to-AI pivots yet, and Erik Voorhees says most of the industry drew the wrong lesson from it.

Voorhees, founder and CEO of Venice AI, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to argue that crypto's job was never to serve crypto people, it was to become the financial rails a decentralized AI future actually needs. He pushes back on the instinct to abandon tokens for pure AI plays, and on the assumption that America deserves to win the AI race just because it is America.

They get into why Voorhees sold Venice's equity but refused to sell its VVV tokens, why he says the big labs are losing money "hand over fist" subsidizing $200-a-month plans, how DeepSeek reset the cost curve for inference, and why he calls the moderation layer sitting inside today's AI models "deceptive."

His answer for who should actually win the AI race has nothing to do with flags.

Hosts:

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

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

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Erik Voorhees - Founder and CEO of Venice AI

Timestamps

🤝 01:51 Why Stripe buying OpenRouter is one of crypto's cleanest AI pivots

🪙 04:02 Why Erik says he can't pivot out of crypto even while building an AI company

⚖️ 12:43 Crypto has principles, AI didn't: unpacking the two industries' DC playbooks

💧 27:58 1inch Aqua: See how shared liquidity keeps LPs' tokens in their wallet at https://1inch.com/aqua

💰 28:44 Why Erik sold Venice's equity but refuses to sell its VVV tokens

🧩 42:51 Inside Venice's strategy for aggregating every major AI model in one app

📉 49:15 Why Erik says labs are bleeding money on $200 plans, and how DeepSeek reset AI pricing

🌐 57:30 Why Erik says America doesn't deserve to win the AI race by default

🔓 01:02:41 Why Erik has 'zero faith' in politics and trusts decentralized tech instead

🕵️ 01:09:56 Why Erik calls the moderation layer inside AI models 'deceptive'
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Arthur Hayes unveils Flop, a new protocol for AI compute, and makes the case for why Bitcoin is entering a fresh liquidity-driven leg up.

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Bitcoin has been pumping in its sharpest move since March, after the US Treasury said it would double its long-end bond buybacks, and traders liquidated $1.44 billion in short positions within hours.

Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, joins Laura Shin to argue the rally is proof the Treasury and the Fed are already running what he calls soft yield curve control, defending the 10-year near 5% by funding long-end purchases with short-term bill issuance instead of admitting real yields cannot rise.

Hayes reiterates his year-end $5,000 target for ETH, traces how Japan's yen crisis could force the Fed's hand, and argues the AI CapEx boom is a real estate bet on depreciating chips that ends like subprime did.

He also unveils Flop, his currency for AI agents, and why he is taking on a new CEO role after an already successful career. He also weighs in on Saylor's $218 million Bitcoin sale and reflects on his and his cofounders’ decision to shut BitMEX down.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

Arthur Hayes - CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom

Timestamps

🏛️ 00:47 Why Arthur says the Treasury's buyback move is 'soft yield curve control'

📈 04:14 Why ETH is Maelstrom's largest position outside Bitcoin

🇯🇵 07:02 The yen quake: how Japan's repatriation could force the Fed's hand

📣 13:41 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more at http://1inch.com/

🤖 13:58 Why Arthur calls the AI boom 'just another boring real estate play'

💽 22:29 Inside Flop: Arthur's new currency for paying AI agents to compute

⚙️ 29:34 How Flop's miners and validators actually work

🪙 41:16 Flop's halving schedule and why Floplabs only takes a cut for two years

📉 45:45 Why Arthur says don't buy MicroStrategy anymore

🔌 48:37 Why Arthur shut down BitMEX on his own terms
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