The Chopping Block

Exploring today's crypto topics through the perspective of industry insiders @hosseeb, @rleshner, @tarunchitra & @tomhschmidt!

🤝 Streaming @Unchained_pod

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

this week: ETH identity crisis, seppuku licenses, honeypots, Tarun defending North Korea, and Nvidia’s affairs.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:49 Is ETH Digital Gold?
10:19 Bitcoin's Quantum Problem
14:01 The Case for Zcash
19:22 The EF Seppuku Lawsuit
28:39 Jensen and the Alleged Spy
37:21 Who Gets Honeypotted?
44:01 Trump on World Liberty
48:02 McHenry Blames Coinbase

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[Andy @andyyy]

@_choppingblock Tarun mode.

[darrennn @genzzztrade]

Haseeb says Jensen sleeping with a Chinese spy is the ultimate kill shot against loosening chip export controls

"Honestly my position is I don't really care what somebody else's sex life is, not really my problem. If he's a good CEO he's a good CEO. Great, have at it."

"The problem is you are sleeping with a woman who is spying on you to the CCP. That is the kill shot for anybody ever arguing against restrictions on exports to China. It's just the ultimate argument winner. It resonates so much with the audience because it's such a simple story."

"Now all of a sudden you cannot help but to see every single time Jensen has spoken about Chinese exports, oh, it must have been that woman in his ear."

"He will never be allowed to talk about chip exports to China ever again."

[Haseeb Qureshi ＞|＜ @hosseeb]

It's been a rough week. Thankfully, the Chopping Block is here to break it down.

– ETH's repositioning to SoV
– EF's seppuku license: almost a good idea?
– Jensen lost the chip export debate
– Who in crypto gets honeypotted?
– The upcoming Trump corruption files

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

In crypto a honeypot costs you millions. In AI it gets you a congressional inquiry. Haseeb says Jensen may have come out ahead.

Tom: "It is surprising how this was a meme for months and months and months."

Tarun: "You can't honeypot me," was like early '25."

Tom: "It's like you lose millions of dollars"

"In AI you get thrown in front of congressional inquiry group."

"In crypto it's almost more like you have random North Korean person trying to install malware on your laptop."

Haseeb: "Ironically, getting honeypotted means that you're now selling chips to the second-largest market in the world."

"Arguably he benefited from getting honeypotted."

Tom: "It's probably actually likely that Jensen would've had the same position regardless."

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

Tarun says Zcash has a better store of value story than Ethereum. Haseeb asks him to steel man proof of work.

Tarun: "I think arguably Zcash has just a better story for store of value to me than Ethereum."

"It is just much harder to manipulate fundamentally."

"The fact that there's a tangible input cost is sort of the thing that gives you a floor."

Haseeb: "I really don't get why proof of work is tied to being a store of value."

"Steel man that argument for me."

"The input cost of something obviously does not create a floor in its value. It's the other way around."

"The floor in the value creates the input cost."

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

Tom says nobody he knows went to Devcon, and the EF is fading without much grace.

Tom: "I feel like we're just in the twilight of the EF."

"I was thinking of Devcon last week too, which I feel like I don't know anyone who went."

"I saw very little content from it."

"It just feels like the energy is slowly draining, to Tarun's point."

"The plan always was for the EF to gradually fade out."

"Having it fade maybe a little bit more intentionally and gracefully versus this feels like floundering."

Haseeb: "Not with a bang, but a whimper."

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

The alleged Jensen Huang spy story: the CCP probably learns more from its people inside NVIDIA, but the story is just too good. And then Elon posted a prayer emoji.

Haseeb: "I'm sure that China has spies within NVIDIA as well."

"Very often, somebody dating the CEO is actually getting less information than the people they probably have inside the company."

"But the story is just so good."

Tarun: "Nathan Fielder needs to go live with Jensen Huang."

"It'd be an amazing movie and documentary."

Haseeb: "Probably a little bit more security around him than around Elizabeth Holmes."

"I do think that this is the beginning of the end for this entire position."

Tarun: "My favorite tweet today was some random anon account was like, 'I don't care who my CEO is fucking.'"

"But then right underneath was Elon Musk posting a prayer emoji."

"I honestly couldn't stop laughing when I saw that."

[Laura Shin @laurashin]

Living rent free in Charles’s head 💅🏻

[Yuki is short, so is life @ballsyalchemist]

I reckon @hosseeb is now officially on the CCP watchlist, just from this.

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

@ethvaorg @jdetychey @Pol_Lanski @0xzak this is what I'm gonna show my family when they ask what's working in crypto like

[Arjun @clipsofcrypto]

Tarun and Haseeb say AI compute is splitting into two worlds as the build-out abroad speeds up 100x: enterprise in the US, consumer apps and neoclouds everywhere else.

Tarun: "The non-US build-out speed-up is like 100x in the last two weeks versus where it was, in terms of how much capital commitments are coming in, people issuing debt in other countries."

"I basically think the non-US build-out will catch up, probably exceed the US now. And that compute will get sold, most likely not to Anthropic, because I think they don't like buying non-US compute as much as other people do."

Haseeb: "It's not as enterprise-friendly to have your GPUs outside the US. But the demand from neoclouds and from consumer apps, I think they're gonna be a lot less sensitive to where the compute is gonna live."

Tarun: "And that's gonna look like crypto, geo-distributed data centers, versus the Anthropic stuff is gonna look like trad hyperscaler. I think we're getting into a tale of two worlds soon from this."

[darrennn @genzzztrade]

Robert Leshner reveals midterm polls were way off because they predicted a blue wave, not a blue tsunami

"Trust me, there was polling error. The polls all had Democrats forecast for a very good night. The polls did not anticipate a mega tsunami. The polls did not indicate that the Democrats would take deep deep deep red Senate seats."

"So the polls were off tremendously, and they underweighted the Democrats. There was a lot of talk about 'oh the polls are bogus, they're going to overweight the Democrats'. No, they underweighted the Democrats. The polls were significantly off."

"I think the prediction markets were fortunate that the direction of the polling error was in the direction of where the polls would have had people predicting."

"Most of the Senate seats were 70 to 80 odds for the Democrats going into it. So there wasn't a prediction market error because it was aligned with the polls. I also think the prediction markets underpriced the true odds in that case because they were quite well aligned with the polls."

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

@tayvano_ @hosseeb really depends on the style this dates pre-AI

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

The Beloved Host has returned. After a long journey, Comrade @hosseeb resumes his rightful place at the head of the Chopping Block.

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

The Blue Tsunami has landed!

Robert says the polls missed the wave. Meanwhile, Tarun can't figure out why Citadel is suing over equity perps. Haseeb says banning abliterated AI models is prior restraint. Tom compares the abliteration fight to early Bitcoin.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
02:51 a16z Goes Frontier
05:42 The Midterm Mega Tsunami
15:39 Crypto's New Congress
29:10 CFTC Clears Equity Perps
34:14 Anthropic's S-1 Update
35:35 Data Centers Go Blue
43:44 The Abliteration Threat

🔥Stay updated with all the latest hot takes by following and subscribing to @_ChoppingBlock and @unchained_pod!

🎥 YouTube: https://t.co/WDjprgCqJ7
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🍎 Apple: https://t.co/jrnmstpjql
🎙 Podcast Home: https://t.co/r6OZC52PK5

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

@Titan_Node @hosseeb give me 2x RTX 6000 Blackwells and we'll make an entire chopping block anime

[Haseeb Qureshi ＞|＜ @hosseeb]

The midterms were an ultimatum on Trump, on the Iran war, and on inflation.

I’m back on the Chopping Block to break down the shellacking and what it means for crypto.

It's gonna be the subpoena show over Trump corruption, World Liberty Financial, and Trump Coin.

New episode ⤵️

[Arjun @clipsofcrypto]

Haseeb says the midterms were a rejection of Trump, not an embrace of Democrats

“Everybody in the Republican Party, it is dawning on them now that Trump is toxic. His brand is only going to drag them down. Every single candidate he handpicked lost pretty resoundingly.”

“Down ballot, you have all these races that really should not have gone to Democrats that went blue, many for the first time in many, many decades.”

“It felt like almost less of an embrace of Democrats. I was reading a bunch of exit polling saying that people still don’t like the Democratic Party that much, but they really felt like this was a response to Trump and to Trumpism.”

“This is very clearly an ultimatum on Trump, on the Iran war, on inflation. And now we’re gonna have a very combative legislature against Trump.”

[The Chopping Block @_choppingblock]

The Blue Tsunami has landed!

Robert says the polls missed the wave. Meanwhile, Tarun can't figure out why Citadel is suing over equity perps. Haseeb says banning abliterated AI models is prior restraint. Tom compares the abliteration fight to early Bitcoin.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
02:51 a16z Goes Frontier
05:42 The Midterm Mega Tsunami
15:39 Crypto's New Congress
29:10 CFTC Clears Equity Perps
34:14 Anthropic's S-1 Update
35:35 Data Centers Go Blue
43:44 The Abliteration Threat

🔥Stay updated with all the latest hot takes by following and subscribing to @_ChoppingBlock and @unchained_pod!

🎥 YouTube: https://t.co/WDjprgCqJ7
🎧 Spotify: https://t.co/0ilprLbQb6
🍎 Apple: https://t.co/jrnmstpjql
🎙 Podcast Home: https://t.co/r6OZC52PK5