Rise Up Media

Good now revolutionaries—Emily's back in the co-host chair and we're dissecting the wave of DeFi exploits that just reshaped the conversation around security, governance, and trust. This is not a heat-check episode. This is an autopsy. Evan walks through the Drift exploit — $285M gone via a 2-of-5 multisig with no time lock — and the KelpDAO bridge exploit that used a single DVN validato...

Good now revolutionaries— The Arculus purple wallet order form is officially LIVE. Evan and Will (with Alex taking the morning off to host Trust Issues tonight) kick off Tuesday with a packed show: the purple wallet QR hits the screen, shouts to Crystal, Lakita, Derek, and Jason — the first wave of orderers — and a real-time breakdown of why Pengu's 83% drawdown may still have further to fall...

Good now revolutionaries— William Watson IV and Doug aka Drift are back after a two-week break, and they're walking straight into a market that's pricing in a Wednesday deadline on the Iran situation. This episode is the macro reset you needed before the week starts: why oil's move matters more than the S&P headline, why the Fed is pinned on rate cuts, and why Bitcoin is only 27...

Good now revolutionaries— Will is back from Mexico and the timing could not have been worse for DeFi. Over the weekend, KelpDAO was exploited for ~$293 million via a Layer Zero bridge — the attacker fraudulently minted RSE, parked it on Aave as collateral, and borrowed out legitimate dollars in roughly an hour. It's the biggest DeFi hack of 2026 so far, and Layer Zero is pointing directly at...

Good now revolutionaries— Quigley is back, and we spent 90 minutes on the two themes everyone in crypto should be obsessing over right now: quantum risk and the endless creativity of social-engineering attackers. We start with the pump-and-dump clinic of the week — Allbirds, a failing shoe company whose stock ripped 400–600% after announcing a pivot to "GPU-on-demand AI" — and trace the...

Good now revolutionaries — it's World Liberty Financial week, whether we like it or not. Evan and Alex break down the new 62.3-billion-token unlock proposal, the absurd 1% governance quorum, and why Justin Sun is now publicly accusing the team of a "hidden blacklisting function" and threatening court over it. Then the stablecoin question: USD-1 is backed one-to-one with US treasurie...

Good now revolutionaries— Evan and Alex are holding it down solo for another No-Will Wednesday, and they brought the DeFi receipts. This episode runs straight through liquidity pools, a short squeeze anatomy, a quantum-proofing proposal for Bitcoin, and a market check you'd expect from an adult. The main event is a 30-minute DeFi deep dive that starts with Steckler's question about a wra...

Good now revolutionaries — Episode 17 of Trust Issues is here, and we spent nearly the entire episode doing a deep dive on World Liberty Financial that somehow got more unhinged as it went on. Emily walked us through the full structure: the two Trump-affiliated tokens (WLFI and USD1), the $500M MGX investment from Abu Dhabi, Binance's 80% concentration of USD1, and the layered LLC structure —...

Good now revolutionaries— It's a no-Will Tuesday (he's still in Mexico — Evan has a theory), but Evan and Alex are fully locked in for a packed news day. They open with the SEC's new staff guidance on DeFi front ends — a five-condition framework that lets certain crypto interfaces potentially operate without broker-dealer registration. Alex breaks down what it actually means: not la...

Good now revolutionaries — Evan Mann and Alex Popovic bring you a packed Monday as Will heads to Mexico for a well-deserved vacation. The show leads with the story dominating crypto Twitter all weekend: World Liberty Financial, President Trump's DeFi protocol, deposited five billion WLFI tokens onto the Dolomite lending protocol to borrow roughly $80 million in USDC. The problem? WLF controls...

Good now revolutionaries — Thursday April 9, and it's a packed final show of the week. Iran is now accepting ships through the Strait of Hormuz — but requiring payment in Bitcoin, stablecoins, or Chinese yuan. Alex walks through exactly what the Iran oil union's spokesperson got wrong about Bitcoin (one out of three ain't bad: correct on sanctions, wrong on the transaction time and...

Good now revolutionaries — Wednesday morning, the Iran ceasefire is holding but the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Alex walks through the hammer candle on the S&P, why the 2-week bullish window is real but fragile, and what happens to oil if the deal collapses ($110–$160/barrel possible). Will catches everyone up on the Drift Protocol $300M exploit in 60 seconds and tells you which account...

Good now revolutionaries — Evan Mann is joined tonight by Smobyday, a software engineer and educational content creator who has built a following by making crypto, finance, and tech genuinely accessible without dumbing anything down. Her ethos: "I don't simplify topics. I just explain them so well." The first hour covers Smo's foundational investing philosophy — starting with F...

Good now revolutionaries— Tuesday morning. Trump's Iran deadline is tonight at 8pm ET. Will Watson joins for the first half of the show before heading out — his final update: Iran struck its own Kharg Island oil terminal (90% of Iran's oil refined there), and Trump warned 'a whole civilization will die tonight' if negotiations fail. Markets are frozen until Wednesday. First up:...

Good now revolutionaries— Happy Easter Monday. The markets are waiting on Trump's Tuesday 8pm ET deadline to Iran — open the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on bridges and power plants. Will Watson is watching the UConn national championship game tonight, so Doug is running market watch. But before he heads out, Will drops breaking news live on air: Iran officially rejected the U.S. ceasefir...

Good now revolutionaries— Iran threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz overnight, oil jumped 11.4% in 12 hours, and by the time we wrapped it was up 14.5% on the day. Will Watson broke down what that actually means for markets—and why it's not over. We also hit the one-year mark since Liberation Day, and the numbers are grim: beef up 14%, coffee up 21%, oil up 40%, electricity up 36%, co...

Good now revolutionaries— Tonight on Rise Up After Dark, Evan, Alex, and Will Watson hosted CCS and Zoe — two builders from the XPR/Metallicus ecosystem — for a deep, direct, and occasionally heated conversation about whether this six-year-old blockchain is genuinely building something or quietly doing what a lot of L1s do: building without gaining. Alex brought receipts from Elrond. The conversat...

Good now revolutionaries— Happy April Fools Day. Will Watson is out (allergies), so Evan and Alex are holding it down solo. No pranks — but plenty to cover. A story circulated this morning claiming Anthropic's Claude source code was accidentally leaked in a product update. Before you panic: April 1st is the worst day to trust a headline. We walk through what actually happened, what wasn'...

Good now revolutionaries— Today's a milestone: Alex officially wraps his day job and goes full-time on Rise Up starting tomorrow. We open with breaking news that matters if you were caught in the FTX collapse — the fourth creditor payout ($2.2 billion) is hitting today, but at 2022 prices. If you lost a Bitcoin, you're getting reimbursed at a $16,000 valuation. We cover what you need to...

Good now revolutionaries— today's episode is a certified Monday banger. Will Watson rolled in from a Nashville wedding weekend with a smooth brain and a new title (best man), Alex was island-chill despite the early hour, and the blockchain debate that kicked things off ended up being one of the sharpest philosophical conversations RUMS has had in a while. The main event: is a permissioned blo...

Good now revolutionaries — the cost to mine a single Bitcoin just hit $70,000, and the miners making it happen are taking home $500 a token. Marathon Digital unloaded over $1 billion in Bitcoin overnight, and three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments just hit the network for the first time since July. Will broke down exactly what that means for price pressure and who is quietly buying the...

Good now revolutionaries — Wednesday's episode was all about stablecoins, who's winning the legislative fight over them, and why Circle's stock dropping 20% is actually the buy signal, not the warning sign. The Senate Banking Committee's version of the Clarity Act just removed your ability to earn interest on stablecoins held on Coinbase or Kraken. The banks lobbied for it, the...

Good now revolutionaries—  Matt Wiley is back from ten days in Andalusia, Spain, and he came armed with receipts on Katana. The token launched at roughly 88% below its advertised price of 10¢, the team quietly raised the instant-exit fee from 25–40% to 80% days before launch with no community vote, and TVL figures were inflated via paid Binance and OKX campaigns. Alex added the structural analysis...

Good now revolutionaries — the Rise Up Morning Show is back for EP477, Monday March 23. Evan is joined by Will Watson and Alex as the week kicks off with a heavy macro backdrop: Iran and the US are trading contradictory statements about peace talks, oil is pushing past $110/barrel, and the S&P 500 just closed below its 200-day EMA for the first time this cycle. Will puts it plainly: from a pur...

Goodnow revolutionaries— Will opens with the weekly Bitcoin chart and the news you want: a strong close above the 200-week EMA, breaking out of the golden pocket in play since February. Short-term target $73,500, path to $79K and potentially $87K if it holds. The Friday dip was one news event—the bombing of Iran's Kharg Island—and the weekly chart never flinched. Rule of thumb: double Bitcoin...