Unchained

Bitcoin dropped under $69K even as the SEC and CFTC create more clarity for crypto, and agentic commerce looks like it will reshape the sector.

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Bitcoin dropped under $69K after the Fed, ECB, and Bank of England all held rates steady this week, while Australia hiked. Kaiko's Laurens Fraussen joins to explain what's actually happening beneath the surface, from collapsing liquidity to a quiet geographic shift in who's buying.

He also makes the case that agentic commerce could reshape how crypto payments work entirely and we break down why the market mostly shrugged at the latest crypto guidance from the SEC and CFTC.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steven Ehrlich⁠, Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview

Guest:


⁠Laurens Fraussen, Research Analyst at Kaiko

Links:

Bitcoin, Markets, and the Iran Conflict

Bitcoin Holding at $70,000 as Iran War Stokes Inflation Concerns — Bloomberg

These 3 Charts Show Bitcoin’s War-Linked Selloff Keeps Shrinking as Iran Conflict Worsens — CoinDesk

What Bitcoin’s Falling Hash Rate Might Mean for Prices — CoinDesk

What’s Next for Bitcoin Price Amid Iran War and Oil Prices Surge — DL News

Central bank rate decisions

Fed Interest Rate Decision March 2026: Holds Rates Steady — CNBC

Fed Meeting Recap: Powell Says Inflation Isn’t Coming Down as Much as ‘Hoped’ — CNBC

Bank Rate Maintained at 3.75%, March 2026 — Bank of England

ECB, BOE, Swiss National Bank, Riksbank Interest Rate Decisions — CNBC

ECB Holds Rates, Predicts 2.6% Inflation for 2026 — Central Banking

SEC/CFTC Interpretive Guidance

SEC Clarifies the Application of Federal Securities Laws to Crypto Assets — SEC.gov

Joint Interpretation From the SEC and CFTC on Certain Types of Crypto Assets — Free Writings & Perspectives

SEC Names Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and 13 More Crypto Assets Digital Commodities — FinTech Weekly

Agentic Commerce and Payments

Stripe-Led Payments Blockchain Tempo Goes Live With AI Agent Protocol — CoinDesk

Stripe and Paradigm’s Tempo Mainnet Goes Live for Machine Payments — Crypto.news

Coinbase-Backed AI Payments Protocol Wants to Fix Micropayments but Demand Is Just Not There Yet — CoinDesk

Google Agentic Payments Protocol + x402: Agents Can Now Actually Pay Each Other — Coinbase

Google Debuts ‘Universal’ Protocol for Agentic Commerce — PYMNTS

Coinbase and Cloudflare Will Launch the x402 Foundation — Coinbase

World Launches AgentKit With Coinbase-Backed x402 to Verify Human Identity Behind AI Agents — CoinDesk

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Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and CPO of Mysten Labs,  walks through how Hashi works and how it differs from the competition. Can it succeed where others have failed?

Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges. 

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Mysten Labs has announced Hashi, a protocol designed to unlock several financial applications for native Bitcoin in a trust minimized way.

Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun walks through how Hashi works and how it differs from wrapped Bitcoin tokens and L2s.

He says the protocol is built with institutions in mind, highlighting for one that it does not trigger a tax event like alternatives and also comes with low-premium on-chain Bitcoin denominated insurance.

Listen to find out how Hashi manages these and more.

Will Mysten Labs succeed in unlocking Bitcoin's long-desired $1.4 trillion liquidity?

Guest:


⁠⁠⁠⁠Adeniyi Abiodun, Co-Founder and CPO of Mysten Labs

Links


Unchained:


Sui Blockchain Restored After Six-Hour Outage


Sui-Based Typus Finance Loses $3.4 Million in Hack


Coinbase’s cbBTC Crosses $1 Billion Market Cap, Deploys on Solana


New Bitcoin Liquid Staking Protocols Aim to Replicate Lido’s Success


Kraken Launches Wrapped Bitcoin Token kBTC


Top Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) Alternatives You Should Know About

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The crew unpacks the significance of the Trade[XYZ] S&P 500 license, why Vanity Fair's recent crypto piece is so controversial and whether the EF is returning to “communism.”

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Trade[XYZ] has obtained a license from the S&P Dow Jones Indices to offer S&P 500 perps on Hyperliquid. A crypto trader lost $50 million in a single Aave swap. A Vanity Fair crypto shoot and article is sparking backlash. And the Ethereum Foundation has unveiled a “new” mandate.

Uneasy Money hosts Kain Warwick, Luca Netz and Taylor Monahan dig into what the S&P license means for crypto with Kain saying it is not priced in yet.

They also debate whether DeFi frontends should block high slippage swaps after the recent Aave swap gone wrong.

Plus, did Vanity Fair intend to mock crypto? Luca shares how he dodged the bullet. Tay explains why OpenSea founder Devin Finzer and his wife got the most heat. Kain lets slip how he found himself on the New York Times for buying Trump's memecoin.

And why Kain does not think the Ethereum Foundation's new mandate matters in the long-run.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Links:


Unchained:


S&P 500 Gets First Officially Licensed Onchain Perpetual, Landing on Hyperliquid


Dueling Post-Mortems Reveal How a $50 Million DeFi Swap Went From Bad to Catastrophic


Ethereum Foundation Codifies Its Own Obsolescence in New Mandate

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The crew unpacks the Binance case against the Wall Street Journal. Is the lawsuit just for optics? Plus, why crypto can't turn a blind eye to one Aave user's $50 million loss.

Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges. 

Get started at nexo.com/unchained

Binance has sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation over a report that money has flowed from its platform to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. 

DEX in the City hosts Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos and Jessi Brooks are joined by Arktouros Partner Jane Khodarkovsky to discuss the sanctions implications of the story, what is at stake in the lawsuit and the burden of proof on Binance. 

Is Binance fighting a losing battle? And could the case backfire amid a parallel DOJ investigation?

Beyond the Binance case, the crew unpacks recent efforts by the CFTC and SEC to provide crypto with regulatory clarity. Find out why KK says the CFTC's recent prediction markets guidance is a “nothingburger” and why a no-action letter to Phantom is not a carte blanche for all crypto frontends.

Plus, is it time for crypto to consider best execution rules as an Aave user loses $50 million in a DeFi swap gone wrong?

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital


⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare

Guest:


Jane Khodarkovsky, Sanctions expert

Links:


Unchained:


CFTC Moves to Rein In Prediction Markets as Industry Booms


SEC and CFTC Move Toward Unified Crypto Rules


Dueling Post-Mortems Reveal How a $50 Million DeFi Swap Went From Bad to Catastrophic


Vy Le's paper on on-chain best execution:


Fairness by Design: Verifiable Execution in On-Chain Markets


This week's good news:


Tech boss uses ChatGPT to create cancer vaccine to save dying dog

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Across Protocol wants to retire its token in exchange for equity. Is the DAO model structurally broken?

Thank you to our sponsor!


Adaptive Security

With Across Protocol proposing to retire its ACX token in favor of equity, a long-simmering question in crypto governance is finally breaking into the open: do token holders actually have meaningful ownership, or just the illusion of it? 

As the regulatory environment under the new U.S. administration shifts dramatically from the Gensler era, the structures that crypto teams were forced to build may now be working against the very communities they were meant to serve. 

Ryan Yi, founder of Onchain Group, and Felipe Montealegre, co-founder and CIO of Theia, have studied these incentive structures closely, and what they have found is uncomfortable. From PumpFun's suppressed valuation to the perverse incentives baked into token buyouts, this conversation examines whether the DAO model was ever built to last, and what governance actually needs to look like if crypto is going to compete with global finance.

Guests:


⁠⁠⁠⁠Ryan Yi, Founder of Onchain Group


⁠⁠⁠⁠Felipe Montealegre, Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer at Theia

Links:

Read our Aave deep dive here

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