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?

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

• Bitcoin grapples with the fallout of the Epstein Emails
• Did Jeffrey Epstein influence Bitcoin development?
• Is Bhutan selling their Bitcoin?
• Do Bitcoin devs care about quantum?
• Is Bitcoin Core under the influence with sophons
• Kyle Samani steps back from Multicoin
• What Samani's departure means for crypto
• Is web3 dead forever?
• Vitalik starts second-guessing the L2-centric roadmap
• Tether is trading at a slight discount

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Nic on Substack, Bitcoin developers are mostly not concerned about quantum risk

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

• Matt is heated about the Belichick HoF vote
• Fidelity launches a stablecoin FIDD on Ethereum
• Market structure passes Senate Ag Cmte
• The White House crypto council is being revived to find a compromise on stablecoin yield
• Fairshake has another war chest for the midterms
• Do stablecoins cause bank deposit contraction?
• Tether has 140 tons of gold now
• Why is Bitcoin not participating in the "debasement" trade?
• Is gold at risk from alchemy?
• People are still worried about quantum
• Will Worldcoin save us from AI bots?
• What's the solution to the AI slop apocalypse?
• Digital alibis with blockchains

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Niall Ferguson and Manny Rincon-Cruz, Stablecoins Are the Future but Banks will Survive
• McKinsey and Artemis, Stablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers miss

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

• There's a big storm coming
• Matt's playoff picks
• Farcaster sells to Neynar
• Is this the nail in the coffin for Web3Social?
• Where Farcaster went wrong
• BitGo goes public
• NYSE is building a tokenized security trading platform
• Are we looping back around to enterprise blockchains?
• A MA judge has issued an injunction against Kalshi
• Jeffries drops Bitcoin from its model portfolio over quantum risk
• Coinbase launches an advisory board on quantum
• Trump sues JPM for debanking him
• Does the Central Bank of Iran really control $500m worth of USDT?
• What's next for Caroline Ellison?

Matt and Nic are back after a week off. In this episode:

• The Clarity market structure bill markup is delayed for now
• Coinbase backs out of supporting Clarity
• The bank lobby is trying to torpedo Clarity
• Kontigo is accused of ignoring sanctions
• X changes its API to block InfoFi
• California's wealth tax has backfired already
• BitMine invests $200m into Mr Beast's company
• Why tokenized deposits aren't as interesting as stablecoins

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Jason Mikula, Kontigo: Y Combinator's Venezuelan Sanctions Evasion Startup

Wyatt, Henry, and Jake recently put out a report called "Total Value Lost", exploring how best to assess the value of various DeFi markets - starting with lending markets. This episode is a continuation of that conversation, exploring what carries value in DeFi going forward, particularly on the back of a shaky market period. This discussion covers:

• Where does the recent, ongoing market selloff leave us?
• What metrics matter for onchain markets?
• What market dynamics contributed to the October 10 washout?
• How does leverage manifest in onchain markets, and what does it look like today?
• How do you assess the value of illiquid cryptoassets?
• What drives revenue multiples.
• Which protocols will benefit from the tokenization of other asset classes, and which will struggle?
• How do the individual behaviors and incentives of investment funds contribute to crypto market volatility?