The Defiant - DeFi Podcast

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

Kain Warwick—DeFi OG and founder of Synthetix and Infinex—is back on The Defiant Podcast with Camila Russo for a no-BS conversation at a pivotal moment: Infinex just ran its INX token sale and is heading into its TGE.
We get into:
Why Kain believes DeFi’s biggest bottleneck isn’t “more decentralization,” but UX + distribution

The hard lesson OG DeFi learned: users won’t “learn to love complexity”—the product has to be holistically better

The INX sale controversy: $2,500 cap → cap removed, one-year lockup stays, and why he says the sale “didn’t need to happen” (but still closed)

What he’d do differently: market-driven pricing for locked vs. liquid tokens (and why he thinks the liquidity premium is brutal right now)

Kaito / InfoFi: how incentives turned crypto Twitter into slop—and why he thinks it “blew up the public square”

What INX actually does: early access, fee discounts, governance—and what demand looks like from power users

Infinex’s product roadmap: Safe support, hardware wallets, integrating “competitors” like Hyperliquid, and the real metric he watches—share of wallet

The bigger vision: a one-stop, non-custodial front-end that can serve both whales and newcomers (and why that’s the only way DeFi competes with fintech)

Subscribe for more founder interviews and deep dives from The Defiant.

In this interview, Camila Russo sits down with Danny Ryan — former Ethereum Foundation researcher and a key leader behind Ethereum’s shift to proof of stake — now Co-Founder & President at Etherealize, to talk about the next big wave for crypto: institutional adoption of Ethereum.
Recorded in Buenos Aires during Devconnect, Danny breaks down why the mood inside banks has flipped from “we can’t touch crypto” to “if we don’t adopt it, we’ll be left behind.” We dig into what institutions actually want beyond ETFs, why the biggest opportunity isn’t “tokenizing assets” but rewiring markets from first principles, and why privacy is table stakes for institutional-grade onchain finance.
We also cover the regulatory whiplash of the last few years, what’s changed, what still needs to be written into law, and why Danny believes Ethereum is uniquely positioned for serious capital markets infrastructure.
Key topics:
Why banks suddenly have Ethereum FOMO

The difference between “tokenizing assets” vs rewiring markets

Where the biggest inefficiencies are (credit, fixed income, esoteric institutional markets)

Why privacy + ZK are essential for institutionsCoordination problems, incentives, and who doesn’t want markets to upgrade

Ethereum’s edge: neutrality, uptime, decentralization, and security

👍 If you enjoyed this episode, like, subscribe, and share it with someone who still thinks institutions only care about ETFs.