The podcast where crypto, capital, code, and law collide.
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Marc Ryan, co-founder of Spout Finance, on how pairing covered calls with lending can give tokenised stock holders interest-free leverage. We cover how Spout uses options on borrower collateral to pay lenders, creating 0% loans with a cost of capital 10 to 20 times cheaper than competing platforms. Plus covered-call tail risk, token wrappers versus native issuance, why Spout scrapped its own issuance to become a permissionless DeFi layer, the $2M raise, moving options onchain, regulatory clarity, and why Marc believes all public equities will be tokenised within five to 10 years. Guest: Marc Ryan, Spout Finance Host: 8bitpenis
Lili, co-founder of Over.computer, on why prop firms profit when traders fail and how Over lets traders own the house. We cover how prop challenges actually work, FTMO’s $850M year, why payouts come from traders who lost before you, and why the next 1,000x in trading could come from incentive design rather than leverage. Plus tokenised stocks and crypto perps, rising payout caps, prediction markets, OIP-1, why Over.computer is launching on Solana and MetaDAO, and agentic trading as the biggest risk to the prop industry. Guest: Lili, Over.computer Host: 8bitpenis
Kirat, founder of The Inner Table, on how India’s shifting poker laws have opened a blue ocean for offline studios and why creator-led distribution could be the winning edge. We cover his journey from Goldman and Gather Town to Superteam and Backpack, leaving crypto to build a 600K-subscriber coding channel, and why he is now opening a livestream-first poker studio in Delhi NCR. Plus the economics of a 5% rake, how 100 daily players could generate a $200K monthly topline, why normies attract the best players, raising $100K on Backable, regulation as the biggest risk, and potential token holder perks including zero rake and weekly freerolls. Guest: Kirat, The Inner Table Host: 8bitpenis
Tim, founder of The Syndicate, on why crypto gaming keeps collapsing in on itself and how he’s building a game people actually want to play. We cover his path from primary school teacher to Tensor, Vector, Kamino and Backpack, how getting rugged inspired an idle mafia strategy game anyone can play without a wallet, and what crypto adds through true ownership and provably fair pack openings. Plus why the team killed its own in-game token, how a four-month beta proved players would stay without financial incentives, raising through ownership tokens on Backable, and reaching $265K in revenue, 850+ daily active users and 25% 30-day retention. Guest: Tim, The Syndicate Host: 8bitpenis
Tony from Epicentral on bringing American style options onchain, the Solana Options Standard, and why options are the biggest gap in DeFi. We cover why options have never scaled in crypto, how option pools replace the order book with onchain Black-Scholes pricing, why you can write options without putting up 100 SOL of collateral, and why he calls options the original prediction market. Plus binary options vs real options, the quadrillion dollar market Solana doesn't yet capture, and options as a hedge against impermanent loss. Guest: Tony, Epicentral Host: 8bitpenis
Shrii from Credible Finance on instant settlement for high-risk payments, raising on MetaDAO, and building a Stripe for the businesses traditional gateways won't touch. We cover why Stripe can't follow him into this market, what T+0 settlement means for gaming and prediction market platforms sitting on cash flow risk, how the open payment stack lets teams self onboard and spin up their own DeFi pools, and the two pivots that turned a trade finance idea into a full-blown PSP. Plus futarchy, the $103 micropayment mystery, and why only speed and price matter. Guest: Shrii, Credible Finance Host: 8bitpenis
Ranga from Solomon Labs on building a productive dollar, raising on MetaDAO, and why USDv is the stablecoin you default to instead of the one you chase yield for. We cover why the old token playbook is dead, the 100M raise and the Cloudflare outage that nearly derailed it, how YaaS makes monetary policy programmable so USDv can stay liquid and always earning, the pivot off the basis trade into a Treasury-backed model, and what actually backs USDv. Plus futarchy, the most-traded decision market in MetaDAO history, and why you already take on reserve risk with USDC and USDT but get none of the upside. Guest: Ranga, Solomon Labs Host: 8bitpenis
Hunter from Laso Finance on private crypto prepaid cards, raising on MetaDAO, and the case for agentic commerce. We cover privacy at the point of spend, how Laso stays compliant with no ID upload, why the 4% of volume from AI agents may matter more than the 96% from humans, and why he's building agents to start businesses rather than to ease shopping. Plus Bitrefill, x402, and the on-chain endgame with Tempo and Plasma. Guest: Hunter, Laso Finance Host: 8bitpenis
Arad, founder of Lightcone, makes the case for impact markets — permissionless decision markets that don't require the questions or assets to be ones you control. We cover Polymarket's origins as an "information markets" platform, why futarchy fails when proposals lack information, the two-universe mental model behind Lightcone's settlement, and why Arad believes the Oracle problem in prediction markets is really a market definition problem. Closing on insider trading across market types, why Lightcone is launching on Solana, and the political backlash he expects when election impact markets ship. Arad: https://x.com/aradtski Lightcone: https://x.com/lightconexyz Sponsored by MetaDAO and Umbra.
Proph3t, founder of MetaDAO, breaks down futarchy from first principles — a governance system where prediction markets, not token holders, decide what a protocol does. The conversation moves fast: from the origin story of MetaDAO to ownership coins, liquidating failing projects as a feature, insider trading risks in onchain governance, and buybacks as value accrual. Then it zooms out — Proph3t's actual goal is to apply futarchy beyond crypto, to corporations and eventually governments. If you've ever lost money to a rug and wondered if there's a structural fix, this episode is it. Sponsored by MetaDAO. Hosted by 8bitpenis. Produced by Blockformer.
Maushish, founder of Paystream, comes back 5 months after raising $750K through MetaDAO to give a honest account of what building post-raise actually looks like. He covers his early skepticism about futarchy, how the Omnipair and Umbra raises convinced him, what the Ranger liquidation proved about the mechanism, and why Paystream has since pivoted from LPing to funding rate arbitrage on perps. The back half of the conversation gets technical — how funding rate arb works, why most opportunities are under $20K, how Paystream's auto-close mechanism protects principal, and what the path to sustainability looks like before the treasury runs dry. A rare episode that skips the pitch and goes straight to the reality of building inside the MetaDAO ecosystem. Hosted by 8bitpenis. Sponsored by MetaDAO. Produced by Blockformer.
Sheldon from P2P joins 8bitpenis to explain why a startup backed by Multicoin and Coinbase Ventures chose MetaDAO over another VC round. The answer is about regulatory survival. P2P operates in India, Brazil, Argentina, and Indonesia — markets without clear regulatory frameworks for crypto on/off ramps. Decentralizing ownership to 50,000+ token holders across 50 countries isn't ideological. It's structural protection. The conversation covers how P2P actually works (USDC settlement over UPI, Pix, and PromptPay in under 90 seconds), how they prevent fraud with zkKYC and an AI fraud engine, how the spread-based revenue model works market by market, and what the Circles of Trust token model means for global expansion. If you've wondered why stablecoins were built for emerging markets and not the US — this episode explains it clearly. Hosted by 8bitpenis. Produced by Blockformer. Sponsored by MetaDAO.
