DAT Stocks Are on Sale. Are They a Buy? Plus, Why Crypto Is Dead - Ep.985

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

🔍 16:34 How to pressure test different DATs to see which ones are opportunity and which are traps

19:34 Introduction

21:03 Why Dougie thinks crypto natives could be left behind as the market evolves

24:33 Why Dougie sees the current incentive-heavy crypto strategy fading away

27:13 Is crypto’s high risk market “saturated?”

28:32 Why Dougie sees Robinhood as a shining example of where crypto is going

29:46 How companies are shifting their strategies for this new moment in crypto

31:41 Why Dougie says the crypto label would be baggage in the future

33:13 Which companies are best positioned for the next phase of crypto adoption?

35:42 Which companies would have to evolve to survive?

42:11 Will the DeFi Mullet strategy prove successful?

42:17 Which parts of crypto culture should survive?

43:14 Why Dougie says Coinbase's content coins are still in their early innings

47:34 How crypto becomes mainstream

51:03 Is the four-year Bitcoin cycle over?

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