Unchained

Unchained

Crypto assets and blockchain technology are about to transform every trust-based interaction of our lives, from financial services to identity to the Internet of Things. In this podcast, host Laura Shin, an independent journalist covering all things crypto, talks with industry pioneers about how crypto assets and blockchains will change the way we earn, spend and invest our money. Tune in to find out how Web 3.0, the decentralized web, will revolutionize our world. Disclosure: I'm a nocoiner.

Episodes

November 15, 2025 30 mins
Bitcoin continues to look weak, falling through the psychologically important $100,000 level. Is the cycle over? In this episode, Fairlead Strategies founder Katie Stockton joins Unchained Executive Editor Steve Ehrlich to break down the charts. She explains how the Bitcoin market has changed and Ethereum's potential trajectory. She also takes a look at the state of the DAT sector and Zcash's steep rise. Thank you to our sponsor...
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Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, the crew dives into the shift from airdrops to ICOs as Monad, MegaETH, and Coinbase’s new sale format spark a rethink of how tokens should be distributed. They discuss ICO Beast’s hedging fiasco, why most airdrops fail to create real users, and whether fixed-price ICO...
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Thank you to our sponsors! Uniswap  Mantle For decades, the internet has worked without a native way to pay for things. Credit cards were bolted on, platforms built their own integrations, and developers had to stitch together complex payment flows to charge even a few cents for anything. But with AI agents now making requests, triggering actions, and needing to pay for data or services instantly, that old patchwork...
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In this first episode of Uneasy Money, hosts Luca Netz, Kain Warwick, and Taylor Monahan dig into the Balancer hack, Berachain’s centralized response, the sudden return of ICO-style distribution, and why some new drops give away so little.  Luca explains why he thinks generous airdrops are essential for building a real “army,” Taylor breaks down MetaMask’s own thinking on token incentives, and Kain questions whether any of these m...
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In this episode, Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company, which created Zcash, and Harry Halpin, co-founder of Nym, join Laura to delve into why privacy coins have taken off, and why technology is suddenly at the center of conversations involving governments, financial institutions, and national security officials. They discuss what’s actually driving the privacy coin renaissance, why transparent ledgers create risks far be...
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In this first episode of DEX in the City, hosts Jessi Brooks of Ribbit Capital, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos of StarkWare, and Vy Le of Veda dig into the questions that DeFi keeps forcing the industry to confront. They debate how projects should respond after exploits like the recent Balancer hack, what “programmable risk management” could look like in practice, and why the idea of “pure DeFi” might be more myth than model. They also...
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Follow Unchained On Air on X or YouTube! https://x.com/Unchained_pod https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWiiMnsnw5Isc2PP1to9nNw Check out our sponsor Walrus! https://www.walrus.xyz/ The government’s about to reopen, but the economic cracks aren’t healing. From runaway debt to DATs trading below NAV, markets are feeling the strain of unsolved macro problems. In this week’s Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell and Chris Perkins are...
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Subscribe to the Bits + Bips newsletter: https://unchainedcrypto.com/newsletters/ Check out our sponsor Mantle!  As profitability tightens and competition soars, many Bitcoin mining companies are turning to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) to stay relevant. In this week’s Bits + Bips, host Steve Ehrlich sits down with John Todaro, Managing Director, Crypto & HPC/AI Equity Research at Needham & Company,...
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Subscribe to Unchained Daily: https://unchainedcrypto.com/newsletters/ Check out our sponsor Mantle!  Most new blockchains promise to scale. MegaETH promises to feel instant. Fresh off its public sale, for which allocations were revealed on Thursday, the team behind MegaETH joins Unchained to explain why they’re calling it the world’s first real-time blockchain. Co-founder Shuyao Kong and ecosystem lead Amir Almaimani walk thro...
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Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, the crew breaks down DeFi’s Black Friday: a brutal week that saw the $120 million Balancer v2 hack, the collapse of Stream Finance, and a market-wide panic that reminded everyone — nothing in crypto is risk-free. They dive into how one of DeFi’s oldest, most audited c...
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Crypto’s most controversial trading product might be Wall Street’s next obsession. In this interview, Brett Harrison, former president of FTX.US and founder of Architect Financial Technologies, joins to explain how he’s aiming to take perpetual futures — crypto’s 24/7 leveraged trading engine — to traditional markets like stocks, commodities, and FX. Will this be the next big shift in global finance? Thank you to our sponsors! ...
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Bitcoin’s bleeding again and sentiment is collapsing. But if you’ve been around for a few cycles, this kind of pain might look familiar. In this episode of Unchained, Laura sits down with Yann Allemann, Co-founder of Swissblock, and Joe Vezzani, CEO of LunarCrush, to unpack the latest market wipeout, and whether it’s a signal of exhaustion or opportunity. From retail’s record-breaking bearishness to the unwinding of crypto’s DAT...
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Bitcoin has fallen below $102,000. “Uptober” ended in blood. But while retail traders are terrified, institutional conversations are heating up. In this episode of Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins are joined by Teddy Fusaro, President of Bitwise, to unpack the week’s market turmoil. They dig into why institutions are finally comfortable allocating to bitcoin, how Ripple is building an ecosyste...
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Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, Kaledora Linn, Co-founder and “Empress of RWAs” at Ostium, joins to break down the rise of on-chain equity perps, the funding-rate chaos that hit 365%, and why she believes the next wave of tokenized assets won’t come from exchanges—but from structured liquidity market...
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In this episode of Unchained, Laura is joined by Rob Hadick, General Partner at Dragonfly, and Sam MacPherson, Co-founder and CEO of Phoenix Labs, to break down the fast-moving world of stablecoins and stablechains. They discuss Ethena’s USDe $5 billion drop, the rise of “stablecoin-as-a-service” models, the emergence of payment-focused blockchains like Tempo and Codex, and the return of TradFi heavyweights like Visa, Mastercard, ...
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Gold may have history, but does it have a future? Former Citi Chief Economist Willem Buiter joins Unchained Executive Editor Steve Ehrlich to argue that gold’s “6,000-year bubble” is long overdue to burst.  He explains why he thinks central banks should dump their bullion, why Bitcoin isn’t a reliable store of value, and why fully backed stablecoins and central-bank digital currencies could define the next era of money. He also ...
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In this episode of Bits + Bips, former BlackRock executive and SharpLink co-CEO Joseph Chalom joins hosts Austin Campbell, Chris Perkins, and Ram Ahluwalia to discuss why the Federal Reserve may move to ease rates despite a “Goldilocks” economy, the growing role of stablecoins in foreign exchange and settlement, and how major banks like JPMorgan and Citi are expanding their use of blockchain.  The conversation also explores Japan’...
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As crypto markets mature, Kraken is transforming from a trading venue into a multi-asset infrastructure platform.  Co-CEO Arjun Sethi joins to break down the exchange’s expansive strategy: building a vertically integrated derivatives business, pioneering tokenized equities with xStocks, and launching a purpose-built layer 2 chain, Ink, to bridge regulated finance and open DeFi. Sethi also explains how Kraken responded to the Blac...
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Crypto has spent years obsessing over tokens, airdrops, and speculation. But what about the unsexy businesses actually making money? Arthur Hayes and Adam Schlegel join Laura Shin to talk about Maelstrom's $250M private equity fund targeting crypto's most profitable, yet overlooked, companies, $50M revenue businesses with 50% margins that VCs can't touch and exchanges won't pay cash for. But while everyone frames this as just ano...
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This special two-part episode brings together two very different conversations. In part one, investment manager Lawrence Lepard lays out why he believes the fiat monetary system is structurally unsustainable, what role inflation plays in that system, and how Bitcoin could be the exit ramp, not just from fiat, but from war, debt, and economic manipulation. He discusses gold, stocks, silver, the real estate market, and why he’s bett...
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