CoinDesk Podcast Network

Sometimes things are clear, and to both Camila Russo (write of The Defiant newsletter) and David Hoffman (co-host of the Crypto POV podcast), it couldn’t be clearer that the essential narrative of 2019 was the rise of DeFi as a true market force. In individual interviews as part of The Breakdown’s end of year coverage, each also makes a 2020 DeFi prediction. For David, it’s all about increased att...

Marty Bent is the author of one of the most popular daily Bitcoin newsletters and co-host of Tales From The Crypt. In this end of year interview with The Breakdown, he talks about the macro context - from trade wars to pressure on the fed to continue and expand the QE experiment to global instability - and how it is painting in stark colors the need for tools like bitcoin.  See Privacy Policy at h...

Rob Paone, aka Crypto Bobby, got his start as a popular crypto YouTuber and has gone on to help build a number of crypto companies before launching his own technical recruitment firm. Preethi Kasireddy is the founder of the TruStory debate platform. In two individual interviews as part of The Breakdown’s end of year extra, both argue that a big part of the 2019 story was the slow, steady slog of b...

One of CoinDesk’s ten most influential people of 2019, Melem Demirors is a crypto renaissance woman, known best for investing, operating as CSO of CoinShares, and for explaining ‘shitcoins’ to Congress. In this end of year Breakdown, Meltem argues explains why the entrance of governments to the digital asset game is the most significant story of 2019, as well as suggesting that the presence of an...

 Peter McCormack is one of the most prominent podcasters in the space. In 2019, he added a new podcast called “Defiance” and focused on the intersection of bitcoin, human rights, and political activism to complement his “What Bitcoin Did” podcast. In this special end of year episode of The Breakdown, Peter discusses why the past year represents an inflection point for citizen action and sovereign...

One of the most important (yet somehow quiet) narratives of 2019 has been the financialization of bitcoin and the emergence of a robust market for derivative products. That was reinforced today as Binance announced a significant investment in derivatives exchange FTX. How will key events coming up in 2020 like the bitcoin halving be impacted by the presence of derivatives?  At the same time, not a...

Accredited investor laws block most of the US out of technology and other types of early stage risk investing, but as the ICO boom showed, not being allowed to do something doesn’t mean that people don’t want to do it. The SEC announced prospective changes to those laws that could expand accredited status. In the world of DeFi, a number of different projects including Synthetix (with an assist fro...

From “digital gold” to “stacking sats” to “ETH is money,” 2019 was a year of narrative battlegrounds and meme warfare. And when every narrative is competing for scarce resources and attention, things are sure to get contentious.  This special episode breaks down Ryan Selkis’ recent list of top ten crypto narratives and adds a few more worthy of note. Does “The Revolution Need Rules?” Is “Dissident...

Welcome to The Breakdown: A daily analysis show distributed by CoinDesk, featuring @NLW On this episode... More crypto businesses are transitioning to or choosing to focus exclusively on bitcoin only from the beginning, in some ways representing a productization of bitcoin maximalism. In China, however, the government is cracking down fiercly on resurgent crypto businesses that have taking Preside...

Subscribe to Road to Consensus here: https://art19.com/shows/road-to-consensus-by-coindesk We've launched a new podcast featuring interviews with leaders of the blockchain industry. If you like this first episode, please subscribe at the link above! And if you want more info about Consensus in New York on May 13, visit Consensus2019.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Californi...

F2pool, believes that anywhere from 600k to 800k bitcoin miners have shut down since mid-November as the bitcoin network’s hashrate - and the cryptocurrency’s price - have declined. Ripple has released the latest version of its most popular product, xCurrent. Porn startup SpankChain raised $6 million in an initial coin offering in 2017. Ohio has officially become the first US state to accept bitco...

The U.S-based crypto mining firm Giga Watt filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this past Monday, but it still owes creditors some $7 million. Insurance coverage in the crypto space totals about $6 billion, a mere drop in the bucket for a market cap of $140 billion. Six days after the bitcoin cash hard fork, it appears that the chains will be permanently split. Silvergate Bank has 483 crypto startups a...

The ICE’s bitcoin futures trading platform Bakkt is delaying its product launch. The U.K.’s FCA is considering a ban on some cryptocurrency-based derivatives, a senior executive has said. The Alabama Securities Commission is taking a hard stance on would-be ICO frauds. The U.S. Department of Justice is increasingly focusing a months-long investigation into crypto market manipulation on the tether...

Bitcoin’s price fell below $5,000 for the first time since October 12, 2017, dropping more than $500 to hit $4,981 earlier today. Despite the falling crypto prices, developers and entrepreneurs are still moving into the crypto space. Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is calling on Interpol’s member nations to cooperate in preventing cryptocurrencies from being used for illicit purposes....

A European Central Bank executive board member said this week that blockchain is promising – but that bitcoin is “the evil spawn of the financial crisis.” Two cryptocurrency startups have agreed to register their initial coin offering tokens as securities after settling charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Interest from both employers and job seekers in blockchain and cryptocu...

Bitcoin cash's contentious hard fork happened today around 1 pm eastern time. Notable consumer bitcoin mining pioneer Baliji Srinivasan is backing a startup seeking to take another stab at popularizing in-home crypto mining. Police in Tokyo have arrested eight men alleged to have run a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme that collected 7.8 billion yen (almost $69 million) from thousands of victims acros...

Bitcoin fell to its lowest price in over 12 months on Wednesday amid a broader cryptocurrency market sell-off. A new BitLicense has been issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services Messenger app maker Kik is quitting Ethereum for good as it continues to develop its own cryptocurrency. One of the bitcoin community’s most beloved veterans just got a promotion. SPECIAL on today's ep...

It's increasingly looking like Bitcoin Cash mining pools will run a version of the software called Bitcoin SV. An ongoing legal battle between XRP investors and payments startup Ripple is entering its next phase. Japanese IT giant GMO has reported a loss of about $5.6 million for its cryptocurrency mining business in the third quarter of 2018. Oil industry giants Shell and BP are among a group of...

Ironic? A fractious divide in the Bitcoin Cash community has raised fears that the cryptocurrency – the fourth largest by market cap – could split into two. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the country's stock exchange, Singapore Exchange (SGX), have developed a settlement system for tokenized assets that can work across different blockchains. Global professional services giant Accent...

Bitmain is launching two new Antminer models targeting the bitcoin mining industry. U.S. elections drama may be dragging Augur out of the doldrums. Crypto wallet provider Blockchain says it's about to stage what it's calling the "largest crypto giveaway in history." Cryptocurrency mining technology firm Bitfury Group has just closed an $80 million funding round led by venture capital firm Korelya...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to clarify when and how cryptocurrencies may be classified as securities, and will do so in "plain English." The chairman of Deltec Bank & Trust says a widely scrutinized letter about stablecoin issuer Tether's account at the Bahamas-based institution is "authentic." Switzerland's Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) is giving tough...