WuBlockchain Podcast

In this episode of the WuBlockchain Podcast, we speak with Chris Yin, co-founder and CEO of Plume, about RWA adoption, onchain yields, liquidity risks, and the future of tokenized assets. Chris argues that while stablecoins have proven the potential of RWAs, the bigger challenge is no longer tokenization itself, but distribution and liquidity.

Chris discusses RWA products offering 12%–15% yields and the underlying credit, custody, and liquidity risks investors need to understand. He also explains why secondary markets remain underdeveloped and why instant liquidity cannot always be guaranteed.

Looking ahead, Chris expects growing competition from traditional financial institutions and sees distribution and product design as key differentiators. He believes the next phase of RWAs will extend beyond tokenization into onchain derivatives, secondary markets, and investment products combining crypto and traditional assets.

Timeline:

00:00 What Is Plume Building in the RWA Market?

01:06 Why Chris Founded Plume

03:05 Why Stablecoins Are the Most Successful RWA Use Case

05:55 Why Do Crypto Users Need RWAs?

09:13 Why RWA Distribution Matters More Than Tokenization

11:54 Balancing Yield, Risk, and Liquidity in RWAs

14:55 Where Do High RWA Yields Come From?

19:21 Managing Redemptions During Market Downturns

22:13 Investor Restrictions and Global RWA Access

26:13 How Plume Competes With Traditional Finance

32:57 Key RWA Trends Over the Next 2–3 Years

34:48 Beyond Tokenization: Onchain Derivatives and Portfolios

38:31 Plume’s Push for a U.S. Broker-Dealer License

This episode features a public Binance Space with co-CEOs Yi He and Richard Teng, alongside Chief Security Officer Jimmy Xu, addressing the major security breach on October 30. According to Binance, attackers compromised an internal wallet-signing service and bypassed normal withdrawal procedures to steal approximately $6.34 billion in crypto assets. At the time of the discussion, around $2.85 billion had reportedly been frozen or intercepted. Binance says it will cover all losses, has replenished roughly 98% of the affected token balances, and has fully resumed withdrawals, with no shortfall in customer funds.

Jimmy explains how the attackers allegedly used fake job postings and technical interviews to trick an engineer into running malicious code on a work computer, ultimately gaining access to internal systems. The attackers also exploited onchain authorization mechanisms to continue moving funds even after Binance suspended withdrawals. Binance believes the attack involved a state-sponsored hacking group and says its security team has blocked 57 suspected North Korean cyberattacks in 2026.

Yi He says she pushed for greater transparency about the incident despite internal concerns that disclosing technical details could introduce additional security risks. Binance plans to rebuild the affected wallet infrastructure, strengthen internal system isolation, and bring in independent security reviews. Looking ahead, Yi He argues that the crypto industry needs to focus more on real-world utility and sustainable business models, highlighting tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), equity perpetual futures, and the convergence of crypto and traditional finance as key areas of growth.

The figures, attack attribution, asset recovery claims, and security measures described above are primarily based on public statements by Binance executives and should not be taken as independently verified findings.

Timeline:

00:00 Binance Leadership Addresses the $6.3B Hack

01:17 Richard Teng on the Exploit, Frozen Funds, and Reimbursement

03:27 Yi He on Binance's Initial Response to the Attack

07:58 Why Binance Was Targeted by Suspected State-Sponsored Hackers

08:53 Are Customer Funds Safe? Binance Says 98% Has Been Replenished

10:56 Why Binance's Withdrawal Freeze Was Different From FTX

12:08 How a Fake Job Interview Compromised an Engineer's Laptop

14:01 Binance Says It Blocked 57 Suspected North Korean Cyberattacks

15:15 Why Suspending Withdrawals Couldn't Stop the Attack

16:45 AI as Both a Cybersecurity Threat and Defense Tool

18:23 Why Yi He Pushed to Disclose Details of the Exploit

21:57 Rebuilding Wallet Infrastructure and Strengthening Security

26:47 Yi He on Binance's Future: RWAs and Equity Perpetuals

In this episode of the WuBlockchain Podcast, we speak with Luuk Strijers, Coinbase Head of Exchanges and former Deribit CEO, about the Coinbase–Deribit integration, trading infrastructure upgrades, derivatives expansion, and institutional market activity.

Luuk discusses how Coinbase's global reach and regulatory infrastructure are helping Deribit expand. The upgraded matching engine delivers a 50–60x speed improvement, with median round-trip latency of around 75 microseconds, though the acquisition has also slowed some decision-making. He also covers the expansion into perpetual futures tied to equities, commodities, and pre-IPO assets, noting that pre-IPO perpetuals have seen weaker-than-expected demand.

With limited new capital flowing into crypto options, Coinbase is focused on improving capital efficiency by enabling clients to use assets held in custody for derivatives trading and expanding access to U.S. markets. Luuk also discusses institutional versus retail options trading, competitive pressures, and market positioning, which suggests a modest bullish bias but no strong directional consensus.

Timeline:

00:00 Introduction: Luuk’s role at Coinbase and Deribit

00:41 Why did Deribit agree to the Coinbase acquisition?

02:41 Key milestones in the Coinbase–Deribit integration

05:03 Deribit’s trading volume and business performance

07:53 Will Deribit retain operational autonomy?

09:48 How is Deribit’s core business performing?

11:13 Derivatives available to U.S. traders

12:28 Changes in management and decision-making

15:35 Expanding into equity, commodity, and pre-IPO perpetuals

18:48 Matching engine upgrade: 50–60x faster

21:50 Challenges in the Coinbase–Deribit integration

24:06 Institutional trading activity and market recovery

26:26 Where is new capital entering crypto options coming from?

28:38 Institutional vs. retail options trading

32:16 Competing with lower-fee exchanges

35:44 Crypto market outlook for the next 6–12 months

This episode features a public talk by OKX founder and CEO Star Xu at OKX NOW, the company's global product and ecosystem conference. Xu explores how the internet, crypto, and AI are converging to reshape financial services — from payments and investing to wealth management.

He argues that the line between crypto and traditional finance will continue to blur, combining crypto's 24/7 markets, programmable money, global settlement, and self-custody with the liquidity and infrastructure of traditional finance. AI could accelerate that shift by transforming everything from software development and compliance to personalized financial services. In the future, Xu envisions AI agents that understand an individual's assets, risk preferences, and financial goals — potentially bringing private-banking-style services to a much broader audience.

Timeline:

00:00 The Convergence of the Internet, Crypto, and AI

01:35 Why Financial Infrastructure Still Lags Behind the Internet

02:25 Why Cross-Border Payments Remain Expensive

03:20 From Early Experiment to Mainstream Finance: Crypto's Evolution

04:57 From Crypto Exchanges to Broader Financial Services

06:15 Four Trends Shaping the Next Generation of Finance

07:20 Could AI Give Everyone a "Private Banker"?

08:05 Why Global Finance Still Needs Regulation and Trust

09:21 Crypto and TradFi Are Moving Toward Convergence

10:55 How AI Could Change Financial Institutions

11:30 How AI Is Already Changing Software Development

12:15 AI in Customer Service, Fraud Prevention, and Compliance

13:46 AI Is Moving From Concept to Large-Scale Adoption

14:30 How the Internet, Crypto, and AI Could Reshape Finance

15:35 From Payments and Investing to AI-Powered Wealth Management

This episode features a public talk by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin at OKX NOW, OKX's global product and ecosystem conference themed "The Future Is Now." Vitalik explores how AI could reshape blockchain, privacy, and security. As zero-knowledge proofs and other cryptographic tools mature, he sees blockchains evolving beyond "programmable assets" toward "programmable data" — allowing users to prove facts without revealing the underlying information, a capability that could become increasingly important in the AI era.

Vitalik also sees AI becoming a new interface for blockchain. Instead of relying on traditional apps, users could ask AI agents to write scripts and execute on-chain actions directly. But this creates new risks, from prompt injection to AI misinterpreting user intent. Looking ahead, he expects Ethereum to become cheaper and more private, with bots and AI agents playing a much larger role in how people interact on-chain — while security increasingly extends from software all the way down to hardware.

Timeline:

00:00 AI: The Biggest Opportunity and Risk

01:20 From Programmable Assets to Programmable Data

02:35 Why Privacy Matters More in the AI Era

03:59 AI, Cyberattacks, and Software Vulnerabilities

05:30 Can AI Make Blockchain More Secure?

07:28 AI as the New User Interface

08:20 The Risks of AI Agents On-Chain

10:55 What Will Ethereum Look Like in Two Years?

12:15 When Apps and Counterparties Become Bots

14:18 "Not Your Silicon, Not Your Keys"

15:10 Blockchain at the Frontier of Security and Privacy

This episode features a public speech by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin at the 12th Global Blockchain Summit in Shanghai. Vitalik reviews how blockchain technology has evolved over the past 15 years, arguing that the industry is moving beyond blockchain alone toward a broader technological stack combining blockchains with zero-knowledge proofs, programmable cryptography, and other advanced tools. As data analytics and AI become increasingly powerful, the privacy assumptions of early public blockchains are no longer sufficient, creating a greater need for new cryptographic approaches to privacy, scalability, and security.

Vitalik highlights technologies including SNARKs, STARKs, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and formal verification. He argues that zero-knowledge proofs are moving from long-term roadmaps into real protocols, while programmable cryptography could expand blockchain systems from determining "who can send what" to determining "who can see what." In this vision, blockchain will increasingly become a broader network encompassing L1s, L2s, off-chain computation, transaction pools, block building, and other components.

He also argues that AI can accelerate the development, verification, and understanding of complex cryptographic systems. As zero-knowledge proofs become more efficient and technologies such as formal verification and quantum-safe cryptography advance, developers may gain new ways to build decentralized applications with stronger privacy, scalability, and security guarantees.

Timeline:

00:00 Speech Introduction

00:39 How Blockchain Has Changed Over the Past 15 Years

02:30 Why Early Blockchain Privacy Is No Longer Enough

04:48 How SNARKs and STARKs Change Scalability and Privacy

06:20 Zero-Knowledge Proofs Move from Roadmaps to Real Protocols

07:20 FHE and Other Cryptographic Technologies

08:00 Moving Toward Multi-Party Block Building

08:45 Off-Chain Proofs and Parallel Verification

09:40 From "Who Can Send What" to "Who Can See What"

10:40 Blockchain Becomes a Multi-Layer Cryptographic Network

12:25 How New Architectures Reduce Scalability Trade-Offs

14:20 How AI Can Accelerate Cryptographic Development

16:25 Why Formal Verification Matters for L2 Security

18:00 Ethereum's Path Toward STARKs and Quantum Safety

19:44 How New Cryptography Could Reshape Application Development

In this episode of WuBlockchain podcast, Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun joins the show to discuss how Sui is positioning itself today, what's driving its growth, and where long-term value could come from.

Adeniyi frames Sui as a high-performance blockchain built for global value transfer, highlighting its horizontal scalability, low-cost payments, onchain storage, and broader developer stack. He also argues that stablecoin payments and AI agent–driven automated transactions could become the biggest demand drivers for crypto going forward.

The conversation also touches on Sui's TVL swings, tokenomics, institutional partnerships, ecosystem support, and the governance tradeoffs exposed during security incidents. At a high level, Sui is trying to move beyond the narrative of being just another general-purpose L1 and instead position itself as infrastructure for global payments and the agent economy.

Timeline:
00:00 Intro
00:16 Sui's new positioning: a high-performance network for global payments and value transfer
02:42 Beyond market cycles: which metrics the team actually cares about
03:54 Why stablecoin payments are crypto's clearest real-world use case today
04:43 Why AI agents could become the next major driver of onchain growth
06:32 Why AI still needs blockchains: trusted data, payments, and automated execution
08:22 How AI is already changing Mysten Labs' engineering and security workflows
10:41 "A good chain doesn't always make a good asset": responding to unlock and token overhang concerns
12:40 Where long-term value accrual for SUI could come from: burn mechanics, staking, and stablecoin-related yield
16:00 Governance after security incidents: should validators ever freeze assets?
19:32 Sui's expansion across Asia, Africa, and other emerging markets
20:44 What to watch over the next year: stablecoin scale, agent payments, and institutional onboarding
21:10 Sui's long-term vision: becoming an alternative to traditional payment rails

In this episode of Friends of OKX Wallet, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discusses the long-term convergence of AI and crypto. He talks about the role Ethereum could play in the agent era: rather than serving as a traditional “operating system,” blockchain is better understood as a public data layer, an on-chain computation layer, and an economic layer for multi-party coordination.

As AI agents begin to interact on-chain at scale, Ethereum will need to offer more than lower costs and higher throughput. It will also need stronger privacy, verifiable security, minimal identity disclosure, and an L2 ecosystem tailored to different application needs.

Vitalik argues that humans will remain the users, while AI becomes a new interface and execution layer. Wallets may evolve from standalone products into secure software capability layers that AI can call and orchestrate. For identity, users should avoid revealing who they are in full, and instead prove only what is necessary, such as reputation or source of funds, through zero-knowledge proofs.

On scaling, Vitalik says L2s should not simply copy the EVM. Instead, they should start from application needs and provide specific functions such as order matching, low-cost execution, or privacy. For Agent product experience, he emphasizes local AI, privacy, security, formal verification, and alignment with user interests. He also points to ZK Payments and ZK API as promising foundations for Agent-native payments and interaction standards.

Timeline:

00:00 Opening: The long-term convergence of AI and crypto

00:51 Vitalik on Ethereum's two core functions in the Agent era

03:30 Why blockchain's economic layer is key to decentralized AI coordination

05:07 AI as the new interface, with humans still at the center

07:09 Wallets evolving into secure API / SDK capability layers

10:03 Why humans and agents can share the same underlying framework

12:04 Low-cost settlement for AI high-frequency transactions, and why L2s need a rethink

16:31 Using AI for Ethereum security verification and Agent wallet development

18:52 Why ZK Payments could be the next protocol-level Agent standard

20:25 Preventing abuse with security deposits without compromising privacy

Arthur Hayes updated his outlook on market liquidity and Bitcoin’s trajectory in his keynote, “21 Weeks Later,” delivered at the Bitcoin 2026 Vegas conference.

Hayes argued that the market had previously been driven by an “AI deflation” thesis: AI boosts efficiency and puts pressure on high-paid white-collar jobs, which could weaken bank credit quality and weigh on Bitcoin and other risk assets. But as geopolitical tensions rise and the US shifts more clearly toward a wartime fiscal stance, he believes the market is starting to price in fiscal expansion, higher bank leverage, and a fresh wave of credit creation.

He also argued that concerns over Kevin Warsh potentially becoming Fed chair and pursuing an aggressively hawkish balance-sheet reduction are overblown. In Hayes’s view, what is more likely is a structural reshuffling between the Fed’s balance sheet and those of commercial banks. With regulatory easing, commercial banks could take on more Treasuries and repo assets while expanding lending to defense, resource extraction, and AI infrastructure. Hayes believes this new credit creation could outweigh the drag AI has placed on jobs and legacy credit demand, allowing liquidity conditions to turn positive again. On that basis, he remains bullish on Bitcoin and expects further upside this year.

Timeline:

00:00 Opening remarks

00:35 Why markets may treat the conflict as temporary

01:45 How AI deflation and job losses weighed on risk assets

03:24 The shift toward a wartime inflation and fiscal expansion narrative

05:51 Why Hayes questions the “super hawkish” Warsh view

06:49 A possible balance-sheet shift from the Fed to commercial banks

08:26 How banks could absorb more Treasuries and expand lending

10:00 Why Washington still shows no real appetite for austerity

11:23 Why US banks may become major buyers of new Treasury supply

12:09 Why banks could gain more room to lend

This episode is based on Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's keynote at Hong Kong Web3 Festival, centered on one question: what kind of chain Ethereum is ultimately trying to become. Vitalik framed Ethereum as infrastructure that serves both as a "public bulletin board" and a "shared computation layer," stressing that its core value is not about chasing maximum speed, but about long-term security, decentralization, verifiability, and fair participation.

In the talk, he laid out Ethereum's roadmap for the coming years. In the near term, the focus remains on scaling both data availability and execution, raising the gas limit, advancing zkEVM adoption, improving block building, and using account abstraction to strengthen smart contract wallets, privacy, and support for post-quantum signatures. Over the medium to long term, the priorities shift toward tackling state growth, expanding formal verification, achieving full post-quantum readiness, simplifying the protocol, and making it possible for ordinary devices — including phones and IoT devices — to verify chain state.

Vitalik also emphasized that Ethereum should not become a platform optimized for high-frequency trading. Instead, it should serve as a secure and durable base layer that developers and users can rely on for the long haul, providing a strong foundation for decentralized applications across finance, identity, social, prediction markets, and beyond.

Timeline: 

0:00 Ethereum roadmap backdrop

01:20 Ethereum's two core roles: DA and execution

03:01 Core values: security, verifiability, fair access

03:50 dApps will remain hybrid onchain-offchain

05:21 L2s should not become bigger centralized Ethereums

06:01 Ethereum must scale data and execution together

06:31 The next five years: scaling, zkEVM, post-quantum, privacy

07:39 Next hard fork: parallelization, gas repricing, higher gas limit

08:13 Account abstraction: smarter wallets, gas sponsorship, privacy, post-quantum support

09:50 Mid-term bottleneck: state growth

10:12 Security, formal verification, and AI-assisted proofs

11:47 Ethereum must rely less on core dev teams

13:40 Ethereum's endgame: a global shared layer for rules and data commitments