Unchained

Kristin Smith walks through the vote math, the ethics fight, and what happens to crypto capital if the Clarity Act stalls before the midterms.

The Senate needs 60 votes to pass crypto's market structure bill, the Clarity Act, before an August recess deadline just weeks away. Majority Leader John Thune says the votes likely will not be there in time, and Polymarket puts the odds of passage this year at roughly 30 percent.

Kristin Smith, President of the Solana Policy Institute, joins Laura Shin to explain why a deal that seemed close has snagged on ethics language Trump agreed to but Senate Democrats do not trust the Department of Justice to enforce.

Smith walks through the vote math behind 53 Senate Republicans and the Democrats who backed last year's Genius Act, the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act's protections for developers, and the new commodities pathway for token launches. She also maps where the sidelined capital goes, from the Middle East to Japan, if Clarity misses its window before the midterms.

Host

Laura Shin - Founder, CEO and Host of Unchained

Guest

Kristin Smith - President of the Solana Policy Institute

Sponsor

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Timestamps:

🗳️ 00:41 Why Clarity's Senate timeline looks so tight before the August recess

📣 09:11 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code unchained at https://cape.co/unchained

⚖️ 10:10 Why Trump's ethics language deal became Clarity's toughest sticking point

🏛️ 18:21 Kristin Smith on the Clarity Act provisions that most excite the industry

🌍 23:18 What happens to crypto capital and global leadership if Clarity fails

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SPONSORED CONTENT: This video is a paid partnership with 1inch. It was produced in collaboration with 1inch and is separate from Unchained's editorial coverage.

1inch cofounder Sergej Kunz says up to 85% of DeFi's liquidity sits idle. He walks through Aqua, the self-custodial product built to put that capital back to work.

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Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1inch - Swap crypto at the best rates in DeFi with 1inch — and get an early look at Aqua, their new protocol that lets your liquidity do more than one job at a time https://1inch.io

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Discover Aqua, their new shared-liquidity protocol that lets your capital power multiple DeFi strategies at once — without leaving your wallet. Learn more at https://1inch.io

1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz says he built Aqua after getting sandwiched by MEV bots while providing his own liquidity, and after 1inch's research found up to 85% of concentrated liquidity across DeFi sits idle.

Kunz walks through why he thinks liquidity pools fragment capital by design, and how Aqua's intent-based, self-custody model tries to fix that without asking users to give up control of their assets.

He covers Aqua's sub-wallet structure, how professional market makers settle trades after passing 1inch's compliance and KYB checks, and the rollout across 13 networks including Base and Robinhood's chain. Kunz also details 1inch DAO's plan to distribute USDC to liquidity providers.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠André Beganski - Host

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sergej Kunz - Cofounder of 1inch

Timestamps

📣 00:19 Swap crypto at the best rates in DeFi with 1inch — and get an early look at Aqua, their new protocol that lets your liquidity do more than one job at a time https://1inch.io

💧 00:40 Sergej on getting sandwiched, and why 85% of DeFi liquidity sits idle

🔬 06:15 Why Sergej says every chain shares Aqua's idle-liquidity flaw

🧩 07:16 Sub wallets: how Aqua runs positions without creating debt

🛡️ 12:10 Why 1inch keeps Aqua self custody, and the risks Sergej flags

🏦 13:24 Who Aqua is built for, and how it isolates sanctioned funds

💰 17:03 Aqua's 13 networks and the $500K DAO incentive program
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Cole Kennelly, founder and CEO of Volmex Labs, traces why BVIV and BVIV-US diverge around IBIT's regulated options market, makes the case that Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid have more to gain from the Clarity Act than Bitcoin, and shares his outlook for an increasingly institutional crypto market by year-end.

Host:

Steven Ehrlich, Head of Research at Sharplink

Guest:

Cole Kennelly - Founder and CEO of Volmex Labs

This clip is from a longer conversation on the Clarity Act's uneven impact across crypto and Volmex's institutional outlook for the market. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/9SUeqeInZws?si=gF6-ZEEy-BED-yJa

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

Sponsor

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 BVIV vs. IBIT options divergence — and what it's telling traders

📊 00:31 Regulated vs. offshore: how IBIT and BVIV-US stack up

⚖️ 02:16 Why Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid have more riding on Clarity than Bitcoin

⏱️ 05:11 How far out Volmex's term structure actually reaches

🔮 05:23 Cole's read on where an increasingly institutional crypto market goes next
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Jesse Pollak owns the Base App's social miss, unpacks Robinhood Chain's rise, and explains Brian Armstrong's memecoin moment.

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Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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 cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED).

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Jesse Pollak spent the week owning a very public miss. In a lengthy post, the Base creator admitted the Base App's social bet had not worked, leaving Base behind in perps, prediction markets and tokenization, and handed the app's reins to Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie.

Pollak joins Laura Shin to unpack why the pivot happened now, what he makes of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's memecoin controversy over a token called $BRIAN, and how Base plans to compete as Robinhood Chain outpaces it on daily active users, according to Artemis data.

They cover Base's move off Optimism's stack onto its own Azul, Beryl and Cobalt upgrades, a roadmap toward 20,000 transactions per second under the new B20 stablecoin standard, and the x402 agentic payments protocol already handling roughly 90% of Base's transaction volume.

Pollak argues less than 1% of the world uses crypto, and that Base's bet is on whoever builds the trusted rails first.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jesse Pollak - Creator of Base

Timestamps

🗞️ 01:48 Why Jesse Pollak feels 'fired up' despite Base App's social miss

🧭 03:58 Pollak on why the timing was wrong for Base App's social bet

💳 05:42 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained

🖼️ 06:39 Pollak on Brian Armstrong's Coinbaseman meme coin controversy

🏎️ 10:43 How Pollak plans to compete as Robinhood Chain overtakes Base in DAUs

🤝 12:53 Why Coinbase's distribution edge matters for onboarding new users

🔀 15:37 Why Pollak handed the Base App to Cobie to focus on the chain

🌉 18:20 Why Base App is expanding beyond Base to Solana and Bitcoin

⚙️ 21:05 Base's Azul, Beryl and Cobalt upgrades and its new B20 standard

🔐 24:27 Base Ledgers, agentic payments and privacy in Pollak's roadmap
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An OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face to cheat its own test. Kain and Taylor break it down — plus Base’s failed social bet and the North Korean IT workers still inside crypto.

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Thank you to our 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).

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

Coinbase just handed Jesse Pollak’s Base app to Cobie, days after Pollak posted a public mea culpa admitting that the onchain-social and creator-coin bet behind Base never worked.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan trace why Base swung so hard at social instead of perps and prediction markets, and argue Coinbase’s bottomless-money culture, the same one that let Google build Android on a whim, makes it nearly impossible for founders to know when a bet has genuinely failed.

They also unpack Brian Armstrong’s memecoin profile-picture flap, arguing the outrage is almost entirely manufactured by traders chasing volatility, the North Korean IT workers still quietly inside much of the crypto industry, and the strangest story of the week: an unreleased OpenAI model that chained two zero-day exploits to escape its test sandbox and hack Hugging Face’s benchmarking servers for the answers.

The episode closes on an uncomfortable question: if a model will cheat on a security test just to avoid not knowing its score, what else will it break to get there?

Hosts:

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

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

Timestamps

📣 01:55 Base hands its consumer app to Cobie after Jesse Pollak's mea culpa

🏛️ 04:56 Why Kain compares Coinbase's culture to Google's money-fueled delusion

📣 26:50 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code UNCHAINED at https://cape.co/unchained

🪙 28:28 Brian Armstrong's memecoin PFP sparks a very online meltdown

📈 32:58 Why Taylor says the backlash to Brian's memecoin is manufactured

🕵️ 45:15 Why nearly every sizable crypto company has quietly had a DPRK IT worker

💻 47:37 The hidden risk: IT workers who get hacked themselves and expose you

🤖 53:39 An unreleased OpenAI model hacks Hugging Face to cheat on a benchmark

🔓 01:00:26 Why Kain says the model's logic for gaming the test almost makes sense

📄 01:04:10 Hugging Face discloses the hack before OpenAI even notices
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