Everything is gambling now
Who's going to win the Super Bowl? What about the latest season of Survivor? Or the race to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve? Who will be Portugal's next president? How many times will Elon Musk tweet in the next week? On Polymarket, and other prediction markets, you can bet on all these things and more. Are we entering a world in which everything is gambling and gambling is everything? Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal joins the show to explain the rise of prediction markets, what's betting and what's investing, and more. Then, The Verge's Hayden Field teaches us about Model Context Protocol, a wonky bit of AI infrastructure that might be key to making AI agents work. MCP is barely a year old, and practically all of tech is ready to embrace it. Finally, Hayden helps David answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about why every AI company seems to want you to go shopping.
Further reading:
Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is betting not
Election night at Kalshi HQ
Joe Weisenthal at Bloomberg
From Bloomberg: My Biggest Question About Prediction Markets
Anthropic launches tool to connect AI systems directly to datasets
AI companies want a new internet — and they think they’ve found the key
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Is Bitcoin a Safe Haven? Market Correlation, Gold, and Macro Chaos – The Chopping Block - Ep. 823
Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. In this episode, the crew is joined by special guest Joe Weisenthal, co-host of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, for a wide-ranging, unfiltered conversation. They dive into whether Bitcoin is becoming digital gold, why Ethereum’s value might be leaking away, and how stablecoins are quietly reshaping global finance. Joe challenges the panel on NFTs, DePIN, and whether any of crypto’s big promises have actually delivered. Plus, they debate the rise of MicroStrategy copycats, the failure of crypto social apps, and why Worldcoin’s orb-pilled vision might actually make sense.
Show highlights
🔹 Bitcoin = Safe Haven? – Why BTC is acting like gold in a crisis while ETH and altcoins are tanking
🔹 Ethereum’s Value Leak – Joe questions why ETH hasn’t captured any upside from stablecoins or NFTs
🔹 The MicroStrategy Clone Wars – Solana copycats are trying the Saylor playbook… but will it work?
🔹 Worldcoin’s Creepy Appeal – Joe is orb-pilled: privacy is dead, but proof-of-personhood might just work
🔹 The Freeport Theory of Bitcoin – Could BTC be the decentralized answer to offshore gold storage?
🔹 Are Stablecoins the Eurodollars of Crypto? – Haseeb lays out how stables quietly rewrote the financial system
🔹 Ethereum’s L2 Gamble – The panel debates if Ethereum’s scaling strategy caused value to bleed out
🔹 The DePIN Dilemma – Is decentralized infrastructure a dead-end or just early? Joe wants receipts
🔹 Crypto Social Media? – Joe’s skeptical: why decentralized comms hasn’t clicked yet
🔹 Utopia or Bust? – If crypto’s gonna be this expensive, Joe says it better deliver a better world
Hosts
⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly
⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate
⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures
⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly
Guest
⭐️ Joe Weisenthal, Editor at Bloomberg
Disclosures
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:57 Bitcoin's Market Behavior
06:53 Bitcoin as a Safe Haven
15:56 Economic Value in Crypto
19:51 Stablecoins, NFTs, and Worldcoin
36:00 Blockchain's Value in Social Networks
41:20 Reality of Crypto Utopias
49:19 The Future of Stablecoins and Regulation
54:54 MicroStrategy and Bitcoin Investments
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Anatomy Of A Market Meltdown — With Joe Weisenthal
Joe Weisenthal is co-host of Odd Lots and an editor at Bloomberg. He joins Big Technology Podcast to make sense of the cratering stock market, discussing the various factors that led to this moment and when it might turn around. Stay tuned for the second half where we go rapid-fire, analyzing a bunch of tech companies that are getting absolutely hammered, and some big-time investors as well. We end with a meditation on crypto.
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Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal on how this crisis is different from '08
We are going to rewind the clock on this episode of The Scoop with the Odd Lots team, Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal.
The podcast duo – whose combined time covering global financial markets spans more than three decades – take us back to their times at the FT's Alphaville and The Business Insider, respectively, where they covered the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
In this episode, the podcasters become the "podcast-ees." The episode explores how there are parallels between the dearth of reporters at the cutting edge of the repo markets and blind spots in today's coverage of the coronavirus.
We also dive into:
The differences between the structural problems as revealed by the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19-linked crisis.
How the government's inability to funnel money to Main Street reveals the issues underpinning our financial plumbing, and how those issues could make Universal Basic Income more of a mainstream policy prescription in the U.S.
Why cash in people's pockets during a crisis is a good thing.
How this crisis might result in a shift in how we think about capitalism, whereas the last crisis resulted in a shift in the way we think about risk.
How bitcoin and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) aren't as different as some pundits might think.
Why we shouldn't sleep on equity analyst research.
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