Saifedean Ammous is an economist and the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, which has been translated into 20 languages. In this episode, he discusses: the basic tenets of Austrian economics and why it is the only school where Bitcoin is possible historical examples of currencies and how they lost their monetary value the stock-to-flow model and how Bitcoin fits into that model the three functions, or descriptive properties, of money and why Bitcoin...
Aug 25, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 187
David Chaum, the inventor of eCash and CEO of xx network, and Adam Back, the inventor of Hashcash and the cofounder and CEO of Blockstream, discuss their involvement in digital currency well before Bitcoin existed. In this episode, they discuss: how they each became enamored with the idea of digital currency years before such an idea was widely discussed the crypto wars of the 1990s and the U.S. government’s attempts to control access to advanced cryptography Digicash, the creation of eCash, and...
Aug 18, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 186
Aaron van Wirdum is the technical editor at Bitcoin Magazine. Finn Brunton is the author of “Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency.” In this episode, they tackle the history of digital currency. Topics include: the motivations behind the earliest attempts to create digital currencies, and who was behind those attempts the Extropian philosophy and how digital currency was born out of it how the cypherpunks came together and eve...
Aug 11, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 185
Dave Jevans, CEO of CipherTrace, and Siân Jones, Senior Partner at XReg Consulting, give the lowdown on the Financial Action Task Force’s travel rule and how it applies to businesses in the crypto space. They discuss: their background and journey into crypto what the travel rule is the consequences for countries that are not compliant whether the regulation will apply to staking providers in the future the type of companies and transactions that will be covered under the travel rule the type of ...
Aug 04, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 184
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, shares his thoughts on the five-year anniversary of Ethereum, challenges with ETH 2.0 and criticisms about DeFi. We discuss: his thoughts and feelings ahead of Ethereum’s five-year anniversary how to address the high gas fees on the Ethereum network whether the complexity of Ethereum 2.0 creates a risk for the security of the network whether staking will lead to a higher focus on ETH price and issues such as monetary policy how he looks at the ETH price w...
Jul 28, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 183
Camila Russo, founder of The Defiant and author of a new book on Ethereum, "The Infinite Machine," speaks about how currency controls in Argentina got her interested in crypto and explains why she chose to tell the Ethereum story. She discusses: how she started covering the crypto space what it was like living through currency controls in Argentina why she started focusing on Ethereum instead of Bitcoin what’s in her new book, The Infinite Machine the most pivotal moments in Ethereum’s history p...
Jul 21, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 182
Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the author of numerous books including The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and most recently, the Square and the Tower: Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook, and Michael Casey, chief content officer at CoinDesk and coauthor of two books on crypto, The Age of Cryptocurrency and The Truth Machine, discuss the history of money and the macro environment for Bitcoin. We c...
Jul 14, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 181
Dan Elitzer, investor at IDEO CoLab Ventures, and Will Price, data scientist at Flipside Crypto, discuss the yield farming craze. In this episode, we cover: the goals of protocols offering liquidity mining the goals of users yield farming right now whether users of Compound will have much awareness of COMP in the future how Compound is trying to dampen inorganic activity and properly align incentives how incentives in one DeFi protocol can screw up another's such as changes in Compound's liquidi...
Jul 07, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 180
This episode is the first in a series, Why Bitcoin Now, that takes a deeper dive into Bitcoin and the history of money in the macroeconomic environment of the coronavirus. Mike Novogratz, founder, CEO and chairman of Galaxy Digital, and Raoul Pal, founder and CEO of Global Macro Investor and Real Vision Group, tell us where they think Bitcoin is going amidst this macro uncertainty and the global crisis due to the coronavirus. We discuss: why Bitcoin’s price hasn't risen in price due to the globa...
Jun 30, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 179
Chamath Palihapitiya, the CEO of Social Capital and chairman of Virgin Galactic, talks about a wide range of issues, including Bitcoin, COVID, civil unrest, and broad economic trends and forecasts. We discuss: Whether his economic forecasts have shifted throughout COVID Why he believes a debt crisis will occur How he views the success of BTC as a hedge against the ruling class How the economic pendulum will swing back toward consumers Why he doesn't mind if big corporations and hedge funds get w...
Jun 23, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 178
At an event at the NYU Stern School of Business, Christopher Giancarlo, former CFTC Chairman and co-founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation, discusses his proposal for a US central bank digital currency (CBDC), and how that fits into the broader geopolitical environment. We cover: Why he has focused on pushing for a US digital dollar after leaving the CFTC How a US CBDC would be different from other stablecoins How the proposal is designed to build off of the traditional banking infrastructure ...
Jun 16, 2020•55 min•Ep. 177
U.S. House Representative, Warren Davidson, contextualizes the state of crypto legislation in terms of widespread civil unrest, COVID-19, and global shifts in power. He explains where crypto plays a role in these paradigm shifts and talks about: Why he believes in crypto, and how he came into the space How his Token Taxonomy Act creates regulatory clarity for token issuers What four conditions tokens would have to meet to not be considered securities Other features of the Token Taxonomy Act, inc...
Jun 09, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 176
Jesse Walden of Variant Fund, and Robert Leshner of Compound explain all of the problems associated with the decentralizing process in terms of governance and compliance, pulling from their own lessons and their commentary on other projects. We cover: Why projects must start with some level centralization How projects can both monetize and not put their code at risk of being forked How they can decentralize while also maintaining security, especially for composable DeFi projects that may become ...
Jun 02, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 175
This week’s Unchained is my panel at Ready Layer One! We talk everything layer one with four key players and projects -- Illia Polosukhin of NEARprotocol, Zaki Manian of Cosmos, Rob Habermeier of Polkadot, and Arthur Breitman of Tezos — to find out how these projects plan to compete with Ethereum and attract developers and users. We discuss: What platforms they are building and at which stage in development they are How they differentiate themselves from Ethereum, and what problems they believe ...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 174
Changpeng Zhao, aka CZ, cofounder and CEO of Binance, and I kicked off the Ethereal Virtual Summit with a fun fireside chat! He talked about Binance’s current operations, its plans for the future, and the crypto industry as a whole. He explains: Why he thought the questions I asked him in our first interview were misleading Whether Libra’s new plans are affecting Binance’s strategy for Venus What impact China’s DCEP will have on crypto Why the confluence of circumstances caused by COVID are a “p...
May 19, 2020•51 min•Ep. 173
Amanda Fabiano, director of Bitcoin mining at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, and Christopher Bendiksen, head of research at CoinShares, discuss the third Bitcoin halving, which occurred hours before the publication of this episode. They discuss: the significance of the halving what effect it could have on price and what Amanda and Christopher think of Dan Morehead's projection that it could reach $115,000 next year how macroeconomic events like the coronavirus and quantitative easin...
May 12, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 172
Hi everyone, this is an essay by Mariano Conti of MakerDAO that was so popular, personal and relatable, especially to those living in Latin America, that we decided to have Mariano translate it and read it in Spanish. Share it with your Spanish-speaking friends who still don’t understand what crypto is about, to show how it solved real-world problems for at least one person. Mariano Conti, jefe de contratos inteligentes de MakerDAO, nos lee su ensayo sobre su experiencia personal con criptomoned...
May 06, 2020•35 min•Ep. 171
Dan Guido, cofounder and CEO of Trail of Bits, and Taylor Monahan, founder and CEO of MyCrypto, discuss all the recent hacks in DeFi, how it can be made more safely and who is responsible. We tackle: the Hegic security incident: whose responsibility it was to make sure the contract was secure — the auditor (Trail of Bits) or the team (Hegic) — what Trail of Bits was saying in its audit summary, and how to read between the lines of an audit summary how long an audit should be upgradeability: part...
May 05, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 170
Matt Luongo, CEO of Thesis, the parent company of Fold and Keep, describes the just-launched tBTC, his plan for a censorship-resistant Bitcoin-Ethereum bridge. He explains his personal reasons for wanting such a platform, why tBTC is different from other versions of Bitcoin on Ethereum, and how it works -- including the process of becoming a signer in minting tBTC, how the system will handle crises, the reason for high collateralization levels, why staking assets are limited, and the necessity o...
Apr 28, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 169
Cathie Wood, CEO and CIO of ARK Invest, and Yassine Elmandjra, ARK's thematic analyst, discuss their investment strategy with disruptive innovation, and how blockchain technology, especially Bitcoin, plays a major role in it. They explain why the unique market circumstances due to the coronavirus have led to more correlation between crypto and the traditional financial markets, but also why, in the long-term, it will ultimately be uncorrelated. We cover why they think crypto in the age of COVID-...
Apr 21, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 168
Mariano Conti of MakerDAO, head of smart contracts at MakerDAO, reads from his essay about his personal experience with cryptocurrency, particularly as an Argentine whose family has experienced periods of hyperinflation, and as a freelancer accepting payment from foreign countries. He describes the evolution of Maker from single-collateral Dai (now Sai) to multi-collateral Dai, and also gives his perspective on the events of Black Thursday and the subsequent debt auctions the protocol undertook ...
Apr 14, 2020•34 min•Ep. 167
Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital reads from his essay on how defensible each of the major DeFi protocols on Ethereum are, and what that says about Ethereum's defensibility. He evaluates how easy it would be from an effort and capital standpoint to fork each of the major DeFi protocols, and makes a strong case for how and why he thinks protocols like Maker are quite defensible, and why he believes certain dexes are less so. Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com : https://crypto.com/ Kraken: https...
Apr 07, 2020•25 min•Ep. 166
In this essay, Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly Capital explains why he thinks the focus on decentralization can be overhyped. He looks at why decentralization can be important but then makes it clear, by dissecting when it is important and when it’s not, and to whom it does and doesn’t matter, that it isn’t the be-all end-all goal for every endeavor. He talks about which questions we should be asking beyond just, “is it decentralized,” and also explains why that question doesn’t even make sense. Tha...
Mar 31, 2020•33 min•Ep. 165
Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, dissects Black Thursday, March 12, the day the crypto markets plunged twice amid the wider sell-off in the markets due to the coronavirus. He offers several theories for the first price drop that day, how that set off a series of liquidations on various exchanges, and then why liquidations stopped for about 12 hours before the next wave, which triggered the next price slump. He also describes why, at that point, the crypto market structure brok...
Mar 24, 2020•59 min•Ep. 164
In this essay, Chris Burniske of Placeholder Capital talks about what kind of world crypto entrepreneurs are creating and want to be creating with the systems they build. He talks about different kinds of values, the dangers of only pursuing market values, and why crypto has a unique opportunity now to recalibrate those market values and incorporate more of the societal virtues we hold dear. Then he dives into which values he hopes to imbue into crypto networks and how that informs his thinking ...
Mar 17, 2020•39 min•Ep. 163
Soona Amhaz, general partner at Volt Capital, and Yele Bademosi, founder of Microtransaction, explain why they believe Africa is poised to become a hub for crypto development. They give some interesting stats on how crypto is currently used and traded on the continent, plus talk about how these factors interplay with the region’s unique demographics and the status of some of the continent’s fiat currencies to create what could be a unique environment for increased crypto activity. They end with ...
Mar 10, 2020•31 min•Ep. 162
In this fireside chat from ETH Denver, crypto-friendly governors Jared Polis of Colorado and Mark Gordon of Wyoming discuss how they each became interested in crypto and blockchain, how their states became friendly to the industry and how to resolve some of the thornier problems in crypto regulation, such as the state-by-state money transmission licensing regime. We also dive into the details on some of the regulations in their states, such as the regulations that make it possible to hold state-...
Mar 03, 2020•38 min•Ep. 161
Maya Zehavi, blockchain consultant, and Zubin Koticha, cofounder and CEO of Opyn, discuss the two recent bZx attacks, whether they were hacks or arbs and whether they were unethical or illegal. They also look at whether flash loans are to blame, how much transparency DeFi teams should have about vulnerabilities on their platforms, how much bug bounties should be for DeFi, and whether flash loans means the amount of bug bounties should be higher. We also talk about whether DeFi should institute c...
Feb 25, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 160
Santiago Siri, the cofounder and president of Democracy Earth, reads from his essay on how governance and identity change in the age of cryptography. Thank you to our sponsors! Kraken: https://www.kraken.com CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com Crypto.com : https://crypto.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Feb 18, 2020•33 min•Ep. 159
Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, reads his essay, A World Without Bitcoin. Thank you to our sponsors! CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com Crypto.com : https://crypto.com/ Kraken: https://www.kraken.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Feb 11, 2020•31 min•Ep. 158
