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What if the next stablecoin boom isn't in dollars? Ripio co-founder and CEO Sebastian Serrano joins David Hoffman to unpack how Latin America is bringing six local currencies onchain, why self-custody wallet deposits are still so expensive, and how stablecoins could improve cross-border payments. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY2 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔓NEAR | TRADE CONFIDENTIALLY, GET 20% BACK https://bankless.cc/near2026 🌍 RIPIO | LOCAL CURRENCIES, ONCHAIN https://bankless.cc/ripio 🛡️VIZOR | THE WALLET ZCASH DEVS USE https://bankless.cc/vizor 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Crypto adoption in Latin America 5:38 Local currencies, FX and the carry trade 8:19 Inside Ripio: crypto infrastructure for LatAm 16:29 Fixing on-ramps with local stablecoins 28:26 Wrapped fiat: business model and cross-border payments 35:29 Distribution and which blockchains 42:14 Regulators, banks and market growth --- RESOURCES Sebastián Serrano https://x.com/sserrano44 --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Scott Kupor helped build a16z from three people into a firm with hundreds of employees. Now, as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, he’s applying some of the same lessons about talent, incentives, and organizational design to a workforce of roughly two million federal employees. Scott joins Founders host David Senra to tell the story of a16z’s earliest days, from joining Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz during the 2008 financial crisis to borrowing Michael Ovitz’s CAA model to build a venture firm around specialized networks and services for founders. He explains why a16z chose to market itself when venture firms traditionally didn’t, how early wins like Skype accelerated the firm’s growth, and why it eventually reorganized around specialized investing teams. Then they turn to Scott’s move into government. He lays out his effort to build a more merit-based federal workforce, attract younger technical talent, and create what he calls “permissioned risk” so government employees can actually try new things. That includes everything from changing how performance and promotions work to replacing a retirement process that still relied on hundreds of millions of pieces of paper stored in an underground Pennsylvania mine.

Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Mistral, the last remaining hope for frontier intelligence in Europe. Mistral has raised approximately $7.5BN, including debt, and reached a valuation above $24BN. Previously a researcher at Google DeepMind, Arthur co-authored the landmark Chinchilla research, showing how smaller, better-trained AI models could outperform much larger rivals.

AGENDA: 

00:00 Is Mistral Europe's Last Hope in AI?
08:45 Are Chinese Open Models Actually Safe?
13:00 Will OpenAI & Anthropic Replace Their Own Customers?
14:40 Why Energy Isn't Europe's Biggest AI Bottleneck
24:05 Why Mistral Won't Follow OpenAI Into Chips
30:40 Who Gets Rich From the Inference Boom?
31:45 102 New AI Labs: Who Actually Survives?
35:30 Are $100 Billion Training Runs a Fantasy?
36:20 If Everyone Needs Compute, Why Are AI Stocks Crashing?
44:05 Will Mistral Choose Europe for Its IPO?

 

Health advice has become an endless stream of supplements, diets, wearables, and biohacks. Which interventions are actually worth your time? Truemed CEO Justin Mares argues that most people should ignore the extremes and focus on a few fundamentals: better food, movement, sleep, and reducing harmful exposures. Justin joins a16z General Partner Daisy Wolf to walk through his own approach to health, from what he eats and how he exercises to supplements, blood tests, sauna, sleep, and the changes he’s made to his home. They also discuss the larger problem behind Truemed: while chronic disease drives the vast majority of U.S. healthcare spending, relatively little goes toward prevention. Justin explains how Truemed is trying to change that by making it easier for eligible consumers to use tax-free HSA and FSA dollars on qualified lifestyle interventions.

What makes a startup worth acquiring when software has never been easier to build? Salesforce’s John Somorjai says the answer goes well beyond technology: the best acquisitions can accelerate a product roadmap, bring in exceptional talent, and put a startup in front of 15,000 Salesforce sales reps almost overnight. John joins a16z General Partner Alex Immerman to unpack the thinking behind nearly $100 billion in acquisitions during his tenure, from Slack and MuleSoft to a new generation of AI-native companies. They discuss Salesforce’s build-versus-buy framework, why outcome-based pricing is replacing seats in parts of enterprise software, and what founders should consider when deciding whether to sell. John also shares what can kill a deal during diligence, why he thinks parts of today’s venture market are overvalued, and how Salesforce Ventures is expanding from enterprise software into frontier AI and robotics.

AGENDA: 

04:00 OpenAI Cuts Valuation to $1.25 Trillion as Fundraise Shrinks
08:00 Google Loses $500 Billion as AI Stocks Sell Off
10:00 Anthropic's Growth Slows as AI Price War Intensifies
27:00 DoorDash Buys Instacart for $17 Billion
33:00 Kalshi Raises $1 Billion at $40 Billion Despite Legal Threats
41:00 Cognition Eyes $80 Billion as Baseten Hits $30 Billion and Serval $3 Billion
51:00 AI Law Firm Crosby Bids for Collapsed Legal Giant Weil
57:00 Physical Intelligence Targets $20 Billion Valuation
01:00:00 Hugging Face Deal Faces Scrutiny as Salesforce Buys Cresta for $2.7 Billion

 

David Sinclair, AO, PhD, is a longevity scientist, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, author of the book "Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To," and host of the "Lifespan" podcast.www.youtube.com/c/davidsinclairpodcast  www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lifespan/David-Sinclair/9781501191978  https://lifespan.com  https://davidasinclair.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Visit https://superpower.com/rogan for $20 off your membership. This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/JRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A blue wave and a black swan. Democrats sweep Congress, markets whipsaw into a $2 trillion selloff, and Bitcoin holds its 50-week moving average through the biggest heist in history: $6 billion stolen from Binance. Ryan and David break down how North Korea pulled it off, how a French bank got robbed with crypto as the getaway car, Ethereum's December 2028 quantum-proof deadline from DevCon, and Coinbase insiders' new sell plans. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔓NEAR | TRADE CONFIDENTIALLY, GET 20% BACK https://bankless.cc/near2026 🌍 RIPIO | LOCAL CURRENCIES, ONCHAIN https://bankless.cc/ripio 🛡️VIZOR | THE WALLET ZCASH DEVS USE https://bankless.cc/vizor 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 1:57 Blue Wave: Democrats Sweep Congress https://x.com/DCinvestor/status/2117789052573544873 3:33 $2 Trillion Erased: AI Bubble Popping? https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2118362154558779411 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HWX6J1hXwAAXczz?format=jpg&name=medium 7:41 Bitcoin Holds the 50-Week: Early Bull Intact? 10:59 NEAR AI Red https://near.ai/blog/the-right-to-run 11:44 Will the Dems Come for Crypto? https://x.com/0xGrimes/status/2111584181562290268 https://x.com/caprioleio/status/2118125380741795929 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2118006193276805427 https://x.com/EleanorTerrett/status/2118041922011021418 https://x.com/hosseeb/status/2118080207664062720 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/2118043617650491467 21:11 Binance Hack: The $6B Heist, 7 Days Later https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/alerts/2026/north-korea-responsible-for-6-billion-binance-attack https://x.com/zachxbt/status/2116030284261179538 https://www.binance.com/en/proof-of-reserves https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/11/03/binance-s-usd6-3-billion-hack-began-with-a-fake-job-interview-exchange-says https://x.com/binance/status/2117626126214504729 https://x.com/hosseeb/status/2117650872603955542 27:26 THORChain & the Laundering Fight https://x.com/FBICyberBranch/status/2116660730745299426 https://thedefiant.io/podcasts-and-videos/podcast/thorchain-refused-to-block-the-usd387m-bitget-hacker-here-s-why-or-chad-barraford 32:49 North Korea: Too Close to the Sun? https://www.theblock.co/news/regulation/2026-11-02-kim-jong-un-sister-rejects-fbi-claims-linking-north-korea-binance-hack-432344 35:45 Polygon's Hard Fork & the Validator Bribe https://forum.polygon.technology/t/pip-proposal-recovery-of-funds-held-in-blocked-addresses-following-the-polymarket-and-binance-incidents/22497 38:25 How to Rob a Bank: Crypto Was the Getaway Car https://x.com/gregory_raymond/status/2117864901108432999 https://x.com/Jrag0x/status/2117878442309906695 48:37 DevCon 8: Ethereum Post-Quantum by 2028 https://x.com/EFDevcon/status/2117497506007576631 https://x.com/ethereumfndn/status/2117717427920498698 51:17 The Ethereum Economic Zone https://www.kucoin.com/news/flash/ethereum-economic-zone-unveils-three-cross-chain-breakthroughs-at-devcon 52:57 L2Beat Becomes ETHBeat https://x.com/ethbeat_org/status/2117913893796225035 https://ethbeat.org/crops 54:08 Vitalik's Keynote Controversy https://x.com/ethereumfndn/status/2117500382977102044 https://x.com/gakonst/status/2117668817082155157 https://x.com/uttam_singhk/status/2117673754574651760 https://x.com/fede_intern/status/2117993844159438993 58:58 Coinbase Earnings & Armstrong's Sell Plan https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/30/coinbase-coin-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ https://thedefiant.io/news/cefi/coinbase-ceo-armstrong-adopts-plan-to-sell-up-to-1-31-billion-in-shares 1:02:53 STRC Back at $100 https://x.com/Strategy/status/2118036238741688626 --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures