The Blockcrunch Podcast

In 2021, Axie Infinity took the world by storm as the world's most popular Play-to-Earn game with 2.7 million concurrent users at its peak.   It also shocked the world a 2nd time in March 2022, albeit for a negative reason as its Ronin bridge suffered the largest bridge exploit of all time with $600M lost, Though users were made whole, confidence levels are inadvertently impacted   Despite everyth...

Crypto has been always been likened to an echo chamber, where crypto-natives reinforce their beliefs over and over again with others on Twitter   Contrarian and long-term thinkers are rare, and today on Blockcrunch we have just the guest to talk about investing in frontiers that most crypto-natives have yet to pick up   Anirudh Pai, Partner at Dragonfly, shares with us: What it means to invest at...

Web 3 champions the ethos of decentralization, wherein users own their data, and services are trustless and permissionless. But ironically, much of Web 3 is built on centralized infrastructure.   Today we have David Choi, Product Manager at Protocol Labs, to share with us how Web3Storage and NFT.Storage allows developers to build on Filecoin to achieve higher levels of decentralization, amongst ot...

In the past month, the banking sector experienced its most turbulent period since 2008. Major crypto-friendly banks, including Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature, have gone under, while the 170-year-old Credit Suisse stands on the brink of being absorbed by its main competitor, UBS.   Are we witnessing a reenactment of the 2008 financial crisis? Will the BTFP Fed program ignite another...

These few weeks have been turbulent for the markets to say the least, with 3 of the largest banks that support crypto winding down, USDC stablecoin de-pegging and more developments happening in real time.   Is this the end for crypto, or are we on the cusp of another bull-run?   Today we have Hal Press, founder of North Rock Digital who is known on Twitter for his timely and accurate calls, such a...

Opinion on DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations is split between 2 camps - those that don't believe that decentralized organizations can be effective, and those that swear its the business model of the future To end the debate, there's no one better to ask than DAO experts Anthony and Timour, who operate and invest in DAOs at the same time on: Why and when a DAO structure is better than...

Recently, a new phenomenon called Ordinals, known as NFTs on Bitcoin reignited interest in Bitcoin and got people wondering - what else is possible and is this the start of something bigger?   At the center of this discussion is Stacks, a smart-contract layer built on Bitcoin that is working to unlock the $500 billion Bitcoin capital via DeFi, NFTs, and more.    In this Blockcrunch episode, Muneeb...

Over the past few months, there has been a steady uptick in activity on Arbitrum, an Optimistic Layer 2 scaling solution on Ethereum.  Today, Arbitrum is home to popular DeFi dApps and GameFi projects like GMX and Treasure and owns more than 50% of the market share against other Layer 2s like Optimism and Metis. In this Blockcrunch episode, A.J Warner, Chief Strategy Officer at Offchain Labs share...

This is a sponsored episode from our collaboration with Filecoin Huddle01 is a decentralized video-meeting platform built to be scalable and secure from the get-go and features web 3 functions such as NFT-gated meetings and decentralized storage for meeting recordings.   In 2022, it hosted over 30,000 meetings that lasted over 500,000 minutes on its platform.    Today on Blockcrunch, Huddle01's Co...

Ryan Breslow dropped out of Stanford to found payment startup Bolt, which later on raised $1.3 billion dollars at an $11 billion valuation - making Ryan one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires (according to Forbes)   Now, Ryan is on the mission of improving the health and wellness of the world with alternative medicine like natural remedies, by making them more accessible to all and giv...

Crypto games often face criticism for being unpolished and lacking quality, but Illuvium is unlikely to face this issue. Built by a team of 220 people, $35 million has been reportedly invested over 2 years in building this AAA Sci-Fi game world - and they're expected to launch their games this year Today, we have Kieran Warwick, Co-Founder of Illuvium, to share with us:  Building the next big gami...

Crypto markets are off to a bullish start in the new year, and one of the projects that have renewed a ton of community interest is Frax - the only semi-algorithmic stablecoin that has actually persisted throughout 2022's thick and thin without depegging. Today, we have Sam Kazemian, Founder of Frax, to share with us: How Frax's 5 products all tie together in 1 unifying vision  Frax's roadmap in 2...

P.S Blockcrunch VIP subs can access exclusive alpha from Hal in our part 2 interview over at http://bit.ly/3iTnsS4   2022 was one of the toughest years to be in crypto with even professional investors suffering from 80-90% losses.   However, crypto hedge fund North Rock Digital reportedly navigated 2022's crises nimbly, and its founder quickly rose to prominence on Twitter for his timely and decis...

Since 2020, the development of the Web 3 space has arguably validated the value propositions of decentralized blockchains. However, Web 3 today primarily serves crypto-natives and exists as a subset of the internet.   An up-and-coming vertical of projects known as Consumer Vertical focuses on helping empower the everyday internet user and helping Web 3 reach its fullest potential.   Today, we have...

*PS* we apologize for the background noise around the 17min mark. We have already tried to minimize it to the best we can, but it is still audible. Even amidst all the blowups in the bear market, great builders continue to build and great investors continue to support them. Blockchain Capital is one of the earliest and leading venture capital firms in the blockchain industry. Today, Blockchain Cap...

How can crypto be dead when we still have outstanding teams building amidst this bear market? STEPN took the world by storm when it introduced the idea of earning through movement - at its peak, there were more than a million daily active users using STEPN. Since then, Find Satoshi Labs (team behind STEPN) has made further strides and verticalized to launch its own decentralized exchange DOOAR and...

GoldenTree, one of the largest independent asset managers with $47 billion AUM recently announced their official foray into the crypto space with a new subsidiary GoldenChain and a $5.2 million investment in Sushi While traditional funds entering the crypto space is becoming more common, GoldenTree's entrance is huge news because of their caliber and active investment strategy Today on Blockcrunch...

Last week was one of the darkest weeks for the crypto industry - the implosion of one of the largest crypto exchanges that no one saw coming. In this episode, Blockcrunch Host Jason Choi recounts the entire FTX saga all the way from FTX's 2019 beginnings to the aftermath of the implosion. Host: Jason Choi @mrjasonchoi . Not financial advice. ------------ Timestamps ------------- (00:00:00) – Intro...

With DeFi activity reportedly down 70% from its all-time high and the recent OFAC regulations, it is safe to say DeFi took a heavy beating in 2022.  However, Sam Kazemian, Founder of decentralized stablecoin protocol Frax thinks that DeFi is not dead but requires innovation to reignite interest in the vertical.  Today on Blockcrunch, we have Sam and Wangarian to share with us: Regulatory landscape...

Recently we've seen the rise of applications verticalizing into their own app-specific chains While app-chains offers customizability, they lack the social coordination that generic chains bring - Sei offers both by being in the intersection of app-specific and generic chains Sei is the first sector-specific Layer 1 blockchain specialized for trading to give exchanges an unfair advantage Today on...

Cosmos has grown to become one of the largest blockchain ecosystem, with apps and services trading at more than $59 billion market cap   However, the community has always criticized ATOM, the token that powers the ecosystem, for its inability to accrue value   ATOM 2.0 is here to change that.    Today on Blockcrunch, we have 2 Cosmos experts to share with us: The 4 proposed changes of ATOM 2.0 How...

Yield Guild Games is the largest gaming guild in Web 3 and have invested in standout Web 3 game titles like Axie Infinity, Sandbox and more . To date, they claim to have helped 30,000 players worldwide earn over $10 million playing Web 3 games thanks to their scholarship model.  Today, Yield Guild Game's Co-Founder Gabby Dizon shares with us: 2 new ways Web 3 guilds are evolving 3 ways to make Web...

*Apologies for the audio quality this week! Usual quality will resume in the next episode DeFi has been accused of being propped up by unsustainable ponzis - can Ribbon be the solution? Ribbon is a DeFi protocol that allows users access to crypto structured products. Till date, they reported over $10 billion in notional volume and claims to offer 24% on their ETH - despite being in a bear market....

Many businesses have been disrupted by technology - Electric Capital thinks investing is no different   Electric Capital, a crypto VC fund with more than $1 billion AUM, hires Software Engineers and Designers instead of Financiers to manage its fund.    Today, Managing Partner Avichal from Electric Capital shares with us:   Thesis on Software Eating Money DAOs as Internet-native corporations Impor...

Most wouldn't be comfortable with broadcasting their daily lives to the entire world - but that's what happening with the transparent nature of blockchains   Founders of Aztec Network believe that privacy is a fundamental human right and that crypto-users should have easy and cheap access to privacy.   Today, Co-Founder Joe Andrews and Head of Growth Jon Wu from Aztec shares with us: Use-cases for...