Laura Shin
@laurashin • 287,565 subscribers
Crypto journalist 🎧 Host @unchained_pod 📚 Author, The Cryptopians 💌 Sign up https://t.co/gf90Q5GrXy Ads [email protected]
Videos
"It's just complete balance sheet mismanagement" Jeff Dorman on why Strategy is being forced to sell Bitcoin "The market was worried they weren't gonna be able to satisfy the dividend. So they raised about $2 billion and said now you don't have to worry for a year and a half because we have this $2 billion sitting on the balance sheet solely to pay dividends. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief" "Then a month later he takes 1.4 billion of that cash cushion and buys back some of his convertible debt at 92 cents on the dollar, completely the opposite of what he said the cash was for. He retired 2029 maturity debt, which doesn't come due for three more years" "Now that one and a half year cash cushion suddenly fell to four months. He comes out on Monday and says we're actually gonna sell some Bitcoin. It's teasing the market that that's the only choice he has now. That's why Bitcoin's imploding, that's why the stock is imploding"
Laura Shin225,912 views • 4 days ago
"I don't see any scenario where you'd really want to own MSTR stock right now, given how dire the options are" Jeff Dorman ranks the Strategy capital structure from safest to riskiest "In a worst case where MicroStrategy defaults, you'd want to own the debt first. If you have $56 billion of Bitcoin backing $7 billion of debt, you're fully covered. Those would rise to par immediately if you thought default was imminent. That's the safest place" "The next safest is the preferred. There's only $15 billion of preferreds on top of $7 billion of debt, backed by $57 billion of Bitcoin. In a default you'll get your money back. But people buy them for the dividend, and if you cut it they fall 30 or 40 percent" "If you think default is four years out instead of one year and you can get 12 percent per year while you wait, that might be worth it. But the MSTR stock is the hardest one. I don't see any scenario where you'd want to own it right now"
Laura Shin55,617 views • 4 days ago
"Privacy might feel great when Zcash is up 30%. It doesn't feel great when it's down 30%. We need private stablecoins" Kain on the obvious thing in crypto that nobody has landed yet "I went down the Zcash rabbit hole and the challenge is the core asset is the only one that is private on Zcash. In order to have privacy, you hold Zcash properly shielded. But it's somewhat volatile" "It seems really obvious that we need private stablecoins. Zcash has thought about this, the community has multiple proposals. But no one's really landed it" "Tornado Cash had a USDC pool for a long time. But it's not enough to just have one pool. You need enough for it to actually work and be scalable"
Laura Shin68,535 views • 10 days ago
"We pitched the Ethereum Foundation in 2018. The conversation went: we're not paying you shit. You can build it, but we will not pay you a red cent" Illia on how Near was born after the EF rejected them twice "We needed a blockchain for our Near AI stuff. Looked around. Didn't find anything that would match our needs. Scalable, easy to use, abstracted" "Ethereum was talking about sharding, WebAssembly, fast slot times, better user experience. We're like cool, we can just build all that. We have a team, we're VC funded. Just need an upside" "I pitched it again before launching mainnet. We've built it now. We had sharding, web assembly, we derisked all the expertise. I have a team that works twenty four seven effectively. They want upside"
Laura Shin56,818 views • 10 days ago
"The EF is completely out of touch. They're funding hippos in Asia and doing a bunch of stuff nobody in the world gives a shit about other than Vitalik and his little cabal" Zak on why the EF can no longer take the same liberties it did six years ago "They tried it out with Tomasz and kind of shit the bed. Now they're just like let's go back to what we know, which is infinite gardening and funding longevity research" "At least they're acknowledging that other organizations are gonna have to step in. But then it becomes a question of whether they're actually going to seed those reins to any organization that is more competent and more in touch" "Ethereum is no longer a startup. It's a mature and robust ecosystem. There's billions, trillions of dollars on the line. Livelihoods are dependent on that. My entire career has been on Ethereum. If it goes to shit, what am I gonna do?"
Laura Shin58,492 views • 11 days ago
I spoke with Dio Casares (Diogenes) of Patagon Markets about why Anthropic and OpenAI voided secondary shares before their IPOs — and why, structurally, pre-IPO perps sidestep almost all of those problems. It’s an inside look at why pre-IPO perps avoid the legal hot potato aspect of pre-IPO trading activity. 🎧 Timestamps: 🚀 00:45 Why are we seeing so much pre-IPO activity bubble up right now 🗂️ 02:45 The types of market activity that are happening pre-IPO and why they’re happening 💙 6:04 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at ⛓️ 07:52 The kinds of problems that buyers and sellers of pre-IPO shares are trying to solve by going onchain ⚖️ 11:15 How unicorns have wanted to be private but have their shares 📊 13:19 Why people aren’t just waiting till pre-IPO share perps go live to get exposure 🃏 15:30 The problems can arise in second- and third-layer SPV situations 🏦 18:19 Where the Robinhood tokenized-share model fits in all this 🏛️ 19:59 Where the FTX bankruptcy Anthropic block falls 🗺️ 21:55 The spectrum of players — from offchain to onchain, from shadier to more legitimate 🤺 24:30 Why more of this activity is happening on Solana than Ethereum 🤝 25:23 What Patagon does in the secondaries market 🔭 29:27 How Dio expects the onchain private market space to evolve
Laura Shin64,551 views • 13 days ago
Arthur on why he called Q1 a no trade zone and why AI deflation was the real risk nobody was pricing in "10% to 20% of the workforce getting let go because of AI efficiencies means high consuming individuals can no longer service their debts and no longer buy the things that run the American economy" "I know eventually there will be a crisis and they will print enough money to make me whole. But why would I be adding risk at this particular point in time"
Laura Shin80,429 views • 25 days ago
Arthur on why the Zcash and NEAR integration is the quietly building mechanism that flips NEAR from inflationary to deflationary "Shielded Zcash lets you swap and send any coin, USDT on Tron, Bitcoin, anything, and that transaction will not point back to you. Completely anonymous" "The integration between shielded Zcash and NEAR intents means every time one of these transactions happens the NEAR protocol earns a fee" "If volumes grow that fee accumulates over time and flips NEAR from an inflationary to a deflationary protocol. That is what will cause the price to rocket higher"
Laura Shin63,800 views • 25 days ago
"Pump Fun should have given the biggest airdrop the world has ever seen and prayed it drew down 95%. They would own the entire float and this thing would be vertical" Luca on why Pump Fun's token strategy makes zero sense "We gave 50% of the supply to people. Everyone said dude, 50% liquid float, you are mad. In a world where floats were 3-5% of FDV, it was actually a very contrarian bet" "They never airdropped. He had mentioned he was going to airdrop and never did. Rather than fulfilling that promise, you create a new idea but you still haven't fulfilled the first one. That's where it fell short" "They are not stupid operators. They invented the bonding curve. But the emotional quotient is not in that room. They're not capital constrained. They could buy the entire token after the drawdown. Instead he's perpetually fighting market sentiment and his own community. It actually makes zero sense"
Laura Shin48,067 views • 1 month ago
"Morpho doesn't manage assets. We're not comparable to Aave. We're infrastructure for asset managers like Aave" Morpho Co-Founder Paul Frambot on why Morpho came out nearly unscathed "Morpho provides a modular stack of isolated lending markets that anyone can deploy. You can have the safest as well as the riskiest products, but they're isolated" "People compare Morpho and Aave and try to put one against the other. But we're not competing with Aave. We're infrastructure for asset managers like Aave. Our builders are the ones competing with Aave" "90% of our volume is stablecoins in terms of active loans. We think stablecoin loans are what's truly going to be the scalable market if we want to unlock real-world lending. That's the only place where we spend our time and energy"
Laura Shin46,083 views • 1 month ago
3AC’s Kyle Davies on Why He’s Crypto’s Lloyd Blankfein and Why He’s Not Sorry Few crypto figures have been as vilified as Kyle, the co-founder, along with Su Zhu, of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which imploded in mid-2022, losing $3 billion and bringing many pillars of the crypto industry down with it. Davies and Zhu have been accused of, among other things, lying about 3AC’s assets as the firm was imploding, trying to borrow money when the firm was insolvent, and seeking funding from the Mafia, all of which Davies denies. But he remains unapologetic about 3AC’s demise, saying most, if not all, companies eventually go bankrupt, and that 3AC had a “pretty spectacular” ten-year run. He joined Unchained to explain why he and Su Zhu were ordered to prison in Singapore for non-compliance with the liquidation proceedings, Zhu’s “six weeks meditating” (in prison), where he’s living now, why he and Zhu went to Bali after the bankruptcy, his $25,000-a-month fee for consulting for crypto bankruptcy exchange OPNX, his and Zhu’s current work advising crypto derivatives platform and what he wishes he would have done differently in terms of 3AC’s wind down. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 02:43 Why Kyle continues to try to work in crypto 03:22 Kyle’s dealings with the 3AC liquidators Teneo and creditors 06:15 Kyle and Su’s prison sentences 13:15 Where Kyle is going to live now 15:18 Dubai fines Kyle 21:06 Whether Su and Kyle are being investigated 22:21 The final days of 3AC 24:31 Allegations of fraud 32:21 Post insolvency events 38:21 Kyle’s assets get frozen 43:40 Launching OPNX 50:34 ‘Almost all companies go bankrupt’ 55:48 58:50 Su’s prison ‘vibe’ 1:00:01 Cloud kitchen chicken dreams 1:03:46 Sixth Man Ventures lawsuit 1:05:18 Criticizing 3AC’s liquidators 1:06:46 Things Kyle would have done differently 1:11:27 Kyle’s lack of remorses
Laura Shin650,890 views • 2 years ago
Every major U.S. war was funded by printing money, not taxes. 💣 Lawrence Lepard, "fix the money, fix the world" argues that if the US ran on Bitcoin, it would eliminate this loophole, making wars financially impossible without citizen consent. This is the most radical use case for BTC you'll hear.
Laura Shin156,038 views • 7 months ago
Circle had the ability to freeze over $285M in stolen USDC from the Drift hack. They declined — their policy requires a judge’s order first. Tay 💖 explains why that’s the wrong call, and how Tether does it differently. Timestamps: 🚀 0:00 Introduction 🏦 11:21 The Drift Protocol hack, active as recording starts 🇰🇵 12:42 Whether DPRK is behind the attack, and the Axios connection 💻 18:29 How DPRK malware steals session tokens and bypasses 2FA 🛡️ 27:23 Why EDR beats AV — and why you need a separate device 🔒 39:14 Why Circle’s freeze policy fails in real-time hacks 🚨 51:05 What SEAL 911 is and how to reach them if you’re compromised 🤖 59:55 The Claude Code source leak and what it reveals about agentic dev
Laura Shin49,218 views • 2 months ago
.Miguel Morel of Arkham explains that ThorChain is the Lazarus Group's chain of choice: they run small tests, conduct the exploit, move the money, and immediately hit ThorChain. The trail is unmistakable to those watching onchain. Timestamps: 🎤 0:00 Introduction and sponsor messages 🔍 2:09 How Arkham's automated monitoring detected the rsETH exploit 🌊 3:18 Why ThorChain is the Lazarus Group's preferred laundering tool ⚖️ 4:30 How the bad debt was created on Aave and how users reacted 🪙 9:36 Miguel's gold bar framework for understanding DeFi contagion 🏦 16:15 How Aave users are using onchain alerts to be first in line 📈 18:36 The free-market case for letting Aave's yield float to clear bad debt 🕵️ 20:46 What the onchain evidence reveals about who conducted the attack
Laura Shin33,019 views • 1 month ago
Ethereum is finally pivoting: 🔸 Gas limit x100 🔸 Simpler L1 🔸 Rethinking EVM But can it fix tokenomics, developer bleed, and rollup chaos in time? New episode w/ Tarun Chitra and Max Resnick 👇 Timestamps: 👋 0:00 Introduction 🛠️ 2:05 Why Ethereum had to pivot and what triggered the urgency 📈 7:16 Why raising the gas limit could actually be a big deal 💻 9:12 Whether Ethereum devs are too idealistic ⚡ 19:02 How Solana managed to outperform Ethereum at the base layer 👨🏫 24:09 Why Max feels Vitalik’s proposals focus on outdated technology 🔧 27:57 The growing gap between Ethereum research and its execution clients 👍 35:02 The ONE thing Max thinks Ethereum is doing well ⚖️ 40:38 Did “credible neutrality” push Ethereum down the wrong path? 🌀 48:23 Will the new Ethereum R1 rollup succeed? 🔀 52:53 What the new updates mean for layer 2s and their value proposition 📉 1:02:58 Whether ETH is finally due for a price reversal 🎯 1:09:12 Why Ethereum should take a page from Trump’s strategy playbook Thank you to our sponsors! ➡️ Bitwise
Laura Shin221,661 views • 1 year ago
