Unchained: Big Ideas From The Worlds Of Blockchain And Cryptocurrency

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez talks about how Miami plans to be the crypto capital of the world. In this show, he discusses: what Miami is doing to become the crypto capital of the world (1:40) why he feels so strongly about bringing crypto to Miami (3:09) the relationship between cryptocurrencies and government (4:08) why he believes that, in the future, governments will transaction in crypto, not fiat currency (5:26) his feelings about the FTX sponsorship proposal and how he convinced city officials to move past crypto’s tumultuous past (6:51) whether city of Miami employees have expressed interest in being paid in bitcoin (10:06) what needs to happen for Miami to be able to hold BTC in its treasury (11:25) how Mayor Suarez balances his interest in Bitcoin against his interest in mitigating the effects of climate change on Miami (14:24) Crypto News Recap (18:00)   Thank you to our sponsors!  Download the Crypto.com app and get $25 with the code “Laura”:  https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unchained

Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, and Matthew Kolesky, president at Arbor Capital, discuss the state of Bitcoin adoption amongst financial advisors, who control $5 trillion in investor wealth. In this episode, they talk about: their background and why they got into crypto (1:25) how most RIAs (registered investment advisors) view digital assets and the hassle of buying crypto on a client’s behalf (8:59) what percentage of financial advisors have already invested in bitcoin and how many more will come into the space by next year (18:20) how RIADAC -- the RIA Digital Assets Council -- is educating financial advisors about crypto (21:59) their favorite methods to explain Bitcoin and other digital assets (25:22) the different ways financial advisors are getting bitcoin/crypto exposure for their clients (35:32) why RIAs use investment vehicles to purchase Bitcoin rather than spot-buying the actual asset (39:58) why GBTC is trading at a deficit to the bitcoin price and their thoughts on a

MetaKovan, the pseudonymous buyer of Beeple’s Everydays NFT and founder of MetaPurse, talks about his recent $69 million purchase. In this episode, he discusses: why he bought Everydays: The First 5000 Days for $69 million (1:57) Beeple’s 13-year “proof of effort” process of creating art and why Beeple has the potential to become a generational artist (4:38) why he believes NFTs are “10x” better than physical art (9:40) his vision of the metaverse (13:57) the reasons for hiding his identity behind the Metakovan avatar (17:09) how he made his fortune in crypto and why he felt comfortable spending $69 million on something that might be a fad (19:12) why he started Metapurse and how its native B20 token works (24:31) crypto news recap (28:57)   Thank you to our sponsor! Download the Crypto.com app and get $25 with the code “Laura”: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unchainedcardearnfeb2    Episode Links   MetaKovan: https://twitter.com/metakovan?lang=en   Metapurse:  https://metapurse.fund/  

Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures, and Mason Nystrom, a research analyst at Messari, discuss the NFT craze that has enveloped the crypto world over the past few weeks. In this episode, they talk about: their backgrounds, and how they became involved in crypto (1:19) the major catalysts -- specifically Beeple and NBA Top Shot -- that have brought NFTs into the mainstream (5:29) why NFTs are a “megatrend” and not just another ICO-like bubble (13:35) how to explain non-fungible tokens to normies (18:06) what someone is actually purchasing when they buy an NFT (24:46) the reasons behind NBA Top Shot's success and why it is so difficult to withdraw money from its platform (36:27) the best way to scale NFTs and why Ethereum, despite severe storage limitations, will most likely remain the most popular blockchain on which to mint NFTs (41:44) why the gaming, fashion, and music industries will be disrupted by NFTs (49:37) when the current subscription-based business model for content creators will transit

Brendan McGill, co-founder of Offsetra and Carbon.fyi, a company focused on reducing carbon emissions, talks about the environmental impact of NFTs. In this episode, Brendan discusses: his career as an environmentalist and how his sites intersect with crypto (1:07) why online art platform ArtStation canceled its plans to create an NFT program (3:21) what the environmental impact of NFTs actually is and why minting and transacting with NFTs has a greater environmental impact than for normal Ethereum transactions (5:21) misconceptions surrounding the environmental impact of NFT minting and why he believes artists should not be blamed for the carbon footprint calculated by Offsetra (6:57) what accounts for the emissions in NFT transactions and why it’s hard to calculate the exact environmental impact of any specific NFT, and why minting NFTs doesn’t necessarily increase emissions (7:32)  why NFTs aren’t really responsible for the bulk of emissions from Ethereum and why Brendan thinks the backlash against

Antonio Juliano, founder of the decentralized exchange dYdX, and Eli Ben-Sasson, cofounder of StarkWare, discuss the recent launch of dYdX on Ethereum layer 2 using StarkWare’s scaling technology. In this episode, they cover: what cross-margin perpetual trading is and why dYdX chose StarkWare to be its scaling partner (1:13) ZK rollups and how they contrast with optimistic rollups (8:49) how many transactions per second StarkWare can handle through its layer 2 solution (16:57) lessons learned and critical takeaways from their six months spent working together (20:15) the similarities between Ethereum and StarkNet (26:07) why Antonio believes that scalability is more important than composability (27:30) the benefits of decentralized exchanges and how dYdX fits into the dex marketplace (31:54) why dYdX chose Chainlink as its oracle provider, and how it got oracle prices onto layer 2, which previously had none (38:11) why Cairo, StarkWare’s Turing-complete programming language and platform, can be the “

Gil Luria, director of research at D.A. Davidson, talks about the upcoming Coinbase direct listing and his recent research note, “Introducing Crypto’s Amazon Moment.” In this episode, Gil discusses: his crypto background, including his experience as the first Wall Street analyst to cover Bitcoin back in 2013 (1:27) why the Coinbase IPO is going to be an inflection point for the crypto industry (3:02) why he gave Coinbase's upcoming stock a “buy” rating (4:14) who Coinbase's biggest competitors are (5:13) why Gil believes Coinbase is the “gold standard” in crypto (6:29) how investing in Coinbase stock compares to investing in actual crypto assets (8:13) how he came to $195 price target for COIN (10:39) why a $2 billion revenue estimate for Coinbase in 2021 might be conservative (12:01) how Coinbase is generating money outside of transaction fees (14:19) whether he expects the institutional adoption trend to grow (15:49) what his expectations are for the price of COIN on the day it opens (17:20) wh

Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Avanti Financial Group, talks about the issues plaguing the current state of technology in traditional finance and how her background as a 22-year Wall Street veteran, gubernatorial appointee to the Wyoming Blockchain Task Force, and crypto pioneer is helping her shape Avanti into a bridge between conventional banking and crypto. Tune in to hear Caitlin discuss: the current state of crypto adoption on Wall Street (1:09) how her entrepreneurial spirit galvanized a career spanning Wall Street, the Wyoming Legislature, and, now, crypto banking (2:07) why Caitlin fell in love with Bitcoin (4:57) fractional reserves and why the current financial system is a “violation of property rights” (7:00) how stablecoin technology will change banking leverage and what effects faster settlement times will have on inflation (11:30) why corporate treasurers have been using BTC since 2014 in foreign exchange transactions (17:14) what issues Wyoming is trying to solve through crypto legisl

Jeff Roberts, executive editor at Decrypt and author of “King of Crypto: One Startup’s Quest to take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street” talks about Coinbase going public. In this episode we discuss: Jeff's biggest takeaways from Coinbase’s S-1 filing (0:56) why institutions are choosing Coinbase (2:42) how Coinbase going public feels like validation for bitcoiners (4:37) issues Coinbase may face as a business that currently generates 96% of revenue through transaction fees (6:25) Why Surojit Chatterjee has so much equity in Coinbase (11:29) why Coinbase has only invested $130 million in crypto through its corporate treasury (12:26) whether or not decentralized exchanges like Uniswap pose a threat to Coinbase, and whether unregulated centralized exchanges might squeeze them from the other end (15:41) challenges Coinbase will face going forward (19:13) how well the stock will do once it's listed (20:05) Crypto News Recap (20:59)    Thank you to our sponsor! Crypto.com: htt

In this episode of Unchained, Charles Cascarilla, CEO and cofounder of Paxos, explains how the 2008 financial crisis led him to crypto, what financial plumbing has to do with GameStop, and how Paxos is leveraging blockchain technology to change financial services. In this episode Charles discusses: his work experience prior to Paxos and how the financial crisis in 2008 opened his eyes to Bitcoin and blockchain (01:07) what it was like to work in Bitcoin during the early days compared to now (4:02a) why Paxos decided to focus on building solutions for institutions rather than targeting the retail market like Coinbase (11:38) the relationship between Paxos and PayPal + why PayPal customers can’t send crypto directly to their wallets or crypto addresses yet (19:37) how Microstrategy and Tesla are bringing Bitcoin mainstream (25:31) what really happened with GameStop and Robinhood and why financial plumbing matters (30:34) how the Paxos Settlement Service is bringing greater transparency to financial mark

Lea Thompson, aka Girl Gone Crypto, talks about what goes into producing her popular “The Crypto Minute” vlog, what initially got her into crypto, and her recent decision to quit her day job and go full time crypto. In this episode we discuss: what “The Crypto Minute” is all about, and all the crypto video content she produces (2:37) how Lea comes up with creative content such as wearing a whale costume to portray Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor (5:04) how long it actually takes to create “The Crypto Minute” (6:36) what goes into producing “The Crypto Minute” and which family member is behind the camera (7:05) the biggest challenges Lea faces when creating her videos and how she decides which stories make the final cut (8:56) Lea’s favorite bloopers including, but not limited to, rug pulls, sushi, an Amazon money printer, and a few fake $100 bills (10:28) how Girl Gone Crypto fell down the crypto rabbit hole and why her ukulele skills were instrumental to her crypto journey (12:54) the time when JK

Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, comes onto the show to discuss the lending protocol and second-biggest DeFi project by total value locked. Here are some of the highlights:  How Stani’s background studying law and his passion for fintech led him to the world of smart contracts (1:53) Why he decided to transition ETHLend to Aave, and how that eliminated the “meme” narrative (5:55) How Stani would explain Aave to a five-year-old, or your normie friend (9:04) What new features were released in Aave v2 (15:54) reducing overall gas costs aTokens swapping collateral debt tokens What Aavenomics is and how the “safety module” attempts to keep the protocol secure (20:39) How AAVE works as a governance token Active versus passive risk in governance staking How Aave is transitioning from a centralized to a decentralized protocol (25:01) what he's finding difficult about this process issues with voting and an over-reliance on the Aave team delegating voting power to what he calls “prot

Lyn Alden, CEO and founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategies, and Raoul Pal, CEO & cofounder  of Real Vision Group & Global Macro Investor, explain their thinking about Ethereum and its native token, and talk about their perspective on GameStop. In this episode, we discuss: why Raoul views ether as similar to bitcoin at a macro level (1:25) why Lyn decided ETH was not currently investable (5:06) an analysis of utility protocols (John Pfeffer’s paper) (6:55) counterarguments to John Pfeffer’s paper (9:31) how to allocate between BTC and ETH (11:22) why Raoul also invested in other coins beyond BTC and ETH (11:47)  whether Metcalfe's law applies equally to all kinds of networks (13:35) why Lyn views Ethereum’s use case as circular, and why that makes it less investable (15:09) whether Ethereum 2.0 and Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559, and whether that could make ETH more investable (21:20) the impact of fees on the value of Ethereum (23:36) Raoul's views on what S-Curves and the Lindy Effect indi

In this episode, Shehan Chandrasekara, head of strategy at CoinTracker, and Dan Hannum COO at Zen Ledger, take a deep dive into the world of crypto taxes. Over an hour and fifteen minutes they tackle a bevy of topics ranging from why the IRS is asking about your crypto history to explaining the proper way of reporting yield farming income. Shehan and Dan give up their hard-earned tax secrets and tips learned through building their respective cutting-edge crypto tax software. Here is a list of talking points covered in the discussion: how the IRS is handling crypto this year (1:20) where to start with reporting crypto and what constitutes a taxable event (5:59) bitcoin corner cases: mining, with a description of calculating cost basis (19:48)  wages (27:01) peer-to-peer transactions outside of exchanges (28:23) defi and taxes: yield farming — and how it's like Russian nesting dolls (31:45) how the IRS taxes earned interest (36:32) airdrops (40:15) crypto transactions that are not taxable:

Michael Saylor, CEO and founder of Microstrategy, explains how he decided the publicly traded business data firm needed to put its excess cash in bitcoin and what happened afterward. In this episode, we discuss:  why Microstrategy decided to buy Bitcoin, and how the pandemic spurred that whether his previous experience with Microstrategy stock imploding after accounting irregularities were revealed had any bearing on the company's decision to buy bitcoin the reactions of the officers and board members to his suggestion to invest in bitcoin why they put all the excess cash into bitcoin as opposed to some percentage what parts of the bitcoin industry could be improved to better serve corporate interests whether Microstrategy intends to take any money off the table at the top of any future bubbles and reinvest when the price hits a new low whether it hurts Microstrategy that GAAP rules require the company to mark Bitcoin down to the lowest price it traded at during the quarter how his life has changed si

Stephen Palley, partner at Anderson Kill. and Gabriel Shapiro, partner at BSV Law, discuss the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple and two executives, Chris Larsen and Bard Garlinghouse. In this episode, they explain: what was so "egregious" that the SEC went after two executives, Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse, were charged  why their sales showed an information asymmetry, and why that matters why the complaint comes close to being a fraud case, but why the SEC didn't charge them with fraud why the idea that XRP is a currency and therefore cannot be a security will likely not fly why it's unlikely the case will go to the Supreme Court the SEC's case for why XRP is a security, and Ripple's role in it how even on a technical level, the XRP network is centralized how strong the SEC's case is against Larsen and Garlinghouse Stephen's and Gabriel's predictions on how the lawsuit will play out how this will likely impact XRP investors whether or not Ripple could become an SEC-reporting company and XRP a s

Willy Woo, a prominent on-chain Bitcoin analyst and author of the “The Bitcoin Forecast,” a market intelligence newsletter, explains the parabolic activity of Bitcoin in the past month. We cover:  why he thinks Bitcoin has more than doubled in the last month what the "double pump" market is and why Bitcoin may see two rallies this cycle what stage of the Bitcoin bull market we are currently in who is buying, and how they've differed from previous investors who still is yet to buy this cycle why Bitcoin hitting new all-time highs mean that we're in "uncharted price discovery" how his "top cap model" shows Bitcoin could be around $95k by end of year and how if certain trends accelerate, it could reach $200,000-$300,000 by year's end how the pandemic impacted Bitcoin’s price what on-chain movements he's seeing that make him call the current cycle of Bitcoin "whale spawning season”  how to gauge the increasingly rapid investor activity  what to expect from Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2021   Thank you

This panel, from a panel for the fifth anniversary of Hyperledger, features Rob Palatnick, managing director of global head of technology research and innovation at the DTCC and chairman of the Hyperledger board, Matthieu Saint Olive, Codefi payments product manager and CBDC advisor at ConsenSys, and Robert Bench, assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. In this discussion on the current outlook on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), they cover:  what main problems CBDCs can solve whether CBDCs should be open sourced why building a new technology for CBDCs is preferred over using existing tech how concerns over CBDCs and their privacy implications differ across countries what possible pain points or opportunities CBDCs pose for central banks whether CBDCs should be blockchain-based to what extent CBDCs will be distributed and open networks, and whether fees would be charged for transactions how central banks are thinking about methods of adoption, like whether they will ba

Host Laura Shin recaps the biggest stories of the year in crypto, with clips from shows throughout the year. In this episode, we cover how the pandemic drove Bitcoin to new all-time highs, how regulation began to come for the crypto space in a big way, plus new trends in DeFi, corporate structures, and how ETH will change as an asset.    Thank you to our sponsors!  Crypto.com: http://crypto.com 1inch: https://1inch.exchange   Episode links:  Meltem Demirors on Bitcoin’s behavior during the recession https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-bitcoin-now-meltem-demirors-and-lyn-alden-on-the-perfect-conditions-for-bitcoin/   Mike Novogratz and Raoul Pal on Bitcoin’s relation to fiat https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-bitcoin-now-mike-novogratz-and-raoul-pal-on-the-single-greatest-brand-of-the-last-10-years/   Chamath Palihapitiya on Bitcoin as a financial hedge https://unchainedpodcast.com/chamath-palihapitiya-why-bitcoin-will-be-the-category-winner/   Cathie Wood and Dan Tapiero on corporate adoption of Bi

Jeremy Allaire of Circle Pay and Kristin Smith of the Blockchain Association explain the impact of and motivation behind Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s proposed FinCEN rule that targets “unhosted” wallets. In this episode, they cover: what the new FinCEN rule says, and how it would impact unhosted or self-hosted wallets, as well as crypto businesses why they believe this is really politically motivated and unilateral midnight rule making by Secretary Mnuchin  what other bureaucrats and policymakers think should be done instead  whether the rule only affects businesses rather than individuals  what information will be recorded according to the rule ways to circumvent compliance  how the rule affects DeFi and Web3 the procedural hurdles Mnuchin took to propose the rule, and what they recommend the crypto community to do try to stop the implementation of the rule  how the rule comports with European GDPR regulations  which government entities will be tasked with making the regulatory changes the s