Bankless

Michael Saylor’s Strategy bought itself time, but did it actually solve the problem? David sits down with Jeff Dorman and Matt Walsh to unpack Strategy’s increasingly complex capital structure, why $STRC and MSTR are now fighting for oxygen, whether Saylor may need to sell Bitcoin, and why the company is starting to look less like a levered BTC play and more like an actively managed hedge fund.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

2:30 Can Stretch Return to 100?

4:00 Explaining the New Framework

4:43 Can the Capital Stack Coexist?

6:39 Refunding the Converts

8:32 MNAV Near the Breaking Point

11:15 Option Value or Investor Betrayal

15:37 Legal Risk and Retail Exposure

19:52 Buying Time, Not Solving It

22:20 Scenario Odds After the Pivot

24:54 Sell Bitcoin or Wait

28:59 M&A as a New Path

34:13 Temporary Relief, Future Crash

36:21 Slow Bleed, Not Bankruptcy

40:58 Bitcoin Needs a Bigger Narrative

46:56 Would Jeff Buy Stretch?

48:26 Is the Model Actually Genius?

52:09 Closing & Disclaimers

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RESOURCES

Matt Walsh

https://x.com/MattWalshInBos

Jeff Dorman

https://x.com/jdorman81

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Ethereum has a new R&D lab, and its mission is blunt: make Ethereum and ETH win. In this episode, David sits down with Ansgar and Caspar, two co-founders of Ethlabs, to unpack why the organization exists, how it complements the Ethereum Foundation, and what it means to put Ethereum back on offense.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 What is Ethlabs?
2:35 The EF Narrows Its Mission
9:30 Putting Points on the Board
13:06 Principles Need Users
14:53 ETH the Asset and Ethereum the Network
17:33 Scaling, Interop, and Growth Workstreams
22:52 The Talent Behind Ethlabs
25:27 What a New Organization Unlocks
27:53 Pro Markets, Pro Growth, Pro ETH
30:51 The Trillion Dollar ETH Question
37:07 Who Steers Ethereum?
39:55 Shared Vision, Different Path
45:13 Funding Ethlabs
51:54 Hiring for Ethlabs
54:24 Ethereum’s Long Arc
58:14 What Comes First

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RESOURCES

Ansgar Dietrichs
https://x.com/adietrichs

Caspar Schwarz-Schilling
https://x.com/casparschwa

Ethlabs
https://ethlabs.org/

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Markets are bleeding as Bitcoin breaks below $60K and Strategy faces its biggest test yet. Ryan and David unpack Saylor’s three-way squeeze, ETH Labs vs. the EF reset, quantum timelines moving up, and Illinois’ new crypto tax.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

3:35 Bitcoin Below $60K and Strategy’s 3 Body Problem
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/KZYJV3ef/
https://www.strategy.com/
https://x.com/saylor/status/2069028571880845340
https://x.com/saylor/status/2069682624956612731
https://x.com/Pentosh1/status/2069797143917855024
https://x.com/jdorman81/status/2067616073479078386
https://x.com/jdorman81/status/2069857950202835258
https://x.com/ki_young_ju/status/2069646523668033833
https://x.com/PeterSchiff/status/2070146847692185798
https://polymarket.com/event/what-price-will-bitcoin-hit-before-2027

17:59 ETH, Stocks, South Korea Selloff, and the AI Trade

20:59 Why Crypto Is Down: AI Attention, Debasement Pause, and the 4-Year Cycle

27:06 Mover of the Week: $CARDS and Pokemon Cards as RWAs
https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/collector-crypt

31:32 Ethereum’s Center of Gravity Shifts: EF Cuts and ETH Labs
https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/2069431500035023121
https://blog.ethereum.org/2026/06/23/ef-structure
https://x.com/aerugoettinea/status/2069017140846330107
https://x.com/tkstanczak/status/2069454499509596582
https://x.com/bobbyong/status/2069965817882755342
https://x.com/ethlabs_org/status/2069104073245159573
https://ethlabs.org/thesis.html
https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2069110440903196810
https://x.com/trent_vanepps/status/2067593124398989551

51:50 White House Quantum EO: Are Crypto Timelines Moving Up?
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2069154174818754759
https://x.com/projecteleven/status/2069151681015627881
https://x.com/drakefjustin/status/2061793725299224676

57:25 Illinois Passes a 0.2% Crypto Transaction Tax
https://x.com/0xBeaconLayer/status/2069120528238121154
https://x.com/manwithadogg/status/2069158605664756205
https://x.com/DarrenBaileyIL/status/2070149517102469527

59:50 Portfolio Check and Crypto Bottom Watch

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
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What happens when powerful AI requires an ID, governments can restrict access by country, and your most private data flows through centralized systems? NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin joins David to explain why AI export controls could fracture the internet, how nationalized AI could become a surveillance layer, and why decentralized, user-owned AI may be the only real alternative. They also unpack Ironclaw, confidential inference, private agents, and NEAR’s push to make AI and assets fully sovereign.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

3:47 Pandora’s Box Opens

6:03 AI Meets Government

7:16 Decentralizing the Stack

8:51 Why Ban Fable?

11:18 Internet Balkanization

13:57 KYC for AI?

18:43 Nationalized Models

21:07 Building Private AI

26:30 Agent Marketplace

30:26 User-Owned Alignment

35:28 Winning Against Giants

40:19 Regulation Fuels Crypto

42:24 Global AI Adoption

45:05 Compute Is the Bottleneck

49:00 Enterprise Use Cases

51:39 Confidential TVL Explained

55:25 Full Sovereign Mode

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RESOURCES

Illia Polosukhin

https://x.com/ilblackdragon

Near Protocol

https://www.near.org/

---

Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Arthur Hayes is back on Bankless, and he’s taking the W off the table. After selling HYPE, NEAR and ZEC, Arthur walks through why the AI trade started to look less asymmetric, why oil and geopolitics may still be the bear case no one wants to price, and why ETH may offer one of the cleaner setups in crypto today. Then the conversation turns bigger: AI capex, circular revenue, China’s cheap models, GPU depreciation, and the moment Arthur thinks the Fed discovers it can’t print Moore’s Law.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Why Arthur Sold HYPE, NEAR and ZEC
4:26 The AI Trade Starts to Look Crowded
6:25 How Arthur Is Positioned Now
7:15 Crypto’s Strange Market Dispersion
11:09 Oil, Iran and the Fake-Out Risk
14:16 Why the Iran Deal May Not Be Durable
17:29 Can AI Survive Higher Oil?
21:20 The AI Bubble Thesis
26:11 China’s Cheap AI Threat
30:38 The Credit Event Arthur Is Watching
35:51 The 2028 Perfect Storm
39:45 Why AI Is Draining Crypto’s Bull Market
44:28 Arthur on Inventing Perps
48:11 Why Perps Could Eat Wall Street
51:18 Socialized Loss Explained
53:21 Onshore vs Offshore Perps
55:50 Why Hyperliquid Can Flip Binance
56:30 The Perp Inventor Does Not Use Leverage
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RESOURCES
Arthur Hayes
https://x.com/CryptoHayes
---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures