Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
YC's Nemil Dalal joins to explain why he's never been more bullish as BitMEX winds down after 11 years, whether every failed crypto idea (TCRs, DAOs, creator coins) eventually works, why crypto is really about money, Base's consumer mea culpa, on-chain reputation and credit, and who pays in the x402 AI-agent era.
Show highlights
🔹 BitMEX, the exchange that invented the perp swap, winds down September 23rd after 11 years, alongside BitMart, Movement Labs, and Balancer Labs.
🔹 Nemil Dalal explains why he's never been more bullish: rivals adopted BitMEX's innovations, regulatory clarity is arriving, and crypto is becoming invisible infrastructure.
🔹 YC rented the Chase Center for a 7,000-builder YC event with Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, and Patrick Collison, yet almost nobody's launching a token early.
🔹 Imran's viral thesis that every failed crypto idea eventually works sparks Haseeb's 'toxic positivity' pushback and a war-memories tour through TCRs and DAOs.
🔹 Instacart's Apoorva vs Webvan and Reddit vs Digg: why timing, path dependency, and the YC 'why now' question decide which failed ideas return.
🔹 Jesse's Base mea culpa: the consumer-social bet on Zora and Farcaster was wrong for now, so he handed the Base app to Kobe.
🔹 Haseeb says crypto has always been about money; Nemil counters 'money is everything,' calling the blockchain the greatest capital innovation machine in the world.
🔹 Why pure on-chain credit keeps faceplanting: address repudiation, no recourse, no wage garnishment, and old memories of Debt DAO's revenue ratchet.
🔹 The x402 AI-agent era: Cloudflare pay-per-call gating, Kimi's inference license, and whether decentralization survives Google-shaped gravity as agents become the new wallet.
Hosts
⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly
⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly
⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures
Guest
⭐️Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y Combinator
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:23 Inside YC Startup School
03:05 BitMEX Shutdown & Exchange Wind-Downs
05:08 Why Nemil Is Bullish
08:28 Web2 vs Crypto Builders
11:48 Will Failed Crypto Ideas Come Back?
16:18 NFTs, Creator Tokens & the 'Why Now' Test
19:52 Every Dot-Com Idea Came True
23:29 Base's Social Pivot & Why Crypto Is About Money
34:51 On-Chain Reputation, Identity & Credit Bureaus
42:41 Homo Economicus & Machine-to-Machine Payments
50:35 x402, Cloudflare Gating & AI Agent Micropayments
55:39 Does Decentralization Survive?
1:00:17 AI CapEx, Monetization & the On-Demand Internet
_______________________________________________________
#bitcoin #ethereum #crypto #cryptocurrencies
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subscribe to our channel!
Website → unchainedcrypto.com
Unchained Daily Newsletter (FREE!)→ unchainedcrypto.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Unchained X → https://x.com/unchained_pod
Apple → podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1123922160?ls=1
Spotify → open.spotify.com/show/1cJrrfGY1SKBIRn5noKSAf?si=6SI4qIcRTEO7EhOe0V9n4w
RSS Feed → https://feeds.megaphone.fm/LSHML4761942757
Unchained: Your no-hype resource for all things crypto!
YC's Nemil Dalal joins to explain why he's never been more bullish as BitMEX winds down after 11 years, whether every failed crypto idea (TCRs, DAOs, creator coins) eventually works, why crypto is really about money, Base's consumer mea culpa, on-chain reputation and credit, and who pays in the x402 AI-agent era.
Show highlights
🔹 BitMEX, the exchange that invented the perp swap, winds down September 23rd after 11 years, alongside BitMart, Movement Labs, and Balancer Labs.
🔹 Nemil Dalal explains why he's never been more bullish: rivals adopted BitMEX's innovations, regulatory clarity is arriving, and crypto is becoming invisible infrastructure.
🔹 YC rented the Chase Center for a 7,000-builder YC event with Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, and Patrick Collison, yet almost nobody's launching a token early.
🔹 Imran's viral thesis that every failed crypto idea eventually works sparks Haseeb's 'toxic positivity' pushback and a war-memories tour through TCRs and DAOs.
🔹 Instacart's Apoorva vs Webvan and Reddit vs Digg: why timing, path dependency, and the YC 'why now' question decide which failed ideas return.
🔹 Jesse's Base mea culpa: the consumer-social bet on Zora and Farcaster was wrong for now, so he handed the Base app to Kobe.
🔹 Haseeb says crypto has always been about money; Nemil counters 'money is everything,' calling the blockchain the greatest capital innovation machine in the world.
🔹 Why pure on-chain credit keeps faceplanting: address repudiation, no recourse, no wage garnishment, and old memories of Debt DAO's revenue ratchet.
🔹 The x402 AI-agent era: Cloudflare pay-per-call gating, Kimi's inference license, and whether decentralization survives Google-shaped gravity as agents become the new wallet.
Hosts
⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly
⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly
⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures
Guest
⭐️Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y Combinator
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:23 Inside YC Startup School
03:05 BitMEX Shutdown & Exchange Wind-Downs
05:08 Why Nemil Is Bullish
08:28 Web2 vs Crypto Builders
11:48 Will Failed Crypto Ideas Come Back?
16:18 NFTs, Creator Tokens & the 'Why Now' Test
19:52 Every Dot-Com Idea Came True
23:29 Base's Social Pivot & Why Crypto Is About Money
34:51 On-Chain Reputation, Identity & Credit Bureaus
42:41 Homo Economicus & Machine-to-Machine Payments
50:35 x402, Cloudflare Gating & AI Agent Micropayments
55:39 Does Decentralization Survive?
1:00:17 AI CapEx, Monetization & the On-Demand Internet
_______________________________________________________
#bitcoin #ethereum #crypto #cryptocurrencies
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subscribe to our channel!
Website → unchainedcrypto.com
Unchained Daily Newsletter (FREE!)→ unchainedcrypto.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Unchained X → https://x.com/unchained_pod
Apple → podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1123922160?ls=1
Spotify → open.spotify.com/show/1cJrrfGY1SKBIRn5noKSAf?si=6SI4qIcRTEO7EhOe0V9n4w
RSS Feed → https://feeds.megaphone.fm/LSHML4761942757
Unchained: Your no-hype resource for all things crypto!
