Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Pankaj Balani , CEO and co-founder of Delta Exchange . They discuss the differences between derivatives exchanges vs traditional exchanges, market stability, current engineering challenges, and more. Episode Highlights: Pankaj began in derivatives trading in Hong Kong before moving into hedge funds. Pankaj believes his old colleagues view crypto as another asset class and are receptive to it. The reaction has been positive to the recent Supreme Court decision in Ind...
Mar 25, 2020•49 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Catherine Coley , CEO of Binance.US . They discuss Binance.US’s origin story, how Catherine made the switch from traditional finance to digital assets, how she sees them differing, and more. Key Points: The scale of digital assets is wildly different from traditional finance. Digital assets allow users to have more agency and voice in their financial choices. Being in crypto gives you an expanded skillset and toolbox. Episode Highlights: They are recording on the da...
Mar 20, 2020•50 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Uri Kolodny and Eli Ben Sasson of StarkWare, and Will Harborne from DeversiFi. They discuss the pros and cons of centralized and decentralized exchanges, the development of Layer 2 technologies, scalability, and more. Episode Highlights: StarkWare is an Israeli startup that develops proof systems for scalability, security, and permissions for blockchain. DeversiFi is a decentralized exchange that allows people to connect to any Ethereum wallet and can reach up to 9,...
Mar 14, 2020•39 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Anatoly Yakovenko, Founder of Solana. They discuss how to make blockchain technology faster, its use cases, and how to accrue value in this space. They also discuss the philosophy behind where blockchain, math, and time intersect. Key Points Processing speed has less to do with hardware than software; it’s the software that currently does not take full advantage of the processing speed some hardware is capable of. Solana is almost like a hardware in itself because o...
Mar 11, 2020•55 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Yaniv Tal , project lead at The Graph to discuss how the Graph is a decentralized protocol for querying data from blockchains, starting with Ethereum. We discuss indexing DeFi, Web3 and the decentralized future. Episode Highlights: What the graph is and its current status How the graph works, and what an indexing and querying layer for blockchains means. The Web3 apps The Graph will enable in the future User experience and user interface hurdles for decentralized ap...
Mar 09, 2020•53 min
On this exclusive Macro Matters Series, guest host Kevin Kelly talks to Oliver Renick , lead anchor for TD Ameritrade Network , about his outlook for markets and the way Oliver and his team integrate Bitcoin & crypto into their day-to-day coverage. Oliver discusses his philosophy for covering markets and the move away from “momentum news”, the growing importance of bitcoin as a macroeconomic indicator, consensus expectations for monetary policy and the “Fed fulcrum”, what we can expect as th...
Mar 04, 2020•1 hr 24 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Stan Kladko , Co-Founder and CTO of SKALE Labs . They discuss the evolution of SKALE Labs, the decentralization of finance and social networks, and the current state of artificial intelligence. This builds on our previous episode with SKALE's CEO and Co-founder Jack O'Holleran. Episode Highlights: Stan Kladko did his PhD in Germany in physics and moved to Stanford and Silicon Valley. Stan joined a past start-up and raised about $50 million but it wasn’t making money...
Mar 02, 2020•57 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy sat down to speak on short notice with Eric Feigl-Ding , PhD, an epidemiologist, health economist, and nutrition scientist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health to discuss the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Eric has been an extremely informative source on the Coronavirus, and we discussed all aspects of the virus from what it is, to transmission rates, to outlook and vaccines and some potential outcomes. I really appreciate Eric taking the time on such short notice to sit dow...
Feb 26, 2020•52 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Brooke Pollack, Founder and Managing Partner of Hutt Capital . They discuss the differences between traditional VC funds and VC within blockchain, how Hutt Capital chooses investments and more. Episode Highlights: After a lot of work with investing and VC, Brooke steered Greenspring Associates into work with crypto and blockchain before eventually founding Hutt Capital. In his work with very wealthy families as clients, Brooke had trouble convincing them to invest i...
Feb 24, 2020•39 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Omer Ozden and Kevin O’Brien, CEO and Managing Director of Rocktree Capital , respectively. They discuss the China blockchain market versus the US, tech innovation, the move to cashless economies, and more. Key Points US tech innovation is stifled by regulatory restrictions as compared to China. It’s of the utmost importance to be sure you’re legally compliant from the beginning to avoid huge problems later. China is at the forefront of a global movement towards cas...
Feb 21, 2020•58 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network. Alex discusses the impetus for creating MOIP (Money over IP) and Celsius Network, what has prevented blockchain from becoming mainstream thus far, and his predictions for the future of MOIP technology. Key Points: There is a high barrier to entry for new users of crypto and blockchain technology. The shift for crypto becoming mainstream will be generational. 2020 will be a defining year for crypto adoption. Quotes “The main th...
Feb 19, 2020•43 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Galen Wolfe-Pauly, CEO of Tlon, which is building out Urbit. Galen discusses his vision for Urbit, how developers can work with it, what’s on the horizon for Urbit in the near future, and more. Episode Highlights: Galen learned programming really young and was interested in web and app design. Urbit functions like an operating system rather than an app and provides a better user experience. Urbit is the platform from which you contact the blockchain, and Galen sees ...
Feb 18, 2020•55 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Ria Bhutoria, Director of Research at Fidelity Digital Assets. Ria discusses her recent article about Omnibus model, the importance of proof of solvency, technological developments in crypto and DeFi in financial institutions, and more. Key Points The omnibus account model has been important to large financial institutions as the cryptocurrency market has grown. Using omnibus accounts with digital assets means some value is stored online and some is stored offline. ...
Feb 06, 2020•40 min
On this episode, Host Tom Shaughnessy is joined by Camila Russo, founder of the Ethereum based newsletter The Defiant and author of the coming book on the birth of Ethereum titled, The Infinite Machine : How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum. We dive into why Camila decided to research Ethereum's early life, how she has been tirelessly researching the protocol for months and what to expect from her new book. Pre-order here while you're listening. About The Boo...
Feb 04, 2020•35 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Aleks Larsen, part of the Investment team at Blockchain Capital. Aleks discusses issues with decentralization, DeFi growth and opportunities, what place security tokens hold in the DeFi space, and more. This episode builds on a recent episode we hosted with Blockchain Capital's Spencer Bogart. Key Points Nothing is entirely decentralized yet because we’re still learning best practices for blockchain and DeFi tech. The user experience on DeFi is generally lacking, an...
Jan 24, 2020•46 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Kyle Samani, Founder and Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital. Kyle discusses his predictions for the middle layer and full-stack development, attracting developers to the crypto space, how competition in the industry will develop, and a complete discussion on the Web3 Stack. Key Points While there are a lot of opportunities higher up the stack, there is the most money in layer one because that’s what has been proven stable over time. The next few years will see an...
Jan 21, 2020•32 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Jake Ryan, Founder and general partner of Tradecraft Capital and author of an upcoming book on crypto investing. Jake discusses his prediction for the Age of Autonomy, the challenges of predicting where crypto will go, and more. FYI: We're looking for long term show sponsors. To be considered as a sponsor this show, contact Tom@DelphiDigital.io Key Points: Society is at the end of the Age of Information and is headed into what Jake calls the Age of Autonomy. Competi...
Jan 16, 2020•29 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Spencer Bogart, general partner with Blockchain Capital. Spencer discusses the current state of crypto, his predictions for its future, and more. FYI: We're looking for long term show sponsors. To be considered as a sponsor this show, contact Tom@DelphiDigital.io Key Points: Crypto is becoming increasingly relevant to global macroeconomics. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where in the crypto development arc we are, so some believe it’s growing more slowly than ex...
Jan 14, 2020•46 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy leads a roundtable discussion with Yan Liberman (co-founder of Delphi Digital), Phil Bonello (former Head of Research at Ikigai), and David Puell (Head of Research at Adaptive Capital). They discuss the difficulties of crypto valuation, productive vs. unproductive assets, the differences between some projects, and more. Key Points It is very difficult to establish any intrinsic valuation of cryptocurrencies. Many strategies for short-term growth do not lead to long-term stab...
Jan 09, 2020•1 hr 8 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Akin Sawyerr a Strategy and Governance Lead for Decred. Akin discusses getting involved with the Decred platform, governance, and community-building. Key Points Decred is unique for its transparent, token-holder led governance. A community mindset of searching for the best solution to a problem increases transparency and decreases contention. Decred wants to build incrementally and develop iteratively in order to maintain a strong community and culture. Episode High...
Jan 06, 2020•36 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Alex Wearn, the co-founder and CEO of IDEX , a decentralized exchange built on Ethereum, to discuss the next version of the exchange and using optimized optimistic rollups to scale the exchange. Key Points IDEX tries to combine the design of a centralized exchange and the security of a decentralized exchange. The “optimized optimistic rollup” takes the most scalable aspects of different transaction settlement methods. There is a huge potential ...
Dec 26, 2019•28 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Zaki Manian, the Director of Research at Tendermint Inc and Dean Tribble, the CEO of Agoric. On this episode we dive into into how IBC (inter-blockchain communication) will connect blockchains to enable new use cases. On this episode we discussed a lot of philosophical questions around a multi-chain vs few chain world, chain sovereignty, Agoric's targeting the world's 20M javascript developers for its smart contract platform, the use cases IBC ...
Dec 19, 2019•59 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by NEAR Protocol's co-founders Alex and Illia to discuss the project. We previously had Alex and Illia on in November of 2018 when the podcast was first starting out so on this episode we discuss what has changed since then, the progress the project has made and much more. Specifically we dive into how NEAR plans to attract developers across three key areas, smart contract wars between layer-1's, governance for NEAR, and what to expect from the pr...
Dec 17, 2019•58 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder and COO of Matic Network. On this episode we discuss how Matic is using Plasma and proof-of-stake based sidechains to scale Ethereum, how he thinks the landscape of dozens of layer-2 scaling projects will shake out, building on Matic, Bitcoin's lightning network and so much more. Matic Network's token recently crashed on FUD and while this episode was recorded before the news, its a deep dive into the project its...
Dec 12, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Luke Martin, an analyst, trader and host of the Coinist podcast. Luke has gained a massive following for his keen ability to spot trends and opportunities early, especially in crypto. On this episode we dive into his story of leaving graduate school for crypto, the merits of technical analysis, the BTC thesis and so much more. Luke is an incredible guy, and this episode is worth the listen. To help support the show, please hit the subscribe but...
Dec 10, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Amir Haleem, the CEO & Co-Founder of Helium. On this episode we discuss how Helium is creating a crypto incentivized, decentralized telecommunications network. The network is up to 1,600 nodes, and the company raised $15M from top tier funds. Amir is the CEO & co-founder of Helium. Prior to Helium, Amir served a long career in the videogame industry as CTO at gaming startup Diversion, and member of the original team behind Battlefield 1...
Dec 05, 2019•47 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Lior Lamesh, Co-Founder & CEO at GK8. Lior is a cyber security expert and on this episode we discuss GK8's crypto security offering that the company believes is the most secure on the market for enterprises, firms and funds. The Upbit hack of $50M happened after we recorded this episode, although Lior shares some very relevant information on this topic. Lior also dives into the Binance Hack , and how this could have been prevented. GK8 is a...
Dec 03, 2019•33 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Kyle Kistner, co-founder of bZx Protocol. For the podcast, we try our best to locate early stage projects in the space. We noticed bZx's total value locked on DeFi pulse grew from $1M in September to near $3.5M in late November. While small in absolute numbers, the increase is notable, and with the launch of Fulcrum and Torque, we believed having the team on the podcast would be worthwhile for our listeners. BZX is a decentralized protocol that...
Nov 27, 2019•40 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Matthew Finlayson, Head of Product and a co-founder of Invictus Capital. On this episode we discuss how Invictus Capital is democratizing access to investment opportunities through its blockchain-based asset management platform. The platform already supports 4 tokenized funds (ERC-20 tokens), with two more planned (emerging markets solar fund and a real estate fund). To help support the show, please hit the subscribe button on iTunes so we can ...
Nov 25, 2019•35 min
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Mike Alfred, the CEO and Co-Founder of Digital Assets Data. On this episode we discuss Mike's journey from a successful exit of BrightScope to founding Digital Assets Data and how he runs 100 mile marathons. We also dive into what separates Digital Assets Data from other data providers, and the answers are compelling. Digital Assets Data is a fintech and data company building enterprise-grade software and data feeds for crypto hedge funds and o...
Nov 20, 2019•42 min
