The Defiant
The internet of money is being built with blockchain technology and without banks. We call it DeFi, short for Decentralized Finance, and this is where you can hear the builders and users of this cutting edge world tell their stories first hand. Hosted by Camila Russo.
Episodes
Michael Saylor built his entire identity around one promise: he would never sell Bitcoin. Last week, that promise ended.
Strategy's board voted to authorize selling Bitcoin to cover dividend payments and build cash reserves — in the middle of MSTR and STRC crashing to record lows, the yield blowing up, and confidence in the whole experiment starting to crack.
Is this a rational pivot? Or the beginning of the end for the world's...
The Ethereum Foundation just cut 20% of its staff and 40% of its budget. Two co-executive directors are gone. And the talent exodus has been quiet but real.
But the community didn't wait. In a matter of weeks, 50 institutions and Ethereum leaders came together to form ETH Labs — a new organization backed by Sharp Link, Joe Lubin, and Bitmain, with a mandate to build what the Foundation decided it no longer wants to. Is t...
Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Commerce forced Anthropic to shut down Fable V for the entire world. One government, one decision, zero global access. Is this the definitive case for decentralized AI?
Jake Brukhman (Coin Fund), Jesus Rodriguez (Sentora), and Haseeb Qureshi (Dragonfly) debate the hottest topic at the intersection of crypto and AI: whether frontier AI can and should be decentralized — or whether we're repeat...
How close did DeFi come to a real systemic collapse?In this episode, Camila Russo sits down with Mike Silagadze, co-founder and CEO of Ether.fi, to break down the Kelp exploit, the DeFi United rescue effort, and why Mike believes the default path could have been far worse if nobody had stepped in. He explains why the bigger lesson is not just smart contract risk, but operational security, app-layer responsibility, and the need to m...
April saw some of the worst DeFi losses in recent memory, and even OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Aráoz warned people to get out. But while CT feels gloomy, institutions are not stepping back - they're leaning in with more diligence, stronger infrastructure requirements, and growing demand for onchain yield.In this livestream, Camila Russo is joined by John Zettler of Kraken, Sunand Raghupathi of Veda, and Anthony DeMartino of Sent...
Top Ethereum talent is leaving. The Ethereum Foundation is shrinking. And one question now hangs over the entire ecosystem: what happens to ETH if the EF steps back?
In this livestream, Camila Russo is joined by Dankrad Feist, Laura Shin, Ajit Tripathi, and William Mougayar to break down the EF departures, leadership turmoil, the cypherpunk mandate, the debate over tokenomics, and whether Ethereum is still positioned to win as compe...
DeFi is approaching a breaking point.After a wave of hacks and growing concerns around smart contract risk, liquidity risk, and hidden dependencies, the biggest question in crypto is no longer just how much yield you can earn, but whether that yield is actually worth the risk.In this debate, Camila Russo is joined by Santiago Roel Santos of Inversion, Daniele Ugolini of Rysk Finance, and Mauricio Di Bartolomeo of Ledn to break down...
Explosive debate: after one of DeFi's biggest attacks left Aave facing bad debt, DeFi United raised more than $300M to stop the contagion. But did the ecosystem prove its strength - or expose hidden trust assumptions, opaque risk, and the need for a real DeFi backstop?
The Defiant's Camila Russo is joined by Dean Eigenmann (Markets Inc.), binji (Ethereum Foundation), and David Phelps (Confetti) to debate whether crypto bailouts are ...
The Arbitrum Security Council just made one of the most controversial decisions in DeFi history — freezing $70M in ETH stolen by North Korean hackers from the KelpDAO bridge exploit. But was it the right move?
And what does it say about the systems we're building?
Griff Green (Giveth Co-Founder and Arbitrum Security Council member) and Gabe Shapiro / Lex_node (crypto lawyer, MetaLex founder, ZK Sync Guardian Council) go head-t...
Two new research papers just intensified one of crypto’s most serious long-term risks: quantum computing.
In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Camila Russo sits down with Alex Pruden, co-founder and CEO of Project 11, to unpack what the latest quantum breakthroughs actually mean for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader crypto ecosystem.
Alex explains why the new papers matter, how quantum computers could use Shor’s algor...
A new DeFi exploit triggered millions in losses, but the deeper story is about risk. In this episode, Omer Goldberg, founder of Chaos Labs, explains how the attack unfolded, why the damage spread across lending markets, what vault curators got wrong, and whether DeFi is truly ready for mainstream adoption. If you want to understand stablecoin risk, oracle design, curator incentives, and the future of safer onchain finance, this is ...
What happens when the institution at the center of U.S. market plumbing starts putting securities onchain?
In this episode of The Defiant, Chris Storaker sits down with Tom Sullivan, Managing Director at DTCC Digital Assets, to discuss how DTCC is approaching tokenization, why regulatory clarity changed the game, and what it means for U.S. Treasuries, stocks, ETFs, collateral, and 24/7 markets.
Tom explains DTCC’s role as the t...
New Podcast with Aave founder Stani Kulechov just dropped: Aave is at a turning point - will the Aave Will Win proposal lead to innovation or chaos? Aave is navigating a pivotal moment with the recent "Aave will win" proposal. This initiative aims to redirect 100% of protocol revenue back to the Aave DAO, a move that many in the community have embraced. But with any major change comes scrutiny.Critics are questioning the governance...
In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Camila Russo sits down with Jing Wang to discuss how Optimism is evolving and why the debate over what counts as a “real” Ethereum L2 might be missing the point.
Jing argues that the most important question isn’t whether a chain is an L1, L2, or sidechain.
It’s whether the architecture actually serves users and real-world use cases.
“If it looks like an L1, we&rsqu...
Layer 2 was supposed to scale Ethereum.
But what if it fragmented it instead?
I
n this episode, we break down:
• Why public chains are “expensive databases”
• Why composability is Ethereum’s real value
• Why stablecoins don’t need blockchains
• Why L2 may be weakening Ethereum’s core
Is scaling helping Ethereum — or hollowing it out?
Explore The Defiant ✨
Bitcoin Renaissance or JPEG Hype?In 2023, Bitcoin had what many called a renaissance.NFTs on Bitcoin.BRC-20 tokens.Runes.10x transaction spikes.Fee revenue surging to levels not seen since 2017.And then — just as quickly — it cooled.So was the Bitcoin renaissance just a flash in the pan?Or did Ordinals, BRC-20s, and Runes permanently change Bitcoin?In Episode 2 of our Beyond Digital Gold docu-series in partnership with ...
"In a decentralized governance system, it's unavoidable to develop politics."
Rune Christensen explains why DAO governance becomes a struggle for resources, how the "iron law of bureaucracy" emerges, and why Sky redesigned its architecture to survive it.
From USDS growth to the Atlas rulebook and Genesis Capital — this is Sky's long-term vision for sustainable decentralized finance.
Robinhood is opening the testnet for its Arbitrum-based Ethereum Layer 2. In this episode, we sit down with the fintech’s head of crypto, Johann Kerbrat, to discuss the strategic move to build on Ethereum. He believes institutions can get the privacy and compliance guarantees they need on public chains like Ethereum, so building on private chains doesn’t make sense as they are just a “fancy database.” Kerbra...
Stablecoins have quietly become the most successful use case in crypto.In this episode, Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Circle, explains why USDC is more than a digital dollar — it’s a global financial network.We discuss economic inclusion, internet-scale finance, programmable payments, emerging markets, AI-driven payments, and why stablecoins are becoming the backbone of global money movement...
2025 marked a turning point for crypto.In this episode, Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional, sits down with Camila Russo to explain why institutional adoption accelerated last year. From ETFs and stablecoin regulation to banks using public blockchains in production, crypto crossed a line it can’t uncross.We explore how Coinbase evolved from a retail exchange into a global financial infrastructure layer, why tokeniza...
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