Bankless
The Ultimate Guide to Crypto Finance. DeFi, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies. Level up. Go bankless.
Episodes
A legal war over prediction markets just went public. Ryan and David break down the CFTC’s claim of exclusive authority, the backlash from state officials and lawmakers, and why this fight is really about whether markets or politics get to define truth. They explore why AI-powered prediction markets may be crypto’s strongest product-market fit yet, and why that scares regulators. Plus: Harvard rotates from Bitcoin into Ethereum, Ba...
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February 16, 2026 • 98 mins
Lyn Alden joins us to make sense of the “everything, everywhere, all at once” macro moment.
A fourth-turning-style unwind of the long-term debt cycle, rising fiscal dominance, and a rare, headline-level clash over Fed independence—plus what a Kevin Warsh Fed might actually do under real-world constraints.
We dig into the “gradual print” era, why gold is ripping, how a more multipolar monetary order could emerge (gold, bitcoin...
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Crypto feels cooked in 2026, and the Super Bowl proves it. Ryan and David unpack Coinbase’s Backstreet Boys rug pull ad and what it reveals about crypto’s collapsed public narrative. Then they dig into the brutal selloff, why IBIT’s record volume hints at forced TradFi liquidation, and what Polymarket is pricing for Bitcoin under $50K. From Robinhood’s prediction markets exploding into a real revenue engine to the political fight o...
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February 12, 2026 • 75 mins
Last week felt like four different crashes happening at the same time: AI software stocks melting down, crypto capitulating, gold and silver whipping around, and markets suddenly panicking about AI CapEx. Jim Bianco returns to Bankless to explain what actually changed: why AI is collapsing the cost of building software (and threatening SaaS pricing models), how “synthetic Bitcoin” in TradFi can amplify volatility even when nothing ...
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February 11, 2026 • 44 mins
Robinhood isn’t just adding another crypto feature—it’s assembling a new exchange stack: stock tokens, an Ethereum L2 built for real-world assets, and a wallet that can plug into DeFi. Johann Kerbrat (GM of Crypto at Robinhood) joins Bankless to unpack what “24/7 markets” actually requires, why liquidity and routing are the hidden battleground for tokenized equities, and how “Certified by Robinhood” could become a distribution moat...
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February 9, 2026 • 82 mins
MegaETH mainnet is live, kicking off a new frontier for Ethereum scaling: ultra-low latency, massive throughput, and an execution environment built to unlock apps that can’t exist on L1.
Lei Yang & Namik break down why Vitalik’s latest L2 framing validates “barbell” scaling, what users actually inherit from Ethereum (censorship resistance, exit guarantees, and fraud-proof security assumptions), and why stages + governance are har...
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February 7, 2026 • 52 mins
A single Vitalik tweet just snapped Ethereum’s scaling narrative into focus: the rollup-centric roadmap is over, and a new path is here. Ryan and David break down what Vitalik actually said (and what he didn’t), why stage 2 plus rollup interop proved far slower than anyone hoped, and why L1 scaling, powered by ZK, may be Ethereum’s real reset button in 2026. Along the way, they unpack the quiet death of the “L2s are Ethereum” meme,...
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February 6, 2026 • 64 mins
Crypto enters a full-blown pain market as Bitcoin, ETH, tech stocks, and even gold sell off together. Ryan and David break down why crowded trades are unwinding across markets, what the Warsh Fed chair pick means for rates and risk assets, and whether crypto has become uniquely fragile in this cycle. They dig into Vitalik’s L2 pivot and what it signals about Ethereum’s next era, unpack massive institutional paper losses at Strategy...
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February 5, 2026 • 97 mins
AI agents aren’t “coming” to Ethereum—they’re already here, spinning up on dedicated machines, clicking through wallets, deploying contracts, and even building apps for themselves. In this episode, Ryan and David sit down with Davide Crapis and Austin Griffith to map the emerging agent stack: ERC-8004 as a decentralized identity + reputation layer, x402 as payment rails for agent-to-agent commerce, and the real-world “Clawdbot” exp...
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February 3, 2026 • 59 mins
Michael Nadeau went risk-off in October and has been targeting Bitcoin's fair value near $65K. In this episode, he joins Ryan to unpack what changed after BTC broke below $80K, why he does not think this is the macro low yet, and what a real bottom typically looks like (capitulation, then apathy).
They also dig into the new wild card: incoming Fed chair Kevin Warsh, and why “rates down” could still mean tighter liquidity if the...
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February 2, 2026 • 89 mins
Capitalism may be heading toward an “event horizon,” where a handful of firms become so entrenched they’re effectively the last companies standing.
We break down the four “Infinity Gauntlet” pillars: intelligence, energy, capital, and labor. And why collapsing costs in AI and robotics could make abundance, and monopolies, the default outcome.
From Google’s data + compute flywheel to the Tesla/SpaceX/xAI convergence and even spa...
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January 30, 2026 • 64 mins
Markets wobble as gold and silver hit all time highs, raising the big question of what comes next for crypto. Ryan and David unpack the macro shock driving the move, from Fed independence and shutdown risk to a weaker dollar narrative, and why Tether is quietly becoming one of the world’s largest gold holders. They make the case for Ethereum’s comeback, from surging usage to serious quantum resistance efforts, break down Fidelity’s...
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January 29, 2026 • 72 mins
Celo is quietly powering real-world payments at global scale. In this episode, David and Ryan sit down with Marek Olszewski, CEO of cLabs, to unpack how Celo became a fast, low-cost payments layer used for remittances, savings, onchain FX, and identity across emerging markets.
They explore why Celo stayed focused on peer-to-peer payments while others chased trends, how Opera’s MiniPay onboarded hundreds of thousands of daily users,...
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Iran is a real-world stress test of freedom: the Islamic Republic is built to outlast dissent. In this special Iran Unchained episode, David talks with Sana Ebrahimi and Amin Soleimani about the regime’s control stack, including unelected theocracy, street-level coercion, corruption as governance, and propaganda that reaches far beyond Iran’s borders.
They unpack gender apartheid, internet blackouts during uprisings, why protests k...
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January 26, 2026 • 94 mins
Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox joins Bankless to argue that privacy is back on the critical path—because AI turns chain surveillance into pattern-recognition at scale—and that the real bottleneck for cypherpunk tools has always been UX and onboarding.
We dig into Zcash’s “encrypted Bitcoin” meme, the dev fund’s evolving design (and why it helped Zcash survive), recent ZEC momentum, and the wallet/intents stack that makes private spen...
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Markets slide this week as Trump floats taking Greenland and tariff threats resurface, pushing investors toward gold. Ryan and David break down what Davos revealed about a shifting world order, why crypto finally had a real seat at the table, and the moments from Brian Armstrong and Larry Fink that framed Crypto versus Central Banks. Plus: the NYSE unveils a tokenized trading platform and whether it validates or co-opts DeFi, Farca...
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Crypto in 2026 is consolidating into a handful of high-stakes rivalries:
Ethereum vs. Solana for the center of gravity, Coinbase vs. Robinhood for the finance super-app, and Polymarket vs. Kalshi for prediction markets.
Arnav Pagidyala (Bankless Ventures) joins David and Ryan to map the investment implications, why incentives-driven L1s keep leaking liquidity, what makes Morpho’s institutional playbook work, and whether H...
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January 16, 2026 • 66 mins
Washington takes center stage this week as crypto collides with power, policy, and markets. Ryan and David break down the CLARITY Act fight in the Senate, why banks want to kill stablecoin yield, and why Coinbase says the bill may be worse than no bill at all. They also unpack Trump’s DOJ targeting Jerome Powell and what it means for Fed independence, silver’s explosive move as markets search for safety, X’s push toward becoming a ...
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January 13, 2026 • 83 mins
What if the biggest threat to your freedom isn’t a bad decision - but a scoreboard you never agreed to? Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen joins Bankless to unpack how modern life quietly turns values into points: likes, GPAs, net worth, rankings, and performance metrics that feel objective - but often flatten what matters most. We explore what games really are, why “gamified” platforms like social media can be uniquely corrosive, and how “...
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January 12, 2026 • 90 mins
Is Canton a real blockchain or a new kind of capital-markets operating system?
Digital Asset co-founder Yuval Rooz explains why Canton prioritizes privacy as “need-to-know” information sharing and a federated “cantons” design that still allows atomic cross-canton transactions without bridges.
We unpack the two-tier architecture (edge validators + super validators that stitch cantons together and validate the public Canton Coin) ...
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