Unchained

The crew debates whether Saylor's STRC preferred shares are "Luna for suits," unpacks the ETH Labs spin-out and Ethereum Foundation layoffs, breaks down the CME's lawsuit against the CFTC to kill domestic perps, and weighs whether Meta's leaked prediction market Arena is a real threat to Polymarket.

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, Saylor's STRC preferred shares, which have broken below their $100 target. Laura argues it's a confidence crisis, Tarun calls it "Luna for suits," and Haseeb pushes back — there's no death spiral, Saylor can just defer dividends and "burn the boat." Then the Ethereum Foundation shakeup: ETH Labs spinning out with seven senior EF members while the EF lays off 20% of its headcount.

The back half covers the CME suing the CFTC to block domestic perps — which Haseeb frames as "suing for the right to not compete" — and Meta's leaked prediction market Arena, where Tom reveals this is Meta's third or fourth attempt at prediction markets. Let's get into it.

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

Show highlights

🔹 Saylor's STRC preferred shares break below $100 target — Tarun calls it "Luna for suits"

🔹 Haseeb pushes back: no death spiral, no margin calls — Saylor can defer dividends and "burn the boat"

🔹 Tom reveals Strategy execs are cold-calling crypto funds to sell them STRC — "very Luna"

🔹 ETH Labs spins out with 7 senior EF members as the Foundation lays off ~20% of headcount

🔹 CME sues CFTC to block domestic perps — Haseeb: "suing for the right to not compete"

🔹 Haseeb proposes 100-year futures as a workaround to route around the lawsuit

🔹 Meta leaks prediction market Arena — Tom reveals this is Meta's third or fourth attempt at prediction markets

🔹 Tarun argues prediction markets will be viewed as information social networks within five years

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly 

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly 

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

Guest

⭐️Laura Shin, Journalist, Author of ‘The Cryptopians,’ Founder and CEO of Unchained

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:10 STRC & Strategy: Saylor "Luna for suits"

12:33 No death spiral — burn the boat

17:06 Strategy execs cold-calling crypto funds

20:06 Ethereum Foundation shakeup & ETH Labs spin-out

27:33 ETH Labs is the ghost of Tomasz

35:20 CME sues CFTC to block domestic perps

44:44 100-year futures as a workaround

50:29 Meta's prediction market "Arena"

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Three years ago, Chris Perkins sat across from Terry Duffy in Congress and made the case for perpetuals. Duffy pushed back — hard. Now Duffy's CME is suing the very regulator that finally allowed them.

The CME argues Bitcoin perpetual futures are really swaps and should carry far more collateral. Chris traces the Dodd-Frank history that created the swap-versus-future divide, and Austin Campbell lays out why picking this fight in a post-Chevron court could backfire on the incumbent. Is a perpetual a swap or a future, and who gets to decide?

Hosts:


Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern


Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida


Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto

This clip is from a longer conversation on tokenization, the AI trade, and the CME's lawsuit against the CFTC. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/oSiOeWq_pKE 

We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET - subscribe to catch it live. 

Sponsor


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Chapters

⚖️ 00:00 The incumbent sues its own regulator: what the CME is actually claiming

📜 01:22 Chris on Terry Duffy, and the testimony fight that set this up

🏛️ 02:12 The Dodd-Frank origin story, traced back to the 2009 G20

⏱️ 03:12 Why a 'swap' costs five days of margin and a future costs two

🌊 04:42 Constrain leverage onshore and watch it flee offshore

⚠️ 05:15 Austin: why the CME should be careful what it wishes for

🧨 06:26 The Dodd-Frank footnote where Congress admits it punted

🤝 08:20 ICE, OKX, and Kraken: where the dance partners line up

🎯 09:12 What the market really needs out of all this
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Was Michael Saylor wrong to sell Bitcoin? Matt Cole breaks from his fellow critics on Strategy, S&P's junk rating on MSTR, and whether the model is breaking.

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Thank you to our sponsor!


⁠⁠⁠⁠Fidelity⁠⁠⁠⁠: Fidelity has been building in crypto and DeFi since 2014 — now they're hiring. Explore career opportunities at one of the most forward-thinking names in finance here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠crypto.fidelitycareers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠.


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Strive's Matt Cole had just lived through what he called the most difficult day in the history of digital credit when he sat down to defend it. STRC had touched $82.50, SATA had slipped into the low nineties, and the Bitcoin treasury trade was suddenly the most argued-over corner of crypto.

Cole came from a pension background and built Strive into one of the largest Bitcoin treasury companies around a single conviction: that structured credit can solve an income problem fiat can't. The critics, he argues, can't even agree with each other on what is actually wrong.

Was last week a leverage liquidation or a crack in the model? Did Michael Saylor quietly change his story? And is wrapping Bitcoin in preferred stock a betrayal of its ethos or the bridge most people actually need? Laura Shin pressed on all of it.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matt Cole - Chairman and CEO of Strive

Timestamps

🎙️ 02:07 What Strive is, and why Matt calls SATA the company's main product

🏦 10:16 Could Strive cut SATA's 13% yield without breaking par?

👥 15:45 Who is actually buying SATA, and the one buyer Matt says he's never met

📣 25:15 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers and make the decision that could change your future at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com

🔒 25:58 Cape: Use code unchained for 33% off at https://cape.co/unchained

💧 27:28 What Matt thinks really drove last week's STRC drop, and why SATA didn't follow

🏛️ 31:28 Why Matt won't fault Saylor for selling, and the S&P rating he calls a joke

⚖️ 50:53 Is buying SATA un-Bitcoin? Matt answers the Mallers vs Saylor critique
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Kalshi just brought crypto perps to the US, targeting a $90 trillion offshore market. Its Head of Crypto, John Wang, explains the bet, the risks, and who Kalshi is actually competing with.

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Thank you to our sponsor!


⁠⁠⁠Fidelity⁠⁠⁠: Fidelity has been building in crypto and DeFi since 2014 — now they're hiring. Explore career opportunities at one of the most forward-thinking names in finance here: ⁠⁠⁠crypto.fidelitycareers.com⁠⁠⁠.


⁠⁠⁠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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The $90 trillion offshore market for crypto perpetual futures just got its first US-regulated entrant. Kalshi — the prediction market exchange that raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation — launched the first CFTC-approved crypto perps, becoming the only domestic exchange approved on launch day.

John Wang, Kalshi's Head of Crypto, joins Laura Shin to map how perpetual futures work, why Kalshi's guarantee fund and segregated accounts differ from what offshore venues provide, and how the exchange plans to compete with Hyperliquid, Coinbase, and Kraken.

Wang pushes back on CME Group CEO Terry Duffy's claim that crypto perps are "a disaster waiting to happen," noting CME's own futures carry higher leverage than Kalshi's platform. He covers the ARCA and Galaxy block trades on Kalshi's prediction markets, insider trading protections built around athlete and congressional staff lists, and the regulatory filings separating Kalshi from perps on equities. Wang estimates only 0.2% of the US has adopted perpetual futures — the real growth has barely started.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠John Wang - Head of Crypto at Kalshi

Timestamps

🎯 02:51 Why Kalshi chose crypto perps as its first product outside prediction markets

🔧 05:15 What a perpetual future is and why traders prefer it over options and standard futures

🤓 11:14 The metric that reveals real demand: Kalshi's ratio of trading volume to open interest

🛡️ 14:19 How Kalshi plans to onboard Americans, and how its risk model differs from Hyperliquid's auto-deleveraging

🏛️ 21:05 Wang on Terry Duffy's claim that crypto perps are 'a disaster waiting to happen'

🎓 23:17 Fidelity: Explore crypto careers that could change your future at https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com

📱 24:00 Cape: Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained

🤝 25:32 How institutions are pitching its perps to institutions — and which ones have so far done trades

🌐 33:09 How Kalshi plans to compete with Hyperliquid, Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood

🔍 41:14 How Kalshi attempts to prevent insider trading — and what John thinks about its rivalry with Polymarket

💰 46:16 Kalshi's roadmap after its $1 billion raise at a $22 billion valuation
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The government export-controlled Anthropic's best model. Kain, Luca, and Taylor debate whether Dario talked his way into it and what the shutdown means for every AI lab.

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Thank you to our sponsors!

⁠⁠Multichain Advisors⁠⁠: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at https://multichainadv.com.

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A reported jailbreak of Anthropic's most powerful model, Fable, triggered US government export controls, and the Uneasy Money hosts argue Dario Amodei's response on the call with the administration made it inevitable. Kain, Taylor, and Luca dig into what Dario got wrong, why a company about to go public had no one in Washington who could speak the government's language, and what it means that the shutdown drew no public backlash.

Porter Stowell, CEO of W3.io and a Coinbase alum, joins for the first half with his read on the exchange's big announcement day: agentic payments on Base, tokenized stocks, and a ground-up trading rebuild. Midway through, Luca drops something unannounced: Igloo has built a financial instrument to list crypto tokens directly on the NYSE as securities, with protocol revenue flowing back to holders.

The episode closes on Strategy, and why Kain thinks selling 32 Bitcoin, then buying back 1,587 two weeks later, exposes the structural risk of a belief-based asset with one dominant buyer.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Guest:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Porter Stowell - CEO of W3.io

Timestamps
🏦 03:16 Porter Stowell on why Coinbase's announcement day signals a real shift in how the exchange competes

💬 06:26 Luca on why Coinbase's core trading product still lags: charts that won't load and page refreshes to buy Bitcoin

🤖 17:40 Porter on why agentic payments on Base is the real sleeper from Coinbase's announcement day

📋 25:10 What "real" means in Coinbase's tokenized stocks launch and whether the custody approach actually differentiates it

💡 34:15 Luca reveals Igloo's instrument to list crypto tokens directly on the NYSE as securities

📣 41:12 Multichain Advisors: Navigate TGEs, go-to-market, and capital markets advisory at https://multichainadv.com

🧠 41:54 What Fable was, why it scared security researchers, and how a reported jailbreak report ended it

⚠️ 48:36 Taylor on why Anthropic's communications with the government made the Fable export control inevitable

🏛️ 57:09 Kain on why the Fable shutdown is the 'first fracture' in AI, and what the lack of pushback means

🌍 01:00:18 Binance's EU license bid in doubt, and Kain's contrarian case that losing Europe is bullish

📉 01:07:32 Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin on June 1 then bought back 1,587: what the panic reaction revealed about Bitcoin's concentration risk
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