The Scoop

On this episode of The Scoop, Adam Carson, Operating Partner & Crypto Investment Lead at Point72 Ventures, joined host Frank Chaparro for the company's first public interview to discuss its investment strategy as well as Carson’s perspectives on the convergence of fintech, Web3 and the metaverse. Point72 Ventures, an offshoot of billionaire investor Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management Grou...

“We’ll be back." This November, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejected a proposal to list a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) from VanEck, only to approve VanEck's bitcoin futures-based fund a few days later. While VanEck may not have been able to launch a spot ETF at the time, the firm sees a silver lining in the reaction from policymakers in Congress. “For the SEC to have got...

"It seems very much like the mania is just absolutely peaking right now." That's Pierce Crosby, general manager at TradingView. During this episode of The Scoop, Crosby joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss the state of the retail market in crypto and stocks, the data firm's institutional ambitions and its bid to take trading charts global. “Deployment of TradingView not just across the US, but gl...

“It makes a lot of sense for us to be a crypto first firm.” That’s Jess Turner, Executive Vice President of New Digital Infrastructure and Fintech at Mastercard. On this episode of the Scoop, Turner joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss how Mastercard is continuing to lean into crypto. More than ever, Mastercard and other traditional financial institutions are finding themselves involved with cryp...

The crypto world has only just begun digesting the finalized crypto reporting requirements from the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF. The years-long process began in the summer of 2019 when the FATF made public its initial version that called for what it dubbed virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, to undertake an unprecedented degree of information-sharing about their customers and the t...

"It's really a matter of moving at the pace of the decisions of institutional players." That's Shaun Martinak, research and portfolio manager at One River Digital, the newly-launched arm of One River Asset Management that's working with clients to add crypto exposure to their portfolios.  In an interview during the latest episode of The Scoop podcast, Martinak observed that while institutional pla...

GSR is building out a space for itself at the intersection of traditional and decentralized finance worlds, according to its newly-minted head of DeFi, Jake Dwyer.  During the latest episode of The Scoop podcast, Dwyer explained that the firm is building out the capacity to both create new trading products as well as provide liquidity to DeFi protocols in a way that's more familiar to the traditio...

“We're not art investors. We're investing in things that have communities” On this episode of The Scoop, Adam Goldberg co-founder of Standard Crypto joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss his work as a crypto VC and how his company is looking at the DeFi market in an unconventional way. Standard Crypto is $1 billion in size, according to a source familiar with the fund. Today, their investment team...

“When I started to read about smart contracts… my mind exploded.” That's Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, who joined host Frank Chaparro for the latest episode of The Scoop podcast to discuss his entry into the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) and offer a deep dive into Aave's ecosystem.  Among the topics: Aave Arc, the project's institutional product. During the conversation, Kulecho...

"I noticed it has a big connection to electronic music and that is my biggest passion." On this episode of The Scoop, multi-platinum and Grammy-nominated DJ Alesso and Lin Dai CEO of OneOf joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss why prominent artists are getting into NFTs and how this is signaling a cultural shift for how tastemakers are engaging with their fans today. Alesso explained that electron...

The latest data from Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance shows that the U.S. has taken over China as the country with the biggest share of Bitcoin's hash rate. The backdrop of this data shift: the near-complete exodus of bitcoin miners from China, once the undisputed powerhouse for this particular sector of the crypto economy. This historic reversal took place over the course of mere months a...

Robinhood was hit by a slowdown in its crypto business during the third quarter, but the business unit's chief operating officer, Christine Brown, is optimistic. On this episode of The Scoop, Brown told host Frank Chaparro that "business is good" at the brokerage company.  "More than 60 percent of Robinhood funded accounts traded crypto in Q2, and now everyone, everyone listening should know that...

"We're stepping more and more into an almost bigger focus in the building in crypto." On this episode of The Scoop, Kanav Kariya, President of Jump Crypto joined host Frank Chaparro for a rare interview to discuss Kariya’s vision for its 100-person large digital assets division. Launched in the late 1990s, Jump is one of the most active trading firms across equities and crypto markets. Kariya spok...

On this episode of The Scoop, founder Ari Rubenstein and founder & CEO Ryan Sheftel joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss the launch of their new crypto firm, called Radkl. Radkl, which was born out of trading firm and New York Stock Exchange market maker GTS, is a new digital asset trading business. GTS currently trades hundreds of thousands of financial instruments algorithmically, which acc...

“For us it’s almost like having a store on 5th avenue”. Atari is gearing up to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and appropriately enough the company is kicking off its half-century birthday not in the physical world, but in the metaverse. Specifically, it is hoping to capitalize off of the "land" it owns in virtual worlds built by Decentraland and The Sandbox. Atari's Head of Blockchain Manfred Man...

“It’s a global development.” On this episode of The Scoop, 10T Founder and CEO Dan Tapiero joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss his insights into the globalization of crypto markets and how his macro investing strategy has seen his fund 10T pour hundreds of millions into crypto unicorns. To date, Tapiero has already allocated the majority of some of his funds to companies such as Kraken, Deribit,...

Sygnum is one of the few cryptocurrency banks operating in Europe. On this episode of The Scoop, Mathias Imbach Co-Founder and Group CEO of Sygnum joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss the country's crypto ecosystem and how large wealth channels are opening up to bitcoin and other digital assets. “Nowadays, the conversation goes very different," said Imbach. "There's very few banks in Switzerland...

DARMA Capital's Andrew Keys is a believer in the disruptive power of Ethereum, but he's also concerned that regulators may stand in the way of it. Digital Asset Risk Management Advisors, or DARMA for short, is an investment firm with more than $1 billion of assets under management. DARMA currently holds over 10,000 validators at over 320,000 Ether, Keys told host Frank Chaparro on this episode of...

“We are heavily moving into DeFi.”  Pantera Capital, the longest operating US based bitcoin investment firm, now manages 5Bn worth of assets. But when it comes to decentralized finance, Pantera’s Franklin Bi still sees the space as undervalued. “As long as we're still looking at the fundamentals and drawing out what the multiples are there, we're still not at the point where you know, you're reall...

 On this episode of The Scoop, Sky Mavis Games Co-Founder and Growth Lead Jeff ‘Jiho’ Zirlin joined Frank Chaparro at the 2021 Mainnet Conference to discuss their game Axie Infinity. Chaparro and Zirlin cover Axie’s recent growth in popularity, kicking off the ‘Play-To-Earn’ trend in gaming, and how Axie Infinity players in the Philippines and other emerging economies are playing the game to suppl...

 This week, the world's largest auction house cracked $100 million in NFT sales. Christie’s Noah Davis says they’re just getting started. On this episode of The Scoop, Davis, an associate vice president and head of digital sales at the auction house, joined Frank Chaparro to discuss Christie’s view of the 2021 rise in NFT sales and how the traditional art market and this brave new one are convergi...

  Okcoin, which was founded in 2013, is doing something different in a crowded field of crypto exchanges: it's going to allow clients to denominate trades in bitcoin in units of satoshi, rather than BTC.  On this episode of The Scoop, Okcoin CEO Hong Fang joined host Frank Chaparro for a discussion on Okcoin's rapid retail product launches and the hiring growth they've undergone in an effort to co...

Digital artist Pplpleasr believes that the production and dissemination of art represent just the first phase of NFT technology adoption. This week on The Scoop, PplPleasr joined host Frank Chaparro to break down how she created Fortune Magazine's DeFi cover and the role of NFTs in Web3 and the broader art space. Earlier this year, Pplpleasr was commissioned by Fortune to create its first NFT cove...

Mike Belshe founded BitGo—the crypto financial services and custody firm—in 2013 with the original intention to help solve a pinpoint he identified when entering the bitcoin market early on: how to store crypto holdings safely. "We forget about how easy loss is", said Belshe. Today BitGo is more wide-spanning than just storage and custody, also covering lending, trading, and prime-related financia...

On this episode of The Scoop, Bittrex Global CEO Stephen Stonberg joined host Frank Chaparro for a discussion on Bittrex’s US and global businesses, his outlook on security tokens, and how the company is tackling regulatory tightening in an effort to safely enter markets across the world. In its global business, Stonberg said that Bittrex is testing out lending and staking products as well as dipp...