When Shift Happens Podcast

Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly, has backed more than 150 crypto companies. He explains how top investors actually pick and win deals, and why the AI boom looks a lot like crypto in 2020. He also explains why most of the difficulty in venture is getting a seat at the table, and how an underdog can win without a big brand. He also shares what drew him to early bets like Near, Ethena a...

Illia Polosukhin, CEO of the NEAR Foundation and co-founder of NEAR Protocol, also helped create the transformer architecture behind AI like ChatGPT and Claude, explains what really happens to your data when you use AI and why a handful of companies could end up controlling it.  He also shares how he went from AI to crypto and how crypto's privacy tools are being used to build AI that can'...

NBA champion Tristan Thompson breaks down the simple Bitcoin strategy he uses to build long-term wealth, and why he believes in Bitcoin going to $1 million.  He opens up about growing up around government assistance, the memecoin trade where greed cost him most of a seven figure gain, and why so many rich people end up losing it all.  Whether you’re new to crypto or already stacking, this is a rar...

Dan Tapiero, founder of $1.7 billion digital asset firm 10T Holdings, returns to reveal the boring secrets to getting rich in crypto that actually work, from why he passed on FTX to the selling rule that keeps you from giving it all back.  After 35 years in investing, including working under legends Stan Druckenmiller, Julian Robertson and Steve Cohen, Dan explains why crypto is the easiest place...

Raoul Pal believes we have roughly four years to build wealth before AI fundamentally changes how the economy works.  THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to The Shift, my new weekly newsletter where I share the uncut stories, raw takes, and behind-the-scenes notes from When Shift Happens: https://www.kevinfollonier.com/crypto-web3-newsletter ___________ PARTNERS ⚖️ Variational agg...

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), founder of Binance, sits down with Kevin live on stage at Bitcoin Asia 2026 in Hong Kong and explains why right now is the best point in history to build wealth in crypto.  He breaks down why $1 million Bitcoin is coming faster than anyone expects, why Bitcoin will overtake gold in the next bull run, the exact crypto allocation he tells governments to hold, and what the bigges...

Jordi Alexander, founder and CEO of crypto trading firm Selini Capital, explains why retirement is a 20th century dream and why no amount of money will ever be "enough" in a world being rebuilt by AI.  He also shares the skill AI can't replace, where he sees Bitcoin and Zcash heading next, and why health, not wealth, will be the biggest divide of the next 20 years. THE SHIFT NEWSLETT...

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), founder of Binance, opens up on why he's always bullish on Twitter, how a single tweet lined up with Bitcoin's 20% pump right before Trump's crypto speech, and why he believes crypto is still nowhere near saturated with less than 1% global penetration.  He also gets candid about growing up a second-generation immigrant in Canada, surviving the FTX collapse and a Binance hack,...

Lucas Schuermann is the founder and CEO of Variational, a peer-to-peer derivatives protocol built on Arbitrum. Former Genesis executive, former quant, and someone who went to Columbia at 12 and started a hedge fund at 20. Today we get into why variational charges zero trading fees, how it's aggregating liquidity from traditional finance to list hundreds of assets on chain, why perps have a funding...

Guy Young built Ethena from zero to billions in under two years.  In this conversation, we talk about the one crypto product he believes can reach 100 million users: a yield-bearing dollar in a mobile app.  The goal is for it to feel like a normal fintech app where users don't even know crypto is powering it underneath. Just save, spend, and send to anyone in the world.  THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go...

Trezor's CTO, Tomáš Sušánka, breaks down how AI is changing the scam landscape and why even security experts are getting fooled.  From AI deepfake Microsoft Teams calls to voice cloning and phishing sites that nearly caught the CTO himself, this conversation covers the modern security playbook everyone needs for 2026. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to The Shift, my new weekly...

Jupiter COO, Kash Dhanda, breaks down the real playbook for building wealth in crypto without luck, memecoins, or moonshots.  He explains why we're still in the early majority phase of crypto adoption, why Solana is becoming the everything chain, and why he personally keeps over 50 percent of his portfolio in stablecoins earning yield. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to Th...

Jordi Visser, macro strategist at 22V Research and former Weiss Multi-Strategy CIO, breaks down why Bitcoin is his hedge against a coming age of AI-driven abundance and why he holds no interest in ever selling.  He also dives into longevity, heart rate variability, and why chasing money and status like buying a house may be the wrong game to play. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscri...

Scott Melker, host of The Wolf of All Streets, explains why most people chasing quick wins in crypto never make it, and why his own strategy is deliberately boring: mostly Bitcoin, bought on a schedule and left alone.  He also opens up about being a top creditor in the Voyager collapse, his first interview with Michael Saylor, and why he thinks crypto Twitter is actively hurting mainstream adoptio...

Raags, founder of Kast, breaks down the massive crypto opportunity he bet his career on, why he scrapped Kast’s token for tokenized equity, and what really happens to your money if a crypto bank collapses. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to The Shift, my new weekly newsletter where I share the uncut stories, raw takes, and behind-the-scenes notes from When Shift Happens: https...

Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, breaks down why he sees Solana and Zcash as two of crypto's most undervalued bets heading into 2026, using his "physics and incentives" framework to separate real conviction from trader noise.  He also debunks the recent Zcash security scare, explains why AI is forcing crypto toward "spaceflight-level" security standards, and weigh...

Tushar Jain, Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital, breaks down why he believes the crypto market has already bottomed and is entering a new turning point, walking through his conviction plays on Solana, Hyperliquid, and Zcash.  He also opens up on Multicoin's biggest shakeup yet: co-founder Kyle Samani's exit from the firm and the industry. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subsc...

Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly, breaks down the one rule that separates investors who actually get rich from those who don't: staying in the market when everything says to get out.  A former professional poker player turned VC, he shares how he survived 2018 and FTX without selling, and why he defended Ethereum and Solana when nobody else would. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond...

Eric Larchevêque, co-founder of Ledger, shares why everything you've been told about owning money is wrong - and how losing his savings to a corrupt bank, having his gold seized, and watching his co-founder get kidnapped for €10 million in Bitcoin proved it. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to The Shift, my new weekly newsletter where I share the uncut stories, raw takes, a...

Dan Tapiero is the Founder of 50T Funds, a growth-stage equity fund exclusively focused on the digital asset ecosystem, and one of the few Wall Street veterans who has been publicly bullish on crypto since 2019. In this episode, Dan reveals why crypto is the greatest macro investment of all time, why most investors will lose money despite being right, and why his $50 trillion thesis may actually b...

Tarek Mansour is the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, the largest federally regulated prediction market exchange in the US - valued at $2 billion and backed by some of the world's top investors. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to The Shift, my new weekly newsletter where I share the uncut stories, raw takes, and behind-the-scenes notes from When Shift Happens: https://www.kev...

Raoul Pal, co-founder of Real Vision, returns to break down why the AI race is the biggest capital event in human history and why crypto holders are positioned to win.  THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to The Shift, my new weekly newsletter where I share the uncut stories, raw takes, and behind-the-scenes notes from When Shift Happens: https://www.kevinfollonier.com/crypto-web3...

Michael Saylor is the Founder and Chairman of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin with roughly 818,000 BTC and over $65 billion in capital.  After surviving a 99.8% stock collapse that left his company three days from bankruptcy, he rebuilt it into a "reserve bank for Bitcoin" - issuing products like STRC that pay an 11.5% monthly divide...

Eddie Travia is the co-founder and CEO of Coinsilium Group, the first blockchain company to complete an IPO, and a pioneering crypto investor since 2013. In this episode, Eddie breaks down how AI agents and crypto are converging into a $15 trillion shift that will reshape investing, fundraising, and entrepreneurship - and explains why millions of jobs won't survive the transition. THE SHIFT NE...

Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys, warns that big tech is racing to build centralized AI systems that could control humans and every system on the planet - and explains why decentralized protocols are the only architecture standing in the way. THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER 💡Go beyond the mic - subscribe to The Shift, my new weekly newsletter where I share the uncut stories, raw tak...