The DeFi Decoded Podcast

Cosmos is highly regarded in the Web3 world for its novel and robust design, which allows developers to launch application specific chains while benefiting from the shared architecture of the Cosmos "Hub." For example, dYdX, the popular DeFi derivatives platform, recently migrated from Ethereum to Cosmos, citing a desire to be masters of their own fate. However, ATOM, the token most people associa...

On today's episode, Alex and Andrew speak with Aryan Sheikhalian, Head of Research at CMT Digital, one of the world's leading digital asset venture capital firms. Aryan walks through CMT Digital's investment philosophy, its core focus areas within crypto, and he makes a few predictions for 2023. Aryan is interested first and foremost in infrastructure - ways to make Web3 work better. For example,...

On this week's episode, Andrew and Alex start by discussing recent exploit of the Binance chain's most popular bridge, which led to the theft of nearly $600 million of BNB, the chain's native token, before the network was paused and much of the theft reversed. Binance chain is more centralized than Ethereum and others, and the swift pause, though effective, was controversial. Some argued that any...

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew talk about how the Twitter take-over battle has illuminated how the world's richest people think about blockchains and Web3. In some revealing text exchanges made public because of the civil suit, Elon Musk is seen considering the value of turning Twitter into a protocol, with the urging of billionaires like Jack Dorsey and Sam-Bankman-Fried...

On today's episode, Alex and Andrew dig into the current macro situation and debate the 'Milkshake Theory" that the US dollar sucks all liquidity from other currencies (Cue Daniel Day Lewis: "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"). Right now, global currencies are collapsing as the US dollar steamrolls its way across the globe. Financial conditions are as tight now as in March 2020. In U.S. doll...

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew speak to Anthony Di Iorio, co-founder of Ethereum and Founder of Jaxx and Decentral. Anthony dedicates much of his time to helping Ethereum and other blockchains become more decentralized, resilient, and widely used. He's also a passionate advocate for Canada and his hometown of Toronto. It's a little-known fact but Ethereum is a made-in-Canada s...

On September 15th, 2022, Ethereum became a proof-of-stake network. On today's episode Andrew and Alex break down what happened, how it changes the investment case for Ethereum and what it means for the future of Web3. The significance is hard to overstate: by some estimates this will reduce Ethereum's carbon footprint by 99%. It will clear the deck for future upgrades to make Ethereum more scalabl...

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with Zaki Manian, a veteran crypto entrepreneur and co-founder of Sommelier Finance. DeFi is moving at such a rapid clip, it is difficult for most investors to stay on top of the latest trends and even more challenging to make educated investment decisions. Sommelier Finance aims to solve this problem by providing access to proven st...

"Dogecoin is sponsoring the Jamaican bobsled team." This is the first time Sunny Aggarwal first heard about crypto, back when he was a high school student in California. The friend might as well have been speaking Klingon, because the sentence made no sense to Sunny, so he went home and googled Dogecoin which led him down the Bitcoin rabbit-hole. He was hooked, or shall we say "doge-pilled." Fast...

How do blockchain networks like Ethereum, supporting thousands of applications, billions in capital and millions of users, actually work? What is the essential infrastructure supporting cryptopunks, DeFi smart contracts, GameFi guilds, stablecoins, and other Web3 innovations? To the average user, the inner workings of blockchains are mysterious. In many ways, this reflects the technology's growing...

Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin recently and now sits at 50% of Bitcoin's market capitalization. This has some observers suggesting the "flippening," where Ethereum surpasses Bitcoin in market value, is in grasp. Ethereum has gotten close to Bitcoin's market capitalization before, namely in Summer 2017 at the beginning of the ICO craze, hitting 80% of Bitcoin's value, only to crater to 10% at th...

This week, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on Tornado Cash, a popular 'mixer' that allows individuals to do crypto transactions anonymously. Typically, sanctions are placed on individuals and institutions. In this case, the government was sanctioning an open-source software project and a neutral tool used by many. This sets a potentially dangerous precedent, which Alex and Andrew...

On today's episode, Alex and Andrew discuss the latest DeFi exploit - a hack of the Nomad "bridge." But first, what's a bridge? What problem does it solve? Do these exploits prove bridges are unfeasible or are they simply implementation challenges to overcome. DeFi boosters talk about dApps and digital assets as being composable, like interlocking LEGO pieces. But we're not dealing with one unifor...

Solana (SOL) typified the explosive growth of crypto and blockchain in 2021. A new blockchain protocol with a novel and ingenious design, Solana was able to attract thousands of developers and millions of users to an application ecosystem that started with DeFi but diversified into NFTs, Gamefi and beyond. At its peak, Solana was worth $90 billion USD. And while crypto prices have cooled, the thes...

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Jake Hannah of SX Network steps in to help SX co-founder Andrew co-host the podcast while Alex is out fishing in Northern Canada. Jake and Andrew cover everything, starting with what the betting markets are saying about the Fed interest rate decision. They also cover the current betting market's view on the probability that Ethereum's highly anticipated "Mer...

"It's faster to drive money from Nigeria to Ghana than it is to send a wire transfer because with a wire, the money must first go to New York, and then London before coming back to Africa" says Dickson Nsofor, identifying one of many absurd examples of how the global financial system fails African countries, businesses and individuals. This is the problem and opportunity Dickson identified four ye...

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew try to put the crypto correction in the context of an increasingly complex and muddled global macro picture. Bitcoin failed its test as an inflation hedge, but will the spectre of global recession push it lower, or can it catch a bid and resume its status as uncorrelated asset in a secular bull market? Plus, they discuss (hopefully for the la...

Centralized, custodial, opaque, and laden with risk. This describes some of the crypto lending outfits currently teetering on the brink of insolvency. By contrast, most DeFi protocols, which automatically connect willing market participants peer to peer using smart contracts, have continued to operate smoothly through the crisis, though they have seen their assets (known as total value locked or T...

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew discuss the efforts of Sam Bankman Fried, or SBF, who has swooped in to stabilize the industry, ask whether its ok that all these firms fail and ponder the question of what the industry will look like when this rout is over.

In honor of DeFi Decoded joining Tik Tok, we bring you this special Gen-Z titled episode (clearly written by Alex, an old millennial, aka Boomer, hence the cringe). Check us out on Tik Tok at @defidecoded. On this week's episode Alex and Andrew talk about the recent weakness in crypto markets and try to untangle how much of it is caused by the general weakness in financial markets and how much of...

On this week's DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex sit down with Tim Copeland, News Editor at The Block, one of the industry's leading news outlets. In this wide-ranging chat, Tim talks about how his experience reading and synthesizing dense philosophy books helps him do the same for crypto white papers and other esoteric ideas. He also shares his thoughts on the upcoming ETH merge, the growing pre-emin...

On this week's episode, Alex sits down with Eric Turner, VP of Market Intelligence at Messari. Eric describes Messari's role as the leading provider of market intelligence for crypto and why in an ocean of data and content, it's the context, insight and analysis that matters. "Separating the signal from the noise is what we do," Eric says. Alex and Eric then talk about the future of crypto, why Er...

On today's DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra. Bill's a seasoned crypto entrepreneur and industry leader who has been building businesses in this industry for the better part of a decade. With Abra, Bill has created one of the most popular consumer-facing crypto applications in the world. Bill shares his perspective on the state of global macro, explains how the...

On Today's episode, Alex and Andrew sit down with Rodney Yesep, partner at Hack VC. Hack VC is a venture capital firm that invests in the cryptocurrency, fintech, and marketplaces sectors. Hack VC is a crypto native investment firm that specializes in identifying early-stage companies to invest in. Rodney talks about the strategy of Hack VC and how they identify opportunities and early-stage compa...

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dive into the recent collapse of UST, which failed to hold its value to the US Dollar (the "de-pegging") and discuss the knock-on effects in the rest of the crypto market. Andrew talks about how stablecoins are like the Wildcat Banking days of yore. Alex draws an analogy to the Panic of 1907, where J.Pierpont Morgan (The man, not the company)...