Unchained

Ethena's Guy Young explains why the companybuilt a neobank that pays 6% in yield, 5% cash back, and never tells users they're holding self-custodial stablecoins instead of dollars.

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DeFi's total value locked never reclaimed its 2021 peak, even four years and a full bull market later. That data point convinced Ethena Labs founder Guy Young the onchain dream needed a backup plan.

Young joins Laura Shin days after launching Ethena Pay, a neobank paying 6% on dollar deposits and 5% cashback in AVAX while hiding from users that their balance sits in a self-custodial stablecoin wallet, not a bank account. He argues yield, not brand loyalty, is what pulls the next hundred million users onto crypto rails.

They cover why Young shrugs off Tether-backed Plasma as a rival, how USDe's backing shifted from a basis trade toward AAA-rated real-world-asset lending, why a Revolut-style KYC breach is a risk Ethena can't fully control, and why card spend and FX fees, not USDe's own yield, are the revenue line he is actually chasing.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guy Young - Founder and CEO of Ethena Labs

Timestamps

🏦 01:25 Why Guy built a neobank after DeFi's TVL never beat its 2021 peak

🥊 07:16 Why Guy doesn't see Tether-backed Plasma as a competitor

🕵️ 17:57 How Ethena Pay hides self-custody from users who don't know it

🌍 19:10 The nearly 50-country rollout and Ethena's slow, controlled go-to-market

📣 22:30 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity platform lets LPs back multiple positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

⛰️ 23:18 Why Ethena Pay chose Avalanche, not Ethereum, for settlement

🏛️ 29:20 How USDe's backing shifted from basis trades to AAA-rated RWA lending

🔓 33:00 What the Revolut KYC breach means for Ethena Pay's own compliance risk

💳 39:55 Why card spend, not USDe's yield, is the metric Guy actually chases

🚀 47:50 The 7-figure deposits that surprised Guy in Ethena Pay's first two weeks
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The SEC's next tokenization rule could force platforms to get issuer sign-off for stock tokens first. Securitize’s Brett Redfearn lays out what's actually at stake for Wall Street.

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AMC CEO Adam Aron's public feud with Robinhood over its AMC stock tokens erupted into a war of words last week, with the AMC chief calling the tokens "contemptible" and Robinhood's chief legal officer, and former SEC commissioner, Dan Gallagher firing back that Robinhood would "not DECIST" mocking a misspelling in Aron’s tweet.

Brett Redfearn, President of Securitize and a former SEC Trading and Markets Division director, joins Laura Shin to referee the fight. He explains why issuers deserve a say before their stock gets tokenized, and breaks down the three real categories of stock tokens, from Securitize's issuer-sponsored model to Robinhood's offshore synthetic.

Redfearn unpacks why an AMC token pair once traded at 60 times its reference price, details the SEC's looming innovation exemption and the Securities Transfer Association's push for an issuer opt-out, and explains why non-KYC tokens could let bad actors amass stakes in defense contractors. The debate, he says, will decide whether tokenization becomes Wall Street's next upgrade or its next flashpoint.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brett Redfearn - President of Securitize

Timestamps

🥊 00:54 Brett unpacks the AMC-Robinhood spat and who has the stronger legal argument

📣 10:15 1inch Aqua: See how the new shared liquidity platform works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt

🧩 11:12 The 3 types of stock tokens, from issuer-sponsored to Robinhood's synthetic

🔐 21:33 Why Brett wants KYC before permissionless DeFi meets tokenized stocks

🏛️ 28:32 The Securities Transfer Association's push for an issuer opt-out

🗳️ 33:38 What Robinhood should do with the voting rights on its collateral shares

🏢 35:29 How many public company CEOs actually want their stock tokenized
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Alex Thorn and Jon join Kain and Taylor to unpack a Bitcoin hack, two new frontier models, and why nobody trusts their AI chats anymore.

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A Bitcoin sidechain lost $300 million to a consensus bug this week, and the hackers who returned 85% of it are trying to extort a "bug bounty" out of Blockstream for the rest.

Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, and Jon, Head of Strategy at Venice and co-founder of ShapeShift, join Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan to unpack how AI models are now finding exploits faster than the humans who wrote the code, and to push back on the idea that returning stolen funds makes anyone a white hat.

They also dig into Astra and Fable 5.1, two frontier models that landed days after a mathematician working inside OpenAI's Codex clashed publicly with OpenAI over who actually solved a Millennium Prize-adjacent proof.

Jon and Alex explain why the "don't train on my data" toggle may not mean much, and why identity is becoming the real privacy battleground.

The conversation closes on whether an Anthropic researcher quitting this week is a warning the industry is choosing to ignore.

Hosts:

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

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

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Thorn - Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jon - Head of Strategy at Venice and Co-founder of ShapeShift

Timestamps

🔓 01:15 How a consensus bug let hackers mint $300M in fake Bitcoin

📜 7:50 Why the Liquid hackers are no white hats

🤖 17:16 Did an AI agent find the Liquid exploit?

⚖️ 28:10 Taylor on why there’s no excuse for the hackers’ actions

💧 32:08 1inch Aqua: See how the shared liquidity layer works at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn

🧠 32:54 Astra and Fable 5.1 land, and one is writing eerily compressed code

📐 35:19 The Millennium Prize proof fight between OpenAI and an Anthropic researcher

🧬 44:48 Kain on fast takeoff, recursive self-improvement, and paperclipped kids

🕵️ 55:18 How to keep your novel research out of an AI's training data

⚰️ 01:07:03 Why an Anthropic researcher's resignation has Kain and Taylor spooked
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FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger joins Haseeb, Tom, and Tarun to answer last week's unc takes on memecoins: why a fully transparent social graph beats copy trading, how FOMO became the biggest app on Robinhood Chain, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token, the three-way launchpad war, AMC's fight with Robinhood over tokenized stock, and the AI race to solve Navier-Stokes.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by FOMO co-founder Paul Erlanger to chop it up about the latest in crypto.

After getting dunked on as uncs for last week's memecoin takes, the crew brings on the founder at the center of it. Paul lays out FOMO's case for a fully transparent trading social graph, Tarun reports back from a holiday weekend in the trenches, and Haseeb holds the line on where memecoin trading actually destroys value. Then: Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token, the Pons versus Stonk.fun versus Pump launchpad war, AMC's CEO versus Robinhood's tokenized stocks, and the OpenAI versus Anthropic fight over who solved Navier-Stokes.

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

Show highlights

🔹 Paul explains why FOMO refuses to build copy trading and bets on full transparency instead: trade well and the feed follows you.

🔹 Tarun spent his holiday weekend trenching, finished up a respectable 10 percent thanks to Hunter Biden copycat coins, and says it felt more like a video game than trading.

🔹 FOMO had 94,000 active wallets on Robinhood Chain, three times the next largest app, and its users no longer know which chain they are on.

🔹 Haseeb draws the line: buying Doge is harmless, but the memecoin production function is where retail reliably loses money.

🔹 Paul and Haseeb converge on churn: an app that lets customers incinerate themselves flames out fast, so FOMO rewards holding and theses over launching.

🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token launches on Base with airdrops to Trump token losers and a scraped Channel 5 subscriber list.

🔹 Pons, Stonk.fun, and Pump fight over launchpad revenue while Paul stays agnostic and pitches Team Tags as the highest-intent distribution channel ever built.

🔹 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile, and the panel debates whether one-to-one backed equity tokens fix the fundraising objection.

🔹 Tarun explains Navier-Stokes and why math academia is depressed after OpenAI's $15 million compute run at a Millennium Prize problem.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guest

⭐️Paul Erlanger, Co-Founder of FOMO

Disclosures

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:06 Paul vs. the uncs

03:37 From dYdX to FOMO

05:14 Tarun's weekend in the trenches

08:40 Transparency vs. copy trading

12:27 FOMO's distribution power on Robinhood Chain

17:52 Where memecoin trading destroys value

21:10 Churn, theses, & traders as the next celebrities

27:08 Shaming, sidewallets, & clans

32:35 Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP token

37:15 Stock coins, bond ETF fees, & how long the meta lasts

42:52 AMC's CEO vs Robinhood's tokenized stock

47:51 One-to-one backed equity & earnings calls as TV shows

52:20 OpenAI, Anthropic, & the Navier-Stokes drama

58:49 Is math research over?
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📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips

AMC's CEO spent the holiday weekend calling Robinhood's tokenized AMC shares "contemptible" and "vile."

Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins break down what a "reverse ADR" actually is, why Ram thinks most of this is derivatives repackaged as innovation, and why Chris pushes back using Robinhood Chain's own financials.

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 clip is from a longer conversation on tokenized stocks, meme coins, frontier AI, and the Fed. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/cDFv4OCihgU?si=qdPWALHcmHc97SEc

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-yt

Chapters:

🥊 00:20 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile: what it actually is

📊 06:36 Ram: stock tokens are "derivatives for the sake of derivatives"

🔍 11:17 Why Austin says the AMC fight reveals microstructure ignorance

🏗️ 14:40 Ram: real innovation looks like CDO Square 2.0, not this

💰 21:41 Chris defends Robinhood Chain's financials
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