Bankless

What does it take to build an exchange that refuses to choose between speed, cost, security, verifiability and composability? Lighter founder Vlad Novakovski joins David to trace his path from international Olympiads and Harvard at 18 to Citadel, early machine learning, Lunchclub and an 18-month ZK engineering bet.

---

📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:

🔓NEAR | TRADE CONFIDENTIALLY, GET 20% BACK
https://bankless.cc/near-20

📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0
https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks

🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE
https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS

🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS
https://thedefireport.io/bankless

👑BANKLESS PREMIUM | AD-FREE & BONUS EPISODES
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
TIMESTAMPS

0:00 A Particular Set of Skills
11:33 Harvard at 18
19:03 Citadel and the Search for Alpha
25:14 Machine Learning Before the AI Boom
36:46 ​​Finding Elite Talent Early
41:39 The Lunchclub Matching Problem
45:11 Pivoting Into Lighter
51:18 The 18-Month ZK Engineering Bet
56:38 Lighter’s Five Pillars
1:00:04 A New Generation of Exchanges

---
RESOURCES

Vlad Novakovski
https://x.com/vnovakovski

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Ryan and David unpack the CLARITY Act’s last-minute lifeline, $100 oil, BitMine’s ETH slowdown, and the OpenAI model that escaped its sandbox.

---

📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24

https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---

BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:

🔒NEAR | TRADE CONFIDENTIALLY, GET 20% BACK

https://bankless.cc/near-podcast

📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0

https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks 

🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE

https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS 

🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS

https://thedefireport.io/bankless 

👑BANKLESS PREMIUM | AD-FREE & BONUS EPISODES

https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:33 CLARITY Act at a Crossroads

https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/2079334038104408522

https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/2079962528243650990

https://x.com/coindesk/status/2079633633023836667

https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/2079608362522575063

https://x.com/politico/status/2080261045114065177

https://polymarket.com/event/clarity-act-signed-into-law-in-2026/clarity-act-signed-into-law-in-2026

17:56 BitMine’s 5% ETH Strategy

https://x.com/BitMNR/status/2079184988541448638

https://x.com/ykkz99/status/2079607294354964696

https://x.com/ykkz99/status/2079244980103659697

https://x.com/coindesk/status/2079200035045036162

27:40 Hester Peirce Eyes DeFi Vaults

https://x.com/HesterPeirce/status/2080011999702880341

https://x.com/CJRobins01/status/2079976258423627785

https://x.com/Bankless/status/2079536878588715366

https://morpho.org/blog/now-live-morpho-midnight

38:28 BitMEX’s End of an Era

https://x.com/CryptoHayes/status/2080286601125482771

https://x.com/BitMEX/status/2080201602456301580

44:36 NEAR Goes Post-Quantum

https://bankless.cc/near-podcast

https://x.com/NEARProtocol/status/2079189515843821764

48:58 TradFi Moves Deeper Into Crypto

https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/2077774644652790240

https://x.com/JSeyff/status/2077792050573918432

https://crypto.com/us/company-news/cryptocom-announces-400-million-strategic-investment-from-citadel-securities

https://x.com/mzorkin/status/2077834551091478695

54:07 OpenAI Model Breaks Out

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/openai-cyberattack/

https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026

https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-model-evaluation-security-incident/

1:02:40 Closing & Disclaimers

---

Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Securitize has gone public, raised $400 million and tokenized its own equity, but Carlos Domingo says the real race is only beginning. He joins David to explain how Securitize makes money, why investor demand remains tokenization’s biggest bottleneck and what separates an actual onchain share from a synthetic stock wrapper.

---

📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:

🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET
https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast

📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0
https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks

🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS
https://thedefireport.io/bankless

👑BANKLESS PREMIUM | AD-FREE & BONUS EPISODES
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Going Public
4:50 Demand Bottleneck
10:19 Real vs Synthetic
17:31 Liquidity Wins
23:43 First Movers
29:24 Trading SECZ
39:47 Spot and Perps
43:01 The $1T Goal

---
RESOURCES

Carlos Domingo
https://x.com/carlosdomingo

Securitize
https://securitize.io/

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Bitcoin has won the store-of-value argument, but can it become the foundation of an entirely new credit system? David Seroy of Alpen Labs joins David Hoffman to explore why Bitcoin’s next era may be defined by digital credit, ZK rollups, fixed-duration lending, and an onchain repo market rather than payments alone.

---

📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:

🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET
https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast

📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0
https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks

🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS
https://thedefireport.io/bankless

👑BANKLESS PREMIUM | AD-FREE & BONUS EPISODES
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Hyperbitcoinization
3:51 Bitcoin’s Next Phase
9:57 The Talent Crisis
11:29 BitVM and ZK
16:26 Bitcoin L2s
19:06 Bitcoin Credit
28:28 Onchain Repo
34:09 The Yield Curve
38:21 Borrowing and Risk
43:24 Why L2s Failed
48:29 Saylor vs Onchain
54:51 Alpen and Strata
56:36 Ethereum’s Purpose

---
RESOURCES

Alpen Labs
https://www.alpenlabs.io/

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Inflation cooled, war intensified, and crypto climbed anyway. Ryan and David ask if the bottom is in, unpack Robinhood Chain’s surge past Base, and debate who benefits from Ethereum’s L2 boom.

---

📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24

https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---

BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:

📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0

https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks 

🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE

https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS 

🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS

https://thedefireport.io/bankless 

👑BANKLESS PREMIUM | AD-FREE & BONUS EPISODES

https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:29 Cycle Bottom Watch

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077774313726304659

https://x.com/goodalexander/status/2077031311664197738

https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/2076857638059720736

5:24 Inflation Cools, War Heats

https://x.com/kobeissiletter/status/2077008212994253025

https://x.com/geiger_capital/status/2077011477580451983

14:56 Crypto Outperforms Stocks

https://x.com/saylor/status/2076638696053276748

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2076647130572235017

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077197119207756098

22:34 Robinhood Chain Breaks Out

https://x.com/donnoh_eth/status/2075890751834071189

https://dune.com/entropy_advisors/robinhood-chain-network-overview

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/07/15/the-launchpad-that-fueled-robinhood-chain-s-memecoin-boom-just-gave-away-all-its-revenue

https://dune.com/adam_tehc/the-robinhood-trenches

29:31 Base Pivots to Trading

https://x.com/jessepollak/status/2077427261586997745

https://x.com/jessepollak/status/2077550728416256489

https://x.com/austincampbell/status/2077545305789067398

36:15 Does ETH Earn Enough?

https://x.com/vladtenev/status/2076666114801877310

https://x.com/LorenzoARK/status/2076792007184298076

https://x.com/apolynya/status/2077301418860466487

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077400104458154428

https://x.com/ethereumJoseph/status/2076838398510211122

47:29 L2s and Rent Sharing

https://x.com/sgoldfed/status/2077082053330272454

https://x.com/l2beat/status/2077764769436553272

https://l2beat.com/native-rollups

56:20 Ethereum Spinoffs Multiply

https://x.com/eth_systems/status/2077000602320805918

https://x.com/fradamt/status/2077739531520921621

58:49 DeFi Hacks May Be Peaking

https://x.com/hosseeb/status/2076682247168827849

https://x.com/maraoz/status/2059413451265441990

1:01:44 Buy-and-Burn Wins

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2077186630566224208

https://x.com/blknoiz06/status/2077773554033037509

1:06:29 Closing & Disclaimers

---

Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:

https://www.bankless.com/disclosures