Good now revolutionaries—Will kicks off solo with Alex Popovich, then Evan catches the back half, and Crypto Crush's Danielle joins from the UK to talk about what you actually do with your money when the DeFi world feels like it's on fire.

Danielle opens with her thesis — Circle anywhere below $90 is a buy, she's eyeing $70 or below, and "cash is also a position." From there the conversation gets into the real DeFi playbook: she uses Morpho to borrow against Bitcoin (cbBTC), Kamino to borrow against Solana, and insures her positions through Nexus Mutual. Evan defends Aave after the Kelp bridge exploit — the contract did exactly what it was supposed to do, and absorbing a $6B TVL flight in 24 hours is a quiet vote of confidence. Alex explains why the Clarity Act keeps getting punted, and why all of crypto legislation right now is really about one company's banking interests.

Breaking news lands mid-show: Tether just froze $344M in USDT at the request of U.S. law enforcement. Tether now works with 340+ LEAs across 65 countries — 2,300+ cases globally. The hosts argue both sides of the decentralization-vs-cooperation whiplash. Plus: China's sulfuric acid export ban, the $70 Circle stock pick, and why Hyperliquid settling tokenized volume in USDT + USDC is the real stablecoin infrastructure story.

The show is sponsored by Arculus — get 10% off at GetArculus.com or the TikTok shop with promo code ARCURUMS10 (purple RUMS-branded wallet waitlist is live), and powered by Jito — the largest place to stake your Solana. Join us in the community after every show: community.rumshq.com. The only thing missing is you

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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
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Good now revolutionaries—Emily's back in the co-host chair and we're dissecting the wave of DeFi exploits that just reshaped the conversation around security, governance, and trust. This is not a heat-check episode. This is an autopsy.

Evan walks through the Drift exploit — $285M gone via a 2-of-5 multisig with no time lock — and the KelpDAO bridge exploit that used a single DVN validator on LayerZero to push ~$300M out through bad debt on Aave. Emily translates the security failure modes into plain English: why vibe-coded products are uniformly insecure, what SOC2 actually is (a framework built by accounting teams, not the DeFi marketing department), and why Aave "worked exactly as designed" is the most damning possible defense.

Big takes to listen for: Arbitrum's 9-of-12 Security Council freeze was in the governance docs from day one — read your protocol's founding documents. Circle's decision not to freeze for Drift is defensible. And the bank-run dynamic we're watching unfold across TVL isn't a crypto problem — it's a finance problem the banking world has been bailing out for decades.

Scam watches and real-world use: the Strait of Hormuz USDC anecdote, why the safety-stand-down model from aviation and the military is exactly what DeFi needs right now, and a teaser for next week on Tether and stablecoin reserves.

If you're checking out: lock your keys, read your governance docs, and come hang out with the community at community.rumshq.com — the only thing missing is you.

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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
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🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
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Good now revolutionaries—

Solo-host vibes. Will runs the show today while Evan takes the day off under a new trial schedule, with Alex co-riding. Bitcoin is trying to push through initial resistance toward $81–83K, but Alex isn't convinced the fundamentals are driving this — he sees insider-led trade action, a potentially compromised Fed chair in Kevin Warsh, and oil-market theatrics around the Iran-US "ceasefire where no one ceased firing." His only high-conviction fundamental play right now is Hyperliquid.

Post-hack DeFi is the spine of this one. Will and Alex walk through why Aave wasn't hacked (the contracts worked exactly as written — a user set slippage to "absolutely bananas"), how the Drift $292M theft was pulled off Italian Job-style by a DPRK group who socially engineered the multi-sig to remove the time lock, and why the Arbitrum Security Council freeze was written in the founding docs — people just didn't read them. A clean zero-day explainer and a sharp disambiguation of the Layer Zero / Kelp DVN blame game round it out.

Two PSA moments to watch for: Alex's MEXC warning (the White Whale freeze story, plus his personal grant story where MEXC tried to strong-arm him into launching a token) and his warning about the "crash-it-to-a-new-system" narrative — which he's seen weaponized to shill specific assets to scared people. There is no new system. There are just people extracting on the way down.

Sponsors: Arculus Wallet — the purple-themed Rise Up Morning Show wallet pre-order is live (scan the QR), or grab a regular Arculus at GetArculus.com with promo code ARCURUMS10 for 10% off. The RUMSHQ community at community.rumshq.com is free to join; Premium is $30/mo (first two weeks free) and gets you office hours with Will, Evan, and Alex, discounts on classes, and a stack of free altcoin research and DeFi-safety materials

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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
Helpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.

🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
LIVE Monday @ 7p central
Technical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.

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WANT MORE?
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FOLLOW OUR HOSTS:
☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan
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🐬 Will Watson: https://coinguide.vip

RISE UP!
✊🔥

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Nothing on this channel should be construed as financial/legal advice. Educational/entertainment purposes only....

Good now revolutionaries—Emily's back in the co-host chair and we're dissecting the wave of DeFi exploits that just reshaped the conversation around security, governance, and trust. This is not a heat-check episode. This is an autopsy.

Evan walks through the Drift exploit — $285M gone via a 2-of-5 multisig with no time lock — and the KelpDAO bridge exploit that used a single DVN validator on LayerZero to push ~$300M out through bad debt on Aave. Emily translates the security failure modes into plain English: why vibe-coded products are uniformly insecure, what SOC2 actually is (a framework built by accounting teams, not the DeFi marketing department), and why Aave "worked exactly as designed" is the most damning possible defense.

Big takes to listen for: Arbitrum's 9-of-12 Security Council freeze was in the governance docs from day one — read your protocol's founding documents. Circle's decision not to freeze for Drift is defensible. And the bank-run dynamic we're watching unfold across TVL isn't a crypto problem — it's a finance problem the banking world has been bailing out for decades.

Scam watches and real-world use: the Strait of Hormuz USDC anecdote, why the safety-stand-down model from aviation and the military is exactly what DeFi needs right now, and a teaser for next week on Tether and stablecoin reserves.

If you're checking out: lock your keys, read your governance docs, and come hang out with the community at community.rumshq.com — the only thing missing is you

Support the show

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Want to hang out with us after the show, get live answers to your questions, or join future giveaways?
Join our free community where the show lives 24/7:
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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
Helpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.

🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
LIVE Monday @ 7p central
Technical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.

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WANT MORE?
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FOLLOW OUR HOSTS:
☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan
🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info
🐬 Will Watson: https://coinguide.vip

RISE UP!
✊🔥

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Nothing on this channel should be construed as financial/legal advice. Educational/entertainment purposes only....

Good now revolutionaries—

The Arculus purple wallet order form is officially LIVE. Evan and Will (with Alex taking the morning off to host Trust Issues tonight) kick off Tuesday with a packed show: the purple wallet QR hits the screen, shouts to Crystal, Lakita, Derek, and Jason — the first wave of orderers — and a real-time breakdown of why Pengu's 83% drawdown may still have further to fall even as Pudgy Penguins remains the only successful community takeover in crypto.

Evan pulls up DeFi Llama live to debunk a rumor that Jito is shutting down (it's not — they're the largest Solana liquid staking platform, doing billions in TVL). Will gets philosophical on the Arbitrum Security Council's recent smart-contract freeze and what "decentralized enough" actually means when 12 compliance-checked members can freeze a protocol. Tether is raising $500B — not because they need it, but because OPM is a hell of a drug. Plus: Satoshi-era BTC is moving, Circle TA ahead of May 11 earnings, and a full walk-through of why ChatGPT alone is not due diligence (ask it about Balancer and see what happens).

Question of the day: Lethal Weapons asks why he can't move his USDC off his Arculus wallet. Evan's answer turns into the clearest gas fee explainer you'll hear this week — nominal native token, every chain, every movement.

Grab your cold wallet at getarculus.com with code ARCURUMS10

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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
Helpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.

🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
LIVE Monday @ 7p central
Technical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.

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WANT MORE?
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🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info
🐬 Will Watson: https://coinguide.vip

RISE UP!
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Nothing on this channel should be construed as financial/legal advice. Educational/entertainment purposes only....

Good now revolutionaries—

William Watson IV and Doug aka Drift are back after a two-week break, and they're walking straight into a market that's pricing in a Wednesday deadline on the Iran situation. This episode is the macro reset you needed before the week starts: why oil's move matters more than the S&P headline, why the Fed is pinned on rate cuts, and why Bitcoin is only 27 weeks into a historical 52–57 week bear bottom pattern.

Stock market gets the forensic treatment — three white soldiers are printing but volume is falling off a cliff, and William walks through why that reads more like manipulation than real strength. The pair then covers the Aave bridge exploit (not a hack of Aave), the Drift fallout pulling money out of DeFi broadly, and why Hyperliquid's adoption is the clearest bullish tell left standing. Plus: BitTensor's largest subnet exits with a scathing letter, Pudgy Penguins lands NHL + Party City deals, and Doug quietly makes his own Pengu profits on the ride.

If you're sitting on a green position right now — from Sky Protocol, Syrup, Pengu, or anything else — William and Doug are aligned: take 30% off, set a stop, and wait. October is the realistic reversal target unless there's a genuine peace announcement in the next few days. You don't get rich by losing money. Tune in, take notes, and don't front-run the setup.

Join the community → https://community.rumshq.com

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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
Helpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.

🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
LIVE Monday @ 7p central
Technical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.

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FOLLOW OUR HOSTS:
☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan
🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info
🐬 Will Watson: https://coinguide.vip

RISE UP!
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Nothing on this channel should be construed as financial/legal advice. Educational/entertainment purposes only....

Good now revolutionaries—

Will is back from Mexico and the timing could not have been worse for DeFi. Over the weekend, KelpDAO was exploited for ~$293 million via a Layer Zero bridge — the attacker fraudulently minted RSE, parked it on Aave as collateral, and borrowed out legitimate dollars in roughly an hour. It's the biggest DeFi hack of 2026 so far, and Layer Zero is pointing directly at North Korea's Lazarus Group / "Trader Traitor." Aave froze RSE on V3 and V4, but not before the contagion kicked in: Aave saw ~$6.2B move out (~23% of locked capital), Morpho lost almost a billion in net outflows, Jupiter and Sky Protocol bled too.

Also on the show: Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire pushing back on protocol-level kill switches; Alex making the case that these aren't hacks at all — they're bridge exploits cascading into protocols that weren't built to absorb them; the Vercel / Shiny Hunters breach where $500K in Bitcoin is the asking price for Next.js supply-chain access; Bitcoin's top-heavy-but-grassroots case; and the White Whale's return post — plus the pump.fun copycat that tagged Evan within minutes. Evan closes with the sharp one: don't buy creator coins. Ever.

Sponsor callout:

Today is the day — the co-branded Arculus x Rise Up Purple Wallet is live for pre-order at rumshq.com. Limited quantity, up to five per person, pay in cash or crypto (BTC/ETH/SOL/USDC/USDT). Shout-out to Crystal who grabbed #1 of 100.

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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
Helpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.

🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
LIVE Monday @ 7p central
Technical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.

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WANT MORE?
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FOLLOW OUR HOSTS:
☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan
🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info
🐬 Will Watson: https://coinguide.vip

RISE UP!
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Nothing on this channel should be construed as financial/legal advice. Educational/entertainment purposes only....

Good now revolutionaries—

Quigley is back, and we spent 90 minutes on the two themes everyone in crypto should be obsessing over right now: quantum risk and the endless creativity of social-engineering attackers. We start with the pump-and-dump clinic of the week — Allbirds, a failing shoe company whose stock ripped 400–600% after announcing a pivot to "GPU-on-demand AI" — and trace the lineage back through Kodak, Long Blockchain, and Atari. Same playbook every time, still legal, still heartbreaking for retail.

Then Quigley unpacks BIP-361, the quantum-resistant Bitcoin proposal from Jameson Lopp that would freeze vulnerable addresses in phases. Google's new paper pulled the "cryptographically relevant quantum computer" timeline in to roughly 2030 — about nine minutes to derive a private key from an exposed public key. It's important but not urgent, and the fix is less exotic than it sounds: stop taking the convenience shortcuts (Taproot, reused addresses, public-key-exposing spends) that quantum exploits.

The second half is the Quigley School of Paranoia: $450M in protocol losses year-to-date, most of it social engineering, not software. The $280M Drift hack came from DPRK operatives who funded a fake quant firm and spent six months building rapport at Solana conferences. The fix is friction — keep accounting off LinkedIn, whitelist your wires, voice-verify every new instruction, isolate your financial device, and ditch SMS 2FA for an authenticator app. "You don't need to outrun the bear. You need to outrun the guy running from the bear with you."

Plus: IONQ's photonic interconnect of two trapped-ion systems at 99.99% fidelity, the Bitcoin Talk forum puzzle at privatekeys.pw, the Genius Act quietly not defining stablecoins as needing a blockchain, and Quigley's pitch for a pencil-and-paper blockchain workshop at Consensus Miami.

Arculus Wallet (getarculus.com — code ARCURUMS10) for the cold-storage-or-get-rekt crowd

RUMSHQ community at community.rumshq.com — where the show lives 24/7.

Support the show

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☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
Helpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.

🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
LIVE Monday @ 7p central
Technical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.

—

WANT MORE?
👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com
👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com
👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.com

FOLLOW OUR HOSTS:
☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan
🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info
🐬 Will Watson: https://coinguide.vip

RISE UP!
✊🔥

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Nothing on this channel should be construed as financial/legal advice. Educational/entertainment purposes only....