Unchained

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For decades, the internet has worked without a native way to pay for things. Credit cards were bolted on, platforms built their own integrations, and developers had to stitch together complex payment flows to charge even a few cents for anything.

But with AI agents now making requests, triggering actions, and needing to pay for data or services instantly, that old patchwork is starting to break.

In this episode, Laura Shin speaks with Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering for Coinbase’s Developer Platform, and Sam Ragsdale, founder of Merit Systems, about x402, a new open standard for internet-native payments designed for the AI era.

They discuss why AI has revived a decades-old idea, how x402 works under the hood, why devs say the experience is simpler than traditional payments, and how stablecoins make microtransactions economically viable. They also dive into the big debates: no chargebacks, chain-agnostic design, the shift to a foundation, and how this standard could eventually work with fiat as well.

Guests:

Sam Ragsdale, Founder and CEO of Merit Systems

Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform

X402

x402scan

ERC-8004: Trustless Agents

Payments MCP: Bringing Wallets, Onramps, and Payments to Every Agent

Google Agentic Payments Protocol + x402: Agents Can Now Actually Pay Each Other

Timestamps:

🎙️ 0:00 Introduction

🌐 1:53 What x402 is—and the problem it finally solves for the internet

💳 7:06 How today’s payment rails work vs. how x402 reimagines them

🛠️ 9:06 Why Sam says the developer experience is “fundamentally better”

🔗 10:54 How x402 stays chain-agnostic

🧪 15:25 How Sam got into x402 and what x402scan enables

🚀 19:22 Some of the most interesting early use cases

🪄 23:05 How x402 works on the backend and why users shouldn’t see any of it

🏛️ 26:21 Why x402 is becoming a Foundation + the Cloudflare partnership

🔮 28:10 What the future of payments could look like in an AI-native world

💱 33:05 How x402 could also work with fiat, not just stablecoins

🆓 34:31 How the team is able to charge zero transaction fees

❓ 37:48 Whether x402 can fix the chargeback problem

🔌 42:57 Integrations: Payments MCP and Google A2A

🐶 45:28 How x402 is being used to buy memecoins, and other early apps Sam & Erik love

🤝 50:37 The challenge of reputation and trustless AI agents

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In this first episode of Uneasy Money, hosts Luca Netz, Kain Warwick, and Taylor Monahan dig into the Balancer hack, Berachain’s centralized response, the sudden return of ICO-style distribution, and why some new drops give away so little. 

Luca explains why he thinks generous airdrops are essential for building a real “army,” Taylor breaks down MetaMask’s own thinking on token incentives, and Kain questions whether any of these models still make sense in a sentiment-driven market.

Plus, Uniswap’s fee switch proposal and the tea on Velodrome and Aerodrome.

Hosts:

Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Kain Warwick, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

Taylor Monahan, Security at MetaMask

Timestamps:

👏 0:00 Intro

🛑 1:23 The Balancer hack—and why we need more guardrails beyond audits

🐻 10:18 How Berachain’s centralized response raised deeper questions

🚀 19:19 The return of the ICO meta

💰 21:26 Why Luca says big airdrops are essential to building an “army”

🐧 24:24 How Luca designed the PENGU airdrop—including the goal of surpassing DOGE

📉 37:11 What’s the point of airdrops if everyone just dumps?

⚖️ 39:50 Are ICOs actually better than airdrops?

🦊 43:41 How MetaMask designed its rewards system—and what Taylor thinks about incentives

🦄 47:19 Uniswap’s UNIFICATION proposal and what it showed about what drives prices

🔀 49:42 Velodrome + Aerodrome merge—and why Kain says the move is “weird”

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In this episode, Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company, which created Zcash, and Harry Halpin, co-founder of Nym, join Laura to delve into why privacy coins have taken off, and why technology is suddenly at the center of conversations involving governments, financial institutions, and national security officials.

They discuss what’s actually driving the privacy coin renaissance, why transparent ledgers create risks far beyond user behavior, and how technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and mixnets are reshaping what’s possible onchain.

Josh and Harry also break down exchange support, institutional interest, the Zcash DAT, upcoming Zcash upgrades, and whether Ethereum or Solana (or others) can realistically add privacy to chains that were never designed for it.

Thank you to our sponsors! 

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Uniswap

Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company

Harry Halpin, CEO and Co-founder of Nym Technologies

Timestamps:

🎬 0:00 Teaser Clip

🎙️ 1:14 Introduction

🌅 1:29 The reasons why Harry and Josh say we’re in a privacy “renaissance”

🛡️ 11:00 Why privacy matters, and how Harry first got pulled into the space

🔐 15:59 How zero-knowledge proofs and other privacy technologies actually work

⚡ 21:12 Why Josh started Zcash and what his long-term vision looks like

📊 24:48 The real-world ways Zcash is being used

💸 28:40 How the Winklevoss brothers are backing the new wave of privacy projects

🏛️ 30:12 How centralized exchanges should support privacy

🕵️ 35:56 Why financial institutions are suddenly interested in privacy and why governments see it as a national-security issue

🌐 38:42 How Nym aims to protect metadata and network-level privacy

🪙 44:47 Why Nym has a token and what role it plays

🔭 49:53 What’s coming next for privacy tech and for Zcash

🧱 54:55 Whether Ethereum, Solana, or other L1s can realistically add privacy to chains that weren’t designed for it

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In this first episode of DEX in the City, hosts Jessi Brooks of Ribbit Capital, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos of StarkWare, and Vy Le of Veda dig into the questions that DeFi keeps forcing the industry to confront.

They debate how projects should respond after exploits like the recent Balancer hack, what “programmable risk management” could look like in practice, and why the idea of “pure DeFi” might be more myth than model. They also cover the MIT Brothers trial (and what its mistrial revealed about the law’s limits in crypto) and end with why the long-awaited crypto market structure bill still isn’t close to the finish line.

Hosts:

Jessi Brooks, Ribbit Capital

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel at StarkWare

Vy Le, General Counsel at Veda

Links:

Paper: Trust Without Intermediaries: A Programmable Risk Management Framework for the Future by Jessi Brooks and Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos

Paper: Blockchain May Offer The Investor Protection SEC Seeks By Tuongvy Le

Timestamps:

👏 0:00 Introduction

🌆 0:43 Welcome to DEX in the City — meet the hosts and the mission

⚙️ 6:16 What “programmable risk management” could mean for DeFi’s future

💥 10:38 How the Balancer hack exposed huge differences in how projects respond to exploits

🧩 17:48 Can “pure DeFi” really exist, or is it just a myth?

⚖️ 22:23 The MIT Brothers trial: why no one paid attention and why it matters

🏛️ 28:26 Inside the Senate’s new crypto market structure bill draft

🕒 33:13 Vy’s prediction on when (or if) the bill finally passes

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The government’s about to reopen, but the economic cracks aren’t healing.

From runaway debt to DATs trading below NAV, markets are feeling the strain of unsolved macro problems.

In this week’s Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell and Chris Perkins are joined by Matt Zhang of Hivemind Capital and Felix Jauvin, head of content at Blockworks and host of Forward Guidance, to unpack what happens when policy meets reality.

They discuss why a $2,000 “tariff dividend” could ignite inflation, how America’s ballooning debt is constructive for crypto, and why DATs could still have plenty of potential, despite already showing cracks.

Plus: the Bank of England’s £20K stablecoin proposal, whether $3 trillion is too low a target for the sector, and a final provocation: is XRP worth more than Ripple equity?

Hosts:

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

Christopher Perkins, Managing Partner and President of CoinFund

Felix Jauvin, Head of Content at Blockworks and Host of the Forward Guidance Podcast

Matt Zhang, Founder & Managing Partner at Hivemind Capital

CNN: Trump’s shutdown win just landed Republicans with a huge political headache

Forbes: A $2,000 Tariff Dividend? Trump’s New Pitch Raises Tax Concerns

BeInCrypto: Digital Asset Treasuries Are Collapsing: Lost Confidence Triggers Market Sell-Off

FT: Bank of England dilutes planned rules for UK stablecoins

CoinDesk: U.S. Fed's Miran Says Policy Needs to Adjust to Stablecoin Boom That Could Reach $3T

Timestamps:

🎬 0:00 Intro

🏛️ 2:33 The U.S. government will reopen—but the economic damage lingers

💸 11:02 Could Trump’s proposed $2,000 “tariff dividend” spark inflation?

🧩 16:18 Why no one is fixing America’s long-term fiscal problems

🪙 18:59 How runaway debt should  be bullish for crypto

📈 20:52 Finding the “true” risk-free rate

💥 23:00 Why DATs are trading below NAV, and if staking ETFs are the better bet

✅ 31:09 The five ingredients of a successful DAT

📉 38:39 Are DATs fairly priced?

💷 42:45 Why the Bank of England wants to cap stablecoin holdings at £20K per user

🌐 50:45 Is $3 trillion too conservative a forecast for stablecoin growth?

⚖️ 57:41 What’s worth more: XRP or Ripple equity?

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As profitability tightens and competition soars, many Bitcoin mining companies are turning to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) to stay relevant. In this week’s Bits + Bips, host Steve Ehrlich sits down with John Todaro, Managing Director, Crypto & HPC/AI Equity Research at Needham & Company, and Kevin Dede, Senior Research Analyst at H.C. Wainwright, to unpack the pivot that’s reshaping an entire corner of the crypto industry.

They discuss how miners are courting AI clients, why Wall Street is suddenly valuing them like data infrastructure plays, and what this means for Bitcoin’s long-term security model. The conversation dives deep into hashprice trends, investor signals, power constraints, and whether these companies can truly deliver on the AI promise — or risk stretching too thin.

Guests:

Kevin Dede, Senior Research AnalystManaging Director of Equity Research at H.C. Wainwright

John Todaro, Managing Director, Crypto & HPC/AI Equity Research at Needham & CompanySenior Research Analyst at Needham & Company

Timestamps:

💡 0:00 Introduction

🏗️ 3:23 Why investors suddenly care about miners’ HPC capacity

📈 9:08 Why the Bitcoin Mining Index is outperforming BTC itself

🤖 12:49 Can AI demand really live up to the hype?

⚠️ 16:31 The red flags investors should be watching

💰 20:50 Why debt levels could make or break mining firms

🔄 23:14 Can miners truly pivot and deliver on the AI promise?

📊 29:42 Why hashprice is falling even as hashrate rises

🚀 34:02 The long-term potential for Bitcoin mining operations

🏦 42:07 Bitcoin miners vs. holding BTC on balance sheets

🇺🇸 51:10 The future of Bitcoin mining in the United States

🔁 57:08 Could miners pivot to securing other assets?

🧠 59:22 Should the U.S. government buy a stake in Bitcoin miners?

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Most new blockchains promise to scale. MegaETH promises to feel instant.

Fresh off its public sale, for which allocations were revealed on Thursday, the team behind MegaETH joins Unchained to explain why they’re calling it the world’s first real-time blockchain.

Co-founder Shuyao Kong and ecosystem lead Amir Almaimani walk through their decision to build as a layer 2 on Ethereum, not a competing layer 1, and why they think the real opportunity is creating onchain experiences that feel like Web2 apps.

The pair also dive deep into the tokenomics behind $MEGA, from sequencer rotation to proximity markets, and defend their choice to skip an airdrop in favor of “skin-in-the-game” token distribution.

Guests:

Shuyao Kong, Co-founder of MegaETH

Amir Almaimani, Head of Ecosystem at MegaETH

Unchained: Why Protocol-Native Stablecoins May Be Crypto’s Next Big Thing

MegaETH Public Allocation Strategy by MegaETH’s CSO Namik Murodoglu

Timestamps:

🚀 0:00 Introduction

🧱 1:47 Why MegaETH chose to build as an Ethereum layer 2, not a new layer 1

⚡ 5:10 How it plans to stand out from Arbitrum, Base, and other successful L2s

🔓 9:53 Why Shuyao says many L2s are actually more decentralized than L1s

🧩 11:16 Whether MegaETH plans to decentralize its sequencer

💰 13:43 The utility of the $MEGA token—and how Tesla and Ethereum inspired it

📍 16:58 How “proximity markets” work

⛽ 18:09 How MegaETH designed its gas model and tokenomics

🎯 21:28 The philosophy behind the public sales

😬 25:13 Why Shuyao says the soulbound NFT sale didn’t go as planned

📊 27:29 How MegaETH decided allocations in its latest sale

🙅‍♂️ 30:39 Why the team rejected the airdrop model entirely

🤝 32:00 How early community members earned 25% of the sale allocation

🕵️‍♀️ 34:46 How MegaETH scored onchain users and detected Sybil clusters

💳 39:36 Why MegaETH has its own native stablecoin, USDm

👷 41:34 How the project hopes to attract the best builders

🔥 46:00 The kinds of apps that are “only possible” on MegaETH

🎯 50:35 What’s next for MegaETH

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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 week, the crew breaks down DeFi’s Black Friday: a brutal week that saw the $120 million Balancer v2 hack, the collapse of Stream Finance, and a market-wide panic that reminded everyone — nothing in crypto is risk-free.

They dive into how one of DeFi’s oldest, most audited contracts failed, why smaller chains froze or rolled back transactions, and what it means for decentralization as Berachain, Sonic, and Polygon took emergency action. The panel debates whether the Balancer attacker used an AI “vibe-coded” exploit, how Ethereum might one day face its own rollback dilemma, and why privacy chains like Zcash may be the last true cypherpunk strongholds.

In the second half, they unpack the off-chain losses behind Stream Finance’s XUSD blow-up, the contagion risk across Euler, Silo, and Morpho, and the hard lessons for “yield-chasing” DeFi vaults. The gang closes with advice for founders weathering the storm — from Tarun’s “cockroach mindset” to Haseeb’s reminder that crypto’s long-term fundamentals haven’t changed.

Whether you’re building in DeFi, securing smart contracts, or surviving the next credit unwind, this episode lays bare the harsh truths — and enduring resilience — of crypto’s frontier markets.

Show highlights

🔹 Market Meltdown Post-“10/10” — The crew dissects October 10’s liquidation shock, lingering rumors about blown-up market makers, and why confidence cratered despite steady fundamentals.

🔹 ADL & Forced Sellers — What auto-deleverage events signaled about thin liquidity and whale-driven order books across perps venues.

🔹 “Nothing Is Risk-Free” — Haseeb’s reminder that there is no crypto “risk-free rate”; even delta-neutral and staking carry hidden smart-contract and market risks.

🔹 Balancer v2 Hack, Explained — Why an OG, heavily-audited E-Pool contract still failed; $120M+ impact across chains and the psychological hit to DeFi’s “battle-tested” narrative.

🔹 AI “Vibe-Coded” Exploit? — The team debates whether attacker logs hint at LLM-assisted discovery vs. expert-guided coding—and why the doomsday “one-shot” scenario isn’t here yet.

🔹 Freeze/Rollback Firestorm — Berachain halted, Sonic froze the attacker, Polygon censored transfers; the panel weighs user protection vs. decentralization purity.

🔹 When Would Ethereum Roll Back? — A thought experiment: is there a loss threshold (e.g., LST or validator-level failure) where even ETH would contemplate extraordinary action?

🔹 Privacy Chains as Last Bastion — Why true no-rollback, censorship-resistant values may persist most credibly on privacy smart-contract chains.

🔹 Builder Mindset in a Doom Cycle — “Be a cockroach”: ignore price, conserve runway, keep shipping; sentiment flips in crypto faster than in any other industry.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly 

Timestamps

00:00 Intro 

01:01 Market Carnage & Sentiment

04:42 Speculations & Rumors: Wintermute vs. Binance

08:34 Builders’ Advice: Survive & Ship

23:11 Balancer V2 Hack: Berachain & Sonic Labs

28:28 Defi Confidence Shaken Hard

33:26 AI “Vibe-Coded” Exploit Debate

36:18 Rollbacks, Freezes, & Chain Ethics

40:13 Future of Decentralization

48:55 Stream Finance & XUSD Collapse

Disclosures

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Crypto’s most controversial trading product might be Wall Street’s next obsession.

In this interview, Brett Harrison, former president of FTX.US and founder of Architect Financial Technologies, joins to explain how he’s aiming to take perpetual futures — crypto’s 24/7 leveraged trading engine — to traditional markets like stocks, commodities, and FX.

Will this be the next big shift in global finance?

Thank you to our sponsors!

Mantle

Guest:

Brett Harrison, Founder & CEO of Architect Financial Technologies 

Links:

The Defiant: Former FTX US President Brett Harrison to Launch Perpetuals Exchange

Timestamps:

💡 0:00 Introduction

🏗️ 1:43 What problems Architect is trying to solve

📜 4:27 The two licenses Architect holds — with the SEC and CFTC

⚖️ 6:18 The key difference between CFDs and perpetual futures

🌐 8:15 Who Architect’s products are designed for

💥10:02 What crypto learned the hard way from the Oct. 10 liquidation event

📊 15:25 Why reputable benchmarks are critical for pricing assets

💰 18:02 How leverage actually works in these new exchanges

🛡️ 22:03 How Architect’s insurance fund is built

🎯 22:46 Whether prediction markets will ever offer leverage

💵 24:35 Why Architect includes interest rate swaps

🔗 25:27 How tokenization could affect the derivatives trading space

🚀 28:50 How Architect plans to attract users and market makers

🔥 31:50 What Brett is most excited about next

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Bitcoin’s bleeding again and sentiment is collapsing.

But if you’ve been around for a few cycles, this kind of pain might look familiar.

In this episode of Unchained, Laura sits down with Yann Allemann, Co-founder of Swissblock, and Joe Vezzani, CEO of LunarCrush, to unpack the latest market wipeout, and whether it’s a signal of exhaustion or opportunity.

From retail’s record-breaking bearishness to the unwinding of crypto’s DAT mania, they explore why the market feels bearish and what that might mean for what’s coming next.

They also dive into the likelihood of a blow-off top, the resurgence of privacy coins, the risk in digital asset treasury companies, and even why some think we could see new all-time highs before the year ends.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Mantle

Yann Allemann, Co-founder and Chairman of Swissblock

Joe Vezzani, Co-founder and CEO of LunarCrush

Timestamps:

🎬 0:00 Intro

📉 2:13 Why Bitcoin’s crashing again and whether DATs are to blame

💥 10:43 The consequences of the October 10 liquidation wave

🔄 18:48 Is the four-year crypto cycle finally dead?

📊 25:00 The unraveling of the DAT trend: end of the mania or just a pause?

😶 29:32 Why markets feel eerily quiet and deeply bearish

🐻 32:55 How this became the “most bearish bull market” ever

🥇 40:49 If Bitcoin is digital gold, why hasn’t it followed gold’s rally?

🎯 47:09 Are prediction markets stealing attention from crypto?

🚀 53:30 Why Yann thinks a blow-off top is still coming

🕵️‍♂️ 55:51 The privacy coin comeback led by Zcash

💫 1:02:00 Why ETH’s relative strength could surprise the market

⚠️ 1:07:36 Why Yann says there’s “no reason to hold speculative assets”

💰 1:12:59 Bitcoin price predictions and what smart money’s really doing

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