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About Unchained
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.
Over the past six months (Mar 8 – Sep 8, 2026), Unchained covered major industry developments. Security incidents dominated: Cronos halted its chain after a $75M Tectonic exploit (Mar 17); North Korea drained $285M from Drift Protocol via a six-month social engineering campaign (Apr 7); ColdCard suffered a ~$100M loss from a random-number-generation bug buried in a one-word commit five years ago (Aug 6).
On the technology front, Citrea launched its mainnet, bringing the first trust-minimized Bitcoin (cBTC) and native stablecoin (ctUSD) to a fully programmable platform (Apr 7). StarkWare executed the first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction on mainnet (Aug 27), followed by Blockstream's SHRINCS post-quantum signature proposal to preserve block space (Aug 28).
In products and markets, Swan unveiled Swan Trinity, a three-party custody solution where Swan, BitGo, and a third firm each hold a key (Sep 1). SoFi and Kraken parent Payward linked banking rails to crypto markets for 24/7 settlement (Sep 2). The SpaceX IPO drew comparisons to token launches, with Hyperliquid perps predicting the first-day pop.
Future focus areas include quantum-resistant signatures, Bitcoin application-layer expansion, institutional-grade custody, and resilient security frameworks against nation-state attackers.
Laura Shin is the founder and CEO of Unchained, a crypto media outlet. She is a former senior editor at Forbes and the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time. She hosts the Unchained podcast, authored 'The Cryptopians' (2022), and has spoken at TEDx and the IMF. She holds bitcoin, ether, sol, and sui.
No reliable information is available on other co-founders or current core executives.