Unchained

Google just set a deadline. Quantum computers could break Bitcoin's encryption by 2029. Are blockchains ready?

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Google's paper, co-authored by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake and Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, estimates 2029 for breaking the elliptic curve cryptography that protects Bitcoin and Ethereum.

With 6.7 million BTC in vulnerable addresses and a newly identified 9-minute attack window on unspent Bitcoin transactions, the question is no longer whether blockchains need to migrate. It's whether they can do it fast enough.

Guests:

⁠Alex Pruden, Co-Founder & CEO, Project Eleven

⁠Dolev Bluvstein, CEO of Oratomic

Links:

Unchained:

Q-Day Is Imminent. Can Bitcoin Survive the Quantum Threat?

Solana Deploys Post-Quantum Signatures on Testnet

Is Nic Carter Exaggerating Bitcoin's Quantum Risk? Yes, Says One Core Dev

Research Papers:

Google: Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies Against Quantum Vulnerabilities

Oratomic: Shor's Algorithm with as Few as 10,000 Reconfigurable Atomic Qubits (arXiv)

Caltech: Useful Quantum Computers Could Be Built with as Few as 10,000 Qubits

Companies & Tools:

Project Eleven

Project Eleven: Yellow Pages

Oratomic

BIP 360: Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR)

Standards & Infrastructure:

NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards

Cloudflare: State of the Post-Quantum Internet

Google Quantum AI: Willow & Error Correction

Algorand: Quantum-Resistant Falcon Signatures

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Oil above $100, Qatar's LNG infrastructure in ruins, and a 150-year-old grid buckling under AI-era demand: Sean Murray breaks down why energy has an L1 problem and how Fuse is building the crypto-native fix.

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A $5 billion UK energy company built by Revolut alumni is about to launch a new token, and they already have an SEC no-action letter to back it up. 

But the real story starts with the grid itself. European gas prices are running 50-70% above normal. Multi-billion dollar LNG facilities damaged in recent attacks could take years to repair. And a power grid designed 150 years ago is buckling under AI data centers, EVs, and renewables it was never built to handle. 

Sean Murray, Fuse Energy's crypto lead, joins Steven Ehrlich to lay out why an estimated $70 billion in clean energy has been wasted because the grid can't move it, why that congestion problem mirrors crypto's own L1 scalability crisis, and how coordinating millions of smart home devices through a token-incentivized network could fix it.

Host:

Guest:

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Will AI agents use cards or stablecoins? Here’s how two crypto VCs see the agentic future shaping up.

Sponsored by Nexo: A crypto lending and borrowing platform that lets users earn interest on digital assets and access credit against their holdings. Now available in the US with exclusive privileges for new clients. Get started today: http://nexo.com/unchained

What happens when merchants are code instead of storefronts? Noah Levine and Robbie Petersen debate whether stablecoins or cards win in an agentic economy, and more importantly, where the profit pools end up.

One sees headless merchants driving a new payment stack; the other warns that front ends never fully disappear. Both agree on this: traditional fraud detection will likely fail against AI behavior patterns, and the rails question masks a deeper problem of regulatory and social inertia.

The outcome hinges on whether permissionless infrastructure can outcompete existing payment incumbents, and whether agentic commerce actually scales beyond niche use cases.

Guest:

Noah Levine, Partner at a16z

Robbie Petersen, Junior Partner at Dragonfly

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Chaos Labs’ Omer Goldberg joins the crew to dig into the Resolv Labs exploit. Why was the USR minting function controlled by a single key? And how did audits miss it?

Thank you to our sponsors!

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Crypto Tax Girl

$25 million extracted and millions more in bad debt across lending protocols.

Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg joins Uneasy Money hosts Kain Warwick, Luca Netz and Taylor Monahan to unpack the Resolv exploit.

They dive into how the exploit reveals DeFi's basic OpSec and risk judgement failings. Omer highlights the various ways it could have been prevented as Tay says protocol audits have become “security theater.”

Kain questions Morpho's curator model after its pools were hit hard as the contagion spread. He also highlights markers that suggest the exploit may have been executed in panic.

Beyond the Resolv exploit, the crew highlights that Aave v4 has made it out of governance, discussing the motivations behind the upgrade and whether the hub and spoke model will impact listing standards.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Guest:

Links:

Unchained:

Aave V4 Clears First Governance Vote with 100% Support After Months of Internal Conflict

Stani Kulechov on Why Aave Labs Is Putting Itself at the Mercy of the DAO

How Aave Labs and the DAO Should Split Ownership of the Brand – Uneasy Money

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Trump pulled off a five-day ceasefire nobody expected. Ram calls it the greatest TACO of his career.

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Trump announced a five-day pause on strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure just hours before his own 48-hour ultimatum expired. Oil crashed below $90. Bitcoin surged from $68,200 to above $71,000. Ram called it the greatest TACO of Trump’s career and said the Trump put is officially here.

Meanwhile the Fed held rates steady but the dot plot revealed a historically wide internal split: seven members want zero cuts in 2026 while five want 50 basis points or more. Powell warned inflation isn’t coming down as hoped with projections now at 2.7% for headline. 

And in tech, Elon Musk unveiled a $25 billion chip fab that Ram says is pure fiction while Bezos raised $100 billion to buy manufacturing companies and transform them with AI.

Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Zero Knowledge Consulting

Ram Ahluwalia, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida

Chris Perkins, Co-Host, President of CoinFund

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Bitcoin dropped under $69K even as the SEC and CFTC create more clarity for crypto, and agentic commerce looks like it will reshape the sector.

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Bitcoin dropped under $69K after the Fed, ECB, and Bank of England all held rates steady this week, while Australia hiked. Kaiko's Laurens Fraussen joins to explain what's actually happening beneath the surface, from collapsing liquidity to a quiet geographic shift in who's buying.

He also makes the case that agentic commerce could reshape how crypto payments work entirely and we break down why the market mostly shrugged at the latest crypto guidance from the SEC and CFTC.

Host:

Guest:

Links:

Bitcoin, Markets, and the Iran Conflict

Central bank rate decisions

SEC/CFTC Interpretive Guidance

Agentic Commerce and Payments

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Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and CPO of Mysten Labs,  walks through how Hashi works and how it differs from the competition. Can it succeed where others have failed?

Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges. 

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Mysten Labs has announced Hashi, a protocol designed to unlock several financial applications for native Bitcoin in a trust minimized way.

Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun walks through how Hashi works and how it differs from wrapped Bitcoin tokens and L2s.

He says the protocol is built with institutions in mind, highlighting for one that it does not trigger a tax event like alternatives and also comes with low-premium on-chain Bitcoin denominated insurance.

Listen to find out how Hashi manages these and more.

Will Mysten Labs succeed in unlocking Bitcoin's long-desired $1.4 trillion liquidity?

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Adeniyi Abiodun, Co-Founder and CPO of Mysten Labs

Links

Unchained:

Sui Blockchain Restored After Six-Hour Outage

Sui-Based Typus Finance Loses $3.4 Million in Hack

Coinbase’s cbBTC Crosses $1 Billion Market Cap, Deploys on Solana

New Bitcoin Liquid Staking Protocols Aim to Replicate Lido’s Success

Kraken Launches Wrapped Bitcoin Token kBTC

Top Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) Alternatives You Should Know About

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The crew unpacks the significance of the Trade[XYZ] S&P 500 license, why Vanity Fair's recent crypto piece is so controversial and whether the EF is returning to “communism.”

Thank you to our sponsors!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fuse: The Energy Network ⁠⁠⁠⁠ – Shift your energy use and earn rewards.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MultiChain Advisors -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Growth & Capital Markets Partner You Need

Trade[XYZ] has obtained a license from the S&P Dow Jones Indices to offer S&P 500 perps on Hyperliquid. A crypto trader lost $50 million in a single Aave swap. A Vanity Fair crypto shoot and article is sparking backlash. And the Ethereum Foundation has unveiled a “new” mandate.

Uneasy Money hosts Kain Warwick, Luca Netz and Taylor Monahan dig into what the S&P license means for crypto with Kain saying it is not priced in yet.

They also debate whether DeFi frontends should block high slippage swaps after the recent Aave swap gone wrong.

Plus, did Vanity Fair intend to mock crypto? Luca shares how he dodged the bullet. Tay explains why OpenSea founder Devin Finzer and his wife got the most heat. Kain lets slip how he found himself on the New York Times for buying Trump's memecoin.

And why Kain does not think the Ethereum Foundation's new mandate matters in the long-run.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Links:

Unchained:

S&P 500 Gets First Officially Licensed Onchain Perpetual, Landing on Hyperliquid

Dueling Post-Mortems Reveal How a $50 Million DeFi Swap Went From Bad to Catastrophic

Ethereum Foundation Codifies Its Own Obsolescence in New Mandate

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The crew unpacks the Binance case against the Wall Street Journal. Is the lawsuit just for optics? Plus, why crypto can't turn a blind eye to one Aave user's $50 million loss.

Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges. 

Get started at nexo.com/unchained

DEX in the City hosts Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos and Jessi Brooks are joined by Arktouros Partner Jane Khodarkovsky to discuss the sanctions implications of the story, what is at stake in the lawsuit and the burden of proof on Binance. 

Is Binance fighting a losing battle? And could the case backfire amid a parallel DOJ investigation?

Beyond the Binance case, the crew unpacks recent efforts by the CFTC and SEC to provide crypto with regulatory clarity. Find out why KK says the CFTC's recent prediction markets guidance is a “nothingburger” and why a no-action letter to Phantom is not a carte blanche for all crypto frontends.

Plus, is it time for crypto to consider best execution rules as an Aave user loses $50 million in a DeFi swap gone wrong?

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital

⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare

Guest:

Links:

Unchained:

CFTC Moves to Rein In Prediction Markets as Industry Booms

SEC and CFTC Move Toward Unified Crypto Rules

Dueling Post-Mortems Reveal How a $50 Million DeFi Swap Went From Bad to Catastrophic

Vy Le's paper on on-chain best execution:

Fairness by Design: Verifiable Execution in On-Chain Markets

This week's good news:

Tech boss uses ChatGPT to create cancer vaccine to save dying dog

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Across Protocol wants to retire its token in exchange for equity. Is the DAO model structurally broken?

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Adaptive Security

With Across Protocol proposing to retire its ACX token in favor of equity, a long-simmering question in crypto governance is finally breaking into the open: do token holders actually have meaningful ownership, or just the illusion of it? 

As the regulatory environment under the new U.S. administration shifts dramatically from the Gensler era, the structures that crypto teams were forced to build may now be working against the very communities they were meant to serve. 

Ryan Yi, founder of Onchain Group, and Felipe Montealegre, co-founder and CIO of Theia, have studied these incentive structures closely, and what they have found is uncomfortable. From PumpFun's suppressed valuation to the perverse incentives baked into token buyouts, this conversation examines whether the DAO model was ever built to last, and what governance actually needs to look like if crypto is going to compete with global finance.

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Ryan Yi, Founder of Onchain Group

⁠⁠⁠⁠Felipe Montealegre, Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer at Theia

Links:

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