The Scoop

In this episode of The Scoop, Frank Chaparro and former Deutsche Bank payment analyst Ryan Todd delve into Coinbase's financial performance for the fourth quarter. Todd, a former payments analyst at Deutsche Bank, offers an in-depth analysis of why Wall Street regularly underestimates Coinbase's earnings. He sheds light on the structural factors leading to consistent earnings outperformance, not o...

Colosseum is an online platform that runs hackathons, accelerates founders, and invests in breakout startups on Solana. In this episode, Colosseum co-founders Matty Taylor and Clay Robbins discuss how they are establishing Colosseum as an entry point into crypto, and their personal journeys in building Colosseum. According to Robbins, maintaining a supportive culture around developer activity is v...

Matthew Hougan is the Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise — one of several asset managers to recently launch a spot Bitcoin ETF. In this episode, Hougan shares his inside perspective on how market participants are reacting to the new spot Bitcoin ETFs, and why he believes we're not yet at the "sweet spot of demand" for the new products. OUTLINE 00:00 Introduction 05:46 Crypto & Wall Street 09...

Dr. Friederike Ernst is the co-founder of Gnosis and Gnosis Pay. In this episode, Dr. Ernst shares how Gnosis Pay is working to bridge the gap between on-chain and off-chain payments, and how the upcoming Gnosis Card will allow users to spend their crypto at over 80 million VISA merchants worldwide. Although crypto payments for everyday transactions have yet to penetrate the consumer market, Dr. E...

Chris Dixon is a managing partner at a16z and the founder of a16z crypto. In this episode, Dixon gives an overview of his new book ,  Read Write Own: Building the Next Generation of the Internet,  and explains how blockchains have the potential to create more equatable online experiences. OUTLINE 00:00 Background 08:04 New Book 11:13 Crypto Skeptics 14:56 Tech Centralization 19:53 Web2 vs Web3 24:...

Jelena Djuric is the co-founder of Noble and Sam Hart is the co-founder of Timewave Labs and the Head of Strategy at Skip Protocol. In this episode, Djuric and Hart — both seasoned Cosmos veterans — breakdown the recent advancements that have helped the Cosmos ecosystem enter into a new era of innovation and expansion. Djuric also announces Noble's partnership with Hashnote to bring the USYC token...

Scott Fletcher co-founded Intersection Growth Partners — one of the crypto industry's leading executive search firms. In this episode, Fletcher overviews how the crypto job market has changed since the market bottom in 2022 and explains what it takes to land an executive position at a top crypto company. According to Fletcher, CEO hires have more than doubled as a percentage of overall executive h...

Dan Tapiero is the founder and managing partner of 10T Holdings and 1RoundTable Partners — two growth equity funds operating across the digital asset ecosystem. In this episode, Tapiero gives an overview of how the recent market rally has impacted deal flow on the secondary market, and explains why he remains strongly bullish on the future growth trajectory of the industry. According to Tapiero, v...

George Calle is the VP of Research at The Block. In this episode, Calle gives an overview of the key themes from The Block's 2024 Digital Assets Outlook Report. The full report can be downloaded here. OUTLINE 0:00 - Introduction 04:36 - 2023 Overview 08:08 - Blockchain Scaling 14:02 - DeFi Usage Trends 17:43 - 2023 Macro Impact 20:41 - Regulatory Landscape 27:39 - Binance 36:09 - 2023 Winners 40:2...

Tzvi Wiesel is the founder and CEO of Baxus, a startup in the wine and spirits industry attempting to revolutionize the way these products are traded, authenticated and valued globally. In this episode, Wiesel explains how his company leverages blockchain technology for ownership proof, authentication and secure storage — and how Baxus aims to address challenges like opaque pricing and legal compl...

James Seyffart is an ETF Research Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. In this episode, Seyffart shares why he believes a spot bitcoin ETF approval is on the way and how the market might react to the news. Grayscale Investments’ win against the SEC in August over its application to convert its flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) product into a spot bitcoin ETF is another major factor in the SEC...

This is the opening installment of the miniseries ' Web3 will fail unless... ', sponsored by Axelar and featuring co-host Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder of Axelar. In this episode, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan lays out the vision for EigenLayer and explains how the increasing modularization of blockchain infrastructure and services will enable the next wave of crypto innovation. OUTLINE: 00:00 I...

Charles d'Haussy is the CEO of the dYdX Foundation. In this episode, d'Haussy discusses the launch of dYdX v4, and the potential tailwinds that could help decentralized derivative products gain market share in the years ahead. According to d'Haussy, the decision to launch dYdX v4 as a standalone appchain in the Cosmos ecosystem was made to optimize the experience of dYdX users. "If you need to upg...

Alex Felix is the Chief Investment Officer at CoinFund. Back in July, CoinFund announced the raise of $158 million for a new early-stage crypto startup investment fund.  In this episode, Felix explains how his firm is thinking about allocating the capital, and breaks down the institutional interest in early-stage crypto investing. According to Felix, the market is still discounting web'3 full pote...

Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital. In this episode, Scaramucci reflects on the lessons he learned in the depths of last year's bear market, and explains why he believes the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. will lead to hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into bitcoin in the near future. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 05:28 - SkyBridge Strategy...

Justin Slaughter is the Policy Director at Paradigm. In this episode, Slaughter explains why crypto regulation in the U.S. is likely stuck "in a holding pattern" until after the 2024 election cycle, and how policymakers on both sides of the aisle are beginning to see past crypto's volatility to appreciate the underlying technological innovation. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 07:16 - Crypto Policy...

Superphiz is a long-time Ethereum community member and a became a vocal advocate for staking decentralization following the Ethereum 'Merge' to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism last year. In this episode of The Scoop, Superphiz unpacks how Ethereum's merge to proof-of-stake has caused liquid staking derivatives to pose a potential threat to Ethereum's credible neutrality, as well as the best p...

Kavita Gupta is the founder and CEO of Delta Blockchain Fund. Gupta — a former executive at ConsenSys — launched the fund in September 2021 and it currently sits at $125 million AUM. In this episode of The Scoop, Gupta discusses how the recent surge in crypto prices has impacted the venture landscape, and shares what sectors of the market she is paying the most attention to. According to Gupta, mo...

Leo Mizuhara is the founder and CEO of Hashnote — a digital asset management platform that aims to provide institutions with a regulated gateway to DeFi. In this episode of The Scoop, Mizuhara explores the recent hype around tokenized real-world assets and examines some of the hidden risks under pinning this sector of the digital assets market. According to Mizuhara, many purported 'tokenized' T-B...

Austin Federa is Head of Strategy at the Solana Foundation. In this episode of The Scoop recorded live at Solana Breakpoint 2023, Federa unpacks some of Breakpoint's biggest announcements and explains how Solana builders persevered through the depths of the bear market to continue enhancing Solana's tech. According to Federa, Solana's recent performance enhancements have rectified many of the prob...

Armani Ferrante is the founder and CEO of the crypto wallet company Backpack and the creator of the MadLads NFT collection. In this episode of The Scoop recorded live at Solana Breakpoint 2023, Ferrante unpacks Backpack's plans to launch a new exchange in Dubai. As Ferrante explains, the new exchange is both an opportunity to bring a regulated crypto exchange to market and to bolster the Solana ec...

Jupiter Zheng is Partner of Liquid Funds & Research for HashKey Capital — the investment arm of the Hong Kong crypto financial services firm HashKey Group. In this episode, Zheng explains how the crypto industry is gaining momentum in Asia — particularly in Hong Kong. Back in September, Hashkey announced it is raising up to $100 million for a new liquid fund with a heavy focus on altcoins. Thi...

Juthica Chou is the head of OTC options trading at Kraken and the former president of LedgerX. In this episode, Chou explains how crypto's recent rally is being reflected in the options market, and what signals to pay attention to in the weeks ahead. According to Chou, volatility has returned to the market after months of relatively little activity: "The market's definitely pricing some big moves....

Pranav Kanade is a portfolio manager at VanEck. In this episode, Kanade analyzes some of the trends and opportunities that he sees playing out during the current crypto bear market. Kanade says that crypto builders should be focusing on building products that help onboard new users into the ecosystem: "If I were to criticize this space for something, it's that a lot of people are too focused on bu...

Kevin Johnson is Coinbase's VP of Institutional Sales and Trading. In this episode, Johnson shares the details behind Coinbase Prime's new web3 wallet designed to give institutional and enterprise clients secure and direct access to web3, DeFi, and various onchain operations. As Johnson explains, "It was always in our plans to take the great centralized tools that we had built with those multi use...