Dmitry Buterin, father of Vitalik Buterin and cofounder of BlockGeeks, discusses Ethereum at 5 years old. In this episode, he talks about: how he feels upon Ethereum's 5th birthday how he introduced Vitalik to Bitcoin what he thought when Vitalik dropped out of college to explore Bitcoin more his thoughts on Vitalik's initial idea and white paper for Ethereum what he thought of the ICO craze whether or not he worried about the SEC charging Ethereum or Vitalik with securities violations how Steve...
Jul 31, 2020•39 min•Ep. 136
Haseeb Awan, CEO of Efani, a secure and private cell phone service, talks about how he became acquainted with hackers who took over prominent accounts on Twitter last week. He describes: the underground industry that steals cell phone numbers and why who the main players, Kirk, lol and "ever so anxious" are what the hackers did when they took hold of prominent accounts, such as those of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and those of crypto companies such as Binance and Coinbase wha...
Jul 24, 2020•43 min•Ep. 135
Nate Maddrey, senior research analyst at Coin Metrics, discusses a report on the rise of stablecoins over the last few months that Coin Metrics published in conjunction with Bitstamp. He covers: why a stablecoin supply that grew over five years has doubled in the last four months why demand has grown, specifically for Tether, especially after Black Thursday why that demand caused Tether's price to rise above $1 post-Black Thursday why Tether is the most dominant stablecoin how traders were makin...
Jul 17, 2020•37 min•Ep. 134
Jeff Roberts, senior reporter at Fortune and author of "King of Crypto: One Startup’s Quest to take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street" talks about the news this week that Coinbase may go public later this year. We talk about: how Coinbase may offer an additional token offering in addition to a traditional listing how the firm has been laying the legal groundwork for an innovative offering Coinbase's new chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, who is a former federal judge who h...
Jul 10, 2020•29 min•Ep. 133
Ben Celermajer, index manager at Coin Metrics, talks about a new metric Coin Metrics introduced this week, called free float supply. In this episode, he explains: what problems in general Coin Metrics is trying to resolve with its various new metrics when it comes to blockchain-based tokens what other new metrics it has introduced what free float supply is what types of tokens and token holders it excludes from the free float how market caps change for some of the biggest coins when compared to ...
Jul 03, 2020•33 min•Ep. 132
Angel investor and writer Tony Sheng explains what yield farming is, why it's been such a craze, and whether or not the trend is sustainable. We discuss: how yield farming works how people could potentially earn 100% in annual percentage yields from it why people can earn more from lending or borrowing certain tokens vs. others how people can earn from borrowing at all how much leverage people are playing with the three ways people can lose their money while trying to yield farm and what the lon...
Jun 26, 2020•34 min•Ep. 131
Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, discusses the launch of the COMP token this week, including: why the price of COMP tokens popped how this now meant that the governance of the Compound protocol was now in the hands of the community whether liquidity mining in DeFi is similar to or different from transaction mining on centralized exchanges what the price jump in COMP on day 1 means for a future DeFi bull market why Kain believes he is already seeing Bitcoin flowing into alts and DeFi tokens wh...
Jun 19, 2020•34 min•Ep. 130
Robby Greenfield, the CEO of Emerging Impact and the former head of social impact and diversity programming at ConsenSys, talks about how the crypto community handles issues of diversity and inclusion. We discuss: why he thinks many in the community want to change everything but systemic racism why many in the community turned a blind eye to racist posts retweeted by cryptographer Nick Szabo how people in the crypto community responded to his recent essay on racism why cryptocurrency would not e...
Jun 12, 2020•33 min•Ep. 129
Steven McKie, CEO and founding partner at Amentum Capital, discusses the incidents involving Amy Cooper and George Floyd and the resulting protests, and how systemic racism affects black entrepreneurs in crypto. In this episode we discuss: His personal story from a childhood in poverty to running a crypto hedge fund How companies that want to hire from underrepresented groups have to change their habits to reach out to those communities Why underrepresented communities can be easily left behind ...
Jun 05, 2020•36 min•Ep. 128
Sergio Lerner, the head of innovation of IOV Labs and the creator of the Rootstock side chain, describes a pattern he discovered in early Bitcoin mining that he called Patoshi and why people are talking about it now. In this episode he explains: what the Patoshi pattern is what connection it has to Satoshi why the pattern exists how the pattern is being used now in a current court case in which Craig Wright is claiming he is Satoshi Nakamoto how the Patoshi pattern was used this week to evaluate...
May 29, 2020•36 min•Ep. 127
Jeff Roberts, staff writer at Fortune and author of the recent Audible book, “Kings of Crypto: Coinbase and the Coming Disruption of Finance,” discusses Coinbase's past, present and future. In this episode, we cover: when Coinbase duped Apple with its app and eventually got kicked out of the App Store when Coinbase's hot wallet got hacked how CEO Brian Armstrong handled challenges like the Bitcoin block size debate and an IRS summons on all its customers' activities for years how it handled the ...
May 22, 2020•42 min•Ep. 126
Yan Liberman, cofounder at Delphi Digital, breaks down all kinds of data from the Bitcoin blockchain to give a snapshot of where Bitcoin is at this point in its development and glean where it might go in its future. We discuss: Bitcoin's wealth distribution and how that has changed over time what whales have been up to recently and how that compares with their behavior in previous bull and bear markets what data on multi-sig transactions tells us what companies serving the institutional and reta...
May 15, 2020•43 min•Ep. 125
Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital, talks about the coronavirus and its impact on the economy and on Bitcoin. We discuss: why he thinks the US won't have a V-shaped recession how the government's monetary and fiscal policy will affect the recovery how this looks similar to what he saw when he traded in Japan in the early 1990s why tokens are outperforming venture whether or not Bitcoin is uncorrelated or if that narrative is changing where he thinks Bitcoin will go — and whether the rest of th...
May 08, 2020•39 min•Ep. 124
Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, explains why he believes Bitcoin is revolutionary, has begun to cement its status as a digital version of gold and is becoming less of a risky investment and more of a way to lower one's risk in a portfolio — but why he doesn't view it as a payment system. He describes how he expects the halving to affect the price of Bitcoin, why the on-chain metrics vs. price seem to him strong signs of adoption and why he views Ethereum as ...
May 01, 2020•34 min•Ep. 123
Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner of Dragonfly Capital, describes how the Lendf.me attack happened, why imBTC was involved in that hack and a $300,000 hack involving Uniswap the day before, and how the ERC-777 token standard was involved. He also recounts what happened after the attack, including messages sent to and from the hacker, how the Chinese and Western DeFi communities had different responses, and how the hacker ended up returning the funds. Plus, he goes into the details of what he know...
Apr 24, 2020•35 min•Ep. 122
Stephen Palley, partner at Anderson Kill and chair of the firm’s technology, media and distributed systems practice group, explains what the 11 recent class-action lawsuits against ICO issuers from 2017 and exchanges were about, who brought them, who the defendants are, and what hurdles they face, especially regarding jurisdiction. He also discusses why some prominent individuals in crypto, such as Changepeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, Brendan Blumer, CEO of Block.One , Arthur Hayes, CEO and cofo...
Apr 17, 2020•37 min•Ep. 121
Matthew Graham, the CEO of Sino Global Capital, describes how the economy has changed in China due to the coronavirus, how it is affected as business opens back up and how the government is managing it. He explains why the DCEP project is continuing apace and described how he thinks the coronavirus will impact the crypto industry, how it will affect entrepreneurship, and how he thinks startups should approach this time. We also cover the Bitcoin halving and why he thinks that miners in China wil...
Apr 10, 2020•34 min•Ep. 120
Kevin Kelly, macro strategist at Delphi Digital, discusses how the coronavirus's impact on the economy will affect Bitcoin and the crypto markets, including the ripple effects of the US fiscal stimulus package and historically high jobless claims. He explains how Bitcoin compares to traditional financial assets, what the recent Bitcoin price action says about the theory that Bitcoin serves as a macro hedge, and why it looks like newer buyers, rather than long-term holders, have been selling Bitc...
Apr 03, 2020•32 min•Ep. 119
Antoine Le Calvez, blockchain data engineer at Coin Metrics, explains what happened during the Bitcoin liquidation spiral on March 12, why it was so significant for the Bitcoin markets, and how a DDOS attack affected trading on BitMEX and the Bitcoin price during a period of high liquidations. We also discuss how Bitcoin liquidity has changed since Black Thursday, why that might be, and also what the coronavirus is showing us about Bitcoin's correlation to traditional financial assets. Thank you...
Mar 27, 2020•32 min•Ep. 118
Emily Parker, cofounder of Longhash, reads from an essay she wrote about a problem that is probably relatable to everyone in the crypto industry: how you explain blockchain technology to other people. She goes into the three main reasons why the industry has this problem, including the fact that the decentralized nature of the space means there's no designated marketer, that many in crypto don't know what story to tell, and how many actors in the space prefer to engage in petty infighting vs. co...
Mar 20, 2020•32 min•Ep. 117
Noelle Acheson, director of research at CoinDesk, discusses the effect that coronavirus has been having on the traditional financial markets, Bitcoin and why Bitcoin is not turning out to be the uncorrelated asset it was touted to be. We also talk about why Bitcoin had a safe haven to begin with, the role traders played in changing how Bitcoin behaves as an asset, and why we can expect Bitcoin to become even more volatile in the short term. We cover how this could affect Bitcoin miners' ability ...
Mar 13, 2020•39 min•Ep. 116
Brady Dale, senior reporter at CoinDesk, walks through the last few weeks of drama in Steemit this week, staring with when Justin Sun bought Steemit, what that meant for the network, and how the validators (aka "witnesses") responded and how exchanges got involved. We talk about why it's significant that the exchanges were Poloniex, Huobi and Binance, and why they seem to have walked back their support of new witnesses. We also cover the lessons in this drama for blockchains that use delegated p...
Mar 06, 2020•31 min•Ep. 115
Caitlin Long talks about her new venture, Avanti Bank, which will be a Wyoming special-purpose depository institution, what that means, and how that could bypass the New York Bitlicense. She covers why that's better than trust companies for certain types of customers, which type of institutions Avanti will target, and how this status will protect investors in a bankruptcy situation. Plus, she explains how Avanti will be a bank and yet have the “not your keys, not your coins” ethos, and how it wi...
Feb 28, 2020•30 min•Ep. 114
Lev Livnev, a formal verification researcher at dapp.org and a founding partner at Symbolic Capital Partners, talks about the two attacks on bZx in the last week. He describes what the attackers did, why he thinks flash lending is not the culprit and how much he thinks bZx is to blame. Plus, we talk about what this means for DeFi in general and where the space goes from here. Thank you to our sponsors! eToro: https://www.etoro.com Crypto.com : https://crypto.com Kelman Law: https://kelman.law Ep...
Feb 21, 2020•33 min•Ep. 113
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce discusses her proposal for a three-year safe harbor period for token sales. We talk about what problems she hopes to solve with this suggestion, the conditions that token issuers would have to meet to qualify for it, such as achieving a decentralized network or functional token within three years, and how she defines those terms. We also cover how the other commissioners have received her proposal and what the next steps are to her proposal potentially being adopte...
Feb 14, 2020•32 min•Ep. 112
Elizabeth Stark, cofounder and CEO of Lightning Labs, talks about her company's two big announcements this week: the beta launch of its first paid product, Lightning Loop, and the company's Series A $10 million fundraise. We discuss how Lightning Loop works, what kinds of companies are already using it, and how Lightning Labs will make money from it. She also talks about the investors in this round, how several of them come from traditional finance and what their views are on Bitcoin and Lightni...
Feb 07, 2020•36 min•Ep. 111
Frank Chaparro of The Block discusses the report released by his firm and the Blockchain Association on employment trends in the blockchain industry. He covers how the demand for such jobs is growing, who the biggest employers are in the space, and what types of companies are hiring. We talk about how token launches are moving primarily to Asia, why there's still significant hiring demand in the US and what kinds of jobs are being sought. Plus, we look at the recent LinkedIn study showing "block...
Jan 31, 2020•34 min•Ep. 110
Tom Schmidt, junior partner at Dragonfly Capital, talks about how liquidators are making money in DeFi — on which protocols, how liquidations work, and how much money they're making. He also discusses how liquidators do their work, how easy it is to create a bot to watch for liquidation opportunities, and how competitive the space is. We also discuss the growing competitive pressures, both from other liquidators as well as savvier borrowers. Thank you to our sponsors! eToro: https://www.etoro.co...
Jan 24, 2020•28 min•Ep. 109
Leighton Cusack, CEO and cofounder of PoolTogether, describes how the Ethereum-based no-loss lottery applies the psychology of winning a prize to the action of saving money, to get more people to save, why this is better than a typical lottery, and how blockchain technology makes it even better than a typical no-loss lottery. He also talks about how PoolTogether works, why it currently uses Dai and Compound and whether it would use other stablecoins and interest-bearing platforms. We also discus...
Jan 17, 2020•30 min•Ep. 108
Nate Maddrey, senior research analyst of Coin Metrics, gives an overview of how the major crypto networks ended 2019. We discuss how Bitcoin outperformed most other crypto assets last year, how it has been somewhat correlated with gold this year, whereas other crypto assets are not, and how the price movement of Bitcoin and Ethereum is starting to uncouple. We also talk about "realized cap," which is when each individual coin last moved on chain, and "market cap to realized cap" (MVRV), which is...
Jan 10, 2020•30 min•Ep. 107
