NEWS

July 16, 2026

Polygon Labs Cuts Staff a Second Time in 2026 as It Races to Close Coinme Deal

CEO Marc Boiron said the layoffs are part of finishing the Coinme acquisition and remaking the company into a payments business aiming to turn a profit in 2027.

PODCASTS

Episode #1176 | July 15, 2026

Crypto Has Seen Drama Over ENS, BonkDAO and VVV. What Does DeFi’s Future Look Like?

Nick Almond and Proph3t on ENS’s treasury fight, the BonkDAO heist, and why Proph3t would not touch Venice’s VVV token.

SUBSCRIBE TO GET THE LATEST EPISODE

Follow Unchained on your preferred podcast player so you never miss a show!

Apple PodcastsYoutubeSpotify

Latest Podcasts

July 15, 2026

DEX in the City: Why the Supreme Court’s FTC Ruling Could Rewire Crypto Regulation

The Supreme Court just made it easier to fire SEC and CFTC commissioners. Katherine, Jessi, and Vy on why that could reset who controls crypto policy. Plus, the UK’s new rulebook.

July 14, 2026

How China May Be Interfering in Local US Politics to Block AI Data Center Progress

Episode #1172 | July 10, 2026

How Lighter Powers Robinhood Perps With USDG as the Quote Asset

July 10, 2026

Why Any DeFi Protocol ‘Lives and Dies by Its Oracle’ and How to Strengthen Them

July 9, 2026

Austin Griffith on the $1 AI Audit and the Case for Founders Over DAOs: Uneasy Money

July 9, 2026

Tokens vs Equity, Lighter x Robinhood – The Chopping Block

July 9, 2026

Strategy Sells $216M in Bitcoin. Is Saylor a Buyer or a Seller Now?: Bits + Bips

Episode #1168 | July 8, 2026

Strategy Sold More Bitcoin. Is This a Betrayal of the Bitcoin Ethos?

July 7, 2026

Ari Redbord Sits Down With the Hosts of DEX in the City

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

Get daily crypto updates with our free newsletter: news, episodes, market updates, recommended reads, and memes.

Join our subscriber-only chat group to get the inside scoop on the latest in crypto

Bitcoin

July 12, 2026

Saylor and Back Reject Bitcoin’s BIP-110 Fork as Deadline Nears With Almost No Miner Support

Michael Saylor and Adam Back came out against the anti-spam soft fork days before an early-August activation deadline it appears certain to miss.

July 9, 2026

Bitcoin Slides Below $62,000 as Trump Declares Iran Ceasefire ‘Over’

Remarks from Trump at the NATO summit reignited Iran war fears and unwound Bitcoin’s early-July recovery.

July 8, 2026

Strategy Sold More Bitcoin. Is This a Betrayal of the Bitcoin Ethos?

Strategy sold $260M of Bitcoin at a loss to fund dividends. Parker White of Apyx makes the case that it is smarter than it sounds.

June 30, 2026

Strategy Adopts New Capital Framework, Opens Door to Selling Up to $1.25 Billion in Bitcoin

The new Digital Credit Capital Framework raises the STRC dividend to 12%, authorizes $2 billion in buybacks, and for the first time formally permits selling bitcoin at scale to fund the company’s obligations.

Business

July 16, 2026

Polygon Labs Cuts Staff a Second Time in 2026 as It Races to Close Coinme Deal

CEO Marc Boiron said the layoffs are part of finishing the Coinme acquisition and remaking the company into a payments business aiming to turn a profit in 2027.

July 15, 2026

Cobie Takes Charge of Coinbase’s Base App

Jesse Pollak handed the consumer app back to Coinbase and gave it to the trader known as Cobie, in a candid retreat from his bet that crypto’s next wave would run on social apps and creator coins.

July 15, 2026

Stripe and Advent Bid $53 Billion for PayPal, Linking Two Stablecoin Players

The offer values PayPal at a 28% premium and would fold its PYUSD stablecoin into Stripe’s fast-growing crypto-payments push, though PayPal has been reluctant to engage.

July 15, 2026

DTCC Begins Limited Tokenized-Asset Trades With JPMorgan, BlackRock and Goldman

The clearinghouse at the center of US securities settlement is moving towards the full launch of its tokenization project.

DeFi

July 16, 2026

Some DeFi Pools Are Rigged to Fake a Good Price, Enso Finds

Enso says it found two real pools, on Ethereum and Polygon, engineered to pass a wallet’s pre-trade simulation with an attractive quote and then execute at a worse rate.

July 16, 2026

Aave Deploys Its V4 Lending Protocol on Avalanche

The rollout is the first time Aave’s new Hub and Spoke architecture has run on a chain other than Ethereum, though the tokenized-asset markets it is built for remain a stated plan.

July 10, 2026

How Lighter Powers Robinhood Perps With USDG as the Quote Asset

Robinhood Chain perps now run on Lighter. Vlad Novakovski maps the revenue split, the USDG collateral risk, and the race for a US perps license.

July 8, 2026

Strategy Sold More Bitcoin. Is This a Betrayal of the Bitcoin Ethos?

Strategy sold $260M of Bitcoin at a loss to fund dividends. Parker White of Apyx makes the case that it is smarter than it sounds.

Ethereum

July 15, 2026

Crypto Has Seen Drama Over ENS, BonkDAO and VVV. What Does DeFi’s Future Look Like?

Nick Almond and Proph3t on ENS’s treasury fight, the BonkDAO heist, and why Proph3t would not touch Venice’s VVV token.

July 7, 2026

Vitalik Buterin Proposes ‘Extremely Lean’ Ethereum That Cuts Validator State by 95% Using ZK Proofs

Vitalik Buterin proposed a radical redesign of Ethereum's consensus layer that shrinks validator data by 95% using daily zero-knowledge proofs.

July 6, 2026

Vitalik Buterin Says Ethereum’s Next Major Upgrade Will Take Three to Four Years and Rival the Merge

Buterin says "Lean Ethereum," a rebuild touching nearly every layer of the protocol, will take three to four years and rival the Merge in scope.

July 3, 2026

How Ethereum Institutional Intends to Grow Ethereum’s Market Share

Joseph Chalom lays out why Ethereum Institutional exists, how it differs from Etherealize, and why he thinks Michael Saylor is in a pickle.

NFTs

July 2, 2026

Melania Trump Raked in Over $6 Million From NFTs and Collectibles in 2025

The first lady's annual financial disclosure shows nearly $17 million in total earnings, driven by her Amazon documentary, memoir, and a booming NFT business.

March 17, 2026

OpenSea Shelves Token Launch as Its Quiet Pivot Away From NFTs Stalls

OpenSea postponed its SEA token generation event indefinitely as NFT market capitalization fell 50% since January, even as the platform’s OS2 rebuild shifts most volume to crypto trading.

January 8, 2026

Nike Sold RTFKT to Undisclosed Buyer in December: Report

Nike quietly exited its NFT business by selling RTFKT months after shutting it down, as former holders pursue legal action over lost value.

November 28, 2025

Can ‘Choose Rich’ Nick Create the Barstool Sports of Crypto?

Nick O’Neill, more popularly known by his persona “Choose Rich Nick,” delves into how he became internet famous, the man behind the persona, his endgame and the secret to his success.

Regulation

July 16, 2026

Senate Passes Bipartisan Resolution Opposing Clemency for FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried

The Senate unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution stating that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried should never receive a presidential pardon or commutation.

July 16, 2026

Trump to Meet Senators as Clarity Act Ethics Deadlock Threatens Crypto Bill’s Path

President Trump is expected to meet senators Thursday to resolve the Clarity Act's ethics provision, the last major obstacle before a possible Senate floor vote.

July 15, 2026

Japan Reclassifies Crypto as ‘Financial Products,’ Eyes Lower Taxes and ETFs

Parliament moved digital assets out of the payments rulebook and into the same framework as stocks and bonds, laying the groundwork for lower taxes in 2028 and future spot bitcoin funds.

July 15, 2026

US Treasury Freezes More Than $130 Million in Iran-Linked Crypto Wallets

OFAC sanctioned wallets tied to Iran’s central bank, freezing mostly Tether’s USDT on Tron, as a US-Iran ceasefire collapsed and Washington renewed a naval blockade.

Tech

July 13, 2026

Ethereum Foundation’s AI Agents Found a Real Validator Bug, but Humans Did the Hard Part

The Foundation's security team used coordinated AI agents to uncover a remotely triggerable crash, then spent most of its effort weeding out convincing false positives.

July 9, 2026

Coinbase’s Base Launches a Native Token Standard With Freeze-and-Seize Built In

B20, now live on Base mainnet, runs tokens as native code in the chain and bakes in roles, blocklists, and freeze-and-seize powers aimed at stablecoin and real-world-asset issuers.

June 23, 2026

Trump Signs Executive Orders to Build a Quantum Computer and Mandate Post-Quantum Encryption Migration

Two White House executive orders accelerate U.S. quantum computing development while setting a 2030 deadline for federal agencies to migrate to post-quantum cryptography, sharpening the urgency for crypto networks still weighing their own defenses.

June 22, 2026

Sandwich Bot Jaredfromsubway.eth Loses $7.5 Million to Its Own Trading Logic

Ethereum’s most notorious MEV bot, jaredfromsubway.eth, lost $7.5 million after an attacker fed it fake trades and exploited its open token approvals.

In Case You Missed it

July 9, 2026

Tokens vs Equity, Lighter x Robinhood – The Chopping Block

Vladimir Novakovski of Lighter joins the Chopping Block crew to untangle one of crypto’s oldest debates: what happens when tokens and equity coexist. The gang digs into the Venice/VVV controversy, breaks down Lighter’s new Perps integration with Robinhood Chain and the fragmentation questions it raises, dissects the wild BonkDAO governance exploit, and reacts to the eye-popping $2.4 billion in crypto income disclosed in Trump’s financial filings.

July 2, 2026

The Chopping Block: Visa, Mastercard & 140 Firms Take On Circle, Saylor’s Digital Credit Reset & the DAO Reckoning

The crew is joined by Selini Capital’s Jordi Alexander to break down Open USD, the no-fee stablecoin from a 140-firm consortium spanning Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, all aimed at the Circle and Tether duopoly. Plus Saylor’s new Digital Credit framework for MicroStrategy, the Ansem-fueled memecoin comeback, and ENS reigniting the “DAOs are fake” debate.

For Beginners

wbtc alternatives

September 16, 2024

Top Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) Alternatives You Should Know About

Several WBTC alternatives have emerged to bring Bitcoin liquidity to DeFi ecosystems across the cryptoverse. Discover the most prominent ones in this guide.

based rollups

July 3, 2024

What Are Based Rollups and How Do They Work?

Based rollups are an exciting new addition to rollup scaling solutions.

Site Design + Development Alchemy + Aim