The Chopping Block: Bitget's 387 Million Dollar Hack, Kalshi's Cooked Perps Volume, and Agentic Bank Runs

North Korea takes $387 million from Bitget and moves it through THORChain while NEAR's Shield freezes what it can, a Consensys validator hack tests whether staking was ever the risk-free rate, a quant named Benny shows Kalshi's perps volume was cooked, and Apollo warns that AI agents are coming for your checking account.

Welcome to The Chopping Block, where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week the three of them record from a self-serve podcast studio in Amsterdam.

Bitget loses 387 million dollars to North Korea's Lazarus Group and pays every claim from its user protection fund, but the stolen funds raise a harder question: THORChain lets them through while NEAR's Shield freezes them, so which one is actually decentralized? (Dragonfly is an investor in Bitget and NEAR.) Then a Consensys validator compromise tests staking as the risk-free rate, Robert prices insurance on US Treasuries at 35 basis points, a quant named Benny exposes Kalshi's perps volume, and the crew takes apart Apollo's warning about agentic bank runs, from Robert's one basis point checking account to Tarun's agent filing his insurance claims.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Bitget loses about 387 million dollars to North Korea's Lazarus Group, and its 460 million dollar user protection fund covers every claim, so there is no contagion.

🔹 The stolen funds run through THORChain while NEAR's Shield freezes around 500K and refuses to route more than 100 million, which reopens the question of what decentralization actually requires.

🔹 Robert wants only the two extremes, fully neutral infrastructure or deliberate censorship, and nothing in the middle. Haseeb counters that everything between a centralized exchange and Uniswap already is the middle.

🔹 Haseeb argues property rights mean more than valid state transitions, and that anomaly detection can enforce them in a way that is still neutral and programmatic.

🔹 Tarun explains why cross-chain intents, with their solvers and RFQs, are where all the fights happen.

🔹 A Consensys validator compromise forces a mass exit, and Robert says staking was never the risk-free rate, only the best possible one. He looks up US CDS at 35 basis points and puts Ethereum validation risk at about five.

🔹 Would Ethereum roll back an unfair sla