Bankless

58:54

Capitol Hill War Stories from a DC Lobbyist Who’s...

Bankless ·

2026/06/04

Crypto policy in Washington has gone from punchline to power center. David sits down with Ron Hammond, Head of Policy and Advocacy at Wintermute, for a rare inside look at how crypto actually moves through DC: the SBF era, Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto army, Gary Gensler’s SEC, bank lobby pressure, Trump’s crypto conflicts, the Clarity Act fight, and why privacy and self-custody may be the next major battleground.--- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE:

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56:55

"ZODL is to Zcash What Coinbase Was to Bitcoin" |...

Bankless ·

2026/06/01

What happens when every payment, wallet, and onchain interaction becomes searchable by governments, companies, adversaries, and AI? Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, joins David to explain why Zcash is having a major privacy comeback, how ZODL and the Zashi wallet helped unlock real shielded adoption, why the shielded pool may be the most important ZEC metric, and what it will take for private money to become too big to kill.--- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE:

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63:38

ROLLUP: False Strength? | ETH Crisis | Altcoin ATHs |...

Bankless ·

2026/05/29

Crypto is splitting in two: Bitcoin and ETH look weak, while HYPE, ZEC, NEAR, and VVV keep breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the strange market divergence, Ethereum’s crisis of faith, and whether this rally is real or false strength. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🟦 COINBASE ONE | MEMBER

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50:09

NEAR’s AI Money Thesis: Intents, Privacy, and...

Bankless ·

2026/05/27

NEAR keeps showing up in strange places: cross-chain wallets, privacy apps, AI infrastructure, and now the emerging agent economy. Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN, joins us to explain why he thinks this is not another NEAR pivot, but the original thesis finally coming into focus. They dig into NEAR Intents, AI money, tokenomics, privacy, fee capture, agentic commerce, and why SVRN is trying to commercialize the NEAR ecosystem rather than simply hold the asset.--- 🧭OKX | 120M+ USERS

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92:43

Cloudflare Needs 100M TPS from Crypto to Fix the...

Bankless ·

2026/05/25

The internet is about to be flooded by machines, and Matthew Prince thinks the old business model is not ready. The Cloudflare co-founder and CEO joins Bankless to explain why AI agent traffic could overtake human traffic by 2027, how crawlers are changing the economics of content, why ads and subscriptions may not survive in their current form, and how x402, stablecoins, and pay-per-crawl could create a new payment layer for the web. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE:

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71:25

ROLLUP: David Sold His ETH | EF Exodus |...

Bankless ·

2026/05/22

Crypto’s old leaders are struggling, but new winners are breaking out. Ryan and David unpack the rise of HYPE, Zcash, and Venice, the macro bear fuel markets are ignoring, the EF talent exodus, and why David selling his last ETH may mark a new era for Ethereum and Bankless.--- 📣METAMASK | $100,000 ONDO GM CHALLENGE https://bankless.cc/OndoOnMetaMask --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🟦 COINBASE ONE | MEMBER

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78:01

Bitcoin’s $300T Credit Market Opportunity | Jeff Walton

Bankless ·

2026/05/21

Bitcoin may be outgrowing the “digital gold” narrative. David sits down with Strive Chief Risk Officer Jeff Walton to unpack how Bitcoin-backed credit products like SATA and Strategy’s STRETCH could turn BTC into digital capital, why Jeff says the “Ponzi” framing misunderstands the balance sheet, how 13% yield and daily dividends could disrupt credit markets, and why this new financial layer may expand Bitcoin’s TAM far beyond gold.--- 📣OKX | THE NEW MONEY

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63:54

"Crypto Without Privacy Isn't Crypto" - The Zcash...

Bankless ·

2026/05/19

Zcash is having its first real narrative moment in years. David sits down with Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain and Mert Mumtaz to unpack why privacy may be crypto’s missing store-of-value primitive, why Zcash is being framed as “private Bitcoin,” how institutional adoption could normalize shielded money, what AI and onchain surveillance change about the privacy debate, and why quantum risk could become a real catalyst.--- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE:

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51:07

Clarity Act Odds Jump to 75% After Surprise Senate...

Bankless ·

2026/05/18

Two surprise Democrat votes just rerated the entire crypto policy timeline. After the Senate Banking Committee advanced the Clarity Act on a bipartisan basis, Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn moved his odds of the bill being signed this year from a coin flip to 75%. He and David map the seven-week sprint to the president's desk, the ethics-provision standoff that could still sink everything, the bank lobby's quiet obstruction game, and why the stablecoin yield compromise leaves the

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65:23

ROLLUP: Is the Bull Back? | The Clarity Act | Wall...

Bankless ·

2026/05/15

Markets are ignoring every warning sign as stocks hit new highs, but crypto may finally have its catalyst. Ryan and David break down the CLARITY Act’s key vote, Wall Street’s Ethereum push, Bitcoin’s $80K test, and why private AI stocks are creating chaos onchain.--- 📣GALAXY | INSTITUTIONAL DIGITAL FINANCE https://bankless.cc/Galaxy --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🟦 COINBASE ONE | GET 20%

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44:14

The $200 Billion Shadow Market Behind Anthropic's...

Bankless ·

2026/05/14

Anthropic's secondary market is tens of billions of dollars deep, stacked with SPVs on top of SPVs charging 10% fees plus carry, and almost entirely opaque. Dio Casares of Patagon breaks down how it actually works: which deals Anthropic blesses and which get cease-and-desists, why fake share certificates show up in 10-20% of executed deals, what tokenized equities and pre-IPO perps actually represent, and the mess of lawsuits and stuck shares coming when Anthropic finally

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82:23

Will AI Populism Decide the 2028 Election? | Jasmine Sun

Bankless ·

2026/05/13

AI is no longer just a technology story. It is becoming a political fault line. Jasmine Sun joins Bankless to unpack the rise of AI populism, why backlash against data centers and AI labs is spreading across strange political coalitions, and whether jobs, inequality, and SuperPAC money could turn AI into a defining 2028 election issue. --- 🎬 DEBRIEF | RYAN & DAVID BREAKDOWN THE EPSIODE https://www.bankless.com/podcast/debrief-will-ai-populism-decide-the-2028-election --- BANKLESS SPONSOR

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65:58

How Long Will the AI Boom Continue? The #1 Question...

Bankless ·

2026/05/12

AI stocks are ripping, crypto is following, and the question is whether this is the next leg higher or the final frothy phase before a reset. Ryan and Michael Nadeau break down why Bitcoin is so tied to the NASDAQ right now, how today’s AI boom compares to 1999, and what investors should watch if the bubble keeps inflating or finally starts to burst. Michael Nadeau & The DeFi Report: https://x.com/JustDeauIt https://bankless.cc/BTDR-RSS --- 📣THE DEFI REPORT | 20% OFF ANNUAL

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94:08

Why North Korea Is Winning Crypto Crime and How to...

Bankless ·

2026/05/11

North Korea isn’t just hacking crypto anymore, it’s studying it, infiltrating it, and turning DeFi’s weakest links into a state-run revenue machine. This time around, Ryan and David sit down with Ari Redbord of TRM Labs to unpack the Drift hack, the $6B DPRK crypto crime machine, how stolen funds move through THORChain, Bitcoin, OTC desks, and Chinese laundering networks, and why the fightback may require everything from better DeFi security to real-time Beacon alerts and offensive cyber. --- 🎬

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60:17

ROLLUP: Crypto’s Nasdaq Problem | The CLARITY Act |...

Bankless ·

2026/05/08

Stocks and AI are ripping to new highs, and crypto is getting pulled along for the ride. Ryan and David break down whether this rally is real or too frothy, what the CLARITY Act still needs to survive, why Coinbase layoffs are colliding with billion-dollar crypto raises, and what Saylor selling Bitcoin would actually mean. 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION

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76:27

“Finding Satoshi”—How a Private Investigator Solved...

Bankless ·

2026/05/04

Spoiler alert: This episode contains spoilers for the documentary Finding Satoshi.Bill Cohan and Tyler Maroney unpack their new documentary Finding Satoshi, a four-year investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. They explore why Satoshi’s identity still matters, the cypherpunk roots of Bitcoin, the public interest behind the mystery, and what the search reveals about privacy, money, power, and the mythology at the heart of crypto. ------ 🔎 FINDING SATOSHI | USE CODE: BANKLESS

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59:34

ROLLUP: $120 Oil vs New Highs | AI Boom Masks War |...

Bankless ·

2026/05/01

Markets are ripping despite $120 oil and an escalating war. Ryan and David break down why the AI boom is drowning out macro risks, whether a wave of trillion-dollar IPOs could mark the top, and how DeFi just bailed itself out after its biggest hack ever. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🟦 COINBASE ONE | GET 20%

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74:26

MegaETH Token Launch with Co-Founders Shuyao and Lei

Bankless ·

2026/04/30

$MEGA token is live, but the bigger story is what the launch says about the future of L2s. Co-Founders Shuyao and Lei join Bankless to unpack why MegaETH tied its TGE to app milestones, why USDM and proximity markets could become core revenue streams, and how the team is thinking about appchains, AI agents, security, and Stage 2 decentralization.--- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION

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129:42

$200 Oil by June?—The Biggest Oil Shock in History |...

Bankless ·

2026/04/29

Rory Johnston, the “oil quant,” joins us to explain why the Hormuz crisis could become the biggest oil shock in history.Oil markets are already screaming. Supply is trapped, inventories are being drained, and the market may still be underpricing the scale of the disruption. If the Strait stays closed, Rory says the path to $200 oil is no longer crazy. It may be the next stop. This is oil, geopolitics, inflation, and markets all colliding at once. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE:

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119:30

Has Bitcoin Bottomed? Jordi Visser on AI, Inflation,...

Bankless ·

2026/04/27

Has Bitcoin already bottomed, or are investors still looking at the wrong signals? Jordi Visser joins Bankless to argue that AI is destroying software moats, reshaping inflation, and pushing capital toward scarce assets, with Bitcoin at the center of that shift. We get into his “AI is the new QE” thesis, the scarcity-versus-abundance portfolio, why the S&P may struggle in an AI regime, what a more muted Bitcoin cycle looks like, and where he still sees upside across the rest of

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