Unchained

Latest Episodes:

Why Fintechs May Finally Beat Banks at Their Own Game: DEX in the City May 26, 2026

Show notes

Banks are about to lose two of their biggest advantages: custody and payments. A new White House EO opening Fed master accounts to fintechs could be the catalyst.

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A White House executive order is pushing the Fed to open its master account system to fintechs and crypto firms, and the implications are bigger than most people realize.

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le trace what it would mean to plug crypto directly into the core plumbing of the US dollar system, why traditional banks should be furious, and where the guardrails are missing.

They also dig into the NYT’s scathing CFTC piece and whether the snark undermines the serious allegations. Plus the SEC's delayed innovation exemption, Commissioner Hester Peirce's departure, and the White House AI EO that collapsed in eighteen hours. Jessi maps the four White House factions fighting over AI governance, and argues crypto's "don't trust, verify" model is exactly the accountability layer AI needs.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TuongVy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Veda

Timestamps 🏛️ 01:12 Could crypto firms get direct access to the Fed’s payment plumbing? 🏦 07:37 Why traditional banks stand to lose their two biggest advantages ⚖️ 15:57 The prediction market litigation war: Rhode Island, Congress, and the NYT’s CFTC exposé 🔍 30:52 Is leveling the playing field for retail the best case for prediction markets? 📣 32:15 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at https://coinbase.com/unchained ⚠️ 35:37 Commissioner Peirce is leaving the SEC. Who fills that role? 🤖 40:14 The AI EO that vanished: four White House factions and what crypto can teach them 🦕 48:06 Good news: the biggest sea creature ever found, and what it says about perspective

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Is the Ethereum Foundation Too Out of Touch to Save ETH? May 26, 2026

Show notes

Vitalik finally said ETH the asset matters. Zak Cole’s reaction: ‘Should have said that five years ago.’ What broken cryptoeconomics mean for Ethereum’s future.

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The Ethereum Foundation has lost a wave of senior people in the span of a few months. A new co-executive director nobody has ever met is cutting budgets and releasing documents with a certain aesthetic.

Vitalik published a post saying ETH the asset is the most high-value product of the blockchain. And David Hoffman sold his last ETH.

Zak Cole, president of the Ethereum Community Foundation, and Greg Markou, co-founder of Sprinter and ChainSafe, join Laura Shin to sort through what’s a bear market tantrum, what’s a structural failure, and what would actually need to change for Ethereum to stop ceding ground to its competitors.

The conversation covers the CROPS mandate, the rumored loyalty pledge, broken cryptoeconomics, and what Zak says the EF still refuses to admit.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Zak Cole - Managing Partner, Number Group; President, Ethereum Community Foundation
⁠⁠⁠⁠Greg Markou - Co-founder and CEO, Sprinter; Co-founder, ChainSafe

Timestamps 🏛️ 00:32 The EF departures: a maturing org, or a retreat from what Tomasz built? 📣 06:52 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at https://coinbase.com/unchained 👀 08:41 Are these departures actually concerning, or is this just what churn looks like? 📑 15:22 The CROPS mandate, the manga aesthetic, and what it says about who’s really in charge ⚠️ 26:50 The loyalty pledge: performance improvement plan or loyalty purge? 🧠 33:11 Dankrad’s $1B proposal: what would it actually take to fund Ethereum’s comeback? 💸 42:00 Vitalik finally says ETH the asset matters. Zak: ‘Should have said that five years ago’ 🏆 48:36 Ethereum vs. Solana, Tron, and Hyperliquid: does the EF even know it’s in a race? 🏗️ 52:50 What Zak’s Ethereum Community Foundation is building, and what the EF could learn from it

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Why the SEC Paused on Its Innovation Exemption for Tokenization: Bits + Bips May 25, 2026

Show notes

Citadel and SIFMA lobbied to slow tokenized equity rules. Arjun Sethi calls it 'corporate plumbing.' Chris Perkins calls it a bond future moment.

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If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Kraken has spent $2.75 billion on acquisitions in the past year, and co-CEO Arjun Sethi says the point is not a bigger exchange. The goal is a 24/7 global operating system for capital markets: spot, derivatives, payments, tokenized equities, and custody under one regulatory stack.

Sethi makes the case for each move, from REAP's tripling revenue in emerging markets to Bitnomial's CFTC trifecta, and says what will actually drive Kraken's next three years is not trading volume.

The conversation then turns to the SEC's paused innovation exemption for tokenized equities, why Citadel and SIFMA showed up to lobby against it, and whether direct listings on crypto rails could eventually replace Wall Street's IPO machine.

The episode closes on a question nobody saw coming: what Pope Leo's first encyclical on AI and finance has to do with the Bitcoin white paper.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell (@austincampbell) — Founder, Zero Knowledge Consulting; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management

Guest:

Arjun Sethi - Co-CEO of Kraken / Payward and Chairman of Tribe Capital

Timestamps 💰 01:08 Kraken has spent $2.75B on M&A in 12 months. Which deal would Arjun defend most? 🌍 07:33 Institutions aren’t buying tokenized equities. So who is the target customer? 📈 10:54 Derivatives are 95% of crypto volume. Where does Bitnomial fit? 🔑 14:12 Arjun on what actually drives Kraken's next three years ☠️ 20:44 What keeps Arjun up at night and what problems he potentially sees in crypto 🏛️ 22:48 Why the SEC paused tokenized equity rules, and who's really to blame 🚀 31:15 Could 24/7 crypto rails make Wall Street's IPO machine obsolete? 📣 42:05 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at https://coinbase.com/unchained ⛪ 43:56 Why it matters that Pope Leo mentioned crypto in his AI encyclical 👀 49:38 How the pope's decentralization argument tracks with the Bitcoin white paper

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The Bond Market Is the Boss Now: Bits + Bips May 21, 2026

Show notes

Kevin Warsh wants a smaller Fed balance sheet and fewer dot plots. Noelle Acheson says the bond market won't let him have either. Here's what she expects instead.

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Heads up!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Bond yields are climbing globally while stock markets push higher on AI optimism — and Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter, argues the divergence is not a contradiction but a warning. In her read, inflation was building before the Hormuz crisis, the BLISS trade has permanently replaced the TACO trade as the structural put under markets, and Kevin Warsh is walking into a Fed that the bond market controls more than he does. She also flags a contrarian indicator nobody is talking about: the gap between the cap-weighted S&P 500 and the equal-weight index is widening at a pace last seen in 1999.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Ehrlich, Head of Research at SharpLink and Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Noelle Acheson | Author, Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter

Timestamps 📈 00:02:00 — Why the bond market is flashing fear while stocks party on 📊 00:04:30 — The inflation signals nobody's watching, and why Hormuz relief won't save us 💬 00:09:00 — The "BLISS trade" explained, and which market breaks first 🤖 00:12:30 — The AI stock bubble question Wall Street refuses to ask 🏛️ 00:19:00 — The Fed chair's real legacy: independence hero or inflation villain? 🔑 00:24:30 — What the incoming Fed chair actually can and can't do 📉 00:27:30 — The hawkish FOMC split the official vote tried to hide ₿ 00:31:00 — Bitcoin's identity crisis: debasement hedge or just high-beta risk? ⚖️ 00:34:00 — Will the CLARITY Act pass, and does crypto even need it anymore? 🔬 00:38:30 — The tokenization loophole that could break how markets work

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Why Pre-IPO Perps Like SpaceX on Hyperliquid Are Seeing an Upswing May 21, 2026

Show notes

Pre-IPO trading is hot ahead of three big IPOs. Perp volume on Hyperliquid went from $3M to $44M in three months, and SpaceX perps is just the beginning, says Dio Casares of Patagon.

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Pre-IPO perp volume on Hyperliquid grew from $3 million to $44 million in roughly three months.

Anthropic and OpenAI voided secondary shares, sending shockwaves through the pre-IPO marketes. Robinhood launched trust-style tokenized offerings into a gray area. And three trillion-dollar IPOs — SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI — are converging in the same window.

Dio Casares, founder and CEO of Patagon, a private neobank that has facilitated deals in Anthropic, xAI, Circle, and Kraken, explains the structural difference between derivatives and tokenized spot, why second and third-layer SPV waterfalls are legal hot potato, who actually holds the cleanest title, and where the competition for private market liquidity goes next.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠Dio Casares - Founder & CEO, Patagon

Timestamps 🚀 00:45 Why are we seeing so much pre-IPO activity bubble up right now 🗂️ 02:45 The types of market activity that are happening pre-IPO and why they’re happening 💙 6:04 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained ⛓️ 07:52 The kinds of problems that buyers and sellers of pre-IPO shares are trying to solve by going onchain ⚖️ 11:15 How unicorns have wanted to be private but have their shares 📊 13:19 Why people aren’t just waiting till pre-IPO share perps go live to get exposure 🃏 15:30 The problems can arise in second- and third-layer SPV situations 🏦 18:19 Where the Robinhood tokenized-share model fits in all this 🏛️ 19:59 Where the FTX bankruptcy Anthropic block falls 🗺️ 21:55 The spectrum of players — from offchain to onchain, from shadier to more legitimate 🤺 24:30 Why more of this activity is happening on Solana than Ethereum 🤝 25:23 What Patagon does in the secondaries market 🔭 29:27 How Dio expects the onchain private market space to evolve

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The Chopping Block: The CLARITY Act, Hyperliquid vs CME, and the Prediction Market Supreme Court Showdown May 21, 2026

Show notes

Rebecca from Jito Labs joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun for a regulation deep-dive covering the CLARITY Act's stablecoin yield compromise and presidential ethics sticking points, CME and ICE's lobbying war against Hyperliquid's RWA perps, the prediction market legal battle heading to the Supreme Court, and whether the SEC's tokenized securities innovation exemption will actually matter.

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, joining us is Rebecca Rettig, Chief Legal Officer at Jito Labs, who's here to help the crew make sense of the absolute regulatory tornado tearing through the industry.

First up: the CLARITY Act. It just got out of Senate Banking Committee, but the road to passage is anything but smooth. The stablecoin yield fight with banks ended in a "do stuff yield" compromise, but presidential ethics provisions remain the last polarizing hurdle. Rebecca breaks down what actually changes for token founders if it passes — spoiler: not much immediately, since rulemaking alone could take years.

Then: CME and ICE have declared war on Hyperliquid, lobbying the Hill to force CFTC registration on the decentralized perps giant. The crew debates who actually wins US regulated perps, whether Hyperliquid's pre-IPO markets represent a genuine threat to investment banking, and Rebecca introduces "on-chain finance" — a distinction the panel immediately roasts her for.

Finally: prediction markets are in a legal bloodbath across state courts with a Supreme Court showdown likely by 2027, and the SEC's tokenized securities innovation exemption has Twitter buzzing but Rebecca skeptical. Let's get into it.

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

Show highlights

🔹 CLARITY Act Passes Senate Banking – Landmark crypto bill advances with bipartisan support, but presidential ethics provisions remain the final sticking point before a full Senate floor vote.

🔹 Stablecoin Yield Compromise – Banks screamed bloody murder, but the "do stuff yield" deal means transaction-based rewards are in and bank deposit lookalikes are out.

🔹 CME & ICE vs Hyperliquid – Traditional exchanges lobby Congress to force CFTC registration, KYC/AML, and trade surveillance on the decentralized perps giant.

🔹 Hyperliquid Prices Cerebras Better Than Bankers – Pre-IPO market nails the opening price while investment banks undershoot by over 100%, raising questions about the future of book building.

🔹 Rebecca Rettig Returns – Jito Labs CLO breaks down what CLARITY actually means for token founders (spoiler: not much changes immediately — rulemaking takes years).

🔹 Prediction Markets Head to SCOTUS – Legal bloodbath across state courts likely culminates in a Supreme Court showdown by 2027 over CFTC vs state gaming jurisdiction.

🔹 The Super Bowl Coin Toss Traded at 58/42 – Tarun surfaces the most absurd prediction market of the year, and the CFTC chair basically says it shouldn't exist.

🔹 Who Wins US Regulated Perps? – Haseeb bets on Coinbase and Robinhood, Tarun argues there's an opening for a dark horse, and Rebecca flags HIP 4's unified margin as a game-changer.

🔹 SEC Innovation Exemption Buzz – Twitter is hyped about tokenized securities guidance, but Rebecca is skeptical it drops before CLARITY is resolved.

🔹 OnFi Is Not Going to Happen – Rebecca tries to coin "on-chain finance" as distinct from DeFi. The panel roasts her. Mean Girls memes are inevitable.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

Guest
⭐️ Rebecca Rettig, Jurisprudential Genius at Jito Labs

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

02:10 The CLARITY Act: Banks vs Crypto

05:21 The "Do Stuff Yield" Compromise

07:18 The Compromise: Transaction-Based Rewards

10:22 Presidential Ethics: The Last Sticking Point

12:26 What Actually Changes If CLARITY Passes?

16:01 Token Founders: What Do You Have to Do?

18:41 Developer Protection & DeFi Activity

20:15 CME & ICE Lobbying Against Hyperliquid

26:05 On-Chain Finance vs DeFi

29:57 Who Wins US Regulated Perps?

34:39 ETF Options vs Crypto Perps

40:24 What Hyperliquid Means for Investment Banking

44:50 Retail IPO Participation & Dynamic Share Counts

49:25 Prediction Markets: Kalshi & Polymarket vs the States

51:40 Supreme Court Showdown: CFTC vs State Gaming Laws

58:30 Economic Impact Test

01:01:47 Tokenized Securities & the SEC Innovation Exemption

01:06:41 Do Issuers Actually Care About Tokenization?

Disclosures

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Ethereum Foundation Staff Are Leaving. What Does It Mean for ETH? - Uneasy Money May 20, 2026

Show notes

Top Ethereum Foundation staff are leaving. Why? Also, Trade.xyz launched a synthetic pre-IPO SpaceX perp on Hyperliquid that further shows RWAs moving onchain.

========================================================

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⁠Multichain Advisors⁠: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at ⁠multichainadv.com⁠.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Coinbase One⁠⁠⁠⁠: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at ⁠⁠⁠⁠coinbase.com/unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠.

========================================================

A synthetic SpaceX perpetual futures contract launched on Hyperliquid ahead of any IPO, jumping 44% before settling back down. Kain and Tay unpack what it means when a dress rehearsal for one of the biggest potential IPOs in years generates $33 million in trading volume.

Then: the Ethereum Foundation exodus. Trent Van Epps, Josh Stark, Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Carl Beek are out. Kain’s theory: longtime Ethereum “missionaries” were given hope for change under Tomasz Stanczak, only to see that momentum fade.

Finally, three DeFi exploits in four days, including a Thorchain attack that Taylor reconstructed in real time using AI tools during incident response — ending with a fully working attack demo she never asked for.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Timestamps 🚀 01:01 SpaceX pre-IPO perps go live on Hyperliquid — it opened at $150 and jumped to $216 📊 06:52 Were SpaceX IPO bankers watching — and was $150 too cheap? 🔒 10:40 Luca on hedging locked positions — and getting ADL’d at the bottom 💹22:25: Multichain Advisors: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at https://multichainadv.com. 💙23:04: Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at https://coinbase.com/unchained. 🏛️ 24:51 The Ethereum Foundation exodus — who left and why it matters 💥 29:21 Kain’s theory: Ethereum’s “missionaries” were given hope — then lost it 🤖 40:47 Kain: the place you want to be right now gives you infinite inference tokens ⚙️ 43:09 Grok Build launches — and xAI's compute advantage over every other frontier lab 🔓 49:51 Three DeFi exploits in four days: Echo Protocol, Thorchain, and a bridge attack 🔐 54:41 How the Thorchain attacker extracted a raw key that should never have existed 🧠 01:00:00 Tay: AI wrote a full working attack demo during live incident response

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Why the Consensus After-Party Set Crypto Back: DEX in the City May 19, 2026

Show notes

KK, Jessi, and Vy Le call out the silence from CoinDesk and industry organizations after the Consensus after-party was held at E11even. Plus: Clarity’s odds.

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⁠coinbase.com/unchained⁠

The CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9, but Katherine, Jessi, and Vy Le are not popping champagne.

KK puts passage odds at 35-40%. Vy Le came down from 90% after only two conditional Democratic votes out of committee. The ethics fight — whether any bill that leaves Trump family crypto holdings intact can get to 60 votes — remains the most credible blocker.

Meanwhile, WallStreetBets filed an SEC comment letter defending quarterly reporting that inadvertently makes the strongest case yet for why onchain transparency makes periodic disclosure obsolete. And the crew addresses the Consensus conference after-party, held at E11even, which features strippers: not a word from most of the trade organizations that claim to represent the industry.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TuongVy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Veda

Timestamps 🏛️ 01:00 KK walks through the six sections of the CLARITY Act 📊 03:18 Odds on passage: KK at 35%, Vy Le below 90% — and the three blockers 🤖 16:35 Jessi on how frontier AI finds DeFi exploits — and programmatic prevention without centralization 🔵23:42: Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan - https://coinbase.com/unchained 📄 25:29 Vy on how the WallStreetBets SEC letter shows the benefits of onchain markets 📈 35:03 the SEC's tokenized-equities innovation exemption could drop soon 🎪 36:42 The Consensus after-party: what happened and why the silence is the story 💪 45:17 The good news: companies and people who are actually showing up

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Can Hyperliquid Come Onshore Without Killing What Makes It Special? May 18, 2026

Show notes

CME and ICE want regulators to rein in Hyperliquid, which delivers 24/7 derivatives markets that incumbents can't match. Can it be brought onshore?

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠Coinbase One⁠⁠⁠: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at ⁠⁠⁠coinbase.com/unchained⁠⁠⁠.

========================================================

CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange have asked the CFTC to regulate Hyperliquid, the offshore perpetuals exchange that has rapidly become one of the largest derivatives venues in the world. The incumbents argue that price discovery is migrating to unregulated territory. Hyperliquid argues that its onchain transparency makes it less susceptible to manipulation, not more.

Walt Lukken, president and CEO of the Futures Industry Association, and Chris Perkins, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management, sit down with Laura Shin to work through the options: come onshore and get the licenses, stay offshore and keep growing, or further decentralize until there is no entity left to regulate. The answer may reshape how global derivatives markets are built for the next decade.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

Walt Lukken | President & CEO, Futures Industry Association
Chris Perkins⁠ | CEO, 250 Digital Asset Management

Timestamps 🏛️ 00:00 Why CME and ICE are asking the CFTC to act on Hyperliquid ⚙️ 00:06:47 Three paths for Hyperliquid: onshore, offshore, or decentralize 📋 00:9:28 How exactly Hyperliquid would end up coming onshore 🌐 00:13:32 What it would look like for Hyperliquid to be available in the US without an entity 📡 00:20:24 Whether blockchain transparency answers ICE and CME's concerns 🔮 00:35:00 What Chairman Selig and the CLARITY Act could change 🎯 00:41:00 How Polymarket should approach what is the same onshoring question Hyperliquid faces

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In an AI Agent World, Do Money Markets Win Over Stablecoins? - Bits + Bips May 18, 2026

Show notes

USDC became Hyperliquid's stablecoin infrastructure, and the 30-year broke 5% for the first time since 2008. Austin, Ram, Chris, and Gordon Liao of Circle work through who wins.

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Heads up!

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Coinbase and Circle have moved into Hyperliquid, installing USDC as its aligned quote asset and taking over treasury and technical deployment. For Gordon Liao, Circle's Chief Economist and Head of Research, that is a liquidity supernova. For Chris Perkins, it is the moment every TVL-trapping platform was always going to arrive at.

Meanwhile, the CLARITY Act has cleared the Senate Banking Committee on a bipartisan vote, but the ethics question — whether Democrats will vote for a bill that leaves Trump's family holdings untouched — remains unresolved.

And as Kevin Warsh is confirmed as Fed chair, the 30-year yield breaks 5% for the first time since 2008.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell (@austincampbell) — Founder, Zero Knowledge Consulting; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management

Guest:

Gordon Liao | Master of Coin, Circle

Timestamps 🚀 00:00 Introduction 🟡 01:17 Why Coinbase and Circle moved into Hyperliquid and how every TVL trap will monetize its float 🌊 07:14 Gordon: USDC on Hyperliquid is a 'liquidity supernova' 🧑‍⚖️ 12:29 Even though Elon Musk lost, Ram explains why Sam Altman is still a villain 🏃 18:21 Where value will really accrue in the AI race ⛓️💳 24:48 Whether agents will use blockchain rails or just credit cards 🤖 30:59 Why Chris thinks money market funds might win out over stablecoins among AI agents 🏛️ 36:11 CLARITY clears Senate Banking — what's still blocking 60 votes 🧨 41:27 Why Austin thinks the ethics fight is the one problem with no clean answer 📈 46:01 Why, after Warsh's confirmation, the 30-year cleared 5%

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