The Defiant

Brian Armstrong changed his profile picture to a memecoin. It pumped to thirty million. Ten thousand wallets piled in. Less than twenty-four hours later, he changed it back — and every one of those wallets felt it.
That one move cracked open the week's biggest debate: what should Coinbase and Base actually be for? And what does it mean that Robinhood's new L2 — launched three weeks ago, supposedly for tokenized stocks — already has five hundred million in memecoin volume versus thirteen million in RWAs?
This week on The Defiant, Camila Russo sits down with three guests who can't agree on anything — and that's exactly why this conversation works.
Austin Campbell (Zero Knowledge / NYU Stern) says Base's behavior was both an intellectual and moral failing — memecoins are gambling, and Coinbase can't build payment infrastructure while promoting gambling to young people at the same time. Jason Yanowitz (Blockworks) says the strategy is closer to right than people admit, and the real problem is execution, not direction. Michael Lee (LienFi), a Base builder since day one, says Armstrong's PFP move caused real damage — but mercenary traders have also paid twenty million dollars to creators on Base, and nobody else is stepping in to do that.
School bus. Rocket ship. Same company. That's the problem.

Guests: Austin Campbell (Zero Knowledge / NYU Stern) | Jason Yanowitz (Blockworks) | Michael Lee (LienFi) Topics: Memecoins, Coinbase, Base, Robinhood L2, content coins, Brian Armstrong, crypto regulation, everything exchange

Fourteen days. That's the window the crypto industry has to get the CLARITY Act through the Senate — or wait until the 2030s for another shot.The combined draft dropped last week for the first time, merging the Senate Banking and Agriculture committee text into one bill. It added a law enforcement title (the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed it the same day). It added an ethics provision. And Democrats are rejecting that provision outright.This week on The Defiant, we're bringing three people living this fight from the inside: Miller Whitehouse-Levine (Solana Policy Institute), Amanda Tuminelli (DeFi Education Fund), and Adrian Wall (Digital Sovereignty Alliance). They don't all agree on how close we are — and one of them drops what might be the most explosive political take of the year: that Republicans, Democrats, financial institutions, and Coinbase may none of them actually want this bill to pass.The Polymarket odds: down from 80% in February to 37% this week. The stakes: if it fails, the next administration can undo anything the agencies do by rulemaking. Without a law, there's no floor. And innovation goes abroad.Guests: Miller Whitehouse-Levine (Solana Policy Institute) | Amanda Tuminelli (DeFi Education Fund) | Adrian Wall (Digital Sovereignty Alliance / Tron DAO US Policy) Topics: CLARITY Act, crypto regulation, SEC, CFTC, DeFi, stablecoins, blockchain policy, US Congress, ethics provision, RWAs

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 largest corporate Bitcoin treasury?

This week on The Defiant, I sat down with Scott Melker and Kaleo to get into all of it: the hollow signaling, the STRC question, whether Saylor should rip the Band-Aid and sell billions now — and what any of this actually means for Bitcoin.

Spoiler: they disagree. Strongly.

Guests: Scott Melker | Kaleo (CryptoKaleo)
Topics: Strategy, Michael Saylor, Bitcoin, MSTR, STRC, corporate Bitcoin treasury, convertible debt

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 this a rescue? A power grab? Or the most important moment in Ethereum's 11-year history?
Last week on The Defiant, I sat down with Josef Chalom (Sharp Link, the second-largest public ETH holder) and Viktor Bunin (Coinbase) to get into all of it: the funding structure, the credible neutrality question, the ETH asset vs. protocol tension, and what's actually coming in the Glastonbury upgrade — including a technical shift that could finally make Ethereum feel good to use. 

Guests: Josef Chalom, CEO of Sharp Link | Viktor Bunin, Coinbase
Topics: Ethereum Foundation, ETH Labs, protocol governance, institutional adoption, Glastonbury upgrade

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 repeating the same mistakes as decentralized storage.What you'll hear: why the government hand-picked who gets access to Mythos (and it wasn't Anthropic's call), whether consumer GPU swarms can realistically compete with data centers, what's really happening with on-chain hacks in 2026, and Haseeb's most controversial take: the world's most powerful AI should be treated like a nuclear weapon, not a public good.No easy answers. No consensus. Just the most important debate of 2026.