The Chopping Block: Pump, Perps, and Policy: Crypto’s Multi-Front Bull Market - Ep. 870

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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. In this episode, the crew breaks down the return of the ICO — but with a twist. Pump.fun’s $500 million token sale sells out in 12 minutes, sparking a heated debate about forward markets, new market structure design, and whether we’ve entered a smarter, more institutionalized fundraising era—or just rebranded 2017 chaos. Hyperliquid becomes the surprise king of pre-launch liquidity, exchanges buckle under demand, and a new class of crypto treasury vehicles raises eyebrows (and capital). Meanwhile, Trump declares “Crypto Week” as Congress moves forward with the most sweeping legislation the industry’s seen in years. Is crypto finally growing up—or just getting better at dumping on retail? The gang dissects the narratives, the numbers, and the fallout. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Pump.fun’s ICO Raises $500M in 12 Minutes – The largest token sale in recent memory, with 25,000+ KYC’d participants and CEX/DEX syndication. 🔹 Forward Markets & Hedging Games – Kraken and Bybit face issues as sophisticated traders attempt to arb between ICO allocations and perps. 🔹 New Market Design – Pump introduces a novel multi-venue, API-synced launch structure; future ICOs may follow suit. 🔹 CT Has Negative Alpha – Crypto Twitter sentiment was wildly bearish… right before the most oversubscribed sale in years. 🔹 Hyperliquid Hits $11.5B OI – Becomes the dominant venue for pump trading, eclipsing even CEXs; pre-launch volume milestone. 🔹 Treasury Vehicle Controversy – $888M raised for hype via a new structure; Tarun questions whether it’s a liquidity gateway or retail dump machine. 🔹 Trump Declares Crypto Week – Genius Act (stablecoins), Clarity Act (market structure), and Anti-CBDC Act all hit the House floor. 🔹 Polymarket Vindicated – DOJ and CFTC drop their probe into Shane Coplan’s prediction market platform. 🔹 Altcoin Momentum Returns – $PENGU +270%, $SUI +60%, $UNI +43%; narrative shifts from “revenue meta” to “meme meta.” 🔹 Solana vs. Hyperliquid – Hype replaces SOL as the go-to high-beta asset? The team debates competing ecosystems. ⭐️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 Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:18 Pump ICO Breakdown 06:54 Pump's Unique Market Design 10:57 Future of ICOs and Market Trends 21:36 Hyperliquid's Role in Pump Launch 32:26 Crypto Week and Legislative Updates 41:23 Polymarket Investigation Dropped 47:29 Altcoin Rally and Market Sentiment Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Maybe I'm just too cynical.
0:02.4	Yeah.
0:02.9	Tarun is the jaded member of our podcast.
0:06.2	I think it's, you know, the problem with you, Tarun, is at the moment things are going well for you, you start reflexively finding things to be sad about.
0:13.9	Not a dividend.
0:15.1	It's a tale of two pawn.
0:16.2	Now, your losses are on someone else's balance.
0:19.0	Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways. Inamed trading firms who are very involved. Delic.Eight is the ultimate problem. DFI protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello everybody, welcome to 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 Kukintra is first you got Tom, the Defy Maven and Master of Memes. Hello, everyone. Next you got Robert, the Crypto connoisseur and Tsar of Super State. Aloha. Next, you got Tarun, the Gigabrain, and Grand Puba at Gauntlet. Yo. And finally, I'm a sieve the head hype man at Dragonfly. We're early stage investors in crypto, but I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see chopping block. At XYZ for more disclosures. So it looks like we are back into a bull market. We have Bitcoin hitting all-time highs. We have alt-rallying. And on top of all of that, we have one of the largest ICOs in history, just having taken place in the last week.
0:57.1	That ICO, of that, we have one of the largest ICOs in history, just having
1:12.3	taken place in the last week, that ICO, of course, being Pump.combe. So let's talk about it.
1:18.5	We've talked about Pump many times on the show. It is the largest meme coin launch pad in existence,
1:22.6	and it recently launched its token. Now, its token as of today, is trading on the order of
1:27.4	about $6 billion,
1:28.6	fully diluted. But it raised an ICO at a $4 billion fully diluted valuation. This ICO was
1:35.2	split in some amount of private sale versus some public sale. There was about $500 million
1:40.6	that was raised from the public sale. and it was spread across six different venues
1:44.8	that were centralized exchanges that were offering some inventory of the token that they were selling,
1:49.7	plus some that you could buy directly on chain from pump. What ended up happening was that there
1:54.6	was three days during which you could buy this ICO at a fixed price, and this ICO sold out
2:00.5	in 12 minutes. It was a absolutely insane rush of
2:05.1	capital. Multiple exchanges were oversubscribed to the point where apparently they sort of messed up
2:10.4	and sold more inventory than they actually had. So both Cracken and ByBit ended up having all
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 7 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

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.