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Friederike Ernst, researcher/dev at Gnosis focused on protocol design and interoperability, and Martin Koppelmann, Gnosis co-founder and Ethereum scaling engineer, discuss the Ethereum Economic Zone and real-time proving. They explain how real-time ZK proving could reconnect fragmented rollups, synchronize settlement every block, unify liquidity across chains, and enable new coordination and adoption paths for niche and private networks.

Michael Blaugrund, NYSE exec leading tokenized securities and an NYSE-affiliated ATS; Carlos Domingo, Securitize founder building regulated digital transfer agents. They discuss how issuer-backed equities could be minted on-chain, interoperable trading rails and 24/7 markets. Conversation covers custody and broker flows, whitelisting for DeFi composability, regulatory fit, and practical timelines for migration.

Nic Carter, Castle Island Ventures partner and veteran crypto analyst, sounds the alarm on Bitcoin’s quantum risk. He digs into new quantum papers, why breakthroughs could stay secret, and why 2029 suddenly matters. The conversation explores attack paths, painful post-quantum tradeoffs, Bitcoin’s coordination problem, and the explosive fight over Satoshi’s dormant coins.

Google’s new quantum warning puts Bitcoin and Ethereum security on the clock. Trump’s Iran timeline, oil spikes, and market indifference add macro drama. A $285M Solana DeFi exploit exposes dangerous admin controls. Ethereum’s economic zones aim to reunite fragmented L2s. Crypto wallets are racing to become all-in-one financial super apps.

Jeff Park, a macro investor and crypto market commentator, maps out three massive forces reshaping markets. He explores collapsing demographics, extreme wealth concentration, and AI-driven pressure on labor. The conversation also touches on housing distortions, capital flight, Bitcoin and gold, and why these trends may be colliding right now.

Markets get rattled by Iran tensions, oil fears, and big questions around Bitcoin’s next move. Then the conversation shifts to the Clarity Act, stablecoin yield battles, and why banks are nervous. There’s also tokenized stocks on the NYSE, crypto-backed mortgages, giant ETH staking plans, Tether audit pressure, and looming quantum risk.

MIT economist Christian Catalini joins Ryan and David to unpack his new paper, "Some Simple Economics of AGI," which argues that the scarce resource in the AI economy is no longer intelligence but verification: the human capacity to check, judge, and certify that AI output is correct. Christian walks through the two cost curves reshaping every industry (cost to automate vs. cost to verify), explains why entry-level jobs are collapsing first through what he calls the "missing junior loop," why even top experts are unknowingly training their replacements (the "codifier's curse"), and maps out the three roles that survive the transition: Directors, Meaning Makers, and Liability Underwriters.---📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium---BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKEThttps://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast🪐GALAXY | INSTITUTIONAL DIGITAL FINANCEhttps://bankless.cc/galaxy-podcast🏅BITGET TRADFI | TRADE GOLD WITH USDThttps://bankless.cc/bitget🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTShttps://thedefireport.io/bankless🐇MEGAETH | 1ST REAL-TIME BLOCKCHAINhttps://bankless.cc/megaeth---TIMESTAMPS0:00 Intro3:42 The Low-Grade Panic6:43 Who Gets Hit First, and Hardest?13:06 Coding as Canary, or Exception?16:21 Human Cognition Was the Binding Constraint19:59 What Is Verification, Exactly?29:10 The Codifier's Curse31:21 The Expanding Iceberg: Non-Measurable Work38:32 The Two Racing Cost Curves41:59 Trojan Horse Externality48:46 The Four Quadrants: Where Do You Want to Be?54:12 Liability Underwriters and the Venture Capital Parallel55:41 Directors: Navigating Unknown Unknowns59:49 60-80% of Your Job Can Be Displaced1:06:24 Button Pushers vs. Founders: The Great Resorting1:12:08 The Luddite Risk: Political Backlash Against AI1:17:30 What Companies and Investors Should Do1:22:56 The Crypto Connection1:25:11 Don't Panic: A Closing Playbook---RESOURCESChristian Catalinihttps://x.com/ccataliniSome Simple Economics of AGIhttps://arxiv.org/html/2602.20946v2Christian’s thread on his paperhttps://x.com/ccatalini/status/2026311784421036223---Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Illia Polosukhin, NEAR co-founder and Transformer paper co-author, digs into why AI agents still feel clumsy. He explores trust, security, privacy, and context limits holding them back. The conversation also dives into IronClaw, AI as the new interface, blockchains as the backend, and the rise of autonomous businesses and digital life forms.

Justin Drake, Ethereum researcher and key architect behind its consensus roadmap, maps out the race to get crypto ready for Q-Day. He digs into why 2032 matters, how Bitcoin could face the first real quantum attacks, and why lost coins create a brutal dilemma. Then he breaks down Ethereum’s three-layer post-quantum overhaul and how AI, quantum, and crypto may collide fast.

Crypto gets a jolt from new SEC and CFTC classifications, while Bitcoin’s strength during global turmoil sparks regime shift talk. There’s also a brewing fight over agentic payments, prediction markets pushing deeper into mainstream attention, and a strange cultural spotlight from magazine features to the coming SBF Netflix drama.