Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• What happened with the disastrous Vanity Fair photoshoot
• Kraken postpones their IPO
• The SEC releases long-awaited guidance distinguishing securities from commodities
• A compromise may be developing over stablecoin yield
• The SEC drops their case against Nader Al-Naji
• Phantom gets a no-action letter from the CFTC
• Tempo mainnet launches
• Some regional banks are tokenizing deposits
• Will agentic payments be a thing
• Q-day is creeping closer

Content mentioned:

• Galaxy Research, Bitcoin Is Rising to the Challenge of Quantum Readiness
• Global Risk Institute, Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2025

Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• Are we in an oil crisis and energy shock
• Binance is suing the WSJ for defamation
• NASDAQ and Kraken partner to bring stocks on chain
• The SEC and CFTC issue an MOU
• Prediction markets need surveillance
• Across is considering converting their token into equity
• The White House's cyber strategy
• The banks are still fighting about stablecoin yield
• What risks do stablecoins actually pose to banks?

Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• What Dario Amodei and SBF have in common
• Trump wades in to the market structure debate and asks the banks to come to the table
• Why stablecoins are not like banks
• Kraken Financial gets a skinny Fed master account
• Visa and Bridge are rolling out stablecoin-linked cards
• The FBI arrests a suspect accused of stealing $46m in BTC from the US marshalls
• Morgan Stanley is coming out with their own Bitcoin ETF
• The Aave token governance controversy rumbles on
• Kalshi's traders are upset about their "death market" policy

Content mentioned in this episode:

• The CIV Youtube Channel
• Alpen Labs, Size Matters: Architecting BTC Credit Markets

Alex Wilson, Co-Founder and CEO of Cyclops, joins the show. In this episode:

• Alex's background running The Giving Block and the company's acquisition by Shift4
• Difficulty in enabling stablecoin solutions when utilizing existing providers while inside of Shift4
• Backgrounds of the founding team at Cyclops
• Regulatory strategy for Cyclops
• Products: Pay with Crypto (POS, E-Com), Stablecoin Settlement (for Merchants vs. Wire or ACH), Stablecoin Payouts (Payroll, Contractor Payments, Remittance)
• Key features for building specifically for payments companies

See more at cyclops.io

Dana Syracuse and Josh Boehm of Paul Hastings join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The OCC Charter process how digital asset companies are pursuing the federal path
• The aftermath of the Genius Act passage and the rulemaking process for this law
• Considerations for Federal vs. State charter pathways
• The market structure bill

Learn more about Paul Hastings

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• Kalshi has detected and banned two accounts for insider trading
• Is Polymarket going to have to add KYC?
• Is there a tradeoff between informational efficiency and market fairness
• The OCC de facto bans stablecoin yield in its rulemaking around GENIUS
• Meta is considering partnering with a stablecoin issuer
• Stripe is bullish in their annual report
• ZachXBT determines that Axiom employees have been abusing the platform
• Terraform labs accuses Jane Street of insider trading
• WSJ reports that Binance overlooked Iranian sanctions violations
• Justin Drake unveils a post-quantum roadmap for Ethereum
• Matt Corallo says Nic is wrong about Bitcoin and quantum

Content mentioned:

• Larry Cermak: How Crypto Actually Works: The Missing Manual

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• Crypto VC funds have some dry powder
• CFTC chair Mike Selig asserts jurisdiction over prediction markets relative to the States
• Is Kalshi more reliable than interest rate futures?
• The CLARITY Act inches closer to passing
• Shake up at Gemini
• OpenClaw agents are going to start phishing crypto users
• Bitwise aims to launch prediction market ETFs
• Bridge gets their OCC charter
• Hyperliquid launches a lobbying arm
• DAT hangover continues
• Blockfills reveals a $75m hole
• Ethereum is having an identity crisis
• Base is moving away from Optimism
• Neel Kashkari's bad faith stablecoin criticism

Wyatt sits down with Raj Parekh, Head of Stablecoins and Payments at Monad. In this episode:

• Will enterprises build out their own stablecoin solutions?
• Will card payments continue to grow, or be challenged by other forms of payments?
• What is the role of governments in driving whether stablecoin adoption will continue, accelerate, or decelerate?
• How does Monad work with leading financial organizations?
• Where do you see opportunity for novel tech solutions around stablecoins?
• Will there be many stablecoins or a smaller number of stablecoins at scale?
• Will companies run their own corporate chains?
• How should companies look at embedding stablecoins in their workflows from scratch?

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• Matt reflects on the Patriots season
• We review the Superbowl Ads
• Looking forward to the OpenAI wearable
• Is "something big happening" in AI?
• Does crypto accelerate the rise of malicious AI?
• Are all communications networks going to break down in 90 days?
• SBF wants a new trial
• Blackrock adds BUIDL to Uniswap
• Blockfills suspends withdrawals
• Robinhood is internalizing their prediction market product
• The stablecoin yield issue in Clarity is still a problem
• Fairshake is getting active in the midterms
• Is Chris Dixon right about Web3?
• We review winter olympic sports

Content mentioned:

• Chris Dixon, The long game for crypto

Wyatt sits down with Bhavin, co-founder of Birch Hill to chat about the tokenized asset and DeFi market broadly. In this episode:

• Who is assessing whether cryptoassets are safe in DeFi today?
• Who is assessing risk and ensuring assets are solvent and not fraudulent?
• How have these standards been set and how are they evolving?
• What is a risk curator, how do risk curators make money, and what is their role?
• Is it the responsibility of protocols, curators, wallets, or someone else to protect users from buying bad assets?
• How do you expect non-DeFi-native market participants will start to enter this market?
• Will users eventually buy, hold, and sell assets on protocol interfaces, brokerages / exchanges, or risk curator interfaces?
• Does the Fat Protocol Thesis hold true? Where does value accrue today?