Uneasy Money: Who Owns Stolen Crypto? The $71M Fight Testing DeFi Limits

A legal battle over frozen KelpDAO hack funds is forcing DeFi to answer questions it has long avoided. Thank you to our sponsors!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Coinbase One: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained. Multichain Advisors: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at multichainadv.com. When the Arbitrum Security Council froze $71 million in funds tied to the KelpDAO  hack, it was hailed as vigilante justice. Now lawyers representing families of North Korea's victims are claiming that same money in a New York federal courtroom, as if theft transfers title.  Meanwhile, an AI agent running on Base got robbed via a prompt injection hidden in Morse code, and Coinbase cited artificial intelligence when announcing 14% layoffs.  Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, Luca Netz, and Kelsie Nabben, author of Decentralised Digital Security, work through what DeFi's security layer actually is, who gets to decide when to act, and whether any of it survives the arrival of autonomous agents. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kelsie Nabben, Research Fellow at RMIT University — Author of 'Decentralized Digital Security: Code, Community, Crisis' (2025) Timestamps 🚀 0:00 Introduction ⚖️ 1:55 The $71M legal battle over Arbitrum-frozen KelpDAO hack funds 🔍 7:44 But legally, are those funds DPRK’s? Would that claim hold up in court? 🏛️ 9:16 Why stealing funds doesn’t transfer ownership 🕵️ 14:15 The vigilante security layer in DeFi: who acts and who hides behind 'decentralization' 🧑‍⚖️ 21:13 Questions the judge asked the first day of the Gerstein case 👮 26:24 When Kain was also sued by Gerstein … and Luca was also served 🔵 35:30 Coinbase One ad: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan ⛓️ 37:01 Multichain Advisors ad: Get help navigating TGEs, go to market, BD, partnerships and more 🤖 37:44 BankrBot prompt-injected via Morse code: the LLM-to-LLM attack surface 🛡️ 43:38 Can DeFi survive the agents? AI security risks and what 'blast radius' means 🏢 59:18 Coinbase's 14% layoff and what it really says about AI and org structure Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices