Bankless

Bankless

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

Episodes

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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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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Prediction markets are turning into real-time intelligence, and policymakers are already reacting. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and David unpack the Venezuela “Maduro” trade, the debate over fairness vs. public signal, and Polymarket’s expansion into real estate markets. They also cover Bitcoin’s lowest-vol year ever, Solana’s DEX surge, Ethereum’s stablecoin settlement ATH, Morgan Stanley’s crypto ETF filings, Zcash’s govern...
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Brent Johnson returns to Bankless to update the Dollar Milkshake Theory and explain why the de-dollarization narrative misses the bigger trend. He argues markets may want out of the dollar, but the Eurodollar system keeps pulling demand back in, and “dollar down” headlines do not break the framework. Brent also covers how debt stress can spill into political instability, why stablecoins and the GENIUS Act could accelerate re-dollar...
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Crypto is maturing while attention moves elsewhere. In this Weekly Rollup, David Hoffman and Anthony Sassano break down silver, gold, and the S&P hitting new highs, the Aave civil war over control and fees, Uniswap’s unification win, a new pro crypto CFTC chair, and why quantum computing may be Bitcoin’s biggest long term risk. --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👑BANKLESS PREMIUM | AD-FREE & BONUS EPISODES https://bankless.cc/s...
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David Hoffman sits down with Mike Ippolito to unpack why 2025 felt brutal despite new all-time highs and why that tension matters for 2026. They argue crypto is entering its “2002 internet” phase, where speculation fades, fundamentals matter, and consolidation accelerates. The conversation covers why Ethereum may see a renaissance, why Bitcoin sentiment could struggle, how prediction markets and equity perps actually play out, and ...
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Ben Lakoff and Arnav Pagidyala from Bankless Ventures lay out how they’re thinking about crypto investing heading into 2026. The conversation spans four persistent pillars of every cycle: DeFi, tokenization, capital formation, and speculation and how each is evolving as crypto matures. Topics include the next wave of on-chain lending, equity perps, DeFi neobanks, verticalized tokenization platforms, compliant ICOs, prediction a...
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Ryan and David skip a quiet holiday weekly rollup and instead break down the biggest 2026 crypto forecasts from Bitwise, Coinbase, Galaxy, Grayscale, CoinShares, Fidelity, a16z, and Pantera. They lay out the clearest consensus, stablecoins as real payment rails, tokenization scaling beyond pilots, and ETFs expanding institutional access, then hit the big debates around regulation, prediction markets, token value capture, and the gr...
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December 23, 2025 66 mins
Is the crypto cycle already over? Ben Cowen returns to break down what a post-euphoria cycle looks like, why Bitcoin may have already topped, and how 2026 could play out across crypto, stocks, and macro. We explore the case for a prolonged bear market, why a true alt season may not arrive, and the narrow scenarios where Ethereum could still make a fleeting run at new highs. From Fed policy and labor markets to AI stealing investor ...
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Joey Krug (Founders Fund partner, former Pantera co-CIO, and Augur co-founder) returns to unpack whether the “crypto-native era” is fading as institutions and mainstream apps adopt crypto rails without adopting crypto culture.  We dig into prediction markets’ breakout (and why Polymarket finally found product-market fit), the coming regulatory fights around market structure and “insider” edges, and what’s next for founders buil...
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Crypto prices are down, but the most important players are still building. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and David break down Coinbase’s push to become a financial super app, JPMorgan’s first tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, and why regulators are quietly opening the door for onchain settlement through DTCC pilots. They also unpack Solana’s Firedancer finally going live, the growing fight over tokenholder rights at...
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Trading is no longer just a financial activity; it has become a spectator sport. In this episode, Threadguy explains how Gen Z’s internet-native fluency, built through sneaker markets, NFTs, and meme cycles, translates into a new kind of market intuition: attention, momentum, and mimetics. We delve into “Entertainment Finance,” where perps, prediction markets, and live trading are starting to resemble streaming and esports more clo...
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The Fed cut rates and announced $40B/month in T bill purchases. Is that the signal to buy back into crypto? Mike says no. In this episode, we explain why “QE light” is not real easing, the key indicators Mike needs before flipping risk on, and what Bitcoin’s onchain market structure suggests about where this cycle could go next. ---- 📣THE DEFI REPORT | FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE https://thedefireport.transistor.fm/ https://thedefireport....
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Bitwise’s Matt Hougan and Ryan Rasmussen return with 10 big predictions for 2026. From the case for $1M BTC (and why the classic four-year cycle may be dead) to a world where ETFs soak up more than 100% of new BTC/ETH/SOL supply. We get into Bitcoin volatility vs. mega-cap tech, crypto equities vs. tech equities, and why Polymarket could smash past its 2024 election-era highs. Plus: stablecoins as an “escape valve” that emerging...
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AI is becoming the most powerful surveillance machine ever built and most people are feeding it their deepest secrets without realizing who can read them. Proton founder Andy Yen joins Bankless to explain how Big Tech captures your identity, why AI chat logs are a privacy disaster waiting to happen, and what a self-sovereign, user-aligned future could look like. We explore how AI models profile you, why subscription business models...
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The final Fed meeting of 2025 delivered a surprise rate cut, but the real story is how the market is reacting. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and David unpack what the new policy shift means for crypto liquidity, why regulators across the SEC, CFTC, and OCC are suddenly embracing onchain markets, and how Tom Lee’s massive ETH accumulation is reshaping sentiment. We also get into Ethereum’s growing momentum from ZK advanceme...
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December 10, 2025 69 mins
ICOs are suddenly back, but this time the projects are real, the mechanisms are better, and retail isn’t shut out. Ryan and David break down why MegaEth, Monad, Aztec, Zama, and Infinex are launching public sales all at once, how onchain auctions are fixing 2017’s mistakes, and what regulatory clarity means for U.S. participation. They also dive into the rise of internet native capital markets on Ethereum, the shift away from a...
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What was really happening inside the SEC during the Gensler years? Today, we sat down with Corey Frayer, former senior crypto policy advisor to SEC Chair Gary Gensler and now Director of Investor Protection at the Consumer Federation of America. We dig into how the agency thought about securities law, DeFi, Uniswap, stablecoins, SAB 121, and why platforms like Coinbase and Kraken ended up in the crosshairs. Corey defends the Ge...
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At our Bankless Summit in Buenos Aires, four standout talks captured the frontier of crypto’s next chapter. Lincoln Murr lays out why x402 is emerging as the missing payment layer for the agentic internet. Shay Ketsdever explains how bots already run modern markets, and how programmable auctions and privacy can turn the bot economy into something that benefits people instead of exploits them. Michael Dong shows how real-time ZK pro...
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Bitcoin hit a rare signal this week, dropping to its cheapest level relative to gold in nearly 15 years. Is that a buy signal or something deeper in the macro picture? Ryan and David break down what the BTC–gold anomaly really means, how liquidity, rates, and Trump’s surprise Fed Chair pick factor in, and whether the market is entering a shallow cycle instead of a true winter. We also cover Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade, Vitalik’s ...
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