Unchained

Nadav, founder of Dharma protocol, explains how it enables the borrowing and lending of crypto assets, what would happen in the case of default, and why it would make sense to do it in a decentralized fashion rather than using one of the many fintech companies in the lending space. He talks about what effect he thinks decentralized credit markets could have on the market capitalization of all debt...

Joey Krug, cofounder of Augur and co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, talks about what Augur is and is not, why it’s difficult to create new financial markets today and whether or not Augur markets could curb fake news. He explains why the teams burned its escape hatch key and whether he’s worried that Augur’s crowdsale would be considered an unregistered securities offering, plus answ...

Dfinity's Dominic Williams talks about how Dfinity is an internet computer that can host our software and data, instead of it being held by centralized services. He describes the consensus algorithm, threshold relay, and why he believes Dfinity will be much more secure than Bitcoin. We also dive into Dfinity's governance mechanism, the "blockchain nervous system." Williams, who has written about t...

Josh Stein, CEO of Harbor, and Danny An, cofounder and CEO of TrustToken, talk about security tokens and tokens backed by real-world assets, often called an unsexy area of crypto. They explain the strategies their teams are using to tackle the tokenization of what currently constitute $250 trillion in assets, what kinds of new behaviors and business opportunities "faster, cheaper, more liquid" ass...

In July in San Francisco, I moderated a panel at "Distributed 2018: Unlocking the Global Power of Decentralized Business." The title of our discussion was "Innovate or Reinvent?" and the panelists were Amber Baldet, cofounder and CEO of Clovyr, Matt Roszak, cofounder and chairman of Bloq, and Lily Liu, cofounder of Earn.com. We had a wide-ranging discussion, which included topics such as how the "...

Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties, and Benny Giang, Dapper Labs’ head of Asia, describe how employees at venture studio AxiomZen came up with the idea for CryptoKitties, what problems it exposed in crypto (beyond scaling!), and how CryptoKitties can teach people the value of decentralization. They also defend the $140,000 price tag on one kitty, explain how th...

In this hilarious skeptics' episode, Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of CoinShares, and Jill Carlson, an independent consultant, explain why they think crypto needs fewer moral arguments and more empirical evidence, and how there's too much focus on financial engineering, but not enough focus on winning hearts and minds. They also explain why people are not machines where "you put in a tok...

Kathleen Breitman, CEO of Dynamic Ledger Solutions, the company behind the Tezos protocol, and Ryan Jesperson, president of the foundation, discuss the Tezos initial coin offering, which was the largest ICO at the time of sale. Kathleen explains why she wouldn't do anything differently, except for the choice of foundation head, Johann Gevers, with whom Kathleen and her co-creator and husband, Arth...

Yaya Fanusie, director of analysis at the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Tom Robinson, chief data officer and cofounder of blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, discuss how common money laundering is in crypto, how jihadist groups are using it, and how privacy coins (really Monero) affect their work. (The reason why the dark markets haven't...

Jeremy Allaire, cofounder and CEO of Circle, and Sean Neville, cofounder and president, discuss why they think the internet of value will be even bigger than the internet of information and how all assets will be tokenized. They also talk about why they're launching a stable coin, how their services in payments, exchange and investing will compete against decentralized versions of the same, and ho...

Chris Dixon, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, talks about the new $300 million crypto fund he is leading with Kathryn Haun, the new general partner of Andreessen, and how a16z came to hire its first female GP. The long-time crypto entrepreneur also discusses his theory of how crypto will grow -- and why Cryptokitties was one example of how that might happen -- his nights-and-weekend theory of techn...

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 B...

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...

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 deal...

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 Ri...

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 th...

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 co...

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 bel...

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....

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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 discus...