Front Stage Exit: Diamond Rhino

The Wolverine Stack debate misses the point (and needles)

Brady Dale — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 04:12:14 GMT

Whenever some big change hits the world, the conversation goes the same way:

People on the frontier dive in and pat each other on the back for seeing the future (mistakes get made).
The mainstream rolls its eyes, clutches its pearls, wrings its hands and says “tsk, tsk, tsk” (opportunities get missed).
Eventually and write very long posts about them. No one reads both.

Diamond Rhino, the inimitable podcast, sits in the middle of all that. It puts the frontier and the mainstream together on one show and asks if there aren’t some good points made on both sides.

So, here we are in week two of our coverage of peptides, the industry that’s already bigger than video games were when everyone got surprised that video games were bigger than Hollywood about a decade ago.

The only people who aren’t behind on this issue are in too deep.

So, this week, I dig into claims focus have made about BPC-157 (mostly) and also TB-500, the two grey market peptides that often get combined into what’s known as “The Wolverine Stack” — because they are each thought to help people heal.

It’s just that they don’t help everyone heal! And when they do help, results vary! And also people keep making themselves sick, but not because of what was put in the vials.

More on all of this on today’s episode. Are you hyped? (we’re against hype about everything except this newsletter).

But here’s the part you’re not going to expect but is actually going to really help ground you through the conversation: We’re going to start with some really modest claims from people you have never heard of.

Anecdotes aren’t data, but they are information.

🖤 To subscribe to Diamond Rhino in a pod player, click on any of these links:

Sources

Joe Rogan Experience #1683 - Andrew Huberman
June 27, 2024

BPC-157: Everything You Need to Know—Benefits, Risks, Dosing, & Delivery Methods
Quinn Stilson MD
June 12, 2025

Why I Stopped BPC-157 and TB-500 Peptides
April 26, 2024
Bill Maeda

I Took The Wolverine Stack & My Thoughts On BPC-157 & TB-500
Dr. Josh Jagoda
October 19, 2025

My Experience with BPC-157 | Peptides That ENHANCE HEALING?
Stephanie Wolff, PA
July 15, 2022

My BPC-157 story
Jake Watkins
Aug 20, 2025

How BPC157 and TB500 Changed My Life A Personal Account (Peptide Therapy)
Gabriel Picado
June 23, 2024

I Analyzed the Wolverine Stack Evidence—Here's What I Found (BPC-157 & TB500 Peptides)
Dr. Chris Raynor | Not Your Everyday Ortho
March 14, 2026

Doctor Admits — I Was WRONG About The Wolverine Stack
Dr. Ashley Froese
Mar 10, 2026

Notes

Jake Watkins follow up video, Jan 6, 2026

14 Peptides Are About to Become Legal Again — What This Means for Your Health, Meto, March 12, 2026

Nevada Regulators Fine Peptide Providers at Anti-Aging Festival Where Two Women Became Critically Ill, Propublica, March 13, 2026

A Las Vegas Festival Promised Ways to Cheat Death. Two Attendees Left Fighting for Their Lives, Propublica, July 29, 2025

Music in the episode:

“Data Breach” by FASSounds

“Fortnite Roblox Minecraft Video Game Music,” by MFCC

“Abstract Glitch Hop” by The Mountain

“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube

All from Pixabay Music

What we talk about when we talk about peptides

Brady Dale — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:11:39 GMT

Images from Science Leads The Way (A.C. Gilbert, 1959) and Thrills of Tomorrow #17 (1954, by Ray Palais)

Correction (March 30, 2026, 12:26 PM CST): At one point in the episode, I compare Ozempic to Wegovy. I should have compared it to Zepbound, instead.

If you had a coworker who seemed to transform one month, what would you do?

What if she seemed to have more pep in her step, a glow in her skin, more focus and more charm? Would you ask her what was going on?

You might assume she had found a fresh romance, but what if she reached into her bag, pulled out a little pouch and opened it up to show you a bunch of nasal sprays and said: “I’ve been shooting these on the reg and I feel like I’m 17 again.”

If she swore to you that she knows a dozen other people doing the same thing and that they all report similar results, with no noticeable downsides, what would you do?

Would you order a few bottles?

That’s roughly a conversation that’s taking place on the West coast quite a bit right now. I am willing to bet it’s coming to your backyard sooner than you think. The driver of the conversation: synthetic peptides. Sprays and injections that enter our body and imitate little proteins that have always been good at telling our bodies to do the things we need them to do.

Peptides have been an ambient topic for me over the last three or four years. It all started with Ozempic, of course, but I’ve come across people experimenting with other peptides as well, for things like healthy skin.

It felt like one of those frontier topics that I should have a look into, but once I started poking around YouTube videos and podcasts exploring the topic, I realized how exciting this new kind of hacking really looks to be.

Here’s a heuristic about technology that has never let me down: If lots of smart people and smart money moves into a sector, it can’t lose. Something valuable will come out of it.

Subscribe now

We are in the rebel phase of peptide experimentation and entrepreneurship. It’s a point at which it makes sense to look directly at the rhetoric around peptides in order to see whether or not it sounds similar to (perhaps misguided) rhetoric we have heard about other topics in other times.

This is not a peptides explainer. This is an exploration of the explanations. All I want to convince you of is this: an important conversation about healthcare, health hacking and health sovereignty is underway in this country.

And, of course, there are major vested interests naysaying the whole conversation. Also, Martin Shkreli naysays it.

🖤 To subscribe to Diamond Rhino in a pod player, click on any of these links:

Sources

Silicon Valley's new miracle drug
March 6, 2026
Good Work

How Peptides Conquered the Internet
Feb 13, 2026
Search Engine

The Booming Business of Chinese Peptides
Dec 19, 2025
Odd Lots

The Great Peptide Debate, Musk Driving on the Moon, AI Coming for Zuck’s Job, Unitree S1
TBPN
March 23, 2026
Martin Shkreli v. Max Marchione

The Truth About Popular Peptides (What Works, What’s Overhyped) | Peptide Tier List pt.1
Dec 22, 2025
Dr. Alex Tatem

Dr. Josh Axe: On Mitochondrial Health, Peptide Therapy and Parasite Infections | TUH #205
The Ultimate Human
Gary Brecka
Sept 30, 2025

Before You Start Peptides: A Doctor Answers Your Biggest Questions
Nov 29, 2025
Dr. Ashley Froese

Joe Rogan Experience #2376 - Brigham Buhler
Sept 9, 2025

Narrative note

I’m super skeptical of personal stories from founders and influencers. I included one tiny one. The low trustworthiness of personal storytelling at this point obviously complicates this narrative, and something I will work to remain mindful of going forward.

Notes

The Peptide Craze, Ground Truths

Life on Peptides Fees Amazing, NY Mag

People are buying unregulated, injectable peptides from Chinese factories. Are they safe?**

I Talked to 100 People on PEPTIDES - Here’s What They Said, Feb 10, 2026, Dr. Ashley Froese

They Went on Ozempic—and Gave Up on Life, by Evan Gardner, The Free Press, March 26, 2026

The Ozempicization of the Economy, Kyla Scanlon, March 26, 2026

Certain Bulk Drug Substances for Use in Compounding that May Present Significant Safety Risks, FDA

Which 14 of the 19 Peptides Are Becoming Legal Again?, OpenLoop, March 13, 2026

Music in the episode:

“Data Breach” by FASSounds

“Fortnite Roblox Minecraft Video Game Music,” by MFCC

“Abstract Glitch Hop” by The Mountain

“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube

All from Pixabay Music

Yes, prediction markets have won, but why do they feel so gross? (with Kate Irwin)

Brady Dale — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 22:11:35 GMT

Image adapted from Key Comics #1 (1944, Henry Kiefer)

I feel weird about prediction markets. I think a lot of us do?

Those of us who feel weird about them call it gambling. Those of us who think they are great prefer “gaming.” Our whole country is in the middle of a big conversation about whether or not prediction markets are on balance good or on balance bad.

So, I invited someone who made her beat gaming — the kind of gaming where people try to have fun more than they try to make money (though she was covering crypto gaming, so that line got blurry too, in all fairness), the great Kate Irwin.

You know her from Decrypt, PCMag and Blockworks. Now she’s leading content at the vault company Veda.

She broke the fall of a major crypto gaming operation, Neon Shrapnel.
And GameStop bagging on NFTs.
She made some waves last last year with her big take on the industry, “Extraction Isn’t the Only End Game.”

In this episode, we hear from a number of proponents of prediction markets, from key moments in the history of this sector: before they were legal here, amid the election of 2024 and afterward, as they started to settle in as a clear industry in the United States.

As I edited this episode, I realized that I don’t represent my views on this topic as well as I should. As usual, my general approach is: “Let’s wait and see.”

However. Most use on prediction markets now is sports betting.

Sports betting is bad.1 As a great man once said: “That’s a judgement call and I’m making it.”

You can see it in the fact that we have more and more scandals in sports.

I don’t even care about sports. I don’t watch them. I don’t follow them, but it’s clear to anyone who cares to look that gambling not only corrupts the game but also hurts enough of the bettors to make it not actually worth it societally.

The big idea of prediction markets is that people would bet on things that would help societally. Like, could we set up markets on, for example, which presidential candidate is likely to yield a better overall employment rate? Or a lower national deficit?

As explains in a quote (admittedly, from quite a few years ago) that I clipped from an old episode of Epicenter (linked below), you usually can’t get a lot of liquidity into questions like that. People just don’t find them that interesting.

The tough question that Irwin speaks to a lot in this episode is insiders.

Is society better off if prediction markets give them a profit motive to reveal privileged information by making a bet on something that they are more informed about than anyone else?
Or is society worse off, because those insiders hover up all the money from retail traders who are making bets on public information and vibes?

On that one, I’m a little bit sympathetic to the Hanson view that it’s good to get that information out there, albeit indirectly. But there will be weird edge cases. For example, the Israeli reservist charged for placing bets using privileged military information.

has a good post up today about people betting on the war in Iran. We can’t know for sure that insiders were placing bets, but the sudden rush of wagers just before the attack looks suspicious. And that’s not the only event that looks suspicious.

As Racket reports, Democrats have prepared legislation to forbid Federal employees from placing bets, but I would not bet on that legislation going anywhere. At least not in this session.

Even in crypto, some influential folks are starting to raise their eyebrows. I’m a regular listener to Castle Island Ventures’ weekly news roundup podcast. is starting to give the markets side eye. He suspects retail will get out of the game, soon, as they realize how outclassed they are in most markets.

On the other hand, prediction markets offer some good features for bettors. First of all, their odds are just much more legible.

Second, sports books also stack the deck against bettors. If you are any good at placing wagers, sports books will just kick you off. and his producer Lidia Jean Kott broke all this down in season 4 of their podcast, Against the Rules.

Prediction markets won’t do this because you aren’t betting against Polymarket or Kalshi. You’re betting against another user (you don’t know which one, but you are). So they don’t care if you’re good or bad. They just like your liquidity.

So it is fair to say that prediction markets are different in kind from sports books. OK. But are they different in consequence?

If we were getting lots of compelling insights about the fate of companies or the fate of policy in the U.S. out of these things, I might feel differently. But we mainly seem to be getting a new way for corrupt politicians to max extract and for nobodies to lose money.

These are some of the topics Irwin and I explore in today’s pod. In this post, I wrote more of what I actually think about prediction markets, because I don’t think I say it very well in the episode.

That’s okay though! Kate does a great job making her take clear! So listen for Kate!

One last thing: As I was researching clips to make for this episode, I stumbled on this video about not making rookie mistakes:

I thought I might make a clip from it as something orthogonal for Kate and I to discuss, but, to be honest, I didn’t even understand it. It made me feel like even dumber money. Buy markets on the future at your own risk, friends. Looks pretty rough out there.

Sources

The Folly of Prediction
Steven Levitt
Freakonomics
2011

Robin Hanson: Futarchy, Prediction Markets And The Challenge Of Disruptive Technology
Epicenter
2015

Polymarket CEO says his prediction market is “the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now.”
Anderson Cooper and Shayne Coplan
2025

Why the Media Got the 2024 Election Wrong
Tom Schmidt, Robert Leshner and Haseeb Qureshi
The Chopping Block
2024

Prediction Markets and the “Suckerifcation” Crisis
Charlie Warzel and
2025

Show notes

Meta layoffs — this was weird. We discussed this as a hypothetical market on the show and then it happened, right after we taped.

Male suckerification crisis

Kalshi beats CFTC ahead of 2024 election

Polymarket comes back to USA

FBI raids Shayne Coplan’s home after 2024 election

Rain Protocol

Variant post on Melee

Disclosure

I have made a few bets on a few markets. I don’t trade. I let ‘em ride.

I threw in about $50 and spread it across several of the Democrats who were favorites to get the Democratic Party’s nomination for President. I don’t actually care about this race, I just noticed that the prices for all of them were so low that if any of the ones I bet on won, it would more than make up for my losses on the other.

Of course a dark horse could easily hit and I’ll lose it all. So it goes.

I also have roughly $20 in on whether or not we will learn aliens exist this year. I bought that more as hopium than because I actually think it will work out. I did it right after Trump announced he was asking Hegseth to reveal what the military really knows (looking at your Air Force — you guys have been so sketch).

As we know, I love this topic.

Kate and I actually discussed this but as I was editing I decided to cut it for time as one of the weaker bits. So the same info is now here in the post.

There was one good part in the tape I was sad to cut. After saying which bets I’d made, Kate basically says, “Congratulations, Brady. You’re exit liquidity.”

Not wrong.

By the way, it baffles me how the same reporters who love to say everyone buying cryptocurrency is a moron will also tweet about their game day bets. It’s true that most coins and tokens will amount to nothing, but at least there’s a chance they might power a real product. Every bet is purely zero sum, totally ephemeral and has no chance of making the world better at all. None! Zilch! Square this circle for me, babies?

Blood of the Bitcoin books

Brady Dale — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:45:24 GMT

Illustration from The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1895, drawn by William Strang)

How many novels have we seen so far about some numbnuts taking a job at a Silicon Valley startup? Lots.

But what we haven’t seen nearly so much of, proportionally, have been books that deal with the world of blockchains. That despite the fact that nonces, hashrates and memes have powered a whole hell of a lot of real-world drama. From scams to billionaires to nation-state meltdowns to cyber-robbery, crypto has veered wildly into the edgy zones where fiction breathes.

A part of the problem may be that, as pointed out in 2022, the only books that can get a deal in American publishing focus on the sort of subjects that make an NPR listener say “so important” and “thank you” in that hushed tone of the yes-very-concerned.

I think that’s part of the story. “Crypto” is definitely poisonous among that set. (I may or may not know something about trying to get bookstores — which have the same sensibility — to give the author of a book about cryptocurrency some attention.)

But there’s another problem: The crypto world barely cares about reading books about itself.

This is something that Molly J. Zuckerman and I have been discussing, privately, for some time. Molly is a long time crypto journalist, and she used it in a very real and daily way before she ever started writing about this technology.

So I asked Molly to come talk to me about a new crypto novel that has hit the virtual shelves of Amazon, Blood of the Bourgeoisie, by Michael Sullivan.

One problem with crypto fiction might be the fact that, as Molly points out in our conversation, most of the drama on chain, at the end of the day, is about pushing buttons on a laptop.

A lot of inanity has gone down in crypto, but I can’t think of any swordfights. And everyone knows that swordfights are crucial for good fiction.

But, there is this new novel. It’s about Bitcoin. In the world of this book, there is only Bitcoin. So Molly and I both read it (I confess that I was skimming pretty hard by the end) and we talk about it on today’s episode.

We also talk about some other books, too, so here is the complete list of the crypto books discussed in what follows, in the order that we give them appreciable attention:

Blood of the Bourgeoisie, by Michael Sullivan (the star of our show),
REKT: A Crypto Hallucination , by Chris Furlong (best supporting actor),
The Oracle: A Novel, by Ari Juels,
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall, by Zeke Faux,
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, by Nick Bilton and
Bitcoin Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich.

(Molly also namechecks some fiction books that bring up blockchain topics, but you’ll have to listen for those)

🖤 To subscribe to Diamond Rhino in a pod player, click on any of these links:

Next week…

Kate Irwin and I will discuss prediction markets, what folks have said about them and what we think.

This will be the second time Kate and I have talked about this weird world of ours. The first time was here:

@kateirwin and journalist @BradyDale is HERE!\n\nTimestamps:\n01:01 - How Brady got into crypto back in 2014\n03:15 - Hot takes on NFTs\n09:55 - What's going on with Aave?\n16:59 - Crypto vs TradFi + stablecoin predictions\n19:30 - Will another crypto firm join the ","username":"veda_labs","name":"Veda","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1937083372246798336/3ELNfUvR_normal.jpg","date":"2026-01-16T16:16:33.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_1028,c_limit,q_auto:best/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_88/kw6jr1lccg4ufpuv6i28","link_url":"https://t.co/5y8M5u7pH2"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":4,"retweet_count":4,"like_count":25,"impression_count":1119,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2012196928109621248/vid/avc1/1280x720/NR9aJUdQ_haFHq1k.mp4","belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

Sources

#25 Michael Sullivan - Blood of the Bourgeoise | The Best Fiction Novel About Bitcoin
The Bitcoin Broadcast
Nov 2025

Show notes

How to Send Money to the Wrong Side of the War
CoinDesk

How Tyler Winklevoss Converted His Biographer Into a Bitcoin Believer
CoinTelegraph

Dear Crypto: Read a Book Already
Blockworks

Net Society #65: Exit through the Grift Shop
February 2026

Victor Pelevin
Wikipedia

Tana French
Wikipedia

Origin story of this episode:

@LynAldenContact just dropped a banger 800 word review of Blood of the Bourgeoisie.\n\nThat's why.\n\nTHE BITCOIN FICTION BULL MARKET CONTINUES. ","username":"SullyMichaelvan","name":"Michael R. Sullivan","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1753153254089797632/nn1UV_yB_normal.jpg","date":"2026-02-05T15:10:53.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HAZyxuuXcAARNLJ.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/RUptiWolYt"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":28,"retweet_count":23,"like_count":362,"impression_count":32881,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

In court, Sam Bankman-Fried got more guilty by the day

Brady Dale — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:11:14 GMT

SBF under cross-examination by Danielle Sassoon, in 2023 (Drawing: Brady Dale)

A jury of his peers found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on seven counts in 2023. Then Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

In case you’ve forgotten, he launched the crypto exchange that turned out to have a multibillion hole where it’s customer’s money should have been, late in 2022.

In recent days, SBF has attempted to exonerate his image in the public and he has sucked up to President Trump on social media as he campaigns for a pardon.

It would surprise me immensely if it worked, but his antics gave the journalists who were there to watch his trial a reason to have a reunion of sorts. We didn’t really reunite with each other. Several of them united just with me, over a video call, and all six of them I spoke to are now reunited in this podcast.

We revisited the trial, what about it stood out and what we remembered and how convincing we found the prosecution’s case against him (we found it convincing).

I’ve been following Sam since the first time I spoke to him amid DeFi summer in 2020. Then after his empire fell apart, I wrote a whole book about the guy.

My book, SBF: How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto’s Very Bad Good Guy, was the first to hit bookstore shelves. It isn’t the most famous, but it the only one that tells the full length of his story. The others that got attention really only cover about the last 15 minutes of his career, but mine goes back to the start of his days in the crypto trading game, right up through his arrival in U.S. prisons.

None of the books so far include in the trial, but this account puts a bunch of perspectives on the trial together. The goal of this dispatch was to look back and talk about what, with time, has become the most memorable parts of the trial — the bits that remain the post compelling. (plus, it’s a fun look under the hood at the reporting process).

Just in case time has caused your memories to fade a little, just in case you have started to wonder whether or not we might have been too quick to judge Bankman-Fried, I think this revisiting of his trial should lay any fermenting misgivings to rest.

🖤 To subscribe to Diamond Rhino in a pod player, click on any of these links:

Sources

Interviews with:

Andre Breganski, Decrypt;
Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge;
Crystal Kim, now of Investopedia, then of Axios;
Aleks Gilbert, DL News;
Ben Weiss, then of Fortune, now of Fortune and
Katie Baker, The Ringer.

Judging Sam: The Hail Mary That Wasn’t, Against the Rules, Nov. 1, 2023

Notes

Sam Bankman-Fried is waging a social media campaign for a pardon—but President Trump will not give him one, says the White House, Fortune, Feb 4. 2026

The Year That Cryptocurrency Somehow Didn’t Die, The Ringer, Dec. 19, 2023

Michael Lewis Is Still Defending Sam Bankman-Fried, Institutional Investor, Nov. 6, 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty in FTX fraud case, Axios, Nov 2, 2023

Judge Blocks ‘Going Infinite’ Excerpt as ‘Inadmissible Hearsay’ at Sam Bankman-Fried Trial, Decrypt, Oct 31, 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t recall, The Verge, Oct 30, 2023

The Crypto Whistleblower at the Center of the Sam Bankman-Fried Storm, Rolling Stone, Oct. 23, 2023

Crypto Influencers and ‘Degenerates’ Flock to Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial, New York Times, October, 20, 2023

Caroline Ellison Was Supposed to Shock the SBF Trial. Instead, the Defense Team Has, The Ringer, Oct 16, 2023

SBF trial: FTX lacked funds to meet customer deposits over a year before collapse, witness says,(that forensic accountant) Axios, Oct 18, 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried was a no-good, very bad ex, Axios, Oct. 12, 2023

FTX used random numbers to generate the size of its insurance fund, The Block, October 9, 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried can’t shut up, Fortune, Oct 23, 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried leans on ‘dumb defendant defence’ as he faces life in prison, Decrypt, Oct 5, 2023

SBF overflow rooms wildness, NY Mag, Oct. 2023

Music:

“Data Breach” by FASSounds

“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube

From Pixabay Music

Bear market EthDenver, bull market regulators

Brady Dale — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 23:11:12 GMT

🤯 55% off subscription discount subscription offer

lasts forever! Wow!

Image based on work by Tony Montellaro, in Weird Tales of the Future #3 (Stanley Morse, 1952)

I was not at ETHDenver 2026. It’s the first one I have missed in several years.

But I still have a report for you, because I went through a bunch of the talks posted on YouTube that dealt with the evolving regulatory backdrop for the cryptocurrency world.

Regulation still seems like the key theme of the moment — to me. Plus, it’s also the most likely to serve as a catalyst for renewed enthusiasm about cryptocurrency. People were talking a ton about agents and ETH on stage this year, too, but I’m not going to hold my breath for that to make the market kick off.

Coinbase getting a proper exchange license, at long last, though? That could be a thing. Authorization to raise money selling tokens? Tokens that send profits back to investors with no doubts about getting slapped with a lawsuit?

Oh yes. That could be very real.

So I continue to follow along with the agencies. Congress is not going to get this done.

📼 Follow up on last week’s ep: Curious about how Bitcoin adapts when price tanks?

Sources:

All the sources this year came from videos posted on the EthDenver YouTube page.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins and SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce in Conversation
Feb 18, 2026

The Compliance Era: How Tax Regulation Is Reshaping Web3 | Patrick Camuso - Camuso CPA
Feb 18, 2026

The Identity Layer: Compliance as Core Crypto Infrastructure | Derek Woods - Persona
Feb 19, 2026

Why TradFi Stablecoins Need DeFi Stablecoins | Gerrit Hall - Curve Finance
Feb 18, 2026

Ethereum: The Next Chapter | Alex Stokes - Ethereum Foundation
Feb 19, 2026

Tokenization in 2026: What the Data Says | Dean Khan Dhillon - RWA.xyz
Feb 19, 2026

From Boring to Billions: How RWAs Won Crypto, and What's Next
Feb 18, 2026

Stablecoins as Infrastructure | Gerrit Hall, Jelena Djuric, DeFi Dave, and Katie Talati
Feb 18, 2026

RWAs: From Experiment to Exponential | Drake Breeding - Circle & Bhaji Illuminati - Centrifuge
Feb 18, 2026

Why Policy Needs Cypherpunks | Samuel Jacques Cloutier - Hash Directors
Feb 20, 2026 — Seriously watch this one 👇

Notes:

The Future of Crypto Banking | Jeff John Roberts , Caitlin Long & Rok Kopp
Feb 18, 2026

Peanut Butter & Watermelon: Financial Privacy in the Digital Age
Commissioner Hester M. Peirce
Remarks to the Science of Blockchain Conference
U.C. Berkeley
Aug. 4, 2025

Privacy in the House: Remarks at the Privacy and Financial Surveillance Roundtable
Commissioner Hester M. Peirce
Washington D.C.
Dec. 15, 2025

Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and amended Common Reporting Standard: OECD releases IT format for transmitting information and issues interpretative guidance
OECD
October 2, 2024

Economist Paul Krugman agrees: Bitcoin is for Exit

Brady Dale — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 23:11:06 GMT

Imagery based on Space War #6 (Charlton, 1960)

Imagine my surprise when I started going through crypto crash commentary in mainstream media, news shows and podcasts and found that economist Paul Krugman is on my side on one key point.

The commentator, who has always hated Bitcoin, concedes the one use case for Bitcoin that is — in my opinion — its most compelling: Its ability to evade capital controls.

Bitcoin is for exit. You can hear him say so in the first couple minutes of today’s episode of Diamond Rhino.

Wealth that needs to get out from under a government that’s not working for its owner can escape thanks to Bitcoin. It’s the most rarely used but most powerful use case.

If Krugman can see it, does that mean he will come around?

No.

He’s committed to the bit.

In fact, for some reason, after a decade-plus of talking about Bitcoin on the reg, the mainstream media is still treating the most recent massive drop in BTC price just like they have treated the past ones: Bitcoin is useless. We don’t see the purpose. It’s just a story. There’s no intrinsic value. It’s probably over this time.

Why are reporters in the west so committed to this bit? Do they love being wrong?

Weird flex, bro.

In this week’s episode of Diamond Rhino, we go through some of the latest takes on the drop in Bitcoin price from the names you know: CNBC, the FT, The Information and so on.

Did you hear any mainstream takes that I should have revisited? How fair do you think I was to these commentators?

Let me know in the comments or email me directly.

Note: As ever, I edit clips, but mainly to cut down rambling and for efficiency. I don’t change the speakers’ points or clip to make it look like they said something they didn’t really say. If you disagree, let me know. The fulls segments I used are all linked below.

To subscribe to Diamond Rhino in a pod player, click on any of these links:

🤯 55% discount subscription offer

lasts forever, too! Wow! Keep this site going for cheap!

Audio sources

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe: The latest bitcoin downturn doesn't bother me too much
CNBC w/ host Morgan Brennan
Feb 11, 2026

FT’s Jemima Kelly: Bitcoin’s value is zero and the scarcity argument is pretend
PowerLunch
Jemima Kelly with Kelly Evans
Feb 10, 2026

Behind the volatility in crypto: Bitcoin hovering around $69,000, ethereum near $2,000
MacKenzie Sigalos speaks with Andrew Ross Sorkin
CNBC
Feb 10, 2026

Bitcoin's Bumpy Ride Continues Trading Around $70,000
Isabelle Lee
Bloomberg
Feb 9, 2026

Bitcoin Slump Raises Questions About Crypto's Purpose
Bloomberg
Ed Ludlow talking with Jalak Jobanputra
Feb 9, 2026

Why the Crypto Story is Dying
Yueqi Yang
The Information. Host Akash Pasricha.
Feb. 6, 2025

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman Calls Bitcoin 'Total Bust'
Paul Krugman
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.
Feb 5, 2026

Other sources

Is This Crypto’s Fimbulwinter?, by Paul Krugman

Bitcoin is still about $70,000 too high, by Jemima Kelly, FT

The schtick is in, Front Stage Exit

Coming Attractions From the Division of Corporation Finance
James Moloney, Director, Division of Corporation Finance, SEC
Feb. 13, 2026

Bitcoin: Addresses with Balance > 1 BTC

Russia’s Sberbank plans crypto-backed loans to corporate clients

Are we the baddies? — Know Your Meme

Bitcoin Hashrate Falls 12% After US Winter Storms Hit Miners

Bitcoin: Percent Addresses in Profit

Bitcoin Difficulty Chart

Bitcoin Hashprice Index

Thanks for reading Front Stage Exit! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Music in the episode:

“Data Breach” by FASSounds

“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube

All from Pixabay Music

Thanks for listening! Let me know what you think!

Quantum Money, the apotheosis of cypherpunk

Brady Dale — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 23:22:21 GMT

Images in this are based on ones found in Atomic Comics #4 (1946) and Captain Science #7 (1951)

This podcast covers a new twist on the intersection of cryptocurrency and quantum computing. It’s got a wow factor.

If you think the quantum threat to Bitcoin is controversial, wait until you see what can be uncovered when you start to look into quantum applications.

There’s an idea that’s been floating around out there since 25 years before Satoshi dreamed up Bitcoin: Quantum Money.

We say BTC works like cash, but that’s not really true. If I hand you a dollar, no one has to witness that. The dollar in your pocket is the proof that you have it. The location of the dollar is the ledger.

No one needs to witness a cash transaction.

Bitcoin itself witnesses bitcoin transactions. We don’t mind. We like Bitcoin. It’s neutral. But there are trade-offs there. For example, Chainalysis and Elliptic are always watching. They can probably figure out who we are.

What if there were an electronic money that didn’t need witnesses?

That’s the promise of quantum money.

Quantum money allows the creation of objects, like physical coins, that can work over the internet. In fact, it may even be better than the internet? We may not even need wires. This stuff all gets super weird.

It’s like peering through Alice’s looking-glass.

All of this is completely theoretical. It’s a long way off. But it’s cool enough that maybe, just maybe, it allows a crypto stan to look at the future with less dread. To maybe even look ahead and feel a little dazzled.

Were you dazzled? It would be great to hear your thoughts.

To subscribe to Diamond Rhino on mobile, click on any of these links:

Sources

The Future is Quantum by Fabrizio Romano Genovese (NeverLocal/QSig/20Squares)
Dec 19, 2024
Fabrizio Romano Genovese
QuantumPunks Meetup

Quantum Crypto Acceleration
Dec 19, 2024
Nicola Grego
QuantumPunks Meetup

Quantum Punks with Alex and Nicola
May 7 2025
Alex Obadia and Nicola Greco
ZK Podcast

Quantum Cryptography Part 2
Nov. 1, 2023
Or Sattah
ZK Podcast

Other materials

The Quantum Punks Manifesto

Quantum Punks Meetups

The Quantum Bitcoin Summit

Bitcoin and the Quantum Problem – Part II: The Quantum Supremacy, Murmurations II by

Bitcoin developers are mostly not concerned about quantum risk, Murmurations II by Nic Carter

Restack this baby

As Frontier Tower grows, Network States take root in San Francisco

Brady Dale — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 23:16:28 GMT

Images from Amazing Stories #54 (1950) and Wonder Comics #13 (1947)

Announcement: I turned on monetization today. It would still be great if readers wanted to support the newsletter. For the first 44 days this is monetized, I’m offering a huge discount: 55% off, forever. Sign up now and it will be $2.25/month or $24.75/year for as long as you want to support this.

Today’s show is about a new outpost of crypto culture in San Francisco, where the idea of “Network States” has taken up permanent residence. Some entrepreneurs from Germany have purchased a 16-storey building and they are turning it into their first outpost of a nation of frontier nomads they hope to expand all over the world, ultimately enlisting 13 million citizens.

It’s called Frontier Tower. It’s not even a year old, but it’s going strong.

Have you heard about the robot fight clubs? Have you heard about Chinese peptide raves? Those were at Frontier Tower.

And this thing wants to go over all the world.

This is a story where crypto wealth meets urban downtowns in transition and the continued push and pull of visionary tech types and normie neighbors.

For me, this caught my attention because I started as a journalist covering innovation in cities. So obviously a startup experimenting in reviving the way urban areas work is going to grab me.

And the whole vibe is extremely crypto. So tune in for another exploration of crypto culture, and let me know what you think.

To subscribe to Diamond Rhino on mobile, click on any of these links:

Show notes

Sources:

Ep 62.Dr. Peptides
NET society
Jan 19, 2025

Jakob Drzazga of Frontier Tower on Network & City States
James of Ârc
Jan 9, 2026

Lit 6 - Christian Nagel - Building the Future : The Frontier Tower Vision
with Christian Nagel
Jan 7, 2026

Talk: The Story of Frontier Tower
Katia Yakovleva
SafetyWing
Dec 19, 2025

Laurence Ion
KGRAdb
Transhumanist Enlightenment Salon
Dec 3, 2025

Edge City — What is Frontier Tower
Katia Yakovleva
Nov 13, 2025

Inside Balaji’s Network State Vision | E2145
This Week in Startups
June 30, 2025

Who kills subcultures?
OK Banger, Christin Chong and Cameron Armstrong, hosts
May 27, 2025

Silicon Valley’s Plan to Dismantle Democracy
Taylor Lorenz
May 30, 2024

Other references:

Frontier Tower

On YouTube

‘Market Street is coming back to life’: The tech utopia trying to revitalize Mid-Market
SF Standard
May 15, 2025

Broken $100M dream city haven for utopians
Bloomberg

San Francisco Chronicle
May 18, 2025

The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of “Blues”
April 26, 2024

I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup
Sept 30, 2014

‘Peak SF’ on a Friday Night Is a Robot Fight
New York Times
2025

Chinese peptides rave
Jan 3, 2026

Chairman Birb.

Geeks, mops and sociopaths.
Meaningness

Sarah Friend on utopias

Other useful material:

The Tale of One Tower: SF-Based Vertical Longevity Village
Lifespan
July 29, 2025

How Cities Build Vibrant Tech Scenes
NextCity
Sept 10, 2014

VitaDao

Rumors in the tower
YouTube

Crypto will touch grass in 2026 thanks to real world assets

Brady Dale — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 23:11:49 GMT

Cars from Hot Rods and Racing Cars #63 (Charlton, 1963)

Real world assets aren’t just a narrative. They are a phase change for the cryptocurrency industry. The new episode of Diamond Rhino breaks all that down. In detail. With charm.

But before we get to that… First! If you like the podcast so far, it would be great if you subscribed via one of your favorite mobile pod players.1 Here’s some helpful links for you to find the show wherever you tend to listen:

Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Pocket Casts
Overcast
And theoretically any other podcast player as well…

Thank you!

So. The fate of the crypto markets will no longer be hermetically sealed against the real economy, inside the balances in Coinbase and Kraken accounts or inside Metamask wallets.

No, in the real world asset future, on-chain will meet Main Street at scale.

The way this has been discussed so far, to me, has sounded like real world assets would just be the new corner of crypto. As if there’s memecoins and NFTs and Bitcoin and now we’ve got real world assets, too.

That’s not right. Once real world assets reach adequate scale, the liquidity, the volume growth, the blockchain-to-reality connection, it’s going to reach every corner of this whole market.

To research this episode I went through a slew of discussions of real-world assets and it only gave me greater conviction that crypto has not had a real cycle yet. The true cycle will kick in once the real world asset flywheel really begins spinning.

Sure this is all bullish, but I see something else, to. There’s a thesis at the end that I’ve been kicking around a while but haven’t talked about too much yet.

So come for the breakdown. Stay for the lowdown.

Subscribe now

Show notes:

Unlocking Trillions of Dollars with RWAs (Real World Assets)
The Defiant
Lucas Vogelsang, Centrifuge
October 16, 2023

Tokenizing Real World Assets — with Robert Leshner of Superstate
Bankless
March 12, 2024

Unlocking Trillions: Sergey Nazarov On Tokenizing Real World Assets & The White House Crypto Summit
Wolf of All Streets
March 16, 2025

Are Tokenized Stocks Real?
Bankless
Gabriel Otte, founder of Dinari
July 14, 2025

The State Of DeFi Lending With Mary Gooneratne
Lightspeed
Mary Gooneratne, Loopscale
Aug 19, 2025

The Future of Finance is Tokenized: Ondo’s Vision for RWAs
The Defiant
Ian De Bode, Chief Strategy Officer at Ondo Finance
Sept 2, 2025

State of Crypto 2025: The Latest Data, Trends, and Themes Revealed
a16z Crypto
October 22, 2025

Most Tokenization Projects Fail. Here’s Why One Succeeded
Unchained — Bits & Bips
Figure CEO Mike Cagney
Dec 20, 2025

Real-World Asset Summit Brooklyn 2025: The Path to $1T Onchain
Real World Asset Summit
Vivek Raman, Etherealize
Sep 30, 2025

Real World Asset Summit. Debate 2025
Jenn Senhaji, Chronicle.
Sept 18, 2025

Mary Gooneratne, Co-Founder of Loopscale, on 11AM w/ Seed Club
11AM Seed Club
Mary Gooneratne, Loopscale
Sept 12, 2025

Talking Tokenization: Tokenizing the Future of Credit Markets
Talking Tokens
Mary Gooneratne, Loopscale
Jan 8, 2026

Other useful materials:

Figure Goes Public As HELOC Growth, Marketplace Vision Take Center Stage
National Mortgage Professional
Sept. 12, 2025

Figure’s flash crash sends $13bn worth of blockchain loans flying
DL News
Oct. 27, 2025

Ondo and Pantera Capital earmark $250 million for real-world asset tokenization
Axios
July 3, 2025

BlackRock tokenized fund overtakes Franklin Templeton
Axios
May 1, 2024

Centrifuge turns real world assets into loans
Axios
Sept 23, 2022

Planet Money: We Bought a Toxic Asset
NPR
2010-2011

And if you’re dying for more, today’s episode is a natural follow up to this one:

If you’re curious, apparently this brand new show is doing much better than normal new podcasts, though it’s still small. It’s just that most new podcasts hardly have anyone listening, and this one has literally dozens of downloads. That’s actually encouraging! So if you like it, it would be great to lock it in where you normally listen to other shows.

How Bitcoin exit-pilled Joe Rogan, podcasting's everyman

Brady Dale — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 23:11:36 GMT

Background from the cover of Spaceman #5 (1954).

It seems like the first time Joe Rogan, the mega-podcaster, ever heard about Bitcoin was caught on the mic in a very early episode. That clip can now only be found as a clip other people have posted online, because that old episode, #110, is no longer available from Rogan himself.

But it gets shared around often enough.

In this podcast episode, I take us through some of the key conversations on the Joe Rogan Experience where he talks about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. By my read (and you can feel free to debate me on this point), what seems to grab Rogan about the original cryptocurrency is more its allegiance to core values than its remunerative potential or the business use cases that appeal to startup founders.

Many have said that what will really make this technology appealing for people is better UX, better speed and/or more functionality.

Rogan’s story looks different, though, as I go through in the episode. Let me know if you’re convinced.

There are clips in here from 2011, 2014, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024. If you put them all together, Rogan goes from: hmm? To, ah-ha!. To, hey… To, oh damn.

What he never becomes is a true believer or a hardened critic. He’s just intrigued (and a bit worried).

Subscribe now

Show notes:

Here’s links to all the shows I pulled clips from for this episode, plus some other additional material that I consulted.

Joe Rogan Experience #110. The video isn’t watchable any longer. I got the clip from this tweet, and it has some lame background music on it.

JRE #446, 2014. The first with Andreas Antonopoulos.

JRE #490, 2014. The second with Antonopoulos.

JRE #1236, 2019. With Jack Dorsey, when he was still CEO of Twitter (and of Square, which is what’s relevant here)

JRE MMA #124, 2022. With Khalil Rountree, MMA fighter.

JRE #1921, 2023. Peter Zeihan, geopolitical analyist and author.

JRE #2044, 2023. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO and Worldcoin co-founder.

JRE #2234, 2024. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, web pioneer. Like Rogan: bald.

Legendary Twitter thread starts here:

Other materials that were useful:

How crypto converted Joe Rogan, Daily Coin, April 2025

Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank. 1959 novel.

JRE #844. A 3rd with Andreas. Didn’t use it in this episode, though.

Jack Dorsey, Marc Andreessen and the Makings of a Crypto Holy War, The Information, 2022

Market Realist, 2022

Central Bank Digital Currency tracker, Atlantic Council

On debanking:

Court warns FDIC of sanctions over crypto documents (Axios)

Crypto firm’s debanking story (Axios)

Recommended reading:

The Right to Transact, by Zelinar Xy

A note on the clips: Some of the clips are clipped within the clip or clipped together, for length, clarity or an excess of explanation. If anyone thinks I warped anything, hit me up.

Mostly the clips are just as they appeared, though.

Music in the episode:

“Data Breach” by FASSounds

“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube

All from Pixabay Music

Thanks for listening! Let me know what you think!

Worldcoin to pit proof-of-humanity against pig-butchers of the lonelyhearted

Brady Dale — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 23:11:39 GMT

Worldcoin has had many lives since it revealed itself in 2021.

When we all first heard about it, it was a plan to deliver a crypto basic income to everyone on earth, as fears mounted about what artificial intelligence would do to employment.

Then the crypto and biometrics startup started talking more about dealing with deepfakes. Then it became more about ensuring you’re interacting with a real person.

But that’s not what 90% of the mental energy that’s been invested in Worldcoin has honestly been about. It’s mostly been about the eyeball scanning. Is the biometric-based campaign good or bad? Is the company’s orb freaky or not?

I have always been ambivalent about Worldcoin, but I’ve also secretly suspected I was being a little unreasonable about it, reacting more to its optics than to its fundamentals. So, this episode is my attempt to take an honest look at the project, something I’ve never really done previously.

Right now, it seems like the top priority is to just get more people registered for WorldID’s (that is, to get their eyeballs scanned and get them on the network). As you’ll here in the episode, Sam Altman, one of the co-founders, likes to make bets on getting to very large scale.

To that end, the company strategists have identified three verticals for growth: Gaming, social and dating. All these verticals are very popular online and all of them have a problem with either bots or people pretending to be someone that they are not.

Honestly, the one of these that seems the most compelling to me is online dating.

Friends, I’m gonna be honest: I have nothing to say about whether or not you die alone. That’s on you. But I do care about whether or not you get your wallet emptied while looking for someone to spend a little time with. That seems like a problem we should be able to solve as a society.

Romance scams cost Americans something like $1.1 billion every year. Pig-butchering has been one of the most vile trends of the last several years.

Could WorldID’s eyeball scans throw up a lot of friction for romance scam rings? Probably. It bums me out that widows and perma-singles are getting taken advantage of this way, and it’s nice to see an effort to deploy cryptography to combat it.

It opened my mind somewhat to shoving one’s face into one of these orbs. Have I done it yet, though? No. But still.

Unc might need to.

And yes, yes, I know that the company doesn’t go by “Worldcoin” any longer. It’s technically just “World,” (operated by the company, Tools for Humanity). That rebranding is right up there with the WeWork switch to “We.” (Do y’all really want to emulate Adam Neumann?)

So, have a listen to this latest dispatch of Diamond Rhino. I go through much more than the romance use case, to be fair. What I don’t do is obsessively dwell on the orb. That facet has gotten tons of attention. What you might find encouraging, though, is the way World’s info security guy talks about using cryptography.

So come for love, but stick around for discretionary disclosure.

Also, if you haven’t gotten enough Brady Dale in your ears and eyes, lately, here are a couple shows I appeared on in recent days.

Kate Irwin had me on her new Veda Labs podcast to talk about the year in crypto we are heading into:

And the Blockspace Media guys (all CoinDesk alums, like me) had me on to talk about the state of Crypto Media, following upon the Twitter thread I put out a few weeks ago.

In my opinion, the most fun part is when all three of us throw shade on the New York Times consistently embarrassing crypto coverage.

In fact speaking of the Times:

So that’s it for recent appearances.

For the sources I consulted for this Worldcoin episode, see below:

(aka, show notes)

Experience Real Connections with World ID and Match Group

Digital identity - weighing the risks of misuse and missed use | Dakota Gruener | TEDxMarrakesh
July 3, 2019

Sam Altman: OpenAI CEO on GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the Future of AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #367
Mar 25, 2023

Here’s what a Sam Altman-backed basic income experiment found (CBS News)

At Last ft. Alex Blania and Sam Altman
World
May 1, 2025

A New World ft. Alex Blania and Sam Altman
World
Oct 18, 2024

Introducing AMPC: Another leap in privacy and performance for World ID, Sept 4, 2025

Worldcoin: Most Dystopian Crypto?
CoinBureau
Aug 3, 2023

The Real Reason World Scans Your Eyeballs
BeInCrypto
Dec 24, 2025

Reclaiming the panopticon, X essay

Why Proof of Humanity Matters in an AI Future Alex Blania
Empire Podcast
May 16, 2023

Transforming Government: Digital Identity in India
World Bank
Jan 13, 2016

Inside India’s Aadhar: The World’s Largest Biometric System Explained
ByteMonk
Jan 25, 2025

You Can Pre-Order This $15,000 Crypto-Powered Beer Vending Machine
CoinDesk
Sept. 13, 2021

The History and Philosophy of Cypherpunk
Harry Halpin
Nov. 12, 2024

World Dune Dashboard

I covered a World app, Divine Research, in this story:

Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How World recruited its first half a million test users
MIT Tech Review
April 6, 2022

Sam Altman’s eye-scanning Worldcoin banned in Spain
Reuters
March 6, 2024

Sam Altman’s World pauses operations in Germany as company overhauls iris-scanning stations
DL News
July 10, 2025

All Hail The Orb: Worldcoin - Episode 123
Crypto Critics Corner
Aug 2, 2023

Pondering the Orb with Molly White
Tech Won’t Save Us pod
Aug 17, 2023

Worldcoin Is Older Than Ethereum —Just Not the Eyeball-Scanning One
The Defiant
October 26, 2021

How to see the sky with Bitcoin

Brady Dale — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:14:30 GMT

This is going to be a weird episode of this very new podcast.

But if you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, then you have tasted the fruit of reasoning from uncertainty.

However, cryptocurrency’s epistemic terrain has gotten to be much too easy travel. So come with me to give that conceptual flexibility you learned from embracing decentralized networks a workout by exploring another kind of conceptual terrain: embracing communion with interstellar intelligences.

Hopefully, I can convince you that doing so will chart a path to a better world, for everyone, right here, right now.

In 2021, George Mason University professor Robin Hanson published a paper, “If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens Are Also Rare.” Since then, he’s been making the argument that we can — based on what little we know about the universe so far — make a model that estimates the population of interstellar colonizers across all time and space.

As we’ll see in the episode, that doesn’t mean it enables the estimation of all interstellar life. That doesn’t matter though. What matters is that his model and the discussions around it make conceptualizing life, the universe and everything considerably more tractable. At least it did for me.

The journey here is about concepts. The key concepts in discussing how to think about interstellar life. That’s the power of what Hanson opened up here.

Most discussions you see of UFOs will try to show you evidence that we’ve been visited. I’ve looked at basically all the evidence in the public domain, and I find much of it compelling.

But you know what’s really compelling? Thinking it all through. So that’s what I’m going to try to do here. This isn’t about the very sketchy and impossible to reproduce facts. This is about the ideas they have led us to.

I very much have a point of view, but I also think this episode should help any open-minded person to refine their own, as well.

Subscribe now

This episode draws on a lot of material besides Hanson’s paper. Not that many of the clips in this episode were edited for clarity (often to cut out some jargon-filled asides that weren’t really additive to the point in the episode).

For more on the sources of many of the clips or topics I discuss in the episode, see below:

Grabby Aliens — website devoted to the topic.

If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens Are Also Rare

How Far To Grabby Aliens? Part 1

It’s time to take UFOs seriously. Seriously. (Vox)(paywalled, but you can find it on the Wayback Machine)

National Defense Autorization Act. Go to section 1841.

Three Body Problem Trilogy: Simply Brilliant Astounding modern classic Sci-fi book series

“The Apologists,” Tade Thompson (Clarkesworld)

Panpsychism on Wikipedia.

Primary doc on the Malmstrom UFO incident.

Wikipedia entry, with debunking and etcetra.

Subscribe now

Music in the episode:

“Data Breach” by FASSounds

“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube

All from Pixabay Music

Thanks for listening! Let me know what you think!

UPDATE Jan 9, 2026: Added a bunch of links I should have included in the first place.

The Aave dispute, the glory of a DAO, and the discomforts of DeFi growing up

Brady Dale — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 23:11:32 GMT

Some controversy has broken out this week over the Aave protocol, as the Aave DAO accuses Aave Labs, the company that first developed the giant money market’s smart contracts, of siphoning off profits that should be going to the DAO.

This episode is much (much) less about that controversy, and much more about reviewing how Aave has come so far, what made the difference for it along the way (because it wasn’t always number 1, but it has been for a long time now) and where it’s headed.

After all, if people are fighting, that nearly definitionally means that there’s something worth fighting over.

I confess, for a long time, in Aave’s early years, I looked at it as the second fiddle to Compound, the pioneer of pooled liquidity in money markets. That’s just not a position one can maintain at this point, however.

No pod next Sunday. Next show on January 4.

(but there will be Tuesday and Thursday newsletters)

Thank you!

Some of you have been forwarding these newsletters around, and I could not appreciate that more.

Subscribe now

Aave show notes

Here’s all the sources of sound I used in this episode, plus a bunch of other relevant materials I had a look at along the way as I prepped the episode.

Aave.com

DefiLlama

EthLend ICO

Compound launch on Techcrunch

Andre Cronje: DeFi Expressionist

Compound COMP bug

Chart about Safety Module v Umbrella by @sonyasunkim

Bunni flach loan hack story

Balancer flash loan story

DL News Morpho evolution and Gauntlet Departure

Lens starts getting talked about

Lens confirmed in February

@jessyfries

Uniswap v3 description

DL News story on the Aave front end stuff

Stani K on X: How Aave will win

Aave Changelog

Music in the episode:

“Data Breach” by FASSounds

“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube

All from Pixabay Music

Thanks for listening! Let me know what you think!

XRP's consensus model truly blows my mind

Brady Dale — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 23:18:12 GMT

Welcome, welcome!

To the first episode of Front Stage Exit’s podcast, Diamond Rhino.

For more first episode, I decided to dive deep into the cryptocurrency XRP, its chain, XRPLedger and the company that made it all possible: Ripple. I’m attempting to steelman these projects, to make the best case I can for them.

Why? Because it’s said that one of the best ways to hone your own thinking is to try to make the case for something you don’t agree with.

I have never bought the story of Ripple and XRP. I have mostly expressed that by just not writing about either much, but I plan to take a different approach with this podcast. I plan to go right at things I’m not crazy about, to check my instincts, to see if there’s any there there.

And I will tell you that I learned one thing about XRP that really blew my mind.

If you already knew it, when you get to it, I’ll be impressed. Let me know.

It’s no secret! It’s a very basic fact about the chain, but I had no idea.

If you would have told me this in a conversation at a bar, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would have thought you were taking the piss.

On podcasting

I feel mostly good about how much I learned taping, editing and producing this episode. I see through a glass darkly about how to do these better going forward.

One thing that is definitely not perfect in here is my introductions of the various clips I pulled in. Please forgive me. But all the sources are cited in the show notes and below. I’ll make that clearer next time.

If the outro music on this one doesn’t make you smile, well… I don’t know. It should. It really should.

Show notes

Welcome to the first episode of Diamond Rhino, which should come out every Sunday. Let me know if I got anything horribly wrong, and please bear with me as I get my workflow down. I learned a lot doing this episode. Next one should go better.

Sound clips came from these videos:

XRPL Foundation - Consensus

XRPL Foundation - Nodes and validators

XRPL Foundation - Tokenization

David Schwartz Stanford Blockchain Conference 2020

Brad Garlinghouse on the Future Of Ripple, XRP, & Crypto | Live From Ripple Swell 2025

News and other text media referred to in this episode:

Archive link to the funding announcement in WSJ

https://archive.ph/C7h9a

The race to replace Bitcoin — Observer

https://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/

When Howey Met Gary