The Defiant - DeFi Podcast

"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.” Kerbrat says he sees a future where most financial infrastructure and assets transact on public blockchains. Topics:Robinhood Layer 2 LaunchTokenized Stocks & Real-World AssetsThe "Adapt or Die" moment for BanksSelf-Custody vs. Platform Safety

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 tokenization is finally happening for real, and what regulation unlocked that years of innovation couldn’t.This is about the moment crypto became part of the financial system.

Before Ethereum. Before smart contracts. Before the hype around NFTs and ICOs — Bitcoin was already experimenting.
In this episode of Beyond Digital Gold we rewind to 2012–2014, when developers were pushing Bitcoin’s limits with:
• Colored Coins were early real-world assets
• Mastercoin, the first ICO in crypto history
• Counterparty and Rare Pepes, the first NFTs
• Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s first native Layer 2
Featuring JR Willett, Matt Luongo, Yoni Assia, Adam Krellenstein and Elizabeth Stark, and co-hosted with Nathan from StarkWare, this episode asks a fundamental question:
👉 If Bitcoin has already succeeded as digital gold, is it even worth experimenting anymore?
The answer may surprise you.
🎬 Episode 1 of the Bitcoin DeFi mini-series
📺 Subscribe for the full series on Bitcoin’s past, present, and future