Unchained

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

When the Clarity Act stalled in Congress, the shorts expected Bitcoin to break. It dipped to $75,000 and stopped. Then came the surprise that the bill might pass after all, and Bitcoin closed its first weekly candle above its 50-week moving average in 45 weeks.

Ram Ahluwalia calls it a short squeeze, and says that doesn't make it illegitimate. Chris Perkins sees a regime change, with institutions now underwriting crypto on fundamentals. Austin Campbell asks what happens if US retail, still missing from the Coinbase premium, shows up too.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell

Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97

This segment is from a longer conversation on Bitcoin, the Fed, a $30 trillion debt pile, and Meta's new AI agent. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/r2Z9ooMTcZ0?si=-mncR-xhm7kUM507

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

👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

Chapters:

📊 00:34 Bitcoin's 50-week reclaim: the bull case and the bear case laid out

🐻 03:51 Why Ram thinks it's a short squeeze, and why that doesn't make it illegitimate

🔄 05:14 Why Chris thinks this is a regime change toward fundamentals

⚖️ 07:31 Austin on how Clarity's failure invalidated the short case

👀 12:26 Why retail hasn't shown up yet, and what happens if it does
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Zcash and NEAR are both ripping this week, and Illia Polosukhin and Mert Mumtaz say privacy is the reason why. Is this how the “Bitcoin DeFi” vision comes true?

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Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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Zcash just cracked the top 10 on CoinGecko, up 32% in a week and near an all-time high. NEAR is up 69% over the same stretch, and both rallies trace back to the same catalyst: transactions nobody else can see.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to unpack why confidential transactions, not speculation, are driving the rally, and why the two networks now function as one privacy-preserving liquidity layer for real businesses and institutions, not just traders.

They cover NEAR Intents' $260 million in TVL, the multi-party computation and secure enclaves behind NEAR's confidential balances versus Zcash's zero-knowledge shielded pool, the counterfeiting bug that forced Zcash's Ironwood migration, and NEAR's Shield system, which halted transactions mid-hack during a Litecoin exploit. Zcash's next upgrade, Project Tachyon, aims to make the network quantum-proof and scale it 100x, and Mert argues privacy will not stay a competitive edge for long.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol

⁠Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius

Timestamps

🚀 01:39 Guest intros, plus why ZEC (+32%) and NEAR (+69%) are ripping this week

🌐 03:13 Illia and Mert on why NEAR and ZEC's price action is turning heads

🟠 08:34 Is Zcash and NEAR the Bitcoin DeFi dream, minus Bitcoin?

🕵️ 11:54 Why coffee-shop-level balance visibility is a real business risk

✈️ 15:06 Mert's travel hack: booking flights and hotels privately via NEAR Intents

🧠 18:12 Why privacy is a retention tool first, not just an onboarding one

📣 25:11 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🔐 26:23 Privacy vs confidentiality: ZK proofs versus NEAR's MPC-and-enclave model

🛡️ 29:26 Inside NEAR's secure enclaves, and why store-of-value needs real privacy

🔄 33:59 How a NEAR Intents swap settles across chains, and its $206 million in TVL

🐛 39:09 The Zcash counterfeit bug, the Ironwood migration, and formal verification

🤖 45:49 How NEAR's Shield AI system and MPC guardrails manage solver risk

⚡ 51:33 Zcash's NU7 upgrade: faster blocks, quantum-proofing, and private voting
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Days after Clarity failed, the SEC granted a major exemption for tokenized stocks. The Digital Chamber’s Cody Carbone explains whether agencies can replace the law.

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Thank you to our sponsor!

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The Clarity Act failed its cloture vote this week, with every Senate Democrat voting no and sinking crypto's biggest legislative shot in years.

Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, joins Laura Shin to unpack what killed the bill: an ethics fight over Trump's blind trust and digital-asset dealings, stablecoin-reward limits the banks wouldn't accept, and a Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act rewrite that stripped noncustodial developers of criminal-liability protection. Carbone argues Democrats rejected 80% of their own ethics demands rather than hand Republicans a win, and traces how crypto PAC money and the threat of Maxine Waters chairing House Financial Services shape what happens next.

Two days after Clarity died, the SEC granted an innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading, and Carbone says the SEC and CFTC are about to unleash years of rulemaking with or without Congress. The question now is whether that agency-driven momentum outlasts the next hostile administration, or gets undone with a single signature.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

Cody Carbone - CEO of The Digital Chamber

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:18 Why the Clarity Act's cloture vote failed: 'politics beat policy'

⚖️ 02:38 Scoring Trump's corruption against Nixon and Suharto fuels the ethics fight

🗳️ 06:51 Election pressure: a lame duck vote and crypto PAC money's next targets

🏦 11:57 Why Cody blames the banks' stablecoin rewards fight for killing Clarity

🌊 14:35 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

📜 15:23 The SEC's new innovation exemption for tokenized stock venues

🔓 18:28 Could 2 years of SEC and CFTC rulemaking replace a crypto law?

🧩 23:20 Why regulators are staying silent on synthetic stock tokens

🤝 26:46 What's left to negotiate: developer liability and stablecoin yield

🔮 31:14 Is the lame duck Clarity's last shot, or could agency rules become permanent?
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Delphi Ventures founding partner Tommy Shaughnessy tells Kain and Taylor the AI slowdown talk is a moat against cheap Chinese models. Plus, why the Clarity Act died.

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Thank you to our sponsors!

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

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The Clarity Act failed a Senate cloture vote 49 to 50, and Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan open by asking what crypto did wrong. Taylor thinks the Trump family's memecoins and World Liberty sank it. Kain worries the industry squandered its best shot at actual laws and is now counting on friendly SEC rulemaking instead.

Guest Tommy Shaughnessy, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, argues that OpenAI and Anthropic's calls to slow AI down are a play for a regulatory moat, because Chinese open source models like DeepSeek are getting good and cheap. He also explains why he runs Delphi Ventures on its own AI agent instead of handing its data to Claude or ChatGPT. Kain says the fear inside the labs is genuine, and that the idea of simply shutting down the data center won't hold forever.

They also cover Anthropic's report on a Chinese surveillance operation that surfaced in its logs, an $8M exploit of a Safe wallet that a 4-year-old yoink bot frontran, the SDNY charges against Robinhood engineers accused of trading tokens on Hyperliquid ahead of Robinhood listings, and why Wyoming's stable token dropped LayerZero for Chainlink.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tommy Shaughnessy - Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures and Co-Founder of Delphi Digital

Timestamps

🏛️ 02:35 Why Clarity died without 50 votes and what SEC/CFTC rules might replace it

🇺🇸 19:06 Why crypto's all-in bet on Trump has Taylor uneasy about the partisan trade

💧 23:20 1inch: Back multiple liquidity positions and keep your tokens in your wallet until a swap fills at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🤖 24:08 Why OpenAI and Anthropic's own founders are calling to slow AI down

🐉 31:12 Tommy on why AI safety talk is regulatory capture against Chinese open source

🕵️ 38:17 Anthropic's own report: how a CCP surveillance job showed up in its logs

💰 51:42 Would you bet on AI safety or acceleration? Tommy makes the hosts pick a side

🔓 56:56 How an $8M Safe exploit got frontrun by a 4-year-old yoink bot

📈 01:01:46 Why the SDNY charged Robinhood engineers with trading on Hyperliquid ahead of listings

⚔️ 01:05:27 Why Wyoming dropping LayerZero for Chainlink reignited the Link Marines
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The boys get together in person as CLARITY falls short with 47 votes. They break down what comes next, Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP token collapse, the Robinhood/Hyperliquid case, Balancer winding down, and the debate over an AI pause.

The CLARITY Act fails cloture with 47 votes, not a single Democrat in favor, and the crew works out what that leaves behind: rulemaking at the SEC and CFTC, an ethics fight that was never really about market structure, and Robert's tally of everyone who walked away with nothing. Then Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses 99.85 percent, the SDNY indicts two Robinhood engineers over Hyperliquid front-running, Balancer and a wave of exchanges wind down, Robert explains why Satoshi is a time traveler, and the panel takes apart the labs' agreement to pace the frontier.

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

Show highlights

🔹 CLARITY gets 47 of the 60 votes it needed, with no Democrats in favor, and the sticking point was forced divestiture of Trump-affiliated tokens rather than market structure.

🔹 Robert tallies the losers: no ethics win for the Democrats, no GENIUS rewrite for the banks, no expanded AML hooks, and no developer protections for anyone.

🔹 Haseeb argues adoption protects crypto better than legislation ever will, because nobody takes away a product people already use.

🔹 Prediction markets are politically safe for a reason nobody says out loud: every politician already reads them as better polling data.

🔹 Tom's counterfactual for what would have flipped the vote is blunt. You never should have launched that damn memecoin.

🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token flashes to a 140 billion dollar valuation on 50,000 dollars of liquidity, then falls to twenty cents, and the chart ends up shaped like a laptop.

🔹 Two Robinhood engineers are charged over front-running crypto listings on Hyperliquid for about 50,000 dollars each, and Haseeb explains why the OpenSea conviction got overturned.

🔹 Balancer winds down and the panel asks what became of the ICO treasuries, from Golem's GPUs to Aragon's founder building a neobank.

🔹 Robert makes the case, half in jest, that a future superintelligence sent Satoshi back to 2008 to get humanity building chips early.

🔹 On the AI pause: Tarun on who evaluates the evaluators, Tom on why coordination without China is futile, and Haseeb on why a training freeze just moves the competition to another line item.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

00:43 CLARITY day

03:36 Silver linings

05:26 Was it close? Or did everybody loose?

12:23 Why adoption protects crypto better than a bill

15:00 Was DC trading on the CLARITY odds?

18:37 The one thing they would go back & undo

20:48 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses

23:50 Celeb coins never work

26:17 Robinhood engineers indicted over Hyperliquid front-running

31:35 Balancer winds down & the exchange shakeout

35:11 AI arbitration & ideas ahead of their time

37:44 Satoshi is a time traveler

39:14 The AI pause: pacing the frontier

42:57 China calls it a conspiracy

44:40 What do you buy if the doomers are right

45:50 Does an AI pause actually cut CapEx?

50:32 Futile without the Chinese labs

54:05 Harden society instead of slowing the models

56:47 Which doom vectors are real

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