"Bazooka in Every Hand" Do We Really Want Unstoppable AI? w/ Jake Brukhman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jesus Rodriguez
Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Commerce forced Anthropic to shut down Fable V for the entire world. One government, one decision, zero global access. Is this the definitive case for decentralized AI?
Jake Brukhman (Coin Fund), Jesus Rodriguez (Sentora), and Haseeb Qureshi (Dragonfly) debate the hottest topic at the intersection of crypto and AI: whether frontier AI can and should be decentralized — or whether we're repeating the same mistakes as decentralized storage.What you'll hear: why the government hand-picked who gets access to Mythos (and it wasn't Anthropic's call), whether consumer GPU swarms can realistically compete with data centers, what's really happening with on-chain hacks in 2026, and Haseeb's most controversial take: the world's most powerful AI should be treated like a nuclear weapon, not a public good.No easy answers. No consensus. Just the most important debate of 2026.
The Case for a New Internet | Curtis Yarvin & Jake Brukhman, Urbit
In this episode, Urbit founder Curtis Yarvin presents a case for reimagining the internet from the ground up. Yarvin dissects the evolution of the internet from its decentralized origins to today's centralized "social databases," explaining how this shift has degraded online communities and compromised digital sovereignty. He introduces Urbit as a potential solution, detailing its unique approach to digital identity and personal servers. The conversation explores the challenges of centralization, the potential for "accountable monarchies" in digital governance, and how crypto could fundamentally alter the internet's course. Thanks for tuning in!
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The 6th edition of Meridian, a web3 conference hosted by the Stellar Development Foundation is happening in London, England October 15-17, 2024.
Learn more and get your early-bird priced tickets now at meridian.stellar.org by using the code BLOCKWORKSPOD.
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Harpie sets the standard in on-chain security, actively monitoring and safeguarding your crypto wallet against theft in real time. It detects, blocks, and recovers stolen assets from risky transactions before they execute, shielding you from even the most advanced hacks and scams. Harpie is free to use and compatible with all Ethereum, Base, Polygon, and Arbitrum wallets.
Protect your crypto today at harpie.io.
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Supra Containers are secured by Supra’s L1 nodes and get access to Supra’s 500k TPS throughput, sub-second consensus latency, and all their built-in services like oracle price feeds and onchain randomness without any overhead. Supra is also MultiVM compatible so you can easily deploy your EVM, Move, and SVM smart contracts here.
Get all the freedom, control, and tools you need to build super dApps and bring the world onchain. To learn more, visit www.supra.com/blockworks
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:51 The Evolution of the Internet
08:22 Rise of Centralized Networks
12:15 Future of Decentralized Systems
30:45 Urbit & Blockchains
46:53 Stellar Ad
47:43 Supra Ad
48:39 Harpie Ad
49:32 What is Urbit?
01:15:54 Decentralized Identity and Personal Servers
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Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Crypto VCs are slowly transitioning into generalists
Jake Brukhman is the founder and CEO of CoinFund.
In this episode, Brukhman explores the intersection of AI and blockchain technologies and their impact on consumers, and shares his thoughts on the saturation of the early-stage crypto VC market.
OUTLINE
00:00 Introduction
01:33 CoinFund's Structure & Strategy
05:56 Early vs. Late Stage Crypto Venture
16:37 Crypto AI & DePIN
28:35 Crypto DePIN
32:51 Tokenomics & PMF
37:00 Interoperability Trends
41:14 Shifting LP Expectations
46:50 Closing Thoughts
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Polkadot
Polkadot is the blockspace ecosystem for boundless innovation. To discover more head to polkadot.network
The Block Community
The Block is launching a new community experience for fans of The Scoop! Follow us on Lens on stay in the loop: hey.xyz/u/theblockcommunity
The Block Newsletters
The Block's newsletters bring you the latest news and analysis of the fast-moving crypto and DeFi markets. To subscribe, visit theblock.co/newsletters
CoinFund's Playbook for a Crypto Supercycle | Jake Brukhman & Seth Ginns
In this episode, Jason sits down with Jake Brukhman and Seth Ginns, co-founders and managing partners at CoinFund. They dive deep into CoinFund's origin story, investment philosophy, and how the firm navigates the complex landscape of liquid and venture investing in the crypto space. Jake and Seth share their insights on the current crypto market cycle, drawing comparisons to previous cycles and discussing potential scenarios for how this one may unfold differently. They explore the intersection of AI and crypto, with Jake highlighting the importance of decentralization and democratization in the development of AI to avoid dangerous centralized control by a few big tech companies. Stay tuned for all of this and much more!
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Follow Seth: https://twitter.com/sethginns
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Monad is a fully EVM compatible Layer 1 blockchain that can support 10,000 real transactions per second. Monad aims to open up the design space for the EVM to support high fidelity defi, consumer facing applications, and more generally allow crypto to scale to the masses.
If you are interested in participating in Monad's journey, follow: https://twitter.com/monad_xyz and join: https://discord.gg/monad
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Marinade is the leading Solana staking service that spreads your stake across 100+ top validators, distributes MEV rewards, and provides automatic downside protection with new Protected Staking Rewards. Choose to liquid stake for mSOL for use in DeFi, or delegate your stake through Marinade Native, which gives you full custody of your SOL and no smart contract risk. Max performance for you, max performance for Solana.
https://blckwrks.co/Marinade
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(01:50) CoinFund Origin Story
(12:53) Web2 vs Crypto Venture
(27:28) Liquid Investing
(36:00) Determining Valuations
(44:54) Monad Ad
(45:53) Marinade Ad
(47:00) Opportunity in Interop
(55:32) Market Cycles
(01:11:16) Crypto & AI Thesis
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Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Why CoinFund Believes Worldcoin Could Become More Popular Than Bitcoin - Ep. 525
CoinFund’s Jake Brukhman and Chris Perkins join Unchained to dissect their recent $158 million seed round and the transformation of the investment landscape following the 2022 crypto carnage. As backers of Worldcoin, they confront criticisms about the project's approach of distributing money to individuals who may not fully comprehend the underlying technology. They also delve into why the Coinbase lawsuit could potentially boost the industry, share their perspectives on current crypto legislation, and explore the intersection of AI and crypto.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Show highlights:
how the fundraising crypto environment changed this past year after the 2022 carnage
what the impact of FTX’s alleged fraud has been
why Chris and Jake believe that the SEC’s lawsuit against Coinbase is bullish for the industry
why Jake believes there's no massive consumer application in web3 yet
how institutions have been building during the bear market
whether Worldcoin solves the sybil resistance problem in crypto and whether it could become more decentralized than Bitcoin
Jake's response to the criticism surrounding the centralization and privacy issues in Worldcoin
the ethical implications of giving free money to people who may not fully understand how their biometric data is being used
what the Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) is and what are its two main applications
how the foundational web3 + AI intersection is happening in the compute area
why Chris believes that the crypto market structure bill is not perfect
whether creating proper stablecoin legislation is a very important opportunity for the US
how DeFi should be regulated to ensure that privacy gets protected
Thank you to our sponsors!
Crypto.com
Arbitrum Foundation
TOKEN2049
Guests:
Chris Perkins, President of CoinFund
Jake Brukhman, Founder and CEO of CoinFund
Links
Unchained:
Worldcoin Launches Token on Mainnet, Plans to Deploy 1,500 Eyeball Scanning Orbs
Is Sam Altman's Worldcoin the End of People's Privacy?
CoinDesk:
Worldcoin Could Enable Wider Distribution of Crypto Than Even Bitcoin, Says CoinFund,
Worldcoin Releases Tokenomics, Report Geofenced for Some Countries
The Block: What exactly is CoinFund's new Composite Ethereum Staking Rate
What do I think about biometric proof of personhood? By Vitalik Buterin
CoinDesk Indices and CoinFund Announce CESR, the Benchmark Rate for Staking on Ethereum
CoinFund Reinforces Commitment to Web3 Technology with the Close of $158M Seed IV Fund
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Crypto Networks Are Monetizable Public Goods | Jake Brukhman
In this episode of Empire, Jason and Santi are joined by Jake Brukhman, the founder and CEO of CoinFund, to explore the concept of crypto as a public good. We discuss:
-- How crypto is a public good, and why that's important
-- How public goods can monetize and accrue value
-- How crypto will democratize public goods funding
Tune in for these answers and more!
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Timestamps
(00:00) Introduction
(02:23) Defining Crypto's Value Proposition
(07:17) Private vs Public vs Common Goods
(13:59) Can Public Goods Accrue Value?
(28:41) The Tragedy Of The Commons
(32:35) What Crypto Skeptics Get Wrong
(38:32) Why Users Will Want Decentralized Networks
(41:50) A New Business Model To Fund Public Goods
(50:03) Rapid Fire Questions
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The Network State by Balaji
https://thenetworkstate.com/
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Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
CoinFund executives explain why crypto is the ‘obvious’ choice for ambitious fintech pioneers
Founded in 2015, crypto-native VC firm CoinFund has spent the past year bolstering its leadership with talent from the world of traditional finance, including Chris Perkins — a former executive at Citigroup — and Christopher Giancarlo, the former CFTC chair.
CoinFund’s hiring of Chris Perkins as the firm’s new President is part of a larger exodus of talent from Citi towards digital asset companies, as reported by The Block.
In this episode of The Scoop, CoinFund’s President Chris Perkins and CEO Jake Brukhman break down the recent personnel updates at CoinFund, and explain why the combination of crypto-natives and experienced executives from traditional finance are key to pushing blockchain technology to the point of mass adoption.
While Brukhman and Perkins believe outsiders from traditional finance can help crypto projects scale, that is not to say that all crypto projects are eager for VC firms to get involved.
As Perkins mentioned during the interview: “Crypto is all about community, and you really have to work to navigate that community to understand the founders and to help them grow.”
While the crypto community can be nuanced compared to the world of traditional finance, Perkins believes the allure of working with the burgeoning digital asset industry is strong enough to continue to draw in talent:
“We're effectively in the process of giving birth to a brand new asset class. And it's just so incredibly exciting being a pioneer, being on the cutting edge. For those of us who are wired like that, it's kind of obvious why you'd want to transition into this space.”
Episode 36 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Senior Fintech Reporter Lucy Harley-McKeown, and Chris Perkins, President and Jake Brukhman, CEO & Founder of CoinFund.
Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross River
Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.
About Coinbase Prime
Coinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.
About Cross River
Cross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.
32 - The Bull Case for NFTs | Jake Burkhman & Andrew Steinwold
September 28, 2020
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----- 32 - The Bull Case for NFTs | Jake Burkhman & Andrew Steinwold
There's something bubbling under the surface with NFTs. A lot of really smart people are starting to make a lot of noise about the coming wave of NFT explosion.
But what are NFTs exactly?
What can we do with them?
Are they really all that unique?
What is so powerful about a Non-Fungible Token?
Jake Burkhman, founder of CoinFund, is particularly bullish on this sector of Ethereum.
Andrew Steinwold, host of a podcast exclusively dedicated to NFTs, thinks that the world of NFTs will dwarf the world of DeFi by orders of magnitude.
What makes these two individuals so optimistic about NFTs? Listen to find out! ------ Resources: Bankless articles:
The First $100M in NFTs https://bankless.substack.com/p/the-first-100m-in-nfts Democratization of Value https://bankless.substack.com/p/the-democratization-of-value How to make money selling Digital Art https://bankless.substack.com/p/how-to-make-money-on-digital-art Listen: Andrew Steinwold's Podcast: Zima Red https://anchor.fm/andrew-steinwold
Rate the Podcast 5 Stars
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----- Not financial or tax advice. This podcast is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Do your own research.
CoinFund's Jake Brukhman and Multicoin's Tushar Jain on Generalized Mining - Ep.92
Jake Brukhman of CoinFund and Tushar Jain of Multicoin Capital discuss a new trend among crypto funds: generalized mining, also called mining 2.0, in which investors participate in the networks in order to seed activity on them. For instance, an investor might offer disk space on a file storage network or provide capital on a decentralized lending network. They explain why it makes more sense to do this in the early days of a network than when it's matured, whether this will lead away from a peer-to-peer vision for crypto toward more professionalization and how this affects the basic premise of the fat protocols thesis. We also discuss how this impacts how crypto funds hire, do their accounting and reporting and structure their LP agreements.
Thank you to our sponsors!
Abra: Click this special link for a free $25 in Bitcoin! https://www.abra.com/unchained
Altlending: https://altlending.com
WeTrust: WeTrust: Donate in crypto and have your donation matched by WeTrust through Giving Tuesday, November 27! http://wetrust.io/unchained
Episode links:
Jake Brukhman: https://twitter.com/jbrukh?lang=en
CoinFund: https://coinfund.io
Tushar Jain: https://twitter.com/TusharJain_
Multicoin Capital: https://multicoin.capital
Jake's post on crypto borrowing: https://blog.coinfund.io/crypto-borrowing-and-staking-networks-e7d2d64a81a4
Tushar's post on generalized mining: https://multicoin.capital/2018/10/23/the-evolving-role-of-crypto-investors/
Jake on LivePeer as a case study: https://blog.coinfund.io/livepeer-cryptoeconomics-as-a-case-study-of-active-participation-in-decentralized-networks-19a932415e0e
Unchained episode with MakerDAO: http://unchainedpodcast.co/why-its-so-hard-to-keep-stablecoins-stable
Unconfirmed episode with Rune Christensen of MakerDAO: http://unconfirmed.libsyn.com/rune-christensen-of-makerdao-on-its-15-million-from-andreessen-horowitz-ep039
Initial witness offerings, by Jake's partner Alexsandr Bulkin: https://blog.coinfund.io/iwos-with-adapt-a-creative-technological-solution-to-a-regulatory-problem-513b0bc811ff
Jake's post on fat protocols not being an investment thesis: https://blog.coinfund.io/fat-protocols-are-not-an-investment-thesis-17c8837c2734
Unchained interview with Joel Monegro, the author of the fat protocols thesis: http://unchainedpodcast.co/placeholders-joel-monegro-on-the-fat-protocols-thesis-today-ep65
Videos that Jake mentions at the end of the show:
Generalized Mining, An Introduction & Primer by Jake Brukhman, CEO of CoinFund: https://youtu.be/ceex9CN2YZU
Panel #1: Supply Side Services | Generalized Mining and The Third-Party Economy: https://youtu.be/Cr6H2FcidjY
Panel # 2: New Role of Crypto Investors | Generalized Mining and The Third-Party Economy: https://youtu.be/zakQc07GRXA
Panel #3: Staking Economic Design | Generalized Mining and The Third-Party Economy: https://youtu.be/ydViUpTZens
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