The Scoop

As the crypto market matures, owners of “pristine” digital assets will increasingly be able to use their holdings as collateral for an array of financial services, according to Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra. Founded in 2014, crypto wealth management platform Abra closed a $55 million Series C last September led by IGNIA and Blockchain Capital. In this episode of The Scoop, Barhydt explains why the rec...

The demise of the Terra blockchain sent a ripple effect throughout the crypto ecosystem last week, as the market absorbed over 80,000 BTC deployed in a failed attempt to keep the UST "stablecoin" pegged 1:1 with the US dollar. “If you’re a market maker and you don’t make money in those kinds of days, then yeah — you’re doing something wrong,” said Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute — an algorithmic...

The Bahamas has turned into an attractive destination for crypto companies looking to set up shop in a jurisdiction with a clear regulatory framework for digital assets — a movement spearheaded by crypto exchange FTX’s announcement to relocate its headquarters to the island nation late last year. In this episode of The Scoop, Ryan Salame, Co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets (FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary),...

Bitcoin traded below $30,000 on Monday, amid market uncertainty brought about by the ‘depegging' of UST—an algorithmic stablecoin whose value is supposed to remain equivalent to $1. At publication, UST is trading at $0.92, although the ‘stablecoin’ saw lows of $0.6050 on the Binance UST/USDT trading pair. In this breaking episode of The Scoop, host Frank Chaparro spoke with crypto researcher Mika...

This special bonus episode of The Scoop was recorded live at the Crypto Bahamas conference with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, the digital payments and infrastructure company behind the popular stablecoin USDC. As data from The Block shows, USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, and its share of the total stablecoin supply has been steadily on the rise. According to Allair...

Founded back in 2011, Blockchain.com recently closed a Series D funding round in March at a valuation of $14 billion, making the crypto company both one of the longest-operating exchanges as well as one of the highest valued in the industry. After spending effectively “zero” on marketing for over a decade, Blockchain.com recently announced a sponsorship deal with the Dallas Cowboys, becoming the f...

Before Jon Cheesman became the global head of FTX Access — a new division of the crypto exchange founded by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried which caters to institutional clients – the seasoned market-veteran served as head of forex sales to banks and hedge funds in London at HSBC, spent time as a partner at crypto venture firm Distributed Global and was a VP at Goldman Sachs. Despite having over a d...

The Blockchain Association — a trade association that lobbies US politicians on behalf of the crypto industry — saw explosive growth in 2021, thanks in part to the controversy surrounding the crypto tax reporting provisions that were included as part of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that went through Congress last year. In this episode of The Scoop, Kristin Smith, Executive Director of the B...

Founded in 2015, crypto-native VC firm CoinFund has spent the past year bolstering its leadership with talent from the world of traditional finance, including Chris Perkins — a former executive at Citigroup — and Christopher Giancarlo, the former CFTC chair . CoinFund’s hiring of Chris Perkins as the firm’s new President is part of a larger exodus of talent from Citi towards digital asset companie...

In this episode of The Scoop, Framework co-founders Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer sat down with host Frank Chaparro to explain their new fund’s investment thesis which centers around the idea that blockchain gaming is “getting to the point of mass-market appeal.” As Anderson explained during the interview, the combination of AAA quality game design and in-game ‘play-to-earn’ economies is the...

In the last episode of the Mining Report, The Block's Wolfie Zhao discussed the unprecedented growth of North American bitcoin mining companies in 2021 with massive equipment pre-orders and power capacity build-outs. Over the past few months, there have been several interesting developments in the crypto mining industry. The prices of graphic unit processors, commonly used for mining on Ethereum a...

An estimated 25,000 people descended on Miami, Florida earlier this month for Bitcoin 2022, the world's largest Bitcoin-focused conference. That's more than double the attendance the conference saw last year. The annual Bitcoin conference is known for its fanfare, including some anti-government and anti-regulatory sentiment. That was still on display at Bitcoin 2022, with incidents like billionair...

Gauntlet Network — a platform that provides risk modeling and performance optimization solutions for DeFi protocols — recently raised $23.8 million for a valuation of $1 billion. On June 24, 2020, when Gauntlet Network’s CEO Tarun Chitra first came on The Scoop, the total value locked across all DeFi verticals was just over $1.5 billion. Today, less than two years later, that number has grown expo...

During an episode of The Scoop from last November, Mastercard EVP Jess Turner explained how Mastercard was pivoting to become a ‘crypto first’ company. Mastercard has since made significant progress on this decision, including the filing of over a dozen metaverse and crypto-related trademarks. During this latest episode of The Scoop -- recorded at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami -- Raj Dhamod...

Amun Holdings Limited - owner of both 21Shares and Amun, Inc. - introduced the first crypto exchange traded product (ETP) to market back in 2018. Although the collaborative ARK Investments and 21Shares bitcoin spot ETF was recently rejected in the US, 21Shares remains the world’s largest provider of crypto ETPs with 30 unique products currently trading across exchanges.  In this episode of The Sco...

Animoca Brands, the Hong-Kong based digital entertainment startup behind the popular blockchain metaverse platform The Sandbox, raised $358.88 million in January at a valuation of over $5 billion in a funding round led by Liberty City Ventures. In this episode of The Scoop, CEO of Animoca Brands Robby Yung discusses his company’s growth and shares his philosophy on what it means to build an ‘open’...

After decades of experience working with software companies, Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm with over $100 billion in assets under management, announced its plans to move into crypto last fall.  In this episode of The Scoop, Thoma Bravo founder of Orlando Bravo unpacked the similarities between early software companies and today's crypto landscape, and discussed the thought process behind Thom...

Sequoia Capital has been invested in crypto since 2015, but the VC firm recently raised the stakes by announcing its first sector-specific fund: a $500 million Sequoia Crypto Fund focused on liquid tokens and digital assets. In this episode of The Scoop, Sequoia partners Shaun Maguire and Michelle Bailhe sit down with host Frank Chaparro to discuss Sequoia’s new fund and explain how the power dyna...

Before IreneDAO went viral last year, Irene Zhao only had a few hundred followers on Instagram. Today, the influencer from Singapore has nearly half a million followers on the social platform. In this episode of The Scoop, Irene Zhao and Ben Tang share why IreneDAO is a proof-of-concept for their web3 startup named So-Col or 'Social Collectables', and how web3 could empower both content creators a...

Do Kwon, Founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, recently made headlines with an announcement to purchase billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in order to establish “decentralized forex reserves” for UST, Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin. In this episode of The Scoop, host Frank Chaparro and Kwon discuss the details of Terra’s bitcoin reserves and unpack Terra's plans for unlocking bitcoin’s potential as...

In the weeks since the invasion of Ukraine, the US and others have levied heavy sanctions against Russia. Financial businesses, including crypto firms, are now expected to comply with regulations by blocking a growing number of sanctioned entities. Some businesses, like PayPal and Revolut, have chosen to block Russian users altogether, despite this not being a requirement under the current sanctio...

With nearly $13 billion in total value locked, Aave is certainly one of the dominant players in the DeFi lending space. However, as the protocol grows, so too does its risk factor. In this episode of The Scoop, founder and CEO of Aave Stani Kulechov discusses the innovation brought on by the recent Aave V3 upgrade, and shares what is being done to mitigate risk. While parameter adjustments through...

David Woo, a former top Bank of America executive, is famous for his 2013 prediction that Bitcoin would prove to be a viable alternative to traditional money transfer providers. Nearly a decade later, Woo is still prognosticating about the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, though given the current macro backdrop, his outlook is significantly bleaker.  In the latest episode of The Scoop...

As the market for non-fungible tokens continues to court interest from mainstream corporates, investors, and celebrities, Anchorage co-founder Diogo Mónica reveals how his firm is managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these assets.  As Mónica explained during an interview on The Scoop with host Frank Chaparro, there are two main reasons he believes institutions are expressing interest...

For those unfamiliar with the term “anon”, it refers to the prolific but anonymous identities that many veteran crypto investors use to discuss projects and express views on the market without revealing details of their personal lives. Out of the legion of such popular anon accounts on Twitter, the members of a syndicate known as “eGirl Capital” have established large followings due to their comme...