Validated OUT OF SCOPE, Ep. 1: Hot Takes Roundtable with Tori Pastore (Soup) and Austin Campbell (Zero Knowledge)
Jun 26, 2026
Austin Campbell, a financial pro who built stablecoin reserves and early Bitcoin custody, joins for a wide-ranging hot-take roundtable. They riff on stablecoin reserve rules, banks as payment cartels, prediction markets and insider-trading risks. Conversations also cover regulator pay and accountability, catastrophe bonds, market structure tweaks, and a playful ranking of video-conferencing tools.
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Banks Hold A Payments Monopoly
- Modern payments effectively force consumers through banks, creating cartel-like power for banks.
- Austin shows card taps and deposits mean buying a coffee routes through bank deposits that fund project and hedge lending, not just mortgages.
Invest In Regulators And Hold Them Accountable
- Be sympathetic to frontline regulators and invest in them: pay higher salaries and give better tech budgets.
- Austin argues regulators are underpaid, blamed for unsolvable problems, and need resources plus accountability.
Insider Trading Erodes Market Trust
- Insider trading and opaque information flows degrade market confidence and price discovery.
- Austin suggests SEC surveillance misses off-exchange signals and recommends open-source intelligence to expose more insider activity.