Unchained

Latest Episodes:

Coinbase’s Top Lawyer Calls SEC Wells Notice a ‘Massive Overreach’ - Ep. 472 Mar 24, 2023

Show notes

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, shares his concerns about the SEC’s recent warning that it would pursue legal action against the crypto exchange. With the U.S. markets regulator failing to provide clear rules on digital assets, Grewal discusses the implications for Coinbase and for the future of crypto in the United States.

Show highlights:

why Grewal was not surprised by the Wells notice
how Coinbase asked the SEC multiple times for clear rules and got no response, according to Grewal
how the SEC is withholding information about which rules Coinbase allegedly broke, according to Grewal
Coinbase’s efforts to disclose everything about its operations
whether Grewal thinks there was a change in the regulators’ approach after the collapse of FTX
why Grewal thinks this is not the right way to go to keep crypto in the United States
the jurisdictional fight between the CFTC and the SEC
whether Coinbase will proceed with litigation
why Grewal thinks the Wells notice is a “shot at crypto as a whole”
why Coinbase believes that its products are “fully compliant”
what opportunities the U.S. Congress has to legislate blockchain technology

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Guest

Paul Grewal, chief legal officer at Coinbase

Previous appearances on Unchained: Just a Coincidence? Coinbase and Polygon Lawyers See Bad Omens in SEC Crackdown

Links

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The Chopping Block: Why AI Will Change the Course of History in Crypto - Ep. 471 Mar 22, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to “The Chopping Block” – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news. This week, NEAR co-founder and former Google AI researcher Illia Polosukhin joins the show to discuss the intersection of crypto and machine learning.

Show highlights:

whether Signature was shut down because of its crypto arm
whether banking crypto is riskier than banking other industries
how Balaji’s $1 million BTC bet is just highly effective marketing
whether the Fed is doing quantitative easing again
how the artificial intelligence industry has changed over the years
why Illia says that “open source always wins”
the intersection of blockchain technology and AI
whether a broken Tesla could become the world’s greatest investor

Hosts

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly
Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly

Guest

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near

Disclosures

Links

Signature and Banking

Balaji’s bet

Coin Edition: Balaji Bets $1M on Bitcoin Price, Says US Hyperinflation Is Underway

Artificial Intelligence:

Richard Sutton: The Bitter Lesson
Facebook: Introducing LLaMA: A foundational, 65-billion-parameter large language model
Stanford: Alpaca: A Strong, Replicable Instruction-Following Model

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Why Caitlin Long and Meltem Demirors Are Worried About Crypto’s Future in the US - Ep. 470 Mar 21, 2023

Show notes

Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Custodia Bank, and Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of CoinShares, share their concerns about crypto in the U.S. following a wild week in the banking sector. With Signature Bank’s takeover looking like a targeted takedown and crypto-friendly upstarts like Custodia being shadowbanned by the Fed, the two longtime experts look ahead at the fights to come. Is USDC next to land in regulators’ crosshairs?

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights:

how crypto is viewed as a “big, scary, and strange” industry
how Signature and Silvergate became so important for the crypto industry with SEN and Signet
why Caitlin says it’s “crystal clear” that we are now in Operation Choke Point 2.0, with U.S. regulators pushing to debank the crypto industry
why Caitlin says the Fed’s vote against Custodia’s application was preordained
whether Sen. Elizabeth Warren had an impact on the current crisis
how everything comes down to game theory
whether VCs are responsible for causing the bank run
whether the rollback in 2018 of certain provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act played a role in the recent collapse
Caitlin’s hot takes on what happened with Signature Bank
the unique characteristics of Custodia’s business model as a bank
how stablecoins challenge the current financial system
why it’s so important for crypto to improve its public perception

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Guests:

Meltem Demirors, Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares
Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Custodia Bank

Links

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Jim Bianco on Why the Banking System Has Always Been Broken - Ep. 469 Mar 17, 2023

Show notes

Jim Bianco, president and macro strategist at Bianco Research, explains what’s causing the recent cascade of bank failures. Yield seekers taking their money elsewhere are putting banks under strain. However, the Signature Bank takeover by New York regulators is “a little fishy,” Bianco says. He adds that DeFi has been holding up strong, providing an “alternative to this unstable system that we have right now.”

Show highlights:

why Jim thinks this is a liquidity crisis, not a solvency crisis
the role of crypto and tech startups in the recent bank run
how people have been pulling out of crypto in the past 18 months
why the traditional fractional reserve system for banks is broken
why crypto projects like Aave and Compound are solutions
why Jim says the Fed is a “legal counterfeiter”
why money moving around so fast is a challenge to our antiquated financial system
whether Signet, Signature Bank’s digital payments platform, is the real reason why regulators shut the bank down
whether the Fed will succeed or fail with FedNow, its instant payment system

Thank you to our sponsors!

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Railgun DAO

Guest

Jim Bianco, President and founder of Bianco Research

Links

Unchained:
The Fall of SVB: What Happened and How It Affects Crypto
Was Signature Bank Actually Insolvent?
Circle to Bring On New Banking Partner for USDC Minting, Redemption
Regulators Close Signature Bank Following SVB Collapse
Silvergate to Wind Down Operations in ‘Voluntary Liquidation’
CNBC: Long-awaited Fed digital payment system to launch in July
Ram Ahluwalia’s tweet on the Fed

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The Chopping Block: Was Crypto Just Debanked? - Ep. 468 Mar 16, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to “The Chopping Block” – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news. This week: Silicon Valley Bank went belly up and knocked USDC off its peg with it. For good measure, Signature Bank was taken over by regulators. After a hellish weekend, what did we learn?

Show highlights:

what happened with Silicon Valley Bank
why USDC depegged and reached a low of 88 cents
how Maker responded to the depegging of USDC
whether DeFi responded flawlessly to the chaotic events
how Haseeb’s VC fund, Dragonfly, was ensnared in SVB’s collapse
what Tarun thinks made Elizabeth Warren change her tune on SVB
whether Signature Bank was shut down because of its crypto-related activities
why bonds are not marked to market by banks
which company is going to issue the euro-dollar stablecoin
how BTC has been outperforming the NASDAQ since the FTX collapse
how Euler Finance got hacked for almost $200 million
whether flash loans should be banned
the rules around crypto and finance in the Middle East
why DeFi is a fundamental innovation that’s better than many financial systems across the world

Hosts

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly
Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
Robert Leshner, founder of Compound
Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly

Disclosures

Links

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How Will ETH React to Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade? - Ep. 467 Mar 14, 2023

Show notes

ETH staking began in December 2020. With Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, which could happen as early as mid-April, withdrawals of staked ETH will finally be enabled. Will validators rush to cash out? Or will Shanghai bring more institutional stakers into the fold? Christine Kim, VP of research at Galaxy Digital, joins the show to discuss how Etheruem’s latest upgrade will affect the network, and maybe even ETH’s price.

Show highlights:

how Christine became an Ethereum expert
what you need to know about Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade
when Shanghai is expected to go live on mainnet
what the difference is between Shanghai and Capella
possible outcomes following the activation of staked ETH withdrawals
whether Shanghai makes ETH staking more attractive to institutions
why Christine thinks there won’t be much impact on ETH’s price
how Shanghai will impact liquid staking providers
upgrades that are coming to Lido and Rocket Pool
what will happen in Ethereum’s subsequent upgrade: Cancun
what “proto-danksharding” is and how it will help Ethereum scale
what New York Attorney General Letitia James got wrong when she said ETH is a security
how Ethereum development has become more and more decentralized over the years
the next steps in Ethereum’s roadmap
why Christine is still concerned about Lido and staking centralization
what zkEVMs are and why they play a key role in the future of Ethereum scaling

Thank you to our sponsors!

Guest:

Christine Kim, Vice president of research at Galaxy Digital

Twitter

Links

Post-Merge, If Lido Becomes Dominant, What Does That Mean for Ethereum?

In the Recent Crypto Market Meltdown, What Role Did Lido’s stETH Play?

Is ETH on Its Way to Becoming Ultra-Sound Money? Yes, Says Justin Drake

ETHDenver presentation: Staked ETH Withdrawals: A Step-By-Step Overview with Christine Kim

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The Chopping Block: Arthur Hayes on Why Crypto Needs to Ditch the Banks - Ep. 466 Mar 11, 2023

Show notes

BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, fresh out of home confinement after settling charges with the U.S. government, joins “The Chopping Block” with Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, and Tarun Chitra. The early crypto pioneer pulls no punches in his assessment of SBF, TradFi’s failings, and how crypto traders lost the plot in trusting CeFi middlemen.

Show highlights:

why Arthur travels with stuffed animals, and what his favorite brands are
what factors led Sam Bankman-Fried to success
how Bill Clinton seems to be related to many multibillion-dollar downfalls
whether everyone in crypto thinks that prices are eventually going up
what’s the thesis behind Maelstrom, Arthur’s new investment arm
why he’s bullish on decentralization but also game to trade “dog shit”
what the impact of Silvergate’s failure will be on the crypto industry
what would Arthur have done if he was the CEO of Silvergate
the role of rising interest rates in understanding Silvergate’s downfall
why holding Tether’s USDT is not so different from USDC
why crypto needs alternatives to dollar-backed stablecoins
the real reasons why the U.S. Treasury is worried about stablecoins

Hosts

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly
Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
Robert Leshner, founder of Compound

Guest

Arthur Hayes, cofounder of BitMEX

Disclosures

Links

Unchained:
Silvergate to Wind Down Operations in ‘Voluntary Liquidation’
Silvergate Confers With FDIC to Avoid Closing Down: Report
Silvergate Shuts Down Crypto Payments Network
Bloomberg: Silvergate Had a Crypto Bank Run
NYMAG: Arthur Hayes, the Original King of Crypto, Is Back.
Arthur’s posts:
White Boy
Dust on Crust

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Grayscale v. SEC: Who Won This Week’s Hearing? - Ep. 465 Mar 10, 2023

Show notes

Elliott Stein, senior litigation analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, shares his insights from a court hearing this week on the SEC’s rejection of Grayscale’s bid to convert GBTC into a spot bitcoin ETF. Stein says federal appellate court judges seemed skeptical of the SEC’s arguments for why bitcoin futures ETFs are OK while bitcoin spot ETFs aren’t. Who’s likely to win the case and what does it mean for the crypto industry as a whole?

Show highlights:

why Grayscale filed the lawsuit against the SEC
why Grayscale believes that a bitcoin futures ETF is essentially the same as a spot ETF
what the SEC disagrees
why the judges pushed back against the SEC’s arguments
why Elliott changed his mind about who will win the case after the hearing
what would happen if Grayscale ends up winning the lawsuit and whether the SEC could go back on its previous approvals
whether other companies applying for a bitcoin spot ETF would benefit from Grayscale winning the case
whether this case could have an impact on the jurisdictional battle between the SEC and the CFTC
why Elliott is keeping an eye on other cases such as Ripple, Terraform Labs, and insider trading at Coinbase

Thank you to our sponsors!

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Railgun DAO

Previous coverage of Unchained on Grayscale and GBTC:

Guest

Elliott Stein, Senior Litigation Analyst for the Financials Sector at Bloomberg Intelligence

Twitter

Links

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ETH Denver Debate: Should Testnet ETH Be Free or Have a Price? - Ep. 464 Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

LayerZero launched a testnet bridge that allows users to swap mainnet ETH for Goerli ETH (GoETH), which led to a sudden emergence of a liquid market for GoETH tokens.

This was a hugely controversial decision, as many in the Ethereum community believe that testnet tokens should remain free.

At ETH Denver, Laura moderated a panel discussion about this hot topic with Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero Labs, Greg Markou, founder of Chainsafe and Matt Garnett, software engineer for the Ethereum Foundation.

Show highlights:

why LazerZero launched a testnet bridge for Goerli ETH (GoETH)
the three reasons why Greg is opposed to Goerli ETH having a price
why Bryan believes it is impossible for a permissionless testnet to have free tokens
the three types of constituencies that use testnets
whether the Sepolia testnet solves the issues with Goerli
the upcoming Holli testnet and the problems it aims to solve
how to create a permissionless testnet that takes into account the needs of developers from all over the world
whether LayerZero’s move will create more problems in the future

Thank you to our sponsors!

Panel

Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero Labs.

Greg Markou, founder of Chainsafe

Matt Garnett, software engineer for the Ethereum Foundation

Hosts

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly
Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly

Guest

Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital

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Is ETH on Its Way to Becoming Ultra-Sound Money? Yes, Says Justin Drake

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Previous coverage of Unchained on Grayscale and GBTC:

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