Jim Bianco, president and macro strategist at Bianco Research, explains what’s causing the recent cascade of bank failures. Yield seekers taking their money elsewhere are putting banks under strain. However, the Signature Bank takeover by New York regulators is “a little fishy,” Bianco says. He adds that DeFi has been holding up strong, providing an “alternative to this unstable system that we have right now.” Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform ..read more

Welcome to “The Chopping Block” – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news. This week: Silicon Valley Bank went belly up and knocked USDC off its peg with it. For good measure, Signature Bank was taken over by regulators. After a hellish weekend, what did we learn? Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights:  what happened with Silicon Valley Bank  w ..read more

ETH staking began in December 2020. With Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, which could happen as early as mid-April, withdrawals of staked ETH will finally be enabled. Will validators rush to cash out? Or will Shanghai bring more institutional stakers into the fold? Christine Kim, VP of research at Galaxy Digital, joins the show to discuss how Etheruem’s latest upgrade will affect the network, and maybe even ETH’s price. Show highlights: how Christine became an Ethereum expert what you need to know about Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade when Shanghai is expected to go live on mainnet what the differen ..read more

Elliott Stein, senior litigation analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, shares his insights from a court hearing this week on the SEC’s rejection of Grayscale’s bid to convert GBTC into a spot bitcoin ETF. Stein says federal appellate court judges seemed skeptical of the SEC’s arguments for why bitcoin futures ETFs are OK while bitcoin spot ETFs aren’t. Who’s likely to win the case and what does it mean for the crypto industry as a whole? Show highlights: why Grayscale filed the lawsuit against the SEC why Grayscale believes that a bitcoin futures ETF is essentially the same as a spot ETF what ..read more

In-person at ETH Denver, crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest crypto news. This week, Kyle Samani, scion of Solana, joins the show.  Show highlights:  why Coinbase decided to launch Base, a layer 2 on Ethereum and whether developers are building on it how Coinbase might make money from it whether it will be a permissioned, KYC’ed chain that requires users to reveal their identities  Kyle's opinion on the allegedly fraudulent operations of FTX, in which his firm, Multicoin Capital, was an investor how due diligence changed in ..read more

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra were joined by Laura Shin, CEO of the show, to chop it up about the collapse of FTX.  Show topics: Haseeb's explanation of the blowup of FTX whether FTX was a Ponzi scheme Sam Bankman-Fried's strategy to become a billionaire the weird sale of Serum, a project backed by SBF the lack of proper accounting practices in FTX and Alameda whether FTX did not have a proper and large enough security team  the likelihood that FTX’s volume numbers are fake  why Haseeb thinks this is one of the big ..read more

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry.  Show topics: Everyone’s impression of Laura’s interview with Do Kwon The importance to differentiate failure and fraud The Mango Markets hack and whether code is law What happened with the BNB hack and the concerns it raised about decentralization Magic Eden’s decision to enable optional royalties and the debate about NFT royalties How creators are going to find a way around the royalties, according to Robert Whethe ..read more

LayerZero launched a testnet bridge that allows users to swap mainnet ETH for Goerli ETH (GoETH), which led to a sudden emergence of a liquid market for GoETH tokens. This was a hugely controversial decision, as many in the Ethereum community believe that testnet tokens should remain free. At ETH Denver, Laura moderated a panel discussion about this hot topic with Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero Labs, Greg Markou, founder of Chainsafe and Matt Garnet, software engineer for the Ethereum Foundation. Show highlights: why LazerZero launched a testnet bridge for Goerli ETH (GoET ..read more

In-person at ETH Denver, crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest crypto news. This week, Kyle Samani, scion of Solana, joins the show.  Show highlights:  why Coinbase decided to launch Base, a layer 2 on Ethereum and whether developers are building on it how Coinbase might make money from it whether it will be a permissioned, KYC’ed chain that requires users to reveal their identities  Kyle's opinion on the allegedly fraudulent operations of FTX, in which his firm, Multicoin Capital, was an investor how due diligence changed in ..read more

Muneeb Ali, co-creator of Stacks, discusses the Bitcoin trend that has everyone – or at least, many Bitcoiners – buzzing: Bitcoin ordinals. Ali explains why it is that they’ve taken up block space, pushed Bitcoin fees higher, and caused controversy in the community. Plus, he explains why the phenomenon has generated excitement about Stacks. Show highlights: how Ordinals technology works to enable NFTs in the Bitcoin blockchain the difference between NFTs in smart contracts platforms like Ethereum vs. NFTs in Bitcoin the way in which the Taproot upgrade allowed Ordinals technology to exist wh ..read more