On The Brink with Castle Island

Matt and Nic are back for a week of news and deals. In this episode: 
The Tartan Army takes over Boston
Europeans are shocked that American infrastructure works
STRC falls into the low $80s
STRC's liquidation cascade mechanics
What are Saylor's options now?
Is the US right to put the brakes on Fable?
Will open weight models puncture the AI boom?
Are we living in a vulnerable world?
Kristin Gillebrand's son raises $30m for a perps exchange
Make sure your tokenized equity provider has the equity
Why aren't publishers doing pay per content
Content mentioned:
Nick Bostrom, The Vulnerable World Hypothesis

Matt and Nic are back with a new week of news and deals. In this episode: 
Spanish soccer club Osasuna hedges their relegation on Kalshi
Strategy shocks people by buying the dip
Is Strategy sacrificing MSTR to save STRC?
Saylor bolsters his cash position
What factors are dragging on the BTC price?
Zcash fixes a scary inflation bug
SBF formally applies for a Presidential pardon
The CFTC proposes banning a subset of prediction market contracts
Polymarket thinks that Kalshi is spying on them
European fans in America for the World Cup are discovering Buc-ees
The DATs are struggling
Hester Peirce gives her farewell address
Japanese banks are launching a joint stablecoin
Will there be offshore interest-bearing USD stablecoins?
Anthropic drops Fable 
The thin model hypothesis
What could pop the AI rally?

Wyatt sits down with Omid Malekan, a Professor at Columbia Business School, author of several books, and "Explainer-in-Chief" of blockchain technology. In this episode, Wyatt and Omid discuss:
Why do stablecoins carry a persisent sense of being "dangerous" or "ungovernable?
Are stablecoins truly private money? How do we define private money?
Who owns our current banking and payment systems?
Why do banks vocally oppose stablecoins?
Who will own and control digital money networks?
Are blockchains the right medium for digital finance over the long term?
Is digital trust a problem?

Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: 
FIFA's World Cup ticketing scandal
Andrew Yang is now a crypto and telecoms entrepreneur
Are Strategy's woes responsible for the Bitcoin pullback?
Will Saylor defend STRC or MSTR?
What are Saylor's options here?
Polymarket has another market resolution SNAFU
How UMA could be used to exploit Polymarket
BitMine considers a perpetual preferred security
Google's quantum circuit is optimized by hobbyists
Galaxy launches OTC trading for prediction markets
Treasury sanctions Iran's largest digital asset exchanges
Andrew Left of Citron research is convicted of securities fraud

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 
The CEO of Lead bank says debanking was made up
Which aspects of debanking were real?
The SEC scraps its 50-year-old gag rule
The WSJ gets free banking history wrong in their attack on stablecoins
What does history tell us about decentralized monetary issuance
Why stablecoins aren't vulnerable to the same issues as free banks
SoFi launches SoFiUSD and mixes a stablecoin with a tokenized deposit
Sentiment is bottoming in Ethereum
David Hoffman sells his ETH
Are stablecoins parasitic to L1s
Can L1s accrue value sustainably?
The DATs are troubled
Is AGI here already?
AI cost discipline
Content mentioned in this episode: 
Nic on Substack, Stablecoins are private money. There's nothing wrong with that