In this episode of Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins tackle a packed agenda: from the fairness of Binance’s listing fees to the ways in which DeFi didn’t perform well during the “Black Friday” crash, why Tempo’s $500 million raise might have been a political ploy, and the growing war over stablecoin dominance.
The trio debates whether Bitcoin is undervalued compared to gold, why Ethereum’s 10-year track record gives it an edge, and whether today’s Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) are just froth, or the permanent backbone of institutional crypto.
Plus: Austin makes a bold prediction about the stablecoin that will dominate by 2040.
Sponsors:
Mantle
Hosts:
Ram Ahluwalia, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida
Austin Campbell, NYU Stern professor and founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting
Christopher Perkins, Managing Partner and President of CoinFund
Links:
Binance Listing Fee Drama
Unchained:
Binance Listing Fee Fight: What’s a Fair Price to List on the Top Crypto Exchange?
Binance Claims It Does Not Profit From Token Listings
Jesse Pollak (Base) chimes in
Tempo & Dankrad
Fortune: Exclusive: Stripe-backed blockchain startup Tempo raises $500 million round led by Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital and Greenoaks
Ethereum core dev Dankrad Feist joins Tempo
Reactions:
Ryan Adams (Bankless): Tempo will optimize for itself, not ETH.
Nick Almond: Not a death sentence for ETH
Breadguy: Big loss. Dankrad was a major L1 scaling advocate.
Black Friday
Dan Wilson: 3 big lessons post-crash
Gold vs. BTC
GOLD/BTC up 23.5% in past month
Bitcoin Is Undervalued vs. Gold
DATs
Bloomberg: Huobi Founder Li Lin Set To Launch $1 Billion Ether Accumulator - Bloomberg
CoinDesk: Ripple Set to Enter Corporate Treasury Business With $1B Acquisition of GTreasury
Timestamps:
🎬 0:00 Intro
💸 3:39 Binance listing fees — fair price for distribution or pay-to-play?
🏛️ 10:19 What is the best way to go public?
⚔️ 11:57 How exchanges really compete behind the scenes
💥 15:00 “Black Friday”: why Chris calls it catastrophic — but with a silver lining
🧱 24:52 What the industry must fix to prevent another meltdown
💵 30:15 How Tempo’s $500M raise represents peak frothiness
🚨 39:12 Is Dankrad’s exit from the Ethereum Foundation a red alarm for ETH?
🔮 43:07 Austin’s bold prediction: which stablecoin wins by 2040
🥇 46:17 Is Bitcoin undervalued compared to gold?
🏗️ 52:21 Why DATs are here to stay despite the market carnage
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