Bankless

Bankless

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

Episodes

Market uncertainty? On this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and guest co-host Tom Schmidt dig into a jittery crypto market, Trump’s new economic ideas aimed at boosting sentiment, and whether the four-year cycle prophecy is finally catching up with Bitcoin. They also cover Coinbase bringing ICOs back to U.S. retail, Uniswap’s long-awaited fee switch moment, and JPMorgan launching a deposit token on Base. Plus: Zcash’s 4,000 percent surg...
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Ethereum hasn’t reached full speed yet. Now it might. Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation outlines Lean Ethereum, a plan to optimise the stack so validators stop executing and start verifying. With zk proofs in under 12 seconds and on-prem provers around 10 kW, the base layer can reach gigagas capacity and roughly 10,000 TPS while getting more decentralized. Add Fossil, seconds-level finality, and post-quantum signatures, and t...
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BlackRock’s Head of Crypto Robbie Mitchnick joins Ryan to unpack how institutions are actually allocating (and why correlation to “digital gold” matters), what the ETF data says about demand for BTC and ETH, and why the October leverage flush didn’t dent long-term adoption. We dig into BlackRock’s tokenization roadmap, from the BUIDL-style tokenized money market funds and the Genius Act angle to the stablecoin flywheel, plus what...
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Is the crypto bull market really over, or just pausing while AI takes the spotlight? On this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and guest co-host Haseeb break down Bitcoin’s 10/10 crash, hidden leverage, and the “Bitcoin silent IPO” thesis. They also cover the $128M Balancer hack, DeFi’s decentralization debate, L2 vanity metrics, Brian Armstrong’s prediction market stunt, and why Peter Thiel says Bitcoin’s becoming a BlackRock coin. ---...
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Payment chains are heating up. Not every “stablecoin chain” is playing the same game. Codex cofounder and CEO Haonan Li joins David to map the real landscape: what neutrality looks like in practice, why the bottleneck isn’t TPS but fiat-to-stable friction, and how on-chain FX could pull global flows. We dig into the Bear-Chain incentive trap. Why Codex chose to build as an Ethereum L2. The case for app-specific rollups that return ...
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Micropayments were always meant to be part of the internet, but the technology never existed to make them work. Until now. David sits down with Sam Ragsdale, CEO of Merit Systems, to unpack x402, a new protocol reviving the long-dormant “Payment Required” status code to enable crypto-powered microtransactions across the web. They explore how x402 could transform how machines, AI agents, and humans pay for internet resources, re...
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Land isn’t just dirt under buildings—it’s the world’s oldest, strangest asset, worth an estimated $180T, quietly steering credit cycles, politics, and who gets to build the future. Economist editor and Money Talks host Mike Bird joins us to decode the “land trap”: why superstar cities underbuild, how mortgages turned banks into land-collateral machines, and what Japan’s 1980s super-bubble can (and can’t) teach us about China’s mana...
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Luke Gromen makes the case that “debasement” isn’t a trade, it’s the new regime. We unpack why assets look strong in dollars yet stagnate in gold/Bitcoin terms, the global reserves shift back toward gold, how a U.S. gold reprice to $10k–$20k could fund a balance-sheet reset, the risks of “paper gold,” Bitcoin’s potential catch-up (and a possible East=gold, West=BTC split), AI as an accelerant, and a pragmatic portfolio framework ...
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Markets got the treat they were waiting for with a Fed rate cut and pause on quantitative tightening, but prices still fell. Why? This week, Ryan and David break down why the markets got spooked, what Powell really said about December cuts, and what it means heading into November. We also cover MegaETH’s oversubscribed ICO, Monad’s airdrop, Polymarket’s confirmed token, and JP Morgan’s $34B Base token estimate. Plus Solana’s new ET...
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Neobanks might be the quiet coordination hack that makes Visa optional. David sits down with Frax’s Sam Kazemian to map the new payment stack: why cards today settle over Visa yet still onboard users into stablecoins, how Frax USD (payments) pairs with sFRAX USD (savings), and why Ethereum remains the “savings/issuance” base while specialized payment chains battle for flows. Sam unpacks Frax’s white-label issuance strategy and RWA ...
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NBA Star Tristan Thompson and Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal break down why pro athletes are moving into Bitcoin, crypto, and onchain prediction markets. We cover stablecoin rewards after the Genius Act, Coinbase’s fight to preserve consumer yield and staking, the CFTC vs. state path for prediction markets, and Tristan’s new onchain app, basketball.fun. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24  https://bankless.cc...
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Downtober drags on… but not all is bearish. On this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and David break down why sentiment feels cold despite strong BTC, and the three ways this cycle could play out. Plus, gold is ripping! Can crypto catch up? We also cover Dankrad’s jump to Tempo, Coinbase’s Echo deal, Polymarket’s NHL play, the Fed’s potential FedWire opening, and the AI trading showdown. ------ 📣BANKLESS SUMMIT 2025 | SPONSORED BY...
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a16z crypto’s CTO Eddy Lazzarin and partner Daren Matsuoka return for our annual State of Crypto to map where 2025 really is on the curve: a price–innovation cycle poised to hand the baton back to builders, Bitcoin holding ~50% share, and 70M people now using crypto on-chain out of 716M owners. We dig into why institutions are actually shipping (not just PR), how stablecoins now rival Visa-scale volumes and sit among top U.S. Treas...
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Is the crypto cycle already over, or is this just a reset before one last push? Michael Nadeau from The DeFi Report joins Ryan to break down why he went 70% cash ahead of the flash crash, what late-cycle data he’s watching, and the signals that would flip him back risk on. We dig into Bitcoin’s 50-week moving average, ETH’s $8–10K scenarios, slowing ETF flows, rising leverage, and whether global liquidity and AI could still drive a...
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Futarchy flips governance on its head—decisions aren’t voted on, they’re traded on.  In this conversation with Felipe Montealegre of Thea Research and Proph3t, co-founder of MetaDAO, we explore how market-driven governance can eliminate the token “rug pull” problem, create true shareholder protections on-chain, and unlock the next era of crypto capital markets.  From prediction markets and token design to MetaDAO’s “ownersh...
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Markets just saw a $19B wipeout in a single day. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, we break down the Friday Flash Crash, what really caused it, and whether it signals the end of the cycle or just a reset. We also cover Binance’s leaked listing fees, a major Chinese tech company quietly building on Ethereum, and reports that the U.S. may add $14B in Bitcoin to its strategic reserve. Plus, Democrats renew their push against DeFi, and La...
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A $19B liquidation wave hit crypto 10 days after Lighter’s public mainnet—so we asked founder/CEO Vladimir Novakovski why they built a ZK L2 Perp DEX on Ethereum, how the escape hatch actually protects users, and what really happened under extreme stress. We dig into ADL vs. LLP, trader-first design, and why verifiability (not vibes) should govern order matching and liquidations. Vlad shares throughput targets, why Lighter chose cu...
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Binance listing fees, finally out in the open. CJ Hetherington, Founder of Limitless, published the offer he received after no NDA. 8% of total token supply and $250k. We dig into why the founders accept deals like this, the hidden sell pressure, and how onchain price discovery can replace CEX gatekeeping. CJ also breaks down Limitless on Base, instant-settlement price markets, and the path to Coinbase via Aerodrome. ------ 📣IMMU...
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Tom Lee and Arthur Hayes map how crypto is flipping Wall Street: BTC at fresh highs, ETH’s comeback, and a surge of institutional capital, tokenization, and stablecoin rails. Tom lays out Bitmine’s big ETH accumulation and bold targets (BTC $200–250k, ETH $10–12k), while Arthur dives into cycles, liquidity, why perps outshine leveraged ETFs, and the looming clash between prediction markets and TradFi. Plus: banks turning into on-...
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Gold shatters $4,000, Bitcoin quietly hits new all-time highs, and Wall Street just made its biggest bet yet on prediction markets. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, we break down why the debasement trade is heating up, how the AI bubble is shaping markets, and what it all means for crypto’s next move. We cover BNB’s explosive run to the #3 spot, ICE’s $2B investment in Polymarket, and ETH staking ETFs officially going live. Plus, Sol...
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