In this week's episode, Cho and Matuszewski give the trader perspective on bitcoin and the DeFi scene, including: How Circle Trade went from making an "ungodly" amount of money to being sold off to Kraken Whether the market is at "peakFi" Why big news events are having less of an impact on bitcoin price swings An overview of the crypto brokerage wars, and how crypto firms will get "more violent" with each other over time.
Jul 28, 2020•54 min•Season 2Ep. 29
On this week's episode of The Scoop, Cermak explained out how The Block first picked up on the biggest Twitter hack in history, and what the early hours of information gathering looked like. He also touched on: The details that indicate the hack was either unplanned or executed by amateurs What a front page BTC scam means for bitcoin adoption The debate over Coinbase's move to block the addresses at the height of the hack Where the stolen funds are now...
Jul 21, 2020•45 min•Ep. 28
CoinFLEX emerged in 2019 as one of the first marketplaces for physically-delivered crypto futures. Now, the Hong Kong-based firm has relaunched its platform to build out a repurchase market for digital assets. Mark Lamb, CEO of CoinFLEX, sat down with The Scoop this week to talk about the plan. In the traditional context, a repurchase market or "repo market" allows large clearing banks to exchange assets for short bursts, providing a quick way to finance other activities. Trillions of dollars a ...
Jul 15, 2020•44 min•Season 2Ep. 27
R. Martin Chavez left his Goldman Sachs office in December after decades of work bringing new technology to Wall Street, most recently as Goldman's CFO, though his career began in Silicon Valley. Now, he's returned to the tech world, where he serves on the boards of health technology firms and has gotten involved in the conversation around the " digital dollar ." On this week's episode of The Scoop, Chavez broke down some of the changes that have occurred at the intersection of health and techno...
Jul 08, 2020•58 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Zane Tackett has witnessed some of the crypto industry's biggest moments. And he recently took a post as a sales and business development executive at FTX, giving him a first-hand look at growth occurring in the derivatives market today. It comes as a notable time for that particular corner of the crypto space, given that more that 100,000 bitcoin options contracts – a historic number totaling over $900 million – is slated to expire this Friday. Tackett will have a front row seat, and he talked ...
Jul 01, 2020•56 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Before Tarun Chitra built out his company, he spent years doing quantitative research and development for places like D.E. Shaw Research and Vatic Labs. Chitra took his experience in machine learning to create and head a simulation platform for crypto networks — Gauntlet — which garnered backing from companies like Coinbase, Distributed Global and Polychain, among others. Gauntlet provides tools for crypto developers to forecast security risks, possible governance snags and consensus mechanism i...
Jun 24, 2020•49 min•Season 2Ep. 24
In a matter of months, Brian Brooks made the move from Coinbase to head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Brooks left his job as the exchange's top lawyer in March, after his former OneWest Bank colleague and current Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin tapped him to become the COO and first deputy comptroller at the OCC. Just two months later, then Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting announced his departure, making Brooks acting Comptroller. On this week's episode o...
Jun 17, 2020•54 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Ian Sigalow has been in the venture capital (VC) space for over a decade, launching his firm Greycroft in 2006. Since then, he's taken some big swings in the fintech space, many of which have paid off. Greycroft manages about $2 billion today. He was an angel investor in Venmo at a time when people told him that PayPal had already won the race of free peer-to-peer service. On this week's episode of The Scoop, Sigalow discussed how one of the firm's latest investments — Public.com — could build a...
Jun 09, 2020•51 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Last week, saw a deluge of prime brokerage news, capped off by Coinbase's announcement of its acquisition of crypto broker Tagomi . After months of rumors surrounding the two-year-old firm, the deal became one of Coinbase's biggest acquisitions in a move to fill out its institutional business of trading and custody services. With the deal inked, Coinbase is one step closer to becoming a full-scale prime broker. This week's episode features Su Zhu, crypto investor, market commentator and founder ...
Jun 02, 2020•48 min•Ep. 21
After a gloomy March and a proverbially rainy April, May has shaped up to be a – dare one say it – positive market from a macro market perspective. Despite the ongoing tragedy of the global coronavirus pandemic, investors appear to be buying. The S&P 500 broke 3,000 for the first time in March and the Dow is up broadly on positive sentiment that efforts to reopen businesses in the U.S. – all in the hopes of coaxing back consumers – will be successful. Yet despite the sense of optimism, analy...
May 26, 2020•51 min•Ep. 21
Institutional crypto exchange LMAX Digital closed out its second year by 10x-ing its trade volumes, trading $75 billion worth of crypto in the past 12 months, the firm revealed exclusively to The Block. Since its launch two years ago, the firm has facilitated $85 billion in trades, according to a Tuesday press release. Last year's monthly high was $8.6 billion traded in June of 2019, and that month saw the firm's daily record high on June 27, when $1.25 billion was traded on the exchange. CEO of...
May 19, 2020•47 min•Season 2Ep. 20
If recent headlines are any indication, Wall Street's slow embrace of bitcoin – or, at least, financial instruments tied to it – is beginning to pick up the pace. Earlier this week, it was reported that JPMorgan is offering banking services to cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini. And macro investor Paul Tudor Jones recently revealed that he allocated as much as 2% of his assets to bitcoin, while his fund has opened to door to buying bitcoin futures . Elsewhere, derivatives markets are h...
May 15, 2020•42 min•Season 2Ep. 19
It’s been an interesting time for the stablecoin market. Total stablecoin issuance recently surpassed $10 billion, according to data compiled by The Block Research. Meanwhile, the discussion of Facebook’s Libra has taken on interesting new dimensions of late. Lex Sokolin, a former research analyst and the current global co-head of fintech at Consensys, has been paying close attention to these developments. In this episode of The Scoop, which was recorded prior to the Libra Association announceme...
May 12, 2020•32 min•Ep. 18
Unless you were hiding under a rock on Thursday, you would have seen the letter by macro investor Paul Tudor Jones that outlines his case for owning bitcoin as a hedge against central bank money printing. In the letter – titled The Great Monetary Inflation – Jones dropped the bombshell update that Tudor Investment Corp could allocate a percentage of its assets to bitcoin futures. Although Jones doesn't subscribe to owning bitcoin "in isolation" or view himself as a "crypto nut," the coin communi...
May 08, 2020•29 min•Season 2Ep. 17
We are going to rewind the clock on this episode of The Scoop with the Odd Lots team, Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal. The podcast duo – whose combined time covering global financial markets spans more than three decades – take us back to their times at the FT's Alphaville and The Business Insider, respectively, where they covered the 2008-2009 financial crisis. In this episode, the podcasters become the "podcast-ees." The episode explores how there are parallels between the dearth ...
May 05, 2020•51 min•Season 2Ep. 16
From multi-platinum performing artist to crypto-entrepreneur, the mononymous Akon has long chased lofty ambitions. The Senegal-native's Akoin project is the singer's latest lofty endeavor. The aptly-named cryptocurrency was founded to democratize financial-services in Africa, where traditional banking infrastructure is scarce. Indeed, the project harkens back to the ICO boom of 2017 when celebrities made headlines in the mainstream press for promoting a digital currency fundraise – drawing the a...
May 01, 2020•31 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Despite the world being beset by the COVID-19 pandemic and a financial crisis, humor is something we can all find respite in. This is even the case, believe it or not, for Wall Street. From the Ghana funeral that's swept financial services Twitter (FinTwit) following Ray Dalio's "cash is trash" call to the much-loved "Money printer go brr," this crisis has seen its fair share of memes. Indeed, it's fueled engagement for meme accounts, such as Ramp Capital, the anonymous, self-declared CFO of Fin...
Apr 28, 2020•49 min•Season 2Ep. 15
In 19 days, the number of bitcoin released with each block reward will drop from 12.5 to 6.25, a 50% cut in supply. This will be the third halving in bitcoin's lifetime and it has market participants across crypto speculating about the potential ramifications. Namely, whether it will result in a pop in bitcoin's price or whether it is priced in. In this episode of The Scoop, we welcome GSR Trading co-founder Rich Rosenblum to dig into the halving. Rosenblum, who spent ten years at Goldman Sachs ...
Apr 22, 2020•45 min•Season 2Ep. 11
The U.S. Federal Reserve and the Federal government are working aggressively to implement policies to address the financial crisis tied to the spread of Covid-19. Most recently, Americans across the country began receiving checks to recoup losses in their incomes and the Fed said it would serve as a backstop for the junk bond market, announcing it would for the first time purchase corporate bonds including those in junk territory. Such government actions has triggered a cacophony of criticism, s...
Apr 16, 2020•48 min•Season 2Ep. 10
A financial crisis triggered by a global pandemic has exposed underlying problems on Wall Street and the market as a whole. That's according to Paxos chief executive officer Charles Cascarilla, who made an appearance on the latest episode of The Scoop podcast with host Frank Chaparro. Cascarilla – who spent the most formative years of his career as a hedge fund investor at Cedar Hill Capital during the 2008-2009 financial crisis – talked about unexpected liquidity issues across assets, such as T...
Apr 14, 2020•47 min•Season 2Ep. 9
The cryptocurrency market continues to exhibit signs of volatility. As such, Genesis Global Trading – an institutional over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading and lending firm – decided to hit the pause button on credit extension amidst the coronavirus-tied market chaos. Recently, Genesis has started to extend credit on a client-by-client basis but is acting gingerly in the market it helped pioneer – at least for a few weeks to figure out where the crypto credit market stands. Moreover, while Ge...
Apr 07, 2020•39 min•Ep. 9
As markets whipsaw amidst uncertainty surrounding the economic and health impacts of the coronavirus, the pipes and plumbing of our financial system, for the most part, has held up. That is even as legions of bankers, traders, and financial services professionals are forced to hunker down in their homes. Last week, there was one exception, however. A reported ransomeware issue at a little-known payments processor caused headaches across mid-sized banks across the country, making it difficult for...
Apr 02, 2020•54 min•Ep. 9
Many have tried to launch a bitcoin-tied ETF, but all have failed. Bitwise Asset Management is one such fund manager, which had its proposal for a bitcoin-linked fund shot down by the Securities and Exchange Commission in January. Indeed, the fight for a bitcoin ETF dates all the way back to the Winklevoss' attempt to launch one with Cboe. The idea behind an ETF is that it would offer an onramp for investors who want exposure to bitcoin but are uninterested in holding the coins themselves. In th...
Mar 06, 2020•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 8
State Street, one of the largest custody banks in the world, has yet to launch a service to store crypto assets but that doesn't mean it is actively involved in the digital asset market. Leading the charge is Jay Biancamano , Managing Director of digital product development and innovation at the firm. Biancamano has had his finger on the pulse of all things market structure, having previously worked at trading technology firms like ITG, Liquidnet, and Fidessa. So he has seen the shift to electro...
Feb 26, 2020•36 min•Ep. 8
To the bemusement of some XRP bears, crypto exchange Bitso captured attention earlier this year with news that it captured over 2% of Mexico's remittance market. Indeed, the ability to quickly and seamlessly send money across borders has long been one of the touted benefits of cryptocurrencies, but Bitso's surge has stood out among its rivals. XRP/Peso volume growth has surged over the past 5-months, while volumes on the whole declined. In this episode of The Scoop, Bitso CEO Daniel Vogel walked...
Feb 19, 2020•44 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Crypto custodian Anchorage emerged from stealth in January 2018, unveiling a new type of custody solution aimed at toppling incumbents like BitGo and Coinbase. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Blockchain Capital, the firm has locked down $57 million in venture capital to build out a faster alternative to cold storage solutions. Leading the firm's regulatory and policy efforts is Katie Biber, a legal professional who once served as the GC for Romney's presidential campaign. On this episode of Th...
Feb 14, 2020•40 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Blockchain.com is one of the oldest companies in the crypto world. Best known for its consumer wallet business, the firm has expanded into new verticals over the past year, launching an exchange, institutional lending, and over-the-counter trading businesses. On this episode of The Scoop, Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith joined The Block's Frank Chaparro to discuss: how the firm has leveraged its 40 million wallet accounts to break into new segments the size of the non-custodial market versus the ...
Feb 11, 2020•46 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Facebook's Libra sent shockwaves through Washington D.C. when it was announced with much fanfare last summer. Indeed, it sparked a conversation among policymakers and legislators about the benefits of cryptocurrency, and stablecoins specifically, as well as broader questions about what money is and the implications of a Facebook rival to the U.S. dollar. Since this summer, a number of countries have announced their intentions to digitize their own sovereign currency. In China, the country has ra...
Feb 04, 2020•42 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Launched in May 2019, crypto exchange FTX has showcased the breakneck growth of the burgeoning market for digital asset derivatives. The Binance-backed firm is known for its diversity of products, offering trading of futures tied to dozens of cryptocurrencies. Recently, following the lead of firms like Bakkt, CME, and Derebit, FTX launched options, a derivative product that offers the option traders to purchase bitcoin at a certain price at a predetermined point in the future. Indeed, options ha...
Jan 28, 2020•59 min•Season 2Ep. 3
When Tagomi came out of stealth mode in 2018, the need for a crypto prime broker was a commonplace talking point in the digital asset world. An independent broker, sitting in between the spine-tingling market and investors, would help lure larger asset managers to bitcoin, pundits said. Indeed, two years later even Tagomi has been disappointed by the lack of asset managers in the market and their focus on best execution, although important, is no longer core. Still, even though the firm's concep...
Jan 22, 2020•45 min•Season 2Ep. 2
