Bankless

Vaults could become the financial rails that bring trillions onchain, but only if they solve risk, regulation and investor protection. Steakhouse co-founder Adrian Cachinero joins David to explain how vaults work, why repo markets matter and where this new asset-management layer goes next.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:13 Vaults Explained

2:27 Morpho and Vault Origins

6:46 Vault Infrastructure Layers

8:53 Curators and Control

18:25 Risk Frameworks

24:48 Risk Creep and Incentives

32:51 Principal-Agent Tensions

39:33 Safe Vaults Scale

41:50 SEC and Regulation

46:58 Two Vault Futures

53:54 Distributors vs Curators

59:21 AI Meets Vaults

1:01:23 Growth and Challenges

---

RESOURCES

Adrian Cachinero

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriancachinero

Steakhouse Financial

https://www.linkedin.com/company/steakhouse-financial/

---

Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Every lending protocol in DeFi quietly decides your interest rate for you. Paul Frambot thinks that was always a workaround and Morpho Midnight is his argument for what replaces it. Fixed-rate lending as the only true primitive, pricing trust on-chain, and the one switch Morpho won't flip yet.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 What Is Morpho Midnight?
1:59 DeFi's Wrong First Shape
7:18 The Only Real Primitive
14:47 Inside a Midnight Market
20:49 Openness Is the Advantage
22:52 Order Books and New Curves
30:01 Pricing Trust
35:40 Stablecoins and What's Next
37:13 Who Comes On-Chain Next
42:18 Collapsing the Margin
44:50 The Bankless Connection
47:57 How Big by 2027?
51:59 Hester Peirce on Vaults
55:49 Who Takes the Liability?

---
RESOURCES

Paul Frambot
https://x.com/PaulFrambot

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

What does it take to build an exchange that refuses to choose between speed, cost, security, verifiability and composability? Lighter founder Vlad Novakovski joins David to trace his path from international Olympiads and Harvard at 18 to Citadel, early machine learning, Lunchclub and an 18-month ZK engineering bet.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 A Particular Set of Skills
11:33 Harvard at 18
19:03 Citadel and the Search for Alpha
25:14 Machine Learning Before the AI Boom
36:46 ​​Finding Elite Talent Early
41:39 The Lunchclub Matching Problem
45:11 Pivoting Into Lighter
51:18 The 18-Month ZK Engineering Bet
56:38 Lighter’s Five Pillars
1:00:04 A New Generation of Exchanges

---
RESOURCES

Vlad Novakovski
https://x.com/vnovakovski

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Ryan and David unpack the CLARITY Act’s last-minute lifeline, $100 oil, BitMine’s ETH slowdown, and the OpenAI model that escaped its sandbox.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:33 CLARITY Act at a Crossroads

https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/2079334038104408522

https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/2079962528243650990

https://x.com/coindesk/status/2079633633023836667

https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/2079608362522575063

https://x.com/politico/status/2080261045114065177

https://polymarket.com/event/clarity-act-signed-into-law-in-2026/clarity-act-signed-into-law-in-2026

17:56 BitMine’s 5% ETH Strategy

https://x.com/BitMNR/status/2079184988541448638

https://x.com/ykkz99/status/2079607294354964696

https://x.com/ykkz99/status/2079244980103659697

https://x.com/coindesk/status/2079200035045036162

27:40 Hester Peirce Eyes DeFi Vaults

https://x.com/HesterPeirce/status/2080011999702880341

https://x.com/CJRobins01/status/2079976258423627785

https://x.com/Bankless/status/2079536878588715366

https://morpho.org/blog/now-live-morpho-midnight

38:28 BitMEX’s End of an Era

https://x.com/CryptoHayes/status/2080286601125482771

https://x.com/BitMEX/status/2080201602456301580

44:36 NEAR Goes Post-Quantum

https://bankless.cc/near-podcast

https://x.com/NEARProtocol/status/2079189515843821764

48:58 TradFi Moves Deeper Into Crypto

https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/2077774644652790240

https://x.com/JSeyff/status/2077792050573918432

https://crypto.com/us/company-news/cryptocom-announces-400-million-strategic-investment-from-citadel-securities

https://x.com/mzorkin/status/2077834551091478695

54:07 OpenAI Model Breaks Out

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/openai-cyberattack/

https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026

https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-model-evaluation-security-incident/

1:02:40 Closing & Disclaimers

---

Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Securitize has gone public, raised $400 million and tokenized its own equity, but Carlos Domingo says the real race is only beginning. He joins David to explain how Securitize makes money, why investor demand remains tokenization’s biggest bottleneck and what separates an actual onchain share from a synthetic stock wrapper.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Going Public
4:50 Demand Bottleneck
10:19 Real vs Synthetic
17:31 Liquidity Wins
23:43 First Movers
29:24 Trading SECZ
39:47 Spot and Perps
43:01 The $1T Goal

---
RESOURCES

Carlos Domingo
https://x.com/carlosdomingo

Securitize
https://securitize.io/

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Bitcoin has won the store-of-value argument, but can it become the foundation of an entirely new credit system? David Seroy of Alpen Labs joins David Hoffman to explore why Bitcoin’s next era may be defined by digital credit, ZK rollups, fixed-duration lending, and an onchain repo market rather than payments alone.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Hyperbitcoinization
3:51 Bitcoin’s Next Phase
9:57 The Talent Crisis
11:29 BitVM and ZK
16:26 Bitcoin L2s
19:06 Bitcoin Credit
28:28 Onchain Repo
34:09 The Yield Curve
38:21 Borrowing and Risk
43:24 Why L2s Failed
48:29 Saylor vs Onchain
54:51 Alpen and Strata
56:36 Ethereum’s Purpose

---
RESOURCES

Alpen Labs
https://www.alpenlabs.io/

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Inflation cooled, war intensified, and crypto climbed anyway. Ryan and David ask if the bottom is in, unpack Robinhood Chain’s surge past Base, and debate who benefits from Ethereum’s L2 boom.

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---

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:29 Cycle Bottom Watch

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077774313726304659

https://x.com/goodalexander/status/2077031311664197738

https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/2076857638059720736

5:24 Inflation Cools, War Heats

https://x.com/kobeissiletter/status/2077008212994253025

https://x.com/geiger_capital/status/2077011477580451983

14:56 Crypto Outperforms Stocks

https://x.com/saylor/status/2076638696053276748

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2076647130572235017

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077197119207756098

22:34 Robinhood Chain Breaks Out

https://x.com/donnoh_eth/status/2075890751834071189

https://dune.com/entropy_advisors/robinhood-chain-network-overview

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/07/15/the-launchpad-that-fueled-robinhood-chain-s-memecoin-boom-just-gave-away-all-its-revenue

https://dune.com/adam_tehc/the-robinhood-trenches

29:31 Base Pivots to Trading

https://x.com/jessepollak/status/2077427261586997745

https://x.com/jessepollak/status/2077550728416256489

https://x.com/austincampbell/status/2077545305789067398

36:15 Does ETH Earn Enough?

https://x.com/vladtenev/status/2076666114801877310

https://x.com/LorenzoARK/status/2076792007184298076

https://x.com/apolynya/status/2077301418860466487

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077400104458154428

https://x.com/ethereumJoseph/status/2076838398510211122

47:29 L2s and Rent Sharing

https://x.com/sgoldfed/status/2077082053330272454

https://x.com/l2beat/status/2077764769436553272

https://l2beat.com/native-rollups

56:20 Ethereum Spinoffs Multiply

https://x.com/eth_systems/status/2077000602320805918

https://x.com/fradamt/status/2077739531520921621

58:49 DeFi Hacks May Be Peaking

https://x.com/hosseeb/status/2076682247168827849

https://x.com/maraoz/status/2059413451265441990

1:01:44 Buy-and-Burn Wins

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077186630566224208

https://x.com/blknoiz06/status/2077773554033037509

1:06:29 Closing & Disclaimers

---

Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

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NEAR wants users to stop thinking about blockchains altogether. Proximity Labs co-founder Kendall Cole joins David to explain how NEAR Intents connects 35 chains, powers products like Infinex, brings tokenized assets and confidential transactions into one seamless experience, and turns fragmented crypto markets into a single account where users see assets, not infrastructure.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

2:29 Chains Need Neutrality

4:20 Near’s Chain Abstraction Vision

6:03 Wallets to Retail Expansion

9:30 Bootstrapping Liquidity and Partners

11:23 RWA Asset Explosion

15:00 Tokenized Stocks on Near

15:57 One App Across Chains

19:01 Near as Chain Abstraction

21:35 Trading Bots and Payments

24:54 MiCA’s Market Shock

28:16 Noncustodial Compliance Strategy

29:17 Euro Onramps into Near

31:38 Regulation Meets On-Chain Freedom

38:09 Confidential Intents Launch

41:15 Privacy for Users and Firms

43:36 Private Zcash Routing

46:50 Privacy for AI Models

49:52 Near’s Fee Capture Model

52:19 Crypto as Exchange Infrastructure

---

RESOURCES

Kendall Cole

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendall-cole-91b00534/

Proximity Labs

https://x.com/proximityfi

Near Intents

https://x.com/near_intents

---

Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Onchain trading infrastructure is reaching a point where it can seriously compete with centralized exchanges. Jito founder Lucas Bruder joins David to introduce JTX, a new prosumer trading terminal built to bring major crypto assets, tokenized equities, perps, and eventually global markets into one onchain experience.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Solana and Tokenized Stocks
2:22 What Is JTX?
8:44 A Better Trading UX
11:25 Better Execution
15:37 The JTX Roadmap
19:35 JTO and SOL Tokenomics
25:23 Why Solana Got Better
29:34 Prop AMMs Explained
37:25 Liquidity and Market Makers
40:04 Solana vs. Robinhood Chain
46:51 The JTX Rollout
48:07 Global Markets and the SOL Thesis

---
RESOURCES

Lucas Bruder
https://x.com/buffalu__

JTX
https://x.com/jtx_trade

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
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What happens when rebel money becomes institutional money? In this episode, David sits down with Bitcoin OG Dan Held to ask whether Bitcoin is actually going according to plan. They unpack Bitcoin’s cypherpunk origins, the rise of ETFs and corporate treasuries, Michael Saylor’s influence, Bitcoin’s missed scaling opportunities, privacy tradeoffs, quantum risk, the Satoshi mystery, and why Dan thinks Bitcoin can still flip gold.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Is Bitcoin Going According to Plan?
2:39 Bitcoin’s Culture Changed, But Did the Code?
9:06 From Magic Internet Money to Digital Gold
15:08 Michael Saylor, Strategy and Concentration Risk
20:08 Is Bitcoin Becoming Too US-Coded?
24:12 Did Bitcoin Miss Its Scaling Moment?
29:42 Privacy, Cash and Bitcoin’s Tradeoffs
32:15 Satoshi’s Design Choices
37:50 BIPs, Quantum Risk and Bitcoin Upgrades
41:35 How Urgent Is Quantum?
44:14 The Satoshi Mystery
47:38 Bitcoin’s Next Phase of Adoption
49:23 Will Bitcoin Flip Gold?
53:11 Being Early Looks Crazy

---
RESOURCES

Dan Held
https://x.com/danheld

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures