Unchained

Ran Neuner argues crypto has finally found product-market fit, and a BlackRock report on AI agents and blockchain rails convinced him the thesis may be much bigger than he thought.

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Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠ Our listener survey⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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The 10-year Treasury yield just hit its highest level since 2007, and Ran Neuner thinks Scott Bessent will answer by bringing more money to the party. Neuner, founder and CEO of Crypto Banter, makes the case to Laura Shin that this is not just another Bitcoin cycle but crypto's first real bull market.

His argument rests on two use cases. The first is social trading, which he describes as the world's biggest social network and casino "having a baby," with Hyperliquid and Pump.fun earning millions of dollars a day. The second is AI agents: he cites a study projecting one billion agents by 2029 and a new BlackRock report arguing machine-to-machine payments favor blockchain rails over ACH and card networks.

They also cover why he calls RWAs magazines moved online, whether AI IPOs will drain crypto liquidity, and why he thinks Zcash may be more useful than Bitcoin. If he's right, his own 7x altcoin projection may prove conservative.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

Ran Neuner - Founder and CEO of Crypto Banter

Timestamps

🏦 01:47 Why Ran thinks Bessent is engineering 'the ultimate short squeeze'

📊 04:45 Why an ETH/BTC breakout signals crypto's first real product-market fit

🎰 09:35 Social trading: a social network and a casino 'having a baby'

💧 14:03 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🤖 15:06 How a billion AI agents could send altcoins far past Bitcoin

⏱️ 29:14 Why Ran thinks AI agents will borrow against compute and tell time in blocks

🌐 37:01 Will AI IPOs drain crypto liquidity? Ran on why AI isn't the dot-com bubble

🛡️ 40:05 Privacy vs. social trading, and why Ran calls Zcash 'more useful than Bitcoin'
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Kalshi's ETH perp did half a billion in volume on $3 million in open interest. Kain and Taylor lay out why that isn't necessarily wash trading. Plus, Austin joins as co-host.

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Quick favor: We’re deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what’s worth paying for.

Our listener survey takes five minutes, it’s anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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Kalshi's ETH perpetual futures market logged half a billion dollars in 24-hour volume on just $3 million in open interest, and after its crypto hires picked a fight on the timeline, an analyst pulled the public data and alleged wash trading.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan argue that paid market makers are a likelier explanation than a back room of bots. Austin Griffith, in his first episode as a regular co-host, asks whether all that liquidity actually helps a prediction market find the truth.

The hosts also cover Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's warning that AI labs answer for their agents, Taylor's Tornado Cash parallel, Anthropic's new wet lab, Amazon blocking Meta's Muse assistant, and Jev, a classifier model that decides in 200 milliseconds.

Plus, Zcash around $1,500 and why NEAR suddenly has people paying attention. As Kain puts it, a new model is dropping nearly every day, and keeping up now takes agents of its own.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Griffith - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Builder Enablement at Ethereum Foundation

Timestamps

🎲 02:32 How Kalshi's crypto hires started a timeline war over its perp volume

🤝 07:28 Why Kain suspects paid market makers, not wash trading, are behind the volume

🔎 09:59 Austin asks whether any of this liquidity helps markets find the truth

📚 21:41 What the price of Google teaches about liquidity and trusting a market

💧 28:14 1inch Aqua: Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🏛️ 30:59 Scott Bessent told AI labs they're responsible for what their agents do

⚖️ 34:20 Taylor on the Tornado Cash parallel: which humans answer for autonomous code?

🛒 42:48 Why Amazon blocked Meta's Muse assistant from shopping on its site

⚡ 47:29 Jev: the model that makes decisions in 200 milliseconds without talking

🔒 1:00:33 Zcash around $1,500 and why NEAR has people paying attention again
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

When the Clarity Act stalled in Congress, the shorts expected Bitcoin to break. It dipped to $75,000 and stopped. Then came the surprise that the bill might pass after all, and Bitcoin closed its first weekly candle above its 50-week moving average in 45 weeks.

Ram Ahluwalia calls it a short squeeze, and says that doesn't make it illegitimate. Chris Perkins sees a regime change, with institutions now underwriting crypto on fundamentals. Austin Campbell asks what happens if US retail, still missing from the Coinbase premium, shows up too.

Hosts:

Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell

Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia

Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97

This segment is from a longer conversation on Bitcoin, the Fed, a $30 trillion debt pile, and Meta's new AI agent. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/r2Z9ooMTcZ0?si=-mncR-xhm7kUM507

We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live.

👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

Chapters:

📊 00:34 Bitcoin's 50-week reclaim: the bull case and the bear case laid out

🐻 03:51 Why Ram thinks it's a short squeeze, and why that doesn't make it illegitimate

🔄 05:14 Why Chris thinks this is a regime change toward fundamentals

⚖️ 07:31 Austin on how Clarity's failure invalidated the short case

👀 12:26 Why retail hasn't shown up yet, and what happens if it does
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Zcash and NEAR are both ripping this week, and Illia Polosukhin and Mert Mumtaz say privacy is the reason why. Is this how the “Bitcoin DeFi” vision comes true?

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Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for. Our listener survey takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

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Zcash just cracked the top 10 on CoinGecko, up 32% in a week and near an all-time high. NEAR is up 69% over the same stretch, and both rallies trace back to the same catalyst: transactions nobody else can see.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to unpack why confidential transactions, not speculation, are driving the rally, and why the two networks now function as one privacy-preserving liquidity layer for real businesses and institutions, not just traders.

They cover NEAR Intents' $260 million in TVL, the multi-party computation and secure enclaves behind NEAR's confidential balances versus Zcash's zero-knowledge shielded pool, the counterfeiting bug that forced Zcash's Ironwood migration, and NEAR's Shield system, which halted transactions mid-hack during a Litecoin exploit. Zcash's next upgrade, Project Tachyon, aims to make the network quantum-proof and scale it 100x, and Mert argues privacy will not stay a competitive edge for long.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠Illia Polosukhin - Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol

⁠Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius

Timestamps

🚀 01:39 Guest intros, plus why ZEC (+32%) and NEAR (+69%) are ripping this week

🌐 03:13 Illia and Mert on why NEAR and ZEC's price action is turning heads

🟠 08:34 Is Zcash and NEAR the Bitcoin DeFi dream, minus Bitcoin?

🕵️ 11:54 Why coffee-shop-level balance visibility is a real business risk

✈️ 15:06 Mert's travel hack: booking flights and hotels privately via NEAR Intents

🧠 18:12 Why privacy is a retention tool first, not just an onboarding one

📣 25:11 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🔐 26:23 Privacy vs confidentiality: ZK proofs versus NEAR's MPC-and-enclave model

🛡️ 29:26 Inside NEAR's secure enclaves, and why store-of-value needs real privacy

🔄 33:59 How a NEAR Intents swap settles across chains, and its $206 million in TVL

🐛 39:09 The Zcash counterfeit bug, the Ironwood migration, and formal verification

🤖 45:49 How NEAR's Shield AI system and MPC guardrails manage solver risk

⚡ 51:33 Zcash's NU7 upgrade: faster blocks, quantum-proofing, and private voting
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Days after Clarity failed, the SEC granted a major exemption for tokenized stocks. The Digital Chamber’s Cody Carbone explains whether agencies can replace the law.

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The Clarity Act failed its cloture vote this week, with every Senate Democrat voting no and sinking crypto's biggest legislative shot in years.

Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, joins Laura Shin to unpack what killed the bill: an ethics fight over Trump's blind trust and digital-asset dealings, stablecoin-reward limits the banks wouldn't accept, and a Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act rewrite that stripped noncustodial developers of criminal-liability protection. Carbone argues Democrats rejected 80% of their own ethics demands rather than hand Republicans a win, and traces how crypto PAC money and the threat of Maxine Waters chairing House Financial Services shape what happens next.

Two days after Clarity died, the SEC granted an innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading, and Carbone says the SEC and CFTC are about to unleash years of rulemaking with or without Congress. The question now is whether that agency-driven momentum outlasts the next hostile administration, or gets undone with a single signature.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

Cody Carbone - CEO of The Digital Chamber

Timestamps

🏛️ 01:18 Why the Clarity Act's cloture vote failed: 'politics beat policy'

⚖️ 02:38 Scoring Trump's corruption against Nixon and Suharto fuels the ethics fight

🗳️ 06:51 Election pressure: a lame duck vote and crypto PAC money's next targets

🏦 11:57 Why Cody blames the banks' stablecoin rewards fight for killing Clarity

🌊 14:35 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

📜 15:23 The SEC's new innovation exemption for tokenized stock venues

🔓 18:28 Could 2 years of SEC and CFTC rulemaking replace a crypto law?

🧩 23:20 Why regulators are staying silent on synthetic stock tokens

🤝 26:46 What's left to negotiate: developer liability and stablecoin yield

🔮 31:14 Is the lame duck Clarity's last shot, or could agency rules become permanent?
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