The Chopping Block: Market Meltdown, CZ vs. Star Feud, and Tarun's Epstein Files Cameo

Unchained

Laura Shin

Tech News, Business News, News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The hosts dive into Bitcoin's volatility below $75K, dissect the explosive CZ vs Star Twitter battle over who caused the 10/10 liquidation cascade, debate the ethics of founder secondary sales with passionate disagreement, and explore the surprising crypto connections in the newly released Epstein files including Tarun's unexpected cameo. Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, the crew tackles a volatile market with Bitcoin struggling below $75K and explores what's driving the uncertainty. They dive deep into the explosive Twitter battle between Binance founder CZ and OKX's Star over who really caused the catastrophic 10/10 liquidation event that broke crypto's correlation with traditional markets. The conversation gets heated as the hosts debate the ethics of founder secondary sales — with Haseeb taking a surprisingly libertarian stance against his co-hosts. Finally, they explore the unexpected crypto connections in the newly released Epstein files, including Tarun's own amusing cameo and connections to Coinbase, Bitcoin Core developers, and other industry figures. From market analysis to Twitter drama to moral philosophy, this episode covers the full spectrum of crypto discourse. Let's get into it. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Bitcoin below $75K signals uncertain market conditions with equal odds of hitting $40K or $130K 🔹 CZ vs Star Twitter battle over who caused the catastrophic 10/10 liquidation cascade 🔹 Athena unwinding timeline analysis challenges Star's claims about Binance's role 🔹 Heated debate on founder secondary sales ethics with sharp disagreements among hosts 🔹 Tarun's unexpected appearance in Epstein files via Quora digest on homomorphic encryption 🔹 Epstein's 2014 Coinbase investment and connections to Brock Pierce revealed 🔹 Bitcoin developers' interactions with Epstein including Adam Back and Jeremy Rubin 🔹 MicroStrategy's break-even position becomes psychological market threshold 🔹 Quantum computing concerns emerge as potential Bitcoin selling catalyst 🔹 Post-10/10 correlation breakdown between crypto and traditional risk assets analyzed Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm not Brian Johnson, okay?
0:01.3	I didn't get like a plain invite.
0:03.9	Listen, there might be additional files released in the future.
0:06.6	We don't know if this is the true extent. That's true. That's true. We got to get to the bottom of this. We got to get to the bottom of the Turin-Empstein connection. Not a dividend. It's a tale of two pawn. Now, your losses are on someone else's balance. Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways.
0:19.8	I'm into trading firms who are very involved.
0:22.8	Like that Eath is the ultimate Defi protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello everybody. Welcome to the chopping block. Every couple weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insider perspective on the crypto topics of the day. So quick intro, just you got you got Tom, the D-Fi Maven and Master of Memes.
0:38.4	Hello, everyone.
0:40.1	Next to you got Robert, the Crypto connoisseur, and Tsar of Super State. Good morning. And then we've got Tarun, the Gigabrain, and Grand Puba at Gauntlet. Yo, yo, yo. And I'm a C of the head-hyped man at Dragonfly.
0:55.0	We're early-staged investors in crypto.
0:56.0	I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice, police you choppy, and block that X, Y, Z for more disclosures. So it has been a rocky week in Crypto land. We now have Bitcoin below 75K, or it's, it did below 75K.
1:11.5	It's now right back at that level.
1:13.3	There's been a lot of volatility in the market.
1:15.6	And we've seen everything in crypto bleeding.
1:18.7	Heath is at 2,200 something.
1:20.8	Metals have pulled back quite a bit.
1:23.4	There was a blow off top in metals where gold went up to like 56, 57.
1:27.4	I don't know what.
1:28.1	It went really high.
1:29.1	Silver went all the way down below.
1:31.2	Yeah, it was absolute craziness.
1:32.9	Basically, metals are trading like meme stocks.
1:35.3	And there's just a lot of uncertainty in the market about where this is going.
	...

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