Unchained - Which Crypto Assets Belong in a Reserve? This VC Says Not XRP and ADA - Ep. 796

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Trump’s latest crypto moves have sent the market on a rollercoaster. First, he posted on Truth Social that a U.S. crypto reserve would include XRP, Solana, and Cardano. A couple hours later, he had to clarify that Bitcoin and Ethereum would also be included. The market jumped 12%—only to crash the next day. Meanwhile, the White House crypto summit is happening Friday, and not everyone is happy with the guest list. Some say it’s a step toward real regulation, while others argue that without DeFi voices, it’s just a meeting of centralized players. So what does it all mean? David Nage, VC at Arca, joins Unchained to talk about: 4:55 Why David is unfazed by crypto’s swings around Trump’s reserve posts 9:03 David’s take on Cardano and XRP being named for the crypto reserve list 18:11 Why he thinks Bitcoin is a strong candidate for a national reserve asset 22:52 Why David isn’t impressed with the guest list at the White House Crypto Summit 26:26 Why the markets have been struggling—and what could finally turn things around 28:52 News Recap Will real crypto policy changes emerge from this? Or is this just another distraction in a year full of big promises? Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! BitKey: Use code UNCHAINED for 20% off Mantle Guest David Nage, VC Portfolio Manager at Arca Links Unchained:  Why Trump May Have Chosen This Week to Announce a Strategic Crypto Reserve Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Is Not Invited to White House Crypto Summit How Did Ripple Sell Trump on XRP in a Crypto Reserve? By Pushing for Solana Trump Is Having Second Thoughts About His Crypto Council David’s tweet on Cardano and Ripple Eleanor Terrett’s tweet with the Crypto Summit guest list  David Sacks’ tweet saying that the government lost almost $17 billion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Am I thrilled that a bunch of centralized exchanges are going to be present? Not necessarily, because I don't believe that they represent the true innovation of digital assets and crypto. Would I like to have seen decentralized exchanges potentially present there? Yes, because that gives them a different view of the market. Would I have liked to have seen more people that have had a backing or a relevance in the regulatory side of things like a Katie Hahn or Rebecca Riding? Rebecca has been at the forefront of this for years, and I think she would have been a brilliant cast of Carriott. into this. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host,

Laura Shin. We are now featuring quotes from listeners on the show. Today, we have one from Purple Pepe on X, commenting on my interview with Barra chain's Smokey the Barra. Purple Pepe said, quote, Barra Chain, the crypto rebel. Sold VCs the dream. Now it's a messy reality. Ribbit. Have your comment featured. Write a review of the podcast overall. or leave a comment on our video on YouTuber X. This is the March 7th, 2025 episode of Unchained. Imagine an AI that speaks crypto and does the work of a team of analysts. Introducing Focal by Falcon X, bringing in clarity to a world of noise.

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Visit group.mantle.xy to learn more. Hey, all, a quick note before we begin. David and I recorded this episode Thursday afternoon, but at 7 p.m. Thursday evening, AI and Cryptozar David Sacks announced on X that President Trump had signed an executive order establishing a U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve and a digital asset stockpile. As Sachs wrote in his post on X, quote, just a few minutes ago, President Trump signed an executive order

to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. The reserve will be capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. This means it will not cost taxpayers a dime. Although the government doesn't intend to purchase additional assets at this time, Sachs' post continued, quote, The Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers, end quote.

Presumably, once those strategies are identified, the government intends to buy additional Bitcoin, whereas for the stockpile, no additional assets will be purchased. purchased. The price of Bitcoin fell 5% from 90,000 to less than 85,000 on the news, and the global crypto markets dropped 4%, from $2.94 trillion to $2.82 trillion. XRP, Ada, and Saul fell even further than Bitcoin on the news, likely due to the disappointment that they will not make up a significant portion of the United States' holdings. XRP fell 7.27%, while Ada fell 9.9% and Saul fell 5.5%. Although this interview doesn't reference this news, as you'll see, David seemed to hit the nail

on the head with his analysis of why he thought there should be a Bitcoin reserve, but only a stockpile for the other assets. Plus, in this week's chopping block, we expanded a bid on a stockpile versus a reserve, in case you want to check that out. And now, onto my conversation with David Nage. Today's guest is David Nage, VC at Arka. Welcome, David. Thank you, Laura. This has been a wild week for the crypto markets. The entire crypto market was at $2.8 trillion on Sunday when President Trump posted on Truth Social that there would be a crypto reserve of XRP, Sol, and Ada.

As an afterthought, about two hours later, he again posted that the reserve would, of course, also include Bitcoin and Ether. Maybe he saw the outrage that was spreading on social media in between. the market surged about 12.5% to $3.15 trillion, 10 hours after those posts. However, they did retrace all the way back down the next day and then some. And as weeks gone down, they've now crept back up ahead of this White House Crypto Summit that will take place Friday, which is the day that this episode airs. And if you actually zoom out even further, just since the inauguration, the crypto markets are down 18% from then. So what do you make of all this volatile action. There's so much to unpack there, isn't there, Laura? So many different things, so many different balls in the air. I think at the end of the day, I've been in this space now for eight years.

And I remember a time where politicians, regular news outlets, everyone talking about crypto didn't even exist. You were the only one. Like I said before, I started my podcast in 2018 because of you. You were the first out there to start talking about crypto. in a sense, more of an institutional kind of breaking these things down into, you know, more digestible pieces of information. We didn't have that for all these years. And then all of a sudden, the last four years under the Biden administration, it became really kind of punitive to be

involved in digital assets. Even the idea of talking about a digital asset, a token, was whispered because he didn't want to say it too loud, because you were afraid that the rest of the repercussions. And so, you know, one of the things that we've said here for so long is that the digital asset, in our opinion, is the greatest innovation for capital formation we've ever seen. But at the same time, it's like we've built the best, fastest highway in the world, but you're only allowed to drive a Model T on it right now. And so we have this dichotomy, this kind of misalignment with how things have gone. And so the industry was excited. when you actually had a person who is potentially going to be nominated and then us

elected to be president who said, you know what, guys are actually, all of you are okay. I kind of like this. This is interesting. And to even go further, I'm going to experiment with it. Now, again, I know a lot of people out there have been having fits about this. A lot of people are very upset about the Trump token, about Melania. I've seen all the sentiment about it's sucking out a lot of the volume and liquidity in the space, I get all those comments. But at the end of the day, as you just said, pull back. You

have a sitting U.S. president who has issued NFTs, who has now issued a digital asset. His wife has issued a digital asset. You have someone who is also doing or involved with World Liberty Financial, someone who's getting their fingers involved in different aspects of digital assets. Whereas before, as I said again, when I started in the space, that was something that we could never fathom. We didn't. even think was possible. And so, yes, there's a lot of variables in the space. Sure, there's, you know, again, I think a lot of the things that we've seen here is that as a industry, we have straight away from what actually the innovation is, the innovation of open finance with

defy, the innovation of decentralized AI where humans can actually train AI models and become incentivized to do so. The innovation of decentralized science, where, laboratories around the world, especially here in the United States, can be funded to actually find innovations, find therapies, and be able to not have to go through the bureaucratic tech transfer offices around the country to be able to get them out into the world. We've been focusing on meme coins, which is fine. I understand there's those that want to look at the cultural aspects of meme coins. Now, if you pull it back and just say, okay, what are the cultural aspects of meme coins?

You look at Pepe, you look at Doge, maybe she's. Shibu, not many of them have transcended to cultural artifacts, if you will. And so I think at the end of the day, we need to, as an industry, really start to re-hone in on what the value proposition of digital assets are. Now that we can, you know, we are under a new umbrella here, a new administration, where we can actually start talking about digital assets again. We can talk about tokenization again. you have the CEO of the largest asset manager in the world basically saying we must be able to tokenize stocks and bonds assets again these are things that we didn't even think were possible eight years ago okay but but what about so for this week when Trump posted on truth social that

there would be a reserve of the exrp sullen ada what was your reaction to that well anybody can see that I decided to take more of an analytical approach to that I decided to really look at Cardana and look at Ripple, XRP. Again, being in the space for eight years, ARCA has a few different funds here. I have been actively running our venture fund. Within our venture fund, we have never taken a focus on a single ecosystem.

I didn't care if it was Ethereum. I didn't care if it was Salon. I didn't care if it was Avalanche. I wanted to find founders who were building the best technology and the best user experiences in the world. However, as I say that, I did not come into contact with anybody building on Cardano, anyone building on XRPL, which was

surprising when you alluded to that there was potential mentioning that these assets would be in a reserve. So I took a look and I posted it on my Twitter account, which everyone can see, and I looked to see kind of what Cardano has done for the last eight years because effectively they came out around 2017. I understand from my exploratory process that Cardano and the ecosystem decided to go much more focus on security to kind of eliminate a lot of the re-enter the attacks that have plagued Ethereum and some of the other ecosystems.

I understand that there are some nuances to what they've built internally to try to make it more secure. However, a lot of those same purposes that they've done. put in place for security have also slowed them down in terms of market penetration. For instance, with defy, they account for about 0.4% of all defy total value locked right now, if you look at Defy Lama. If you look at stable coins, which is a huge emphasis for this administration, we're probably going to hear a lot about that over the next few days and weeks here.

For stable coin market, they were about a 0.4% penetration in that market of which was about 223 billion. And so, sure, I understand that there were choices made to make it more secure, to not go out and have the potential vulnerabilities that some of the other blockchains have had. But again, when you think of a reserve asset, and I said this in my summary, when you think about a reserve asset, you think of something that is highly coveted. You think of something that everybody wants a piece of, that everyone thinks is incredibly valuable. and today, based on the choices that Cardano and the ecosystem have made, that asset is not necessarily in that realm, in my opinion. It can be. They have to make some changes. They have to really start accelerating the process, but they haven't done that yet. Now, in regards to ripple and to

XRP, I've been starting to look at that too. Really focus much more on the payment side of things, not necessarily focused on being a state-of-the-art blockchain that can do everything between defying, gaming, et cetera, et cetera, really focused on cross-border payments. One of the things that was surprising to me in my looking through this over the last few days is some of the choices that they've made. For instance, without going into the technicals, there are pieces of it where you effectively don't even need to have smart contracts where you can create these obligations between these UNLs and some of the other components to it. And effectively, the one, the validator or the kind of the main driver of that obligation

can effectively remove it or freeze it anytime they want to. And so that was kind of strange to me because that speaks to much more centralization versus decentralization. Now, again, they have raised a ton of money. They have partnerships that they've explored with Santana and Bank of America and a bunch of other large trade-fi companies throughout the country and throughout the world. But again, when I come down to my base thoughts of I have run a venture fund, I have ever used thousands of different opportunities over the last few years. I have been agnostic to the ecosystems that I've looked at. I have not seen anybody necessarily building on XRPL or, you know, doing things with Ripple.

And so, again, it is a surprise because, again, you want to find assets that are highly coveted. You want to find ecosystems that are being used across the board. And so that was another surprise to me for short. Yeah, this was a very long time ago, but I did research into the Ripple Letcher GitHub and pretty much everybody who contributed to it at that time worked for Ripple or was a freelancer for Ripple. So in a moment, we'll talk a little bit more about ATA XRP, but then also the summit on Friday. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make the show possible. Picture this.

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We have another listener comment responding to the interview with Smokey the Bearer. On YouTube, West Floyd wrote, quote, If you give your money to a guy in a bear suit, you should have very reasonable expectations about the outcomes. Again, if you want to hear your comment featured on the show, please write a review or leave a comment on an episode on YouTube or X. Back to my conversation with David. So just a quick note to respond to some of the comments you made about Charles and Cardano. On Wednesday, we here at Unchained reported that a White House, source said that Charles had not been invited to the summit on Friday. In fact, this person said,

quote, they are running around town trying to push their own sort of narrative, meaning people representing Cardano. They are not involved in anything about trying to influence policy and they are not invited to Friday's summit. So pretty pointed remarks. And it was kind of interesting because if you look at Charles Hoskinson's Twitter page, he had said on February 10th that he had a VIP dinner that had been moved from February 22nd to the first, which those are the dates of a MAGA-Inck dinner, which is a super PAC, or it's a PAC. I'm not sure if it's a super PAC or PAC last weekend.

And then last week, he also again said that he would miss Eath, Denver because he had to go to Florida for a thing. So it was very interesting that this White House source said, oh, by the way, this person also said that as Charles Hoskinson had not, had not seen Trump at least since the inauguration because that was the extent of this person's knowledge. So anyway, the other thing that was interesting is we also reported that Ripple had pitched Trump on this reserve, but in order to make it seem more legitimate and that also the fact that XRP should be in it more legitimate, they pitched Saul as being part of the reserve.

serve. So also very interesting. But now let's talk about like a potential announcement that might be coming out Thursday, which is the day we're recording. We waited as long to record as we could to see if this announcement would come out before, but has not. However, maybe this is a clue. David Sachs, the crypto and AIs are tweeted from his ex-account, quote, over the past decade, the federal government sold approximately $195,000 Bitcoin for proceeds of $366 million. If the government had held the Bitcoin, it would be worth over $17 billion today. That's how much it has cost American taxpayers not to have a long-term strategy. So I don't know, the way I read this was maybe it was a hint of whatever this announcement will be.

David, what did you think of what David Sachs said here? It's interesting because I actually got a little bit into it with Jim Channos, who is a legendary stock investor, who yesterday said, you know, how could we even be thinking about? having a strategic crypto reserve in Bitcoin when, you know, we would potentially use debt. And obviously, as you just saw, you know, David Sachs talking about, you know, the former and the fact that, you know, we have as a country taken, you know, Bitcoin, you know, I think the Marshall's office has taken in hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin. And so I know that Senator Lumas has talked about potentially repatriating that into part of

obviously the reserve here. At the end of the day, you know, Bitcoin's role in global markets is different for everybody. I think my colleague, Jeff, has been on here talking about it. I think you've had hundreds of people talking about Bitcoin's role in markets. The way I've always thought about it for eight plus years is that it's an insurance policy against instances of global fiat debasement. I'll say that again. It is an insurance policy against instances of global fiat the basement. Chamatha Palo Paldia basically said it brilliantly in 2013. It is a basically schmuck insurance. It's code-based, it's fixed supply. has all the decentralization features, and it is potentially going to act as a hedge

against historically human-created currency devaluation. And so that's something that, like the S&P 500 or other different indexes, do not do. And so do I think it has a purpose? Absolutely. You know, I think Steve Ratner also, I got into it with him a little bit. I've been very active on Twitter, unfortunately, this week. Steve Ratner, who I think serves as the chairman of Willa advisors, which is Michael Bloomberg's family office, basically also put this into question. And I effectively said, well, Bitcoin has been up about 38,230% in the last 10 years,

whereas the dollar has lost about 30 to 35% of its value in the same time in the last 10 years. And so I think that alone should create at least some talking discussions or some conversations about the value of putting this asset into a reserve. But one question. So do you, just from this tweet, do you think that where this is going is that they saw the backlash about XRP and or Ripple, we should call it, because I think XRP is their PR spin from back 2017, 2018, when they changed the name. But do you think

that, you know, now Ripple and ATA will be included still? I obviously have no insight into that, no direct knowledge of that. I have been, you know, spending some more time in D.C. and talking to policymakers and talking to those that are, you know, trying to get in front of this, I can tell you that, you know, stable coins are definitely the forefront of what they're working on. I think they want to get stable coin regulation done sometime in the next quarter. That's probably going to be a conglomeration of the Genius Act and the Stable Coin Act that Congressman Stile and French Hill have put forth at the beginning of this year. So I know that that,

is something that you're taking very seriously. As a reserve, I can't comment on that because I don't have any direct knowledge about that. But to your point, yes, I also look at crypto-twitter and I also obviously see the sentiment. And I can imagine that David Sachs and Bo Hines have probably received a fair amount of comments on that. And I think there's been a lot of different conjecture over the last few days about there being two tiers where Bitcoin is. potentially the reserve tier, and then there's a weighted average of a smaller index of digital assets. I think at the end of the day, what the president and the administration have put forth as an America First agenda. And what does that mean is that they want to support American founders,

they want to support American businesses. And so I think they're looking at ways where they can support American founders and businesses within the digital asset ecosystem. And I don't know if that's going to consist of them putting those assets in the reserve. Again, from my stand, tried to do is I tried to look at the analysis. I tried to look at what those do and tried to point out if they're used, you know, frequently, if they're being used to build new businesses, that could be beneficial to the United States and to the economy as a large. And it just didn't seem that there was a lot of activity there. Yeah, yeah. And even that notion of like an American-made crypto is kind of unusual because crypto is supposed to be more about decentralization.

and the ones that are most decentralized are, yeah, not really tied to the U.S. because probably they are decentralized. But now let's talk about the summit because so at the time that we're recording, the list we have so far of the attendees includes Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, Artune Seify, the CEO of Pracken, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the founders of Gemini, also in exchange. Vlad Tennev, CEO of Robin Hood, also another exchange. Brad Grawlinghouse of Ripple, Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy, which is aligned with Bitcoin,

Kyle Simani, managing partner at Multi-Coin Capital, which is more aligned with Salana, and, frankly, also David Sachs directly because he used to be an investor there. Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm, and Zach Wickoff, co-founder of World Liberty Phi. There are a few others who are less well-known, but just in general, what did you think of this list? I think I put this out today. It's great to see this finally come to fruition, and I hope this is one of many. I think there were supposed to be something a little bit grander in vision, but I think that there have been so many cooks in the kitchen that have been trying to fight for their piece of pie,

that they had to bring it into a smaller kind of realm. I will have to say that, you know, exchanges Vladte Nev recently just posted that, you know, the tokenization of assets, stocks and bonds and other different, you know, assets is something that, you know, they firmly believe in and they believe in the power of. We agree with that. We believe that that's going to be an unlock in this space. Am I thrilled that a bunch of centralized exchanges are going to be present? Not necessarily, because I don't believe that they represent the true innovation of digital assets and crypto. Would I like to have seen the centralized exchanges potentially present there? Yes, because that gives them a different view of the market.

would I have liked to have seen more people that have had a backing or a relevance in the regulatory side of things like a Katie Hahn or Rebecca Riding? Rebecca has been at the forefront of this for years and I think she would have been a brilliant cast of characters into this. So I do think that it's a fine list. I think that, you know, again, from what I've seen from the outside, that I think they want to do something bigger. But unfortunately, you know, being crypto as we are, we created a, big mess for ourselves, and so they now had to do something smaller. And I hope, as I said again, that David and Bo and the team there really tried to do more of these on a regular basis. I know, for instance, that the SEC has something on March 21st, where they're bringing people in to

talk about, you know, how digital assets could or cannot be securities and transfer into those. I know that the CFTC is talking about things like a sandbox to allow policymakers to actually test these applications in these platforms. There's a lot of listening. And when I was there last week, there was a lot of listening. There was a lot of note taking. They really want to try to get this right. And I encourage them to keep doing these things because there's a lot of information. There's a lot of different opinions. There's a lot of people who are obviously going to have their own opinions and try to push their own agendas. But we need more people who are practitioners. We need more people that have had a more independent lens. And so I'm hoping that they continue to do more of these.

Yeah, by the way, I just wanted to mention for people who maybe didn't see this, our regulatory reporter Veronica Irwin is the one who broke that story about how they had to switch from the council to the summits because there was a little bit too much fighting over who should get a seat on the crypto council, at least amongst the crypto community. So they switched to these summits. All right, well, last question here, we have seen, you know, as I mentioned at the beginning a show that the markets have, you know, just been kind of a very up and down on all this different news. And so I wondered what you thought would happen to the markets after the event.

Like, do you view this as kind of more a sell-the-news event or something that will catalyze more bullish price action? Sure. This is something I wrote about a few weeks ago in our blog. I equated a lot of what's happening here with the Reagan administration in the 1980s and 1981, where before the inauguration and Ronald Reagan, the markets, the stock markets went up about 2 to 3 percent. And there was a few periods of months where the market continued to go up. And then it went down like a nose dive. And that was because the markets and the investor sentiment basically were waiting for this new policy rebirth that the Reagan administration promised. And so finally up until August of 1981,

you saw the markets continually go down and down and down. The sentiment was poor. And then they came out with regulation and with new policy that had tax cuts, it had things that were very positive for companies and small businesses. And then the markets, as you can see, if you expand out from 1981 onward, obviously did very well. And so I think we're in a same place right now is that we're waiting for real structure. We're waiting for real policy. We're waiting for these things not only to be talked about, but to be down on paper.

And so I think that's what we're all waiting for, whether that starts tomorrow. I think it's a starting point. I don't know if we're getting anything concrete, but I think it's a starting point. And I think we all need to appreciate the process because this is unwrapping and undoing years and years of the opposite, where we were attacked and we were the enemies and we were the villains. And now we're trying to, you know, change the tables. All right. Well, thank you so much, David, for coming on Unchained.

My pleasure. Don't forget, next up is the weekly news recap today presented by Wondercraft AI. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Mantle is revolutionizing its on-chain financial hub. Powered by a $4 billion treasury and proven products like Mantle Network and MEath protocol, Mantle is launching three innovation pillars. Enhanced index fund for optimized crypto exposure, Mantle Banking for blockchain-powered banking,

and Mantle X for AI-driven innovation. Experience the future of finance with Mantle, and follow Mantle on X to stay tuned. Welcome to this week's Crypto Roundup. Today, we dive into Ripple's calculated push to include Solana in Trump's controversial crypto reserve, while Cardano's Charles Hoskinson finds himself left out of the White House Crypto Summit. Jump trading is making a U.S. comeback.

Ave considers revamping its tokenomics, and the White House is backing the repeal of the IRS DeFi broker rule. The SEC continues its retreat, dropping lawsuits against Cracken and Yuga Labs, while Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian joins a bid to buy TikTok and put it on chain. Meanwhile, North Korea's Lazarus Group converts its stolen ether into Bitcoin, and Ethereum's Pectra upgrade hits another test net snag. Plus, the Ethereum Foundation names new leadership, and Buckelly tells the IMF he's not stopping his Bitcoin buys.

Thanks for tuning in to the weekly news recap. Let's begin. Ripple pitched Solana to bolster XRP's inclusion in U.S. Crypto Reserve. Ripple executives, including CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Chief Legal Officer Stu Alderode, lobbied President Donald Trump to include Solana in the newly announced U.S. Crypto Reserve, Unchained reported on Wednesday. According to sources familiar with the discussions, the move aimed to lend credibility to the reserve, which prominently featured XRP, Saul, and ADA, but initially omitted Bitcoin and Ether. Following Trump's

announcement, which Unchained reported yesterday, came at the surprise of White House and D.C. Insiders, XRP surged 28%, though skepticism remains over whether the reserve is a strategic initiative or a public relations move. This poses the question of whether large amounts of these tokens will be accumulated or if the plan primarily benefits early investors. Garlinghouse responded to criticism by emphasizing unity in the crypto industry, stating, maximalism is the enemy of progress. Glad to see POTUS recognizing we live in a multi-chain world. Further details may emerge at Friday's White House Crypto Policy Summit, where the administration is expected to clarify the reserve's structure and strategy. Cardano's Charles Hoskinson excluded from Crypto Summit. One notable

absence has been confirmed at the White House Crypto Summit, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. Despite 80's inclusion in the reserve alongside XRP and Solana, a White House source told unchained that Hoskinson and his team are not involved in policy discussions, and were not invited. They are running around town trying to push their own sort of narrative, the source said. Hoskinson was previously rumored to have attended a MAGA Inc. fundraising dinner, but reports indicate he was instead at ETH Denver. Meanwhile, A-Dade's price spiked 100% following Trump's announcement before settling lower. With the summit expected to clarify the reserve structure, Hoskinson's exclusion raises questions about Cardano's actual role in the administration's crypto

reserve. Sam Bankman-Fried tries to rewrite his story from behind bars. Sam Bankman-Fried isn't staying quiet behind bars. In a new interview with Tucker Carlson, the former FTX CEO hinted that his shift toward Republican donations in 2022 may have contributed to his 25-year sentence. In 2020, I was center-left and gave to Biden's campaign, SBF said. By late 222, I was giving to Republicans privately as much as Democrats. And that started becoming known right around FTX's collapse, so that probably played a role. Moreover, he claimed that he doesn't think he was a criminal. SBF also took aim at the SEC, calling it something out of a nightmare, under former chair

Gary Gensler. When asked if he sought political favors during his trial, he denied it, but reports indicate his parents have been engaging with Trump's circle, potentially laying the groundwork for a pardon request. Now housed at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, SBF says he spends his time eating rice and beans, claiming he's been abandoned by former allies while awaiting his appeal. Jump Trading rebuilds crypto operations in the U.S. Chicago-based trading giant Jump is reportedly ramping up its cryptocurrency operations in the U.S. after scaling back amid regulatory uncertainty. The firm, which had significantly reduced its digital asset division in 2023, is now actively hiring

crypto engineers and policy experts to navigate the evolving regulatory landscape. Jumps retreat from the U.S. market followed scrutiny after the collapse of Terra's Luna and the FTX bankruptcy. Last year, its crypto unit Jump Crypto spun off its wormhole protocol and saw its workforce reduced by half. Additionally, subsidiary Time O'Shaun settled a $123 million dollar SEC investigation tied to TerraUSD without admitting wrongdoing. Now, as regulatory conditions shift, Jump is expanding its trading activities globally while reestablishing its U.S. presence. The firm also contributed $15 million to Fair Shake, a super PAC supporting pro-Crypto lawmakers in the 2024 election cycle, signaling its renewed commitment to shaping crypto policy.

Ave unveils Avanomics overhaul with $24 million buyback plan. platform Ave is considering a major tokenomics transformation as part of its newly proposed Avanomics update. Introduced by Mark Zeller of the Ave Chan Initiative ACI, a community-driven group within AVE. The proposal outlines weekly AVE buybacks of $1 million for six months, with potential increases based on revenue growth. The initiative aims to optimize liquidity management, protocol revenue distribution, and staking incentives. A key component of the overhaul is the introduction of anti-GHO, a non-transferable ERC20 token that will replace the current discount on AVE's GHO stable coin and reward Stacave holders. Additionally, the proposal introduces Umbrella,

a revamped safety module designed to protect users from billions in potential bad debt. Zeller called the plan the most important proposal in Avey's history, highlighting the protocol's strong financial position and growing dominance in the defy lending sector, where it currently leads with 41, billion dollars in total value locked. White House-backed Senate vote to overturn IRS DeFi broker rule. The White House has thrown its support behind efforts to repeal the controversial IRS DeFi broker rule, which would have classified decentralized finance businesses as brokers, requiring them to collect and report user data to the IRS. The regulation introduced late in the Biden administration was widely criticized as unworkable by crypto advocates. The Senate voted 70 to

to 27 on Tuesday to overturn the rule with support from both Republicans and some Democrats. The resolution introduced by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Mike Carey now moves to the House of Representatives before reaching the president's desk. David Sachs, the Trump administration's AI and crypto policy advisor, on Tuesday called the IRS rule an 11th hour attack on the crypto industry. If signed into law, the repeal would block the IRS from reintroducing similar regulations in the future, marking a significant victory for Defi advocates and the broader crypto sector. SEC keeps dropping crypto lawsuits.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its lawsuits against Crypto Exchange Cracken and NFT firm, Yuga Labs, marking another significant step in the agency's retreat from aggressive crypto enforcement. Kraken, which had been fighting allegations of operating as an unregistered securities broker and co-mingling funds, announced that the SEC had closed its case without penalties, business changes, or admissions of wrongdoing. The exchange called the decision a turning point for crypto regulation in the US. Similarly, Yuga Labs, the company behind BoredApe Yacht Club NFTs, confirmed that the SEC had closed its three-year-long investigation into whether its NFTs and ApeCoin were securities. This is a huge win for NFTs and all creators, Yuga Lab said.

Moreover, the SEC agreed on Tuesday to drop its enforcement case against crypto-asset trading firm Cumberland DRW. Alexis Ohanian joins bid to buy TikTok and put it on-chain. Reddit co-founder Alexis O'Hanian has joined Project Liberty's bid to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations, with plans to bring the social media giant on-chain using blockchain technology. Ohanian confirmed his involvement on X, saying, users should own their data, creators should own their audience, period. The bid, led by Frank McCourt, aims to restructure TikTok's data model by integrating frequency, a decentralized social media protocol.

If successful, TikTok would shift toward a blockchain-based system, giving users more control over their personal data and online presence. Crypto-investor Kevin O'Leary is also backing the initiative. The acquisition push comes as the U.S. government forces bite-dance to divest TikTok's U.S. operations over national security concerns. While Ohanian has previously explored blockchain-based social media projects, this deal could mark one of the largest integrations of Web3 technology into a mainstream platform. Lazarus Group converts Stolen ETH.

The Lazarus Group, the North Korean state-backed hacking collective, has converted the $1.3 billion worth of ether stolen in the by-bit exploit into Bitcoin, primarily using Thorchain's Asgardex, decentralized exchange and coin mixer ex, according to blockchain security experts. Taylor Monaghan, head of security at Metamask, tracked the movement of funds, confirming that the hackers successfully funneled the stolen assets out of traceable circulation. Her analysis shows that nearly 49% of the transactions went through Thorchain, despite ByBit CEO Ben Joe's attempts to halt the flow of funds. Joe reached out to EX Che, but the platform instead posted his email publicly and refused to intervene.

On-chain investigator Ember CN estimated that Thorchain collected $5.5 million in fees while processing transactions linked to the hack. While a small portion of the stolen funds remains traceable, Monaghan and other security researchers believe that the vast majority is now beyond recovery. Ethereum's Pectra upgrade faces setback on Sepolia TestNet. Ethereum's upcoming Pectra upgrade encountered a technical issue on the Sipolia test net, temporarily disrupting transaction processing. The problem stemmed from a misconfigured custom deposit contract, which prevented execution layer clients from including transactions in blocks. Ethereum Foundation Protocol support lead. Tim Bako acknowledged the glitch shortly after deployment, stating, we're investigating an issue caused by the custom deposit contract on Sepolia.

Developers quickly coordinated a fix, restoring block transactions after about five hours. However, infrastructure providers and wallets may require note updates to ensure full stability. This is the second test net issue for Pectra following earlier validator misconfigurations on Holeski that delayed finalization. Ethereum developers had initially planned a main net launch in early April, but ongoing test net challenges could impact the timeline. The upgrade is expected to enhance scalability, security, and validator staking limits, making it one of Ethereum's most ambitious updates since the merge. Ethereum Foundation appoints co-executive directors. The Ethereum Foundation has announced a major leadership restructuring, naming Shiao Wei Wang and Tomash Stanchak as co-executive directors,

while former director Ayamiyyyy transitions to the role of president. Wong, a longtime Ethereum researcher, has been instrumental in Ethereum's scaling efforts, including sharding and the merge. Stanchak, the founder of Nethermind, brings extensive experience in Ethereum's execution layer. Their appointments follow growing community criticism over the foundation's leadership, with some calling for Miyaguchi's complete departure, due to concerns over Ethereum's competitive positioning. Meanwhile, former Ethereum researcher Danny Ryan has taken a different path, joining Ethereumize, a newly launched initiative focused on promoting Ethereum's adoption in traditional finance.

Ryan described his goal as building an institution that ensures Ethereum becomes a key part of the global financial system. Core Ethereum developer Tim Bako called the leadership transition One of the most consequential turning points in Ethereum's history, as the foundation aims to strengthen its role in the evolving crypto landscape. FunBits, Buckele doesn't bow to IMF. El Salvador's president, Naïd Bukele, has a message for the International Monetary Fund. No, it's not stopping. The IMF, which approved a $1.4 billion loan in December, is now demanding El Salvador halt Bitcoin purchases, liquidate its Bitcoin trust and disclose all government wallet addresses.

Buckele isn't having it. Just as the IMF laid out its new rules, El Salvador's Bitcoin office announced it had added another BTC to its national reserves, because of course it did. The country now holds 6th 101 BTC, $510 million. Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor jumped in, declaring, Bitcoin adoption is unstoppable. Buckele never want to miss a punchline,

fired back with proof of work, proof of whining. The IMF wants compliance, but Buckela seems more interested in stacking sats. The showdown continues, and so do the Bitcoin buys. And that's all. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed this recap, go to Unchained Crypto.com newsletter, that is Unchained Crypto.com newsletter and sign up for our free newsletter so that you can stay up to date with the latest in crypto. Unchained is produced by Laura Shin with help from Matt Pilchard,

Juan Aranovich, Megan Gavis, Pam Majimdar, and Margaret Curia. The weekly recap was written by Juan Aranovich and edited by Stephen Erlich. Thanks for listening.