Unchained

When do oil prices force a ceasefire? Why is crypto holding firm while equities crack? And does Canton or Ethereum win the institutional race?

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Bond market tightening has become the invisible hand constraining every policy decision, from Iran talks to stimulus spending. 

With Brent crude at $107 and the 10-year yield climbing, asset prices face a cascade of headwinds: inflationary supply shocks, tightening financial conditions, and no clear off-ramp for a conflict that the IRGC shows no appetite to negotiate. 

Yet within crypto, a sharper debate is emerging: does institutional adoption demand Canton’s permissioned structure, or can Ethereum survive with real-world assets on a permissionless layer? 

Austin, Ram, and Chris dig into the structural fault lines that the macro backdrop is now exposing, and why market-timing in a conflict where you don’t know who the endgame negotiator is may be the wrong frame entirely.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell⁠⁠⁠, Host of Bits + Bips, Zero Knowledge Consulting


⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida


⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, President of CoinFund

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Oil above $100, Qatar's LNG infrastructure in ruins, and a 150-year-old grid buckling under AI-era demand: Sean Murray breaks down why energy has an L1 problem and how Fuse is building the crypto-native fix.

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A $5 billion UK energy company built by Revolut alumni is about to launch a new token, and they already have an SEC no-action letter to back it up. 

But the real story starts with the grid itself. European gas prices are running 50-70% above normal. Multi-billion dollar LNG facilities damaged in recent attacks could take years to repair. And a power grid designed 150 years ago is buckling under AI data centers, EVs, and renewables it was never built to handle. 

Sean Murray, Fuse Energy's crypto lead, joins Steven Ehrlich to lay out why an estimated $70 billion in clean energy has been wasted because the grid can't move it, why that congestion problem mirrors crypto's own L1 scalability crisis, and how coordinating millions of smart home devices through a token-incentivized network could fix it.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steven Ehrlich, Head of Research, SharpLink

Guest:


⁠⁠⁠⁠Sean Murray, Head of Special Projects & Crypto Lead, Fuse Energy — Previously part of the Revolut early team; now leading Fuse's crypto strategy and DePIN network launch for a vertically integrated energy company doing ~$500 million in annual revenue across the UK and Europe.

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Will AI agents use cards or stablecoins? Here’s how two crypto VCs see the agentic future shaping up.

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What happens when merchants are code instead of storefronts? Noah Levine and Robbie Petersen debate whether stablecoins or cards win in an agentic economy, and more importantly, where the profit pools end up.

One sees headless merchants driving a new payment stack; the other warns that front ends never fully disappear. Both agree on this: traditional fraud detection will likely fail against AI behavior patterns, and the rails question masks a deeper problem of regulatory and social inertia.

The outcome hinges on whether permissionless infrastructure can outcompete existing payment incumbents, and whether agentic commerce actually scales beyond niche use cases.

Guest:


Noah Levine, Partner at a16z


Robbie Petersen, Junior Partner at Dragonfly

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Chaos Labs’ Omer Goldberg joins the crew to dig into the Resolv Labs exploit. Why was the USR minting function controlled by a single key? And how did audits miss it?

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Crypto Tax Girl

$25 million extracted and millions more in bad debt across lending protocols.

Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg joins Uneasy Money hosts Kain Warwick, Luca Netz and Taylor Monahan to unpack the Resolv exploit.

They dive into how the exploit reveals DeFi's basic OpSec and risk judgement failings. Omer highlights the various ways it could have been prevented as Tay says protocol audits have become “security theater.”

Kain questions Morpho's curator model after its pools were hit hard as the contagion spread. He also highlights markers that suggest the exploit may have been executed in panic.

Beyond the Resolv exploit, the crew highlights that Aave v4 has made it out of governance, discussing the motivations behind the upgrade and whether the hub and spoke model will impact listing standards.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Guest:


Omer Goldberg, Founder and CEO of Chaos Labs

Links:


Unchained:


Aave V4 Clears First Governance Vote with 100% Support After Months of Internal Conflict


Stani Kulechov on Why Aave Labs Is Putting Itself at the Mercy of the DAO


How Aave Labs and the DAO Should Split Ownership of the Brand – Uneasy Money

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Trump pulled off a five-day ceasefire nobody expected. Ram calls it the greatest TACO of his career.

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Thank you to our sponsor:

Nexo — the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your digital assets, borrow against them without selling, and trade a wide range of cryptocurrencies all in one place. Now available in the US with 30 days of exclusive privileges for new clients. Get started at nexo.com/unchained.

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Trump announced a five-day pause on strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure just hours before his own 48-hour ultimatum expired. Oil crashed below $90. Bitcoin surged from $68,200 to above $71,000. Ram called it the greatest TACO of Trump’s career and said the Trump put is officially here.

Meanwhile the Fed held rates steady but the dot plot revealed a historically wide internal split: seven members want zero cuts in 2026 while five want 50 basis points or more. Powell warned inflation isn’t coming down as hoped with projections now at 2.7% for headline. 

And in tech, Elon Musk unveiled a $25 billion chip fab that Ram says is pure fiction while Bezos raised $100 billion to buy manufacturing companies and transform them with AI.

Hosts:


Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Zero Knowledge Consulting


Ram Ahluwalia, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida


Chris Perkins, Co-Host, President of CoinFund

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