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Unchained

Unchained

By: Laura Shin
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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.Copyright 2020 Laura Shin. All Rights Reserved. Hourly Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Crypto's Clarity Act Collapses. Two Days Later, the SEC Introduces Its Innovation Exemption

    Crypto's Clarity Act Collapses. Two Days Later, the SEC Introduces Its Innovation Exemption
    Sep 18 2026
    Days after Clarity failed, the SEC granted a major exemption for tokenized stocks. The Digital Chamber’s Cody Carbone explains whether agencies can replace the law. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsor! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1inch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The Clarity Act failed its cloture vote this week, with every Senate Democrat voting no and sinking crypto's biggest legislative shot in years. Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, joins Laura Shin to unpack what killed the bill: an ethics fight over Trump's blind trust and digital-asset dealings, stablecoin-reward limits the banks wouldn't accept, and a Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act rewrite that stripped noncustodial developers of criminal-liability protection. Carbone argues Democrats rejected 80% of their own ethics demands rather than hand Republicans a win, and traces how crypto PAC money and the threat of Maxine Waters chairing House Financial Services shape what happens next. Two days after Clarity died, the SEC granted an innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading, and Carbone says the SEC and CFTC are about to unleash years of rulemaking with or without Congress. The question now is whether that agency-driven momentum outlasts the next hostile administration, or gets undone with a single signature. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: Cody Carbone - CEO of The Digital Chamber Timestamps 🏛️ 01:18 Why the Clarity Act's cloture vote failed: 'politics beat policy' ⚖️ 02:38 Scoring Trump's corruption against Nixon and Suharto fuels the ethics fight 🗳️ 06:51 Election pressure: a lame duck vote and crypto PAC money's next targets 🏦 11:57 Why Cody blames the banks' stablecoin rewards fight for killing Clarity 🌊 14:35 1inch Aqua: See how LPs back multiple positions with one token balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 📜 15:23 The SEC's new innovation exemption for tokenized stock venues 🔓 18:28 Could 2 years of SEC and CFTC rulemaking replace a crypto law? 🧩 23:20 Why regulators are staying silent on synthetic stock tokens 🤝 26:46 What's left to negotiate: developer liability and stablecoin yield 🔮 31:14 Is the lame duck Clarity's last shot, or could agency rules become permanent? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    35 mins
  • Uneasy Money: What Crypto's Gensler Years Say About the AI Slowdown Debate

    Uneasy Money: What Crypto's Gensler Years Say About the AI Slowdown Debate
    Sep 17 2026
    Delphi Ventures founding partner Tommy Shaughnessy tells Kain and Taylor the AI slowdown talk is a moat against cheap Chinese models. Plus, why the Clarity Act died. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-sn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================================================== The Clarity Act failed a Senate cloture vote 49 to 50, and Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan open by asking what crypto did wrong. Taylor thinks the Trump family's memecoins and World Liberty sank it. Kain worries the industry squandered its best shot at actual laws and is now counting on friendly SEC rulemaking instead. Guest Tommy Shaughnessy, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, argues that OpenAI and Anthropic's calls to slow AI down are a play for a regulatory moat, because Chinese open source models like DeepSeek are getting good and cheap. He also explains why he runs Delphi Ventures on its own AI agent instead of handing its data to Claude or ChatGPT. Kain says the fear inside the labs is genuine, and that the idea of simply shutting down the data center won't hold forever. They also cover Anthropic's report on a Chinese surveillance operation that surfaced in its logs, an $8M exploit of a Safe wallet that a 4-year-old yoink bot frontran, the SDNY charges against Robinhood engineers accused of trading tokens on Hyperliquid ahead of Robinhood listings, and why Wyoming's stable token dropped LayerZero for Chainlink. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Host of Uneasy Money and Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Co-host of Uneasy Money and Security Expert Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tommy Shaughnessy - Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures and Co-Founder of Delphi Digital Timestamps 🏛️ 02:35 Why Clarity died without 50 votes and what SEC/CFTC rules might replace it 🇺🇸 19:06 Why crypto's all-in bet on Trump has Taylor uneasy about the partisan trade 💧 23:20 1inch: Back multiple liquidity positions and keep your tokens in your wallet until a swap fills at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt 🤖 24:08 Why OpenAI and Anthropic's own founders are calling to slow AI down 🐉 31:12 Tommy on why AI safety talk is regulatory capture against Chinese open source 🕵️ 38:17 Anthropic's own report: how a CCP surveillance job showed up in its logs 💰 51:42 Would you bet on AI safety or acceleration? Tommy makes the hosts pick a side 🔓 56:56 How an $8M Safe exploit got frontrun by a 4-year-old yoink bot 📈 01:01:46 Why the SDNY charged Robinhood engineers with trading on Hyperliquid ahead of listings ⚔️ 01:05:27 Why Wyoming dropping LayerZero for Chainlink reignited the Link Marines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • The Chopping Block: CLARITY Dies on the Senate Floor, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP Rug, & the AI Pause Pact

    The Chopping Block: CLARITY Dies on the Senate Floor, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP Rug, & the AI Pause Pact
    Sep 17 2026
    The boys get together in person as CLARITY falls short with 47 votes. They break down what comes next, Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP token collapse, the Robinhood/Hyperliquid case, Balancer winding down, and the debate over an AI pause. The CLARITY Act fails cloture with 47 votes, not a single Democrat in favor, and the crew works out what that leaves behind: rulemaking at the SEC and CFTC, an ethics fight that was never really about market structure, and Robert's tally of everyone who walked away with nothing. Then Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses 99.85 percent, the SDNY indicts two Robinhood engineers over Hyperliquid front-running, Balancer and a wave of exchanges wind down, Robert explains why Satoshi is a time traveler, and the panel takes apart the labs' agreement to pace the frontier. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 CLARITY gets 47 of the 60 votes it needed, with no Democrats in favor, and the sticking point was forced divestiture of Trump-affiliated tokens rather than market structure. 🔹 Robert tallies the losers: no ethics win for the Democrats, no GENIUS rewrite for the banks, no expanded AML hooks, and no developer protections for anyone. 🔹 Haseeb argues adoption protects crypto better than legislation ever will, because nobody takes away a product people already use. 🔹 Prediction markets are politically safe for a reason nobody says out loud: every politician already reads them as better polling data. 🔹 Tom's counterfactual for what would have flipped the vote is blunt. You never should have launched that damn memecoin. 🔹 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token flashes to a 140 billion dollar valuation on 50,000 dollars of liquidity, then falls to twenty cents, and the chart ends up shaped like a laptop. 🔹 Two Robinhood engineers are charged over front-running crypto listings on Hyperliquid for about 50,000 dollars each, and Haseeb explains why the OpenSea conviction got overturned. 🔹 Balancer winds down and the panel asks what became of the ICO treasuries, from Golem's GPUs to Aragon's founder building a neobank. 🔹 Robert makes the case, half in jest, that a future superintelligence sent Satoshi back to 2008 to get humanity building chips early. 🔹 On the AI pause: Tarun on who evaluates the evaluators, Tom on why coordination without China is futile, and Haseeb on why a training freeze just moves the competition to another line item. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Robert Leshner, Founder & CEO of Superstate Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:43 CLARITY day 03:36 Silver linings 05:26 Was it close? Or did everybody loose? 12:23 Why adoption protects crypto better than a bill 15:00 Was DC trading on the CLARITY odds? 18:37 The one thing they would go back & undo 20:48 Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token collapses 23:50 Celeb coins never work 26:17 Robinhood engineers indicted over Hyperliquid front-running 31:35 Balancer winds down & the exchange shakeout 35:11 AI arbitration & ideas ahead of their time 37:44 Satoshi is a time traveler 39:14 The AI pause: pacing the frontier 42:57 China calls it a conspiracy 44:40 What do you buy if the doomers are right 45:50 Does an AI pause actually cut CapEx? 50:32 Futile without the Chinese labs 54:05 Harden society instead of slowing the models 56:47 Which doom vectors are real Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr
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Crypto is so noisy. Unchained is the opposite to noisy
The crypto/macro show is extremely good too

The best podcast in crypto

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