CoinDesk Podcast Network

The spread of Coronavirus has dominated the news cycle across industries, but the discussion has been particularly fierce in both the finance and tech worlds, with crypto right in the lead.  For a month or more, prominent crypto voices have been discussing the event in terms of skepticism of reported government cases, questions of market impact, and plans for personal preparation.  NLW surveyed mo...

An incredible amount of work has gone into convincing institutional investors that bitcoin and crypto should be on their radar. Now that many are convinced, however, they face some significant limitations in the infrastructure.  A new crypto bank out of Wyoming is designed to address those problems. Founded by Caitlin Long, Avanti is apply for a special purpose depository institution (SPDI) charte...

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss catalysts and CEOS in the world of blockchain projects, the organizational and organic structures of decentralization and to wonder whether crypto even needs Satoshi-like catalysts now that the fire of blockchain burns bright. On today's podcast we continue the discussion,...

Coindesk reporter Leigh Cuen is joined by Isaiah Jackson, author of “Bitcoin and Black America '' and co-founder of KRBE Digital Assets group, to talk about financial discrimination in the United States and the unique value bitcoin can offer minority communities. According to a survey of 5,126 Americans conducted by Coinbase and Qriously, “twice as many Black Americans have been negatively impacte...

After settling in to the $10,000 price level, BTC suddenly and rapidly dipped more than 5% in an hour on Wednesday. As the market discusses possible explanations, some floated the unexpected simultaneous downtime of Binance and Coinbase as a causal factor.  In this episode of The Breakdown, we discuss the power exchanges wield - both in terms of market liquidity as well as the ability to shape new...

The ‘crypto’ industry is having a hard time fitting everything that’s happening inside that one monolithic term. On this episode, @nlw looks at current news stories from across at least 5 different categories - DeFi, enterprise blockchain, central bank digital currencies, digital collectibles and bitcoin - to ask whether they really all belong lumped in in the same category.  The episode also look...

The DeFi world continues to dissect the recent attacks on bZx. To most, the amount lost in the attacks is far less relevant than what the attacks suggest about how DeFi applications need to be designed.  Within that, one key topic of conversation is the role of price oracles - the systems by which DeFi applications check the prices of assets that dictate what happens in a given smart contract. Sin...

Part of what makes DeFi interesting to people is how it takes advantage of open source protocols to enable types of transactions never before available. The problem, however, is that financial structures mean new financial vulnerabilities. In the last few days, two attacks on bZx have used a similar strategy of manipulating the price of synthetic assets in the context of a new instrument called 'f...

CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen is joined by the Human Rights Foundation’s Alex Gladstein and Syrian entrepreneur Moe Ghashim to discuss how cultural context shapes the way people view bitcoin, including stories from the Middle East. Many bitcoiners see cryptocurrency as a cypherpunk tool that enhances personal freedoms, with cypherpunk meaning “using privacy tech to promote social change.” There are...

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. With the price of bitcoin headed up again, the idea of blockchains and digital currencies has never been more palatable to the mainstream. We've seen this cycle before, but could this time be different? This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com Today's discussion features Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephani...

CoinDesk's Head of Research Noelle Acheson joins Ophelia (Amun's co-founder and president) and Lanre (Amun's researcher) to discuss the advantages, disadvantages and eccentricities of crypto markets, exchanges, settlement and more. The group discusses the differences in the market microstructure between the crypto asset industry and traditional capital markets. The guests drew from their experienc...

There’s no denying that 2020 is off to a roaring start. From prices to volume to social media, sentiment is up up up.  But what’s driving it? On this special Valentine’s Day episode, @nlw reacts to listeners votes about which narratives are most driving the shift in energy, discussing:  The BTC halving Coronavirus and volatility Fed action Central bank digital currency intrigue Ethereum and DeFi P...

We're joined by CoinDesk senior reporter Leigh Cuen to discuss developments and implications in the case alleged against Larry Dean Harmon. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

To look at the US Government, it is the best of times and the worst of times for personal financial privacy.  On the one hand, in comments before the Senate Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says that FINCEN is planning more strict regulations around anti-money laundering and crypto.  At the same time, the CEO of DropBit was arrested on money laundering charges around...

With blockchain puppets (we really mean it) on TV, CNBC pushing the bitcoin-as-gold narrative and The Guardian seeing connections between coronavirus and bitcoin's recent rally, we've got a lot to talk about on today's episode of The Breakdown. After Monday’s quick retrace, bitcoin and the rest of the market went green again. In this episode, @nlw breaks down the shifting sentiment, looking at: Ho...

Last week, Blockstack announced a new proposal through which node operators would be rewarded in bitcoin. The concept behind Proof of Transfer is that, for the cryptoasset ecosystem to run, electricity should only have to be converted into digital scarcity once.  In this interview with @nlw, Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali explains how, by tying the security of Blockstack’s Stacks blockchain to bitcoin,...

Last week, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce proposed Rule 195 to give token projects a 3 year safe harbor. This proposed period would allow them to distribute tokens without fear of violating securities law so long as they achieve certain standards of decentralization in that time. Coinlist is a platform for compliant token sales. On this episode of The Breakdown, Coinlist CEO Andy Bromberg and @nlw...

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss the US tax treatment of "Virtual Currencies" and how scams find a home wherever opportunity exists, at least for a while. Subscribe to the new CoinDesk Podcast Network for fresh, insightful episodes nearly every day of the week This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is spons...

Bitcoin is on a 7 week upward trend. Having already smashed through its $9,000 Vegeta memes, it is now inching closer towards $10k.  On this episode, @nlw is joined by Kraken’s Dan Held to discuss how bitcoin has changed in a number of ways since the last time we were at the $10,000 price level last year. They look at: Narrative - Speculation around bitcoin as a safe haven and the role of the halv...

That’s the way Meltem Demirors described Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s remarks at Stanford yesterday. For the first time, the Fed has said that it is actively researching and experimenting around digital currencies and distributed ledger technologies. This is a change in tone from a Fed that, when asked previously, has more or less dismissed digital currencies.  On this episode, @nlw lo...

If venture investments and acquisitions provide a window into the sentiment in markets, boy did we get a big dose of information today.  Today we look at investments in the world’s best known developer of the Lightning Network; a new prominent corporate investor for a tokenized securities platform; and Square’s investment in a real-time payments company.  We also look at a set of acquisitions, inc...

As claims of election tampering, fraud, and other dubious activities fly around the botched Democratic Caucus in Iowa, trust in our public institutions continues to crater.  The question of trust and censorship are at the heart of our episode today. Handshake is a new protocol for uncensorable web domains. The goal is to create a new blockchain-based Top Level Domain system that governments can’t...

Bitcoin and porn go hand-in-hand in this interview with Spankchain community manager Allie Eve Knox. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Much of the Crypto Twitter conversation this weekend was dominated by talk of Twitter’s suspension of ZeroHedge. @nlw explores why the specifics of the infraction or the quality of the publication aren’t the important part of the conversation, and why he thinks we’ll see arguments for social media platforms to be turned into public utilities in the years ahead.  Also on this episode: Debates aroun...

In “Libre Not Libra: Facebook’s Blockchain Project,” Andreas answers the burning question… Has he tried haggis? Just kidding… He shares his thoughts on the recently released Libra whitepaper, as part of a permissioned blockchain project spearheaded by Facebook. Subscribe to the new CoinDesk Podcast Network for fresh, insightful episodes nearly every day of the week This episode of Let's Talk Bitco...