Devin Finzer is the co-founder of OpenSea, the world’s largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles. He graduated from Brown in 2013 and worked as a software engineer at Pinterest before getting into the startup space. Devin’s finance app, ClaimDog, was acquired by Credit Karma in 2016, and he started working on OpenSea at the end of 2017. Today, Devin joins us at ETHDenver to share the mission and mechanics of buying, selling and trading digital assets on the platform and his long-term v...
Mar 06, 2019•52 min•Ep. 25
We’ve come a long way, baby. In fact, it’s mindboggling to consider the progress cryptocurrency has made, as an industry, since the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009. But we’re still a long way from mass adoption. So, how can improvements in UX lower the barrier to entry? Who are the players working to push crypto adoption forward? And what potential catalysts could spark widespread use of crypto among the general public? Follow Erik on Twitter: https://twitter.com/erikvoorhees Follow Taylor on Tw...
Feb 26, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 24
Today, Evan joins us to discuss the immense resources required to verify cryptocurrency and how Coda is tackling the problem. He shares the fundamentals of Coda Protocol and its side project, Snarky, explaining why they use functional programming and how the team is dealing with scalability constraints. Follow Evan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/evanashapiro?lang=en Follow Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomscaria?lang=en Follow Louis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/louAboudHogben?lang=e...
Feb 20, 2019•48 min•Ep. 23
David Bleznak is the founder and CEO of Totle, the world’s first on-chain order routing solution. By aggregating the liquidity of the top decentralized exchanges, Totle’s software solution makes crypto investing and asset management easy. David began his career investing in the real estate space before developing an interest in crypto in general and the DEX ecosystem specifically. A self-proclaimed ‘dexpert,’ David is committed to advocating for the mainstream adoption of decentralized finance. ...
Feb 12, 2019•44 min•Ep. 22
Ryón Nixon is General Counsel at MyCrypto and Founding Partner of Horizons Law & Consulting Group, a boutique crypto and blockchain corporate and litigation law firm. Ryón’s interest in working with startups led him to Boost VC, where his exposure to entrepreneurs in the blockchain space afforded the opportunity to build a pivotal business relationship with Taylor Monahan and eventually establish his own niche practice. Ryón’s diverse experience ranges from clerking for the US District Court...
Feb 06, 2019•59 min•Ep. 21
Today, Alex joins us to discuss Aurora’s mission to recreate the financial stack through a hybrid decentralized exchange and the company’s plans to decentralize over time. We ask Alex about AURA staking, and he speaks to the current return for running a node. He also offers insight around why IDEX has succeeded where VC-backed market darlings have not and Aurora’s ambitions to expand in terms of asset classes and customer base. Listen in to understand how the Aurora team makes decisions around w...
Jan 30, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 20
In this Wyre Talks, we are excited to host Steven Becker COO and President of MakerDAO. Having spent his career at various trading desks on Wall Street banks and high stakes hedge funds, Steven is no stranger to managing risk. However, a new challenge arose as he was tapped to run the decentralized risk functions at MakerDAO. Steven grasped the problem and led the decentralized organization scale and survive the downturn, all while preparing for the launch of MultiCollateral Dai -- the most intr...
Jan 22, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 19
Fetch is a wallet with trade execution capabilities. Fetch is evolving into a financial services firm by pursuing the appropriate regulations to offer securities trading to their users. This will allow them to market US securities internationally and bring international securities to US citizens. Ditch the Wall Street infrastructure and keep the most popular financial assets in the world - all custodied in your pocket. You can follow the host on Twitter! Thomas Scaria: @tomscaria...
Jan 14, 2019•49 min•Ep. 18
What an eventful year at Wyre and in the crypto ecosystem. Outsiders will look at the price/headlines and think the whole industry is in crisis. We don’t think that’s the case at all. Infact, we welcome the negative press since it chruns the non-believers out of the space so that the true visionaries can focus on building great product. In this special 90 minute episode with Mike, Louis and Thomas, we cover what we’ve witnessed in 2018 and how we think the industry will evolve in 2019. See below...
Dec 20, 2018•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 17
Less is more - keep it simple. That's the elegance of the Compound protocol. Compound has created a liquid, on-chain lending market. By keeping loan terms identical and utilizing a cohesive rate interest model, Compound has created a deep liquidity in a floating rate money market. With a long-term vision for protocol-level governance and a native model for generating revenue, the roadmap for Compound's success seems much more visible than the average protocol level project. Overview: How money m...
Dec 11, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 16
Overview: Josh’s trading style as it pertains to risk management, sizing, instruments, The mindset and habits of a winning trader. A profile of the early Bitcoin trading community. The impact on the derivative markets in crypto on underlying spot markets. The relationship between information asymmetry and technical analysis, the closest thing a trader has to a roadmap. How fundamental indicators can help with predicting BTC price as well as completely mislead traders. Thoughts around current mar...
Dec 04, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 15
In this episode of Wyre Talks, we're excited to have Joe Lau (cofounder & CTO) and Nikil Viswanathan (cofounder & CEO) of Alchemy, join us for the show. Alchemy, the world's leading blockchain intelligence and infrastructure company, powers the top hedge funds managing billions of dollars. In this session they share their background - how they met TAing the largest database class in the world at Stanford, built the #1 Social App in the App Store (featured on front page of the New York Ti...
Nov 29, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 14
You can follow the hosts on Twitter! Thomas Scaria (host): @tomscaria Louis Aboud (co-host): @louAboudHogben
Nov 20, 2018•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 13
You can follow the hosts on Twitter! Thomas Scaria (host): @tomscaria Louis Aboud (co-host): @louAboudHogben
Nov 08, 2018•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 12
You can follow the hosts on Twitter! Thomas Scaria (host): @tomscaria Louis Aboud (co-host): @louAboudHogben
Nov 01, 2018•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 11
You can follow the hosts on Twitter! Thomas Scaria (host): @tomscaria Louis Aboud (co-host): @louAboudHogben
Oct 24, 2018•57 min•Ep. 9
You can follow the host on Twitter! Thomas Scaria: @tomscaria
Oct 17, 2018•42 min•Ep. 10
You can follow the host on Twitter! Thomas Scaria: @tomscaria
Oct 12, 2018•45 min•Ep. 8
In this Wyre Talks, our guest is John Piotrowski, founder and CEO of The Ocean. John has a past life in political campaigning and traditional finance, but made the pivot to cryptocurrency and founded the Ocean in 2017. The Ocean provides wallet-to-wallet trading on a high performance, institution-grade, decentralized platform that provides more liquidity with less risk. They also strive to create an intuitive trading experience, while maintaining a safe exchange with KYC/AML performed on their u...
Oct 03, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 7
In this special live edition of Wyre Talks, we host Tom Schmidt, Product Manager, and Alex Xu, Director of Operations, of 0x protocol. In this episode, we discuss: Operational hurdles with setting up a decentralized project in early 2017 Why does 0x not have any partnerships? Fat protocol thesis and why open protocols are so popular What are relayers? Building an ecosystem that is all about incentivizing relayers Can ethereum handle a successful 0x protocol? Why has governance been the key purpo...
Sep 26, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 6
Yogesh Srihari is a serial entrepreneur, who started several companies until he stumbled upon blockchain and was convinced by its potential to refocus his attention. Now, he is co-founder and CEO at LQDEX (pronounced "liquid-ex"), an inter-blockchain trading platform which allows trading of digital tokens across multiple blockchains. Because the exchange is decentralized, all the trading can be done without counterparty risk. Cross-chain trading often utilizes what are called atomic swaps. We ex...
Sep 19, 2018•38 min•Ep. 5
In this episode of Wyre Talks, we welcome Apurv Mishra, founder and CEO of Zeus Protocol, who explains the mission of the Zeus protocol of breaking down data silos to help developers and how the blockchain can empower users in owning their own identity and personal data. Zeus Protocol: https://zeusprotocol.com/ Contact Zeus Protocol with Telegram: https://t.me/zeusprotocol Sign up for ZeusID: https://id.zeusprotocol.com/ You can follow the host on Twitter! Thomas Scaria: @tomscaria...
Sep 12, 2018•40 min•Ep. 4
In this episode of Wyre Talks, we host Michael Dunworth, CEO of Wyre, and Louis Aboud, Head of Research at Wyre Capital; we took this opportunity to dissect a topic we're not only very interested in, but feel is an important next step for crypto: the DEX. Through the episode, we discuss topics including: What is a DEX (decentralized exchange)? How having unregulated exchanges attracts bad actors How to get the first 100 million users for DEXs Challenges in improving user experience Regulation an...
Sep 05, 2018•48 min•Ep. 3
As traditional investors enter the crypto world, they not only bring their legitimacy and access to funds with them, they also bring old habits with them. This week's episode is about institutional players entering the crypto market and why bitcoin ETF's are so important to the market. We also cover topics like: Are ETF's good for bitcoin? Why the bitcoin ETF was rejected by the SEC Financial institutions making crypto mainstream Why Sillicon Valley is more threatened by crypto than Wall Street ...
Aug 29, 2018•49 min•Ep. 2
In this episode Wyre Talks, we interview the cofounders of Wyre: Michael Dunworth and Ioannis (Yanni) Giannaros. They recounted the story of Wyre; where it came from and where it's going. Wyre has been in the crypto space for five years now, and it's been a long and winding road, but we've seen a lot and learned a lot. It wasn't always easy but this is the story that defines who Wyre is today. Mike and Yanni also talk about: the struggles of founding a company and scaling it beyond the hacker ho...
Aug 21, 2018•42 min•Ep. 1
