It feels like Season One of FTX: Trouble in Paradise has drawn to a close. SBF narrowly avoided jail thanks to a last-minute $250 million bond and is now chilling at home with his parents. Season Two will see him fighting for his freedom in court as his former friends, colleagues and lovers queue up to spill the beans. Everyone just wants to get the lightest sentence possible. SBF’s next court appearance is scheduled for the 3rd of January, so it won’t be long before Season Two is up and running...
Dec 30, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 55
It’s time to check in again with our friends at the Federal Reserve, whose every move is being scrutinised by investors everywhere for signs of what might be on their minds. Are they going to keep raising interest rates as aggressively as they have been in previous months? Will they slow the pace, or maybe even ease off the rate rises completely? The decisions made inside Fed HQ have huge ramifications for the US economy and beyond. We recently got a glimpse inside the Fed’s thinking with the re...
Dec 07, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 54
It’s back to FTX this week sadly, as the exchange’s collapse continues to dominate the crypto headlines. Today, you’ll hear about the company’s recent bankruptcy filing, which revealed just how terribly it and its sister company Alameda Research were being run behind the scenes, by people who were unfit to be running anything bigger than a lemonade stand. The filing makes for some pretty extraordinary reading and reveals just how much work needs to be done to try and clear up the mess that Sam B...
Nov 30, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 53
FTX is still making the headlines and the contagion continues to spread. Companies and projects across the industry are reeling and much of the talk is about which could be the next domino to fall. Welcome to crypto winter. One project that many are concerned about is Solana, which was heavily backed by FTX and Alameda Research. SOL’s price has tumbled in the wake of FTX’s collapse as a result of this exposure, and the road ahead looks rocky. In the first part of today’s episode, you’ll hear a b...
Nov 30, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Crypto has been rocked over the last few days by the biggest disaster ever to hit the industry. While it has experienced its fair share of crises over its short history, the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research is the gravest challenge crypto has faced thus far and the true extent of the damage may not become apparent for some time. In today’s episode, Mike and Guy sit down to talk through what happened and what may come next. Many of the details are still unclear and new information is coming t...
Nov 18, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Ok, you can probably guess what’s going to be covered today. The crypto industry is reeling from the collapse of the FTX exchange and everyone has questions. What happened? Who is responsible? How could such a disaster have been possible? Where next for crypto? And many, many others besides. So, in the first part of today’s episode, you’ll hear our initial assessment of what went down with FTX and get some crucial background info about the people and the entities involved. This is about much mor...
Nov 16, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 50
There’s turmoil in the crypto market at the moment and we’ll tackle what’s been going on with FTX next week when the picture will - we hope - be a bit clearer. But for this week’s episode, we have something a bit different to take everyone’s mind off all the bad news and instead focus on the future. Robin Schmidt is one of the most insanely creative minds in the crypto space. Following a successful career in film and TV production, he began pushing the boundaries of content creation as host of T...
Nov 12, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 49
This week’s picks from our YouTube channel feature a look at the housing bubbles that are looking increasingly shaky in a number of countries and a little tale of what happened when Instagram fact-checked a meme I posted about CBDCs. A home of one’s own is a big deal for many people, especially in my native UK and elsewhere. This fact, coupled with years of near-zero interest rates, have meant that housing prices in many countries have been rising for a long time. The so-called ‘race for space’ ...
Nov 09, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 48
After being parted for over a month, Mike and Guy have managed to get together again to talk crypto once again. Thankfully, our editor has managed to cut out the very long and rambling catch-up chat they had and generally keep in the important stuff. Some waffle may remain though, so please exercise caution. Today’s topic is a crypto niche which has attracted a lot of attention recently and could prove to have staying power in the long run. Move to earn is incentivizes users to get active by rew...
Nov 04, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Mike and Guy are reunited this Friday for another in-depth discussion with plenty of lame jokes thrown in, but before all that we have another couple of recent hits from our YouTube channel for you to enjoy. First up is a look at some recent recommendations for crypto regulations from Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF as he’s better known, the CEO of the FTX exchange. These were unleashed upon the world just a couple of weeks ago and the fallout from them has been pronounced. Put mildly, many in the ind...
Nov 02, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 46
From our YouTube archive this week come two videos which lay bare many of the failings of the current financial system. The first is inflation - that pernicious force which is busy making lives harder for most people around the world. Most, but by no means all, because those at the very top of the pyramid ultimately benefit from the inflationary system the rest of us labour under. Believe it or not, but inflation is guilty of more than just rising prices and increasing living costs. It also driv...
Oct 26, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 45
This week highlights from Coin Bureau’s YouTube channel focus on two critical macroeconomic issues - China and its stance on Taiwan and concerns around global oil prices. Both of these factors will be weighing on any investor’s portfolio in some way. You’ll almost certainly be aware of the fact that China has long coveted Taiwan and aims to unite the two countries - by force, if necessary. This dispute has rumbled on for decades, but tensions are currently higher than they have been for a long t...
Oct 19, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 44
It’s time for some more hits from our YouTube channel to brighten your week. Today you’ll hear all about the recent mini financial crisis in the UK and our investigation into a company that could be poised to dominate the crypto industry. The UK has a new Prime Minister and a new Chancellor of the Exchequer and it’s safe to say they haven’t got off to the most auspicious of starts. Once parliament had reconvened following the period of mourning for the Queen, Chancellor Kwazi Kwarteng announced ...
Oct 12, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Mike is away this week, but never fear because we’re lucky enough to have a guest joining us who is one of the wisest heads in the crypto space. Rob Wolff is the man behind Digital Asset News, one of the best crypto-focused YouTube channels out there. Rob is a seasoned investor and businessman, but also the sort of person who never rests on his laurels or stops being curious. As such, what he has to say about the crypto space, about investing and heck, about most things, is always worth hearing....
Oct 07, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Two more selections from our YouTube channel today, in which we take a look at the latest efforts by EU politicians to regulate crypto in the Eurozone and delve deep into a 2019 report by BlackRock which seemed to predict much of what we’re seeing play out in fiscal and monetary policy-making today. We were lucky enough to get our hands on an advance copy of the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation or MiCA bill, which will be passed by the European parliament in the next few days. We were al...
Oct 05, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Poor Mike felt a bit down after the last time we spoke. Yes, the merge was a success, but the crypto market found its way back into the doldrums pretty quickly afterwards and looks like remaining there for quite some time to come. There are just too many factors weighing on all financial markets at this point in time and it’s hard not to feel a bit gloomy about it all. So, this week, we thought we’d try something different and turn to that ever-reliable source of news, nonsense, time-wasting and...
Sep 30, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 40
For this week’s YouTube selection, we bring you an investigation into the practice of weather modification and a look at how various arms of the US government responded to President Biden’s executive order about cryptocurrency from earlier this year. It’s been a longstanding human aim to control the weather, but it’s only recently that we’ve taken a technological approach to fulfilling it. Prior to that, we simply entreated one god or another to do it for us, but now we’re learning to play god o...
Sep 28, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 39
After previewing Ethereum’s merge event last week, it’s time to look back on the big day and see where it’s left us. Is the post-merge world any different from the world of proof of work Ethereum? Happily the merge went to plan and there were no issues - the sense of relief was palpable. Less happily, the euphoria that followed the merge evaporated in the blink of an eye. The gloomy economic situation that the world economy finds itself in has not gone away and these pressures continue to press ...
Sep 23, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Coming to you this week from our YouTube archive is a piece on Europe’s energy squeeze and a recent report which casts doubt on much of cryptocurrency’s trading volume. The war in Ukraine drags on, causing death, destruction and misery on a shocking scale. But the effects of Putin’s madness are being felt beyond the borders of Ukraine and Russia in many different ways. For Europe, it means a potentially long, cold and dark winter, as fossil fuel exports from Russia dwindle in the face of sanctio...
Sep 21, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 37
As well as our bonus catch-up episode, we’re also bringing you our regular Wednesday edition of the podcast today. Two for the price of one. One of our most popular videos of late has been our look at the World Economic Forum’s dystopian vision of the future. This is built around the idea that ‘you’ll own nothing and be happy,’ something the folks at the WEF seem to believe is a good thing. Well, we beg to differ. In the first part of this episode, you’ll hear our assessment of the WEF’s plans, ...
Sep 14, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 36
It’s been a couple of weeks since Mike and Guy shared the airwaves, but here they are reunited (albeit remotely, as Guy is currently in Dubai.) Apart from catching up and - inevitably - discussing the death of HM the Queen, there’s only really one thing worth talking about right now and that is, of course, Ethereum’s upcoming merge. If you’re sick of hearing about this then take comfort in the fact that it will all be over soon. This episode is being released earlier than normal because the merg...
Sep 14, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 35
It’s an exciting time for cryptocurrency right now, even with markets in the doldrums. That’s because Ethereum’s transition to proof of stake is now only a few days away, while elsewhere the powers that be are still struggling to figure out how they can control the crypto industry. In this week’s highlights from Coin Bureau’s YouTube channel, we take a look at both of these developing situations and what they might mean for the future of crypto and the wider financial landscape. Ever since the g...
Sep 07, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 34
We’re back with some picks from our YouTube channel, taking a look at a major threat to global economic stability and some invaluable tools to help you in your quest for more crypto knowledge. Something to suit every taste. First up, we take a look at the economic crisis unfolding in China, where a cooling property market and some worrying GDP, growth, sales and unemployment numbers are causing a serious headache for Xi Jinping’s government. For years, Chinese citizens have invested heavily in r...
Aug 31, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 33
One of the topics that came up during our look at the cashless society was the notion of privacy and the digital age’s erosion of it. Keeping one’s financial transactions private is a big part of maintaining a life free from unwarranted interference and it’s becoming harder and harder to do. Then, not long after we’d recorded that episode, a blow was struck against crypto privacy that is still reverberating through the industry. On the 8th August, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) - a ...
Aug 26, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 32
This week’s highlights from our YouTube channel look at two hot topics within the crypto community. So, get ready for the lowdown on proof of work vs proof of stake and what went down when the US Treasury decided to sanction a popular privacy tool. First up, you’ll hear our take on a recent report from the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, which looks at the two most well-known consensus mechanisms in crypto: proof of work and proof of stake. Both have their detractors and their champions and both...
Aug 24, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Last week’s discussion about the idea of a cashless society got pretty in-depth, so we thought we’d divide it up into two. So, here is part 2, in which we talk about the groups of people for whom cash is a lifeline and look ahead to where going cashless could one day lead us. The rise of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) is unstoppable and state-issued digital tokens will be a fact of life for many of us by the end of the decade, if not before. We look at why governments are accelerating t...
Aug 19, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Back for some more midweek action with a couple of selections from Coin Bureau’s YouTube channel. The audio you’ll hear this week is from our videos on what makes the perfect cryptocurrency and why we could be about to witness a housing market crash. The developers and fans of many crypto projects like to claim that they have solved the so-called blockchain trilemma. This term, coined by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, posits the idea that no cryptocurrency blockchain can be decentralised, sec...
Aug 17, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 29
As our lives become ever more digital, a world without cash edges seemingly ever closer. For many of us, cash makes only fleeting appearances in our day-to-day lives, as we transact with cards, phones, apps and, of course, crypto on an increasingly regular basis. The cashless society is nigh. Going cashless can certainly seem more convenient in most situations. Who has time for the money that jiggles and folds anymore? Cash use was crashing even before the pandemic came along and dealt what many...
Aug 12, 2022•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 28
It’s time for another selection from our YouTube channel and this week, we’ve chosen our deep dives into the organisations that want to see crypto die and what you can do to beat inflation. What you’re about to hear is the audio from those two videos, which between them have been viewed over a quarter of a million times and counting. The current financial system serves the interests of a select few over those of the rest of us and those few would rather things stayed that way. Among them are a n...
Aug 10, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 27
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for crypto: markets have shown a slight recovery and there’s a renewed sense of optimism in the air from some quarters. Some are speculating that, with the disasters of Terra, Voyager, Celsius, Three Arrows Capital and many others now receding in the rear-view mirror, the worst could, perhaps, be over. Is the stage set for a recovery? We need to look at the bigger picture to find any sort of answer to that question. Crypto is now inextricably bound up wit...
Aug 05, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 26
