The blocmates Podcast

Auld Lang Syne, a song by Rod Stewart. Happy New Year, everyone. It's nice to be back. We thought it'd be tumbleweed for the first week of January but that's not been the case. Kain and Infinex have found themselves in hot water again but is it just nonsense? Prediction markets and insider trading is seemingly big on the menu in every industry across the world, but do they even care...

MSCI confirms Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) will remain in its global index. Is this bullish for MSTR?  Crypto.com partners with Stripe allowing merchants to receive crypto payments Lighter begins begins buybacks from protocol fees. We dive into the numbers

Did the US become the second largest BTC holder?   Ledger falls victim to yet another major security breach Polymarket and Parcl bring real estate prediction markets to the public

DEX wars - Hyperliquid vs. Lighter Aave's alignment proposal   Upcoming MetaDAO ICOs to keep tabs on Jupiter, Helium buyback updates   

Macro updates from US & Japan Pump.fun dev's 6-year sentence Final voting begins for Uniswap's UNIfication proposal   Jump Trading gets sued by Terra administrators 

Trump's announces his first official stimmy - 'Warrior Dividend' Coinbase unveils Super App Robinhood lists $PIPPIN, despite insiders controlling 80% of the supply   ETHGas raises $12 million to create an Ethereum gas futures market blocmates MetaDAO article & podcast plugged

Alex, Grant, 563 and Nev jump on for our last blocmates pod of the year to talk about the good and bad from 2025.  We realise there’s a load we’ve missed but without doing this for three hours, we don’t have much of a choice.  Expect us to get into our personal choices for the best bits including HIP-3, Rekt drinks sending, the privacy meta and everything coming onchain. Things look good for 2026,...

Aave-SEC case dropped, Stani releases 2026 roadmap Hyperliquid ETF to launch soon Visa to settle USDC payments on Solana Japanese Yen stablecoin coming from Startale/SBI to launch in Q2 2026 Securitize to bring equities on chain with full ownership rights

JP Morgan tokenizes MMF on Ethereum Circle acquires Interop Labs team Solana is under a historic DDOS attack, yet network is stable Aster launches 'Shield Mode' with 1001x leverage available

Macro updates: Japan set to raise rates, carry traders out in force Tether is eying a raise at a $500 billion valuation  Firedancer goes live on the Solana mainnet Hyperliquid set to introduce Portfolio Margin The Tether x Juventus takeover rejection saga

Tokenization of stocks, treasuries, bonds is accelerating in the US Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in prison Trump hints at no tax on gambling wins Solo Bitcoin miner hits the jackpot

FOMC recap: Have we stepped into the QE phase? Stripe makes moves in the stablecoin infra space Fogo drops pre-sale announcement  The Lighter vs. Hyperliquid beef

Last week felt like maybe some of the worst sentiment we've seen across the industry in a long time and we even felt it ourselves.  This week we're discussing the chatter online from some chap who says he's wasted his prime years on crypto and is now pivoting to be a philanthropist or something, dunno.  Anyway, do we agree? Or is it just another crash out when the market takes a tur...

FOMC Day: What to expect?   Banks get the green act as crypto intermediaries Hyperliquid's Jeff snaps back at Tarun of Gauntlet over ADL FUD Is Trump about to save crypto gaming?

Crypto to be tested as collateral in US derivatives market  Equity tokenization is accelerating Polymarket accused of double counting its trading volume Poland says no to crypto MiCA rules Saylor's Strategy buys more BTC 

USDC is now linked between HyperCore and HyperEVM  Vitalik proposes futures-style ETH gas market Larry Fink says sovereign wealth funds are buying BTC Aster accelerates buybacks    TAO halving deets 

CFTC green lights spot crypto trades on registered exchanges  Key economic data points to know before next week's Fed meet Ethereum's post Fusaka hiccup Perp DEX wars: Aster, Drift, Lighter edition

Polymarket enters the US Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade goes live Upcoming TGEs: Seeker and Stable   Charles Schwab to step into the crypto arena in 2026 All about the robotics executive order  

Bringing you some festive cheer for our first December pod.  Alex and Grant catch up on the back of Devconnect in Argentina and end up on an hour-long tangent about the issues this industry faces and why everything we buy is completely cooked. And if there's any hope to fix it. 

CNN to use Kalshi prediction markets across its news coverage Trump says Americans may soon pay ‘no income tax’ Aave adds and removes chains (Mantle; Sonium, ZKsync, Metis) Bank of America agrees to 4% crypto exposure Kraken acquires Backed to accelerate tokenization  

MicroStrategy raises cash to fund USD reserve Vanguard to allow clients to buy crypto ETFs Kalshi-powered tokenized prediction markets go live on Solana Anthropic AI agents find hackable smart contracts

HYPE unlocks: A quick TLDR MicroStrategy could sell BTC Yearn Finance gets hacked Ripple makes moves in Abu Dhabi and Singapore China reaffirms negative crypto stance

Kalshi's legal troubles  CME's data centre failure hiccup  Upbit hacker's details emerge  MegaETH's refund plans Infinex's upcoming Sonar sale Will ICOs replace airdrops in 2026? 

Nasdaq proposes raising IBIT options limits Upbit falls victim to $37 million hack  Robinhood's share of Kalshi volume exposed Addressing the Tether FUD   Is Trump's next Fed Chair a dove?