Unchained

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, crypto streamer and trading/markets influencer threadguy joins the crew to translate what is happening in the trenches, from market-open streams and social trading apps to public PnL and Gen Z's appetite for risk.

The conversation starts with a challenge to crypto's old guard: today's lowest-cap markets look less like clicking a few ICOs and more like playing Fortnite with token scanners, wallet trackers, and social feeds all firing at once. From there, threadguy breaks down the fight between FOMO and Pump.fun, why the winner may be whoever owns the trader graph, and how one visible winning trade can turn an unknown wallet into a market-moving celebrity. Haseeb questions whether Robinhood has actually brought new money onchain, Tarun and Robert revisit the hidden counterparty risks of early crypto, and the group imagines a future in which AI agents launch protocols, raise capital, and transact without a human-facing interface.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 threadguy says modern onchain trading looks like Fortnite, with token scanners, social feeds, and wallet alerts all competing for attention.

🔹 Robert argues that crypto was never simply easier or harder. The tools, assets, and attack surfaces have continually evolved.

🔹 Tarun explains how stablecoins and reliable off-ramps replaced the counterparty and FX risks that defined early crypto trading.

🔹 FOMO and Pump.fun are fighting for social traders as exchanges, wallets, and launchpads race to own the next trading graph.

🔹 threadguy says traders are becoming crypto's new celebrities because public wallets make PnL visible and influence measurable.

🔹 Haseeb argues that the latest memecoin revival may be crypto-native capital front-running Robinhood demand that has not arrived yet.

🔹 The panel rejects the idea that AI agents are already managing meaningful memecoin portfolios, but sees that changing as capabilities improve.

🔹 Haseeb predicts the next onchain inflection will come when AI agents create, govern, and use protocols that humans never designed.

🔹 A crypto wallet cannot be switched off like an agent's credit card, which gives autonomous software a uniquely durable financial rail.

🔹 threadguy believes active investing and public risk-taking are permanent cultural shifts for Gen Z and the generations behind it.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Guest

⭐️threadguy, Crypto streamer and trading/markets influencer

Links

threadguy on X: https://x.com/notthreadguy

threadguy on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/threadguy

Disclosures

Timeline

00:00 Intro

01:00 threadguy's New Purple Era

03:58 Could Crypto OGs Survive Today's Trenches?

16:05 FOMO vs Pump.fun: The Social Trading War

24:37 Traders Become Crypto's New Celebrities

31:25 Why Memecoin Volume Is Rising Again

36:57 Is Robinhood Really Bringing New Money Onchain?

40:04 Can AI Agents Trade Memecoins?

43:23 AI Agents and Crypto's Next Capabilities Jump

54:15 Is Gen Z's Risk Appetite Permanent?
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For years, North Korean operatives have infiltrated crypto companies by posing as freelance developers, funneling stolen funds back to the regime. Laura Shin went undercover as a recruiter named "Sophie Wang" to interview one of them — a capable blockchain engineer tied to a $2.7M hack — and tested the one request known to shut these interviews down cold: say something negative about Kim Jong Un. Watch what happens.
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Ondo's founder died at 32, and now his mother and its ousted president are fighting for control. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy on the succession lesson crypto keeps skipping.

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Thank you to our sponsor!

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Ondo Finance co-founder and CEO Nathan Allman died suddenly this summer at 32, leaving the real-world-asset tokenizer with zero sitting directors and two people claiming to run the company: ousted president Ian De Bode, and Allman's mother Kathleen, acting for his estate.

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le use the fight to unpack a problem that has nothing to do with crypto and everything to do with it: what happens when a fast-growing company never writes down a succession plan.

They also cover the White House's new frontier AI oversight framework, which officials confirm exists but will not publish, a proposed FDIC and OCC certification that would let a fintech satisfy every bank's diligence questions at once, and the CLARITY Act's newly scheduled September 15 cloture vote, squeezed into a narrow window before midterms.

Vy Le asks the harder question underneath all three stories: can boundaries this important really be left voluntary?

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Chainlink

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda

Timestamps

🤖 01:40 Jessi on why AI agents are getting great at goals, bad at intent

🏛️ 08:12 Why the White House's new AI framework is finished, but secret

📣 13:42 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity layer works at https://1inch.com/aqua

⚖️ 14:30 Ondo's board hits zero directors after founder Nathan Allman's death

🚌 20:08 KK's 'hit by a bus' rule: the succession plan every startup skips

🏦 27:06 The FDIC's plan to let one fintech certification satisfy every bank

📜 37:51 Why KK is nervous about the CLARITY Act's September cloture vote

🦥 46:16 Crypto good news: robot sloths saving an endangered species
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

A new Ethereum proposal would burn staking issuance to zero once roughly half the supply is staked, and the community had about 48 hours to respond.

Austin Campbell, Chris Perkins, and Seth Ginns of Franklin Crypto discuss whether it is a necessary check on runaway staking or an academic overreach that ignores how institutions actually think about the network.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto

Guest:

Seth Ginns - Chief Investment Officer of Franklin Crypto

This clip is from a longer conversation on Ethereum's staking yield fight. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/MhhJAIhkgVM?si=hqg5R4b3rVBNdNlJ

We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live.

Sponsor:

Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com.

Chapters:

🔥 00:20 Austin on the proposal to burn ETH issuance to zero, and who wrote it

⏱️ 02:02 Why a 48-hour comment window has critics saying the process is broken

🎓 03:33 Seth calls the proposal an academic push that skipped real coordination

🍳 04:48 Chris predicts the plan fails because the EF does not control Ethereum

💴 07:13 Chris's yen carry trade warning about messing with ETH's risk-free rate

⚖️ 09:10 Austin's verdict: 48 hours is too short no matter how the vote goes

🗣️ 13:57 Dapplion's pushback from inside the camp: 'you can't bribe me like this'

💰 15:23 Seth defends the $10 billion in institutional ETH flows
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Spark avoided the DeFi hack that hit almost everyone else in April. Cofounder Sam MacPherson lays out why, and where he thinks AI fits into DeFi security.

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Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com

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In April, a hacker widely assumed to be tied to North Korea drained tens of millions from KelpDAO's rsETH market, and most of DeFi took the hit. Spark did not, because it had quietly exited rsETH months earlier.

Sam MacPherson, cofounder and CEO of Spark, joins Laura Shin to unpack the conservative playbook, rate limits, a triple redundant oracle, and a governance process built to move slowly on purpose, that turned a near miss into a footnote while rivals absorbed the damage.

They cover why Spark's TVL climbed more than 50% after the hack, how emergency multisigs and time locks work when Sky's month-long governance process is too slow, and why MacPherson thinks AI will make smart contract audits more reliable, not less.

MacPherson also maps Spark's growing footprint, from Anchorage-backed institutional lending to a new Uniswap stablecoin FX layer, and why he isn't worried about SPK near its all-time low even as the business keeps compounding.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sam MacPherson - Cofounder and CEO of Spark

Timestamps

📣 00:26 Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com

🏦 01:08 What Spark does and how it plugs into the Sky protocol's balance sheet

🛡️ 05:07 Why Sam says Spark's conservative design let it dodge the KelpDAO hack

⚖️ 11:24 How the rsETH exit exposed the tradeoffs in Sky's onchain governance

🎙️ 13:52 Visit 1inch.com to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at 1inch.com

💰 17:41 Why Sam thinks DeFi yields are converging toward SOFR, not higher

🤖 20:47 Why Sam says AI cuts both ways for DeFi security after the hack wave

🏛️ 23:26 Why Sky built the subDAO model, and whether it can survive politics

💵 26:58 The stablecoin land grab: Robinhood, Coinbase, and Spark's role in it

📊 30:50 Why Sam isn't worried about SPK trading near its all time low

🚀 32:39 Spark's next chapter: institutional lending and Spark Savings USDT growth
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