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This Week on Unchained: Crypto Neobanks, Bitcoin's Bull Thesis, and More!
Don't miss this week's content!
Juan Aranovich
October 26, 2025
Good Sunday! Here’s what we unpacked this week on Unchained:
💳 Crypto Neobanks Are Rising – Can self-custody and yield finally take on traditional banks?
🪙 Bitcoin at $150K? – Lawrence Lepard and filmmaker James Craig dive into fiat’s endgame and the ethics of “code is law.”
⚖️ Bits + Bips: BTC vs. Gold – Binance fees, Ethereum’s quiet edge, and the stablecoin race for 2040.
🚀 Why We’re Streaming on Pump.fun – Laura Shin explains why Unchained is experimenting with memecoin culture.
🔥 The Chopping Block: Zcash, Tempo, and Chaos – Mert defends Zcash’s 400% surge and weighs in on the Base outage, EF drama, and stablecoin wars.
How Crypto Neobanks Make It Easier to Earn Passive Income
Crypto neobanks are merging cards, credit, and yield, all without giving up custody. Ready’s Itamar Lesuisse and EtherFi’s Mike Silagadze explain how this model could challenge traditional banks.
Neobanks changed how fintech thinks about money. Now, crypto builders want to do the same, without custody.
In this episode, Itamar Lesuisse, CEO of Ready, and Mike Silagadze, CEO of EtherFi, argue the real shift isn’t about “crypto cards,” it’s about who controls your assets. EtherFi’s and Ready’s self-custodial apps merge saving, spending, and investing. The result: faster settlement, lower fees, and more transparency, but also new challenges around compliance, credit, and security.
Itamar Lesuisse and Mike Silagadze explain how layer 2 networks made crypto cards economically viable after years of failed attempts and how Africa’s FX markets could become the breakthrough use case for crypto banking.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, PumpFun, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Why Bitcoin Could Hit $150,000 Soon. Plus ‘Code Is Law’ Film
Bitcoin, gold, inflation, and the endgame for fiat — paired with a deep dive into crypto’s biggest exploits.
This two-part episode brings together two very different conversations.
In part one, investment manager Lawrence Lepard lays out why he believes the fiat monetary system is structurally unsustainable, what role inflation plays in that system, and how Bitcoin could be the exit ramp, not just from fiat, but from war, debt, and economic manipulation. He discusses gold, stocks, silver, the real estate market, and why he’s betting heavily on Bitcoin.
In part two, Laura speaks with filmmaker James Craig, director of the new documentary Code Is Law, which traces the evolution of the phrase from a meme into a legal defense for some of the most infamous smart contract exploits in crypto. From the DAO to Indexed Finance, Mango Markets and KyberSwap, the film explores whether exploiting code is legitimate — or just theft with better PR.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, PumpFun, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Could BTC Outperform Gold? Plus, Ethereum’s Big Advantage: Bits + Bips
Binance charges millions to list tokens—while gold rallies and Bitcoin waits. Who’s really overvalued?
In this episode of Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins tackle a packed agenda: from the fairness of Binance’s listing fees to the ways in which DeFi didn’t perform well during the “Black Friday” crash, why Tempo’s $500 million raise might have been a political ploy, and the growing war over stablecoin dominance.
The trio debates whether Bitcoin is undervalued compared to gold, why Ethereum’s 10-year track record gives it an edge, and whether today’s Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) are just froth, or the permanent backbone of institutional crypto.
Plus: Austin makes a bold prediction about the stablecoin that will dominate by 2040.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, PumpFun, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
8 Reasons Why Unchained Decided to Stream on Pump.Fun
When Unchained announced that it would start streaming on Pump.fun, the reaction was immediate — and polarizing. Some accused us of legitimizing a risky memecoin platform, others defended the move as forward-looking.
In this episode, Laura Shin reads her full essay on why Unchained is testing Pump.fun: the reasoning behind the decision, what we’ve learned from decades of watching media business models falter, and why we’re committed to experimentation — with clear guardrails.
The Chopping Block: Zcash +400%, Tempo’s $500M Shock, EF Pay Firestorm & AWS/Base Meltdown feat. Mert
Mert (Helius) defends Zcash’s +400% “encrypted Bitcoin” surge and clashes with Bitcoin maxis. We unpack Tempo’s $500M raise and Dankrad’s EF exit, Mert’s USD Manlet pivot (USDT vs USDC on Solana), and the AWS/Base outage—what “decentralized” should really mean.
Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, Helius’s Mert returns to defend Zcash’s ~400% run and the “encrypted Bitcoin” framing, digging into anonymity sets, privacy UX, and why Bitcoiners are so riled up. We then tackle the Tempo bombshell — a ~$500M raise at a ~$5B pre, Stripe/Paradigm ties, Dankrad’s move from the EF — alongside Péter Szilágyi’s letter on EF culture and compensation: public goods priesthood vs. market incentives. Next up: Mert’s “USD Manlet” rethink (why coordinating Solana around one stable is hard, and why pushing USDT to compete with USDC may be the sharper play) plus a gripe-fueled tour of today’s DeFi trading UX. Finally, an AWS-outage autopsy: Coinbase downtime, Base sequencer hiccups, Infura/MetaMask ripple effects, and the case for multi-region/multi-cloud redundancy when real money — and sometimes safety — are on the line. And no, despite the memes, Mert is not launching a DEX.
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 👀
Bitcoin miners are moving into high- performance computing as demand grows and mining profitability drops. But once they shift towards AI they may not come back.
Some treasury firms are circumventing the restrictions on locked tokens, giving insiders liquidity early.
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