In an episode of strong positions, Blockchain Capital partner and Bitcoin educator Jimmy Song explains why private blockchains will never work, why smart contracts will never work, and why Bitcoin will be the one and only valuable cryptocurrency. He also gives his definition sound money, describes why Bitcoin is sound money, and talks about how he finds new companies to invest in if he believes Bitcoin is already the winner. Plus, he recounts the story of his buzz-generating debate with ConsenSy...
Jun 26, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 69
This is a live recording from a panel I moderated at the World Economic Forum Industry Strategy Meeting. The speakers included Shwetha Shetty Senior Director, Corporate Strategy Group, of SAP, Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain, Brian Behlendorf, executive director of HyperLedger the Linux Foundation and Sheila Warren, project head of blockchain and distributed ledger technology at the World Economic Forum.We dive into the pros and cons of using blockchains for elections. which types of problems are best...
Jun 20, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 68
David Vorick, CEO of Nebulous, which operates Siacoin and a new subsidiary, Obelisk, describes what he's discovered in his exploration of the mining industry, including why he's decided that specialized chips like ASICs are preferable to generalized chips like GPUs, even if they tend to bring out mining centralization. He also describes Obelisk's new service, Launchpad,which secures exclusive deals to create a custom proof-of-work algorithm for a coin and also the mining equipment for it, in exc...
Jun 19, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 67
This is a recording of a panel discussion I participated in with a couple other reporters and crypto PR people at Consensus. (It was at the same time as Jack's talk, so it's totally understandable if you missed it. Also, the room was freezing. I was shivering the entire time.) The other panelists were Leigh Cuen of CoinDesk, Avi Salzman of Barron's (and my old classmate from grad school!), Jill Richmond of Spark PR, Trey Ditto of Ditto PR, and the discussion was moderated by Frank Chaparro of Bu...
Jun 13, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 66
Joel Monegro, partner at crypto VC firm Placeholder Ventures, describes how well his seminal blog post, "Fat Protocols," is holding up, why he and his partner Chris Burniske opted to found a crypto VC firm as opposed to a hedge fund, and what main factors they think will determine the success of a blockchain. He also describes how crypto and blockchains fit into the evolution of technology, how the business models in the crypto space will be built, and why their first publicly known investment w...
Jun 12, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 65
This recording is of Blockchain vs. the Surveillance State, a series of talks and a panel from the Oslo Freedom Forum put on by the Human Rights Foundation. In this session, hear presentations from Ryan Shea of decentralized technology platform Blockstack; Galia Benartzi of smart token platform Bancor; Steve Waterhouse of surveillance-free internet project Orchid; and Arthur Breitman from smart contract platform Tezos. Afterward, I moderate a panel among the four speakers that touches on the way...
Jun 06, 2018•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 64
Arthur Hayes, CEO of Bitmex, describes how traders on his platform can make great gains but experience limited losses, how Asia's crypto markets differ from those in the U.S., and why he makes money whether or not crypto prices go up or down. He also describes why ICOs are crap now but why he fully supports the idea in theory and how they should get back to their roots. He also explains why he believes governments will issue digital cash, and why he believes everyday people will be surveilled th...
Jun 05, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 63
Jonathan Levin, cofounder and chief operating officer for blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, describes how the company was born out of questions he had while a grad student, how they began mapping the Bitcoin blockchain to certain entities, and how their customers, which include government agencies such as the FBI, DEA, IRS, Europol and others, use Chainalysis to help solve Bitcoin crimes. He also reveals what level of detail the software tracks, how privacy coins could affect their work,...
May 29, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 62
Jesse Powell, CEO of crypto asset exchange Kraken, explains why he publicly rejected then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's request for information from crypto exchanges, why he felt it was a publicity stunt and why Kraken, which stopped serving New York customers after New York's Bitlicense was introduced, doesn't see the market as a top priority. He also talks about why Kraken decided to stop operations in Japan after further regulations were imposed and discusses Kraken's $1 million donati...
May 22, 2018•58 min•Ep. 61
This recording of a panel I moderated at Ethereal with Ethereum researcher Vlad Zamfir and GovernX founder Nick Dodson covered the topic that it seems everyone in crypto is discussing these days: governance. We talk about how the community should decide whether or not to unlock the funds frozen by bugs, on-chain governance, what role the Ethereum Foundation plays and what it means that nearly all the people who write Ethereum's code are men. Nick Dodson: https://twitter.com/iamnickdodson Vlad Za...
May 20, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 60
The newly appointed head of the Ethereum Foundation, Aya Miyaguchi, talks about her background as a teacher, at Kraken, helping the Mt. Gox trustee unwind that mess, and the closed process by which she was plucked for her current role. She also describes her goals with the Ethereum Foundation, how the EF believes the Ethereum community should make decisions, how it defines community and more. She also talks about how she hopes to push more financial inclusion with Ethereum, and what she thinks n...
May 15, 2018•59 min•Ep. 59
In this show, recorded without the participation of Ripple (explanation included in the show), Ryan Selkis, CEO and founder of Messari and Matt Leising, Bloomberg reporter, discuss Ripple's XRP, the third-largest coin by market cap. We go over whether or not it plays an essential role in Ripple's products, why banks are unlikely to adopt it, and why it's centralized. We also discuss whether or not it's an unregistered security (although the class-action lawsuit alleging XRP is an unregistered se...
May 08, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 58
Here is the second special episode from the Time Summit, a Bridge Alternatives event, on how institutional investors can do operational due diligence. Suna Said, founder and CEO of family office Nima Capital, Eddie Duszlak of Texas Children's Hospital, and Joel Gantcher of Gantcher Family Partners discuss how they invest in the nascent Web 3.0. They discuss why a year of experience in crypto is so valuable, how they determine who the serious players are in the space and why the speed of disrupti...
May 06, 2018•35 min•Ep. 57
This talk is from a panel I led on infrastructure in the crypto space at the Time Summit, by Bridge Alternatives, featuring Kayvon Pirestani of director of institutional sales at GDAX, Tim McCourt, CME Group’s managing director and global head of equity products and alternative investments, Michael Moro, CEO of Genesis Trading and Genesis Capital, and Hu Liang, founder and CEO of Omniex. We discussed what infrastructure tools need to be built to get institutional players comfortable with the spa...
May 05, 2018•58 min•Ep. 56
Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain, cofounders of Multicoin Capital, dive deeply into their sometimes controversial and unpopular opinions on how the crypto revolution will play out. They describe why they don't think the technology that a team develops early on will play nearly as big a role as some think, why there will be a spectrum of blockchains offering different features with different tradeoffs, and why they're bearish on stablecoins. They discuss why they disagree on whether or not the Lightni...
May 01, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 55
Paul Walsh had long ago predicted that internet scams would migrate from email to private messaging platforms, but it wasn't until crypto mania took off that his thesis was proved right -- in a big way. In the summer of 2017, the founder and CEO of MetaCert discovered many crypto Slack channels were being overrun by scammers capitalizing on FOMO to get people to inadvertently give them their ether and other tokens. Now, the company has several products to help prevent crypto enthusiasts from bei...
Apr 24, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 54
In this live recording of a panel discussion at the CoinAlts Fund Symposium, Marco Santori, president and chief legal officer of Blockchain, managing director at Grayscale Investments, and Barbara Minuzzi, cofounder and managing partner of Ausum Ventures take stock of the 2017 year and discuss a range of trends they're seeing in the industry. Santori describes what the ICO wave was like from his seat as one of the most in-demand lawyers for ICOs, and why he doesn't actually think that securities...
Apr 22, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 53
If U.S. crypto regulation seems incredibly convoluted, this is the episode for you. Perianne Boring, the founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, and its global policy director and general counsel Amy Kim, discuss why U.S. regulation calls crypto assets currency, property, commodities and securities, and how that results in agencies enforcing their own laws without a higher level understanding of the technology. They also discuss what they call the "failure" of the regulatory re...
Apr 17, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 52
Through Inforum at the Commonwealth Club, I recently moderated a sold-out discussion on the basics of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. My guest was Kathryn Haun, a former federal prosecutor who is now teaching a class on cryptocurrency at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and serves on the boards of Coinbase and Hacker One. We go through all the elementary questions most newbies have: what is bitcoin, what is a blockchain, what is Ethereum, what is mining, etc., and give real exa...
Apr 15, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 51
Valery Vavilov and George Kikvadze of Bitcoin mining and blockchain software company Bitfury discuss why the firm has partnered with the publicly traded Hut 8, how it plans to branch out into mining other crypto assets, and how it chooses where to open mining operations. They also explain how low the bitcoin price can go before mining will be unprofitable for them, what their new blockchain analytics tools Crystal can do, and why they often choose people outside the blockchain/crypto industry to...
Apr 10, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 50
In an intermittent series on cryptoeconomics, Olaf Carlson-Wee and Ryan Zurrer of crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital describe what cryptoeconomics is, what goals it typically helps networks accomplish and what behaviors token systems might someday incentivize. We discuss when cryptoeconomic models don't make sense, how the type of consensus algorithms a blockchain chooses can affect behavior in that system and which consensus mechanisms excite them now. We also dive into whether or not it's des...
Apr 03, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 49
Zooko Wilcox, the founder and CEO of the Zcash company, explains why he wanted to create the privacy coin Zcash, why he believes privacy is essential to decentralization, and how encryption is the way censorship-resistance can be created on a technical level. We talk about the revelation that the NSA was targeting Bitcoin users by gathering details on their devices and how even Zcash users could be targeted the same way, but why Zooko believes most people are more concerned about other threats. ...
Mar 27, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 48
Arianna Simpson, managing partner of investment firm Autonomous Partners, discusses this week's news that Cambridge Analytica had used data from Facebook to perhaps manipulate the 2016 election and whether that could create an opening for blockchain-based decentralized social networks. We also cover the announcement that Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and top individual investors invested $12 million in Cryptokitties and why Simpson thinks the area of digital collectibles could take ...
Mar 23, 2018•22 min
Mike Belshe, the founder and CEO of BitGo, talks about one of the biggest problems facing crypto today: security. We discuss some of the ways BitGo has resolved this issue, whether that still leads to single points of failure, and what the company's recent acquisition of Kingdom Trust (a "qualified custodian" as defined by the 1940 Investment Company Act) means for the space -- hint, it may have to do with ETFs. We also discuss the recent violent crimes against people in crypto and how everyday ...
Mar 20, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 47
At the Founders Organization's Initial Taco Offering, an unofficial SXSW event, the co-authors of the recently released Truth Machine, talked about a wide range of regulatory issues from what the SEC subpoenas mean to whether or not the SEC is investigating the SAFT to whether or not the regulators should address crypto on a federal level. We also discuss central bank cryptocurrencies, how the dollar could be knocked off world reserve currency status, rogue governments issuing cryptocurrencies, ...
Mar 18, 2018•56 min•Ep. 46
Wyoming now has five blockchain-specific laws. Caitlin Long, cofounder of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition, describes what these laws are, what they mean, and how our least populous state became a crypto leader. The former chairman and president of Symbiont explains what this could mean for any project that aims to launch a utility token, whether or not ICOs held in Wyoming would only be available to Wyoming residents, and what big issue she thinks remains for the SEC to address. Caitlin Long: h...
Mar 16, 2018•26 min
Amber Baldet, JPMorgan Chase blockchain program lead, talks about what she was discussing at SXSW with Hyperledger executive director Brian Behlendorf and what themes she heard at the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris. She talks about privacy in financial transactions, how "immutable" blockchains might conflict with a new EU privacy law granting people the "right to be forgotten." And we briefly touch on her work with Jalak Jobanputra's new diversity-focused group Collective Future. Privacy...
Mar 15, 2018•24 min
As a former government official, current board member of Coinbase and professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Kathryn Haun has a unique and varied view of the crypto space. She doesn't necessarily see the SEC subpoenas as a reason to be alarmed and compares it to her work as a federal prosecutor. We also discuss the FinCen letter and why her take is different from the fear we've seen in the marketplace. SEC issues 80 subpoeast: https://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-launches-...
Mar 14, 2018•22 min
Preston Byrne, an independent consultant and English lawyer, and Angela Walch, an associate professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law who focuses on blockchain technology, both explain their criticisms of the crypto space, give grades to regulators on their job so far, and how they think major players in the space can improve. They discuss what systemic risks they believe crypto could pose to the wider financial system, how the current activity in the space is accruing "legal debt," and w...
Mar 13, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 45
Spencer Bogart, partner at Blockchain Capital, discusses why he think Bitcoin's growing pains are a sign of success, how the SEC regulatory gloom could affect the development of crypto and how a liquidity crunch could affect crypto hedge funds. We also take a peek at the coming platform wars. Blockchain Capital: http://blockchain.capital/ New crypto hedge funds: https://hackernoon.com/the-fate-of-crypto-hedge-funds-ca5850e8421c Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Mar 09, 2018•24 min
