Unchained
Laura Shin
Crypto assets and blockchain technology are about to transform every trust-based interaction of our lives, from financial services to identity to the Internet of Things. In this podcast, host Laura Shin, an independent journalist covering all things crypto, talks with industry pioneers about how crypto assets and blockchains will change the way we earn, spend and invest our money. Tune in to find out how Web 3.0, the decentralized web, will revolutionize our world.
Episodes
Mentioned books
9 snips
Feb 27, 2026 • 58min
DEX in the City: Why Everyone Is Overreacting About the Terra v. Jane Street Lawsuit
Coy Garrison, Robinhood’s deputy general counsel with SEC experience, and Seong Seog Lee, Head of Product and former quant, discuss Robinhood Chain’s testnet launch and why tokenized equities are core. They cover legal and product tradeoffs, why a testnet is essential, developer adoption, and the Terraform v. Jane Street lawsuit controversy.
40 snips
Feb 27, 2026 • 1h 1min
The Chopping Block: AI's Role in Crypto, Agentic Coding, & Citrini Financial Crisis
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and contributing author of the original Transformers paper, joins to discuss AI meeting crypto. They explore agentic assistants as new interfaces. Topics include secure enclave hosting, permissioning lessons from blockchain, AI-written smart contract risks, agent marketplaces and escrows, and the debate over sensational AI-driven financial doom.
7 snips
Feb 26, 2026 • 1h 8min
Bits + Bips: Are Crypto Markets Bottoming, or Is There More Pain Ahead?
Omid Malekan, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and longtime crypto analyst, brings macro and product skepticism. He revisits DAT hype, questions agentic commerce, and connects crypto’s case to how states treat citizens. The conversation covers tokenized bank deposits, SEC stablecoin guidance, ETF flows, and the market impact of the Supreme Court tariffs ruling.
Feb 23, 2026 • 1h 5min
How Virtuals' New AI Accelerator Will Bring Humanoid Robots to the Real World
Jansen Teng, CEO and co-founder of Virtuals Protocol, builds tokenized AI agents and agentic commerce. He unveils Eastworld Labs, an accelerator helping teams deploy humanoid robots with funding, data and a Kuala Lumpur lab. Topics covered include teleoperation-first use cases, robotic fleet data collection, real-world deployments in retail/hospitality, tokenization for robot projects, and strategies to scale agent-to-agent commerce.
11 snips
Feb 22, 2026 • 1h 18min
Is Nic Carter Exaggerating Bitcoin's Quantum Risk? Yes, Says One Core Dev
Matt Corallo, open source engineer and long-time Bitcoin developer known for protocol work and post-quantum research. He pushes back on alarmism about quantum risk. He explains wallet migration paths, hash-based signature proposals, who is already working on fixes, and a two-step plan to commit post-quantum keys now and flip the switch later if needed.
Feb 20, 2026 • 1h 24min
Uneasy Money: Why Peter Steinberger and Non-Crypto People Hate the Crypto Mob
Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs — brief bio: builder behind LayerZero and the Zero blockchain. He unpacks Base leaving the OP Stack, Zora’s jump to Solana, why L2s may become independent L1s, institutional motives for owning rails, and how AI agents and open source reshape security and developer dynamics.
Feb 20, 2026 • 58min
Stani Kulechov on Why Aave Labs Is Putting Itself at the Mercy of the DAO
Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave Labs and DeFi builder behind the Aave protocol, outlines the “Aave Will Win” plan to funnel product revenue to the DAO. He breaks down why Labs wants the DAO to set its budget, the architecture and goals of Aave v4, and plans for a neutral foundation to protect brand and contributors.
28 snips
Feb 19, 2026 • 55min
The Chopping Block: Dragonfly's $650M Fund + Crypto's Great Resignation + OpenClaw vs Crypto Twitter
A $650M crypto VC raise lands amid a clash between institutional optimism and retail pessimism. Industry veterans are leaving in a surprising talent exodus. The viral OpenClaw AI saga touches on harassment, token pressure, and agent payment standards like X402. Debate heats up over five-minute Bitcoin prediction markets and the coming federal versus state regulation fight.
Feb 19, 2026 • 53min
DEX in the City: Why Prediction Markets Could Spark a Huge Constitutional Fight
Regulatory battles over prediction markets and whether they fall under federal or state control take center stage. The panel debates the CFTC's new council and its lack of diverse representation. They unpack how a high-profile retrial push and a string of crypto-related violent crimes are shaping public perception. The conversation also explores product fixes like time delays to reduce coerced transfers.
6 snips
Feb 18, 2026 • 1h 7min
Bits + Bips: Is AI CapEx a Bubble? And Is Inflation Already Dead?
Stefan Rust, founder and CEO of Truflation, a real-time inflation index provider. He explains Truflation’s methodology and why it reports sub-1% inflation. The conversation covers BLS revisions and employment tracking, how housing and subsidies are measured, blockchain publishing and SQL-native chains, MAG7 AI CapEx scale and risks, and the rise of agents, micropayments and institutional DeFi adoption.
