The Scoop

The Blockchain Association recently launched a new political action committee (PAC) designed to build relationships with pro-crypto Congressional candidates. In this episode of The Scoop, the Blockchain Association’s Executive Director Kristin Smith shares the objectives of the new Blockchain Association PAC, and why she believes Congress is the appropriate authority to design a regulatory framewo...

For the final installment of this three-part Ethereum Merge special edition of The Scoop, we take a closer look at zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups — technology that could enable Ethereum to scale to millions of transactions per second. There are four main teams working on ZK-rollups: Polygon, Scroll, Starkware, and Matter Labs. In this episode of The Scoop, Matter Labs Chief Product Officer Steve Newc...

Last year, Sky Mavis’ Axie Infinity inspired an entire genre of ‘play-to-earn’ crypto games. In recent months however, the volume of in-game NFT sales has been in decline as data from The Block shows:  In this episode of The Scoop, Sky Mavis Co-Founder and Growth Lead Jeff Zirlin explains why he believes the core Axie community is stronger than ever, and how Axie Infinity’s in-game economy will be...

In the crypto world, MEV (‘Maximal Extractable Value’) refers to block producers’ ability to reorganize the sequence of transactions in any given block to extract a premium. While MEV can be used nefariously in instances such as front-running large transactions, it can also be used for arbitrage opportunities that do not directly impact other market participants. In this episode of The Scoop, we t...

In the last episode of The Scoop, we explored why some venture capitalists are becoming reluctant to invest in token models. However, not all VCs in the crypto space share this sentiment. Multicoin Capital — a VC whose combined crypto funds total nearly $550 million — is “primarily token investors,” according to managing partner Kyle Samani. In this episode of The Scoop, Kyle Samani talks through...

Last year’s bull market exuberance is a distant memory, as are the wildly inflated crypto funding rounds that attracted an unprecedented amount of venture capital to the space. In this episode of The Scoop, CoinShare’s Chief Strategy Officer Meltem Demirors and Aglaé Ventures Managing Partner Vanessa Grellet unpack how the crypto VC landscape has changed since last year’s bull market, and particul...

Unstoppable Domains allows users to register domain names via non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which can then be used to receive crypto payments, and as digital identity markers around Web3. In July, the company raised $65 million in a Series A, successfully clinching ‘unicorn’ status at a $1 billion valuation. In this episode of The Scoop, Unstoppable Domains’ Founder and CEO Matt Gould explains why NF...

Back in July, the SEC launched an investigation into Coinbase for allegedly listing several tokens that should have been listed as securities.  Yesterday, SEC Chair Gary Gensler made comments that indicate he believes more crypto exchanges and broker-dealers are still in violation of guidelines put in place under former SEC Chair Clayton in 2017. In this episode of The Scoop, FTX President Brett H...

Since going public last October, the digital asset management platform Bakkt has been working towards enabling more businesses to provide crypto services to their customers. For example, in April of this year, Bakkt closed a deal with American Bank which allows the bank’s customers to buy and sell both bitcoin and ether. In this episode of The Scoop, Bakkt’s Chief Product Officer Dan O'Prey lays o...

In part one of this three-part Ethereum Merge special edition of The Scoop, Lex Sokolin — head economist at Consensys — examined how The Merge will improve web3’s reputation outside of the crypto space. In this episode of The Scoop, Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan provides a technical overview of The Merge, and explains why it took longer than expected to prepare the network for its tran...

After years of anticipation and development, the Ethereum blockchain is finally on the verge of transitioning its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to a more energy-efficient mechanism known as proof-of-stake. According to a blog post from The Ethereum Foundation, switching the consensus mechanism of the blockchain is like changing the engine of a spaceship, and in just a few days, it will be...

Hxro Network (pronounced “hero”) raised $34 million in a token round in November to help advance the platform’s vision of building a decentralized derivative platform on Solana. Now, Hxro is on the cusp of launching USDC collateralized markets, which will mark the first time users are able to trade derivatives products using collateral with real value. In this episode of The Scoop, Hxro co-founder...

Last time Paolo Ardoino came on The Scoop podcast back in 2019, the USDT stablecoin had a market cap of less than $5 billion. Today, that number has risen to more than $66 billion, according to data from The Block's Data Dashboard. While Ardoino serves as both the CTO of Tether (the issuing company behind USDT), as well as CTO of the crypto exchange Bitfinex, recently he has been focusing much of...

Earlier this summer, the collapse of Three Arrows Capital (3AC) sent the crypto lending world into chaos. Many lenders suffered heavy losses due to 3AC exposure and some were forced into bankruptcy. BlockFi — a prominent crypto lender that was valued at nearly $5 billion during the height of the bull market — was one of the firms that took a big hit when 3AC collapsed, prompting the company's shar...

While NFT projects grew in popularity, so too did brand recognition — and the interest of talent representatives to sign them on. United Talent Agency (UTA) was among the first in August of 2021, when it signed CryptoPunks and Meebits creators Larva Labs , followed by Deadfellaz in April of this year. Other talent representatives got into web3 as well, such as Creative Artists Agency (CAA) signing...

Plaid, a fintech infrastructure and payments provider aiming to simplify the digital financial ecosystem through a single API, recently announced big crypto players such as Gemini and Binance. US are joining its network of financial institutions. The move is part of Plaid's broader effort to integrate both legacy institutions and crypto service providers into its platform, which was valued at more...

The US has yet to see a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) reach the market, but when a futures-based product got the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year, issuers were hopeful. Some thought it signified the regulator becoming more comfortable with crypto products and a spot ETF could be on the horizon. But since then, the SEC continued to shoot down applica...

Fractional — a crypto startup whose tech allows individual non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be locked in a smart contract, and then 'fractionalized' into fungible digital pieces — is changing its name to 'Tessera.'  In addition to the name change, Tessera announced they closed a $20 million Series A earlier this summer in a funding round led by Paradigm. In this episode of The Scoop, Tessera co-found...

Over the course of the past two decades, Grammy Award-winning DJ, André Allen Anjos (also known as RAC) has noticed a growing trend. "There's been a trend since 2005 in the MySpace era, and all of that has been a trend towards sovereignty of an artist, of putting the artists on top," he says. RAC is an advisor to Audius — a decentralized music streaming platform that raised $5 million last Septemb...

CoinShares — a London-based crypto firm whose operations include asset management, venture capital, and proprietary trading — had exposure to Terra's "algorithmic" stablecoin UST, the collapse of which resulted in a loss of $21 million for the firm's trading unit of the business. In this episode of The Scoop, CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti provides an inside look at how CoinShares navigated Te...

Block CEO Jack Dorsey has called ' Web5,' a decentralized identity platform under development by TBD, the Block's blockchain arm, "likely our most important contribution to the internet." In this episode of The Scoop, TBD lead Mike Brock explains how Web5, whose name is a play on the idea of connecting Web2 and Web3, aims to reimagine the way trust is established and maintained, and how digital id...

In this episode of The Scoop, Solana Labs co-founder and COO Raj Gokal discusses his early impression of Solana Spaces, as well as the innovation and experimentation that is occurring across the Solana ecosystem at a "breakneck pace." As Gokal explains, some people who visit Solana Spaces' first location in Manhattan are discovering that web3 might not be as daunting as it seems: "There's hundreds...

Circle's USDC stablecoin is the second largest by market capitalization, and has steadily grown in dominance over the last couple of years. In this episode of The Scoop, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy at Circle, Dante Disparte, joins host Frank Chaparro to share his take on what a responsible approach to stablecoin regulation might look like and why he believes central bank digit...

Earlier this year, crypto infrastructure provider Talos closed a $105 million Series B for a valuation of $1.25 billion. In this episode of The Scoop, Talos cofounders Ethan Feldman and Anton Katz provide insider perspectives on how institutions have been positioning themselves during the crypto market’s recent upheaval, and why they believe the industry will rebound stronger than ever before. As...

Variant — a venture capital firm founded on the idea that the next iteration of the internet is going to be defined by decentralized, user-owned networks — has raised $450 million to be deployed across two new funds. In this episode of The Scoop, Variant co-founders Jesse Walden and Spencer Noon reveal how they plan on allocating the capital — and why Variant remains bullish on the long-term futur...