Unchained

OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceXand the AI IPO cycle face a structural problem: a cheap, capable open source exit is already drawing enterprise users away before either company goes public.

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A viral tweet by Tom Shaughnessy, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, identified the most basic way AI could blow up: a 40x subsidy gap between consumer AI subscriptions and enterprise API costs quietly pushing businesses toward open source inference providers at 1% of the price. Citadel Securities published a near-identical thesis shortly after.

Shaughnessy joins Laura Shin to map the implications for the AI IPO wave, starting with SpaceX. Low floats and passive index demand should lift these stocks out of the gate, but public market disclosures will force OpenAI and Anthropic to reveal payback periods, margins, and subscriber numbers for the first time. He also argues OpenAI's reported price cuts target Anthropic's growth metrics before the IPO, not user demand.

The episode also covers the China model wildcard, whether AI model restrictions amount to big brother fearmongering, and whether crypto's tools for capital formation could keep the AGI flywheel from stalling.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


⁠Tom Shaughnessy - Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures and Co-Founder of Delphi Digital

Timestamps

💸 01:10 Why over $600B left crypto in 30 days: AI deal outflows, the SpaceX IPO. and quantum concerns

🧵 04:46 Tom's viral tweet: the 40x subsidy gap hidden in AI subscription pricing

📊 07:51 Why AI IPO filings will force the financials nobody has seen

💡 10:16 Why open source inference will compete with the frontier labs

🏗️ 13:06 Why frontier labs need to own what they create, not collect $200 per month

📣 15:55 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained

📣 17:01 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers that could change your future at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com

🌏 18:08 Chinese open source models and why going closed source could help OpenAI

⚔️ 20:58 Why Tom says OpenAI's price cuts target Anthropic's IPO, not users

🤬 22:09 Why AI model censorship is big brother fearmongering

🔗 24:42 Crypto's answer: ICO for open source AI, Nous Hermes, Venice, Grass, Ambient
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Claude Fable 5 refuses security work, Kain Warwick pulls $5,000 of compute from a $200 plan, and Humanity Protocol loses its bridge, token, and treasury to one infected device.

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Anthropic promised Mythos and shipped Claude Fable 5 instead. The model found a four-year-old bug in Zcash's shielded pool that survived multiple expert audits. But when Anthropic shipped the model days later, it was no longer willing to audit smart contracts, bailing the moment a prompt smells like security work.Jailbreakers are already turning a jailbroken Opus 4.8 against it, while white hats sit locked out.

Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Luca Netz weigh the defender's dilemma: builders cannot point the model at their own code, but nobody can prove black hats have not jailbroken their way in —  and, the hosts warn,North Korean threat actors have spent more than six months harvesting AI API keys.

Then Kain runs the numbers on the subsidy: roughly 200 million tokens in four hours on a $200 plan, about $5,000 at API rates, and on the 22nd Fable goes API only as the first unsubsidized frontier model. Plus Pump.fun's bounty marketplace and the Humanity Protocol hack, which left the hosts asking why a 3-of-6 multisig existed at all. When the subsidies stop, who still gets the frontier?

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Timestamps

🤖 00:40 Why Kain says Fable 5 should have been named Fable zero

🛡️ 03:50 Taylor on how Fable downgrades the second anything touches security

🕵️ 10:42Taylor on stolen AI keys,tokens and North Korea's new favorite loot

🧠 15:48 Does Fable reason like a senior engineer? Kain's 100-doc planning test

💸 20:06 How Kain pulled $5,000 of API value from a $200 Claude plan in four hours

🐧 ~33:45 How Igloo budgets $50K a month on AI, and the bot "brain" running the org

📊 44:00 Multichain Advisors: start building real traction with the team behind $50B at https://multichainadv.com

🎪 44:41 Pump.fun's bounty circus: tattoo typo, the Bootywork coin, Luca's steelman

🚨 55:36 How one infected device cost Humanity Protocol its bridge, token, and treasury
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Coinbase's chief policy officer explains why the bank lobby failed to kill stablecoin rewards — and what 'workable compromise' actually means for crypto users.

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Adaptive Security: Test and strengthen your company’s defenses against AI deepfakes and synthetic identities at adaptivesecurity.com. 

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The Genius Act established that stablecoin issuers could pay rewards to users. The banks said no. For months, the American Bankers Association used the Clarity Act as a pressure point to reverse that decision — tying up a bill that was supposed to govern an entirely different corner of crypto. Now there's compromise language. Coinbase's chief policy officer, Faryar Shirzad, says it's workable. The banks say it doesn't go far enough.

Meanwhile, the Clarity Act itself is racing toward a July 4th deadline, with a Senate Banking Committee markup expected the week of May 14. Ethics provisions around government officials holding crypto assets remain the hardest open question — and, as Shirzad puts it, one entirely above his pay grade.

This is where the biggest crypto legislation in US history actually stands.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


Faryar Shirzad (@faryarshirzad) — Chief Policy Officer, Coinbase

Timestamps
🎙️ 0:00 Introduction
💰 0:43 What the Clarity Act's stablecoin rewards compromise means in practice
🏦 4:04 What the banks got, what crypto kept — and why rewards are still workable
⚖️ 7:51 The American Bankers Association pushes back — is this fight really over?
🔵 13:36 Coinbase One ad: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan
🔒 14:58 Adaptive Security ad: Run deep fake AI generated phishing and vising simulations
📋 15:55 Getting the Clarity Act over the finish line — what's still unresolved?
🔑 18:54 Remaining issues, such as ethics, SEC exemptive relief, whether DeFi apps are money transmitters
🗓️ 28:27 Can the Clarity Act pass by July 4th? What happens if it doesn't?
🌍 32:33 What's next after the Clarity Act — taxes, rulemaking, and global expansion

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A legal battle over frozen KelpDAO hack funds is forcing DeFi to answer questions it has long avoided.

Thank you to our sponsors!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Coinbase One: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained.

Multichain Advisors: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at multichainadv.com.

When the Arbitrum Security Council froze $71 million in funds tied to the KelpDAO  hack, it was hailed as vigilante justice. Now lawyers representing families of North Korea's victims are claiming that same money in a New York federal courtroom, as if theft transfers title. 

Meanwhile, an AI agent running on Base got robbed via a prompt injection hidden in Morse code, and Coinbase cited artificial intelligence when announcing 14% layoffs. 

Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, Luca Netz, and Kelsie Nabben, author of Decentralised Digital Security, work through what DeFi's security layer actually is, who gets to decide when to act, and whether any of it survives the arrival of autonomous agents.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Guest:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kelsie Nabben, Research Fellow at RMIT University — Author of 'Decentralized Digital Security: Code, Community, Crisis' (2025)

Timestamps
🚀 0:00 Introduction
⚖️ 1:55 The $71M legal battle over Arbitrum-frozen KelpDAO hack funds
🔍 7:44 But legally, are those funds DPRK’s? Would that claim hold up in court?
🏛️ 9:16 Why stealing funds doesn’t transfer ownership
🕵️ 14:15 The vigilante security layer in DeFi: who acts and who hides behind 'decentralization'
🧑‍⚖️ 21:13 Questions the judge asked the first day of the Gerstein case
👮 26:24 When Kain was also sued by Gerstein … and Luca was also served
🔵 35:30 Coinbase One ad: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan
⛓️ 37:01 Multichain Advisors ad: Get help navigating TGEs, go to market, BD, partnerships and more
🤖 37:44 BankrBot prompt-injected via Morse code: the LLM-to-LLM attack surface
🛡️ 43:38 Can DeFi survive the agents? AI security risks and what 'blast radius' means
🏢 59:18 Coinbase's 14% layoff and what it really says about AI and org structure

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Ram says the entire market is now one giant AI trade. Chris argues the boom is backed by real fundamentals. Austin asks: is AI creating value for the right companies?

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Circle just made history as the first publicly traded company to run a token presale, raising $222 million from BlackRock, Apollo, ICE, and a16z at a $3 billion valuation — and the stock went up.

At the same time, Coinbase reported a $394 million loss, cut 700 jobs, and suffered a five-hour outage. 

Ram, Austin, and Chris work through what's really happening: whether Circle's Arc is the institutional payment rail the industry has been waiting for or a financial engineering play, whether Coinbase's troubles are cyclical or structural, and whether the AI-driven market rally is a bubble forming or a fundamental shift that makes the dotcom comparison wrong.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell (@austincampbell) — Founder, Zero Knowledge Consulting; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management

Timestamps
🚀 0:00 Introduction and Iran ceasefire update
🛢️ 1:02 What Ram and Chris are watching in oil and Hormuz
📊 4:49 Why markets are shrugging off geopolitical noise
🤖 13:25 Ram on why the market is all one giant bet on AI
💬 16:03 Is the AI rally a bubble or a fundamental shift?
🏦 27:04 Circle launches Arc: could its token compete with its own stock?
📉 40:21 Coinbase: were the layoffs due to AI or the bear market?
🎭 48:26 What it says about the industry that Consensus’s afterparty was at E11even The Crypto Industry’s Maturity Problem

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