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

• Kalshi has detected and banned two accounts for insider trading
• Is Polymarket going to have to add KYC?
• Is there a tradeoff between informational efficiency and market fairness
• The OCC de facto bans stablecoin yield in its rulemaking around GENIUS
• Meta is considering partnering with a stablecoin issuer
• Stripe is bullish in their annual report
• ZachXBT determines that Axiom employees have been abusing the platform
• Terraform labs accuses Jane Street of insider trading
• WSJ reports that Binance overlooked Iranian sanctions violations
• Justin Drake unveils a post-quantum roadmap for Ethereum
• Matt Corallo says Nic is wrong about Bitcoin and quantum

Content mentioned:

• Larry Cermak: How Crypto Actually Works: The Missing Manual

Check out this episode!

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

• Crypto VC funds have some dry powder
• CFTC chair Mike Selig asserts jurisdiction over prediction markets relative to the States
• Is Kalshi more reliable than interest rate futures?
• The CLARITY Act inches closer to passing
• Shake up at Gemini
• OpenClaw agents are going to start phishing crypto users
• Bitwise aims to launch prediction market ETFs
• Bridge gets their OCC charter
• Hyperliquid launches a lobbying arm
• DAT hangover continues
• Blockfills reveals a $75m hole
• Ethereum is having an identity crisis
• Base is moving away from Optimism
• Neel Kashkari’s bad faith stablecoin criticism

Check out this episode!

Wyatt sits down with Raj Parekh, Head of Stablecoins and Payments at Monad. In this episode:

• Will enterprises build out their own stablecoin solutions?
• Will card payments continue to grow, or be challenged by other forms of payments?
• What is the role of governments in driving whether stablecoin adoption will continue, accelerate, or decelerate?
• How does Monad work with leading financial organizations?
• Where do you see opportunity for novel tech solutions around stablecoins?
• Will there be many stablecoins or a smaller number of stablecoins at scale?
• Will companies run their own corporate chains?
• How should companies look at embedding stablecoins in their workflows from scratch?

Check out this episode!

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

• Matt reflects on the Patriots season
• We review the Superbowl Ads
• Looking forward to the OpenAI wearable
• Is “something big happening” in AI?
• Does crypto accelerate the rise of malicious AI?
• Are all communications networks going to break down in 90 days?
• SBF wants a new trial
• Blackrock adds BUIDL to Uniswap
• Blockfills suspends withdrawals
• Robinhood is internalizing their prediction market product
• The stablecoin yield issue in Clarity is still a problem
• Fairshake is getting active in the midterms
• Is Chris Dixon right about Web3?
• We review winter olympic sports

Content mentioned:

• Chris Dixon, The long game for crypto

Check out this episode!

Wyatt sits down with Bhavin, co-founder of Birch Hill to chat about the tokenized asset and DeFi market broadly. In this episode:

• Who is assessing whether cryptoassets are safe in DeFi today?
• Who is assessing risk and ensuring assets are solvent and not fraudulent?
• How have these standards been set and how are they evolving?
• What is a risk curator, how do risk curators make money, and what is their role?
• Is it the responsibility of protocols, curators, wallets, or someone else to protect users from buying bad assets?
• How do you expect non-DeFi-native market participants will start to enter this market?
• Will users eventually buy, hold, and sell assets on protocol interfaces, brokerages / exchanges, or risk curator interfaces?
• Does the Fat Protocol Thesis hold true? Where does value accrue today?

Check out this episode!

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

• Bitcoin grapples with the fallout of the Epstein Emails
• Did Jeffrey Epstein influence Bitcoin development?
• Is Bhutan selling their Bitcoin?
• Do Bitcoin devs care about quantum?
• Is Bitcoin Core under the influence with sophons
• Kyle Samani steps back from Multicoin
• What Samani’s departure means for crypto
• Is web3 dead forever?
• Vitalik starts second-guessing the L2-centric roadmap
• Tether is trading at a slight discount

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Nic on Substack, Bitcoin developers are mostly not concerned about quantum risk

Check out this episode!

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

• Matt is heated about the Belichick HoF vote
• Fidelity launches a stablecoin FIDD on Ethereum
• Market structure passes Senate Ag Cmte
• The White House crypto council is being revived to find a compromise on stablecoin yield
• Fairshake has another war chest for the midterms
• Do stablecoins cause bank deposit contraction?
• Tether has 140 tons of gold now
• Why is Bitcoin not participating in the “debasement” trade?
• Is gold at risk from alchemy?
• People are still worried about quantum
• Will Worldcoin save us from AI bots?
• What’s the solution to the AI slop apocalypse?
• Digital alibis with blockchains

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Niall Ferguson and Manny Rincon-Cruz, Stablecoins Are the Future but Banks will Survive
• McKinsey and Artemis, Stablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers miss

Check out this episode!

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

• There’s a big storm coming
• Matt’s playoff picks
• Farcaster sells to Neynar
• Is this the nail in the coffin for Web3Social?
• Where Farcaster went wrong
• BitGo goes public
• NYSE is building a tokenized security trading platform
• Are we looping back around to enterprise blockchains?
• A MA judge has issued an injunction against Kalshi
• Jeffries drops Bitcoin from its model portfolio over quantum risk
• Coinbase launches an advisory board on quantum
• Trump sues JPM for debanking him
• Does the Central Bank of Iran really control $500m worth of USDT?
• What’s next for Caroline Ellison?

Check out this episode!

Matt and Nic are back after a week off. In this episode:

• The Clarity market structure bill markup is delayed for now
• Coinbase backs out of supporting Clarity
• The bank lobby is trying to torpedo Clarity
• Kontigo is accused of ignoring sanctions
• X changes its API to block InfoFi
• California’s wealth tax has backfired already
• BitMine invests $200m into Mr Beast’s company
• Why tokenized deposits aren’t as interesting as stablecoins

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Jason Mikula, Kontigo: Y Combinator’s Venezuelan Sanctions Evasion Startup

Check out this episode!

Wyatt, Henry, and Jake recently put out a report called “Total Value Lost”, exploring how best to assess the value of various DeFi markets – starting with lending markets. This episode is a continuation of that conversation, exploring what carries value in DeFi going forward, particularly on the back of a shaky market period. This discussion covers:

• Where does the recent, ongoing market selloff leave us?
• What metrics matter for onchain markets?
• What market dynamics contributed to the October 10 washout?
• How does leverage manifest in onchain markets, and what does it look like today?
• How do you assess the value of illiquid cryptoassets?
• What drives revenue multiples.
• Which protocols will benefit from the tokenization of other asset classes, and which will struggle?
• How do the individual behaviors and incentives of investment funds contribute to crypto market volatility?

Check out this episode!

Matt and Nic are back for the first OTB show of 2026. In this episode:

• Matt’s ice rink adventures
• The House issues a draft of the PARITY Act
• The trouble with wealth taxes
• DATs continue to bleed out
• We talk about Nic’s fiction story
• Predictions for 2026
• Is there a secret exchange insolvency?
• What constitutes insider trading for prediction markets? 
• Is the four year cycle finally over? 
• Is it time to try socialfi again? 
• Kickstarter snafus

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Nic Carter, Trillion Dollar Salvage

Check out this episode!

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

Check out this episode!

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

Check out this episode!

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?

Check out this episode!

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

Check out this episode!

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

Check out this episode!

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?

Check out this episode!

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?

Check out this episode!

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?

Check out this episode!

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

Check out this episode!