Bankless

Trading is no longer just a financial activity; it has become a spectator sport. In this episode, Threadguy explains how Gen Z’s internet-native fluency, built through sneaker markets, NFTs, and meme cycles, translates into a new kind of market intuition: attention, momentum, and mimetics. We delve into “Entertainment Finance,” where perps, prediction markets, and live trading are starting to rese...

The Fed cut rates and announced $40B/month in T bill purchases. Is that the signal to buy back into crypto? Mike says no. In this episode, we explain why “QE light” is not real easing, the key indicators Mike needs before flipping risk on, and what Bitcoin’s onchain market structure suggests about where this cycle could go next. ---- 📣THE DEFI REPORT | FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE https://thedefireport.tra...

Bitwise’s Matt Hougan and Ryan Rasmussen return with 10 big predictions for 2026. From the case for $1M BTC (and why the classic four-year cycle may be dead) to a world where ETFs soak up more than 100% of new BTC/ETH/SOL supply. We get into Bitcoin volatility vs. mega-cap tech, crypto equities vs. tech equities, and why Polymarket could smash past its 2024 election-era highs. Plus: stablecoins as...

AI is becoming the most powerful surveillance machine ever built and most people are feeding it their deepest secrets without realizing who can read them. Proton founder Andy Yen joins Bankless to explain how Big Tech captures your identity, why AI chat logs are a privacy disaster waiting to happen, and what a self-sovereign, user-aligned future could look like. We explore how AI models profile yo...

The final Fed meeting of 2025 delivered a surprise rate cut, but the real story is how the market is reacting. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and David unpack what the new policy shift means for crypto liquidity, why regulators across the SEC, CFTC, and OCC are suddenly embracing onchain markets, and how Tom Lee’s massive ETH accumulation is reshaping sentiment. We also get into Ethereum’s gro...

ICOs are suddenly back, but this time the projects are real, the mechanisms are better, and retail isn’t shut out. Ryan and David break down why MegaEth, Monad, Aztec, Zama, and Infinex are launching public sales all at once, how onchain auctions are fixing 2017’s mistakes, and what regulatory clarity means for U.S. participation. They also dive into the rise of internet native capital markets on...

What was really happening inside the SEC during the Gensler years? Today, we sat down with Corey Frayer, former senior crypto policy advisor to SEC Chair Gary Gensler and now Director of Investor Protection at the Consumer Federation of America. We dig into how the agency thought about securities law, DeFi, Uniswap, stablecoins, SAB 121, and why platforms like Coinbase and Kraken ended up in the c...

At our Bankless Summit in Buenos Aires, four standout talks captured the frontier of crypto’s next chapter. Lincoln Murr lays out why x402 is emerging as the missing payment layer for the agentic internet. Shay Ketsdever explains how bots already run modern markets, and how programmable auctions and privacy can turn the bot economy into something that benefits people instead of exploits them. Mich...

Bitcoin hit a rare signal this week, dropping to its cheapest level relative to gold in nearly 15 years. Is that a buy signal or something deeper in the macro picture? Ryan and David break down what the BTC–gold anomaly really means, how liquidity, rates, and Trump’s surprise Fed Chair pick factor in, and whether the market is entering a shallow cycle instead of a true winter. We also cover Ethere...

This episode showcases four of the most important talks from our Bankless Summit event in Buenos Aires for Devconnect, each capturing how Ethereum is evolving as it enters the real world. Tomasz K. Stańczak reveals the EF’s new priorities around developer acceleration, founder support, institutional engagement, and unifying the L2 ecosystem. Ansgar Dietrichs explains why Ethereum is shifting from...

Michael Nadeau called the top before the 10/10 crash. In this episode, he sits down with Ryan to explain why. They break down the onchain data that flipped him risk off, Bitcoin’s decisive break below the 50-week moving average, and why global liquidity and rate cuts may not rescue this cycle. Michael shares the price zones where Bitcoin becomes compelling again, how long-term holder behavior maps...

If crypto wins without privacy, did we actually win? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Aztec co-founders Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews to unpack their eight-year quest to build a private world computer for Ethereum, covering the Aztec ignition chain, zero-knowledge-powered “private intents,” and how you can route trades across L1 and L2s without exposing your strategies or balances. They dive...

Ethereum is transparent by design, and that’s a problem if you don’t want your entire financial life on display. Rand Hindi, co-founder of Zama, joins us to explain how fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) can turn Ethereum into an encrypted, confidential blockchain where contracts stay composable and UX feels exactly the same. We get into why blockchains were public in the first place, why “anonymo...

Happy Thanksgiving! Ethereum is heading into one of its biggest upgrades of the year. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and Anthony Sassano break down the Fusaka hard fork, what it ships for L2 scaling and gas limits, and why Justin Drake’s real-time ZK proving demo could reshape Ethereum sooner than expected. They revisit the four-year cycle debate, unpack Tom Lee’s “supercycle” conviction, and...

Monad just launched Mainnet! That’s why Ryan sits down with Monad co-founder Keone Hon today. We ask the blunt question: do we really need another general-purpose L1? Why not just build this as an Ethereum L2 instead? Keone explains how Monad’s parallel, pipelined EVM works under tight consumer-hardware constraints (32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 100 Mbps), delivering ~500M gas/sec, 400ms blocks, and fast fin...

Global liquidity veteran Michael Howell joins to map out the “master variable” driving asset prices: a 65-month global liquidity and debt refinancing cycle that underpins booms, busts, and the recent “everything bubble.” He breaks down the coming debt maturity wall, rising repo stress, the shift from Fed QE to “Treasury QE,” and a new capital war between a US dollar stablecoin system and China’s g...

We analyze the crypto market's turbulence as Bitcoin falls below $90k, signaling potential bear market conditions. Also, it’s DevConnect! We discuss investor sentiment, and examine key updates like Vitalik Buterin's roadmap for Ethereum and Aave's new app. Tune in for essential market updates! ------ 📣 BLACK FRIDAY | BANKLESS PREMIUM https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOO...

America isn’t just leading the AI race; it’s increasingly built on it. Investor–author Ruchir Sharma joins Bankless to unpack why U.S. growth, stock gains, and even debt complacency are now tethered to a single story, and what a sensible hedge looks like. We trace how U.S. dominance happened, what could puncture the current euphoria, and where the real diversification lives: quality stocks that ha...

Bryan Johnson lays out “Don’t Die,” a moral framework that puts existence first and turns longevity into a shared fight against entropy. We pressure-test the hard stuff: selfishness, inequality, stagnation, and the so-called two-species future. Bryan argues these are solvable with smart societal engineering if “don’t die” is for everyone. He breaks down Blueprint as a practical on-ramp with eviden...

Market uncertainty? On this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and guest co-host Tom Schmidt dig into a jittery crypto market, Trump’s new economic ideas aimed at boosting sentiment, and whether the four-year cycle prophecy is finally catching up with Bitcoin. They also cover Coinbase bringing ICOs back to U.S. retail, Uniswap’s long-awaited fee switch moment, and JPMorgan launching a deposit token on Bas...

Ethereum hasn’t reached full speed yet. Now it might. Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation outlines Lean Ethereum, a plan to optimise the stack so validators stop executing and start verifying. With zk proofs in under 12 seconds and on-prem provers around 10 kW, the base layer can reach gigagas capacity and roughly 10,000 TPS while getting more decentralized. Add Fossil, seconds-level finality,...

BlackRock’s Head of Crypto Robbie Mitchnick joins Ryan to unpack how institutions are actually allocating (and why correlation to “digital gold” matters), what the ETF data says about demand for BTC and ETH, and why the October leverage flush didn’t dent long-term adoption. We dig into BlackRock’s tokenization roadmap, from the BUIDL-style tokenized money market funds and the Genius Act angle to t...

Is the crypto bull market really over, or just pausing while AI takes the spotlight? On this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and guest co-host Haseeb break down Bitcoin’s 10/10 crash, hidden leverage, and the “Bitcoin silent IPO” thesis. They also cover the $128M Balancer hack, DeFi’s decentralization debate, L2 vanity metrics, Brian Armstrong’s prediction market stunt, and why Peter Thiel says Bitcoin...

Payment chains are heating up. Not every “stablecoin chain” is playing the same game. Codex cofounder and CEO Haonan Li joins David to map the real landscape: what neutrality looks like in practice, why the bottleneck isn’t TPS but fiat-to-stable friction, and how on-chain FX could pull global flows. We dig into the Bear-Chain incentive trap. Why Codex chose to build as an Ethereum L2. The case fo...

Micropayments were always meant to be part of the internet, but the technology never existed to make them work. Until now. David sits down with Sam Ragsdale, CEO of Merit Systems, to unpack x402, a new protocol reviving the long-dormant “Payment Required” status code to enable crypto-powered microtransactions across the web. They explore how x402 could transform how machines, AI agents, and humans...