Weekly Roundup 10/30/26 (Prediction market election hiccups, Hyperliquid onshoring, pubcos push back at tokenization, agents are using stables) (EP.747)
Editor’s note: this episode was recorded before the Binance hack. Matt and Nic are back with another week of news. In this episode: Prediction markets keep screwing up around major elections Quantum firm Alice and Bob devise a new lower estimate for an ECDLP break Google enters institutional crypto custody with Google MPC ICE and […]
Weekly Roundup 10/23/26 (Gold alchemy, rogue financial AI agents, GENIUS implements stablecoin yield) (EP.746)
Matt and Nic are back with another week of news. In this episode: Marathon Fusion says it has turned mercury into stable gold What would commercially viable alchemy mean for Bitcoin’s scarcity argument? AI tools uncover a major vulnerability in PHP A certificate authority’s private keys turn out to be trivially guessable Railway warns developers […]
Weekly Roundup 10/16/26 (OCC debanking report, Google’s quantum advance, Ledger spy chips, Richard Heart apprehended) (EP.745)
Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: The OCC publishes its debanking findings on America’s largest banks Will the banks’ fixes satisfy regulators? Google makes another advance in quantum error correction Coinbase lays out its requirements for Bitcoin’s post-quantum migration Can Bitcoin’s quantum transition accommodate institutional MPC […]
Weekly Roundup 10/09/26 (Going Bunker Mode, classical ECC breaks, AI’s math discoveries) (EP.744)
Matt and Nic are back with more deals and news. In this episode: Is it appropriate to have AI manage your fantasy league? Quant firms are hiring “quals” Justin Drake scares everyone in crypto Did AI destroy math? Why a classical ECDSA break would be worse than a quantum one Why we lean forward hash-based […]
Esther Wong (Cashi) on Making Stablecoins Spendable (EP.743)
Esther Wong, founder and CEO of Cashi joins the show. Cashi is a stablecoin spending app and cashback card with a global footprint. In this episode we discuss: Customer personas and use cases for stablecoin payments The future of tokenized equities on chain The landscape of layer one and two blockchains and how these platforms […]
Weekly Roundup 10/02/26 (Fat Model Hypothesis, Agentic bank runs, Hester Peirce retires from the SEC, ETH 2030) (EP.742)
Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: Are OpenAI and Anthropic reenacting the Fat Protocol Hypothesis Will AI agents cause bank runs optimizing bank balances for yield? If the AI complex bursts does it take down VC? Our tribute to Hester Peirce as she retires from the […]
Weekly Roundup 09/25/26 (Post Clarity rulemaking, Sherrod Brown is back, RIP BitMEX, Coldcard white hats, is EA a cult?) (EP.741)
Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: How loud are America’s largest data centers? What’s wrong with XAI’s data center in Mississippi? The Trump admin is reportedly trying to promote dollar stablecoins Binance invests in Circle We pick up the pieces after Clarity Fairshake plans to spend […]
Weekly Roundup 09/18/26 (Clarity fails to advance, Caroline Ellison’s new job, AI leaking MNPI, Poland’s oil snafu) (EP.740)
Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: How is SBF like Dario? The EAs are at it again Do we need new regulation to Pace the Frontier? Can Anthropic be regulated like a bank? Are baseball cards back? Clarity fails at the final hurdle Why did Clarity […]
Weekly Roundup 09/11/26 (Liquid hack, AI x-risk, Silvergate revisited, can AI leak MNPI?) (EP.739)
Matt and Nic are back for more deals and news. In this episode: We bring back his the theme music Anthropic employees think there’s a 10% chance AI destroys humanity Was Jacob Coxon astroturfed or real? Are Anthropic employees being sincere or cynical? Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain is hacked What does the Liquid hack mean for […]
Weekly Roundup 09/04/26 (HuggingFace hack breaks containment, Hyperliquid onshoring, RSA260 factored, is the stablecoin sandwich cheaper?) (EP.738)
Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: We determine the winner of the bad boys theme song competition Dwarkesh ignites controversy with his OpenAI hack recap What actually happened with OpenAI and Huggingface? Gwern’s and Matt Huang’s short story competition Will AI make us dumb? 200m Americans […]