Unchained

Latest Episodes:

Eric Wall and Udi Wertheimer on Why Bitcoin Maximalism Is 'Like a Shitcoin Community' - Ep. 412 Oct 25, 2022

Show notes

Eric Wall, crypto blogger and investor, and Udi Wertheimer, a recovering Bitcoin maxi, discuss everything about Bitcoin Maximalism, whether BTC can survive, and whether Ethereum constitutes a threat for Bitcoin.

Show highlights:

how Eric and Udi got involved with Bitcoin
what Bitcoin was like in the first days
how Bitcoin maxis appear to have a script to engage in discussions
the philosophy behind Bitcoin maximalism
why Eric believes Bitcoin maximalism is like a “weird cult”
how Eric thinks that the BTC community has an unspoken rule forbidding criticisms
whether Bitcoin has lost intellectual power
why people have recently been turning away from Bitcoin maximalism
why the poor Bitcoin culture doesn't mean it's the end for Bitcoin, according to Eric
the perception of the Lightning network and how people are not interested in faster blockchains
whether Bitcoin should increase the use cases of the blockchain, like DeFi, NFTs, and stablecoins
El Salvador's adoption of BTC and whether it had an impact
what happens to internet subcultures and how the behavior of Bitcoiners could be predicted
whether Ethereum is a threat to Bitcoin

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Udi:

Twitter

Eric:

Episode Links

Previous Coverage of Unchained:

Bitcoin Culture and Security

The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin Cultureby Paul J. Dylan-Ennis
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution by David Chapman
Surprisingly, Tail Emission Is Not Inflationary by Peter Todd
Justin Bond’s thread on BTC security model
A (brief and incomplete) history of censorship in /r/Bitcoin

Ultra sound money

El Salvador:

Previous Coverage of Unchained: Bitcoin in El Salvador: Why Would Cypherpunks Support Government-Mandated Bitcoin Adoption?
El Salvador’s Bitcoin Paradise Is a Mirage by Nelson Rauda

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The Chopping Block: 'Code Is Law' Is 'Obviously Not How Anything Works Ever' - Ep. 411 Oct 22, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry.

Show topics:

Everyone’s impression of Laura’s interview with Do Kwon
The importance to differentiate failure and fraud
The Mango Markets hack and whether code is law
What happened with the BNB hack and the concerns it raised about decentralization
Magic Eden’s decision to enable optional royalties and the debate about NFT royalties
How creators are going to find a way around the royalties, according to Robert
Whether NFTs should be treated as securities

Hosts

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

Episode Links

Laura’s interview with Do Kwon:

Do Kwon of Terra: ‘It Was Never Really About Money or Fame or Success’

Hacks

NFT Royalties

Magic Eden
Magic Eden Moves to Optional Royalties and Heats Up the Debate
TCB Debate
Tom’s tweet: “turns out people don’t want to pay royalties”
Robert’s request for a startup
Previous episodes of The Chopping Block debating NFT Royalties:
The Chopping Block: Was This Gary Gensler’s Most Liked Tweet?
The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash?

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Fat Man Terra Speaks: Do Kwon Is a ‘Sociopath’ and a ‘Charismatic Manipulator’ - Ep. 410 Oct 21, 2022

Show notes

Fat Man Terra, the anonymous Twitter account dedicated to bringing Do Kwon to justice, reacts to my recent interview with Do Kwon and says what he thinks it revealed about his personality.

Show highlights:

why Fat Man Terra created the Twitter account
whether Terra was used to enrich insiders
how Fat Man believes Do Kwon evaded questions in the interview with Laura
whether Do lied about Chai to misrepresent the success of UST and LUNA
why Fat Man believes some people will never admit wrongdoing
what he thinks of Do’s response to the stories of people losing everything and whether he is actually sorry
what he calls Do’s lack of transparency about his history
what he believes is the need to make an example out of the collapse of Terra and Do’s failure

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Fat Man Terra

Twitter

Laura’s Interview with Do Kwon

Other Coverage of Unchained on Do Kwon and Terra:

Fat Man Terra’s thread with several devastating stories related to the collapse of Terra

SDT pre-mine

CoinDesk Korea article

Chai

WSJ article
Do’s tweets about Chai:
2.5 million users
Tweet in May 2021
Tweet in May 2021 #2
Tweet in January 2021

Abracadabra Degenbox

$2.7 billion cash out
TFL Exit Liquidity dashboard on Dune

Basis Cash

CoinDesk article

Luna Foundation Guard

Allegations against Do Kwon

SBS news reporting Do moved funds to the Virgin Islands
Seoul Police Probe Allegation of Embezzlement by Terraform Staff
South Korea Launches Investigation into Company Behind Luna Crypto Crash
Class action against Do Kwon
Korean prosecutors are looking into Terra
Red Notice
“Not on the run”

Kwon’s Passport

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The Chopping Block: Two on Two Debate: NFT Royalty Throwdown! - Ep. 409 Oct 19, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Host Haseeb Qureshi partnered with Zhuoxun Yin, cofounder of Magic Eden, to debate Unchained host Laura Shin and Li Jin, cofounder at Variant Fund, on the topic of NFT Royalties.

Show highlights:

What NFT royalties are
Why Laura believes zero NFT royalties is a bad business decision prioritizing short-term needs over long-term ones and that it will turn creators off from the industry
How charging royalties is not sustainable, according to Haseeb
Why royalties are the best mechanism to align incentives between creators and holders, according to Li
The technical limitations of NFT royalties on a general-purpose blockchain like Ethereum or Solana
How to align incentives between NFT creators and holders
Why the prices of NFTs would go up if royalties are not enforced
Whether the NFT market will change in the future
Whether it is possible to create a standard that enforces royalties in a smart contract
The creators’ reaction to Magic Eden moving to optional royalties
The possibility of a bifurcation of the NFT market

Hosts

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly

Guests

Laura Shin, author, and host of Unchained

Zhuoxun Yin, cofounder of Magic Eden

Li Jin, cofounder of Variant

Episode Links

Magic Eden Optional Royalties - Unchained Coverage
Post-debate poll
Tool Metashield
The standards innovation paradox by Li Jin
X2y2 flexible royalties
Previous episodes of The Chopping Block debating NFT Royalties
The Chopping Block - Ep. 405
The Chopping Block - Ep. 386
Article: Why NFT Creators and Collectors Can’t Stop Talking About Artist Royalties
Article: NFT Royalties: Why artists love them, and traders don’t

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Do Kwon of Terra: 'It Was Never Really About Money or Fame or Success' - Ep. 408 Oct 18, 2022

Show notes

Do Kwon, cofounder of Terraform Labs, discusses the charges against him, gives a message to Terra victims, answers allegations about potential fraud and non-transparent business practices, and much more.

Show highlights:

whether Do finds the charges based on the Capital Markets Act legitimate
why he doesn’t want to discuss his location
whether the South Korean government is lying about the accusations against him
what happened with the BTC held by the Luna Foundation Guard
whether Do regrets being so arrogant in his tweets
what he would say to the people who lost huge amounts of money in Terra or family members of people who committed suicide due to its collapse
the decision to set Anchor’s yield near 20%
why Terra had a large SDT pre-mine that was not proactively disclosed
whether Do’s actions show he didn’t think that the algorithmic mechanism was sufficient to keep UST pegged to the dollar
whether Terraform Labs cashed out $2.7 billion using Degenbox
why there were no disclosures about Chai terminating its agreement with Terra
why the Terra blockchain went through a hard fork without a public discussion
the failure of the basis cash stablecoin, also worked on by Do Kwon
whether an algorithmic stablecoin can work
the week of the UST depeg and what happened to the funds held by LFG
where the 3 million Luna unlocked per month by Project Dawn went
when the LFG will return funds to UST holders
what Do would do differently if he had the chance to go back

* Quick correction*

At 7min 18sec, I misspoke, the Korean government posted a pdf for Do Kwon’s passport revocation, not his arrest warrant.

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Episode Links

Do Kwon:

Twitter

Previous Coverage of Unchained on Do Kwon and Terra:

Devastating Stories

One man commits suicide
Fat Man Terra’s thread with several stories

SDT pre-mine

CoinDesk Korea article

Anchor yield

JTBC article reporting core devs wanted a lower yield

Chai

WSJ article
Do’s tweets about Chai:
2.5 million users
Tweet in May 2021
Tweet in May 2021 #2
Tweet in January 2021

Abracadabra Degenbox

$2.7 billion cash out
TFL Exit Liquidity dashboard on Dune

Project Dawn

Launch
The Defiant article

Basis Cash

CoinDesk article

Luna Foundation Guard

Allegations against Do Kwon

SBS news reporting Do moved funds to the Virgin Islands.
Seoul Police Probe Allegation of Embezzlement by Terraform Staff
South Korea Launches Investigation into Company Behind Luna Crypto Crash
Class action against Do Kwon
Was LUNA a Security?
Korean prosecutors are looking into Terra
Red Notice
“Not on the run”
Kwon’s Passport

SEC Actions Against Terra

SEC Investigating UST Stablecoin Blowup in Fresh Threat to Terra
Terraform Labs Loses US Appeal over SEC Subpoena

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Why the SEC Is Probing Yuga Labs and Coin Center �Is Suing Treasury - Ep. 407 Oct 14, 2022

Show notes

Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Coin Center, comes to talk about the SEC probe into Yuga Labs, how to determine whether something is a security, and Coin Center’s lawsuit against the US Treasury over the sanctions on Tornado Cash.

Show highlights:

whether there’s an over-reliance on the Howey Test and how a token being non-fungible doesn’t mean it’s not a security
what constitutes an investment contract and how it works in the Metaverse
the consequences for NFT holders and issuers if the NFTs are considered securities
why Coin Center is suing the US Treasury over the Tornado Cash sanctions
Who the plaintiffs are
whether this lawsuit differs from the one Coinbase is supporting
how to solve the issue of bad actors like North Korea using tools such as Tornado Cash to launder money
the remedy Coin Center is looking for in the lawsuit against the Treasury
how long the lawsuit could take to be resolved

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Peter

Twitter

SEC probe into Yuga Labs

Unchained article
CrypTones thread on land sales

Coin Center lawsuit over Tornado Cash sanctions

Coin Center lawsuit and statement
Unchained article
Coinbase Backs Tornado Cash Lawsuit Against U.S. Treasury
North Korean hacks
Treasury Press release on the sanctions
Previous coverage of the Tornado Cash sanctions on Unchained:
Is TRM Labs Blocking Addresses From DeFi Protocols? Ari Redbord Says No
Tornado Cash Sanctioned. Did the Government Overstep Its Bounds?
The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash?
Given the Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Is Ethereum Censorship Resistant?
Preston Van Loon on Ethereum's Merge and His Lawsuit Against Treasury

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Zaki Manian and Jack Zampolin on Why ATOM Is 'Dogecoin for Academics' - Ep. 406 Oct 11, 2022

Show notes

Zaki Manian, cofounder of Sommelier Protocol and cofounder of Iqlusion and Jack Zampolin, founder of Strangelove Ventures, discuss everything about Cosmos, the new white paper, and how to improve MEV capture for ATOM holders.

Show highlights:

how Jack and Zaki got involved with crypto and Cosmos
what the Sommelier protocol is, the role of Iqlusion, and what Strange Love does
the basics of Cosmos and application-specific blockchains (ASB)
why would a project choose to be an ASB rather than an application on a blockchain
whether Cosmos can achieve network effects
the reasons behind launching a new white paper for Cosmos
why the team decided to pursue interchain security
whether there would be an increase in fees with so many chains relying on the Cosmos Hub for security
how much economic value the Cosmos Hub will end up securing if the proposal gets passed
how the Cosmos Treasury could be used to fund development
the role of the Interchain Scheduler to capture MEV
whether centralized exchanges are going to start trading against the customers
the new issuance model proposed for ATOM
the role of an active governance community to make Cosmos more decentralized
what problems Liquid staking solves
how USDC will launch on a consumer chain

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Jack:

Twitter

Zaki:

Twitter

Episode Links

Previous Coverage of Unchained on Cosmos:

How Osmosis Is Trying to Improve the Crypto User Experience

New white paper

Interchain security

Paper
The Block article
The DeFi investor thread

ATOM 2.0

Show topics:

Whether crypto optimism is different in Asia than in the United States
How Sam Bankman-Fried has been doing some work with US regulators
How the CFTC lawsuit against Ooki DAO changed people’s perspectives about the regulator
Whether the lawsuit could make all DeFi illegal and the role of DAOs to coordinate governance
The SEC settlement with Kim Kardashian for $1.26 million, Gensler’s video explaining the case and whether it was a publicity stunt
Why Tarun would fire almost everyone at the CFTC and the SEC to hire more technical people
How the NFT QQL collection censored a marketplace in its code
What the whole purpose of NFTs is, according to Haseeb
The debate around NFT royalties and their enforcement
How a huge portion of the blocks in Ethereum are generated by Flashbots and whether it represents a centralizing force
Whether MEV should be stopped or accelerated

Hosts

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

Guest

Laura Shin, author, and host of Unchained

Episode Links

The lawsuit against Ooki DAO

Previous Coverage of Unchained on Ooki DAO:
Why the Ooki DAO Case Could Hurt Participation in DAOs
Kristin Smith on Why Crypto Legislation Could Be Passed by Year’s End
CFTC Filing
$250,000 fine
Nik’s article
CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger’s dissenting statement
CFTC serving the members of the Ooki DAO via their forum
Tim Copeland’s article on what’s next for DAOs
A federal court ruled that the CFTC legally served Ooki DAO through a website help bot.
The LeXpunK Army filed a motion for amicus status in the SEC case against bZx/Ooki DAO.
Crypto group DeFi Education Fund argued that the CFTC should properly serve Ooki DAO’s actual members, not just the DAO at large.

NFT Royalties

Tyler Hobbs’ QQL $17 million collection
QQL blacklist explanation
NFT platform hits back
Previous episode of The Chopping Block debating NFT Royalties
Article: Why NFT Creators and Collectors Can’t Stop Talking About Artist Royalties
Article: NFT Royalties: Why artists love them, and traders don’t

SEC charges against Kim Kardashian

The SEC fined reality TV star Kim Kardashian $1.26 million for promoting a crypto security without proper disclosure.
Fortune article on the Kim Kardashian settlement as publicity stunt
eMax price spiked
Gary Gensler’s video

Flashbots and MEV

Post-merge relay drama
What is MEV
Proposer-Builder separation:
MEV Boost
Flashbots auctions
Previous Coverage of Unchained on MEV: Why Is Ethereum Trying to Maximize Value From Users?

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Kristin Smith on Why Crypto Legislation Could Be Passed by Year's End - Ep. 404 Oct 07, 2022

Show notes

Kristin Smith, Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, comes to talk about Tornado Cash, the lawsuit against Ooki DAO, the SEC charges against Kim Kardashian, and crypto legislation.

Show highlights:

whether regulators did not understand the implications of sanctioning smart contracts
the necessity of having a conversation around financial privacy
whether the government wants sanctions compliance at the base layer
the reasons behind the CFTC lawsuit against Ooki DAO
why the SEC settled charges with Kim Kardashian and whether it was a publicity stunt
the chances of the different crypto bills becoming law
why Kristin thinks stablecoin legislation won’t come this year
whether the CFTC being the main regulator of crypto settles the question of crypto being securities or commodities

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Kristin

Twitter

The lawsuit against Ooki DAO

Previous coverage of Unchained on Ooki DAO: Why the Ooki DAO Case Could Hurt Participation in DAOs
CFTC Filing
$250,000 fine
CoinDesk’s Nik De’s analysis
CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger’s dissenting statement
Jake Chervinsky’s opinion
Ooki DAO’s options
CFTC serving the members of the Ooki DAO via their forum
Tim Copeland’s article on what’s next for DAOs
A federal court ruled that the CFTC legally served Ooki DAO through a website help bot.
The LeXpunK Army filed a motion for amicus status in the SEC case against bZx/Ooki DAO.
Crypto group DeFi Education Fund argued that the CFTC should properly serve Ooki DAO’s actual members, not just the DAO at large.

Tornado Cash

Treasury Press release
Previous coverage of the Tornado Cash sanctions on Unchained:
Is TRM Labs Blocking Addresses From DeFi Protocols? Ari Redbord Says No
Tornado Cash Sanctioned. Did the Government Overstep Its Bounds?
The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash?
Given the Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Is Ethereum Censorship Resistant?
Preston Van Loon on Ethereum's Merge and His Lawsuit Against Treasury

Legislation

Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022
Europe’s MiCa bill
Previous coverage of Unchained on legislation:
Why Senator Pat Toomey Thinks SEC Chair Gary Gensler Is Wrong About Crypto
Congressman Ro Khanna: How to Get More Democrats into Web3
Why the Crypto Industry Believes SEC Regulation by Enforcement Hurts US Consumers

SEC charges against Kim Kardashian

The SEC fined reality TV star Kim Kardashian $1.26 million for promoting a crypto security without proper disclosure.
Fortune article: The SEC’s Kardashian fine was a dumb publicity stunt

Stablecoins

Stablecoin Draft Bill
Bloomberg article: Senator Pat Toomey Still Sees Chance of Stablecoin Legislation This Year

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Sam Bankman-Fried on How to Prevent the Next Terra and 3AC - Ep. 403 Oct 04, 2022

Show notes

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, discusses his views on crypto regulation, macroeconomics, and the role of FTX in a decentralized industry.

Show highlights:

whether the market has already bottomed and the influence of macroeconomics
why Sam thinks regulation could have a significant impact on the crypto industry
the impact of the Terra collapse, Sam’s thoughts on stablecoins, and the importance of disclaimers
what the industry can do to prevent high leverage from crypto companies like Three Arrows Capital
how crypto lenders should manage risk in a sustainable way
whether the crypto collapses affected the opinion of lawmakers and regulators
the topics and proposals that Sam is discussing with regulators and his philosophy on financial regulation
what Sam thinks about building a centralized entity in a decentralized space
what it would take for FTX to move back to the United States
why Sam’s political donations more commonly support Democrats, among which are some prominent critics of crypto
whether he makes political donations based solely on candidates’ crypto stances
the role of FTX in the TradFi market and whether crypto and TradFi will evolve toward or away from each other
concerns about potential conflict of interests between FTX and Alameda Research
the impact of the Merge, the value proposition of Ethereum and whether it affects the narrative of Bitcoin as digital gold
how FTX is positioning itself in this macroeconomic environment
the type of acquisitions FTX is interested in