The Chopping Block: Arthur Hayes on Why Crypto Needs to Ditch the Banks - Ep. 466

BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, fresh out of home confinement after settling charges with the U.S. government, joins “The Chopping Block” with Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, and Tarun Chitra. The early crypto pioneer pulls no punches in his assessment of SBF, TradFi’s failings, and how crypto traders lost the plot in trusting CeFi middlemen.

Show highlights: 

• why Arthur travels with stuffed animals, and what his favorite brands are
• what factors led Sam Bankman-Fried to success
• how Bill Clinton seems to be related to many multibillion-dollar downfalls
• whether everyone in crypto thinks that prices are eventually going up
• what’s the thesis behind Maelstrom, Arthur’s new investment arm
• why he’s bullish on decentralization but also game to trade “dog shit”
• what the impact of Silvergate’s failure will be on the crypto industry
• what would Arthur have done if he was the CEO of Silvergate
• the role of rising interest rates in understanding Silvergate’s downfall
• why holding Tether’s USDT is not so different from USDC
• why crypto needs alternatives to dollar-backed stablecoins
• the real reasons why the U.S. Treasury is worried about stablecoins

Hosts

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

Guest

Arthur Hayes, cofounder of BitMEX

• Twitter
• Medium

Disclosures

Links

• Unchained: 
• ​​Silvergate to Wind Down Operations in ‘Voluntary Liquidation’
• Silvergate Confers With FDIC to Avoid Closing Down: Report
• Silvergate Shuts Down Crypto Payments Network
• Bloomberg: Silvergate Had a Crypto Bank Run
• NYMAG: Arthur Hayes, the Original King of Crypto, Is Back.
• Arthur’s posts: 
• White Boy
• Dust on Crust

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices