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About Unchained
Unchained is an independent crypto news outlet founded by journalist Laura Shin, built around investigative reporting, policy analysis and podcasts. The site publishes daily news and long-form pieces on regulation, protocol governance, security incidents and market structure; the podcast side runs two formats, with Unchained doing long interviews and The Chopping Block hosting a roundtable of practitioners including Dragonfly's Haseeb Qureshi and Tom Schmidt and Gauntlet's Tarun Chitra. Content is mainly English, revenue comes from subscriptions, sponsorships and events, and the editorial process keeps fact-checking and conflict disclosures.
Its place in the ecosystem is as an information intermediary: investigations often become source material for governance proposals and regulatory debate, while the podcast airs disagreements between investors and protocols in public. Against institutional outlets such as CoinDesk and The Block it is smaller, leans more on a personal brand and podcast distribution, and concentrates coverage on US regulation and the Ethereum ecosystem.
Unchained was founded by veteran journalist Laura Shin in 2016, initially as a Forbes podcast and one of the first crypto shows with a professional news approach. In 2017, she left Forbes and made it independent, establishing a no-hype, in-depth reporting identity. Over the years, it grew from a single podcast into a media network including The Chopping Block, Bits + Bips, and a news site. In 2024, Unchained marked its 8th anniversary, and in 2025 it began experimenting with platforms like Pump.fun to explore new streaming and crypto media models. These milestones highlight its evolution from a personal podcast to an independent crypto media outlet.
Its lasting significance lies in consistently applying journalistic standards to crypto coverage, helping broaden audience trust and shaping how the industry covers news, narratives, and interviews.
On August 14, 2026 Unchained aired an undercover investigation: founder Laura Shin posed as a recruiter named Sophie Wang and interviewed, over video, a developer suspected of working for North Korea. Calling himself Justin Lim and claiming to live in Long Beach, California, he answered technical questions fluently but turned evasive on questions about the country's leadership. Investigators linked him to a $2.7 million theft from MetaPlay in 2022, and the episode noted that North Korean operatives are estimated to have stolen more than $6 billion from crypto firms.
Unchained also covered regulation. A Senate cloture vote on the Clarity Act failed, with every Democrat voting no, sinking the bill over ethics provisions, stablecoin reward limits and a rewrite that stripped liability protection from non-custodial developers. Two days later the SEC granted an innovation exemption for tokenised stock trading, and Cody Carbone of the Digital Chamber argued on air that agencies, not Congress, will write the rules for years. The idea that legislation died while regulators took over became one of the year's defining threads for listeners.
Unchained keeps a two-to-three episode weekly cadence, runs investigative reporting and policy breakdowns as standing formats, and extends into paid subscriptions and live events.
Laura Shin — Founder & CEO; former senior editor at Forbes, the first full-time mainstream crypto journalist, author of 'The Cryptopians'.
Steven Ehrlich — Host of Bits + Bips; ex-Forbes director of digital asset research, formerly at Kraken and the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance.
Juan Aranovich — Managing Editor.
Scott Williams Jr. — CFO of Laura Shin Media and Unchained.