DeFi mullet: backend DeFi, frontend simplicity

In this combined episode of Unchained, Steven Ehrlich first breaks down why crypto treasury stocks (DATs) have swung from massive premiums to deep discounts, why comparisons to GBTC can be misleading, and why buying these stocks isn’t a clean arbitrage trade but a long-term, high-conviction bet.

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Then, Figment Capital’s Dougie DeLuca zooms out to the broader shift underway. As fintechs and institutions embrace blockchain infrastructure, he argues that “crypto as we know it” may be fading—and that crypto natives risk being left behind unless they adapt to real users, sustainable products, and mainstream distribution.

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Guests:

• Dougie DeLuca, Investor and Researcher at Figment Capital

• Steven Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained

Links:

• Unchained:

• Coinbase Launches Stock Trading and Prediction Markets

• Inside Robinhood’s Big Super App Plan: ‘There’s Still a Lot of Work to Be Done’

• Dougie's “Crypto is Dead” article

Timestamps:

• 👏 0:00 Intro

• 📘 1:16 What a DAT actually is and why mNAV matters more than most people think

• 📉 5:16 How deep the discounts really are and why some of them are optical illusions

• ⚖️ 7:12 Whether mNAVs should trade back to 1 and when that assumption breaks

• 🔁 8:59 How this compares to the GBTC discount and why the analogy can be dangerous

• 🧱 13:44 Why many DATs are stuck below mNAV and what’s structurally holding them down

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