The Chopping Block: Robinhood’s Tokenized-Stock Gambit, Solana’s ETF Splash & the Proof-of-Stake Reality Check - Ep. 862

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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. This week, we’re joined by Jon Charbonneau and Ryan Watkins to unpack the bombshell news of Robinhood Chain—an Arbitrum-based network debuting tokenized U.S. stocks, 3× crypto perps, and that head-scratching $500 K liquidity cap. From riffing on whether proof-of-stake yields are just “money in a box,” to debating Solana’s first U.S. staked ETF, to sizing up the looming perp wars between Robinhood and Coinbase, the crew maps a common thread: corporate chains and regulatory work-arounds are colliding with crypto’s decentralization ideals, forcing builders, traders, and even ETF hawks to rethink where real security, fairness, and opportunity will live next. Show highlights 🔹 Robinhood Chain Revealed – Why the trading-app giant paid up to launch an Arbitrum-based “Robinhood Chain,” starting with 24/5 perpetuals and tokenized U.S. stocks, plus a rumored $500 K–liquidity cap that has Crypto Twitter howling. 🔹 Tokenized-Stock Gold Rush – From Tesla and SpaceX pre-IPO shares to on-chain S&P stalwarts: does 24/7 trading finally make equity tokens stick, or is it just another CFD in disguise? 🔹 Perps Arms Race – Coinbase’s 5-year “quasi-perp” futures vs. Robinhood’s 3×-leverage launch vs. Hyperliquid’s 20× turbo deck—who wins the battle for retail flow? 🔹 Solana ETF First-Mover – RexShares files a staked-SOL C-Corp ETF, beating BlackRock to the punch and testing Wall Street’s appetite after ETH’s lukewarm debut. 🔹 Proof-of-Stake Reality Check – The crew dismantles the “economic security” myth, asks whether validator cartels make inflation rewards pointless, and floats proof-of-governance as the next model. 🔹 Hyperliquid vs. The World – Why a single Tokyo data center is eating CLOB volume, what zk-rollup challengers are planning, and how latency games redefine “decentralized exchange.” 🔹 $2 B Prediction-Market Beef – Paradigm-backed Kalshi clashes with PolyMarket after a viral “little rats” tweet; inside the influencer war and the CFTC license flex. 🔹 Conference FOMO No More – New-York-privileged hosts roast ETH CC in Cannes and declare the age of fly-to-France crypto tourism officially over. 🔹 Reg-Tech vs. Fin-Tech – From transfer agents to T+1 settlement: why outdated TradFi plumbing, not blockchains, still blocks global access to U.S. securities. 🔹 Super-App Skepticism – The panel pokes holes in “super-app” buzzwords and explains why sequencing—product-first, chain-later—matters more than catchy slogans. ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly Guests ⭐️ Ryan Watkins, Co-Founder of Syncracy Capital ⭐️ Jon Charbonneau, Co-founder & General Partner at DBA Timestamps 0:00 Intro 02:59 Robinhood Chain 15:05 Debate on Tokenized Stocks 27:18 Perpetuals (Perps) in the Crypto Market 37:15 Robinhood's New Crypto Traders 39:26 The Solana ETF Approval 41:17 Understanding Staking and ETFs 43:36 The Future of Proof of Stake 46:20 Governance in Ethereum and Other Chains 56:26 Corporate Chains and Validator Selection 01:04:31 Polymarket vs. Kalshi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Didn't invent any new technology. They just don't have this. And they're like, I don't know. They're poor.
0:04.0	You know, we're not. I think there's a lot of people that still just have this old school ideology that, like, for some reason, it's valuable for you to put your money in a box and, like, print more tokens and therefore you get more money. Greg, if you had like a Tesla perp that you can go 20x long and a trace 24-7, that is actually a huge unlock. I think that people genuinely just don't understand the economics of Brick of Steak to like a meaningful extent. Yeah, these people could have gone and opened an equanimous account and bought Bitcoin, but they didn't. 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. I'm named trading firms who are very involved. D5.Eat is the ultimate policy. DFIPy 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 insight's perspective on the current topics of the day. quick intro is first you got tom the defy
0:54.4	maven and master of memes hello everyone joining us we've got some special guest first john charbonneau
0:59.3	protocol provocateur at dba how's it going uh i i i in your mind you will never not be the l2 nihilist
1:06.5	great i wanted to try to work that in but didn't quite didn't quite alliterate um And Ryan Watkins, token tactician at Synchristy Capital. Token tactician, there we go. Yeah. Good to have you. And I'm a Steve, the head hype man of 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 Chopin Block. at XYZ for more disclosures. So it turns out everybody is in France,
1:29.9	which I keep arguing is a failed state. life advice, please see Chopin Block at XYZ for more disclosures. So it turns out everybody is in
1:29.2	France, which I keep arguing is a failed state, and I think people should stop going there. But
1:33.9	they're in France. Why did you guys decide not to go? It seems like where all the actions
1:37.9	happening now. Everyone's here. Everyone's here? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about it.
1:44.0	Like, I'm pretty much to stop traveling in the past year for conferences anymore. Completely. Yeah. So you've let them come to you. Yeah. I mean, if you live in New York at this point, it is just difficult for me to justify going to a conference when this feels like the exact same thing that I did last year. Everyone was just here for permissionless. Like, why do I to go to fly to France to go see everyone right right I remember I did the same thing last year was
2:03.1	the last one I went to is devcon in Thailand because it's like I like I wanted to see a bunch of people at an in a while and then I came home like two weeks later and like all the eth people were here for like Columbia cryptocurrency and I was like why did I just fly to Thailand for this thing Right, right. That's where I'm out. New York privilege. Yeah, I agree. I think I've never been a big conference guy, but I think especially post-election, now that people host more conferences, New York, there's almost not really an incentive to leave because it's usually the same people are going to all the conferences. You agree with this? Yeah, agreed. You agree? I'm not there. You travel. not that much okay i cut down you're asking three new yorkers right yeah no it's true it's
2:36.5	new york privilege i guess yeah yeah You agree? I'm not there. You travel. Not that much. Okay. I cut down a lot.
2:34.3	You're asking three New Yorkers, right?
2:35.5	Yeah, no, it's true.
2:36.5	It's true.
2:36.8	It's New York privilege, I guess.
2:38.2	Yeah, everyone comes to New York.
2:39.4	There you go.
2:48.4	No, it used to be that New Yorkers had to travel because New York was like this wasteland with a pit license. There was nothing going on here. And now you guys are, you guys are eating nice.
2:49.8	Yeah, that's good.
2:52.6	No, New York is, New York is nice.
2:53.8	I am surprised how many people went on the same flight to france because they were they were literally all here and they
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