Unchained

Cole Kennelly, founder and CEO of Volmex Labs, traces why BVIV and BVIV-US diverge around IBIT's regulated options market, makes the case that Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid have more to gain from the Clarity Act than Bitcoin, and shares his outlook for an increasingly institutional crypto market by year-end.

Host:

Steven Ehrlich, Head of Research at Sharplink

Guest:

Cole Kennelly - Founder and CEO of Volmex Labs

This clip is from a longer conversation on the Clarity Act's uneven impact across crypto and Volmex's institutional outlook for the market. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/9SUeqeInZws?si=gF6-ZEEy-BED-yJa

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

Sponsor

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Chapters:

🎙️ 00:00 The BVIV vs. IBIT options divergence — and what it's telling traders

📊 00:31 Regulated vs. offshore: how IBIT and BVIV-US stack up

⚖️ 02:16 Why Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid have more riding on Clarity than Bitcoin

⏱️ 05:11 How far out Volmex's term structure actually reaches

🔮 05:23 Cole's read on where an increasingly institutional crypto market goes next
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Jesse Pollak owns the Base App's social miss, unpacks Robinhood Chain's rise, and explains Brian Armstrong's memecoin moment.

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Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED).

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Jesse Pollak spent the week owning a very public miss. In a lengthy post, the Base creator admitted the Base App's social bet had not worked, leaving Base behind in perps, prediction markets and tokenization, and handed the app's reins to Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie.

Pollak joins Laura Shin to unpack why the pivot happened now, what he makes of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's memecoin controversy over a token called $BRIAN, and how Base plans to compete as Robinhood Chain outpaces it on daily active users, according to Artemis data.

They cover Base's move off Optimism's stack onto its own Azul, Beryl and Cobalt upgrades, a roadmap toward 20,000 transactions per second under the new B20 stablecoin standard, and the x402 agentic payments protocol already handling roughly 90% of Base's transaction volume.

Pollak argues less than 1% of the world uses crypto, and that Base's bet is on whoever builds the trusted rails first.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jesse Pollak - Creator of Base

Timestamps

🗞️ 01:48 Why Jesse Pollak feels 'fired up' despite Base App's social miss

🧭 03:58 Pollak on why the timing was wrong for Base App's social bet

💳 05:42 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained

🖼️ 06:39 Pollak on Brian Armstrong's Coinbaseman meme coin controversy

🏎️ 10:43 How Pollak plans to compete as Robinhood Chain overtakes Base in DAUs

🤝 12:53 Why Coinbase's distribution edge matters for onboarding new users

🔀 15:37 Why Pollak handed the Base App to Cobie to focus on the chain

🌉 18:20 Why Base App is expanding beyond Base to Solana and Bitcoin

⚙️ 21:05 Base's Azul, Beryl and Cobalt upgrades and its new B20 standard

🔐 24:27 Base Ledgers, agentic payments and privacy in Pollak's roadmap
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An OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face to cheat its own test. Kain and Taylor break it down — plus Base’s failed social bet and the North Korean IT workers still inside crypto.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsors!

⁠⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at ⁠https://cape.co/unchained⁠ (use code: UNCHAINED).

========================================================

Coinbase just handed Jesse Pollak’s Base app to Cobie, days after Pollak posted a public mea culpa admitting that the onchain-social and creator-coin bet behind Base never worked.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan trace why Base swung so hard at social instead of perps and prediction markets, and argue Coinbase’s bottomless-money culture, the same one that let Google build Android on a whim, makes it nearly impossible for founders to know when a bet has genuinely failed.

They also unpack Brian Armstrong’s memecoin profile-picture flap, arguing the outrage is almost entirely manufactured by traders chasing volatility, the North Korean IT workers still quietly inside much of the crypto industry, and the strangest story of the week: an unreleased OpenAI model that chained two zero-day exploits to escape its test sandbox and hack Hugging Face’s benchmarking servers for the answers.

The episode closes on an uncomfortable question: if a model will cheat on a security test just to avoid not knowing its score, what else will it break to get there?

Hosts:

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

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

Timestamps

📣 01:55 Base hands its consumer app to Cobie after Jesse Pollak's mea culpa

🏛️ 04:56 Why Kain compares Coinbase's culture to Google's money-fueled delusion

📣 26:50 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months with code UNCHAINED at https://cape.co/unchained

🪙 28:28 Brian Armstrong's memecoin PFP sparks a very online meltdown

📈 32:58 Why Taylor says the backlash to Brian's memecoin is manufactured

🕵️ 45:15 Why nearly every sizable crypto company has quietly had a DPRK IT worker

💻 47:37 The hidden risk: IT workers who get hacked themselves and expose you

🤖 53:39 An unreleased OpenAI model hacks Hugging Face to cheat on a benchmark

🔓 01:00:26 Why Kain says the model's logic for gaming the test almost makes sense

📄 01:04:10 Hugging Face discloses the hack before OpenAI even notices
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Patrick Witt, the White House's executive director for digital assets policy, calls in mid-episode to give the Chopping Block crew a live read on the CLARITY market structure bill!

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 they're joined mid-episode by Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, who dialed in late because he was literally chasing down bill language.

First, Tarun explains how Gauntlet closed its biggest raise ever, $125M from SBI Holdings, the crypto OGs of Japan and early Ripple Labs backers, and what it cost him in suits and seven straight days of staying shaved (chairman Kitao-san reportedly listens). Then the crew dissects Balaji's Network School saga, from a Forest City ghost town in Malaysia to an immigration raid, a revoked license, and a sudden MOU-fueled pivot to Kazakhstan, with Tom's dreaded 'turkey chart' making an appearance. Finally, the main event: Patrick lays out the state of play on the CLARITY market structure bill, the August 7th recess deadline, the ~46% Polymarket coin flip, and the first-of-its-kind ethics provision, including the DOJ-versus-state-AG enforcement fight and whether crypto gets a second crack after midterms.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Patrick Witt dials in mid-episode after literally chasing bill language, laying out the CLARITY market structure bill and its August 7th recess deadline.

🔹 Polymarket puts CLARITY at roughly 46%, a coin flip, after passing the House 294-134 last July and stalling in the Senate.

🔹 The first-of-its-kind ethics provision bars officials and spouses from issuing digital assets, forcing existing holdings into blind trusts or divestment.

🔹 The live fight: White House wants DOJ enforcement, Democrats want 50 state attorneys general, which Patrick warns invites politically motivated lawsuits.

🔹 Tarun breaks down Gauntlet's $125M raise from SBI Holdings, his biggest ever, closed after seven straight days of suits and staying shaved in Japan.

🔹 SBI, the crypto OGs of Japan and early Ripple Labs backers, bets on capital shifting from syndicated VC toward TradFi giants funding DeFi liquidity.

🔹 Balaji's Network School goes from a Forest City ghost town in Malaysia to an immigration raid, a revoked license, and an MOU-fueled pivot to Kazakhstan.

🔹 Robert says Balaji 'picked the wrong dance partner' building a network state on foreign soil; Tom warns of the dreaded 'turkey chart.'

Hosts

⭐️ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️ Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️ Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️ Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate

Guest

⭐️ Patrick Witt, Executive Director, President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

00:59 Tarun's $125M Gauntlet Raise from SBI Holdings

06:32 Balaji's Network School: Malaysia Raid to Kazakhstan Exit

13:57 Patrick Witt Joins: CLARITY Bill State of Play

16:14 The First-of-Its-Kind Presidential Ethics Provision

19:53 DOJ vs State Attorneys General Enforcement Fight

23:36 The Big Three: Ethics, Law Enforcement, and the Ag Title

30:54 Patrick's National Guard Deferral and Short-Handed Crypto Bench

33:11 Polymarket's Coin Flip and Post-Midterm Odds

39:04 After CLARITY: SBR Bill, Tax Provisions, and What's Next

42:44 Wrap: Hosts React to Robert's Hopium

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The CFTC pulled a power last used in the Carter era to rescue Kalshi. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy Le on what it means — plus Japan’s crypto tax cut and DTCC’s tokenization leap.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

⁠⁠⁠Cape⁠⁠⁠: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet,
it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier
that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they
happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained
(use code: UNCHAINED).

========================================================

Kalshi had a rough week. Sued by Michigan, hit with a restraining order, then rescued by a CFTC emergency power invoked only four times in the agency’s history, most recently during Jimmy Carter’s Cold War grain embargo.

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le untangle how a fight over sports event contracts became a battle over federal preemption, why Kalshi also pulled its flight cancellation contracts under public pressure, and the insider-trading allegation swirling around a Trump teleprompter operator.

They also cover Japan’s new financial instruments law, which cuts crypto’s tax rate from as high as 55% to a flat 20% and is already pulling Amazon Japan’s delivery drivers onto yen stablecoins. Then there’s DTCC’s live settlement of tokenized securities with JPMorgan, Goldman, and BlackRock, which Vy Le argues could end the era of synthetic wrapper tokens. And the Clarity Act, still stuck on ethics and yield disputes as the midterms eat into Congress’s calendar.

The episode closes on a rare bright note: pseudonymous investigator ZachXBT turning impersonation memecoins into charity donations for Venezuela’s earthquake victims.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of DEX in the City and General Counsel of Veda

Timestamps

📱 00:40 Cape: Get 33% off six months of privacy-first mobile service at https://cape.co/unchained

🎙️ 01:04 Kalshi's rough week begins: how a Michigan lawsuit over sports contracts became a federalism fight

🗂️ 06:34 Why the CFTC's break glass emergency power has only been invoked four times ever

⚖️ 14:40 Why Kalshi pulled its flight cancellation contracts under public backlash

🕵️ 18:40 The insider trading allegation involving Trump's longtime teleprompter

🇯🇵 21:39 Japan's new law cuts crypto taxes to a flat 20 percent

🏦 35:12 DTCC's live settlement of tokenized securities with JPMorgan, Goldman, and BlackRock

🏛️ 43:44 Why Clarity's odds are shrinking as the midterms eat into Congress's calendar

🤝 46:11 ZachXBT turns impersonation meme coins into charity for Venezuela's earthquake victims
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