Matthew Le Merle and Mitch Mechigian of Blockchain Coinvestors join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The top 5 themes of 2025 for the blockchain industry
• 2026 predictions and key themes to monitor

To learn more about Blockchain Coinvestors visit fifthera.com/blockchain

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Matt and Nic are back for more deals and news. In this episode: 

• Secret exchange insolvency rumors
• Caroline Ellison is free
• David Sacks says CLARITY is getting a markup
• The Fed rescinds their 2023 Novel Activities Supervision program
• Insolvent exchange prediction markets
• Visa’s stablecoin advisory business
• JPM launches a tokenized Treasury fund MONY
• Quantum FUD
• Why Quantum might be a surprise
• Bitwise 2026 predictions
• The four year cycle is over
• Grabby aliens and the Dark Forest

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Talos and Factset, Year in Review

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Henry sits down with Corn, head of business development at Yearn Finance, for a conversation about the evolution and current state of defi. In this episode: 

• The history of defi from 2020 to today, and how the TerraLuna crash impacted the market
• How incentive mechanisms in defi have changed in 2025
• What caused the collapse of xUSD and Stream Finance?
• What is the role of risk curators in defi?
• The state of onchain cybersecurity and recent hacks
• What is the appetite for defi from non-crypto users and institutions, and will a declining fed funds rate help?
• How do defi protocols drive value to their native tokens?
• How “decentralized” is defi today?

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Matt and Nic are back with more news and deals. In this episode: 

• CIV grows the team
• Nic does not regret 8 years in crypto
• People are getting blackpilled about crypto
• Does speculation in crypto have positive externalities?
• Matt has never seen LOTR
• Will web3 ever come back?
• The OCC lets banks broker crypto trades
• The Bitwise 10 lists
• Rushi Manche returns with a fund
• Circle is launching a private stablecoin
• The DTC gets a no action letter from the SEC to settle tokenized securities
• We do a Terra/Luna restrospective
• Terra’s fatal mistake
• Oracle mishaps on prediction markets
• Why did the nation’s largest teachers union come out against the Market Structure bill

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Nic Carter and Allen Farrington, All Falls Down

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Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Quantum risk again
• Are banks filled with spooks?
• The trouble with Taproot addresses
• Microstrategy’s dollar reserve
• Kalshi is going on chain
• Prediction market predicaments
• Are insiders monetizing Google search information on Polymarket?
• Are prediction markets insider trading machines by definition?
• DAT activist fights
• Vanguard adds Bitcoin ETFs
• House Financial Services Committee releases their final report on OCP2.0
• What’s going on with leverage in crypto?
• Are AI agents going to start stealing crypto?
• Is Eliezer Yudkowski to be trusted?
• AI is going to usher in the golden age of fraud

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Stepan, founder of Squads, sits down with Wyatt on today’s episode. In this discussion:

• Squads’ evolution from a DeFi-facing product to servicing a broader range of companies’ asset treasury needs.
• What are the pain points of local small-medium businesses?
• What is driving the gradual global movement from local currencies into USD stablecoins?
• The appetite for safe yield across user types.
• Other traditional digital banking players and how they are evolving with technology.
• How the stablecoin trend impacts governments.
• What happens to local banks?

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Matt and Nic record a special Thanksgiving episode of OTB. In this episode: 

• What’s the deal with deep fried turkeys?
• Polymarket gets CTFC approval
• Klarna is launching a stablecoin on Tempo
• Upbit is hacked
• Berachain drama
• Tether gets a downgrade from S&P
• Robinhood is spinning up their own prediction market with Susquehanna
• Are Visa and Mastercard moving fast enough?
• Who are we thankful for?

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Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Is Quantum FUD causing Bitcoin to sell off?
• Ray Dalio is worry about Quantum
• Scott Aaronson is worried about quantum computing
• Vitalik is worried about quantum
• Quantum upgrade scenarios
• Are we still suffering from the flash crash?
• The DATs are selling
• DAT spot arbitrage
• Will the US government end up with the Satoshi coins
• Should the government bail out AI?
• Will NFTs come back?
• IBIT is Harvard’s largest 13F position
• David Frum on stablecoins
• Will stablecoins require a bailout?

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Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• The Senate Ag Cmte publishes a Market Structure draft
• Paul Atkins’ token taxonomy speech
• Fed Governor Stephen Miran gives a major stablecoin speech
• Grayscale files their S-1
• Coinbase announces a tokensale platform
• Coinbase is leaving Delaware
• The Coinbase BVNK deal falls through
• Visa Direct adds stablecoin support
• The Czech republic buys Bitcoin
• DATs are struggling
• CBDC holdouts
• Jack Dorsey bends the knee on stablecoins 

Content mentioned:

• Stephen Miran, A Global Stablecoin Glut: Implications for Monetary Policy

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Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Tom Brady’s clone dog
• We reminisce on the Nic Carter v Mike Green debate
• Is the government shutdown draining market liquidity?
• The trouble with Opendimes 
• Balancer hacked
• Stream finance’s xUSD collapses
• DATs are selling coins
• Why is Zcash rallying?
• Are stablecoins the lightbulb of crypto

Content mentioned:

• JW Verret, Comment Letter to Treasury GENIUS ANPR

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Keone Hon, founder of the Monad Foundation joins the show. In this episode:

• From the point of view of Keone’s trading background, what is the promise of blockchains?
• Reimagining financial systems with blockchains in 2025
• Why build Monad, and for anyone using a chain, why use Monad?
• How the importance of decentralization and chain efficiency becomes underscored during fragile market periods
• Auto-Deleveraging (ADL): What it is and why it is important.
• Where is there economic efficiency to be created?
• How has Keone gone about building a team to tackle this challenge?
• What would make Monad “successful” in 2-3 years?

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Wyatt sits down with Giovanni Vignone, the founder of Octane Security, a crypto security platform focused on vetting application code pre-deployment. In this episode we discuss:

• What poses the greatest threat to crypto right now?
• How are hackers evolving?
• What are the important categories of crypto-facing cybersecurity?
• How much should startup teams be spending on security?
• How should teams think about counterparty risk?
• What do you wish early stage teams knew?
• Where is there room for improved security practices across the industry?

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Matt and Nic are back for more news and deals. In this episode: 

• Mastercard buys Zerohash for around $2b
• Fiserv has a catastrophic day
• Bitwise launches a Solana staking ETF
• Is there another regional banking crisis?
• EthZilla sold some ETH to buy back shares
• Will there be activists with the DATs?
• Are prediction markets structurally doomed?
• Sen Tillis introduces the Ensuring Fair Access to Banking act
• Could you go back and time and trade effectively?
• Bessent’s great peso trade
• What’s going to happen with Venezuela?
• We review the Iran-Contra scandal

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Sen Tillis, Fair Access to Banking press release

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Geetha Panchapakesan, the founder and CEO of Tesser, joins the show. In this episode: 

• Geetha’s background in payments and how she arrived in stablecoins
• Major shifts across payments over Geetha’s career
• Building a one-stop shop solution for financial institutions, PSPs and MSBs
• Where FIs are today as it relates to engaging to stablecoins
• Regulatory tailwinds post-GENIUS

See more at tesser.xyz

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Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Old fashioned crime is back
• Quantum risk to Bitcoin
• More outcry in Washington over the Democratic edits to market structure
• CZ gets a presidential pardon 
• Federal Reserve announces a payments charter 

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Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• We dissect the market structure behind the flash crash last week
• What happened with Binance and Ethena?
• Palmer Luckey’s de novo bank Erebor gets an OCC charter
• Paxos’ fat finger
• The US government has seized $15b in funds tied to pig butchering scams

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Wyatt sits down with Pbj, the founder of Perpl, a prominent perpetuals exchange on the imminently launching Monad blockchain. In this episode:

• How large are perp exchanges in the crypto market?
• Why perps are attractive to crypto users and traders
• Hyperliquid’s success
• What assets would people trade on Perpl vs Hyperliquid?
• What makes Monad unique
• Perps for other asset classes?
• Reasons to be excited

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Dave Balter, the co-founder and CEO of Flipside Crypto joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• How Flipside has shifted its product to fully harness the power of LLMs for analyzing public blockchain networks.
• Building a product organization in the age of A.I.
• Perspectives on the evolving landscape of layer one and layer two blockchains.
• How the role of a data analyst will evolve in the coming years.
• Where Flipside is focusing its efforts within the blockchain data/analytics segment.

To learn more about Flipside visit flipsidecrypto.xyz and follow the company on X.

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Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Will stablecoins drive deposit flight from the banks?
• Is FDIC insurance obsolete?
• Can CBDCs provide real privacy?
• ICE invests in Polymarket
• North Dakota is looking to issue their own “rough rider” stablecoin, joining Wyoming
• Luxembourg buys bitcoin out of their sovereign wealth fund
• Is the quantum bubble creating risks for Bitcoin?
• The “Salomon brothers” OP_RETURN dusting attack on old Bitcoins
• Reg NMS for blockchains?
• Katie Porter has a new drama
• Congress is still working on the market structure bill
• Shutdown update

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Nic on Substack, Yes, we really do want to trust crypto interests with the future of money
• Galaxy Research, The Great Bitcoin Dusting: A ‘Salomon Brothers’ Client Tries to Claim Dormant Wallets

Check out this episode!

Pelle Braendgaard, the co-founder and CEO of Notabene joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• Pelle’s background and path to co-founding Notabene.
• The travel rule and how institutions achieve compliance for blockchain transactions.
• The launch of Notabene Flow, the first open stablecoin payments platform enabling pull payments for businesses.
• Views on the evolving market structure for stablecoin payments
• The state of digital identity.

To learn more about Notabene visit notabene.id and follow the company on X.

Check out this episode!