Gabriel Abed, founder of Bitt.com and Vice President of the board of directors, describes how he went from mining Bitcoin to persuading governors of central banks to not quash Bitt's goal to create central bank digital currencies in the Caribbean and getting the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank to pilot one starting next year. He tells the tale of how Overstock came to invest in Bitt, how he brought on a new CEO to take over the company he founded, and how he teamed up with Polymath to create a ne...
Jul 09, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 127
Luis Buenaventura, founder of Bloom Solutions, and Leo Weese, president of Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong, discuss the crypto scene in Asia — how it differs from that of the West, and how it differs within the region. We also cover the regulatory climate there, how Korean traders occasionally stuff their pockets with cash and hop flights to Hong Kong, and whether the Hong Kong protests have had any impact on interest in BItcoin. Leo and Luis also talk about Binance and what they think are the ...
Jul 02, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 126
In recent years, the Human Rights Foundation and Alex Gladstein, its chief strategy officer, have become forces in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency community. In this episode, he discusses why Bitcoin is important for human rights, its three most important characteristics, and why Facebook's Libra project should be helpful to the adoption of the technology, at least in the short-term. He also describes how Bitcoin is just part of other movements that have become more open, such as governments shif...
Jun 25, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 125
Tarun Chitra, cofounder and CEO of Gauntlet, describes how his company enables crypto teams to run through simulations to see how their design choices will affect the project once it is trading. Using the cofounders' background in quantitative finance and high-frequency trading, Gauntlet uses tools from behavioral economics as well as game theory, plus real-world information such as exchange data to model outcomes after 100,000 blocks. We discuss how it makes its assumptions, how proof of stake ...
Jun 18, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 124
In this panel, recorded at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2019, I moderated what an attendee described as a "lively" discussion on the relationship between finances and freedom with Bitcoin author and educator Jimmy Song; Alena Vranova, Head of Strategy at Casa; and Coin Center founder Jerry Brito. We talked about what it's like to live under a regime where people don’t have a lot of financial freedom, how the move to a cashless society is leading to a surveillance state, and how we're seeing the emerge...
Jun 11, 2019•55 min•Ep. 123
Peter Smith, the CEO of Blockchain, discusses how the company got started, why the company is focused on users owning their own private keys and how that is what enables all the most interesting applications of blockchain technology. He talks about the full range of customers and markets they serve, their lending business and their dark pool. We also discuss regulation, SegWit, nation-states getting involved in crypto and why Blockchain plans to go public. Read more on Forbes.com : http://www.fo...
Jun 04, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 122
Ted Livingston, CEO of Kik and the founder of the Kin Foundation, and Patrick Gibbs, partner at Cooley, announce the formation of the $5 million DefendCrypto.org fund at Coinbase Custody to fight the SEC in court. Kik and Kin are hoping that a lawsuit would eventually result in a new Howey test for crypto tokens, to determine which ones are a security. In this episode, they explain has happened so far between them and the SEC to bring them to this point and what their main arguments are. Plus th...
May 28, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 121
Sharon Goldberg, CEO of Arwen and Boston University computer science professor, describes how the protocol enables people to trade on crypto exchanges without making their coins vulnerable to exchange hacks, how this differs from trading on a decentralized exchange, and how Arwen would function if the exchange you were using on was hacked during a trade. She also discusses how Arwen works with any custody solution, how they choose which coins to support and what other features they are consideri...
May 21, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 120
Jutta Steiner, CEO of Parity, and Gavin Wood, who goes by the title "chief white space officer," describe the network Parity plans to launch later this year, Polkadot, how it aims to solve scalability, interoperability and security and when a developer would choose to build a dapp on Ethereum vs. a parachain on Polkadot. We also discuss another one of their products, Substrate, which enables developers to easily customize blockchains, and perceived competition between Ethereum and Polkadot. Plus...
May 14, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 119
Jennifer Campbell and Kevin Johnson, cofounder and COO, respectively, of Tagomi, describe how Tagomi helps institutional players make larger crypto trades more efficiently and at the best price possible, plus analyze how that was executed. They contrast it with the pre-Tagomi process for doing large crypto trades, how their software, which functions as a sort of " Kayak.com " for crypto trading, works on the backend, and how they keep funds held on exchanges secure. Plus, we compare today's cryp...
May 07, 2019•55 min•Ep. 118
Jae Kwon, founder and CEO of Tendermint and president of the Interchain Foundation, and Ethan Buchman, cofounder of Tendermint and Cosmos and technical director of the Interchain Foundation, discuss the various technologies that form the Cosmos/Tendermint system. When the Cosmos network launched on March 13, it was built on what is the blockchain equivalent of an operating system, a consensus algorithm called Tendermint, Cosmos is like the world wide web (for blockchains) built on top, and the C...
Apr 30, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 117
Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin and aka SatoshiLite, discusses how he came to launch Litecoin, how the "fair" launch may have helped its success, why he didn't work on it for a stretch, and what inspired him to devote all of his time to it — but not own any litecoins. We also discuss his vision for Litecoin, why he believes stablecoins aren't superior, why he's considering enabling private Litecoin payments, and how he feels about the perception that he sold his litecoins near the all-time ...
Apr 23, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 116
Alexander Zaidelson, the CEO of Beam, a cryptocurrency being built on the MimbleWimble protocol, talks about how he came to start Beam, how it differs from Grin, another cryptocurrency being built on MimbleWimble and what types of users the cryptocurrency is targeting. See the full show notes at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2019/04/16/how-businesses-might-one-day-use-cryptocurrency/ Interested in a weekend of yoga, nature, healthy food and talking crypto? Then join me, Meltem Demirors ...
Apr 16, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 115
Daniel Lehnberg and Michael Cordner, core team members of Grin, discuss the first implementation of the MimbleWimble protocol, named after a tongue-tying curse in Harry Potter. We discuss the many ways in which Grin is similar to Bitcoin: its origin story, its goal to be "digital cash," as Satoshi's paper was subtitled, and even its emission schedule. We discuss how Grin is private, how it is lighter weight than the Bitcoin blockchain, and the philosophy behind Grin, which stands in stark contra...
Apr 09, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 114
In a fireside chat I moderated with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce held by the Blockchain Digital Asset Forum, in conjunction with the NYU Stern Executive MBA program, on March 26, 2019, she explained where her reputation as 'Crypto Mom' comes from — a desire to look at the world with fresh eyes and say, are there things we can do things better? We also discussed a Bitcoin ETF and the prospects for one after Bitwise released a report showing a health legitimate market, as well as initial coin of...
Apr 02, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 113
At the first Unchained Live, Vitalik explained why he thought it was "inevitable" Ethereum would lose some of its lead, when he would be upset if Ethereum were overtaken by a competitor, and whether the Ethereum 2.0 road map was too long. We also discussed why a strain of Ethereum maximalism is emerging, how the foundation sets its funding priorities, whether or not the community should adopt inflation funding for development of the blockchain and why he thinks the MolochDAO experiment likely wo...
Mar 26, 2019•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 112
Ameen Soleimani, CEO of Spankchain, comes on the show to discuss his latest effort to fund Ethereum development through the decentralized autonomous organization MolochDAO. He describes how it works, plus we cover competition in the smart contract space and whether we're seeing the emergence of Ethereum maximalism. Full show notes are back on Forbes.com ! See the full recap of this week's recap of the episode at http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2019/03/18/how-could-ethereum-development-be-f...
Mar 19, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 111
Tushar Jain and Kyle Samani, managing partners of Multicoin Capital, discuss Binance, Binance Chain and BNB token, and why they believe Binance will become the first centralized company to successfully decentralize itself and migrate the value in itself to its token. We cover what Binance, the centralized company has so far achieved in terms of trading volume, fiat on-ramps, and regulatory arbitrage, and whether the company has any more regulatory risk than any other exchange. We also look at th...
Mar 12, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 110
Get your tickets now for Unchained Live with Vitalik Buterin! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/unchained-live-with-vitalik-buterin-tickets-56189456176 It will take place March 20th at 6pm at Columbia Journalism School in the Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall. Hope to see you there! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Mar 10, 2019•2 min
Mona El-Isa, the cofounder and CEO of Melonport, explains how Melon, the asset management protocol which recently launched on Ethereum, makes launching a fund easier and less expensive, plus gives investors even more transparency into the manager's decisions. She describes who will be using Melon, how the funds using Melon access liquidity if the protocol only connects to decentralized exchanges, what happens if bugs are found in the protocol's smart contracts, and how know-your-customer process...
Mar 05, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 109
Glen Weyl, a political economist and social technologist, the coauthor of Radical Markets and a principal researcher at Microsoft, and Santiago Siri, the founder of Democracy Earth, discuss how blockchains can be used to create borderless democracies that can reach any citizen on earth and can be used not just by nation-states but in all kinds of communities such as the workplace, church or a social network like Facebook. We cover concepts such as quadratic finance and quadratic voting, and look...
Feb 26, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 108
In case you haven’t heard, I’m doing a live podcast recording with Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum. What is a live podcast recording? It's a podcast performed by me and the guest on a stage, in front of an audience. Vitalik and I will be discussing Ethereum 2.0, Polka Dot, Substrate, what happened with Afri this week and more. And you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions. It’ll be in New York City the evening of March 20th, which is one month from today. The doors open at 6, the show...
Feb 20, 2019•2 min
Jalak Jobanputra, founder and managing partner of Future Perfect Ventures, talks about how, in 2014, her experience as an investment bank and VC, her global background, and her observation that new streams of data were becoming available led her to launch her first fund, which ended up being 70% invested in blockchain. She describes what it was like selling LPs on the nascent technology in 2014, how her latest fund, which will be more than $50 million, is different and how it's drawing LPs who t...
Feb 19, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 107
Jeremy Welch of personal key security system Casa describes the company's various services and products, including its $10,000-a-year premium service for HODLers of at least $500,000 worth of cryptocurrency and the Casa node. He explains how he came to start Casa, why using seed phrases for managing security of crypto hardware devices is so problematic, and how customers should set up the keys in their possession for the company's multi-signature solution, in which any transaction requires the u...
Feb 12, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 106
Rune Christensen, CEO and cofounder of MakerDAO, explains how multicollateral Dai will work, what happens if one type of collateral fails, and what happens when someone's collateralized debt position with multicollateral Dai needs to be liquidated. He also discusses who gets to participate in the various levels of governance with the MKR token, who owns those tokens and what the purpose of the Maker Foundation is. We also cover whether the CFTC would consider collateralized debt positions to be ...
Feb 05, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 105
Rune Christensen, CEO and cofounder of MakerDAO, explains the intricacies of the MakerDAO system, which includes the stablecoin Dai, which is pegged to $1, backed by collateral, and whose governance is managed by holders of the MKR token. He describes how the current version of "single-collateral" Dai, is backed by ether, how Dai is created with a collateralized debt position and what happens when the value of the collateral falls too low. He also talks about the roles of various players in the ...
Jan 29, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 104
Gemini's Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who serve as chief executive and president, respectively, discuss their new ad campaign -- what they mean when they say crypto needs rules, why they agree in certain respects with some of their critics, and what the general reaction has been. They discuss why they launched a stablecoin, why they chose the stablecoin structure of dollar reserves and GUSD's role in an arbitrage involving a Chinese exchange and a competing stablecoin. They also explain how the...
Jan 22, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 103
In this wide-ranging episode, Eric Meltzer and Dovey Wan of Primitive Ventures describe how Asia is weathering the crypto downturn: how have the low prices affected miners, how has this affected Bitmain's prospects for an IPO and how, despite a ban on crypto exchanges, Chinese crypto users have been trading. We also discuss more broadly how crypto projects and startups differ between China and the U.S., how crypto is upending Silicon Valley's dominance, and how differences in regulation are affe...
Jan 15, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 102
Eric Larcheveque, cofounder and CEO of Ledger, and Demetrios Skalkotos, global head of Ledger Vault, describe the company's three main offerings: its hardware wallets, the new software-as-a-service product for institutions, and an Internet of Things offering for transactions involving physical assets. They also describe how the company scaled for a massive increase in demand in 2017, who their customers are and how the company has responded to vulnerabilities found in its products. Plus, they ex...
Jan 08, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 101
To celebrate the 100th episode of Unchained, I talk a little about what this podcast means to me and thank everyone who's helped me with it. Then I let past guests and listeners take it away with their comments and predictions for 2019. Thank you to everyone who sent in submissions -- and to the listeners and sources who've helped me along the way! Thank you to our sponsors! TokenSoft: https://www.tokensoft.io Microsoft: https://twitter.com/MSFTBlockchain CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unch...
Jan 01, 2019•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 100
