Why Phantom Is Launching Perps + Why Bit Digital Ditched BTC for ETH - Ep. 866

Unknown Source July 11, 2025 74 min

artificial-intelligence startup investment

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104 Companies

103 Key Quotes

3 Topics

2 Insights

🎯 Summary

Podcast Episode Summary: Why Phantom Is Launching Perps + Why Bit Digital Ditched BTC for ETH - Ep. 866

This episode of Unchained features two main interviews: one with Brandon Milman, CEO of Phantom Wallet, discussing their new perpetuals launch, and another with Sam Tbarr, CEO of Bit Digital, detailing their strategic pivot from Bitcoin mining to an Ethereum treasury strategy. The episode also includes listener commentary on the evolving crypto landscape, particularly concerning centralized players like Coinbase and Robinhood.

1. Focus Area

The primary focus areas are Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Product Innovation (specifically perpetual futures integration into a major wallet) and Corporate Treasury Strategy Shifts within the crypto industry, contrasting Bitcoin-centric models with Ethereum-centric ones.

2. Key Technical Insights

Phantom’s Perp Integration: Phantom is leveraging HyperLiquid as the decentralized backend for its perpetual swaps, acting as a user-friendly front-end interface. This allows Phantom to offer access to high-liquidity, decentralized perps without building the core matching engine themselves.
HyperLiquid’s Role: HyperLiquid is highlighted as the first decentralized venue to achieve “centralized exchange scale” liquidity for perpetuals, making it a viable decentralized alternative to previous attempts.
Mobile-First UX: Phantom is prioritizing an opinionated, native mobile user experience for accessing complex DeFi products like perps, contrasting with the “one app wallet per app” model favored by embedded wallets.

3. Market/Investment Angle

Perpetuals Dominance: Perpetual swaps are noted as one of the most crypto-native innovations, dominating trading volume, making their integration into mainstream wallets a significant market opportunity.
Bit Digital’s Strategic Pivot: Bit Digital sold significant BTC holdings to fund a strategic shift into an Ethereum Treasury strategy, betting that regulatory clarity and ecosystem growth make ETH a superior long-term treasury asset compared to the saturated Bitcoin mining space.
Wallet vs. Exchange Entry Point: The thesis presented suggests that wallets will become the primary consumer entry point into crypto as the ecosystem fragments across multiple chains, commoditizing the on-ramp function of centralized exchanges.

4. Notable Companies/People

Phantom (Brandon Milman): Launching perpetual swaps via HyperLiquid, aiming to become the world’s biggest consumer finance platform within five years by harnessing open, permissionless networks.
Bit Digital (Sam Tbarr): Executed a major strategic shift, selling $30M in BTC to acquire ETH, driven by favorable regulatory changes (post-Gensler SEC) and the belief that Ethereum is the future growth vector (“go where the puck is going”).
HyperLiquid: The chosen decentralized liquidity layer for Phantom’s perps, praised for its superior liquidity aggregation compared to prior DEX attempts.
Coinbase/Robinhood: Mentioned as major players integrating perps and developing their own chains/wallets, signaling the convergence of traditional finance interfaces with on-chain activity.

5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion

Favorable Shift for Ethereum: Sam Tbarr emphasized that the departure of Gary Gensler and the arrival of a more friendly SEC chairman, coupled with legislative clarity (like the Clarity Act and stablecoin rules), signals that Ethereum is finally being treated favorably, likely classified as a commodity.
US Access Uncertainty: Phantom noted that the perp launch is compliant with current regulations, meaning it will not be immediately available in the US, though they remain hopeful for future access as the regulatory environment evolves.

6. Future Implications

The conversation suggests a future where:

Wallets evolve into comprehensive consumer finance platforms (Phantom’s 5-year vision), integrating traditional financial tools (like Venmo/Robinhood) powered by on-chain efficiency.
Social discovery is hypercharged within crypto tools, focusing on verifying and sharing on-chain activities (like token trades or governance votes) rather than competing with general social media.
Corporate treasuries are diversifying away from pure BTC mining towards staking and holding assets like ETH, anticipating better regulatory footing and ecosystem growth in the Ethereum space.

7. Target Audience

This episode is most valuable for Crypto Industry Professionals, DeFi Developers, Crypto Investors, and Corporate Strategy Executives interested in wallet evolution, derivative product adoption, and corporate treasury management in the digital asset space.

🏢 Companies Mentioned

Tom Lee ✅ Crypto institutions

GSR ✅ Crypto investment firms

SRM Holdings ✅ Crypto institutions

Justin Sun ✅ Crypto institutions

Asset Strategies / Asset Entities ✅ Crypto institutions

S-Bet ✅ institution

Plasma chain ✅ Layer 1 blockchain projects

Twitter ✅ organization

Strike ✅ institution

GMax ✅ defi

Uncoinbase ✅ exchange

David Bailey ✅ unknown

SRM Holdings ✅ unknown

Justin Sun ✅ unknown

Asset Entities ✅ unknown

💬 Key Insights

"But really what's going to come down to over time is how well they're able to steward their cap tables and if they're able to creatively raise capital in order to purchase crypto and maintain the premiums on the shares, which is really what they should be judged by."

Impact Score: 10

"The real metric that people need to pay attention to is the Ethereum, the Solana, and the Yield, or the Bitcoin Yield metric that was popularized by Michael Saylor. And essentially, it's a way of tracking the rate of accumulation of crypto in relation to the dilution or the increase, the rate of increase in the circulating supply of shares."

Impact Score: 10

"I think what it showed is that investors have gotten hyper-sensitized to what's happening. I think now they're on the lookout for any sign of someone looking, evidently, looking to rush out the door because they know that these run-ups were built on top of very low floats, and therefore it does not take many sellers to [cause a crash]."

Impact Score: 10

"The risk with convertible debt is that if the company is struggling or it's not trading at a premium to NAV, then the company would have to sell its crypto to pay back the principal, and that can lead to a cascade of liquidations and other types of price issues that companies want to avoid."

Impact Score: 10

"What we found in the research, what I found in my research, is that the new shares were going to massively dilute the current base, sometimes somewhere between like 10 and 20X increase in the shareholder base. And that's just essentially that's just a time bomb waiting to go off."

Impact Score: 10

"We stake our entire ETH. It is staked, which I think is interesting because from a capital markets perspective, a lot of people can choose ETFs to get exposure from Ethereum. But ETFs, at least today, cannot stake their Ethereum. So, we can."

Impact Score: 10

📊 Topics

#artificialintelligence 117 #investment 2 #startup 2

🧠 Key Takeaways

💡 just be a Bitcoin treasury strategy