Bankless

Vlad Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO, joins for a fast-paced look at where finance is headed. He talks about the great wealth transfer, why 24/7 markets and tokenization feel inevitable, and why Gen Z may be far more retirement-savvy than people think. They also dig into prediction markets, stablecoins, private market access, and AI-driven financial tools.

Markets go chaotic as oil spikes, gold fails, bonds sell off and crypto bucks the trend. Tokenized stock plans with Nasdaq and Kraken get unpacked. BlackRock’s staked ETH structure and private credit strains loom large. Legal fights over privacy tech and surveillance, plus AI partnerships and political moves, shape the regulatory backdrop.

Michael Nadeau, founder of The DeFi Report and crypto cycle analyst, breaks down where ETH sits in the market cycle. He discusses whether ETH skipped a cycle, how the L2 roadmap may have improved UX while hurting short-term value capture, and which valuation signals (MVRV, supply in profit, 200-week MA) point to a fair value zone. Short, sharp, and focused on valuation and macro positioning.

Michael Selig, CFTC chairman and former SEC crypto task force counsel, talks regulation and market structure. He covers the CFTC’s evolving role in crypto. Prediction markets, perpetuals, Project Crypto and the Clarity Act get focused attention. Discussions include onshoring markets, intermediary definitions, and a pro-innovation tone for making the U.S. a crypto hub.

Markets shock as wartime moves send oil up, bonds down, and the dollar surging while crypto bucks the trend. Kraken wins Fedwire access, hinting at crypto joining core finance. Political pressure mounts on banks over stablecoin yields. AI sparks a Pentagon showdown and a private-LLM token experiment. High-stakes sleuthing exposes a $46M crypto thief and the NYT declares crypto dead.

Alpin Yukseloglu, investment and research partner at Paradigm and co-author of EVMBench, studies AI-driven smart contract security. He discusses AI moving from ~12% to 70% exploit detection, how verifiability makes crypto an ideal training ground, and the unfolding 24/7 blackhat vs whitehat arms race. He also explains EVMBench’s detect/patch/exploit benchmark and why labs may soon prioritize crypto data.

Nat Eliason, entrepreneur and writer building AI-first products, talks about creating Felix, an OpenClaw AI that runs a zero-human company. He explains how a one-night PDF became a marketplace for agent skills, how Felix manages agent employees and bespoke deployments, and the revenue, costs, and tooling behind running an automated, low-cost business.

Haseeb Qureshi, crypto investor and Dragonfly partner who writes on smart contracts and agents. He argues blockchains are machine-readable systems better suited to AI than humans. Discussion covers AI agents managing wallets, agent-driven DeFi discovery, liability hurdles for labs, a two-track future of safe vs frontier agent commerce, and implications for crypto investing.

They dig into why crypto sits in historic fear and an uncertainty bubble. They cover the Supreme Court tariff ruling and the looming multi-billion refund fight. AI doomer scenarios go viral and rattle markets. Allegations surface about TradFi involvement in a major crypto collapse. Tech firms revive stablecoin plans while regulators and the Pentagon spar over AI guardrails.

Jameson Lopp, co-founder of Casa Security and long-time self-custody/security expert, breaks down phishing, wrench attacks, and real-world threats to crypto holders. They discuss wallet segregation, the three-wallet model, air-gapped signing, multisig with geographic distribution, and home hardening tactics like cameras and panic buttons.