The Defiant

Olivia Capozzalo & Camila Russo
September 02, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Here’s what’s happening today

TL;DR

Markets are slightly up after Trump tariff ruling
Kraken expands tokenized stocks to Ethereum
Avalon Labs launches on Rootstock
WLFI tanks in first 24 hours of trading
Goat Network: The future of Bitcoin DeFi and sustainable BTC yield [SPONSORED]

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We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Last 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$110,643	1.53 %
Ethereum	$4,289.84	-1.70 %
XRP	$2.79	0.99 %
BNB	$846.76	-0.12 %
Solana	$200.25	0.85 %

Let’s get into it:

Hello Defiers, coming out of a long weekend in the U.S., markets rally on macro winds, Trumpworld token unravels, Bitcoin DeFi experiments sprout, and a major exchange tokenizes Wall Street blue chips on Ethereum. At the center of it all is the question of whether crypto is finally starting to bridge the divide between hype, politics, and real-world financial integration.

Start with the money. Digital assets caught a bid as investors digested a U.S. court ruling that narrowed President Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs, combined with mounting bets that the Federal Reserve is inching closer to cutting rates. Both developments lightened the macro mood, and crypto rode the wave: Bitcoin and Ethereum climbed alongside equities.

But as the market rallied, World Liberty Financial (WLFI) flopped. The Trump-linked crypto project hit the open market after much expectation, only to shed 18% in its first day of trading. The swift rejection reflects a familiar pattern: splashy narratives propped up by political theater can attract short-term speculation, but it’s getting harder for them to hold water with traders conditioned by years of vaporware.

Meanwhile, other experiments are quietly gaining ground. Avalon Labs, founded by John Avalon—who is also running a congressional campaign on a crypto-friendly platform—just launched on Rootstock, a Bitcoin Layer 2. The project aims to bring DeFi functionality to Bitcoin’s massive base of capital, a holy grail that has historically been easier promised than delivered. Rootstock’s EVM-compatible design could lower that barrier, and Avalon Labs is betting that Bitcoin holders are ready for something beyond passive storage.

An even bigger theme than Bitcoin DeFi has been tokenized stocks. Kraken has been one of the major companies pushing that narrative forward by launching tokenized U.S. stocks on Ethereum through its new platform, XStocks. That means Tesla, Apple, and other familiar tickers can now be traded on-chain, wrapped as tokens that can plug into DeFi’s sprawling infrastructure of lending, trading, and composability.

Today’s news snapshot provides a perfect sampling of the biggest trends in the past few months: Bitcoin is growing as a DeFi base layer, Ethereum is becoming Wall Street’s settlement rail, and the ties between crypto and politics continue to tighten. Stay tuned for the rest of the week!

With love,

Cami, founder of The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

Bridging the Gaps: Prabal Banerjee on Scalability, Interoperability, and the Future of DeFi

In the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, we sit down with Prabal Banerjee, co-founder of Avail and former research lead at Polygon, to explore some of the biggest challenges in the blockchain space, from data availability and scalability to fragmentation and user experience.

His mission? To make blockchain invisible to the end user. We also dive into the multichain future and why interoperability is the key to mass adoption. Prabal explains how Avail is building the infrastructure to unify the fragmented blockchain ecosystem and shares exciting news about Avail’s acquisition of Arcana, a move that could redefine how developers and users experience web3.