As the crypto market matures, owners of “pristine” digital assets will increasingly be able to use their holdings as collateral for an array of financial services, according to Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra. Founded in 2014, crypto wealth management platform Abra closed a $55 million Series C last September led by IGNIA and Blockchain Capital. In this episode of The Scoop, Barhydt explains why the recent Terra blow-up has no impact on crypto’s disruptive potential, and how a new wave of crypto-backe...
May 20, 2022•52 min•Season 4Ep. 44
The demise of the Terra blockchain sent a ripple effect throughout the crypto ecosystem last week, as the market absorbed over 80,000 BTC deployed in a failed attempt to keep the UST "stablecoin" pegged 1:1 with the US dollar. “If you’re a market maker and you don’t make money in those kinds of days, then yeah — you’re doing something wrong,” said Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute — an algorithmic crypto market maker with nearly $2 trillion in cumulative volume, according to the firm’s website. I...
May 18, 2022•47 min•Season 4Ep. 43
The Bahamas has turned into an attractive destination for crypto companies looking to set up shop in a jurisdiction with a clear regulatory framework for digital assets — a movement spearheaded by crypto exchange FTX’s announcement to relocate its headquarters to the island nation late last year. In this episode of The Scoop, Ryan Salame, Co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets (FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary), explains why he believes the conference was “an incredible success,” and why he thinks the Bahamas i...
May 13, 2022•36 min•Season 4Ep. 42
Bitcoin traded below $30,000 on Monday, amid market uncertainty brought about by the ‘depegging' of UST—an algorithmic stablecoin whose value is supposed to remain equivalent to $1. At publication, UST is trading at $0.92, although the ‘stablecoin’ saw lows of $0.6050 on the Binance UST/USDT trading pair. In this breaking episode of The Scoop, host Frank Chaparro spoke with crypto researcher Mika Honkasalo, who appeared on the podcast to provide a detailed look at how the UST drama is unfolding....
May 10, 2022•31 min•Season 4Ep. 41
This special bonus episode of The Scoop was recorded live at the Crypto Bahamas conference with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, the digital payments and infrastructure company behind the popular stablecoin USDC. As data from The Block shows, USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, and its share of the total stablecoin supply has been steadily on the rise. According to Allaire, a primary driver of demand for stablecoins comes from crypto native businesses: “Basically any bu...
May 09, 2022•17 min•Season 4Ep. 40
Founded back in 2011, Blockchain.com recently closed a Series D funding round in March at a valuation of $14 billion, making the crypto company both one of the longest-operating exchanges as well as one of the highest valued in the industry. After spending effectively “zero” on marketing for over a decade, Blockchain.com recently announced a sponsorship deal with the Dallas Cowboys, becoming the first crypto company to ink a deal with an NFL team approved by the league. In this episode of The Sc...
May 06, 2022•49 min•Season 4Ep. 39
Before Jon Cheesman became the global head of FTX Access — a new division of the crypto exchange founded by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried which caters to institutional clients – the seasoned market-veteran served as head of forex sales to banks and hedge funds in London at HSBC, spent time as a partner at crypto venture firm Distributed Global and was a VP at Goldman Sachs. Despite having over a decade of professional experience with global financial markets, Cheesman thinks we are currently liv...
May 04, 2022•47 min•Season 4Ep. 38
The Blockchain Association — a trade association that lobbies US politicians on behalf of the crypto industry — saw explosive growth in 2021, thanks in part to the controversy surrounding the crypto tax reporting provisions that were included as part of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that went through Congress last year. In this episode of The Scoop, Kristin Smith, Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, appears on the show for a record-breaking fifth appearance (pulling ahead of ...
May 02, 2022•36 min•Season 4Ep. 37
Founded in 2015, crypto-native VC firm CoinFund has spent the past year bolstering its leadership with talent from the world of traditional finance, including Chris Perkins — a former executive at Citigroup — and Christopher Giancarlo, the former CFTC chair . CoinFund’s hiring of Chris Perkins as the firm’s new President is part of a larger exodus of talent from Citi towards digital asset companies, as reported by The Block. In this episode of The Scoop, CoinFund’s President Chris Perkins and CE...
Apr 29, 2022•51 min•Season 4Ep. 36
In this episode of The Scoop, Framework co-founders Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer sat down with host Frank Chaparro to explain their new fund’s investment thesis which centers around the idea that blockchain gaming is “getting to the point of mass-market appeal.” As Anderson explained during the interview, the combination of AAA quality game design and in-game ‘play-to-earn’ economies is the key to mass adoption: “That combinatorial effect is the transition that we predict will move from ‘p...
Apr 27, 2022•45 min•Season 4Ep. 35
In the last episode of the Mining Report, The Block's Wolfie Zhao discussed the unprecedented growth of North American bitcoin mining companies in 2021 with massive equipment pre-orders and power capacity build-outs. Over the past few months, there have been several interesting developments in the crypto mining industry. The prices of graphic unit processors, commonly used for mining on Ethereum and other proof-of-working networks, have continued to slump, thanks in part to the overall crypto ma...
Apr 25, 2022•21 min•Season 4Ep. 34
An estimated 25,000 people descended on Miami, Florida earlier this month for Bitcoin 2022, the world's largest Bitcoin-focused conference. That's more than double the attendance the conference saw last year. The annual Bitcoin conference is known for its fanfare, including some anti-government and anti-regulatory sentiment. That was still on display at Bitcoin 2022, with incidents like billionaire Ricardo Salinas including a slide titled "The Devils" depicting regulators and a Braveheart-style ...
Apr 22, 2022•26 min•Season 4Ep. 33
Gauntlet Network — a platform that provides risk modeling and performance optimization solutions for DeFi protocols — recently raised $23.8 million for a valuation of $1 billion. On June 24, 2020, when Gauntlet Network’s CEO Tarun Chitra first came on The Scoop, the total value locked across all DeFi verticals was just over $1.5 billion. Today, less than two years later, that number has grown exponentially to over $211 billion. In this episode, Chitra describes his company’s rise to unicorn stat...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 32
During an episode of The Scoop from last November, Mastercard EVP Jess Turner explained how Mastercard was pivoting to become a ‘crypto first’ company. Mastercard has since made significant progress on this decision, including the filing of over a dozen metaverse and crypto-related trademarks. During this latest episode of The Scoop -- recorded at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami -- Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s EVP of Blockchain/Digital Asset Products & Digital Partnerships, shared the ...
Apr 18, 2022•31 min•Season 4Ep. 31
Amun Holdings Limited - owner of both 21Shares and Amun, Inc. - introduced the first crypto exchange traded product (ETP) to market back in 2018. Although the collaborative ARK Investments and 21Shares bitcoin spot ETF was recently rejected in the US, 21Shares remains the world’s largest provider of crypto ETPs with 30 unique products currently trading across exchanges. In this episode of The Scoop, recorded at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, 21Shares and Amun co-founders Hany Rashwan and ...
Apr 15, 2022•42 min•Season 4Ep. 30
Animoca Brands, the Hong-Kong based digital entertainment startup behind the popular blockchain metaverse platform The Sandbox, raised $358.88 million in January at a valuation of over $5 billion in a funding round led by Liberty City Ventures. In this episode of The Scoop, CEO of Animoca Brands Robby Yung discusses his company’s growth and shares his philosophy on what it means to build an ‘open’ metaverse platform. As Yung explained during the interview: "Our job is very much more like a gover...
Apr 13, 2022•46 min•Season 4Ep. 29
After decades of experience working with software companies, Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm with over $100 billion in assets under management, announced its plans to move into crypto last fall. In this episode of The Scoop, Thoma Bravo founder of Orlando Bravo unpacked the similarities between early software companies and today's crypto landscape, and discussed the thought process behind Thoma Bravo's decision to begin investing in the crypto ecosystem. As Bravo shared during the interview: ...
Apr 08, 2022•58 min•Season 4Ep. 28
Sequoia Capital has been invested in crypto since 2015, but the VC firm recently raised the stakes by announcing its first sector-specific fund: a $500 million Sequoia Crypto Fund focused on liquid tokens and digital assets. In this episode of The Scoop, Sequoia partners Shaun Maguire and Michelle Bailhe sit down with host Frank Chaparro to discuss Sequoia’s new fund and explain how the power dynamic between venture firms and crypto native founders has evolved. So what are these crypto-native fo...
Apr 06, 2022•44 min•Season 4Ep. 27
Before IreneDAO went viral last year, Irene Zhao only had a few hundred followers on Instagram. Today, the influencer from Singapore has nearly half a million followers on the social platform. In this episode of The Scoop, Irene Zhao and Ben Tang share why IreneDAO is a proof-of-concept for their web3 startup named So-Col or 'Social Collectables', and how web3 could empower both content creators and fan communities alike. As Zhao commented during the interview, “IreneDAO kind of revolutionized t...
Apr 01, 2022•39 min•Season 4Ep. 26
Do Kwon, Founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, recently made headlines with an announcement to purchase billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in order to establish “decentralized forex reserves” for UST, Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin. In this episode of The Scoop, host Frank Chaparro and Kwon discuss the details of Terra’s bitcoin reserves and unpack Terra's plans for unlocking bitcoin’s potential as the new gold standard for digital currency. While the move could enhance the stability of UST’s peg...
Mar 30, 2022•45 min•Season 4Ep. 25
In the weeks since the invasion of Ukraine, the US and others have levied heavy sanctions against Russia. Financial businesses, including crypto firms, are now expected to comply with regulations by blocking a growing number of sanctioned entities. Some businesses, like PayPal and Revolut, have chosen to block Russian users altogether, despite this not being a requirement under the current sanctions regime. Others, like Kraken, have made it clear that while they block all sanctioned entities, th...
Mar 28, 2022•33 min•Season 4Ep. 24
With nearly $13 billion in total value locked, Aave is certainly one of the dominant players in the DeFi lending space. However, as the protocol grows, so too does its risk factor. In this episode of The Scoop, founder and CEO of Aave Stani Kulechov discusses the innovation brought on by the recent Aave V3 upgrade, and shares what is being done to mitigate risk. While parameter adjustments through community governance may be sufficient to adjust a DeFi protocol’s risk curve during times of fluct...
Mar 25, 2022•32 min•Season 4Ep. 23
David Woo, a former top Bank of America executive, is famous for his 2013 prediction that Bitcoin would prove to be a viable alternative to traditional money transfer providers. Nearly a decade later, Woo is still prognosticating about the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, though given the current macro backdrop, his outlook is significantly bleaker. In the latest episode of The Scoop podcast, Woo joins host Frank Chaparro to explain why Bitcoin may not be spared from the economic an...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 22
As the market for non-fungible tokens continues to court interest from mainstream corporates, investors, and celebrities, Anchorage co-founder Diogo Mónica reveals how his firm is managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these assets. As Mónica explained during an interview on The Scoop with host Frank Chaparro, there are two main reasons he believes institutions are expressing interest in NFTs: “The first one is that it’s free marketing. You buy an NFT or you do something in crypto and...
Mar 21, 2022•36 min•Season 4Ep. 21
For those unfamiliar with the term “anon”, it refers to the prolific but anonymous identities that many veteran crypto investors use to discuss projects and express views on the market without revealing details of their personal lives. Out of the legion of such popular anon accounts on Twitter, the members of a syndicate known as “eGirl Capital” have established large followings due to their commentary, research and investment in cryptocurrency. In this episode of The Scoop, CL, an anon from eGi...
Mar 18, 2022•36 min•Season 4Ep. 20
VC firm Hashed was founded in 2017 when a group of founders and engineers from South Korea pooled $700,000. Fast-forward five years and more than 500 investments later, and Hashed’s treasury now totals over $4 billion and it is still 100% owned by the firm. Crypto gaming is one of the main pillars of Hashed’s investment thesis, serving as the focal point of a $200 million fund announced in December. While Hashed is actively investing in the emerging Web3 gaming ecosystem, their ambitions don't s...
Mar 16, 2022•41 min•Season 4Ep. 19
LinksDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization aspiring to reimagine the idea of the golf country club through global membership, illustrates the complexity that can underpin the red-hot acronym. While holding a LinksDAO NFT gives users membership rights, there has been some confusion amongst holders as to the extent of what those rights entail. Mike Dudas, co-founder of LinksDAO and 6th Man Ventures, recently discussed the current landscape in an interview on The Scoop. As Dudas explained du...
Mar 11, 2022•49 min•Season 4Ep. 18
Spartan Group — an Asia-based consultancy and venture capital firm — is set to close a new $200 million fund aimed at the metaverse, according to Jason Choi, a general partner at the firm. The new fund, which will close less than a year after Spartan announced its $110 million DeFi fund, will focus on projects building in the metaverse, specifically virtual worlds that support “digital ownership" as Choi described in an exclusive interview on The Scoop. To be sure, Spartan is far from alone. A s...
Mar 09, 2022•40 min•Season 4Ep. 17
Multicoin Capital co-founder & managing partner Kyle Samani, an early investor in both Solana and FTX, is turning his attention today towards the NFT space. In this episode of the Scoop, Samani shared his strategy and investment thesis on where he sees NFTs going in the coming months. Samani believes that NFTs will evolve from their current form of mostly static jpegs and become more dynamic, similar to how Web pages evolved since the early days of the internet. "So far in NFTs we don’t real...
Mar 04, 2022•50 min•Season 4Ep. 16
Bitcoin is converging with one of the largest industries in the world: oil and gas. In this episode of The Scoop, Justin Ballard, co-founder of Jai Energy, joined The Block's Frank Chaparro to discuss how his Wyoming-based firm is working with producers of oil and gas to help them put excess energy to work by mining bitcoin. "Every single of one them that calls us, typically are calling us about a flare gas situation," Ballard, who worked for more than a decade as an attorney and operator in the...
Mar 02, 2022•46 min•Season 4Ep. 15
