How AI Agents Hacked Smart Contracts for $1 Apiece - DEX in the City - Ep. 975

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sponsor: UniswapCitadel has sparked uproar with a letter calling on the SEC to regulate DeFi protocols as exchanges. But the company's requests may not be totally unreasonable. In this episode of DEX in the City, hosts Jessi Brooks, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, and Vy Le dig into Citadel's controversial letter and how it is a reminder that “crypto is a bubble.” They also discuss how the CFTC and SEC are in a “race to the top,” plus Jessi explains how AI agents can exploit smart contracts they haven’t been trained on for just $1 apiece. Plus, Vy calls on the crypto community to support Samourai developers. Hosts: Jessi Brooks, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel at StarkWare TuongVy Le, General Counsel at Veda Links: Unchained: Kraken Valued at $20 Billion After $200 Million Raise From Citadel Securities CFTC Approves Spot Crypto Trading on U.S. Exchanges CFTC’s New Pilot Allows BTC, ETH and USDC as Derivatives Collateral Samourai Wallet Founders Could Serve 5 Years for $237 Million Laundering Samourai pardon petition Timestamps: 🚀 00:00 Introduction 💡 3:05 What Citadel's SEC letter on tokenized securities and DeFi says about how TradFi views crypto 👀 6:50 Why Vy says Citadel's suggestions are not unreasonable 🤔 9:31 Is Citadel shooting itself in the foot? ❌️ 11:13 What Jessi says Citadel got wrong 📍 13:42 How crypto is a bubble (or a cult?), but Citadel’s position is more mainstream 🧠 19:39 Why the CFTC greenlighting spot crypto trading on regulated exchanges matters 💡 22:57 Katherine explains Bitnomial’s advantage 💥 26:53 Why Jessi says the CFTC and SEC are in a race to regulate crypto 🧏‍♀️ 31:30 Why KK loves the CFTC’s tokenized collateral pilot 🧠 33:47 Why Anthropic's study on smart contract security is so scary for crypto ⚠️ 36:31 How AI agents could exploit 1,000 smart contracts for $1 apiece 📝 41:42 How community members can support Samourai wallet developers 💫 44:00 Crypto good news shoutout for the week Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What I worry about here is like Citadel securities to me is not the voice to be saying we care about consumer protection.
0:07.4	But I really think as an industry, we need to take those issues really seriously because the SEC is never going to allow capital markets to come on chain unless we can prove that they're fair and transparent.
0:20.8	One of the things that I still have PTSD over is 2022, where a major contributing factor,
0:27.2	you know, I was at a defy protocol at that time.
0:29.7	And I was so furious because there was so much demonization of defy in the press narrative
0:35.0	during the crypto crash.
0:37.1	And we were all like, it's not defy that
0:40.0	screwed this up, guys. It's actually C-Fi masquerading as defy. We were this next creepy part
0:46.3	because it got worse. So then they were like, okay, let's point the agents at brand new
0:52.0	contracts that were just put out into the ecosystem with
0:56.4	no known issues.
0:57.6	Within a short period of time, the agents found two zero-day exploits.
1:01.5	Zero days essentially just like the builders have had zero days to fix any vulnerabilities
1:06.9	following release and they executed exploits.
1:09.9	And they made money that cost more than what the agents cost.
1:15.1	Hi, all, and welcome to Dex and the City, where the wallets are cold and the takes are hot.
1:21.0	First, we have Jesse, Web3 prosecutor turned Web3 protector at Ribbett Capital.
1:26.1	Hi, everyone.
1:27.8	NV from the SEC to Web 3.
1:31.2	What's up?
1:32.1	And I'm your host, Catherine, or KK, fluent in TradFi and conversant in deep tech over at
1:37.9	Starkware.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Laura Shin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Laura Shin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.