Around The Coin

Mike Townsend interviews James Gillingham. James is the Co-Founder and CEO of Finxflo, the world’s first hybrid aggregator and cryptocurrency brokerage firm. Under his leadership, Finxflo has embarked on a new partnership with leading blockchain luminaries, Tron and JustSwap, to build the world’s first DeFi protocol aggregator. During his 15 years’ of experience in financial markets, FinTech and e...

Mike Townsend interviews Kinsa Durst. Kinsa is the founder of DeFi Code, a consulting firm for developing and executing global go-to-market strategy for blockchain and cryptocurrency companies. Coming from a diverse cultural background, he leverages his extensive experience working with companies in the U.S., China, and Korea to help companies establish their unique value and presence in the indus...

Mike Townsend interviews Daniyal Inamullah. Daniyal is the Head of Capital Markets at Cred and Co-Founder for the Glitter of Hope Foundation. Daniyal has spent his career specializing in mergers & acquisitions for energy companies at EY and Houlihan Lokey before he focused his career on democratizing financial services by leveraging blockchain technology. In his current role at Cred, Daniyal w...

Mike Townsend interviews Moaz Hamid. Moaz is a mission-driven technologist and strategist, solving for the future of jobs and medicine, and the role of Robotics and AI. He is mvmtAi, a health tech startup, founder and CEO. Advisor for SoftBank Robotics, and serves on, and Robotics WG member, for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).Moaz is also advisor and mentor for seed stage startups for Y...

Mike Townsend interviews Ned Phillips. Started his Fintech journey with E*TRADE as one of the very first online brokers and now an entrepreneur, Ned Phillips is the founder and chief executive officer of Bambu. Ned had the opportunity to experience the first dot-com boom with one of the original FinTech companies as well as was a consultant to 8Securities when they launched the first robo-advisor...

Joe Bayen is CEO at Grow Credit. Over the past decade, Joe has specialized in underwriting, credit score improvement, user acquisition, and monetization. Grow Credit helps consumers establish or build credit using a MasterCard designed to exclusively process subscription payments. The platform enables consumers with thin credit or no credit files to seamlessly establish a credit history using a Ne...

Mike Townsend interviews Jareau Wadé, a payments entrepreneur and recovering engineer based in Atlanta, GA. He currently runs growth and marketing at payments infrastructure company, Finix. Prior, Jareau lead commerce and visual search business development for Pinterest and co-founded Balanced, a payments API company that exited to Stripe in 2015. Jareau was also the first employee and head of dat...

Mike Townsend interviews Xiaohan Zhu, CEO of Meter.io. Xiaohan Zhu is an engineer by training, he was born and raised in Chine, and moved the US to go to graduate school at UC San Diego, and eventually got his MBA at Wharton before working as an engineer at Microsoft and Motorola. In 2016 he became fascinated with cryptocurrency and global finance and started ZMT Capital investing in Blockchain, a...

In this engaging interview Mike Townsend interviews Sunayna Tuteja, Head of Digital Assets and Blockchain at TD Ameritrade. With more than ten years of diverse global experience, she has a proven record for building new ventures from scratch and leading the kind of change that is critical in shaping the future of business. In her current role, Sunayna is responsible for building a scalable blockch...

Kyle Samani and Mike Townsend sit down and chat about how cryptocurrency will influence the US and global economy over the coming years. Kyle gives us the down low on companies and crypto projects he's excited about, and how he thinks about making investment decisions. Kyle Samani is a co-founder and managing partner at Multicoin Capital, a thesis-driven investment firm that invests in crypto...

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Alex Bouaziz, the founder and CEO of Deel. Alex is a true international entrepreneur, having been born and raised in Paris, France, he then went to undergraduate university in Tel Aviv, Israel, studying civil and environmental engineering. We chatted about his time getting a master degree at MIT, and starting on his PhD researching water treatment. The co...

In this show Mike Townsend interviews Chris McAlary, the CEO of Coin Cloud, the world’s largest network of two-way digital currency kiosks. From his early days as a Bitcoin miner to now, he is a pioneer in the cryptocurrency industry. When Robocoin installed the world’s first Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver, BC, in 2013, McAlary wondered why not the US. After much research and collaboration, he installed...

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Ljuba Youngblom, the co-founder and CEO of Hometown, an early stage startup reimagining local news from the ground up. Prior to that, Ljuba co-founded the connected car startup Automatic Labs, which was acquired by SiriusXM in 2017. He’s a UX designer, mentor, and pragmatic do-gooder living in Oakland, California. In the show we go into depth on local pol...

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Jason Butcher, CEO of CoinPayments. Jason took over as CEO after running HODLtech, a crypto consultancy. He now leads CoinPayments which is most known for being a leader in facilitating cryptocurrency payments for businesses. CoinPayments has over 1800 crypto options, over 100,000 merchant customers, processing over $100M per month, which has increased ov...

In this show Mike Townsend interviews Nelson Chu, founder and CEO of Cadence. Nelson is a 3x startup founder with several years of experience at the top investment management firms, including Bank of America and BlackRock. Prior to Cadence, he founded a strategy consulting firm specializing in helping companies build products and raise capital for growth, creating over $1B in equity value. He curr...

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Felix Feng, founder of Set Protocol. He previously worked at 21.co (acquired by Coinbase) and Radius, and graduated from UC Berkeley. We learn how Felix came up with the idea for Set Protocol and how how raised money and grew his team. Set Protocol basically allows you to buy and sell crypto management strategies for the average person, similar to how an...

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Mark Thomas, CEO and founder of ZenSports. ZenSports is a mobile peer-to-peer sports betting marketplace where anyone can create and accept sports bets with anyone else in the world, without the need for a centralized bookmaker. Mike and Mark uncover the history of betting, discuss the future of sports coming out of Coronavirus, and talk about what the st...

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Chris Maurice, CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card, a cryptocurrency exchange operating across Africa. In high school, Chris started an SEO consulting firm which helped optimize over 140 websites on Google, including Prezi.com. In college, he started a manufacturing and supply chain logistics company producing clothing and shoes out of a factory in Pakistan...

In this interview, Mike Townsend interviews Greg Kolodziejzyk, founder of AlgoLab. In his 20's Greg quit his job at a local oil company based out of Calgary Albert and started his own business as a freelance graphic designer. In 1994 his company, Image Club, was purchased for millions, and Greg became financially independent. With plenty of time on his hands, Greg shifted his focus to enduran...

Today, ARYZE is passionately led by Jack and is successfully establishing itself in the industry. The values ‘inclusivity’, and ‘transparency’ are embedded in the company’s culture and show what ARYZE is truly about. The company is working towards solving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal Numbers 9, 10, and 16. It does so by building a secure financial platform that is accessible to...

In this interview, Mike Townsend interviews Ethan Austin, who oversees all operations at the Techstars & Western Union Accelerator. This Techstars program focuses on investing in startups looking to shape the future of money. Ethan and Mike talk about the history of Western Union, which is now about 170 years old and dominated the American telegraph industry in both the 19th and 20th centuries...

In our latest edition, Nako Mbelle interviews to whom we refer to as the brand ambassador or Bitcoin evangelist: Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a critically-acclaimed best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts. Andreas makes complex subjects accessible and easy to understand. He is known for delivering electric t...

You can't seem to pick up any Fintech aka banking & payments magazine or blog without the mention of the word, 'financial inclusion'. Depending on whom you talk to, the number of financially excluded population is anywhere from 2.5 Billion people to 1.5 Billion. World Bank Group defines financial inclusion as individuals (and businesses) that have access to useful and affordable...

In this interview Mike Townsend talks to Kyle Hill, which is a special episode because Kyle and Mike are co-founders of Redeeem (trusted peer-to-peer crypto gift card exchange), and have started 3 startups over the last 8 years together. Previous to Redeeem, they raised $23M for HomeHero, a tech-enabled home care marketplace. They talk about how to work successfully together as a team, the mission...

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Ethan, who talks about his journey from CTO of VC funded startup, Overnight, to partner of AGE Crypto hedge fund. Learn about the differences between a VC fund and a crypto hedge fund, as well as how many exist what specific methods hedge funds use to provide returns for their LPs. Ethan walks us through a typical day, researching github projects, talking...