Robert Leshner

Things Robert Says on Podcasts

CEO and co-founder of Superstate, an asset management firm that builds infrastructure for investment funds, and an investor at Robot Ventures. Founded Compound Labs in 2017, which built one of the first DeFi applications. Holds an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is a CFA charterholder. Appears on Unchained and as a guest on the CoinDesk Podcast Network, Wealthion, Tokenized and Forward Guidance.

Where to Find Them

Robert Leshner hosts Unchained . They have also been a guest on CoinDesk Podcast Network (2 times) , Wealthion - Be Financially Resilient , Tokenized and Forward Guidance .

Recently: “The Chopping Block: Black October, Banks Blocking AI Agents, Hyperliquid's Blockchain-Not-Bitcoin Moment, and the Visa-Fireblocks Rumor” on Unchained (October 2026); “The Chopping Block: The Ledger Hardware Implant, a Listening Device at OpenAI, Papertrade's 1000x House, and the Death of Technical Moats” on Unchained (October 2026); “The Chopping Block: Bitget's 387 Million Dollar Hack, Kalshi's Cooked Perps Volume, and Agentic Bank Runs” on Unchained (October 2026); “The Chopping Block: CLARITY Dies on the Senate Floor, Hunter Biden's LAPTOP Rug, & the AI Pause Pact” on Unchained (September 2026); “The Chopping Block: Crypto's Rebound, Reg Crypto, and AI Router Wars” on Unchained (August 2026); “The Chopping Block: threadguy on Crypto's Social Trading War, Trader Celebrities & AI Agents” on Unchained (August 2026).

What They Said

“The hardest thing for people to navigate is like the U.S. healthcare system. It is so difficult. It is so much paperwork. It is so much complexity. The cards are stacked against the individual so badly that AI should have the biggest impact on fixing that. And the biggest losers are going to be health insurance companies. If there was any industry I would want to short, that's what I would want to short.” — Robert Leshner, Unchained

The hosts were discussing banks blocking AI agents from customer accounts. Leshner says agents will matter most where systems are nearly impossible for people to navigate on their own, after a co-host described using one to get years of overpaid copays refunded.

Unchained · 2026-10-24 Permalink → Listen →
Unchained Around 27:25 into the episode
Robert Leshner

Totally. Yeah, I think the banks will generally be fine. Tarun has talked about the example of him getting his health insurance fixed. Like I feel like, you know, or

Tarun Chitra

getting paid back copay as I overpaid for five years. Correct.

Robert Leshner

Correct. If you look at where AI Agents, the end user the most, it's on things that are basically impossible to navigate as a human. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think the hardest systems for people, regular people, everyone, smart people, dumb people, whatever, like all people, the hardest thing for people to navigate is like the U.S. healthcare system. It is so difficult. It is so much paperwork. It is so much complexity. The cards are stacked against the individual so badly that AI should have the biggest impact on fixing that. And the biggest losers are going to be health insurance companies. If there was any industry I would want to short, that's what I would want to short.

Rob Hadick

All right. Maybe move on to a new topic. So speaking of shorting. Speaking of shorting, let's short this topic. Let's move on to Joe Wisenthal and Hyperliquid's US path. So this was actually, I thought was really interesting to me. So Joe Wisenthal and Tracy Alloway did an Odd Lots newsletter and…

Tom Schmidt

Well, I think it's funny that like hyperliquid is the thing that he cites, which I'm like, this is not TradFi in any way, right? He's not talking about like, well, you know, he did profess, I guess, some awareness of stablecoins and I think some understanding of why stablecoins are good. But…

Tarun Chitra

Well, it's also like, is he realizing, isn't he realizing this a little late? I feel like this has been, it's like Bloomberg, other people at Bloomberg have been talking about this and writing about this for like nine months. It's like, I don't, I found that a little bit funny because it's like…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

Collections They Appear In