Coinbase just launched fully backed tokenized stocks on Base. 

Dromos Labs’ Alex Cutler says they’ll chip away at Interactive Brokers "77% profit margin."

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Coinbase this week launched tokenized versions of Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Google stock on Base, moving past the prior synthetic tokenized-stock wrappers. The tokens are fully backed, held in trust, with ETF-style minting and redemption.

Alex Cutler, CEO and Co-Founder of Dromos Labs, joins Laura Shin to unpack what real backing changes about tokenized stocks, and to argue decentralized exchanges can beat legacy brokers on cost and access.

Cutler points to Aerodrome's roughly 25% share of AMM volume on the new assets, about $80 million traded and 5,000 wallets active within days, plus integrations across nine DeFi protocols including Aave, Morpho, and 1inch.

He argues Interactive Brokers extracts a 77% profit margin as a middleman, and cites Nvidia's earnings, released after the bell, as proof onchain markets kept pricing news around the clock.

They also cover the SEC innovation exemption and a roadmap of more assets, a Centrifuge migration to Aerodrome, and a launch on Circle's Arc chain.

Host:

Guest:

Timestamps

🪙 01:15 How Cutler splits tokenized stocks: real backing vs synthetic wrappers

📈 04:44 Cutler's launch numbers: 25% of AMM volume, $80M traded, 5,000 wallets

💧 13:10 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-x

🧩 13:59 Why composability across 9 DeFi protocols is Dromos' biggest draw

🌙 19:11 Cutler on 24/5 oracle risk: weekend price gaps are a feature, not a bug

🏛️ 24:23 Cutler on the SEC exemption bid and Armstrong's 10%-of-GDP vision

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The crew sizes up Bitcoin's rebound, the fight to bring Hyperliquid onshore, the SEC's new token fundraising framework, and why Stripe's OpenRouter deal could make AI inference markets look a lot like DeFi.

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.

Tom and Tarun check in from Bhutan after lunch with the king, then the crew tackles Bitcoin's rebound, the path to a compliant U.S. Hyperliquid, the SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, and the growing overlap between AI inference markets and DeFi market structure.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Tom and Tarun report from Bhutan after discussing Bitcoin mining, AI, and tokenization with the king.

🔹 Bitcoin pushes back toward $80,000 as ETF inflows and the debasement trade revive crypto sentiment.

🔹 The panel explains why a U.S. Hyperliquid would probably require KYC, surveillance, and separate liquidity.

🔹 Robert argues the SEC's $5 million startup exemption could reopen token crowdfunding for smaller projects.

🔹 Tom asks whether Regulation Crypto Assets solves an ICO-era problem that today's builders no longer have.

🔹 Tarun predicts financial engineers will try to scale the small-offering exemption through many token launches.

🔹 AI could overwhelm government processes by removing the bureaucratic proof-of-work that quietly rationed access.

🔹 Stripe's OpenRouter acquisition turns model routing, inference providers, and cached tokens into a DeFi-style market.

🔹 The hosts debate whether data rebates and inference tokens could finally revive crypto's 2017 data-ownership dreams.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Disclosures

Links

SEC Regulation Crypto Assets: https://www.sec.gov/rules-regulations/2026/08/s7-2026-27

OpenRouter is joining Stripe: https://openrouter.ai/blog/announcements/openrouter-is-joining-stripe/

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:22 Tom & Tarun meet the King of Bhutan

04:13 Bitcoin rebounds and crypto gets hot again

08:10 What a compliant U.S. Hyperliquid could look like

13:14 The SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets

23:53 Are the new token rules eight years too late?

28:23 AI removes the government's bureaucratic speed bumps

31:12 Why AI inference tokens could power the next cycle

34:13 Stripe buys OpenRouter and AI starts looking like DeFi

43:28 Router economics, data markets, and new security risks

51:01 Bull-market vibes from Bhutan and Asia

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Roman Storm's retrial slides to April 2027. Peter Van Valkenburgh argues prosecuting Tornado Cash's developers cost real ground in zero knowledge cryptography.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has declared "economic D-Day" on Iran, leaving an open question over whether the sanctions crackdown reaches Uniswap and Ethereum or stops at Iranian exchanges, where humans are in the loop.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan take that gap to Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center, whose defense of the Tornado Cash developers rests as much on zero knowledge cryptography as on sanctions law.

They cover the GENIUS Act's freeze and seize rules for the stablecoin secondary market and Roman Storm's retrial, now pushed to April 2027, where speech protections clash with prosecutors' "frying pan" theory of money transmission.

The SEC's proposed exemptions, the stalled Clarity Act, and Trump’s Hyperliquid all raise the same question: where does decentralization end and regulation begin?

Hosts:

Guest:

Timestamps

🎯 01:26 Bessent brands Iran sanctions 'economic D-Day', DeFi not exempt

🏦 11:15 Van Valkenburgh explains the freeze-and-seize rules coming for stablecoins

💰 15:18 Bessent claims a $1B Iranian crypto rug, but the receipts don't add up

🌊 25:08 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

⚖️ 25:50 Roman Storm's retrial slips to April as an acquittal motion looms

🔐 38:24 Why Van Valkenburgh calls Tornado Cash's developer a hero, not a villain

📜 47:22 SEC's 'Reg Crypto' plan opens two new paths to raise ICO-like capital

🏇 58:07 Trump name-drops Hyperliquid, raising hard questions for the CFTC

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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 

Bitcoin is pushing toward $80,000 after Scott Bessent's Treasury long-end buybacks flipped spot ETF flows positive and rattled the bond market.

Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins are joined by Bitwise's Gordon Grant to unpack why rising Treasury volatility, and bizarre stress signals building in the TIPS market, are becoming a tailwind for Bitcoin's momentum trade.

Hosts:

Guest:

This clip is from a longer conversation on the CFTC's prediction-market brawl, parametric insurance, and a mystery AI model. Full episode here:https://youtu.be/tLKZl37uZ2g?si=Vp_6Y7PvXeDh_iJ8 

We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET — subscribe to catch it live.

Chapters

💰 00:20 Market snapshot: Bitcoin near $80K as ETF inflows flip positive

🌊 03:32 Gordon on how Bessent linked Treasury vol to Bitcoin's own vol spike

📈 05:32 Ram on the 'extraordinary' price action and Bitcoin's momentum

🎙️ 07:39 Chris on the Bitcoin/gold chart and the Fed-Treasury accord

🧮 09:30 Austin on the fiscal-dominance divergence between the front and long end

🔒 10:54 Gordon on the 'buyer strike' driving Treasury illiquidity

🔄 15:19 Chris on why the basis trade's return is bullish for crypto

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Some crypto products work with multiple chains on different post-quantum paths. NEAR’s Illia Polosukhin and Ledger's Charles Guillemet discuss how they manage that challenge.

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In March, a Google research team published a paper on breaking cryptographic keys with a quantum algorithm, so cautious about the finding that it released only a zero-knowledge proof the algorithm existed. Weeks later, an EigenLayer AI competition improved on that method in roughly 48 hours.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger, join Laura Shin for an update on the quantum threat whose deadline could be approaching fast. Both are creating products that deal with multiple chains that all have different post-quantum approaches. 

They discuss why, of the three NIST-standardized, post-quantum algorithms, the crypto industry has splintered into different chains working with different ones, whereas most industries are converging on one, called lattice-based. They also debate what to do with Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoins: do nothing, freeze them, or freeze and tail-emit new bitcoin, an option Guillemet favors even though Bitcoin's leaderless governance makes consensus hard to reach.

Host:

Guests:

Timestamps

🔐 02:18 Illia and Charles map Shor's algorithm leap and EigenLayer's 48-hour crack

🧠 12:43 Why Matt Corallo's Bitcoin core skepticism reveals NEAR's design edge

📢 18:18 1inch Aqua: see how the shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

🔀 23:28 How lattice vs hash based crypto split Ethereum from Bitcoin's plan

🌐 34:46 Charles: why this crypto fight is unique to blockchain, not elsewhere

🛠️ 37:04 Charles walks through Ledger's SDK and hardware wallet quantum roadmap

🔑 44:22 Why 'wrench attacks' expose the physical risk in quantum signing

🕵️ 46:11 Charles debunks the harvest now decrypt later myth for blockchains

₿ 54:52 The Satoshi's coins dilemma: three options and Bitcoin's security budget

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Venice founder Erik Voorhees says crypto's real job was never speculation. It's becoming the rails AI agents actually need. Plus, why he sold equity, not tokens.

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Stripe bought OpenRouter this month in one of the cleanest crypto-to-AI pivots yet, and Erik Voorhees says most of the industry drew the wrong lesson from it.

Voorhees, founder and CEO of Venice AI, joins Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to argue that crypto's job was never to serve crypto people, it was to become the financial rails a decentralized AI future actually needs. He pushes back on the instinct to abandon tokens for pure AI plays, and on the assumption that America deserves to win the AI race just because it is America.

They get into why Voorhees sold Venice's equity but refused to sell its VVV tokens, why he says the big labs are losing money "hand over fist" subsidizing $200-a-month plans, how DeepSeek reset the cost curve for inference, and why he calls the moderation layer sitting inside today's AI models "deceptive."

His answer for who should actually win the AI race has nothing to do with flags.

Hosts:

Guest:

Timestamps

🤝 01:51 Why Stripe buying OpenRouter is one of crypto's cleanest AI pivots

🪙 04:02 Why Erik says he can't pivot out of crypto even while building an AI company

⚖️ 12:43 Crypto has principles, AI didn't: unpacking the two industries' DC playbooks

💧 27:58 1inch Aqua: See how shared liquidity keeps LPs' tokens in their wallet at https://1inch.com/aqua

💰 28:44 Why Erik sold Venice's equity but refuses to sell its VVV tokens

🧩 42:51 Inside Venice's strategy for aggregating every major AI model in one app

📉 49:15 Why Erik says labs are bleeding money on $200 plans, and how DeepSeek reset AI pricing

🌐 57:30 Why Erik says America doesn't deserve to win the AI race by default

🔓 01:02:41 Why Erik has 'zero faith' in politics and trusts decentralized tech instead

🕵️ 01:09:56 Why Erik calls the moderation layer inside AI models 'deceptive'

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Arthur Hayes unveils Flop, a new protocol for AI compute, and makes the case for why Bitcoin is entering a fresh liquidity-driven leg up.

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Bitcoin has been pumping in its sharpest move since March, after the US Treasury said it would double its long-end bond buybacks, and traders liquidated $1.44 billion in short positions within hours.

Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, joins Laura Shin to argue the rally is proof the Treasury and the Fed are already running what he calls soft yield curve control, defending the 10-year near 5% by funding long-end purchases with short-term bill issuance instead of admitting real yields cannot rise.

Hayes reiterates his year-end $5,000 target for ETH, traces how Japan's yen crisis could force the Fed's hand, and argues the AI CapEx boom is a real estate bet on depreciating chips that ends like subprime did.

He also unveils Flop, his currency for AI agents, and why he is taking on a new CEO role after an already successful career. He also weighs in on Saylor's $218 million Bitcoin sale and reflects on his and his cofounders’ decision to shut BitMEX down.

Host:

Guest:

Timestamps

🏛️ 00:47 Why Arthur says the Treasury's buyback move is 'soft yield curve control'

📈 04:14 Why ETH is Maelstrom's largest position outside Bitcoin

🇯🇵 07:02 The yen quake: how Japan's repatriation could force the Fed's hand

📣 13:41 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more at http://1inch.com/

🤖 13:58 Why Arthur calls the AI boom 'just another boring real estate play'

💽 22:29 Inside Flop: Arthur's new currency for paying AI agents to compute

⚙️ 29:34 How Flop's miners and validators actually work

🪙 41:16 Flop's halving schedule and why Floplabs only takes a cut for two years

📉 45:45 Why Arthur says don't buy MicroStrategy anymore

🔌 48:37 Why Arthur shut down BitMEX on his own terms

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Ethereum wants to slash staking yields toward zero. Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki, DV Labs' Oisín Kyne, and Ethereum-France's Jérôme de Tychey debate whether that breaks DeFi.

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Ethereum's core developers are considering a decision that could cut ETH's staking yield toward zero, and DeFi's biggest names are furious about it.

Jérôme de Tychey, President of Ethereum-France and a co-author of EIP-8363, joins Kevin Owocki, founder of Gitcoin, and Oisín Kyne, CEO of DV Labs, to argue through the proposal's tradeoffs. Aave's Stani Kulechov, Ether.fi's Mike Silagadze, and Joseph Chalom have all pushed back, warning the change guts DeFi's biggest source of yield.

They cover the Nakamoto coefficient and why a 51% staking cartel could censor blocks for free, why solo stakers could see after-tax income collapse, and why Oisín is skeptical of an enshrined liquid staking token. Jérôme defends why Ethereum can pay stakers less and still be more secure than rivals boasting 7% yields. All Core Devs meets Thursday, August 20, and the real deadline lands October 26, when the network decides if EIP-8363 is mature enough to move forward.

Host:

Guests:

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:38 Jérôme lays out EIP-8363's validator reward burn curve

🔥 08:02 Oisín on why a 51% cartel could censor blocks for free

⚖️ 10:39 Jérôme's rebuttal: finality security versus censorship risk

📣 14:38 1inch: See how Aqua's shared liquidity pools work at https://1inch.com/aqua

💼 16:13 Kevin on Aave, Bankless, and DeFi's backlash to the burn

🧾 33:18 Why solo stakers could see after-tax income near zero

🏦 45:39 Does killing ETH's yield scare off institutional buyers?

⚛️ 51:03 Ultrasound money versus productive asset: ETH's identity fight

🔐 56:41 Why Oisín is skeptical of an enshrined liquid staking token

🥇 59:34 Can ETH's shrinking yield compete with Solana and stablecoins?

🔮 01:05:27 Post-quantum costs, and when All Core Devs decides EIP-8363's fate

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The CFTC has used emergency powers just six times ever. Twice this month, both for Kalshi. Jessi, Jacob, and Jane ask whether that protects innovation or sets a dangerous precedent.

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The CFTC has invoked its rarely used emergency authority just six times in its history. Twice in the past month, it did so to shield Kalshi. Jessi Brooks argues that's normalizing a dangerous kind of agency overreach.

With KK Bos and Vy Le away this week, Brooks welcomes Jacob Robinson, host of the Law of Code podcast, and Jane Khodarkovsky, a financial integrity and sanctions expert, to debate whether shielding Kalshi from state regulators protects innovation or tramples states' rights.

They also unpack the SEC's abruptly canceled 400-page market-structure proposal, Anthropic's new EU-mandated watermark on Claude's outputs and the First Amendment questions it raises, and a presidential memorandum letting vetted private companies run offensive cyber operations against foreign criminal groups under DOJ and DHS oversight.

Robinson makes the case for treating the fight against crypto hackers like modern-day privateering — arguing what the industry really needs is its own letter of marque.

Host:

Guest:

Timestamps

🏛️ 02:40 Why Jacob calls the CFTC's Kalshi rescue inevitable, and Jessi disagrees

⚖️ 17:45 Why the reasons behind the SEC's shelved 400-page crypto rulemaking stay murky

💧 21:48 1inch Aqua: See how shared liquidity works at https://1inch.com/aqua

🤖 22:34 Why Claude's new EU-mandated watermark reads as compelled speech to Jacob

🔪 23:24 Jane's take on the watermark rule: a hammer when you need a scalpel

🛰️ 35:21 Jessi previews the CFTC's first public meeting on AI in markets

🔐 36:41 Jane unpacks Trump's memo letting private firms fight cybercrime abroad

🏴‍☠️ 46:24 Why Jacob wants a modern "letter of marque" for crypto's hackers

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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips 

Austin Campbell runs through the strongest legal objections to Trump’s privateering memo, from claims it violates international law on piracy to warnings that private hackers could be treated as non-uniformed combatants.

The segment ends with a pointed question: if privateering is where critics draw the line, why did nobody blink at Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran?

Hosts:

This clip is from a longer conversation on Trump's executive order deputizing private firms to hack foreign cybercriminals. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/FxQCMAJ9GBU?si=tVqmGwizLzv2BAk6 

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

Sponsor

Chapters:

⚖️ 00:20 Paul Rosenzweig's claim: privateering violates international law on piracy

💰 01:39 Chris on why no better solution exists: cost, talent, and scale

🎯 03:14 Erica Lonergan and Michael Garcia: the slippery slope and attribution risk

🌍 05:31 Does this go beyond crypto? The pig butchering scam question

🪖 07:21 Jake Williams: are American privateers non-uniformed combatants?

🏛️ 09:47 Isn't privateering a congressional power, not a presidential one?

🔥 12:05 Why Austin says critics need to propose a better solution first

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