Around The Coin

Join our host, Stephen Sargeant , as he welcomes Seni Thomas , CEO and founder of EDGE Markets , to discuss prediction markets and EDGE’s role in compliant, high-velocity fund movement across regulated venues. Thomas covers EDGE’s $29.2M Series A led by CoinFund, the partnership with Kalshi, and why fragmentation into multiple liquidity pools could drive far higher volumes than current projections...

On Around The Coin, host Stephen Sargeant welcomes Aditi Shriram , COO of Para , to discuss her path into crypto from seeing Vitalik speak and starting at ConsenSys, plus her experience as a venture scout for Bain Capital Crypto. Aditi explains Para’s focus on wallet infrastructure for companies building on-chain financial products, highlighting stablecoin-driven use cases like remittances, embedd...

Join our host Stephen Sargeant with Xen Baynham-Herd , Head of Growth and Marketing at Base , on the Around The Coin podcast to discuss Base’s newest launches. Base Ledgers for enterprise-grade private transactions (shielded from the public but visible to regulators/auditors) and Base MCP, which connects chat interfaces like ChatGPT/Claude to a wallet and Base apps so agents can execute DeFi actio...

Join our host Stephen Sargeant with Itai Turbahn from Dynamic and Tal Zackon from TRES Finance , both now under Fireblocks , for a deep dive into agentic AI and what it means for payments, compliance, cybersecurity, and stablecoins. They explain why today’s human-in-the-loop rails like cards and ACH don’t scale for agent-to-agent microtransactions, and why crypto rails and stablecoins can enable i...

Host Stephen Sargeant interviews Chris Mason , founder and CEO of Orbital , about building stablecoin infrastructure and how it can improve cross-border payments compared with traditional correspondent banking and SWIFT. Mason explains Orbital’s background processing stablecoins for seven years, its focus on corporate clients, and why transaction controls, authorizations, segregation of client fun...

Recorded live at EthCC in Cannes, Around The Coin with host Stephen Sargeant sits down with Kyle Jenke , Chief Business Officer at Optimism , about how Optimism’s OP Stack and OP Enterprise help large enterprises build and own their own blockchains for customization, revenue economics, and stronger compliance, privacy, and security. Jenke cites over 50 OP Stack chains and major brands building on...

Live at EthCC on the Around The Coin podcast, Stephen Sargeant heads to the Zama Villa to speak with Zama COO Jeremy Bradley about fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and why financial institutions need a confidentiality layer to balance blockchain transparency with selective access for regulators and compliance. Jeremy explains “programmable confidentiality,” Europe’s GDPR-driven focus on data sov...

Join host Stephen Sargeant reports live from ECC, where discussions center on wallets, tokenization, real-world assets, regulation, and compliance, and introduces a live Around The Coin episode featuring 1inch co-founder and CEO Sergej Kunz . Kunz recounts 1inch’s start at the 2019 ETHGlobal New York hackathon after conversations with Vitalik Buterin, his early hackathon circuit, and how 1inch gre...

Join host Stephen Sargeant live from EthCC in Cannes for a special episode of the Around The Coin podcast featuring Otto Jacobson , CEO of YAP Global . Otto shares his journey from investment banking and CFO to leading one of the top PR firms in crypto, blockchain, fintech, and AI. Together, they discuss the evolving media landscape in Web3, the rise of niche content creators, and how crypto compa...

Host Stephen Sargeant interviews Yat Siu , co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands , covering his background (German mother tongue, education work) and views on how AI is changing the purpose of school and future jobs, emphasizing creativity, humanities, and entrepreneurship. Siu connects cycles from the dot-com era to crypto, arguing technologies that are better for society ultimately...

Join host Stephen Sargeant on this special edition of the Around The Coin podcast as he sits down with Dyma Budorin , CEO of Core3 and co-founder/executive chairman of Web3 cybersecurity firm Hacken —to unpack security transparency, risk analytics, and accountability in crypto. Budorin recounts starting Hacken after a 2017 Kyiv competition led to an ICO, and explains why smart contracts are improv...

Host Stephen Sargeant interviews Arnold Lee , CEO and co-founder of Sphere Labs , about building stablecoin-enabled payment infrastructure during the 2022 downturn and focusing on real end-user needs rather than “stablecoin” narratives. Arnold explains how Sphere helps businesses move money cross-border faster and cheaper by optimizing banking and compliance plumbing, especially in emerging market...

Join host Stephen Sargeant interviews Lawrence Zlatkin , Vice President of Tax at Coinbase , and Wendy Walker , Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Sovos , about the fast-changing tax and regulatory landscape for digital assets heading into 2026. They discuss the rollout of US crypto information reporting including Form 1099-DA, the challenges of incomplete cost basis when assets move across w...

In this episode of the Around The Coin Podcast, host Stephen Sargeant is joined by Rick Harmsen , CTO of DataExpert , to compare key takeaways from two conferences happening at the same time: Chainalysis Links in New York and ECC in Cannes. They discuss the growing convergence of AI, regulation, tokenization, stablecoins, and compliance across both developer and blockchain analytics communities, i...

In this episode of the Around The Coin podcast, host Stephen Sargeant sits down with Vugar Usi , CEO of MEXC , to discuss his path from traditional finance and marketing to running a global crypto exchange. Vugar explains what makes MEXC stand out—serving 40M users across 170+ markets with a 99% retail user base, a “list-first” approach with 3,000+ projects, and near-zero fees that he says returne...

Stephen Sargeant interviews Ran Goldi , SVP of Payments & Network at Fireblocks , revisiting his earlier prediction that stablecoins would become a dominant payments rail and discussing 2025 as a breakout year for stablecoins. Rand shares lessons from algorithmic trading and First Digital’s rapid 2017 growth, followed by a severe downturn that forced him to cut the team from 70 to 7, and how f...

Host Stephen Sargeant interviews Jesse Knutson , Head of Operations at Bitfinex Securities , about his path from investment banking (Barclays, Macquarie) to early Blockstream work and the Blockstream Mining Note, which he describes as an early flagship tokenized security. They discuss Liquid and the Lightning Network, why stablecoins and taxation affected Bitcoin payments, and how Bitfinex Securit...

Join host Stephen Sargeant as he interviews Kevin Lehtiniitty , CEO and founder of Borderless.xyz , about stablecoin infrastructure and global payment flows, including the Genius Act and why stablecoins are more practical for payments than Bitcoin. Kevin explains Borderless’s branding, his early work launching TrueUSD, and how trust features like qualified custodians and attestations mattered befo...

Stephen Sargeant interviews Natalya Thakur , CEO and founder of Knova , about how traditional financial institutions are transitioning into digital assets. Thakur recounts her early exposure to blockchain at BlackRock, where she supported initial Bitcoin ETF work and later promoted digital-asset education for women. She explains Knova’s B2B infrastructure software, which runs on-prem or cloud-agno...

Stephen Sargeant interviews Alex Svanevik , CEO and co-founder of Nansen , on how the company evolved from NFT-era analytics into an AI-native, full-stack on-chain trading product that combines real-time intelligence, execution, and portfolio tracking in one self-custodial experience. Alex discusses his AI background, Nansen’s “New Way 2030” pillars, and how agentic workflows are changing engineer...

Join host Stephen Sargeant on a special edition of the Around The Coin Podcast as he sits down with top industry voices to unpack the biggest crypto trends of 2025 and what’s ahead for 2026. Featuring Mouloukou Sanoh , CEO and co-founder of Mansa , the conversation explores how stablecoin infrastructure is transforming global payments, enabling instant cross-border settlement, and driving adoption...

Join host Stephen Sargeant on the Around The Coin podcast as he sits down with Edward Woodford , the CEO of Zerohash . This episode delves deep into the digital asset and stablecoin infrastructure landscape, exploring how Edward built Zero Hash from the ground up, the evolution of stablecoins, and their wide-ranging use cases from payroll to prediction markets. Edward shares his unique journey fro...

In this episode of Around The Coin podcast, host Stephen Sargeant is joined by Matt Malloy , CEO and co-founder of TruFin Labs , to explore the world of staking, liquid staking, and yield in the digital asset ecosystem. They dive into the differences between traditional and liquid staking, the evolution of blockchain technology and smart contracts, and the current state of the market. Matt also sh...

In this compelling episode of Around The Coin podcast, host Stephen Sargeant sits down with Rand Hindi , the CEO of Zama , a cutting-edge company pioneering Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) for Web3 infrastructure. Discover how Zama's revolutionary technology is enabling confidential transactions on public blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, providing unparalleled privacy without compromi...

Join Stephen Sargeant in this episode of the Around The Coin podcast as he sits down with Joe Robinson , CEO and co-founder of Hummingbird . Discover how Hummingbird is revolutionizing the way financial institutions combat financial crimes using AI and advanced analytics. Joe provides insights into emerging trends in financial crime, shares the challenges of being a CEO, and offers valuable book r...