Unchained

Regulators try to freeze illicit stablecoins, but the money's usually gone before the freeze lands. The hosts on why crypto sanctions keep failing.

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A new academic paper from researchers across several Chinese universities makes a striking claim: a stablecoin freeze isn't really a freeze until the transaction lands in a block — which means the freeze itself can be front-run, and sanctions enforcement becomes a market-structure problem.

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le — three general counsels who live where law meets code — work through what it means that Tether and Circle now do much of the government's freezing onchain. The paper's numbers unsettle them: by its count, across eight years only nine freezes caught the money midway.

From there the hosts widen out: the SEC and CFTC's joint push to harmonize margin rules, your ChatGPT logs turning up as evidence in the courtroom, the Legion lawsuit testing whether export law can govern who logs in to an AI model, and the Bernstein ruling that made code protected speech.

They close with a sober CLARITY Act update, a new CBDC-ban roadblock tangled in an unrelated veto fight, and why the end of MiCA's transition period in Europe might be the week's real good news.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges.


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda

Timestamps
🏛️ 02:32 KK on why the SEC and CFTC margin harmonization matters for crypto perps

🧊 11:39 Vy on ordering power as sanctioning power and the paper behind it

⚡ 14:43 Why a stablecoin freeze can itself be front run

⚖️ 22:09 The third party doctrine and the risk of deputizing crypto's neutral actors

📣 26:40 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained

💻 27:36 Jessi on why AI in the courtroom is really a software control story

🚪 30:13 The Legion lawsuit, export law, and the Bernstein code-as-speech fight

🔒 37:14 ChatGPT logs as courtroom evidence and why your AI chats aren't private

🏔️ 42:20 The CLARITY Act update: why KK is even more bearish on passage

🇪🇺 47:48 Why MiCA's transition deadline is the week's crypto good news
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The crew is joined by Selini Capital’s Jordi Alexander to break down Open USD, the no-fee stablecoin from a 140-firm consortium spanning Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, all aimed at the Circle and Tether duopoly. Plus Saylor’s new Digital Credit framework for MicroStrategy, the Ansem-fueled memecoin comeback, and ENS reigniting the “DAOs are fake” debate.

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. Joining the panel “at the moment of max pain” is Jordi Alexander, CIO of Selini Capital. First up: MicroStrategy in crisis, with MSTR down about 30% in five days and STRC hitting $71, and Saylor’s answer, a new Digital Credit framework with an 18-month cash cushion and a jumbo dividend hike to 12%. Then the headline story, Open USD: a no-fee stablecoin from a 140-member consortium including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, built to break the Circle and Tether duopoly.

The back half covers the memecoin comeback around the Ansem coin, and ENS reigniting the “DAOs are fake” debate after Nick Johnson single-handedly blocked a governance vote, before the crew debates whether consortia are just DAOs in a suit. Let’s get into it.

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

Show highlights

🔹 MSTR falls about 30% in five days and STRC hits $71. Saylor answers with a new “Digital Credit” framework, an 18-month cash cushion, and a jumbo dividend hike to 12%

🔹 Jordi calls the death-spiral panic overblown: “Luna was worthless; you cannot print Bitcoin”

🔹 Tarun stands by “Luna for suits,” comparing STRC’s marketing to Anchor, right down to the AI ad of Saylor escaping the Titanic

🔹 Open USD launches: a no-fee, no-cap stablecoin backed by 140 firms including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, aimed at the Circle and Tether duopoly

🔹 Circle drops about 7 to 8% on the news, and Tether’s Paolo Ardoino “welcomes” a real competitor, the same bit he ran on Libra

🔹 Haseeb’s take: a 140-member consortium is “a signed petition,” good for expanding the market but not for taking Tether’s or Circle’s turf

🔹 Tarun says it all comes down to the revenue share. Set the wrong rules and someone just farms the rake

🔹 The Ansem coin sparks a memecoin revival, a roughly $100M cap the market hasn’t seen in a long time

🔹 ENS reignites the DAO debate as Nick Johnson blocks a treasury restructuring with about 50% of the vote. Are consortia just DAOs in a suit?

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly 

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly 

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guest

⭐️Jordi Alexander, CEO of Selini Capital

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:07 The DeSci beef and Tarun’s Ponzi crusade

03:30 MicroStrategy in crisis: Saylor’s Digital Credit reset

09:34 Is STRC still “Luna for suits”?

19:24 Open USD: 140 firms take on Circle and Tether

29:42 Why a 140-member consortium is just a “signed petition”

42:13 Coinbase’s two masters: USDC vs Open USD

47:01 The memecoin comeback and the Ansem coin

51:57 ENS blows up the DAO: Nick Johnson blocks the vote

57:26 DAOs vs consortia, and can AI save governance?
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Laura Shin has reported on crypto scams since the early days and wrote one of the first stories on sim swaps. That did not stop a spear-phishing attempt from getting her to download software and run a terminal command before she caught it.

Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins turn her near miss into a practical defense playbook, then debate whether self-custody still makes sense for anyone with a public crypto profile.

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:


Laura Shin - Founder and Host of Unchained

This clip is from a longer conversation on crypto security and social engineering. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/yKHaE6xMZsE 

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

Sponsors:

👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED).

Chapters:

🎣 00:00 The fake podcast invite that nearly caught Laura Shin

💻 00:26 How far it went: a download, then a terminal command

🛡️ 05:02 Austin's hard rules for when someone puts time pressure on you

🏦 06:36 Why Ram says ETFs now beat self-custody for public figures

🥷 07:39 Chris on getting hacked and losing his Snoop Dogg NFT

🤖 10:41 Why the same playbook is coming for banks via AI voice clones

🦅 11:33 Chris on letting the private sector recover stolen crypto
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Is it Ethereum or bust? Ansgar Dietrichs makes the case that only Ethereum can anchor the financial system, and admits ETH still lacks a clear value story.

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The Ethereum Foundation is deliberately shrinking its role, and five former researchers have launched Ethlabs to take over the work they worry will otherwise go undone.

Ansgar Dietrichs, co-founder of Ethlabs, joins Laura Shin to lay out the split: the Foundation will protect what should not change, while Ethlabs pushes the parts of Ethereum that must evolve. He makes the case that the global economy is moving onchain, and that Ethereum is the only candidate to sit at the center of it, or no one will.

The conversation traces why ETH the asset has been stuck between $1,000 and $5,000 for five years, why Dietrichs thinks EIP-1559 and cheap blockspace were never intentional choices, how Ethlabs divides labor with the Foundation, Etherealize, and Consensys, and what DeFi founders like Uniswap's Hayden Adams actually need. The throughline is a single missing ingredient he keeps returning to: intentionality about what ETH is actually for.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ansgar Dietrichs - Co-founder of Ethlabs

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:26 Why the Ethereum Foundation is stepping back and the gap Ethlabs fills

🌐 04:00 What Ethereum would look like if Ethlabs succeeds

🧱 07:56 Why Ethlabs is scaling the L1 and fixing interop at the same time

🤝 10:48 How Ethlabs divides labor with the EF, Etherealize, and Consensys

📣 18:34 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers that could shape the future of finance at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com

🔐 19:16 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained

💸 20:15 Why ETH has been stuck waiting five years for its next act

🔗 24:24 Does L1 activity still drive ETH's value, and why ETH's interop lags

🔥 27:25 Why Ansgar says cheap blockspace and EIP-1559 were never intentional

🪙 33:27 Why being an Ethereum L2 isn't yet the superpower it should be

🦄 36:17 The culture at the EF and what kind of culture Ethlabs will have

🏢 39:41 The accountability loop: a two to three year runway and who Ethlabs serves

🛠️ 45:33 What DeFi founders actually need from Ethereum, per Hayden and others
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Carmen Li thought it was a joke when a perpetual futures marketplace asked her to become the market maker for her own index. It wasn't.

In this segment from Bits + Bips: The Interview, she walks Steven Ehrlich through the requests that alarmed her, a daughter analogy for why trading your own benchmark destroys neutrality, the manipulation risks she sees in crypto's index practices, and why she insists any perp venue on her index be regulated and guardrailed.

Host:


Steven Ehrlich - Host of Bits + Bips and Head of Research at Sharplink

Guest:


Carmen Li - CEO of Silicon Data and Compute Exchange

This clip is from a longer conversation on GPUs, compute markets, and crypto. Full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/live/rYDiPneJv20?si=fjS7bSd-bJ6c6tYb 

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

Sponsors


Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED).

Chapters

🤝 00:00 The perp venues circling her index, and the request that immediately felt off

🚩 01:27 The ask she thought had to be a joke: become the market maker of your own index

👧 02:47 Carmen's daughter analogy that nails why trading your own index breaks neutrality

🛡️ 04:47 The guardrails that keep it honest: external audits and hard internal trading rules

🔀 05:36 Why you can't just swap one index for another and keep on trading

⚖️ 06:26 Her one demand for any perp venue building on her index: regulated and ring fenced
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