Around The Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Michael Weisz, Co-founder and President of Yieldstreet, the only multi asset alternative investment platform for retail investors. As a seasoned Alternative Investments expert, Michael has created access to investments spanning art, real estate, private business credit, litigation and marine financing, structured notes, and more previously only available...

In our latest episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Weiwu Zhang, CTO of Smart Token Labs. Zhang has over 9 years of experience in blockchain technology, alt currency design and trading algorithms. He has served as blockchain architect for CBA (largest Australian bank), held the R3 global architect office, and also architected 3 altcoins and 7 ICO projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Toby Russell, Co-CEO of Shift, the platform to make buying and selling cars simple and accessible to everyone. Previously, he was Managing Vice President of Digital at Capital One, where he led the bank’s consumer technology transformation, including building the mobile capabilities that drive the majority of Capital One’s new customers and interactions....

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Brad Levy, CEO of Symphony, the leading financial markets’ infrastructure and technology platform. A driven and dedicated leader with decades of experience in the financial services industry, Brad has played an integral role in the growth of Symphony, and particularly in establishing Symphony’s platform as critical market infrastructure in financial servic...

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Ben Jorgensen, CEO, and Co-Founder of Constellation Network, the first scalable decentralized base layer zero infrastructure built for speed, security, and economical and technical scalability. Constellation Network is a framework that allows everyone to build and conduct a business on the blockchain. Their focus is to be the first decentralized ecosys...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Andrew Jamison, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Extend, a fintech that provides digital payment infrastructure for financial institutions to enable modern card experiences. Prior to Extend, Andrew was the head of B2B Corporate Payments Products at American Express with a mandate to drive digital payment innovation and adoption. Over the course of six years at...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Brett Goldstein, Co-Founder of Launch House, a community for founders and creators. Prior to Launch House, Brett was a Product Manager at Google, where he worked cross-functionally with engineering, design, marketing, machine vision research, and art as well as served as an M&A strategy analyst for the CEO of Google. He then took the role of Senior Pr...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Oded Zehavi, the Founder & CEO of Mesh Payments, and board and advisory board member of several Israeli FinTech companies. Previously, he served as Payoneer's Chief Revenue Officer. Prior to Payoneer, Oded served as the business development director for PayPal, where among other responsibilities he led the inception of the PayPal services in the...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Steve Berneman, the CEO and Co-founder of Blueprint. He is a former practicing attorney and a serial entrepreneur. Prior to starting Blueprint, Steve was the Co-founder and CEO of Overdog, a gaming company acquired in 2016. Steve formed the thesis for Blueprint while an Entrepreneur in Residence at Vanderbilt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Paul Garibian, President of Nota. Fintech expert, entrepreneur, and executive Paul has spent nearly 20 years helping financial institutions drive product development and grow revenue and market share. Nota is an innovative legal industry fintech solution powered by M&T Bank that adds value through increased productivity and decreases compliance risk. B...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Brenda Loya, the CEO and one of the founders of Tellor. She's an economist and a self-taught solidity developer. Previously, she was an economist and supervisor at the U.S. Department of Labor, developing and leading teams to develop statistical software for principal economic indicators. She joined the space initially by helping to develop a derivat...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Stephen Stonberg, CEO of Bittrex Global, one of the most reliable and secure cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Stephen has spent his entire 25-year career working in financial markets in London and New York. He left the traditional world of finance to get involved in the crypto and blockchain industry. Prior to Bittrex Global, Stephen joined the Inve...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with the architect of the Supra BFT Consensus Algorithm. Blockchain Designer & Developer, Joshua Tobkin is a Meta-Game Theorist behind projects such as Unitychain.io's venture projects and more recently SupraOracles.comA lateral thinker, creative, and curiously dyslexic, Josh has been building SaaS companies for the last 10 years. Josh is a well-known...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Trent Sorbe, President and Founder of Central Payments & Co-Founder of Falls Fintech. He is an architect of Central Payments’ Open*CP Fintech API Marketplace. With more than 28 years of debit, credit, and prepaid payments experience, Trent is responsible for products garnering nine Paybefore Awards, three of which garnered Best in Class or Category. He...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Vivek Krishnamurthy, Principal at Commerce Ventures, an early stage FinTech, InsurTech & RetailTech focused fund based in San Francisco. The Fund's investments include Marqeta, Bill.com, MX, Socure, Forter, and +90 others. At Commerce Ventures, Vivek primarily focuses on vertical FinTech applications, core financial services enablement technologi...

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Matt Spoke, the Founder and CEO of Moves, a social finance product for independent 'gig' workers across the U.S. Matt founded the company on a belief that the gig economy isn't working for its workers and by building a product that solves their systemic financial challenges, millions of independent gig workers can come together to improv...

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Ryan Cantor, Chief Product Officer at Thryv. He leads the Thryv product and engineering teams and is responsible for the vision and execution of platform improvements and enhancements in alignment with corporate strategy. Ryan joined Thryv after working with N2 Publishing leading their product effectiveness and scaling improvement efforts. Prior to his...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Spartak Buniatyan, Founder & CEO of PayEngine where he oversees the business and development operations. Spartak has been in the technology development field for over 20 years with heavy emphasis on developing technologies for large-scale vertical software-as-a-service enterprises with a particular focus on payments infrastructures. Learn more about y...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Ran Goldi, CEO of First Digital, where he has been creating blockchain-related products and services since 2017, focusing on payment acceptance for stablecoins and CBDCs. Prior to establishing First, Goldi co-founded and managed an algorithmic trading company, acted as VP in a company he took public in the London Stock Exchange, and acted as the head of I...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews G. Scott Paterson, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of FutureVault. Mr. Paterson, 57, is a prolific entrepreneur, financier and investor focused on technology and media. He is also the Chairman of QYOU Media (TSXV:QYOU), and Lead Director of Giftagram. Mr. Paterson began his career as a financial advisor in 1985 becoming the head of Dominion Securities...

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Nader Al-Naji, creator of DeSo. His interest in crypto began in 2012 when he mined approximately 23 Bitcoins on free campus electricity while studying computer science at Princeton. After that, Al-Naji worked in high-frequency trading at D. E. Shaw and as an engineer on Google Search prior to raising $133 million for Basis, his previous company, which...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Carl Memnon, the COO, and Co-Founder of Grain. Previously, Carl worked at Goldman Sachs, KCG Holdings, and, most recently, as Associate General Counsel at Virtu Financial, a global market-making and execution services firm. Carl's practice focused on Securities, Corporate Finance, and Commercial Transactions in Capital Markets, Technology, and M&...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Chris McCann, General Partner at Race Capital, entrepreneur, and community builder. Prior, Chris founded and led the community program at Greylock Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm with $3.5 billion under management which led investments in Facebook, LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Coinbase, among others. Chris has an angel portfolio of over twen...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Pat White, Co-founder and CEO of Bitwave, the world's first Enterprise Digital Assets Platform bringing cryptocurrencies, tokens, and other digital assets to the world's largest companies. Bitwave helps with accounting, taxes, AR / AP, secure DApps, and more. Pat was formerly a principal engineer and chief architect on Cisco Spark. Formerly, he...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Ekaterina Romanovskaya, CEO and Founder of A.ID, an Identity & Compliance platform with a focus on high-risk customers. She has previously co-founded Nimb, a ring with a personal security system embedded into it. Before diving into entrepreneurship Ekaterina had been doing marketing communications, then started in a retail bank as a PR manager, and a...