On The Brink with Castle Island

Blake King , power markets engineer at Galaxy, formerly of Oak Ridge national lab and ERCOT, joins us to talk about how changing grids are accommodating an influx of load from Bitcoin miners. In this episode:  Why the grid is undergoing a radical transformation today Blake's background in electrical engineering, power system modeling, and renewable development The origin of Blake's papers on bitco...

Matt Walsh sits down with BlockFi CEO Zac Prince to cover turmoil in the crypto lending markets and how BlockFi is handling the crisis. In this episode:   Is the contagion among lenders over?  Was Three Arrows excessive risk taking or fraudulent?  BlockFi's relationship with Three Arrows Does BlockFi still have 3AC exposure?   BlockFi's plan to maintain all of their products and keep them operatio...

Matt and Nic return for a fiery episode of deals and news. In this episode:  Is miner selling backed up by the on-chain data?  Is Massachusetts open to pro-crypto legislation?  FTX provides credit support to embattled crypto lenders  Why private market transactions do not constitute bailouts in the pejorative sense Was 3 Arrows just a case of too much leverage and bad trades, or was it fraud?  Doe...

In this episode, host Ria sits down with the co-founders of Starkware , Eli Ben-Sasson and Uri Kolodny to discuss how the team is leveraging STARKs, or validity proofs, to unlock a magnitude increase in scalability. We discuss: The differences between Starkex and Starknet and how the two will converge Enabling functions and applications that cannot be built on monolithic layer 1s Why data availabi...

Nic and Matt are back for a truly chaotic week in the markets. In this episode:  Is DeFi's transparency a vice?  We reconsider the need for a lender of last resort?  We debrief on Consensus How will the Celsius situation resolve? Fidelity doubles down on digital assets Is the Fed trapped by inflation?  Was the Celsius situation foreseeable?  Where does the next marginal buyer come from?  Another c...

Nic and Matt are back for news and deals of the week. In this episode:  Greetings from a very hot Consensus in Austin Our takeaways from the Lummis/Gillibrand bill What the NY state mining moratorium means for miners The Central African Republic lays out its plans for Project Sango Custodia Bank is suing the Fed for sitting on their master account application Binance fires back at Reuters We break...

The original roundup cast return for a covid-stricken episode. In this roundup:  The boys are laid low with Covid (again!) Nic recounts his visit to Norwegian parliament Nic recaps the Oslo Freedom Forum Are we on the brink of L2 summer? Former Opensea PM is arrested on wire fraud/insider trading charges Is there an insider trading standard for non-securities? Korean prosecutors summon all Terrafo...

Andrew Cahill and Saurabh Deshpande of The Block join the show. In this episode we discuss: The Ethereum L2 ecosystem The varying scaling solutions and views on the communities with traction Views on native tokens being launched on these platforms in 2022 Optimistic rollups ZK rollups Learn more by reading the report, " Layer-2 Scaling Solutions: A Framework for Comparison "  

Matt returns with CMS Holdings' Dan Matuszewski , filling in for Nic, covering deals and news of the week. In this episode:  Bitcoiners brief Norwegian policymakers History of the BitLicense Circle's physical BitLicense a16z raises a massive $4.5b fund The effect of VC dry powder on crypto startups Can crypto catch a bid until macro calms down Adam Neumann is back with a blockchain startup FTX att...

Ric Edelman, the founder of Edelman Financial Services and the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Ric's new book The Truth About Crypto His journey in the digital assets industry The current macro backdrop and how cryptoassets should be considered in a portfolio Views on the RIA market and how the crypto discussion is evolving The regulato...

Matt and Nic return for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  Was UST/Terra a ponzi or not? Fintech apps put client deposits into Anchor Tradfi yields are competitive with DeFi yields The GBTC discount reaches its highest ever level at -31% MSM crypto hate reaches a fever pitch The World Bank publishes a new paper on crypto adoption The Warren staff have a dossier of mean tweets Will g...

Jon Kol and Asa Oines, cofounders of Abacus join the show to talk about the state of the art in cross chain interoperability. In this episode:  Career trajectories and why Jon and Asa decided to start Abacus  The three eras of interoperability  Asset interoperability vs app based interoperability  Why asset interoperability might just be a transitional phase  Why asset interoperability is more abo...

Matt and Nic cover news and deals of the week. In this episode:  The CIV hat snafu Was synthetic USD on Bitmex the first stablecoin?  Remembering Mastercoin and seigniorage shares stablecoins  Does the Fed have a shadow third mandate?  We break down the Luna situation and why it was destined to fail  Why the subsidized yields on Anchor were the biggest mistake  Likely fallout from the Luna collaps...

Mark Lamb , co-founder and CEO of CoinFLEX joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Mark's entrepreneurial path in the cryptocurrency industry and the insight behind starting CoinFLEX The history and market landscape for crypto derivatives platforms The state of the stablecoin market and how flexUSD is positioning for USA launch The regulatory environment and how this is impacting trading venue...

Nic and Matt return for news and deals of the week. In this episode: Matt's takeaways from the Medici conference  The rapid growth of ZKPs We review Brink Nation posts on GM We look back at the history of the FUD dice  Are tungsten dice possible?  Big thunderstorm in Miami  Is the crypto industry sitting out the recession?  We consider the merits of virtual real estate  Does proximity matter in th...

TeraWulf cofounder and CEO Paul Prager joins us to talk about his experience building a vertically-integrated, zero carbon Bitcoin miner. In this installment of the mining miniseries we cover:  Paul's career trajectory from coal trading to energy infrastructure to Bitcoin Beowulf's deal with Marathon and their entry into Bitcoin How TeraWulf distinguishes itself from other Bitcoin miners Why TeraW...

Matt and Nic are back with news and deals of the week, joined by Dave Gray, Head of Workplace Retirement Offerings and Platforms at Fidelity Investments, who joins us to talk about Fidelity's new Bitcoin 401(k) product. In this episode:  Are airdrops taxable? CheckTemplateVerify drama in Bitcoin Central African Republic apparently adopts Bitcoin as legal tender NY State Assembly passes a bill bann...

Longtime Bitcoiner Bruce Fenton re-joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Bruce's career and the events that led him to discovering Bitcoin Bitcoin's social layer and how Bruce has managed to stay close to the project through so many chapters of the journey His view on the tokenization of securities and why he is so optimistic on this technology Why Bruce decided to run for Senate and what is...

Pat Larsen , founder and CEO of crypto tax prep company ZenLedger , joins the show for a timely discussion on how investors should be thinking about taxes this tax season. In this episode:  The outlook for crypto taxes in 2022 Tax accounting for specific transactions Clarifications and improvements to tax regulation ZenLedger provides a platform that makes it easy for users to aggregate transactio...

Matt and Nic return for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  The OTB music debate rages on Nic survives Covid Should we bring back dueling? Ancient altcoin dramas Coinbase launches NFTs Elon has financing to buy Twitter Product suggestions for Twitter The US sanctions Russian miners BitRiver Is Russia remonetizing gold? Australia gets a spot BTC ETF North Korean hackers are active in...

Adam Jackson, co-founder and CEO of Braintrust , a web3 talent network joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Marketplace business models and how web3 models will improve on web2 dynamics How Adam came to the insight to launch Braintrust and how the platform works The regulatory environment in the United States and how Adam sees web3 evolving over time Other marketplace categories where Adam...

We sit down with Ohio Senate Candidate Josh Mandel to cover his race, platform, and Bitcoin advocacy.  Josh's political origins and why he is running for Senate in Ohio Josh's time as Ohio state treasurer and his Ohio state checkbook initiative Why Josh pioneered Ohio's acceptance of Bitcoin for tax payments How Bitcoin values mirror American values Why Bitcoin support ought to stay nonpartisan Th...

Matt and Nic return for a post-conference episode. This week we cover:  The FDIC asks banks to go slow on crypto integrations Blackrock is studying cryptoassets and invests in USDC Blockchain.com partners with the Dallas Cowboys Virginia will allow state chartered banks to custody cryptocurrency Balaji's decentralization inflation index winner is announced Why this current CPI print is misleading...

In the second episode in our modular blockchain mini-series, we sat down with John Adler , the inventor of optimistic rollups and co-founder of Fuel and Celestia . Fuel is the fastest execution layer for the modular blockchain stack. The technology enables parallel transaction execution and offers flexible throughput and the highest security required to scale. FuelVM offers developers a superior e...

Socket Supply Co founder and CEO Paolo Fragomeni joins the show to discuss what web3 is and isn't – and what it should be. In this episode:  Paolo's start writing modem software and BBS in the pre-modern web days  What delineated web 1.0 from web 2.0 The single request that really made web 2.0 possible  How today's web is limited by incumbents  When did web 3.0 really emerge? What distinguishes it...