Around The Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Michael Pearl, COO of Kirobo - the safety net for DeFi. Michael is a fintech and blockchain executive with over a decade of experience managing teams and projects. A qualified attorney and former content chief at both Finance Magnates and Natural Intelligence, Michael has driven client outreach, acquisition, and retention in the fields of trading, personal...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Gabriel Gruber, Founder of Exactly Finance. Exactly is building an open source, non-custodial protocol on Ethereum, that will bring fixed-income solutions for lenders and borrowers. Prior to Exactly Finance, he was a Co-Founder and CEO of Properati (acquired by OLX Group). He ran the Real Estate Startup for five years, launched in Argentina, Brazil, Mexic...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Joel Lin, Contributor at CitaDAO - a marketplace for tokenized Real Estate. Joel is a Real Estate industry veteran with more than 12 years in institutional real estate and structured over $2 billion of deals. He is determined to bridge the real estate world into web3.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Ken Kruger, the founder and CEO of Moon, a crypto challenger bank and banking as a service platform. Prior to starting Moon, Ken ran a software consulting company that helped New York-based venture-backed startups build products. Previously he worked at Lockheed Martin as a software engineer and product manager on classified military projects. Ken has eng...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Michael Messele, a co-founder and CEO of Pillar Project, the leading open source, non-custodial, and community-owned crypto wallet that facilitates seamless access to markets, DEXs, and provides storage for crypto assets across multiple chains. The wallet is powered by Etherspot - Pillar Project’s native SDK. Michael is an experienced campaigner within th...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Sonny Alves Dias, CTO of Pixelmatic, a video game studio currently developing the title “Infinite Fleet” published by Exordium Limited. Infinite Fleet is an MMO strategy game set in space where players take command of a fleet of spaceships and play in cooperation against an alien race controlled by AI. The game also has crypto elements such as a cryptocur...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Sergey Gorbunov, CEO and Co-Founder of Axelar, delivers secure cross-chain communication for Web3. Sergey is an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo (2016 - present). He is interested in building cryptographic primitives, protocols, and systems that enable new applications in untrusted and distributed environments. He received a Ph. D. from M...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Justin Banon, co-founder and CEO of Boson Protocol, the decentralized network on which the future of commerce will run. Boson Protocol enables anyone to sell physical products in the metaverse as NFTs within the Decentraland space Boson Portal. He previously blitzscaled the Priority Pass Group to a $1Bn per annum revenue global rewards platform. With an ac...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Matt Cutler, CEO and Co-Founder of Blocknative, the leading real-time infrastructure for monitoring pre-chain data, optimizing gas spend, and predicting transaction settlement. Matt has founded multiple technology startups, including Web analytics pioneer NetGenesis, which went public in 2000 at the height of the Web 1.0 boom. His most recent startup, the...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Jack McDonald the CEO of PolySign, Inc., and Standard Custody and Trust, a qualified custodian for digital assets licensed by the state of New York. Prior to joining PolySign, Jack McDonald was CEO of Conifer Financial Services for a decade. Jack was named one of the ‘20 Rising Stars of Hedge Funds’ by Institutional Investor Magazine and inducted into Glob...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Julian Liniger who is the co-founder and CEO of Relai, Europe's easiest Bitcoin App and one of the fastest growing Bitcoin Startups in Europe. Julian is a young serial entrepreneur in the fintech and crypto space based in Switzerland. He is into Bitcoin and Crypto since 2015 and has raised more than $5M in Venture Capital so far, before even turning...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Justin Newton, CEO of Netki. Justin Newton is an early internet pioneer and a startup veteran - a serial entrepreneur, thought leader, and innovator with a reputation for driving companies to unicorn valuations while exemplifying the ideals that defined the internet revolution - free speech, anonymity, decentralized ownership, open infrastructure, and per...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Chris Swenor, CEO of Reach. Chris Swenor managed technical teams across the globe for over 15 years before leading the blockchain development platform to a $48 million valuation in May of 2021. With multiple exits under his belt, Swenor serves as mentor at Harvard Business School, TechStars, and MassChallenge. Reach has amassed over 6,000 developers as of...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Michael Bentley, co-founder and CEO of Euler, a non-custodial lending protocol built on Ethereum that allows users to lend and borrow almost any crypto asset. Deployed on mainnet last year, Euler offers a new approach to lending and borrowing markets due to its tiered risk management framework. Prior to founding Euler, Michael was a postdoctoral research...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Thijs Maas, Founder and CEO of Onramper. Thijs went from studying law to teaching to helping blockchain start-ups to founding his own startup. With Onramper, he provides wallets, exchanges and web3 parties with easy access to fiat on-ramps. He's on a mission to make access to crypto as easy as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Fred Thiel, Chairman and CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to serving as Marathon’s chief executive officer, Thiel co-founded and served as chairman of Sprocket, a blockchain and cryptocurrency technology and financial services company whose mission is to reduce the risk and friction of cryptocurrency trading across marketplaces, regions, and exchang...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with David McDonough, the founder and CEO of CommonStock, a social investment platform designed to amplify the knowledge of the best investors, thereby improving the world’s overall financial health. He became interested in investing after graduating during the 2008 financial crisis when he started an investment club. David fell in love with investing and real...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Jonathan Silver, who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Engage People. Jonathan is responsible for managing all facets of the business. He leads the long-term corporate strategy, marketing, and sales at one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Canada, according to Profit Magazine. Jonathan has a proven executive management track record and...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Peter Zhou, who is the co-founder and CEO of Rutter, a Universal API for eCommerce platforms, marketplaces, accounting systems, and payment processors. Rutter has raised $30M from investors like a16z, the CEO of Plaid, BasisSet Ventures, Haystack, Comma Capital, and more. Peter met his co-founder Eric at Yale University and they went through Y Combinator i...

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Sergey Jakimov who is a founding partner of LongeVC, a crypto-friendly venture capital firm backing visionary biotech. Sergey is a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded 3 deep-tech ventures and raised more than $25 million in venture funding. He has advised several other startups in the therapeutics space on fundraising, IP protection, and clinical trial...

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Kirill Gertman, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Conduit. Conduit is building an API that connects businesses with decentralized finance products. Prior to starting Conduit, Kirill led Product at Eco and at BRD, before it was acquired by Coinbase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Sean Moss-Pultz the co-founder and CEO of Bitmark - a startup working to extend traditional property rights to the digital age by creating tools that give individuals control over their own digital assets and data. His passion is developing technologies that empower humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks to Benedetto Biondi the CEO of Folks Finance -one of the most exciting and relevant DeFi projects on Algorand. He is an Engineer and Blockchain Project Manager with 3 years of experience at the Italian software house Blockchain Italia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Kenton Prescott, who is the Co-founder & CEO of Sense, a decentralized permissionless  fixed income protocol, where teams can build and develop new yield primitives for DeFi, such as fixed income assets and yield curves. Kenton comes from MakerDAO where he was a part of its integration team and graduated from the University of Florida in Aerospace Eng...

Mike Cagney is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Figure, where he leads corporate strategy and development. Mike brings decades of experience in the financial industry to his leadership of the company, previously serving as CEO, chairman and co-founder of SoFi, a leading marketplace lender providing student loan refinancing, mortgages, and personal loans, as well as a range of wealth m...