Podcast

Bitget lost $387.5 million in a hack and asked THORChain to block the attacker’s addresses. THORChain said no. Weeks later, Tether froze four THORChain vaults on Tron holding 1.45 million USDT, then unfroze them three hours later. And in May, THORChain itself lost $10.7 million to a GG20 flaw and stayed halted for 39 days. Camila Russo sits down with Chad Barraford, THORChain’s technical co-founder, to tackle the question splitting DeFi: if a protocol can stop a hacker, should it? They cover why hackers run to Bitcoin to cash out, the difference between “can’t” and “won’t,” how THORChain compares to Bitcoin, Ethereum and NEAR Intents, and what comes next: Monero, Zcash, new chains, and the bet that DEXs will eventually beat CEXs.

Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès has spent two weeks opening Ledger hardware wallets bought from third-party sellers in Japan, Singapore and Germany. What he found inside wasn't a one-off: the boards carry revision markings, regional antenna variants and a design that has moved from hand-soldering to something built for volume. Ledger says every confirmed theft traces back to a single Malaysian reseller. Karpelès's own devices didn't come from that reseller — and separate research suggests implants were transmitting seed phrases to overseas servers months before the drains became public. Camila Russo talks to Karpelès about who is manufacturing these implants, how many are still sitting unopened in drawers and on shelves, why a security researcher's March warning to Ledger produced no public alert, and what a company does when it's holding a report it doesn't want to be true. Date: Tue Oct 20, 10am ET Guest: Mark Karpelès, former Mt. Gox CEO — X: @MagicalTux Like, subscribe, and hit the bell so you don't miss our next streams.

What do you actually own when you buy a tokenized stock? Backpack founder Armani Ferrante breaks down the transfer agent, DTCC, SPV debt-security and Backpack models. Backpack’s version is 1:1 redeemable stock you can move between your brokerage and DeFi. Armani explains how that unlocks arbitrage and better price execution, how 24/7 trading and in-kind dividends work, and why the BP token gave zero tokens to founders, team or investors, with 20% of company equity set aside for stakers.

Starknet says it is “actively considering becoming an L1” — leaving Ethereum to become what it calls the first fully quantum-resistant network, with 2027 as the target. StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson joins Camila Russo to explain the plan. The announcement came as a post on X on Oct. 8, with no governance proposal attached. STRK ran from $0.05 to $0.12 in five days and has since given back most of it. In the same week, StarkWare shipped Shadow Accounts, a privacy primitive that gives users a separate address per app, and launched OffMarket, a service for trading on Polymarket without linking positions to a public wallet. We get into: — What becoming an L1 actually means for Starknet, and what replaces Ethereum’s settlement guarantees — Who approves the move, and when a proposal goes to governance — Why Ben-Sasson thinks the quantum threat is “much closer than we think” — Where he lands in the “bunker mode” fight between Justin Drake, Vitalik Buterin and Yehuda Lindell — Why StarkWare is demoing ML-DSA signatures when Buterin named lattices as the next risk — Shadow Accounts, OffMarket, and building privacy on a counterparty that can switch you off — Starknet’s revenue, emissions, and whether an L1 changes the economics Guest: Eli Ben Sasson

The Defiant Livestream | Wednesday, Oct. 14, 1:00pm ET Up to $93M drained from more than 300 wallets, and the software was never touched. Ledger confirmed a physical implant inside signers sold through reseller CryptoBilis, reading recovery phrases off the screen at setup and sending them out over a mobile network. So the question stops being what happened and becomes who you trust. The vendor? The reseller? The sealed box? The device already sitting in your drawer? Yourself? Guest: Pablo Sabbatella (@PabloSabbatella), founder of Opsek (@opsek_io)

The SEC's exemption for tokenized equities has reopened the question every issuer has been working around: should a tokenized stock be a synthetic instrument that tracks the price, or a direct claim on the underlying share? Camila Russo sits down with the lawyers and builders shaping that answer. Rodrigo Seira, partner at Cooley, breaks down what the exemption allows and where the legal lines still sit. Gabriel Otte, co-founder of Dinari, and Peter Curley, head of global regulatory affairs at Ondo Finance, lay out how each model handles custody, investor rights, compliance, and access for non-U.S. users, and which structure is better placed to scale now that the rules have changed. 🗓 Live Wednesday, Sept 23, 11:30am ET Guests: Rodrigo Seira, Partner, Cooley Gabriel Otte, Co-founder, Dinari Peter Curley, Head of Global Regulatory Affairs, Ondo Finance Host: Camila Russo, founder of The Defiant Like, subscribe, and hit the bell so you don't miss our next streams.

Solana just took the most historic step in its governance history: its first real on-chain vote, where any SOL holder — not just validators — could weigh in on the network's constitution, inflation and fees. Camila Russo sits down with Nick Almond, Head of Governance at the Jito Foundation, right as that shift collides with a new threat: Robinhood's own chain moving in on meme coins, the one corner of crypto that was always Solana's. Nick breaks down how the vote actually played out — including the disinflation proposal that was decided with eight seconds left after Kraken flipped its vote — how JitoSOL swung its entire stake pool with a 13% quorum trigger, and why he still thinks Solana's shot at attracting new apps, from tokenized stocks to meme coins, is stronger than people give it credit for. Presented by Oasis — a self-custody wallet built on a 2/3 multisig. You hold two keys, Oasis holds a recovery key, and never has unilateral access. Oasis is giving away a CryptoPunk to the first 500 new or upgraded plans through October 31: https://www.oasisvault.io/cryptopunk

The Senate is set to vote on a procedural motion to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the major crypto market structure bill, on Tuesday, September 15 — a critical step toward a full floor vote, requiring at least seven non-Republican votes to clear the 60-vote threshold. Camila Russo talks with Summer Mersinger (Blockchain Association) and Kevin Wysocki (Anchorage Digital) live as the vote unfolds, breaking down what's in the bill, what's still being negotiated, and what it would mean for the industry if it passes.

Join host Camila Russo live today at 12:30 PM as she sits down with Brian Huang (@BrianInCrypto) and Binji (@binji_x) to dig into one of the biggest debates in crypto right now: are tokenized stocks and memecoins a revolutionary new financial primitive, or are they setting retail traders up for the next big wipeout? We'll break down the mechanics behind tokenized equities, the risks hiding beneath the hype, and what separates real innovation from the next speculative bubble. Like, subscribe, and hit the bell so you don't miss it, and drop your questions in the comments before and during the live.

Robinhood is surging on Arbitrum's stack, and today we're joined by ARB co-founder Steven Goldfeder to break down the boom.