Bankless

Bankless

The Ultimate Guide to Crypto Finance. DeFi, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies. Level up. Go bankless.

Episodes

June 26, 2026 64 mins
Markets are bleeding as Bitcoin breaks below $60K and Strategy faces its biggest test yet. Ryan and David unpack Saylor’s three-way squeeze, ETH Labs vs. the EF reset, quantum timelines moving up, and Illinois’ new crypto tax. --- 🧭OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🦊 METAMASK | ...
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What happens when powerful AI requires an ID, governments can restrict access by country, and your most private data flows through centralized systems? NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin joins David to explain why AI export controls could fracture the internet, how nationalized AI could become a surveillance layer, and why decentralized, user-owned AI may be the only real alternative. They also unpack Ironclaw, confidential inference...
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Arthur Hayes is back on Bankless, and he’s taking the W off the table. After selling HYPE, NEAR and ZEC, Arthur walks through why the AI trade started to look less asymmetric, why oil and geopolitics may still be the bear case no one wants to price, and why ETH may offer one of the cleaner setups in crypto today. Then the conversation turns bigger: AI capex, circular revenue, China’s cheap models, GPU depreciation, and ...
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Equities are rallying, but Bitcoin is breaking down. David and Tom unpack Saylor’s STRC stress, Warsh’s first FOMC, SpaceX’s mega-IPO, Jito’s breakout, Coinbase’s Everything Exchange, and why perps may be crypto’s next real growth engine. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://app.okx.com/en-us/join/usbankless --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https:/...
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Re is bringing the $1T reinsurance market onchain. Founder Karn Saroya and Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg join David to unpack how stablecoins can become a new capital source for insurance, why real-world reinsurance may offer crypto’s missing “real yield,” and how Re is using Ethereum, smart contracts, and AI to compete with legacy giants like Lloyd’s of London, Munich Re, and Swiss Re. They also dis...
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Pokemon cards are suddenly one of the hottest markets in collectibles. But why now, and what does it have to do with crypto? Andy8052 joins David to break down the rise of digital pack-opening platforms, the nostalgia-driven bull case for Pokémon, why grading companies have a stranglehold on the market, and how millions of dollars of real-world cards are slowly moving onchain. Are tokenized collectibles the next NFT comeback story,...
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Perps are coming onshore. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig joins David to unpack the first U.S.-regulated Bitcoin perpetual futures contract, the end of regulation by enforcement, and what comes next for Coinbase, Kalshi, Kraken, Gemini, Hyperliquid, Lighter, and the broader U.S. perp market. They also discuss which assets could list next, how U.S. leverage will differ from offshore exchanges, and why equity perps, RWAs, and 24/7 trading m...
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Bitcoin is back at Biden-era prices, ETFs are bleeding, and Saylor just did the thing he said never to do: sell. Ryan and David unpack whether crypto has one more drop left, what trillion-dollar IPOs reveal about broken capital markets, and why their ETH debate may be the real fight for Ethereum’s future. --- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY APP https://app.okx.com/en-us/join/usbankless  --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: �...
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June 9, 2026 60 mins
Hyperliquid has become the breakout perp exchange of crypto. But is the market missing its biggest competitor? Delphi’s Flip and DeFi investor Will Price join David to make the case for Lighter, a ZK-powered Ethereum L2 with zero-fee retail trading, white-glove distribution, real-world asset perps, and a token buying back revenue at a surprising rate. Is LIT just a Hyperliquid beta trade, or is it one of the most underpriced ...
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AI is quickly becoming the interface through which people think, work, and make decisions—but most users have no idea how much personal data they're handing over in the process. Jon and Jesse from Venice join David to make the case for privacy-first AI, explain why Venice is aiming to become a mainstream consumer AI brand, and explore how $VVV and DIEM transform inference into a crypto-economic primitive. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIU...
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Bitcoin is bleeding, STRC is off peg, and Saylor’s “never sell” machine is facing its first real confidence test. David and Haseeb unpack whether Strategy can survive without selling BTC, why Bitmine’s ETH play may be stronger but riskier, and what select token strength, U.S. perps, and Coinbase’s Ethena deal reveal about crypto’s next phase. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTI...
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Crypto policy in Washington has gone from punchline to power center. David sits down with Ron Hammond, Head of Policy and Advocacy at Wintermute, for a rare inside look at how crypto actually moves through DC: the SBF era, Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto army, Gary Gensler’s SEC, bank lobby pressure, Trump’s crypto conflicts, the Clarity Act fight, and why privacy and self-custody may be the next major battleground...
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What happens when every payment, wallet, and onchain interaction becomes searchable by governments, companies, adversaries, and AI? Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, joins David to explain why Zcash is having a major privacy comeback, how ZODL and the Zashi wallet helped unlock real shielded adoption, why the shielded pool may be the most important ZEC metric, and what it will take for private money to be...
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Crypto is splitting in two: Bitcoin and ETH look weak, while HYPE, ZEC, NEAR, and VVV keep breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the strange market divergence, Ethereum’s crisis of faith, and whether this rally is real or false strength. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/poly...
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NEAR keeps showing up in strange places: cross-chain wallets, privacy apps, AI infrastructure, and now the emerging agent economy. Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN, joins us to explain why he thinks this is not another NEAR pivot, but the original thesis finally coming into focus. They dig into NEAR Intents, AI money, tokenomics, privacy, fee capture, agentic commerce, and why SVRN is trying to commercialize the NEAR ecosystem rather than...
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The internet is about to be flooded by machines, and Matthew Prince thinks the old business model is not ready. The Cloudflare co-founder and CEO joins Bankless to explain why AI agent traffic could overtake human traffic by 2027, how crawlers are changing the economics of content, why ads and subscriptions may not survive in their current form, and how x402, stablecoins, and pay-per-crawl could create a new payment layer for the w...
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Crypto’s old leaders are struggling, but new winners are breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the rise of HYPE, Zcash, and Venice, the macro bear fuel markets are ignoring, the EF talent exodus, and why David selling his last ETH may mark a new era for Ethereum and Bankless. --- 📣METAMASK | $100,000 ONDO GM CHALLENGE https://bankless.cc/OndoOnMetaMask  --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDIC...
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Bitcoin may be outgrowing the “digital gold” narrative. David sits down with Strive Chief Risk Officer Jeff Walton to unpack how Bitcoin-backed credit products like SATA and Strategy’s STRETCH could turn BTC into digital capital, why Jeff says the “Ponzi” framing misunderstands the balance sheet, how 13% yield and daily dividends could disrupt credit markets, and why this new financial layer may expand...
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Zcash is having its first real narrative moment in years. David sits down with Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain and Mert Mumtaz to unpack why privacy may be crypto’s missing store-of-value primitive, why Zcash is being framed as “private Bitcoin,” how institutional adoption could normalize shielded money, what AI and onchain surveillance change about the privacy debate, and why quantum risk could become a ...
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Two surprise Democrat votes just rerated the entire crypto policy timeline. After the Senate Banking Committee advanced the Clarity Act on a bipartisan basis, Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn moved his odds of the bill being signed this year from a coin flip to 75%. He and David map the seven-week sprint to the president's desk, the ethics-provision standoff that could still sink everything, the bank lobby's quiet o...
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