Crypto’s Black Friday Was Its Largest Liquidation Ever. What the Hell Happened?

After Trump posted that the U.S. would impose tariffs on China, all hell broke loose.

When Trump tweeted about 100% tariffs on China, crypto collapsed — $19 billion in liquidations in just hours.

Altcoins plunged 95%, exchanges froze, and stablecoins depegged. In this special episode, Diogenes Casares, founder of Klyra Protocol, joins Laura to break down the chain reaction: what really caused the crash, whether insiders knew it was coming, and how infrastructure failures and extreme leverage turned a policy tweet into crypto’s Black Friday.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Plus, here’s what we also unpacked this week on Unchained:

• 🚀 The Onchain 5 – Meet the five companies quietly building crypto into everyday life.

• 💸 The Stablecoin Wars – With new laws in place, who wins the race to issue digital dollars?

• ⚔️ Bitcoin Core vs Knots – Inside the developer feud that could redefine what Bitcoin is for.

Meet 5 The Firms Poised to Drive the Next Wave of Crypto Adoption

Five companies are making the biggest bets to bring crypto to the masses by embedding blockchain into their core products.

In this interview, Unchained Executive Editor Steven Ehrlich sits down with crypto investor and researcher Ryan Yi to discuss his series, “The Onchain 5.” 

Highlights:

🔹  Why Coinbase is rearchitecting its user experience around Base, and how the Base token can drive adoption

🔹  How Robinhood is pushing ahead with tokenization and a potential reimagining of payment-for-order-flow

🔹  Stripe’s vision for Tempo, Bridge, and a future where stablecoins replace credit card rails

🔹  How Telegram uses TON as both its developer engine and a tool to keep the company solvent

🔹  Why Binance’s BNB token serves as a de facto equity substitute—and what that means for its future

The Stablecoin Competition Is On. Who Will Be the Winners and Losers?

Everyone wants to issue a stablecoin. But which ones of them will win?

The stablecoin race is heating up. With the passage of the U.S. stablecoin law the floodgates have opened. Tether still dominates globally, but Circle, Stripe, and a wave of new “stablechains” are making their move.

In this episode, Dragonfly partner Rob Hadick and Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz join Laura Shin to map out how this battle could reshape crypto and payments.

Will ecosystem apps like Phantom and Jupiter keep their own stablecoins? Can Circle’s new Layer 1, Arc, compete with Tether’s network effect?

Don’t miss it!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Bitcoin Core vs Knots: Why Developers Are Fighting Over a Coming Change

Bitcoin may have just reached an all-time high, but a big fight has been brewing over whether to allow NFTs, memecoins or L2 capability on Bitcoin or to limit such transactions.

Since 2023, image files and meme tokens have clogged the network, spiking fees and making everyday payments expensive. Bitcoin Core wants to lift an 80-byte data limit that’s existed since 2014. Bitcoin Knots disagrees — and has built code to enforce a different limit. Should Bitcoin stay a payments network, or evolve into a platform that stores everything from NFTs to memecoins to experimental layer 2 protocols?

Blockstream CEO Adam Back and Bitcoin and Lightning developer Chris Guida debate whether removing limits on OP_RETURN protects Bitcoin from what they call “spam,” or opens the floodgates to it.

Plus: the real lesson from 2014 when Vitalik Buterin left Bitcoin, why miners can bypass any filter by renting hash rate, and whether 22% of nodes running different code actually matters in a decentralized network.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

In Case You Missed It 👀

DATs Want to Use LSTs to Juice Yields. The Problem? They Can Hurt Earnings

Liquid staking tokens (LSTs) let crypto treasury firms amplify returns on their holdings. But supporters say that old FASB guidance is unfairly penalizing them by blocking mark-to-market accounting.

Landmark Crypto Bill Set to Take a Big Step in the Senate Despite Shutdown

Before any market structure legislation can reach Trump’s desk, both chambers of Congress need to create a unified bill.

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