Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest news. This week, the four discuss Bitcoin’s price surge over the past week amid growing optimism that a spot BTC exchange traded fund would win regulatory approval, an erroneous Wall Street Journal story about crypto funding to the terrorist group Hamas and AI and crypto illiteracy among leading U.S. lawmakers. 

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights: 

• the reasons why the price of Bitcoin has gone up so much in the last week
• whether Bitcoin is decoupling from the traditional stock and equity markets 
• why Robert is convinced that Bitcoin pumped this much due to the BlackRock ETF news
• what an ETF is and why it could be a big deal for Bitcoin
• whether the analogy to the gold ETFs works for Bitcoin
• how an inaccurate report from the Wall Street Journal about Hamas' usage of crypto sparked so much criticism within the crypto community
• why that crypto is not a good venue for illicit financing
• how the US political class is 'illiterate' about AI and crypto, according to Tarun

Hosts

• Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly 
• Robert Leshner, founder of Compound
• Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly 
• Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures

Disclosures

Links

Recent coverage of Unchained on spot Bitcoin ETFs:

• Why a Spot Bitcoin ETF Will Probably Launch No Later Than January 10
• Why It Looks Like BlackRock Could Win America’s First Spot Bitcoin ETF

Bitcoin ETFs

• Unchained: 
• Bitcoin Soars Past $35,000 Amid Spot ETF Optimism
• Bitcoin ETFs Explained: What Are They & How Do They Work?
• South China Morning Post: China’s stock market fund outflows add to biggest capital flight since 2016: Goldman

Regulation:

• Reuters: US lawmakers urge White House crack down on Hamas use of crypto after Israel attack
• Forbes: Elizabeth Warren Is Building An ‘Anti-Crypto Army’—Feeding Serious U.S. Bitcoin Ban Warnings
• WSJ: Hamas Militants Behind Israel Attack Raised Millions in Crypto
• Cryptoslate: Crypto community accuses WSJ of exaggerating Hamas crypto funding by 99%

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