Bankless

War with Iran is back, but markets barely blinked. Ryan and David unpack Saylor’s $216 million Bitcoin sale, whether it marked the bottom, Robinhood Chain’s memecoin breakout, and Vitalik’s “Ethereum 3.0” roadmap. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0 https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks  🧭...

Multicoin provides investment advice to certain private fund clients that own HYPE tokens discussed herein and stands to gain in the event that the price of the token increases. Multicoin's HYPE valuation report discussed in this podcast can be found as a link in the show notes.  Any trading discussion is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to engage in derivatives, leverag...

Robinhood Chain is live, and it may be one of the clearest signs yet that traditional finance is moving onto Ethereum rails. Johann Kerbrat, VP of Crypto at Robinhood, joins David to unpack the launch of tokenized stocks, USDG yield through Morpho, regulated and crypto-native perps, the Lighter integration, and why Robinhood Wallet is being built for the billions of people who have never used cryp...

Crypto looks bullish again, but the receipts are complicated. David and Ryan unpack OpenUSD’s USDC threat, Robinhood Chain’s tokenized stocks, Saylor’s hedge-fund pivot, Venice’s token dilemma, Cloudflare’s stablecoin payments, and Trump’s $1.4B crypto haul. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://app.okx.com/en-us/join/usbankless --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ U...

The stock market is starting to move onchain, and Ondo is one of the teams building the rails. Ian De Bode joins David to explain how Ondo brought tokenized SpaceX stock to Ethereum minutes after trading began, why tokenized equities need real market liquidity instead of shallow DEX pools, and how Ondo Perps could unlock a new generation of RWA trading by using tokenized stocks as collateral. ---...

Michael Saylor’s Strategy bought itself time, but did it actually solve the problem? David sits down with Jeff Dorman and Matt Walsh to unpack Strategy’s increasingly complex capital structure, why $STRC and MSTR are now fighting for oxygen, whether Saylor may need to sell Bitcoin, and why the company is starting to look less like a levered BTC play and more like an actively managed hedge fund. --...

Ethereum has a new R&D lab, and its mission is blunt: make Ethereum and ETH win. In this episode, David sits down with Ansgar and Caspar, two co-founders of Ethlabs, to unpack why the organization exists, how it complements the Ethereum Foundation, and what it means to put Ethereum back on offense. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLES...

Markets are bleeding as Bitcoin breaks below $60K and Strategy faces its biggest test yet. Ryan and David unpack Saylor’s three-way squeeze, ETH Labs vs. the EF reset, quantum timelines moving up, and Illinois’ new crypto tax. --- 🧭OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast...

What happens when powerful AI requires an ID, governments can restrict access by country, and your most private data flows through centralized systems? NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin joins David to explain why AI export controls could fracture the internet, how nationalized AI could become a surveillance layer, and why decentralized, user-owned AI may be the only real alternative. They also unpa...

Arthur Hayes is back on Bankless, and he’s taking the W off the table. After selling HYPE, NEAR and ZEC, Arthur walks through why the AI trade started to look less asymmetric, why oil and geopolitics may still be the bear case no one wants to price, and why ETH may offer one of the cleaner setups in crypto today. Then the conversation turns bigger: AI capex, circular revenue, China’s cheap models,...

Equities are rallying, but Bitcoin is breaking down. David and Tom unpack Saylor’s STRC stress, Warsh’s first FOMC, SpaceX’s mega-IPO, Jito’s breakout, Coinbase’s Everything Exchange, and why perps may be crypto’s next real growth engine. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://app.okx.com/en-us/join/usbankless --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polym...

Re is bringing the $1T reinsurance market onchain. Founder Karn Saroya and Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg join David to unpack how stablecoins can become a new capital source for insurance, why real-world reinsurance may offer crypto’s missing “real yield,” and how Re is using Ethereum, smart contracts, and AI to compete with legacy giants like Lloyd’s of London, Munich Re, and Swiss Re. They als...

Pokemon cards are suddenly one of the hottest markets in collectibles. But why now, and what does it have to do with crypto? Andy8052 joins David to break down the rise of digital pack-opening platforms, the nostalgia-driven bull case for Pokémon, why grading companies have a stranglehold on the market, and how millions of dollars of real-world cards are slowly moving onchain. Are tokenized collec...

Perps are coming onshore. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig joins David to unpack the first U.S.-regulated Bitcoin perpetual futures contract, the end of regulation by enforcement, and what comes next for Coinbase, Kalshi, Kraken, Gemini, Hyperliquid, Lighter, and the broader U.S. perp market. They also discuss which assets could list next, how U.S. leverage will differ from offshore exchanges, and why equ...

Bitcoin is back at Biden-era prices, ETFs are bleeding, and Saylor just did the thing he said never to do: sell. Ryan and David unpack whether crypto has one more drop left, what trillion-dollar IPOs reveal about broken capital markets, and why their ETH debate may be the real fight for Ethereum’s future. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://app.okx.com/en-us/join/usbankless  --- BANKLESS SPONSOR...

Hyperliquid has become the breakout perp exchange of crypto. But is the market missing its biggest competitor? Delphi’s Flip and DeFi investor Will Price join David to make the case for Lighter, a ZK-powered Ethereum L2 with zero-fee retail trading, white-glove distribution, real-world asset perps, and a token buying back revenue at a surprising rate. Is LIT just a Hyperliquid beta trade, or is it...

AI is quickly becoming the interface through which people think, work, and make decisions—but most users have no idea how much personal data they're handing over in the process. Jon and Jesse from Venice join David to make the case for privacy-first AI, explain why Venice is aiming to become a mainstream consumer AI brand, and explore how $VVV and DIEM transform inference into a crypto-economic pr...

Bitcoin is bleeding, STRC is off peg, and Saylor’s “never sell” machine is facing its first real confidence test. David and Haseeb unpack whether Strategy can survive without selling BTC, why Bitmine’s ETH play may be stronger but riskier, and what select token strength, U.S. perps, and Coinbase’s Ethena deal reveal about crypto’s next phase. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 ht...

Crypto policy in Washington has gone from punchline to power center. David sits down with Ron Hammond, Head of Policy and Advocacy at Wintermute, for a rare inside look at how crypto actually moves through DC: the SBF era, Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto army, Gary Gensler’s SEC, bank lobby pressure, Trump’s crypto conflicts, the Clarity Act fight, and why privacy and self-custody may be the next m...

What happens when every payment, wallet, and onchain interaction becomes searchable by governments, companies, adversaries, and AI? Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, joins David to explain why Zcash is having a major privacy comeback, how ZODL and the Zashi wallet helped unlock real shielded adoption, why the shielded pool may be the most important ZEC metric, and what i...

Crypto is splitting in two: Bitcoin and ETH look weak, while HYPE, ZEC, NEAR, and VVV keep breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the strange market divergence, Ethereum’s crisis of faith, and whether this rally is real or false strength. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://ban...

NEAR keeps showing up in strange places: cross-chain wallets, privacy apps, AI infrastructure, and now the emerging agent economy. Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN, joins us to explain why he thinks this is not another NEAR pivot, but the original thesis finally coming into focus. They dig into NEAR Intents, AI money, tokenomics, privacy, fee capture, agentic commerce, and why SVRN is trying to commercia...

The internet is about to be flooded by machines, and Matthew Prince thinks the old business model is not ready. The Cloudflare co-founder and CEO joins Bankless to explain why AI agent traffic could overtake human traffic by 2027, how crawlers are changing the economics of content, why ads and subscriptions may not survive in their current form, and how x402, stablecoins, and pay-per-crawl could c...

Crypto’s old leaders are struggling, but new winners are breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the rise of HYPE, Zcash, and Venice, the macro bear fuel markets are ignoring, the EF talent exodus, and why David selling his last ETH may mark a new era for Ethereum and Bankless. --- 📣METAMASK | $100,000 ONDO GM CHALLENGE https://bankless.cc/OndoOnMetaMask  --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1...

Bitcoin may be outgrowing the “digital gold” narrative. David sits down with Strive Chief Risk Officer Jeff Walton to unpack how Bitcoin-backed credit products like SATA and Strategy’s STRETCH could turn BTC into digital capital, why Jeff says the “Ponzi” framing misunderstands the balance sheet, how 13% yield and daily dividends could disrupt credit markets, and why this new financial layer may e...