Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This episode is a special one: Haseeb reads his new essay, In Defense of Exponentials, a manifesto pushing back against the rising financial cynicism dominating CT. He breaks down why new chains launch into unprecedented hate, why revenue-based valuation models misunderstand the nature of exponential technologies, and why believing in ETH, SOL, and open financial systems still makes sense. It’s a zoom-out moment for the space — a reminder that crypto’s exponential arc is far from over.

Show highlights

🔹 Chain Hate Era — New L1s like Monad, Tempo, and MegaETH now launch into hostility, not indifference, reflecting a major psychological shift in crypto.

🔹 Financial Cynicism — CT has moved from “nothing has value” nihilism to “everything is overvalued” cynicism, insisting L1s trade 5–10× too high.

🔹 Revenue Meta = Linear Thinking — P/E ratios, REV metrics, and exchange-style valuation models misprice blockchains by treating exponentials like steady-state businesses.

🔹 Probability Premium — L1s are priced like biotech: a 1–5% chance of becoming the next ETH/SOL rationally supports multi-billion valuations.

🔹 The No-Prize Fallacy — CT’s new belief: even if a challenger chain wins, the prize is worthless because “ETH and SOL won’t be worth $300B anyway.”

🔹 Amazon Regime Misread — Amazon took 22 years to show profit; judging crypto on revenue today is the same error—arguing P/E ratios in an exponential curve.

🔹 Open Always Wins — Crypto turns money into a file format—24/7, global, permissionless—and every industry in history has eventually yielded to openness.

🔹 Believe in the Exponential — The core thesis: zoom out. Crypto’s exponential is still early, and long-term conviction is the edge everyone has forgotten.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

In Defense of Exponentials by Haseeb Qureshi 

🔗 https://x.com/hosseeb/status/1994110900454949263 

⁠⁠Disclosures

Timestamps

0:00 In Defense of Exponentials

01:05 The Cure is Worse than the Disease

07:10 Feeling the Exponential

16:23 So what exactly am I arguing?⁠⁠⁠

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Nick O’Neill has become one of crypto’s biggest viral sensations over the past year with his “Choose Rich Nick” persona. But beyond a content creator, he is a business man and developer.

In this Thanksgiving/Black Friday episode of Unchained, he discusses how he stumbled into internet fame, the man behind the persona and how he intends to become the Barstool Sports of crypto and NFTs.

He also delves into what really happened at the controversial Avalanche yacht party and what it was like being viewed as “gay” for doing theater as a child. Plus how he feels about attacks on his looks and the secret to his success.

Guest:

Nick O’Neill, CEO & Co-Founder of BoDoggos 

Unchained:

Avalanche’s Unlocked Supply of AVAX Set to Increase by $350 Million

Coinbase Buys Cobie’s ‘Up Only’ NFT and Echo in $375 Million Deal

Timestamps:

🚀 0:00 Introduction 

🧏 1:42 How Nick stumbled into internet fame

🤔 9:16 Who is “Choose Rich Nick” actually?

💡 12:23 Where Nick draws the line with the ‘Choose Rich’ persona

💥 13:22 How Nick wants to create the Barstool Sports of crypto and NFTs

💃16:33 Nick explains the “hot girlfriend” arc and drama

🤯 20:31 What REALLY happened at the Avalanche yacht party

📽 30:06 How Nick got into crypto

😕 35:08 Nick on being viewed as “gay” for doing theater as a child

💡 38:43 How Nick feels about the jabs at his looks

🧠 43:25 The most important ingredient to his success

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In this episode of Uneasy Money, hosts Kain Warwick, Luca Netz and Taylor Monahan discuss Monad's mainnet launch performance and how its ICO strategy may have proven solid in the end.

They also delve into MegaETH's botched TVL campaign with Kain explaining why scrambling is bad for projects. 

In addition, they dissect Polymarket's CFTC greenlight, Klarna's stablecoin launch, Cardano's chain split and Berachain's secret Brevan Howard deal.

Hosts:

Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Kain Warwick, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

Taylor Monahan, Security at MetaMask

Unchained:

Monad Co-Founder Defends Token Sale After Slow Uptake

MegaETH Aborts $1B Cap Raise After Multisig Error Triggers Chaos

Polymarket Gets CFTC Green Light to Operate in the US

Klarna Launches Stablecoin Built on Stripe’s Tempo Chain

Cardano Founder Contacts FBI After Dev’s ‘Careless’ Test Splits Chain

Uneasy Money: ICOs Are Back and Why Airdrops Are Instantly Dumped

Timestamps:

🚀 00:00 Introduction

📈 2:08 Monad's post-mainnet launch performance

🫣 6:57 Will Binance regret not listing Monad?

💡 12:57 How Monad's ICO strategy impacted its launch

🧠 16:00 Lessons from MegaETH's botched TVL campaign

🫠 21:53 How the MegaETH TVL campaign could have been worse 

💥 22:32 Why Polymarket's CFTC greenlight is a big deal

🤔 30:32 Why Klarna's stablecoin launch raises eyebrows

🤯 36:35 What happened with Cardano?

👀 39:33 Will AI kill all our chains?

😕 48:24 Why Berachain's Brevan Howard deal is weird

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Insider trading has become a hot topic in crypto in recent months from questionable digital asset treasury stock trades to suspiciously timed asset trades amid news-led market volatility. But do people really know what it means?

In this episode of DEX in the City, hosts Jessi Brooks of Ribbit Capital, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos of StarkWare and Vy Le of Veda explore the complexities of insider trading law and how blockchain technology can make it easier to detect.

They also delve into how AI agents impact market dynamics, the problem with regulators not being able to hold crypto and how insider trading law would differ from centralized to decentralized platforms. Plus Katherine talks about the future of front running and Vy explains how DATs should approach insider trading policy.
Hosts:

Jessi Brooks, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel at StarkWare

TuongVy Le, General Counsel at Veda

Unchained:

Why the Black Friday Whale’s $192 Million Crypto Trade Was Legal

Insider Trading? Yep, But the Real Story Is Securities

The Department of Justice Goes After Its First NFT Insider Trading Case

SEC and FINRA Scrutinize 200 Crypto-Treasury Firms: Report

How the x402 Standard Is Enabling AI Agents to Pay Each Other

Timestamps:

🚀 00:00 Introduction 

🌫 01:25 Why insider trading is not as clear cut as many think

⚡️18:21 How blockchain has made insider trading detection easier 

💡 20:15 Why Katherine sees the crypto front-running landscape changing as tokenization takes off

🤔 23:35 Do AI agents unfairly affect market balance?

🧱 25:38 The problem with regulators not being able to hold crypto

⚠️ 30:20 How DATs are in a tricky spot as regards insider trading

💡 33:25 Vy explains how DATs should approach insider trading policy 

🚨 36:08 How insider trading controls work in TradFi

💥 42:06 How insider trading policy would differ from CeFi to DeFi

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Crypto funding rounds often look glamorous from the outside: big name investors, big valuations, big narratives. But behind the scenes, the terms can look very different — and sometimes, radically so.

In this episode of Bits + Bips, host Steve Ehrlich sits down with reporter Jack Kubinec, who broke the story about Berachain’s Series B and one of the most unusual terms we’ve seen in a major token deal: a lead investor receiving the right to ask for its entire $25 million investment back, for up to a year after Berachain’s token launched.

Jack walks through what the documents show, why lawyers say the clause is extremely rare, and how a refund right like this could impact other investors, and even trigger MFN clauses. They also unpack Berachain’s market struggles since TGE, the state of the Nova Digital fund inside Brevan Howard, and the transparency questions this episode raises across crypto venture investing.

Read the full story here on Unchained

Thank you to our sponsor Uniswap! 

Host:

Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained

Guest:

Jack Kubinec, Crypto Journalist and Podcast Host

Timestamps:

0:00 — Start

0:25 — Steve introduces Jack

2:24 — What the documents reveal

5:17 — Why Brevan Howard’s refund is a big problem

9:21 — How refund clauses really work

14:09 — Jack’s interactions with the Bera team and how Smokey responded to the story

19:29 — Why the MFN clause is key

26:19 — How Breva Howard Digital didn’t actually invest in Bera

30:18 — What investors should learn from a deal like this

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In this week’s Bits + Bips, Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins dig into a macro environment that’s suddenly turning more supportive: QT ending, institutions stepping in, improving liquidity signals, and major catalysts across global markets. But while the setup may be bullish, one corner of crypto isn’t participating at all: DATs, which Ram calls “a death spiral.”

The hosts debate whether altcoins can recover, whether Strategy pushed its structure too far, if banks’ unrealized losses still matter, and why the return of ICO-style launches may say more about regulation than mania.

Show highlights:

0:00 Intro

3:16 Why Ram says we are still in goldilocks economy

5:07 What is missing in the markets according to Chris and how retail is so hurt

11:07 Why the dollar has been on an uptrend, contrary to what people think

13:17 The importance of banks sitting on so much unrealized losses

18:24 Nvidia’s earnings and whether we are in a buying opportunity

22:21 Whether banks will be negatively affected by stablecoins growth or they are fine

25:05 What Austin and Ram disagree on whether the 50-year mortgage is good

28:25 Whether MSTR should be excluded from the MSCI index

32:56 Why Ram is “very bearish on DATs” and the importance of their operating businesses

45:19 Why Chris finds it fascinating the revival of the ICOs

51:19 Whether there’s a new operations choke point going on in crypto

Ram Ahluwalia, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida

Austin Campbell, NYU Stern professor and founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting

Christopher Perkins, Managing Partner and President of CoinFund

Unchained: MON Rallies 40% After Mainnet Launch

Fortune: Suddenly, the Fed interest rate cut in December looks like it is very much back on the table

Nvidia didn’t save the market. What’s next for the AI trade?

The Index Exclusion That Ends an Era: How MicroStrategy’s Exile Redefines Corporate Finance

Saylor fights back

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The Ethereum Foundation last month said it was taking its privacy efforts a step further. It announced the Privacy Cluster, a group of 47 coordinators, cryptographers, engineers and researchers with one mission: to make privacy “a first-class property of the Ethereum Ecosystem.”

At Ethereum DevConnect, the EF's Andy Guzman and Oskar Thorén join Unchained to discuss the formation of the group in the context of Zcash's recent resurgence, why privacy is important for crypto and the motivations behind Ethereum's recent push.

They also delve into the difference between the current privacy push and past efforts, as well as how it could unlock new use cases and the reaction of institutions. Additionally, they talk about competition with Zcash, reveal implementation timelines and delve into the impact on crypto data analysis.

Thank you to our sponsor ⁠Uniswap⁠!

Guests:

Andy Guzman, PSE Lead at Ethereum Foundation

Oskar Thorén, Technical Lead of IPTF (Institutional Privacy Task Force) at Ethereum Foundation

Unchained:

Ethereum Foundation Launches ‘Privacy Cluster’

Vitalik Unveils New Ethereum Privacy Toolkit ‘Kohaku’

Why the Privacy Coins Mania Is Much More Than Price Action

With Aztec’s Ignition Chain Launched, Will Ethereum Have Decentralized Privacy?

Timestamps:

🚀 00:00 Introduction 

🥷1:33 What is the Ethereum Foundation Privacy Cluster?

🤔 3:49 Did Zcash's resurgence inspire the launch of the Privacy Cluster?

📽 6:29 How the Privacy Stewards of Ethereum has grown over the years

🔗 8:39 How the Institutional Privacy Task Force's got started

💡 10:10 Why privacy is important in crypto

🔮 13:54 What is driving Ethereum's recent privacy push

📝 15:21 Andy and Oskar discuss their backgrounds

🤔 16:48 The difference between Ethereum's current privacy efforts and past efforts like Tornado Cash

🤞18:43 How Ethereum's privacy push could unlock new use cases

🛣 25:09 Andy and Oskar outline different approaches to privacy

🤔 29:52 What are private reads and writes?

👀 35:16 Why Andy says adopting onchain privacy is a question of risk for institutions

🫆 36:39 Why private identities are important

🤔 40:13 What happens if identity proofs are stolen 

📺 43:27 How the Ethereum Foundation wants to improve privacy experience 

🧏 45:44 How the IPTF’s role is unique 

⁉️ 47:51 What is Kohaku?

👀 51:02 Is Ethereum competing with Zcash?

💡 1:01:29 The Ethereum Foundation's thoughts on private viewing keys 

🗓 1:03:44 Implementation timeline

🔮 1:05:50 How the crypto privacy push could impact blockchain data analysis 

💥 1:08:46 Final thoughts

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Fresh off the launch of Ignition Chain, Aztec’s co-founders Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews discuss why they’re rolling out a privacy-preserving L2 now, how they’re approaching decentralization from the start, and why they chose a token sale instead of the airdrop model.

They also explain why they believe most L2s have evolved into “parasitic” ecosystems, how Aztec plans to avoid those incentives, what the AZTEC token is meant to do, and what’s changed in the broader privacy renaissance across crypto.

Guests:

Zac Williamson, Cofounder of Aztec Network

Joe Andrews, Co-founder and President of Aztec Network

Unchained: 

Vitalik Unveils New Ethereum Privacy Toolkit 'Kohaku'

ETH's HTTP Moment? How Ethereum Interop Layer Hopes to Fix L2 Fragmentation

Zcash Developer Reveals Q4 Roadmap

What’s the Best Way for Ethereum to Grow? Justin Drake and Martin Köppelmann Debate

Why the Privacy Coins Mania Is Much More Than Price Action

CoinDesk: Privacy-Focused Aztec Network's Ignition Chain Lights Up 

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Thank you to our sponsors!

Mantle

Walrus

President Donald Trump's pick for chair, Mike Selig, has cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee just as lawmakers look set to hand over crypto oversight to the agency.

In this episode, former CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo joins Unchained Executive Editor Steven Ehrlich to unpack Selig's Senate hearing. Chris shares his experience working with Mike, why the CFTC should get more resources to handle crypto and crypto's unique commodity trading structure.

He also touches on the challenges the agency could face regulating crypto, whether exchanges should be allowed to continue performing several functions under one umbrella, the timeline for CLARITY and the regulatory path ahead for prediction markets.

Host:

Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained

J. Christopher Giancarlo, Former Commissioner of the CTFC

Unchained:

Prospective CFTC Chair Says It’s ‘Vitally Important to Have a Cop On The Beat’ in Crypto

Senate Committee Shares Bipartisan Draft on Crypto Market Structure Bill

The Chopping Block: When Wall Street Meets DeFi — How Equity Perps and RWAs Redefine Leverage On-Chain

DEX in the City: Are Prediction Markets Gambling, and Who Should Regulate Them?

Polymarket Quietly Relaunches in U.S. in Beta Mode: Report

Timestamps:

🚀 00:00 Introduction 

⚡️1:41 Chris details his experience working with Mike Selig

🤔 6:34 Does the CFTC have enough resources to handle crypto?

📽 10:34 Crypto’s unique commodity trading structure

🧱 13:37 The challenges the CFTC could face with crypto's unique trading structure

🤔 15:15 Should crypto exchanges remain vertically integrated?

💡17:25 How DeFi should be regulated

🧏 20:46 Why Chris says crypto perps do not need new laws

🔮 24:49 Mike's confirmation timeline

💥 25:46 Why prediction markets are important

👀 27:57 Why Chris compares the regulatory trajectory of prediction markets to Uber

💡 28:57 What regulations could look like for prediction markets

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Bitcoin keeps drifting lower — and traders are asking the same question: where’s the floor?

Host Steve Ehrlich brings on Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research, to walk through Bitcoin’s technical setup, ETF flows, institutional positioning, and why the recent selloff looks different from past dips.

Markus lays out the metrics he’s watching, the levels that matter, and why the path downward may still be the path of least resistance. He also shares his views on Ethereum, altcoins, digital asset treasuries, and why some investors are stepping away from risk entirely.

Host:

Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained

Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research

Timestamps:

🎬 0:00 Introduction

📉 1:39 Why Markus is not optimistic about the current market

🐻 3:23 How he defines a bear market — and why we may already be in one

📊 8:02 The key metric institutions are watching and Bitcoin’s next support level

🔁 13:14 How to spot when a real rebound might be forming

🪙 17:29 Markus’ views on ETH and what catalysts could matter

⚠️ 19:57 Why Markus warns that “you don’t want to be exposed to anything”

🏦 22:10 Digital asset treasuries and what ETF flows are signaling

🧱 28:54How staking inside ETFs threatens DATs

🔮 34:35 What Markus expects to happen by year-end

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