Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner break down the biggest stories in crypto. This week: Recapping how Bybit lost $1.5B to North Korea’s Lazarus Group—how did it happen, and why did they use THORChain to launder the money? Meanwhile, Ethereum is facing an identity crisis at ETH Denver, with the Foundation’s bizarre “Silviculture Society” raising eyebrows across the ecosystem. And if that wasn’t enough, memecoins are in freefall, with Hayden Adams admitting the game was rigged all along. It’s a wild week—let’s break it all down.

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

Show highlights

🔹 Bybit’s $1.5B Hack – Largest crypto heist ever, pulled off by North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Attack exploited Gnosis Safe’s front end, not Bybit itself.

🔹 THORChain: The New Laundromat? – Lazarus Group uses THORChain to launder stolen funds, sparking backlash. Some THORChain members celebrated the volume spike.

🔹 Memecoins Declared ‘Collectibles’ – SEC says memecoins aren’t securities—right as the bubble bursts. New token launches are down 60%, and pump.fun is drying up.

🔹 InfoWars Bought With a Memecoin?! – Alex Jones supporters use Wars token to outbid The Onion for InfoWars.com in a bankruptcy auction.

🔹 Ethereum’s Cultural Crisis – EF’s ‘Silviculture Society’ announcement triggers community backlash. Hayden Adams calls it “peak Ethereum dysfunction.”

🔹 SEC’s Crypto Pivot – Enforcement shift: Uniswap, OpenSea, and Consensys investigations dropped. Is the SEC losing its war on crypto?

🔹 Richard Heart’s Case Dismissed – The SEC’s lawsuit against the HEX founder gets tossed on procedural grounds, but the agency has a chance to refile.

🔹 The Hyperliquid Question – Is Hyperliquid the next frontier for crypto liquidity, or a regulatory time bomb waiting to go off?

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly
⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate
⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures
⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

Disclosures