CoinDesk Reports (CoinDesk)

“The future of wealth management is a non-custodial plus discretion relationship.”

Host of “On Purpose” Tyrone Ross recaps his lessons learned from spending the past few weeks travelling and speaking with bank executives, RIAs, broker dealers and financial advisers across the country.

Those who are already sold on crypto will resonate with Ross’ sentiment that many of the largest institutions are reluctant to embrace crypto in any capacity. Regardless of their reluctance, clients will search for and invest in products with asymmetric returns. Clients will have a portfolio of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), they will be staking at Coinbase and they will have a MetaMask wallet.

Even if the clients are self-custodying crypto assets such as these, they will still search for advice on what to do with their wealth. Recognizing this future and preparing for it is the best an adviser can do for themselves and their firm.

This episode has been produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Walk with Swag. 

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington are joined by cybersecurity and privacy litigator Sean C. Griffin to discuss the regulatory environment of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

Edgington bought his first NFT from English contemporary artist Damien Hirst. Hirst is expected to raise up to $20 million by selling 10,000 tokens worth $2,000 each. Upon purchase, the NFTs can be redeemed for a physical painting but only for a limited time period of one year. At the end of the year, Hirst will burn the corresponding NFT or painting that the buyer decided not to keep. 

Owning a piece from Hirst’s NFT collection gives the buyer rights to a physical painting and comes with the assurance of limited token supply, which Griffin explains is not always the case with all NFTs. 

The underlying technology of blockchain is able to prove that each NFT token is one of a kind. However, linking NFTs to a physical piece of art requires off-chain trust and verification. Griffin said he often sees NFT buyers “believe they are getting the associated artwork, too,” which is typically not true. According to Griffin, fraudsters have been selling NFTs of valuable artwork and leading people to believe they are buying the rights to the underlying artwork. 

Griffin also highlighted the importance of private key security and avoiding malicious phishing attacks. As the cryptocurrency markets grow in value, so do the privacy and security risks associated with investing in digital assets. 

Griffin hopes increased regulation over NFTs in the U.S. will enforce standards that benefit all market participants. His concern is that regulators will come in from a “zillion” directions and create unnecessary regulations that do more harm than good. 

Kim asked Griffin, “When it comes to holding [individuals] accountable and liable, do you think the main people responsible for abiding to these guidelines are the developers of the marketplaces and developers of the protocol? [Are these] the people that justice authorities go after?”  

Griffin believes the marketplaces facilitating the trading of NFTs are the most at risk of penalties. However, in such a new and changing space it is difficult to judge how regulators will go about governing the industry. 

To hear the full conversation featuring Griffin, Kim and Edgington, check out this week’s episode of “Mapping Out Ethereum 2.0.” 

Links:

Damien Hirst NFTs -- https://www.heni.com/

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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In this episode, Anna Baydakova, Tanzeel Akhtar and Danny Nelson discuss what the GameStop stock market chaos can teach crypto, why the Bank of International Settlements is pitching central bank digital currencies (CBDC) instead of crypto, and the privacy concerns around China’s digital yuan.

The big story for the week involves the Reddit-based trading community called WallStreetBets that has been causing equities to behave like cryptocurrencies – very volatile. WallStreetBets have wreaked chaos in traditional markets after pumping GameStop stock up by nearly 900% in five days to around $380. Hedge fund Melvin Capital Management suffered heavy losses by betting against video game retailer GameStop. 

Does crypto fix this?

The digital yuan was front-and-center in yesterday’s CBDC survey by the BIS, better known as the bank for central banks. Researchers there said 20% of the global population will likely be using general purpose digital fiat in the next three years. What they didn’t say was the identity of the country with 18% of the global population…. China!

In the meantime, security researchers started paying attention to potential risks of the digital yuan for the users outside of China. The Center for New American Security issued a report on how the Chinese Communist Party might get access to the financial data of people worldwide including, potentially, Americans who will be using the Chinese system in the future. 

Would you use something like that, and do you care about privacy of your transactions?

Stories mentioned in this episode:

• CoinDesk: GameStop Investing Craze ‘Proof of Concept’ for Bitcoin Success, Says Scaramucci

• CoinDesk: GameStop-Style Revolts Spread, Drawing Attention of White House, Nasdaq; TD Ameritrade Restricts Trading 

• Reddit: An Open Letter to Melvin Capital, CNBC, Boomers, and WSB

• CoinDesk: BIS Chief Blasts Bitcoin’s Viability, Prompting Blowback From Advocates 

• BIS Plans Platform for Testing Central Bank Digital Currencies in Cross-Border Payments https://www.coindesk.com/bis-plans-platform-for-testing-central-bank-digital-currencies-in-cross-border-payments

• CoinDesk: Geopolitics at Stake in US Response to China’s Digital Yuan: Report

• Center for New American Security: China’s Digital Currency. Adding Financial Data to Digital Authoritarianism

• CoinDesk: WEF Davos: Bank of England Governor Insists Digital Payments (but Not Crypto) Are Sticking Around 

• CoinDesk: WEF Davos: Silver Lake Co-Founder Tells Davos Cash Is Used Far More in Crime Than Bitcoin 

• Colombia, Estonia Upload the Bitcoin White Paper to Their Governmental Websites https://www.coindesk.com/colombia-estonia-bitcoin-whitepaper 

Did you enjoy the show? We would love to hear what you think. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred service and talk to us directly via email at borderless@coindesk.com.

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Sean Farrell, the head of digital asset strategy at Fundstrat; Nicola White, the CEO of B2C2 USA; and Akshi Federici- Kraken, a ventures partner, join Lyllah Ledesma, CoinDesk markets reporter, to discuss who is investing in bitcoin during the dip, from different angles of the industry.

They speak about what they are watching to prepare for the slow crypto season, including consolidation, new non-fungible token projects and traditional finance entering the space. They end with their views on the long- and short-term trends for the market.

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The panel discussion took place on June 10, the second day of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2022 festival in Austin, Texas. 

The executive producer for CoinDesk Reports is Jared Schwartz. Nia Freeman edited this episode.

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Mohammed Badi, the President of Global Network Services at American Express, and Bill Barhydt, CEO at Abra, sit with Coindesks’ lead anchor Christine Lee, to announce the Abra crypto card rollout and to discuss why it is important to the crypto space. 

Barhydt defines it as “the first U.S. market-based product that allows you to earn unlimited crypto rewards on any purchase you make.” In addition to unlimited crypto rewards, the Abra card offers all the perks of an American Express card.

This panel occurred on Friday, June 10, 2022, the second day of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2022 festival in Austin, Texas. 

This episode was edited by Nia Freeman. The executive producer is Jared Schwartz.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the Biden Administration gets underway, what can we expect for cryptocurrency technologies alongside an ascendent bitcoin?

One day into the new President’s tenure we’ve brought in Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association and Amy Davine Kim, Chief Policy Officer at the Chamber of Digital Commerce. In this episode we'll take a look into the regulatory future as we explore the relationships, lobbying and policymaking efforts within Washington. 

Album Photo by Tabrez Syed on Unsplash, modified by CoinDesk

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2022 has just begun. What will the hot topics in crypto be this year?

On this episode of “Opinionated,” hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson kick off the new year with a discussion on the future and purpose of emerging technologies such as Web 3 and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Though both include egalitarian philosophical interests like freedom, democracy, self-custody and decentralization, many worry the ideals will fall as well-funded companies and individuals step in.

How will the ideals of Web 3 and DAOs pan out as the technology develops further?

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is by Elision.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Without letters of credit, bills of lading, shipping documents and trillions of dollars in global goods trade would grind to a halt. (And you thought our dependency on the Suez Canal was a problem!)

This episode is sponsored by Interpop.io

But the world’s system of trade finance, a highly complex setup involving banks, insurers, shipping companies, data providers and all manner of intermediaries, is far from ideal. 

There is massive fraud – check the New York Times’ account of the recent Greensill Capital collapse for – and severe inequity in terms of who gets favorable borrowing terms and who doesn’t. Without access to the trusted data needed to prove their creditworthiness, millions of small-and-medium enterprises are unable to obtain credit to cover the risks associated with exporting their goods. So they either run the risk of non-payment or simply cannot participate in the global economy. 

As a measure of that inequity, Sheila noted in her monologue to this week’s Money Reimagined episode – in which we talk to two blockchain pioneers trying to fix the trade finance industries many problems – that there’s currently a $1.5 trillion global trade financing gap. But then in his first comments, Tallyx CEO Aditya Menon offered an alternative analysis of how much of the goods trade goes unfinanced and came up with a $5 trillion number. That’s about half of the global trade in goods. 

Can blockchains and tokenization address these inequities? 

As you’ll hear from Menon, as well as from Skuchain co-founder Rebecca Liao, the answers lie in figuring out how to incentivize all participants – the exporters, importers, shippers and financiers – to share data in a way that unlocks funding faster. 

Skuchain is focused on making the information richer and more reliable along the supply chain. Tallyx is figuring out how to turn the contractual information such as invoices into tokens of value that can be traded in ways that allow smaller suppliers to monetize their legitimate receivables.

The problems they are trying to solve aren’t easy. But that’s what makes their work so compelling. 

Blockchain projects like Skuchain and Tallyx offer a healthy reminder that beyond the razzamatazz of crypto markets and celebrity non-fungible tokens, meaningful impact is also possible if you work hard at the core problems faced by real-world entities.  

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InterPop is building the architecture of an entirely new landscape of fandom using technology built on the Tezos blockchain to drive their vision. Visit hellointerpop.io to learn more.

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Image Credit: Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images News

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington chat with the CEO and founder of Allnodes, Konstantin Boyko-Romanovsky. Allnodes is a blockchain node hosting, monitoring and staking service supporting over 25 cryptocurrency networks.  

This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.

Among the networks for which Allnodes provides hosting services, Boyko-Romanovsky said, the set up for validator nodes on Ethereum 2.0 was by far “the most stressful.” 

“Ethereum 2.0 is like playing Diablo in nightmare mode. I didn’t sleep well for two months when Ethereum [2.0] was launched because there is a risk of slashing,” said Boyko-Romanovsky.

The risk of slashing, or getting penalized, on Eth 2.0 is greater for staking-as-a-service platforms like Allnodes than for individual users. According to Edgington, this is by design in order to encourage network decentralization.  

“The Ethereum [2.0] protocol was not designed with staking services in mind. It was very much designed for individual stakers,” he said. “It is deliberately not supposed to be easy for [staking] services.” 

Even so, Edgington noted that among staking services Allnodes consistently operates the best-performing Eth 2.0 validator nodes in terms of rewards earned. 

While Boyko-Romanovsky attributed most of that success to “luck,” he also noted that using a single Eth 2.0 software client, Teku, and investing time into understanding Teku enabled him and his team to make “improvements” to their validator set-up based on their knowledge.

The trio also discussed the downfall of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Iron Finance and Mark Cuban’s call for action from U.S regulators in light of the fiasco. To listen to the full discussion, check out this week’s episode of “Mapping Out Eth 2.0.” 

Links mentioned in this podcast:

• CoinDesk article about Iron Finance token price crash (https://www.coindesk.com/iron-finance-says-it-suffered-cryptos-first-large-scale-bank-run-in-token-crash-postmortem)
• Iron Finance blog post (https://ironfinance.medium.com/iron-finance-post-mortem-17-june-2021-6a4e9ccf23f5)
• Mark Cuban’s statement in Bloomberg (https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/1405536487630798859/photo/1) 

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750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.

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This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.

Crypto’s public image has been dominated in the past week by two contrasting perspectives: financial freedom and sanctions evasion.

While the Ukrainian resistance has raised millions in crypto donations when traditional fundraising methods failed, some call for regulation to prevent Russia from using crypto to evade sanctions. 

Jonathan Levin, co-founder and chief strategy officer of blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, joins “Money Reimagined” to contextualize the current conversations on wartime cryptocurrency donations.

The recent uncovering of suspects in both The DAO and Bitfinex hacks represent how transparency inherent to blockchain technology can be an effective tool for law enforcement. But what if state actors exploit this tool?

As the complexities of crypto’s use in Ukraine and Russia continue to play out, it brings to light broader issues about how a society might maintain a balance of access, privacy and inclusion alongside security and the rule of law.

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Take your crypto to the next level with Nexo. Invest and swap instantly, earn up to 20% APR on your idle assets or borrow cash against them at industry-leading rates. Get started today at nexo.io to receive up to a $100 welcome bonus. Valid through March 31.

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard."

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the latest episode of “Mapping out Ethereum 2.0,” CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington announce the podcast is coming to a close, but finish strong, discussing Visa’s $165,000 CryptoPunk purchase, “orphaned blocks” on the Beacon Chain and the Ethereum gas limit debate.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

Visa announced on Monday that it acquired a member of one of the most valuable non-fungible token collections within crypto, called a “CryptoPunk”. CryptoPunks are 24x24 pixel art images depicting eccentric cartoon characters with mixed traits and accessories. 

Kim noted that Visa’s purchase of an NFT “wasn’t so much an investment decision as … really [an experiment] with NFTs wanting to learn more about how they work.”

Even so, market participants responded to the news by making investments in NFTs of their own. $100 million in trading volume took place in the 24 hours following Visa’s announcement, Edgington said. 

The duo also discussed a recent issue with the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain that caused network participation rates to drop a few percentage points and some validators to miss out on rewards. 

The root cause of the issue originated with validator operations by staking as a service Lido. Due to a misconfiguration of their validator software client, Lido was producing orphan blocks that had ripple effects on validators across the network. Orphan blocks refer to blocks proposed by validators that are not included in the blockchain. 

Edgington noted that the issue has since been resolved and participation rates are back to 99% from their recent lows between 96-98%. 

Joining Kim and Edgington for their final episode, CoinDesk Research’s Teddy Oosterbaan discusses a recent debate in the Ethereum community about the governance process for raising Ethereum’s block gas limit. 

To learn more about the significance of gas limits on Ethereum and the controversial project seeking to improve governance around changing the gas limit, listen to the full episode of “Mapping Out Eth 2.0.” 

Links:

The Ethereum Gas Limit Project Twitter - https://twitter.com/ETH_EGL/status/1429530226908930048  

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joining “On Purpose” with host Tyrone Ross are Steve Larsen and Adam Blumberg. The pair founded PlannerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for financial service professionals.

The guests assess how far the wealth management industry has come in terms of embracing crypto and what barriers need to be overcome before mass adoption. 

Larsen and Blumberg believe that education for financial advisers on crypto topics is crucial. They’ve taken it even one step further and created a certification designation, the certified digital asset adviser, managed entirely by PlannerDAO. What are the benefits and challenges of running a certification through a DAO?

Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9–12 in Austin, TX. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code ONPURPOSE15 to get 15% off your pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Walk With Swag.”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross  announces his “Big Day'' for the official launch of his consulting company, OnRamp Invest, and the integration of “Riskalyze” a financial risk rate platform for advisers.  Ross talks about the current state of the crypto markets, the expectations from governmental statutes and the guidance for advisers in the present regulatory environment. 

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

Tyrone Ross is the CEO of OnRamp Invest, founder of 401STC, a storytelling consultancy; is a graduate of Seton Hall University, and named a top ten adviser of 2019 set to change the industry by Wealthmanagement.com 

A message from Tyrone:

The greatest number of people living in poverty are children, we need to change that. If you can, get involved and give back to NoKidHungry.org. Love and Light. I appreciate you!

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InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

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The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A walkthrough of an industrial, portable BTC mining rig.

CoinDesk Deputy Podcasts Producer Rob Mitchell learns the ins-and-outs of bitcoin mining containers by stepping into Foundry’s demo unit on exhibit at Consensus 2022. Todd Sharpe, Foundry’s director of tech ops engineering, explains the basics of mining containers, how the portable units can be deployed and what the future might bring for containerized mining. (Disclosure: Foundry is owned by CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group.)

If you’d like to see the video of this walkthrough, come visit:

https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/coindesk-reports/exploring-a-bitcoin-mining-container/

Consensus 2022 ignited hard-hitting conversations about how crypto technologies and communities are remaking the worlds of finance, investing, culture, entertainment, marketing, governance and more.

Check back on CoinDesk Podcasts to hear live shows like “Money Reimagined,” “The Breakdown,” “Opinionated” and more recorded at the event, plus bonus episodes from the most exciting panels over the weekend.

This episode was edited by Jonas Huck and Rob Mitchell, and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Thanks to Frank Stevens for his camera work.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Brave. 

We’re coming to you from the Brave Podcast Studio at Consensus 2023. Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. It has everything you need to stay safe online. Check them out at brave.com.

The goal of technology is to improve human lives, especially in the area of money. 'Consensus Conversations' hosts Kamala Alcantara and Michele Musso talk with Anna Stone, Web3 Director at eToro about the future of digital assets and cryptocurrency's social responsibility. 

Links:

etoro 

Good Dollar

What gets you up in the morning? (1:50)

Women need to have a seat at the table.

Women are 50% of the population.

What is Web3 exactly?

The next generation of the internet.

What is eToro and what is Twitter? (8:14)

Bringing Web3 to the underbanked.

Twitter partnership with eToro and corporate social responsibility.

Education and enabling people to invest in the community.

Partnership with Twitter for eToro

Understanding money and how it works. (11:57)

All finances and assets are becoming digital.

Thoughts on cash and fear of cash.

The asymmetry between money and the financial services system.

Money is a special type of technology.

Corporate responsibility for cryptocurrencies. (17:11)

Regulation battle with crypto and corporate responsibility.

The socially responsible standard for cryptocurrencies.

The biggest opportunity in crypto is the 5.5 billion underbanked.

Good Dollar Network.

How to learn how to work in a non-custodial wallet. (21:21)

Non-custodial wallet for anyone in the world.

Universal basic income for anyone.

Us vs other countries in terms of crypto usage.

Emerging markets adoption.

The US is a lean startup one-on-one.

The world is waiting to be unlocked.

We still pay for instant transactions. (27:39)

How instant transactions are still paid for.

Blockchain offers instant transfer for free.

The original narrative of crypto and digital cash.

Privacy and privacy in blockchain.

How do you create trust with users? (31:41)

No one wants all of their bank statements online.

Decentralized identity and privacy.

Good Dollar has 500,000 members all over the world.

One of the biggest crypto communities.

What it’s like to ‘serve’ someone (35:53)

The privilege of serving women.

How to get involved with Good Dollar.

Sign up and start claiming every day.

Women first.

From our sponsor:

Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. The built-in Brave Wallet is your secure passport to Web3. It supports over 100 chains, fiat purchases, swaps, NFTs, and even connects with other wallets and DApps. All right in your browser. No risky extensions, no spoofing. Learn more at brave.com/wallet.

This Episode of Consensus Conversations has been produced by senior producer Michele Musso, edited by Ryan Huntington and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Music is Get Down” by Elision and  Image credit: Kevin Ross.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.

This week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast comes to you from Miami, where the annual Art Basel event spawned an explosion of sub-conferences and parties associated with non-fungible tokens (NFT). 

There, we ran into Pierina Merino, the founder of FlickPlay, an exciting new app that combines real-world, camera-captured imagery with digital artifacts so that users can create and place geo-located NFT collectibles. It’s best described as a merging of Pokémon GO with TikTok and NFTs.  

Co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren sat down with Merino to discuss her vision for this project. What emerges is a fascinating discussion around how we human beings project our own “storylines” and how content-generation technology is allowing the merging of the digital with the physical realm. 

Merino’s background as Venezuelan-born, U.S.-trained architect (as in a physical building architect, not a software engineer) is part of what makes this conversation so interesting. She speaks to how that sensibility with the limits of physical space shapes people’s creativity and their self expression for how they live in the world. 

What does this all have to do with money? A lot more than you’d think. 

With NFTs now in the mix, this combination of identity, user-generated content and hybrid physical-digital content constitutes a new form of value creation and transactions. 

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard."

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.

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KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.

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Amidst numerous other scandals, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) has added a crypto one: The U.S. House of Representatives House Committee on Ethics has announced an investigation into Cawthorn’s promotion of the “Let’s Go Brandon '' meme coin.

“Opinionated” hosts  Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson dive into the story, explaining the inspiration of the “Let’s Go Brandon” coin and Cawthorn’s involvement in the coin. Nelson’s reporting included an investigation into Cawthorn’s wallet address, revealing a better timeline of Cawthorn’s investing, along with some unique trading behavior.

See also:  Rep. Cawthorn’s Crypto Wallet Reveals Undisclosed Trades Amid House Ethics Investigation

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is by Elision.

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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code OPINIONATED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the second of our “OG edition” episodes, “Money Reimagined” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey sit down with legendary investor, startup mentor, prodigious networker, kite surfer and passionate conservationist Bill Tai. 

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol. 

And as an added bonus, he is joined by Danny Yang, the CEO and cofounder of NFTs-for-charity provider Nfinita, of which Tai is the chairman. According to its website, Nfinita is working to “make giving more sustainable and scalable through NFTs, and to enable any NFT to be charitable.” 

The episode is timed with the launch of OnChain Monkey, a

10,000-part collection of monkey-themed NFTs. Uniquely, the collection was created in a single transaction, dramatically reducing the transaction costs that would have otherwise been incurred by any charity that was looking to issue such NFTs for fundraising purposes. 

In the episode, Tai and Yang explain how the project is looking to tap into the organizing power of communities of interest to drive the development of environmental and social impact projects. Danny also laid out Nfinita’s thinking in a blog post released shortly before this episode. 

But to get this part of the story, the episode starts with Bill Tai’s personal journey. It began in bitcoin way back in 2010, famously captured in a tweet in which asked whether anyone else was experimenting with bitcoin, which he described as a “P2P digital currency” with “fascinating potential.”

But before that, as Tai recounts, it was his experience with the online game Second Life, founded by his friend Philip Rosedale, that led him to discover bitcoin. Money, he explains, is a force that drives the formation of communities, which is why Second Life took off after it created the Linden dollar.

From there it is a decade-long journey to a related idea and Tai’s latest passion: NFTs as a motivator of value to bring like-minded people to form communities around causes they believe in. It is a natural extension of Tai’s work as a conservationist, cultivated particularly in relation to the oceans, where he spends a great deal of his time kite surfing. 

The conversation also delves into Tai’s enviable investment record, having been an early investor in massive success stories such as Zoom, Canva and BitFury, and his reputation as an uber-networker who has a knack for building relationships across ideas and communities. 

In a period in which angst and concern loom heavy in many places, it’s a conservation that generates an infectious positivity and a hopeful view of how to solve the world’s many problems. 

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine.

Our theme song is ‘Shepard’. 

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com

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For this special inaugural “OG edition” of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey sit down with crypto entrepreneur, investor and long-time cypherpunk Austin Hill. 

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

This is the first in an ad hoc series in which “crypto OGs,” people who’ve been working in the space for some time and have made significant contributions to it, discuss their origin stories, their experiences and their views of the industry’s future. 

Austin Hill is the ideal person to kick this off. He is perhaps best known in the crypto community for being the first CEO of Bitcoin development company Blockstream. But his roots in crypto run much deeper than that, back to before even the arrival of Bitcoin, when he founded a company in the 1990s called Zero Knowledge Systems whose mission was to use the tools of cryptography to build business models around services designed to protect people’s privacy online. It was one of the first attempts to align business opportunities with the Cypherpunk ethos of “Don’t Trust. Verify” – a paraphrasing of Ronald Reagan that Hill and fellow Blockstream founder (now CEO) Adam Back coined together. 

What we get from Hill is a journey. He tells of being influenced early on by the radical ideas of Timothy May and the Cypherpunk movement, which leads, among other projects, to some early, failed dabblings in electronic money. He then describes his discovery a decade later that Bitcoin had solved many of the problems of those first prototypes, which leads to the founding of Blockstream. We learn of why he left that well-funded company amid the stress of the brutal “block size war,” and how he has now found peace doing his own thing even as he turns his focus to the very biggest of challenges, how to save humanity from itself. 

Keep your eye out for later “OG Edition” episodes in the near future. 

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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From the CoinDesk Global Macro newsdesk, this is Borderless - A twice-monthly roundup of the most important stories impacting bitcoin and the crypto sector from around the world. It's created by reporters Nikhilesh De, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson

On today’s show: the FinCEN files, AirTM isn’t working in Venezuela the way people hoped and stablecoin regulations are reappearing in the U.S. and Europe.

CoinDesk's inaugural episode of Borderless discusses the FinCEN Files, which showed that not only is a global superpower keeping tabs on thousands of financial transactions, but it doesn't appear to actually be tamping downon the alleged crimes it purportedly wants to halt using this data. What's more, many of these transaction records aren't suspicious. Should the government hold on to this personal and financial data for 20 years?

Stablecoin regulations are resurging in both Europe and the U.S., with government officials in both regions publishing new guidance discussing how stablecoins might be regulated and how issuers can interact with banks. The EU wants stablecoin issuers to abide by strict "e-money" rules, according to draft legislation leaked last week. Meanwhile, a federal banking regulator in the U.S. says nationally regulated banks can offer stablecoin issuers financial services.

This applies specifically to hosted wallets, meaning wallets that are controlled by a trusted (regulated) third party. Wallets where users directly control the keys do not fall into the guidance. For its part, the Securities and Exchange Commission warns that some of these digital assets may or may not look like securities, and recommends that issuers contact it prior to launching a new token.

Another stablecoin story down in Venezuela has us rethinking whether the country’s purported crypto economy is really as robust as the headlines make you think. CoinDesk contributor Jose Rafael Pena Gholam writes that opposition leader Juan Guaido’s attempted airdrop of $19 million in stablecoins to Venezuela's “health heroes” has fallen flat.

The money came from funds seized by U.S authorities. Guaido was hoping to use it to back pay thousands of health workers with a $100 bonus for three months of work, but the drop has been hampered by the Maduro regime and tech hiccups.Reporters Nikhilesh De, Daniel Nelson and Anna Baydakova discuss these issues and more.

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“I love this space and all its rough edges, evolutions and spits and spats. It’s a reflection of humanity.”

Jeff Garzik  joins “On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross for a wide-ranging conversation on all things bitcoin. Listeners get a peek into Garzik’s journey, from his involvement in the initial stages of web journalism, to his work as an early Linux kernel developer, to his contributions to Bitcoin Core. At one point, Garzik was even the third most prolific Bitcoin Core contributor. 

Throughout his varied career, Garzik has been motivated by a need to do good in the world. He’s achieved that goal through creating sustainable business models and leading by example, ranging from everything from a micro-trucking model to innovative crypto education.

What does someone with so much experience in the space think bitcoin is? As Garzik describes, “it's an evolving organism,” whether in forms such as currency, digital gold, financial freedom and so much more. How will bitcoin evolve next?

This episode has been produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Walk with Swag.

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This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Anna Baydakova are talking to Sebastian Serrano, who is the CEO of Ripio, a popular crypto wallet and exchange in Latin America.  

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

Ripio was founded in 2013 and since then has been expanding in the region with offices in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay as well as Mexico and Spain. Ripio bought Brazil’s second-largest exchange, BitcoinTrade, in January. (Full disclosure: One of Ripio’s early investors was Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent company.)

Latin America has been in the middle of the crypto community’s attention after El Salvador adopted bitcoin as a legal tender. But is it actually a good thing for bitcoin and for El Salvador, and will it benefit the country’s citizens? Serrano has his own take on this.

Listen as Ben and Anna talk to Sebatian about crypto use cases in Latin America, his thoughts on whether other countries would follow El Salvador’s lead and accept bitcoin as money, and what Latin American nations should do about bitcoin.

Sebastian Serrano’s Twitter handle: @sserrano44

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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Kevin Worth discusses Consensus 2023, the state of the industry and how vital crypto media is to the future of money.

It’s day one of Consensus 2023. Who’s here? What are the most important conversations underway?

Kevin Worth and Jared Schwartz, executive producer of podcasts, assess the macro crypto environment and how it impacts discussions at the conference.

Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. The built-in Brave Wallet is your secure passport to Web3. It supports over 100 chains, fiat purchases, swaps, NFTs, and even connects with other wallets and DApps. All right in your browser. No risky extensions, no spoofing. Learn more at brave.com/wallet.

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Self-proclaimed bitcoin maximalist Phil Snyder drops by the CoinDesk Studio in the Austin Convention Center.

University of Houston Professor Phil Snyder teaches a class about bitcoin. Of note, the title of the course doesn’t have the word “bitcoin” in it. CoinDesk podcast producer Rob Mitchell talks to Phil about the class and bitcoin maximalism, but not without interruption from some unexpected guests.

Consensus 2022 ignited hard-hitting conversations about how crypto technologies and communities are remaking the worlds of finance, investing, culture, entertainment, marketing, governance and more.

Check back on CoinDesk Podcasts to hear live shows like “Money Reimagined,” “The Breakdown,” “Opinionated” and more recorded at the event, plus bonus episodes from the most exciting panels over the weekend. This episode was edited by Jonas Huck and Rob Mitchell, and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Photo: Frank Stevens.

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This episode is sponsored by Brave. 

We’re coming to you from the Brave Podcast Studio at Consensus 2023. Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. It has everything you need to stay safe online. Check them out at brave.com.

'Consensus Conversations' host  Michele Musso talks with Kristen Potocki, Solutions Engineer at Arculus, and Cider Lyons, Director of Brand also at Arculus, to describe the growth of women in the industry and how they have been able to create security, convenience, and comfort at Arculus.

Links:

 https://www.getarculus.com/ 

Introduction

Arculus the hardware wallet that stores private keys.

Arculus’s current products. (4:01)

Tap-to-authorize. (7:33)

Looking for true partners.  (9:51)

Advice for women in the space.

The History of Arculus

Getting more women involved in the space. (17:07)

The importance of women in business. (18:37)

How to get people to use Arculus. (22:03)

From our sponsor:

Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. The built-in Brave Wallet is your secure passport to Web3. It supports over 100 chains, fiat purchases, swaps, NFTs, and even connects with other wallets and DApps. All right in your browser. No risky extensions, no spoofing. Learn more at brave.com/wallet.

This Episode of Consensus Conversations has been produced by senior producer Michele Musso, edited by Ryan Huntington and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Music is Get Down” by Elision and  Image credit: Kevin Ross.

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This week on “Opinionated,” we sit down with David Z. Morris, CoinDesk’s chief insights columnist. 

DZM gives us the highlights and lowlights from 2021, and looks ahead to 2022. 

His highlight? El Salvador. 

“For me, the bitcoin policy in El Salvador was the landmark moment of the year,” he says. 

El Salvador has been buying bitcoin at a rapid clip, attracting bitcoin entrepreneurs. It has issued a “Bitcoin Bond” that’s available to nationals through the Chivo bitcoin wallet. 

This points to how bitcoin may point to an opportunity for indebted nations that are often excluded from traditional credit markets to find new ways to grow. 

“It potentially gets El Salvador and other countries out of the yoke of the [International Monetary Fund] and World Bank, which maybe do some good work but by and large have not been great actors over the last 30 years,” Morris said.

DZM’s lowlight?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the man who needs no introduction. 

“Elon Musk has to be top of that list of things that annoyed me this year. He’s a guy with a ton of influence who decided he was curious about crypto and didn’t want to bother learning anything about it, and then came in and created a lot of disruption in the market and confused a lot of people. 

“I don’t think there’s anywhere to go for his reputation other than down from here,” Morris said. 

“You’ve got to be not just nuts but somewhere on the not-caring-about-other-people spectrum to have a million of followers and tweet #baby doge with no context or explanation or consideration of how people are going to respond to that.” 

“He’s financially abusing people who support him and it’s irresponsible. He’s been fined by the [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] before in reference to tweets about his own company. So imagine how responsible he’s going to act when he’s giving financial advice when he's talking about things he’s not responsible for.”

Morris also looked ahead to 2022, offering three predictions. Top of the list:wars between the likes of layer 1 (base) chains Avalanche and Solana and longer-standing chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

“Given the issue with fees that Ethereum has had, it became a real opportunity for people to stand up new layer 1s that have had genuine adoption,” Morris said. 

Listen in for more insights from David Morris and “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova. 

Articles mentioned in this podcast:

David Z. Morris: Behind the Scenes of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Bond With the Man Who Designed It

David Z. Morris: CoinDesk Most Influential 2021: Jack Mallers

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“I think getting smart on crypto is one of the biggest business development opportunities for advisers of the next handful of years.”

Joining “On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross is Matt Hougan, CIO of crypto asset manager Bitwise. Hougan and Ross discuss Bitwise and ETF Trend’s joint benchmark survey of adviser attitudes towards the crypto asset class. The report surveyed over 600 advisers and revealed key indicators of the Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) industry’s perceptions of crypto.

How many advisers have personal crypto holdings? Why is there a discrepancy between advisers’ personal holdings and client allocations in crypto? What factors are holding advisers and investors back?

Adviser engagement with crypto assets is on the rise, but client involvement is lagging behind. Continued education is key to relieving concerns on regulation, volatility and more surrounding crypto.

Retail and institutional investors alike have a significant presence in crypto. Will 2022 finally be the year the RIA industry joins them?

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our Theme song is “Walk With Swag.”

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This episode is sponsored by EY.

The crypto community is faced with the challenge of scalability. Can we build a blockchain that is secure, permissionless and scalable? And what needs to happen in order for people all over the world to start using it easily? 

The answer to the first question is still up for debate. There are many different solutions being proposed, but no clear consensus has emerged. The second question is easier to answer. In order for blockchain to be adopted on a mass scale, it needs to be easy to use. This means building user-friendly interfaces and simplifying the process of buying, selling and exchanging blockchain-based assets. It also requires increasing the efficiency of blockchain networks so that they can handle large numbers of transactions without slowing down. These are daunting challenges, but if the blockchain is going to achieve its full potential, they must be conquered.

Join "Money Reimagined'' host Michael Casey as he discusses these issues with Alex Zinder, the global head of  Ledger Enterprise, and Dr. Naveen Singh, the CEO of Inery. They'll discuss Ledger's Nano series of hardware wallets, which allow users to keep their tokens safe in their hands, and Inery's blockchain protocol, which helps manage both a decentralized storage network and a decentralized database. They'll also talk about how these technologies can help make blockchain more user-friendly as they also dive deeper into the core elements of security, decentralization and efficiency. 

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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.

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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin. 

This week and next we’re taking a year-end holiday from new episodes of “Money Reimagined.” Instead, we’re serving up a couple of our favorites from this year. 

This week’s pick was Sheila Warren’s: the Haiti episode from May 21. 

That’s when Sheila and co-host Michael Casey were joined by Jerry Tardieu, a Haitian author, entrepreneur and politician who represents Petion-ville in the Chamber of Deputies, and by Daniele Jean-Pierre, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Zimbali networks, which delivers smart-ledger solutions for the decentralized economy.

The pair walked us through Haiti’s history to show how a shameful, century-long legacy of a slavery-era debt continues to be a burden for the country. The debt, imposed by France to punish Haiti’s citizens for freeing themselves from their slave masters in a rebellion that won their independence in 1804, later became a U.S.-owned asset serviced by a bank that would become Citibank. In that sense, this long-standing problem is directly related to the issue of Wall Street’s power and dominance in the age of dollar hegemony, a power that is challenged, in theory, by cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The discussion then turns to what solutions, technological or otherwise, might exist to create a system that empowers people rather than leaves them dependent on charity and foreign aid, with all the strings that come attached to that. 

It’s the kind of episode that reminds us why the ideas behind crypto and blockchain matter. 

This episode was produced, edited and announced by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme song is "Father Christmas" by Cody Martin.

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.

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KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.

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Raoul Pal, CEO of RealVision and influential global macro investor, found himself in the middle of this fight recently after he tweeted to bitcoiners that KYC is in their interest because it will bring institutional money into the asset and boost its value. As someone with an account bearing the name SexyWebCamPro100x noted in one of more than 700 replies to that remark, the tweet begged for a meme of someone kicking a hornet’s nest.

Pal is an influential thinker about Bitcoin’s place in the future financial system. So we invited him onto this week’s Money Reimagined podcast to discuss his brawl with Crypto Twitter. For balance, we also invited CoinDesk columnist Jill Carlson, who, among other roles, is a founder of the Open Money Initiative, which focuses on boosting financial access and economic freedom for underserved communities. 

Pal offered a nuanced explanation of his position. He said while his point was partly about allowing both bitcoin HODLers and institutions to “get rich,” it was also that for the Bitcoin system to be a transformative force it needs the “network effect” of more money coming into the space, which in turn requires institution-friendly regulation. 

“For people to realize their ambitions that it’s a stateless money … for it to be adopted by people who live within the confines of a sovereign state, unfortunately it will have to be regulated and there’s almost nothing we can do about it,” Pal said.

Some might see a contradiction: for Bitcoin to realize its power as a “stateless” network, the state must exercise more control over it. But Pal’s point is about sequencing. He says we need to first go through a process of official accommodation within the existing system to advance Bitcoin’s journey along “Metcalfe’s Law.” Once it becomes a ubiquitous network, then it is in a position to properly challenge that system. 

Indeed, as Carlson pointed out, the positive thing, for those who believe in Bitcoin’s disruptive potential, is that “you’re not going to implement KYC and AML at the protocol level.” Since “there is nothing inherent to Bitcoin that can be regulated, enforced or controlled in that way,“ it can at that level always resist official coercion. 

But she also worried that the ever-growing encroachment of compliance requirements on applications built on top of that protocol impedes access to it among marginalized and financially excluded people. 

Carlson cited how LocalBitcoins, a peer-to-peer exchange network that was once a “gateway to economic freedom” in places that impose capital controls and other forms of monetary repression, has “increasingly come under scrutiny and has to institute more and more KYC and AML standards and protocols. She added, “That’s problematic where we are talking about people who don’t have any identity or are unbanked and are refugees and so forth.”

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington discuss the future of validator rewards post-merge to proof-of-stake (PoS) and the significance of the Steklo test network launch. 

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

Currently, if you’re staking on Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum’s parallel PoS network, your operations are earning you a roughly 8% annual percentage return (APR). 

But once Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 merge, validators stand to earn more than triple this amount. 

“It looks like around 25% per annum is the expected initial total annual return for [validators]. So on your 32 ether, you’ll be earning about eight ether per year, on average,” said Edgington. 

The reason why is because a merge to Eth 2.0 will mean all transactions and smart-contract operations on Ethereum are processed by validators instead of Ethereum miners. This means validators will begin earning extra rewards from users and decentralized applications (dapps) in the form of transaction fees. 

Prominent Ethereum community members such as Ethereum Foundation’s Tim Beiko and Trenton Van Epps have cautioned miners about planning operations beyond the end of 2021. 

“To all Ethereum miners: Plan conservatively for an end to mining EOY 2021,” said Van Epps in a tweet. 

Testing is ongoing for Ethereum’s merge to PoS. Last Friday, April 30, developers launched the first multi-client test network for this upgrade, dubbed “Steklo.” 

Steklo “was only up for a day. That was pre-planned. It wasn’t supposed to be a test network that would be up and running for weeks a time,” said Kim. 

For the few hours it was functional, Steklo faced a number of issues and errors. 

For the complete commentary on the troubles the network faced and what developers learned from their first major attempt at modelling the merge of Ethereum and Eth 2.0, listen to the full podcast episode with Edgington and Kim. 

Links mentioned in this podcast: 

• What’s New In Eth2 (www.eth2.news)   
• Valid Points (https://www.coindesk.com/newsletter/valid-points)   

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InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io.

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In this special episode of “CoinDesk Reports,” Managing Editor of Podcasts Adam B. Levine took to Clubhouse, the audio-only social media platform, for hot takes and quick reactions from crypto enthusiasts. What he found was, well, a lot of confusion around why an image on the internet that anyone can see for free would be worth more than a 62-bedroom mansion in New Zealand, and frankly, most anything you might want to buy.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week’s episode, we go to Ireland. 

“Money Reimagined” co-hosts Sheila Warren and Michael J. Casey are joined by Michael O’Sullivan, the author of “The Levelling,” which describes the post-globalization era, and Lory Kehoe, director, Digital Assets & Blockchain at BNY Mellon and the founder of Blockchain Ireland.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

The topic, nominally, is the Biden Administration's proposal to harmonize international tax rates and Ireland’s resistance to that. 

What does this have to do with crypto? A lot, it turns out. 

A common concern among regulators of cryptocurrencies is that a lack of international harmony across jurisdictions creates “regulatory arbitrage” for developers of what is a global, borderless 24/7 technology and market. 

The idea, flagged by Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler in his impactful speech this week, is that if there’s no consistency in rules around the world, crypto businesses will pick and choose where they base their operations and tend toward the most lax regulatory regime. Regulators like Gensler fear this fosters a race to the bottom, opening the door for criminals and the worst actors to find their way in.

Makes sense, right? 

But there’s another side to the story about the policy variance around the world. That is, it allows smaller countries to find opportunities they might not otherwise have to attract international investors and to build their own vibrant domestic economies on the back of that. 

As we learn from Sullivan and Kehoe, Ireland’s use of competitively low corporate tax rates had a sweeping impact on the Irish economy that went far beyond multinationals setting up headquarters there. It was the spark that generated a vibrant ecosystem of innovation, a holistic growth machine that continues to underpin Ireland’s decades-long economic expansion. 

With many in Ireland looking to create a crypto-friendly regulatory framework to encourage innovation in digital assets and fintech, that experience poses real questions about how far governments should go toward harmonizing their rules.

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Unique One Network is an interoperable platform for DeFi-enabled NFT marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross-chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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Image credit: Lucas Bischoff/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by CoinDesk

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington are joined by Flashbots researcher Alex Obadia to discuss the noble yet futile fight to vanquish Miner/Maximal Extrable Value (MEV) on Ethereum. 

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network and Mimo.

MEV is the additional rewards earned by miners as a direct result of their ability to reorder, censor or insert transactions into a block. Since November 2020, Flashbots has created research and built software to assess the impacts of MEV on the network, its users and decentralized applications (dapps). 

The research shows, according to Obadia, that MEV cannot be stopped fully. 

“At Flashbots we definitely believe that MEV should be mitigated, but we also believe that it can't be fully mitigated down to zero,” said Obadia. 

There will always be financial incentives for miners to rearrange transactions within a block due to the auditability and permissionless nature of decentralized blockchains like Ethereum. 

In efforts to mitigate the negative impact of MEV on users, Flashbots created a separate channel for transaction and block ordering earlier this year known as Flashbots Auction. 

Roughly 85% of Ethereum mining computational power, also called hash power, now uses Flashbots Auction to extract MEV rewards. Obadia described Flashbots Auction as a “communication channel between Ethereum users and miners, where they can express their preference over transaction ordering in a more granular way than simply by upping their gas price.” 

While it is difficult to measure the precise impact of the channel on reducing high fees on Ethereum, Edgington asserts that the introduction of Flashbots Auction has been working positively. 

“We can see that gas prices are much better than they were two, three months ago. It seems like Flashbots is working in that sense,” said Edgington. 

Looking ahead, Obadia and his team are figuring out ways to decentralize Flashbots Auction and create mechanisms within it to distribute MEV rewards in a “democratic” way. 

To learn more about Obadia’s work, listen to the full episode of Mapping Out Eth 2.0. 

Links:

Ethereum Community Conference Panel Recordings - https://ethcc.interspace.chat/

Flash Boys 2.0 Paper - https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.05234  

Flashbots Data Dashboard - https://dashboard.flashbots.net/network

Vitalik Buterin’s Proposal on Fee Market Designs to Mitigate MEV - https://ethresear.ch/t/proposer-block-builder-separation-friendly-fee-market-designs/9725

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.

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Art Blocks CEO Erick Calderon has turned generative NFT squiggles into a digital art behemoth. This week on “Opinionated,” we speak with “Snowfro” about the artists whose algorithms power one of the hottest corners of the metaverse. Their NFT sales recently helped Art Blocks raise $6 million from equity investors, Snowfro told “Opinionated.”

Ben and Danny (Anna’s out this week) sort through the term sheets to find what makes Art Blocks tick. Their conversation begins with its cap table. Galaxy’s an investor; so is FlamingoDAO, the crypto-native community of NFT investors. Believe it or not, the DAO apes into equity rounds, too. 

Snowfro helps demystify the philosophy underpinning the digital art scene. He doesn’t define success by making it to the MoMA – though that would be cool, he admits – or by billion-dollar transaction volumes – a milestone Art Blocks already crossed. He’s more interested in providing an outlet for really cool and unique art.

Speaking from his home in Houston, Snowfro walks “Opinionated” through his entrepreneurial history, which began with a college snow cone stand and evolved into an artisanal tile import business. His NFT side-hustle, Art Blocks, is less than a year old. And it’s not quite a side-hustle anymore. 

This episode  is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our Theme Music is by Elision.

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“Onramp does write three things: education, access and tools. ‘E.A.T.,’ we help the RIA space eat.”

In this second part of “On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross’ state of the union episode, Ross explains how Onramp aims to help registered investment advisors (RIAs) integrate crypto into their services by providing education, access and tools. 

As crypto as an investment class quickly becomes too big to ignore, advisers need to understand how the introduction of crypto alters the core four topics that RIAs need to keep in mind: risk tolerance, investor policy statements, financial planning and estate planning.

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our Theme song is Walk With Swag with an added tune by Sam Barsh.

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“I don't think you're going to replace the stock market with the blockchain just because it's better. I think they can coexist. Take all the benefits that you have from blockchain and figure out a way to adapt it."  

Jaime Rogozinski is the founder and ousted chief of Reddit’s infamous trading community: WallStreetBets. He spent years watching crypto from the sidelines as a die-hard “stonks only” investor. This week on “Opinionated,” he tells Ben, Danny and Anna how he finally came around.

Now, Jaime is playing a leading role in WSBDapp.com, a project he says mixes global equities, smart contracts and borderless finance. The idea is to give investors a crypto token whose value is linked to trades they might not otherwise make. Jaime says it’s an innovative evolution of TradFi and DeFi.

The project is in its early stages, but the gang still has plenty of questions for Jaime. For example: Why would regulators allow tokenized stocks? How do tokenized ETPs differ from ETFs? Is this really going to be a boon for retail investors? 

Listen to this week of “Opinionated” to find out. 

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. 

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A few weeks ago, the non-fungible token (NFT) world saw one of the first blockchain art heists, with several users seeing their marketplace accounts taken over and their valuables stolen. In this special episode of “CoinDesk Reports,” Managing Editor Adam B. Levine digs into the thorny issue of not just what can but what should be done in these situations.

This episode is sponsored by Interpop.io

This time we speak with Marguerite deCourcelle, CEO of Blockade Games, the creator of Neon District; and William Quigley, CEO of WAX, a blockchain designed specifically for NFTs. They help us understand the ground truth about blockchain collectibles and how that both helps and hurts when things go wrong. 

Later, we hear from Alex Salnikov, a co-founder of Rarible, for a different perspective on where mass adoption is pushing the still-nascent technology. Oh, and there's at least a sort-of happy ending, too, for the victims in our tale. 

As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Have something to say? Send us an email at podcasts@coindesk.com.

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InterPop is building the architecture of an entirely new landscape of fandom using technology built on the Tezos blockchain to drive their vision. Visit hellointerpop.io to learn more.

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Join Michael Casey & Sheila Warren as they speak with Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO of AZA Finance and Sebastian Serrano, CEO of Ripio for a discussion on the past, present and future of bitcoin and stablecoins in Africa and South America.

Bitcoin, Stablecoins and International Adoption

This week’s accompanying Money Reimagined podcast episode looks at the adoption of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins in emerging markets, which over the past year has seen real signs of life. Is this finally the moment to realize one of the great hopes of this technology: to enable financial empowerment in developing countries where traditional finance is constrained? 

To explore that question, my co-host Sheila Warren and I are joined by Elizabeth Rossiello, the founder and CEO of AZA, which has for seven years been developing digital payment solutions in African markets, and Sebastian Serrano, the founder and CEO of Ripio, which has been doing similar work in Latin America for more or less the same amount of time.

Photo by Captureson Photography on Unsplash modified by CoinDesk

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OneCoin was the promise of a hot new cryptocurrency that was sold to millions of people across hundreds of countries under a multilevel marketing strategy. But when the founder disappeared, the pyramid scheme collapsed, and victims were left with empty pockets.

Jamie Bartlett joins “Opinionated” with hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova to discuss his new book “The Missing Cryptoqueen: The Billion Dollar Cryptocurrency Con and the Woman Who Got Away with It.” The group reflects on the scam’s impact in the early days of crypto and how the fear of missing out contributed to a multibillion-dollar scam.

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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What impact will crypto have on the nature of organizations? Will experiments in crypto’s governance lab lead to lasting trends in how companies are orchestrated?

This week on the “Opinionated” podcast we discussed this big topic with Jeff Dorman, the chief investment officer at Arca, a crypto hedge fund.

Dorman, a CoinDesk columnist, argues that “community tokens” (like LINK or SUSHI) will inevitably outpace “VC tokens” (like COMP, ATOM) because of the preferable incentives at play.

And he believes the trend of community ownership in crypto will meld with the wider shift towards companies doing right by a range of stakeholders as well as just their shareholders.

Dorman contrasts a decentralized finance (DeFi) project like Uniswap with Airbnb and DoorDash, which are now heading for initial public offerings. The former rewards liquidity providers (and soon token holders) who share in the system’s success. The latter companies were built on the work of homeowners and delivery guys, but all the gains from a public listing will go to stock holders.

“With digital assets, you’re starting to democratize access to these companies and you’re starting to spread out income inequality,” he says.

Incentives are key to make more democratic governance work. “Nobody cares about governance until it affects their bottom line. Twitter isn’t going to change its governance for the sake of ideology. If there’s governance for the sake of cash flows, that is another story.”

A sharp thinker with two decades of investing experience, Dorman had plenty of insights in our conversation covering bitcoin, nonfungible tokens (NFT) and Twitter in the wake of the Capitol attack this week.

Check out the episode now and read Dorman’s CoinDesk columns here.

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This episode is sponsored by Near.

The Bermuda government has taken an interesting approach to encourage the development of crypto, blockchain, and digital assets within the territory.

The insurance sector is one area where Bermuda seems well-positioned to dominate crypto finance and its territory is one of the largest insurance and reinsurance hubs in the world.

Does its model set the stage for other countries in the quest for viable insurance?

On this episode of “Money Reimagined” host Michael Casey is at the Bermuda Tech Summit in Bermuda and is joined by his co-host  Sheila Warren to speak with Joseph Ziolkowski the CEO of Relm. Relm describes itself as the leading global insurer for companies operating in new and emerging business sectors, such as digital asset/web3, cannabis, and alternative therapeutics. 

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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org. 

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This week, “Opinionated” co-hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Steven E. Russell, Esq., portfolio manager for Emerald Banking and Finance Fund.

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

Emerald is an asset manager that previously focused on community banks but, unlike many of its peers, could not stay away from the lucrative business of crypto. Since 2019, Emerald has been investing in companies serving the crypto industry, including Silvergate Bank, Galaxy Digital and Grayscale’s ether and bitcoin trusts. (Grayscale is a CoinDesk sister company.)

This seemingly progressive move got Emerald downgraded by the professional investment analytics source Morningstar from Bronze to Neutral. “Emerald Banking & Finance has moved outside its circle of competence,” Morningstar analyst Eric Schultz wrote, adding that “a big shift into cryptocurrencies in late 2020 and early 2021 calls the discipline of the approach into question.”

Steven E. Russell, however, doesn’t think he moved anywhere beyond his competence: He got into crypto in 2017 by starting with bitcoin, then adding ether and getting into altcoins. “Now I look back and think, well, that was really stupid,” he says of some of his altcoin investments.

However, the experience demonstrated that crypto is the future not only of investments but of financial services as a whole, Russell believes. Now that Emerald is in crypto, more and more clients and even rival funds are approaching Russell asking about that “crypto thing,” what is DOGE, etc. 

Russell walks us through his thinking on how the capital markets will have to evolve because of the impact of crypto. “We think [decentralized finance] is really going to change the industry,” Russell said. Listen to Ben, Anna and Danny discuss Emerald’s approach to crypto investments and its vision of asset management of the future.

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InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

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The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

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This episode is sponsored by Roofstock onChain

This is a story of how something can appear to be what it is not. 

It’s a tale of a jarring contrast between the image the world had of Sam Bankman-Fried before FTX’s meltdown pushed the crypto world into a nauseating tailspin and the reality of a wildly mismanaged multibillion-dollar empire with what Bankman-Fried’s appointed successor described as an “unprecedented” failure of accounting, oversight and discipline. 

Before Ian Allison’s Nov. 2 CoinDesk scoop on FTX sister company Alameda Research’s suspect balance sheet, Bankman-Fried was seen as a philanthropic, well-connected, celebrity-hobnobbing, marketing-savvy leader, a wunderkind who made crypto respectable. Two weeks later, he is viewed as a laughing stock, a suspected criminal, an irresponsible, wildly underqualified, selfish child who has destroyed the livelihoods of tens of thousands. Wow. What a difference two weeks make!

In this episode of Money Reimagined, host Michael Casey chats with two CoinDesk colleagues who’ve delved deeply into the SBF story: Deputy Managing Editor for Companies coverage Tracy Wang and Managing Editor for Global Policy and Regulation, Nikhilesh De. Together they dig into how the erstwhile FTX CEO could have misled the world to such a degree. 

They explore Bankman-Fried’s journey, how it begins with his adherence to the principles of effective altruism, a stated desire to get as rich as possible to do maximum good, and how it all seems to fall apart as FTX gets bigger. They discuss how his philanthropy, political donations, and marketing efforts hid the dark reality underneath and delve into what needs to happen, at the community level and in regulation, to protect people falling from such distortions in the future. 

See also:  Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda’s Balance Sheet

Sam Bankman-Fried's Frequent Commenting Draws Icy Response From FTX's Restructuring Chief

FTX Employees Worldwide Learned of Bankruptcy Along With the Public

The FTX Collapse Looks an Awful Lot Like Enron

The Long Arm of FTX

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer, Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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Roofstock onChain allows you to instantly transfer ownership of real-world homes using standard NFT smart contracts. Buy and sell homes with one-click, pay with crypto, and access DeFi lending options. Find our web3 homes at onchain.roofstock.com or your favorite NFT marketplace.

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Details on the SEC’s million-dollar fine for the influencer’s promotion of a token without disclosing payment.

Celebrities regularly accept promotional deals, hyping products from swimsuits to weight loss tea on social media to their hordes of followers. Trouble arrived when a crypto token deemed by regulators a security entered the mix.

“Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova are joined by writer and Assistant Opinion Editor Daniel Kuhn to dissect the bull market trend of celebrity crypto endorsements, and particularly Kim Kardashian’s shilling of the ethereumMax token. 

Kardashian was fined $1.26 million this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for her promotion of a security without disclosing the payment she received in return. Was Kardashian an unlucky scapegoat, or is this penalty a harbinger of broader enforcement action to come?

See also:

• What Is EthereumMax? Inside the Crypto Kim Kardashian Lost $1.2M Promoting 
• Kim Kardashian, EthereumMax and the SEC's Publicity Grab

I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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For the first time ever, financial advisers are at a disadvantage. That is because their clients may know more about bitcoin and crypto assets than they do.

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

In such a competitive and novel market, financial advisers must stay informed. With the volatility of bitcoin, financial advisers can look at data for answers, and so they should truly appreciate “Riskalyze” technology, which is a financial risk rate platform that every adviser should use to help their clients.

In this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross speaks with Aaron Klein, the CEO of Riskalyze. Klein, addresses the ‘pressure shift’ against advisors from institutional to client base through crypto currency as an asset class. Riskalyze is a financial risk rate platform that every financial adviser has or should have heard of and would benefit from.

Ross and Klein discuss the future of financial planning and the importance of using such technology to present the pros and cons of crypto investments. Advisers not only need information, but they also need to be their client’s superhero. Financial advisers have the power to make a difference in the future of money and what investments will yield as a result. That is priceless, and financial advisers must employ the newest technology to get the best possible outcomes for their clients.

Aaron Klein is the co-founder and CEO at Riskalyze. He led the company to twice being named one of the world’s top 10 most innovative companies in finance by Fast Company Magazine. Aaron has served as a trustee at Sierra College, and Investment News has honored him as one of the industry’s top 40 Under 40 executives.

Tyrone Ross is the CEO of OnRamp Invest, founder of 401STC, a storytelling consultancy. He is a graduate of Seton Hall University, and was named a Top 10 Adviser of 2019 set to change the industry by Wealthmanagement.com 

A message from Tyrone:

The greatest number of people living in poverty are children, we need to change that. If you can, get involved and give back to NoKidHungry.org. Love and Light. I appreciate you!

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InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io.

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The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

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As we mentioned last week, this is part two of our two-part series of “Blockchain meet ESG,” an exploration of the challenges and opportunities that confront the crypto and blockchain communities as investors and businesses increasingly demand compliance with environmental, sustainability and governance objectives. This episode was recorded live Tuesday, May 25 2021 at Consensus 2021.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.

In this second episode, our guests address subtleties and niches within environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG). Increasingly, blockchain technologies are employed in a variety of forms across the world to combat specific areas within ESG. These range from indigenous resource allocation and tracking to building sustainable supply chains from the ground up and applying big data to consumer water conservation. And that’s just a taste of what’s underway. At the same time, the blockchain back end’s impact on ESG is being refined, with initiatives angling to avoid worst-case scenarios of innovation, accurately quantify bitcoin energy consumption and reinforce incentives for using clean energy sources.

This time we’ll hear from a diverse array of fascinating guests:

 Julius Akinyemi, founder and CEO of UWINCorp, and Lucía Gallardo, founder and CEO of Emerge, discuss blockchain solutions for free and fair trade. The two companies both focus on resource assessment. UWINCorp encodes the data and location of indigenous plants onto the blockchain, while Emerge is building an agricultural resource database.

Tanya Stephens, senior innovation leader at Procter & Gamble, addresses ways to track sustainability through supply chains and a consumer-focused water conservation coalition. The “50L Home” initiative believes that if consumers have the right data at the right time, they will be able to reduce their water consumption to only 50 liters a day.

Austin Hill, founder of Brudder Adventures and the first CEO of Blockstream, explains the “Vulnerable World Hypothesis,” which investigates how current innovations could be abused or misused in the future. Though “Vulnerable World” predicts a dim future, Hill outlines several strategies to avoid the worst-case scenarios.

Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of Coinshares, and Anton Dek, research associate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, outline methods for quantifying bitcoin’s energy consumption and interpret recent figures. A trend of co-locating mining facilities and renewable energy plants is placing decentralized, smaller-scale facilities on the grid.

Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry (Foundry is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk), and Jesse Morris, chief commercial officer of the Energy Web Foundation, present the miner’s perspective on the incentives of clean energy sources.

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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In this inaugural episode, CoinDesk Podcasts Editor Adam B. Levine previews upcoming shows from the editorial team at CoinDesk.com.

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The virtual event invest: ethereum economy takes place on Wednesday, Oct. 14. CoinDesk’s Christine Kim spoke to colleagues Michael J. Casey and Aaron Stanley about the most compelling and under-discussed topics about Ethereum 2.0 headlining next week’s conference.  

From the dynamics of staking to the architecture of sharding, there haven’t been many topics Ethereum 2.0 core developers have shied away from discussing over the past five weeks on “Developer Perspectives: Ethereum 2.0.” 

See also: 3 Things You Should Know Before Staking on Ethereum 2.0

Each discussion, however, has sparked new questions about the ramifications of Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake on the crypto markets and the broader blockchain industry. 

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions about how the markets are going to behave,” said Casey, CoinDesk’s chief content officer. “Do we end up with a split, [with] two versions of ethereum or at least two tokens that trade differently in the marketplace?”

Casey added that financial engineers in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space will likely seek to unlock the liquidity of staked ETH on Ethereum 2.0 before token transfers are officially enabled on the network. What new DeFi products are created, their attributes and, most important, their impact on the value of ETH remain to be determined. 

Along with lingering questions over how the markets will react to the launch of Ethereum 2.0, there’s also uncertainty over how the launch will affect the competitive landscape for dapp users and dapp developers in the crypto industry. 

“What does the multi-chain future look like?” asked Stanley, CoinDesk’s managing director of events content. “If Eth 2.0 succeeds, … what does that mean for all these other [smart contract] chains out there? Are they going to go away or just cease to exist? I don’t think that’s the case.”

With the recent popularity around yield farming and liquidity mining on Ethereum, Stanley also questioned what the real incentives are for users holding large amounts of ETH, upwards of $11,000 worth, to stake on Ethereum 2.0 when they could earn “100x returns farming ‘hotdog coin’ or whatever the meme coin of the day is.”

See also: Yearn, YAM and the Rise of Crypto’s ‘Weird DeFi’ Moment

These questions are pertinent to the discussions happening next Wednesday at invest: ethereum economy. Keynote speakers headlining the virtual conference are founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin and U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Heath P. Tarbert. To register for the event, click here. 

CoinDesk Research has recently published an updated report about the launch of Ethereum 2.0, as well as recent developments on the existing Ethereum blockchain. Download it for free on the CoinDesk Research Hub.

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This episode is sponsored by Brave. 

We’re coming to you from the Brave Podcast Studio at Consensus 2023. Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. It has everything you need to stay safe online. Check them out at brave.com.

During the third day of Consensus 2023, Michele Musso, senior producer of podcasts at CoinDesk, spoke with Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) about the current state of crypto regulation and innovation, the national security risks associated with "offshoring" crypto and Gary Gensler's message of resistance.

Additionally, the Senator discusses the importance of diversifying your portfolio with crypto and bitcoin, the devaluation of the U.S. dollar and the influence young people have in this space.

Last year both Senator Lummis and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) introduced landmark legislation to create a regulatory framework for crypto called “The Responsible Financial Innovation Act.” They will reintroduce a revised version with more statutory language.  

See more: 

Read full coverage of Consensus 2023 here

S.4356 - Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act

How the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act (S. 4356) Would Alter

the Crypto Regulatory Landscape

Detailed Discussion: 

Cynthia Lummis Introduction. 0:00

 The financial innovation act, responsible management of crypto assets.

Regulation regulation regulation! 2:15

The status of regulation in the US.

The need to legislate sooner.

Resistance message from Gensler. 4:45

McHenry spoke directly to Gary Gensler.

Gensler did not give a straight answer to McHenry.

Legislation on crypto regulation. 6:24

Playing catch-up ball, providing executive branch guidance.

Working carefully to listen to feedback post-FTX failure.

Intelligence officials have flagged national security risks. 8:08

Adjusting the bill to avoid stifling innovation.

National security risks of crypto.

Staff Accounting Bulletin 121. 9:42

Staff accounting bulletin 121 and how it is impacting the industry.

Custody assets belong to individuals.

Should I buy cryptocurrency in 2023? 11:40

Inflation is eating into the value of the U.S. dollar.

Diversified asset allocation.

The importance of diversifying your portfolio. 13:41

Have a diverse set of assets in retirement.

Get advice from knowledgeable young people.

How did the Senator become interested in Bitcoin? 15:27

Senator Lummis purchases Bitcoin.

The Satoshi roundtable in Cancun.

Elevating knowledge and discussion in the US Senate.

The need for innovation in digital assets.

 Close Out - Thank You CoinDesk! 

From our sponsor:

Brave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. The built-in Brave Wallet is your secure passport to Web3. It supports over 100 chains, fiat purchases, swaps, NFTs, and even connects with other wallets and DApps. All right in your browser. No risky extensions, no spoofing. Learn more at brave.com/wallet.

This Episode of Consensus Conversations has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Music is Get Down” by Elision and Image credit: Kevin Ross.

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UST, the algorithmic stablecoin created by Terraform Labs, was de-pegged this week from the U.S. dollar.

 UST's price initially dropped from a one-to-one U.S. dollar value to 60 cents and then fell further. The cause of the de-pegging is due to the sell-off in crypto and in financial markets. The price drop in UST highlights the risks associated with cryptocurrencies and their volatility, which further poses the question of when regulators will step in. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had a few remarks concerning the de-pegging and reaffirmed to the world that the Fed is watching. 

Join “Money Reimagined” host Michael Casey  with Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, the lead manager of USDC, a prominent stablecoin backed by dollar-based liquid assets, and CoinDesk technology reporter Sam Kessler as they discuss this complicated issue of how the UST peg system is supposed to work and what really went wrong. 

After UST lost its peg to the U.S. dollar, $1.5 million of bitcoin reserves was used to defend the peg. Is the underlying algorithm sufficient to keep the token at a stable rate of one dollar? What are the alternatives? Are there other models, collateralized models that would be more effective? 

Allaire further explains on how the structure of Circles model may offer more stability and security to investors. 

- Recorded on Tuesday, May 10, 2022.

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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.

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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Gurvais Grigg, global public sector chief technology officer at Chainalysis, a blockchain investigative firm.

Grigg spent 23 years at the FBI, rising from a trainee to assistant director. But this April, he took a career turn and joined a private sector company, which is often helping law enforcement agencies investigate crypto-related crimes. 

In his intro blog post, Grigg said crypto becomes a tool of global economic influence, and it’s important for the U.S. to keep up to speed with the technology, unless it wants rivals like China or Russia to outpace it. But do we think the U.S. is the world’s best possible crypto cop? Gurvais have some ideas to share about this.

2020 and 2021, indeed, became years of a ransomware pandemic, with cybercriminal groups hitting vast numbers of companies in the U.S. and Europe. In response, the U.S. government started a massive campaign against the hackers, or rather, against people and entities who helped those hackers cash out ransom crypto.

Two Russian crypto services have been sanctioned already, the over-the-counter (OTC) trading firm Suex and crypto trading bot Chatex, and another OTC founder, Denis Dubnikov, was arrested in Amsterdam last two weeks ago, allegedly for helping launder proceeds from the Ryuk ransomware attacks. 

Chainalysis has been involved in some of these investigations, and Grigg said he expects there will  be more indictments, sanctions and arrests. Also, there will probably be more ransomware attacks in the future. What is the role of companies like Chainlaysis in all that? 

Listen to Anna, Ben and Danny to talk to Gurvais about all that, and more. 

Gurvais Grigg’s Twitter handle is @gurvais

Mentioned in this episode:

• US Sanctions Enforcer Blacklists a Crypto Exchange for First Time

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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Managing digital assets comes with unique challenges that do not arise in traditional assets. What are the biggest differences, and how can asset managers prepare for them?

On this episode of “On Purpose” with Tyrone Ross, Mikael Johnson of accounting firm KPMG explains the unique aspects of digital assets that directly affect a wealth manager. He addresses some of the findings in KPMG's recent report “Crypto as an Asset Class: What Asset Managers Should Know Before Going Crypto.”

Johnson helps to answer pressing questions for asset managers looking to get into crypto, like how to define appropriate cutoff times and how to vet custodians. What needs to happen in the crypto industry before mass adoption can take place?

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Walk With Swag.”

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Will Foxley and Consensys’ Ben Edgington meet up with Coogan Brennan to discuss solo staking on Ethereum 2.0.

This episode is sponsored by Interpop.io

Coogan Brennan’s passion for training is contagious as he equips new generations of developers with information. Brennan says, “Education has been the North Star for a lot of the work I have done in Ethereum.” He sees the world of crypto as “learner led” and feels that “it’s such a young industry that no-one can claim to be a senior educator or developer.”

Coogan is a prime example of the learner-led culture and he first heard about crypto while running a tailoring business. After years of grappling with the many complexities related to Ethereum, he now works as a trainer at ConsenSys, which is a leading Ethereum development shop.

Join us as we discuss a series of in-depth articles that Coogan wrote about becoming a solo staker on the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain.

This journey into staking required a shift of mindset. We are all familiar with images of the Proof-of-Work server farms. It’s easy to imagine that we would need a similar kind of kit to run an Eth2 staking rig.

We also take the chance to discuss the complexities of working at a company like ConsenSys. Brennan explains a bit more about his work when he says, “to be an employee of ConsenSys is to live with great contradictions”. He sees one of ConsenSys’ great survival strategies as “its ability to fund wild dreamers.”

Finally, we inevitably arrive at our favorite topic, Ethereum governance. Coogan describes Ethereum as a “dynamic, moving, evolving beast.” Does this make it ungovernable?

Coogan is “always urging people to go further and further down the wormhole.” Listen to the full podcast to catch his infectious desire for learning.

Coogan’s articles:

• My Journey to Becoming a Validator on Ethereum 2.0: Part 1, Part 2
• How to Monitor Your Eth2 Validator and Analyze Your P&L
• How To Safely Migrate Your Ethereum 2.0 Validator Client

Twitter handles:

• ConsenSys Academy: @ConsenSysAcad
• Coogan: @BEB_AND_SON
• Will: @wsfoxley
• Ben: @benjaminion_xyz

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Why was the Philippines uniquely primed for the rapid and widespread adoption of Axie Infinity and other crypto opportunities?

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.

Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Maoi Arroyo, serial entrepreneur and founder of Ignite Impact Fund, the first fund focused on eradicating income and access poverty in the Philippines, and Leah Callon-Butler, director of Emfarsis and screenwriter of the recent “Play to Earn” documentary. Maoi and Callon-Butler bring a depth of understanding of the economic, political and social context of the Philippines and the recent Axie Infinity phenomenon that swept the nation.

The island nation is heavily dependent on its Overseas Filipino Workers, whose U.S.-based workers sent a combined $12 billion dollars in cash remittances back in 2020 alone. The country also faces extensive corruption dating back to the Spanish colonial administration. The low trust of Filipinos in the national economy have pushed them to innovate new ways to interact with money.

Over the summer, the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity exploded in popularity, with a significant portion of its user base hailing from the Philippines. Many Filipinos recognized the opportunities abound within the play to earn economy, and more broadly with digital payment solutions and blockchain technology. What will this ambitious, mobile-native population adopt next?

This episode was produced by Michele Musso and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas. This episode was announced by Adam B. Levine with additional support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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On Friday morning as the OKEx withdrawal-freeze story twisted and turned, CoinDesk's editors had an off-the-cuff discussion about the fundamental realities and unique challenges of security for even the largest exchanges.

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This week on “Opinionated,” the gang dives deep into some big news out of Russia, looks at the issue of rampant intellectual-property theft with NFTs and examines Vitalik Buterin’s idea for synthetic wombs. 

(Yes, you read that last one right. The founder of Ethereum thinks babies should be made in Cosmic Cocoons.)

Could Russia ban crypto? That’s a possibility raised by a highly critical Bank of Russia report this week. It said cryptocurrencies are volatile and widely used in illegal activities, such as fraud. The report called for the Kremlin to outlaw mining and issuance, if not the holding of crypto.

Anna Baydakova said banning bitcoin would be a “nightmare” if the West imposes further financial sanctions should Russia invade Ukraine.

Next up, we spoke with Sam Ewen, head of CoinDesk Studios, about an op-ed he wrote this week (“The Balance Between Art and IP Theft in NFT Culture”). Unauthorized NFT projects like MetaBirkins, The Squid NFT and Non-Fungible Olive Gardens have been making thousands of dollars. Ewen expects Web 3 to change the norms around IP online, posing headaches for brands and platforms like OpenSea. 

Finally, the gang unpacked Buterin’s baby pod idea, which he floated as a means of female empowerment:

“Disparities in economic success between men and women are far larger once marriage+children enter the picture. Synthetic wombs would remove the high burden of pregnancy, significantly reducing the inequality,” he wrote on Twitter.

While it might be admirable for a tech leader to care about gender inequality (everyone should care more about that!), the team didn’t rate the idea too highly. It smacks of techno-Utopianism. 

As we wait for pods to arrive, there may be more practical solutions, noted Baydakova. Like, say, paid maternity leave. 

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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This week, “Opinionated” co-hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Aaron Lammer, author of a podcast series about the now-defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX.

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

The QuadrigaCX saga, first broken by our colleague Nik De and still not finished, could be a dark detective novel: Gerald Cotten, a CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, reportedly dies in India, the crypto wallets are empty and his widow inherits a mind-blowing fortune, while users are trying to get their money back in court for years (the case is still ongoing). 

Aaron Lammer, an experienced crypto podcaster, took on a tricky task to tell the QuadrigaCX story to people who might not know about crypto but definitely can learn a thing or two from this thriller story. Aaron told us how he was investigating the QuadrigaCX story and trying to explain the basics of crypto to a non-crypto audience. The first episodes of his show, “Exit Scam,” are now available for listening.

Aaron interviews a very diverse group of people who have insight into what could have happened at QuadrigaCX, from a private detective specializing in fake deaths to Michael Perklin, chief information security officer at ShapeShyft, who knew Gerald Cotten personally. He walks us through what we know and don’t know about QuadrigaCX and its founders, and how the centuries-old history of scams and financial fraud got a new life in crypto. 

Enjoy the conversation, as we did, and definitely check out the podcast, an arresting detective story with elements of Crypto 101 course for everyone. 

Aaron’s Twitter handle is: @aaronlammer. 

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This week on “Money Reimagined,” we reflect back on the “Nixon Shock” of Aug. 15, 1971 - 50 years ago this week – when the dollar was removed from its peg to gold and the world of finance was turned upside down.  

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of a number of books on currencies and the international monetary system, joined Michael Casey and Sheila Warren to discuss the legacy of this moment. Also chiming in was CoinDesk’s managing editor of podcasts, Adam B. Levine. 

When President Richard Nixon made his drastic decision to remove the dollar from its peg to gold, it prompted all other countries to de-peg their currencies from the dollar, thereby ending the Bretton Woods managed exchange rate system that had been in place since 1944. By extension, it kickstarted the era of fiat currencies that we still live in.

The world that emerged out of that move – one in which the supply of currencies was now at the discretion of monetary officials – set the tone for the current challenges of the global financial system and the powerful role that central banks now play. This monetary history also provides vital context for the efforts by bitcoin and cryptocurrency advocates to build an alternative to that system. 

Prasad recognized the disruption that digital currency technology seems poised to bring to the world of money and sees a competition for supremacy emerging. However, he was lukewarm about the utility of bitcoin in that future, in part because he believes the element that most bitcoiners are drawn to – its fixed supply – is more of a bug than a feature. The real risk in the global economy, he says, is a fall in prices, not inflation. To stave off the threat of a self-destructive deflationary spiral, he said, monetary issuers need discretionary power to increase money supply

That set up a healthy debate with Levine, who argued for the superiority of the Bitcoin protocol’s predictable supply function to generate public “trust” over the discretion of central bankers and who claimed that inflation has been severely understated ever since the Nixon Shock.

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington discuss the significance of three events: an Ethereum 2.0 milestone, an Ethereum hard fork upgrade and the public listing of a major cryptocurrency exchange. 

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io, The Sun Exchange.

Beginning with Coinbase’s direct listing on Nasdaq, Kim and Edgington consider whether this watershed moment in the cryptocurrency industry is really something to get excited about. 

“Bitcoin was created to be this peer-to-peer payments network, where you don’t need any financial middlemen; but here’s Coinbase. Everyone is getting so excited and happy [about] Coinbase even though it’s doing the very thing that Bitcoin was created to deal with and get rid of,” Kim said. 

Concerns over centralized actors overshadowing the decentralized purpose of blockchains is also relevant to Ethereum. Ethereum infrastructure provider Infura is an example of a company who has faced criticism in the past for their expanding role as the “gatekeeper” to Ethereum. 

“It’s an interesting spectrum and we’ve only just begun on this journey,” said Edgington. “Only a few million people have interacted with the blockchain, any blockchain, so far, and there are a few billion yet to reach. I think we need to make it as easy as possible from them to do so.” 

Kim and Edgington also discussed the milestone of the Ethereum proof-of-stake network, also called Ethereum 2.0, reaching its one millionth slot. A slot on Eth 2.0 is space for a block containing transactions and user data to be processed and finalized. Every 12 seconds validators, which are the equivalent of miners, can propose a block into a slot and earn rewards. 

“It’s just a number, but it’s a good point to take stock of where we are. [Eth 2.0] has been running for four and a half months now and it’s been totally trouble free. It’s just been incredible,” said Edgington. 

Finally, the two dissect the post mortem of Ethereum’s latest backwards-incompatible system-wide upgrade known as the Berlin hard fork. Everything didn’t go as planned and, as Kim notes, it’ll become increasingly important that things do work as Ethereum releases more ambitious upgrades in future. 

Check out the full podcast episode hosted by Edington and Kim to get all the latest commentary around Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0. 

Links mentioned in this podcast: 

• What’s New In Eth2 (www.eth2.news)   
• Valid Points (https://www.coindesk.com/newsletter/valid-points)   

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In the lore of digital disruption, Eastman Kodak Co.'s downfall is particularly momentous.

Kodak was once one of the world's most powerful companies. But it failed to act on digital cameras and online photo sharing, despite seeing the trends years before. (Kodak engineer Steve Sasson created the first digital camera in 1975.)

It's an apt story to remember now as the digital money revolution rolls ahead at a time of momentous political transition.

On this episode of CoinDesk's Money Reimagined, join Jen Zhu Scott, Executive Chairman of The Commons Project, Tanvi Ratna, CEO of Policy 4.0, along with hosts Michael J. Casey and Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum for this deep-dive into the potential of, and thought behind China's forthcoming DCEP, better known as the digital yuan.

With DCEP, China’s supply chains will become hyper-efficient, giving it a big advantage over other countries’ production sectors. And as those models extend into China’s international One Belt One Road initiative, foreign dependency on its production processes could grow, giving Beijing geopolitical clout. 

Out of this, China will forge financial autonomy. Its digital currency will eventually be interoperable with other tokens and blockchains, allowing its businesses and their foreign trading partners to move money across borders without using dollars as an intermediary. They’ll bypass New York, in other words. 

Solution: Open Money

This won’t happen overnight. But the effect on confidence in the U.S. could arise within the next four years. 

How should Washington react? Christopher Giancarlo, former CFTC chairman and the founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation, is pushing for a digital dollar that would integrate constitutionally enshrined privacy protections, making it more appealing than the digital yuan, which many fear will become a Beijing surveillance tool. 

But will people truly trust the U.S. not to monitor digital dollar transactions? After all, as Jennifer Zhu Scott, chair of the Commons Project, noted in this week’s Money Reimagined podcast, global finance is already subject to a comprehensive U.S.-led system of surveillance.

So, while we’re right to worry about a Chinese “panopticon” ingesting people’s identifying information, that’s not the data threat the U.S. can or should compete with. In the same podcast episode, Policy 4.0 CEO Tanvi Ratna said the bigger issue is how troves of DCEP-generated anonymized data will enable Chinese businesses to extract huge efficiencies and unlock innovation across decentralized economic systems.

There may be a way for the U.S. to compete here. But it will require a radical, disruptive solution. This is an episode you won't want to miss.

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In this episode, Christine Kim and Will Foxley discuss with David Hoffman, the co-founder of Bankless, the market implications of a dual Ethereum blockchain and what new realities staking presents to the long-term value proposition of ether. 

According to Hoffman’s “Ether as a triple-point asset” thesis, Ethereum 2.0 bolsters ether’s value proposition as a capital asset. This is because Eth 2.0 enables staking on the protocol level. 

For all ether holders with a minimum balance of 32 ETH, they can earn an annual percentage return for locking in their crypto assets to the network and becoming a validator. This is a use case for ether on top of its existing functionalities as a form of payment for fees and as a store of value in decentralized finance applications. 

Eth 2.0 strengthens the diverse ways in which ether can be used. However, it also complicates the monetary policy of the Ethereum protocol. Instead of ether issuance being restricted to one blockchain network, the launch of Eth 2.0 has effectively created two parallel networks both issuing ether and driving up the crypto asset’s total supply. 

However, the dual issuance of ether is a temporary state that in the long run will make the Ethereum economy more “sustainable,” according to Hoffman. 

“Ethereum has committed to this early research and development phase in the beginnings of its genesis. That’s the whole entire effort behind Eth 2.0 and that’s why the monetary policy of ether is so jagged and unpredictable because the monetary policy of ether is a tool for Ethereum to reach its goals,” said Hoffman. 

And what are Ethereum’s goals exactly? Listen to the full episode to find out! 

For more weekly insights on Eth 2.0 development, be sure to check out and subscribe to Will Foxley and I’s weekly newsletter, Valid Points. 

Links mentioned in the podcast: 

EthHub Explainer on Ethereum Monetary Policy - 

https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/monetary-policy/ 

Lyn Alden’s blog post - 

https://www.lynalden.com/ethereum-analysis/

Rocket Pool - 

https://www.rocketpool.net

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In this episode, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson discuss the coming crypto taxation in Russia and India, North Korean hackers indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the GameStop story rolling into the U.S. Congress.

Russia is on its way to taxing cryptocurrency transactions. A draft bill on crypto taxation is now in Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, and it has just passed its first round of hearings last week. The bill says Russian taxpayers must declare crypto they receive to their wallets if its overall value reaches 600,000 rubles, or a bit more than US$8,000. 

India is also moving towards crypto taxation. According to a new draft bill, the government is likely to impose a personal income tax on crypto traders and a goods and services tax on trading platforms. So crypto exchanges will have to pay 18 % from the trading fees they earn. 

Around the world, it’s becoming our new reality: you deal with crypto, you tell your government about it. Danny shares personal experiences while Anna shares some fears about the future.

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice went after three North Korean hackers for allegedly stealing over $100 million in cryptocurrency from exchanges, including a handful in the U.S. Prosecutors said North Koreans have become the “world’s leading bank robbers,” using keyboards as weapons instead of guns. As longtime listeners of the pod know, they’re using that crypto to build more sinister weapons: nukes! 

They even used an initial coin offering to raise money! (Not financial advice.)

GameStop goes to Congress: the U.S. lawmakers questioned Reddit and Robinhood CEOs, as well as the redditor Roaring Kitty. Hearings like this might become hits on their own, just as the Facebook hearings did a couple years ago. But should we expect any material changes afterwards? One thing is for sure: Traditional capital markets are aping right into the crypto world insanity.

Did you enjoy the show? We would love to hear what you think. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred service and talk to us directly via email at borderless@coindesk.com.

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A discussion on the future of layer 2 blockchains in a post-Merge era.

Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge, the transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, successfully occurred last week.

“Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson look to the future on this week’s episode with a discussion about the Merge’s impact on decentralization, Ethereum adoption, energy consumption and planned network updates with StarkWare co-founders Eli Ben-Sasson and Uri Kolodny. The guests provide insights from their perspective as longtime developers in the Ethereum ecosystem.

I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Will Foxley, along with Consensys’ Ben Edgington, discuss the latest proposals fast-tracking Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus protocol. 

The promises of Ethereum 2.0 are changing in important ways. 

On Thursday, March 11, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published a blog post detailing how the network’s transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocol to PoS could be executed far more quickly than developers had originally planned. 

“It would leave a lot of loose ends that we’d have to work on and tidy up later, but it’s looking like this [transition] could be months rather than years [away],” said Edgington. 

There are several reasons why a move to PoS in the near term, rather than long term, looks attractive in the eyes of Ethereum developers. First, it would mean the resistance from proponents of the Ethereum miner community towards reductions in block reward through Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 and changes to the network’s consensus algorithm would be short-lived. With a PoS upgrade, miners would effectively be forked from the Ethereum protocol entirely and replaced with other network stakeholders known as “validators.” 

Second, Edgington noted there’s been “a big backlash” about the environmental impact of Ethereum’s PoW algorithm securing the value of several high-profile non-fungible tokens (NFTs). As the value on Ethereum grows through decentralized applications (dapps) and tokens, there is greater pressure to reduce the energy consumption of the underlying protocol and reduce the network’s environmental footprint through a switch to PoS. 

At the same time, there are equally important reasons why a move to PoS in the near term could negatively impact Ethereum. 

First, the process for coming to an agreement about the development roadmap and timeline for Eth 2.0 has been restricted to a comparatively small group of developers and researchers. Moving forward with a transition to PoS now would mean all decisions are made with a much larger community of network stakeholders and through a more complicated process of governance. This is likely to slow research and development for other innovative aspects of Eth 2.0 – namely, the scalability promises of this multi-year upgrade. 

The second reason for resisting a move to PoS for Ethereum in the near future is that in order to do so, core features and functionalities initially envisioned for the protocol would need to be delayed. For example, sharding, which is the primary scaling solution for Ethereum on a protocol layer, would have to wait in order for an Eth 2.0 transition to happen posthaste. 

Are protocol developers giving up too much of the grand vision originally outlined for Eth 2.0 in favor of a quick fix solution to PoS? Listen to the full podcast to hear from Kim, Foxley and Edgington on what’s at stake for Eth 2.0. 

Links mentioned in this podcast: 

• What’s New In Eth2 (www.eth2.news)   

Valid Points (https://www.coindesk.com/newsletter/valid-points)  

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This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Jameson Lopp, developer and chief technology officer of Casa, a bitcoin custodian.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network and Mimo.

Lopp is a vocal bitcoin advocate and one of those people you probably think about when you hear “bitcoin maximalist.” In this conversation, Jameson explains his attitude toward non-bitcoin projects, DeFi projects and how he, himself, likes to kick the tires of various new projects to see what they are worth.

Lopp is a hardcore crypto anarchist. He believes that bitcoin is the kind of “F-you money” that allows financial autonomy unparalleled by any other financial tools. But are there many people ready to take the risks and responsibility of bitcoin self-custody for the sake of this freedom? For Lopp, it’s a “billion-dollar question” and a matter of constant work and improvement.

Listen to Ben, Anna and Danny talk to Lopp about his views on the challenges of bitcoin adoption, the quality of the DeFi projects he’s involved in and the most exciting project he is working on now.

Jameson Lopp’s Twitter handle: @lopp 

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What happens when a crypto bro walks into a Wall Street bar?

CoinDesk reporter Cameron Thompson’s piece, “A Crypto Bro Walked Into a Wall Street Bar, and It Went Just Fine,” details the physical intermingling of both crypto and traditional finance (TradFi) industry professionals at a networking event.

Thompson joins “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson as the trio discuss the ways in which crypto culture differs from the rules of the traditional financial world, often by design. As institutional adoption of crypto continues, will the two industries’ cultures begin to merge together? 

I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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Dogecoin has come a long way since it launched as an entirely humorous take on cryptocurrency. During a recent meme-filled mania, the dog-themed coin was the 10th largest token by market cap and Elon Musk and Snoop Dogg became big fans. 

But bigger things were to come.

Today, in the latest sign of dogecoin’s ascension, the smiling Shiba Inu appears on the hood of Stefan Parsons’ race car in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

You can watch the dogecoin-adorned car at 4:30 p.m. ET on the Fox Sports channel FS1.

How the hell did this all happen?

CoinDesk spoke to an early DOGE evangelist, Pinguino, about the project’s origins, from dogecoin parties in Hollywood to Pinguino’s thoughts on the new wave of dogecoiners and DOGE price appreciation, much of which she attributes to Elon Musk’s support of the meme-coin. 

Pinguino even organized a party to watch the original “Dogecar” race in 2014, a car that racer Stefan Parsons’ father happened to own.

Pinguino also discusses the WallStreetBets/SatoshiStreetBets phenomenon, her involvement hosting the Satoshi Square LA networking group in Los Angeles from 2013 to 2017 and beta-testing CryptoKitties NFTs. Tune in for fascinating stories from crypto’s pioneer days and an insider’s view of the dogecoin story. 

More about our guest

Artist Pinguino was the publisher of early-bitcoin era Spelunk.in and host of DogeParty West, advocating cryptocurrency use back when few knew what bitcoin was. Working in various forms of internet finance since 1995, Pinguino has lived through the internet’s Wild West and survived to tell the tale. These days, she’s combining her love of comics with crypto and creating non-fungible tokens, including a new set of NFTs in honor of the return of the Dogecar.

Find Pinguino on Twitter: @pinguino 

Note: Rob Mitchell thinks he can access dogecoin he acquired many years ago, but isn’t sure.

Image credit: Springrates and Craig Welty

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Is crypto still bullish on play-to-earn?

Play-to-earn cryptocurrency game Axie Infinity skyrocketed in popularity in 2020, with many of the newly onboarded users residing in the Philippines and Venezuela. The game provided a unique – though ultimately temporary – economic model that allowed users to earn an income while at home in lockdown.

In the time since then, Axie suffered an exploit ultimately attributed to the North Korean Lazarus group and its users dropped off as the game lost its early profitability.

CoinDesk columnist Leah Callon-Butler joins “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova to chart Axie’s recovery and predict what the future of the game might look like. Will the play-to-earn model continue in the years to come, or will it fall off as a short-lived experiment?

I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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In the aftermath of WallStreetBets, Demetri Kofinas joins the hosts of Money Reimagined as they dissect the events that led to this moment and what it means for our future.

There’s a reason the Gamestop/WallStreetBets drama of the past two weeks got so much attention. It’s because it speaks forcefully to the inequities and systemic problems in both our financial markets and the internet economy and how they’ve shaped our politics and social tensions. 

So, in true Money Reimagined form, we wanted to have a super high-level discussion about what all this means for the future of money and society. And for that we called on someone who is a master at drawing big-picture narratives around such issues: Demetri Kofinas, the host of the popular Hidden Forces podcast.

Demetri Kofinas is an insatiably curious media entrepreneur and financial expert. His mission is to make the connections that help you see the bigger picture, empowering you to make smarter investing decisions.

He also hosts the Hidden Forces podcast, where he gives his listeners an edge by using his critical thinking approach to challenge the consensus narratives structuring our world .

You can follow him on Twitter at @kofinas, check out his podcast at hiddenforces.io, and sign-up for more in depth content and analysis at Patreon.com/hiddenforces.

Find Michael Casey on Twitter or Clubhouse (@mikejcasey)

Find Sheila Warren on Twitter or Clubhouse (@sheilaw)

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“You’re moving from a very slow, archaic world into a fast-moving world. There’s a lot to bridge there.”

Lacey Shrum, CEO of Smart Kx, joins “On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross to discuss the improvements technology can make in the adviser space, starting with the modernization of the billing process. A smarter billing system improves compliance, transparency and transaction speeds. Instead of billing once per quarter, advisers can work according to clients’ needs to bill monthly, weekly or even daily. Working with technology instead of against it will improve the client-adviser relationship.

Advisers need to prepare themselves for an incoming technology-focused financial ecosystem. To meet this future head-on, advisers need to become faster, more flexible and more agile with the growing trends.

The first step: Start building trust in technology wherever applicable, from smart contracts for billing to trading crypto.

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our Theme song is Walk with Swag.

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Crypto needs to optimize for mobile. Anatoly Yakovenko believes the way to accomplish this is not by developing better Web3 apps for mobile phones, but to rethink the mobile phone from the ground up with a complete operating system that optimizes crypto applications for mobile.

Yakovenko joins “Opinionated” with hosts Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson to discuss Solana Lab’s newest endeavor: building a mobile phone geared towards Web3 use cases. Yakovenko’s experience with mobile phone development dates back to his time at Qualcomm, where he worked on operating systems.

Solana’s mobile experiment might just determine whether the grand vision of crypto’s use in everyday life is attainable. But is a crypto-native phone something the world needs?

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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“Crypto in and of itself represents access. It represents freedom. It represents inclusion and digital social justice.”

“On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross returns from a Thanksgiving holiday to provide an introduction to the macro landscape in the Registered Advisor (RA) industry. As the emerging crypto industry continues to increase its relevance to clients, advisers need to be up to date on topics such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), the metaverse, Web 3, decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFT).

One emerging technology in particular has the potential to transform the entire RA industry. DAOs present a new opportunity for groups to come together and exercise their combined power for the global good. Ross emphasizes that advisers who start learning now will be ready to embrace “an industry that is going to rush in new ideas, creativity, wealth generation, financial inclusion, diversity and inclusion.”

This episode has been produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Walk with Swag.

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In what has become a de facto world tour of crypto hot spots, this week “Money Reimagined” is headed to Nigeria.

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

We talked to two Nigerian entrepreneurs – Yele Bademosi, the CEO of payments app Bundle Africa, and Adia Sowho, a venture builder and operator – about the burgeoning crypto innovation ecosystem in their country. 

Among this entertaining pair’s many insights was the idea the Nigerian Central Bank’s February order that banks shut down crypto companies’ access ended up being a positive for the industry. It spurred even more innovation in the space, inspiring local developers to dream up interesting new decentralized solutions for getting around the banking sector’s gatekeepers.

The idea dovetails with some we’ve heard from other guests – from Democracy Earth’s Santiago Siri, for example, who spoke of how the startup scene in his native Argentina is shaped and driven by the failure of the existing financial system and the efforts by authorities there to constrain people’s financial freedom. 

It shows how the crypto world has fostered a new breed of developer-entrepreneur, one who no longer wants to work to change the existing system but is inspired to build entire new alternatives to it. 

We also learned from Bademosi and Sowho that the narratives the crypto community in the industrialized world tend to embrace about the technology’s value in the developing world are often misplaced. It’s convenient for people in the U.S. to talk up the idea that Nigerian activists were using bitcoin during the anti-government protests last year or that it is being used widely as a remittance and payments vehicle. But our guests point out those use cases aren’t as widespread as believed and that, much like in the U.S, most Nigerians are for now buying bitcoin as a store of value. 

On the other hand, they tell us Nigeria specifically – and Africa generally – is a hotbed of innovation in DeFi. And why not? The opportunities for experimentation and creativity for decentralized finance are arguably much greater in places where the existing financial system is underdeveloped. 

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InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io.

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The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

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In this episode, Anna Baydakova, Tanzeel Akhtar and Nik De discuss what to expect from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration regarding crypto, how QuadrigaCX users are doing and trying to predict the future for Ripple. 

President Joe Biden has named Gary Gensler as his pick for chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Janet Yellen as the future head of the U.S. Treasury. Gensler, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is known for his series of lectures at MIT about blockchain tech. Yellen said recently she believes crypto is funding illicit activities, sending the bitcoin price down. What’s next? Nik De provides a short guide to what to watch.

Ernst and Young (EY), the bankruptcy trustee for the defunct Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX, is still trying to figure out how to value the firm’s cryptocurrency assets before disbursement to creditors. Timing is crucial here: The amount of money creditors will get depends on the day of evaluation chosen because the price of bitcoin changed a lot between February and April 2019, when QuadrigaCX’s court story was developing. 

Last but not least, Ripple has been grappling with a bunch of troubles since the SEC filed a lawsuit against the company in December. The commission believes Ripple has been selling unregistered securities, namely the XRP tokens. The court case is still in progress, but soon after the lawsuit was filed, a number of exchanges and brokers suspended XRP trading including Coinbase, Kraken, OKCoin, Bitstamp, eToro, Crypto.com, Genesis and others. Now, a new SEC head is expected. Good news for Ripple? Probably not too much.

Stories mentioned in this episode:

• Gary Gensler Named as Joe Biden’s SEC Chair Pick (TA)

https://www.coindesk.com/gary-gensler-confirmed-as-joe-bidens-sec-chair-pick 

• Janet Yellen Says Cryptocurrencies Are a ‘Concern’ in Terrorist Financing https://www.coindesk.com/janet-yellen-says-cryptocurrencies-are-a-concern-in-terrorist-financing

• Criminal Activity in Crypto Transactions Fell Sharply in 2020, Says Chainalysis

https://www.coindesk.com/criminal-activity-in-crypto-transactions-fell-sharply-in-2020-says-chainalysis

• Trustee of Collapsed Exchange Moves to Resolve Crypto vs. Fiat Creditor Claims Tussle https://www.coindesk.com/trustee-of-collapsed-exchange-to-ask-court-to-resolve-crypto-vs-fiat-creditor-claims-tussle

• Kraken to Halt XRP Trading for US Residents https://www.coindesk.com/kraken-to-halt-xrp-trading-for-u-s-residents

• Japan’s FSA Says XRP Not a Security: Report https://www.coindesk.com/japans-fsa-says-xrp-not-a-security-report 

• Asia’s Retail FOMO Could Be Behind XRP’s Rally Despite SEC’s Lawsuit https://www.coindesk.com/xrp-asia-retail-fomo-rally

• Ripple CEO Walks Back Threat to Leave US https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-leaving-usa 

Did you enjoy the show? We would love to hear what you think. Leave us a review on apple podcasts or your preferred service and talk to us directly via email at borderless@coindesk.com.

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Will Gottsegen, CoinDesk's media and culture reporter, joins “Opinionated” hosts Danny Nelson and Ben Schiller to discuss what recent events in the Ethereum Name Service Foundation (ENS) say about the limitations of DAO governance.

When homophobic and transphobic posts from ENS director Brantly Millegan were uncovered, Millegan was promptly fired from his role at the nonprofit that operates the ENS. However, the ENS put the decision to remove Millegan from the organization as a whole to a DAO vote, but it failed to pass.

Millegan himself was able to sway the vote. Without his voting power, obtained through tokens and delegations, the vote would not have failed. Additionally, almost a fifth of the total votes cast were abstentions.

What does the ENS voting outcome tell us about the effectiveness, ethics and future of DAOs?

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is by Elision.

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This week on the Opinionated podcast, we’re joined by PwC’s Henri Arslanian, the consultancy’s very smart global crypto hand. 

Arslanian wrote a 2021 look-ahead op-ed for CoinDesk giving 10 Predictions for 2021: China, Bitcoin, Taxes, Stablecoins and More

He thinks next year will see a number of big trends in crypto come to fruition. 

“2020 has been a terrible year for pretty much the entire world but when we look at it from a fintech and crypto perspective, it has been a game-changing year,” Arslanian tells me. 

“COVID-19 really acted as a catalyst.”

Take bank notes. We’ve been using them less for years but the pandemic has really stopped us using them. At the same time, people are hoarding bank notes (because it’s a crisis), leading central banks to think more seriously about issuing their own digital currencies. 

Next year, Arslanian expects to see the first retail digital currencies. All eyes will be on China’s advanced project. 

Arslanian also discusses bitcoin, derivatives and taxes. He expects lots of M&A activity as crypto unicorns become “crypto octopuses.”

Listen in for one of the smartest consultants in the crypto space.

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In this week’s episode of “Mapping Out Eth 2.0,” CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Will Foxley and Consensys’ Ben Edgington talk about the “sneak” update made to the Ethereum 2.0 protocol that will help enable trustless staking pools to emerge on the network. 

All Eth 2.0 validators after staking 32 ETH on the network are required to generate two cryptographic keys. One is used to sign off validator responsibilities such as attesting to blocks. The other, called the “withdrawal key,” is held until a validator exits the network and withdraws his or her staked ether. 

Up until mid-February, no user could be certain where funds would be deposited after a validator withdraws their stake. Developers have recently upgraded Eth 2.0 code so that withdrawals of validator funds can be linked to Ethereum accounts and wallets active on the original Ethereum blockchain. 

To be clear, the pathway for where validator funds would land has been specified in the Eth 2.0 protocol through this update, but withdrawals and ether transfers are still not enabled on the network. Clarity on where funds will go after validators can move their stake off the network is positive news for Eth 2.0 staking pools. 

The first code update of Eth 2.0 enables staking pools to set up trustless smart contracts on Ethereum to divide up earned rewards between participants. This, according to Edgington, is “a big deal” for decentralized staking services such as RocketPool that differentiate themselves from competitors by offering a transparent and distributed way to validate on Eth 2.0. 

The mechanism that allows validators funds to be withdrawn to existing Ethereum accounts also signals a change in the Eth 2.0 development timetable. 

“[The Eth1 and Eth2] merge has come forward in the timetable. Previously, it was envisaged at being quite distant after we’ve done sharding and after we’ve done some kind of execution environment technology. But now we are bringing the merge forward in the timetable and just putting Eth1 on top of the beacon chain,” said Edgington. 

The new plan is to “dock” Eth1 like a plane to Eth2. 

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn more about the docking plan for Ethereum. 

Links mentioned in this podcast: 

• What’s New In Eth2 (eth2.news)
• Valid Points (https://www.coindesk.com/newsletter/valid-points) 

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“The market will go up and down, but I am going to be here.”

Jeff Garzik has been a prominent figure in the crypto industry for a long time, starting with his involvement as an early Bitcoin Core developer to his work with Vesper today, aiming to create a safe and secure gateway experience for new users to decentralized finance (DeFi). He has also expanded his efforts towards a TV show in the works, building houses and founding a trucking startup.

On this episode of “On Purpose,” Garzik joins host Tyrone Ross for a wide-reaching conversation on the current state and future of the crypto industry from DeFi to non-fungible tokens (NFT) to Web 3. Garzik previously joined the show in November, where he discussed his career changes and Bitcoin’s evolution over the years.

How will advisers and clients interact with their money in the future? Will NFTs continue to grow as an investment class? How will DeFi change the financial landscape? Through the transformations and ups and downs of the crypto industry, Garzik is certain he'll stay to see it all and work to keep innovating new solutions.

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our Theme song is “Walk With Swag.”

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This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.

Our faith in the reliability of digital media is, simply put, broken.

The proliferation of disinformation online has seeped into all aspects of life. Elections, the pandemic, and now, a war are all targets of organized campaigns to obfuscate or even rewrite truth and facts. At the same time, censorship of vulnerable populations is on the rise, only further restricting the flow of information.

Enter cryptography, decentralized networks and the blockchain. 

Joining “Money Reimagined” with Sheila Warren and Michael Casey is Jonathan Dotan, founding director of the Starling Lab. Dotan and the Starling Lab are prototyping cryptographic methods and decentralized web protocols with the aim of establishing trust in the future of history, journalism and law.

Irrefutable evidence of war crimes was brought forth during the Nuremberg trials following World War II, ensuring some form of justice would come to fruition. In 2022, Ukrainian citizens are now the ones recording this irrefutable evidence, equipped with smartphones and social media. New tools are needed to preserve this unprecedented flow of information to eventually render justice for those impacted by the war.

Is blockchain technology the solution?

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Take your crypto to the next level with Nexo. Invest and swap instantly, earn up to 20% APR on your idle assets or borrow cash against them at industry-leading rates. Get started today at nexo.io to receive up to a $100 welcome bonus. Valid through March 31.

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9–12 in Austin, TX. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MoneyReimagined15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to PaperImperium, the first and only pseudonymous crypto advocate, lobbying on behalf of MakerDAO in the corridors of power. 

PaperImperium, or Paper, or Chris (his real name, but he’s not keen to publicize his full name), is advocating for a clear regulation for DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organisations. 

DAOs are a brainchild of the crypto-anarchist culture, and the concept implies that communities can make decisions and solve problems by common voting, using their crypto tokens as voting mandates. 

Interestingly, Chris is not a huge fan of this idea itself, and he’s still on the fence on whether the concept is viable. Also, not everybody shares a belief that decentralized finance (DeFi) needs regulation at all, and recently the DAO members voted down the proposal to compensate Chris for his work. 

Why then is he so passionate about educating congressmen and regulators about MakerDAO and everything around it? What got him into crypto in the first place, and why is he so excited about Maker?

Listen to Anna, Ben and Danny talk to Chris about his observations about the moods towards crypto in Washington, D.C., his hopes for DeFi and other things.

PaperImperium’s handle on Twitter is @ImperiumPaper.  

Mentioned in this podcast:

Meet the DeFi Delegate Knocking on the Doors of Congress

What Is a DAO?

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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The latest in Craig Wright’s series of lawsuits against those who question that he is Satoshi Nakomoto.

The identity of Satoshi Nakomoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, has been an ongoing mystery since the figure’s retreat from the public eye over a decade ago. Australian computer scientist Craig Wright has asserted he is Satoshi, and has fought those who say otherwise in courts around the world. Few in the crypto community believe his claim. 

Cheyenne Ligon, CoinDesk regulatory reporter, joins “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova to discuss the latest lawsuit involving Craig Wright, this time in Norway. The group assesses new, and at times dubious, evidence put forth by Wright’s lawyers. After many unsuccessful attempts, does Wright still believe he can convince the world he is Satoshi?

I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross provides a high-level overview of NFTs for financial advisers. He covers big players like NBA Top Shot and Bored Ape Yacht Club, platforms to pay attention to and financial trends in the NFT space.

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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code ONPURPOSE15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Walk With Swag.”

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The Ukrainian government kicked off an impressive crypto donation campaign, receiving over $50 million in cryptocurrency contributions in just a few weeks.

Kim Bazak of blockchain PR and marketing firm Market Across has an inside perspective on the campaign. Bazak joins “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson to explain the story of how Market Across worked with the Ukrainian government to organize some of the first and largest crypto donations, including Polkadot founder Gavin Wood’s $5 million contribution.

The donation campaign has spotlighted the power of borderless money. Ukraine continues to support the proliferation of crypto assets in the country with the decision to make Ukrainian cryptocurrency exchanges as legal as banks. How will crypto continue to develop in Ukraine?

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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9–12 in Austin, TX. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code Opinionated15 to get 15% off your pass at www.coindesk.com/consensus2022.

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This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is by Elision.

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Coinbase’s recent decision to take no position on political and social issues has divided the cryptocurrency industry. 

Some see it as a wise move in a no-win hyper-sensitive political environment. 

Others say CEO Brian Armstrong is tone-deaf to cultural forces sweeping the United States and the world. 

This week, the debate got material within Coinbase itself, with about 5% of employees choosing to quit and take a severance package, rather than work for a company with a crypto-only mission statement. 

This week on Opinionated – our new podcast featuring CoinDesk’s best columnists and contributors – we are joined by Jill Carlson and Emily Parker to discuss the Coinbase controversy and its meaning for the industry and Silicon Valley. 

Carlson is an investor with Slow Ventures and co-founder of the Open Money Initiative. 

She writes this week that Armstrong, far from creating an environment in which people can work free of distractions, is creating an environment where difficult issues remain unaddressed and people feel not-heard.

Carlson sees Coinbase’s stance cutting off useful debate. “The backlash against cancel culture is not manifesting as advocacy for dialogue, free speech, nuance and tolerance. Rather, the backlash is only driving discourse deeper underground, breeding an even more intense culture of fear and further entrenching intolerance,” she writes. 

Parker is CoinDesk’s Global Macro Editor. Her op-ed “Coinbase’s ‘Mission’ Violates the Spirit of Bitcoin” points to what she calls the hypocrisy of Armstrong going apolitical while espousing the values of Bitcoin (including economic freedom and censorship resistance). 

“Armstrong would like to have it both ways. He wants to be apolitical about the disruptions that make him uncomfortable, but political about Bitcoin’s mission to disrupt the world,” she writes. 

Join us for a lively discussion with two bold and original thinkers. 

Opinions featured in this week’s podcast:

Emily Parker – Coinbase’s ‘Mission’ Violates the Spirit of Bitcoin

Jill Carlson – Reading Between the Lines of Brian Armstrong’s Mission Memo

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“One thing that is important is you separate the short term versus the long term,” recommends Kevin Kelly to digital asset advisers aiming to build their understanding of crypto.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network and Mimo.

In this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross delves into adviser education with Kevin Kelly, founder of Delphi Digital. With increased demand for crypto advice from traditional investors, Delphi brings institutional-grade analysis in the form of digital asset research, consulting and a big-picture fund investing in new technologies in decentralized networks. 

Kelly emphasizes the importance of maintaining a data-informed, long-term conviction on the direction of each crypto asset class. He recommends market metrics resources and providers to help build a numbers-driven outlook, but also to study macro trends as the world and crypto become more entwined.

Listen to this episode for essential educational resources, rewarding mindsets for advisers and a peek into Kelly’s own outlook on the state of crypto.

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.

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Stablecoins are suddenly all over the news, with their explosive growth posing all sorts of questions for investors and regulators alike. 

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.

To discuss, co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined this week by Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Avanti, a Wyoming-based digital assets bank, and George Selgin, director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute.

We start with a striking fact: the supply of the top 10 stablecoins pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar is up fourfold from the beginning of the year, at $109 billion. That’s more than three times the combined value of PayPal and Venmo’s outstanding customer accounts at the end of last quarter. 

This spectacular growth is encouraging stablecoin issuers to play it big. 

Circle, the issuer of the highly successful dollar-pegged token USDC, is going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Tether, the controversial issuer of USDT, has settled a lawsuit with the New York attorney general’s office and is providing regular updates on its token’s reserve backing. It is also now branching out into other markets, including a euro-backed stablecoin. And Paxos is expanding a digital asset servicing agreement with PayPal that’s sure to bring opportunities for PAX and Binance’s BUSD, the two stablecoins it manages, to play a back-end role in a growing market of consumer crypto transactions. 

Regulators are getting nervous. 

Federal Reserve officials are worrying about potential systemic risk from economy-wide exposure to de facto dollar substitutes that may not be sufficiently backed by reserves to stand up the value investors expect them to hold. And anti-money laundering enforcement agents are worried that these tokens will facilitate illicit transactions among criminals. 

So, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen convening a high-powered meeting of the most important financial regulators this week to discuss the topic, it seemed like an opportune time to dive into the outlook for stablecoins and the evolving regulatory framework.

Will regulators strike the right balance by using smart disclosure and management rules to give customers and investors confidence to use stablecoins? Or will they adopt a draconian, restrictive posture that kills off the sector’s huge innovation potential? 

Long and Selgin are ideally placed to discuss these issues. Both are steeped in crypto knowledge, the structure of the banking system and regulation. 

Long’s company, Avanti, is issuing its own digital dollar token, the Avit, for which it is seeking support from the Federal Reserve. Selgin, a monetary historian, is finding that his expertise in the United States’ free-banking era of the 19th century is proving especially relevant to the outlook for stablecoins in the 21st century.

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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Image credit: Panuwat Sikham/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by Coindesk

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A Consensus 2023 panel with Sen. Cynthia Lummis and Rep. Patrick McHenry.

Amid a broad regulatory crackdown, influential members of the U.S. Senate and House share the latest on the process of writing crypto legislation and the plausible outcomes for 2023 and beyond.

Nikhilesh De, managing editor of Global Policy and Regulation at CoinDesk moderates alongside panelists:

• U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
• U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.)

This episode is executive produced by Jared Schwartz and edited by Ryan Huntington, with additional production assistance from Eleanor Pahl. Cover image by Kevin Ross and the theme song is "Get Down" by Elision.

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From the CoinDesk Global Macro news desk, this is Borderless – a twice-monthly roundup of the most important stories impacting Bitcoin and the crypto sector from around the world. On this episode, Nik, Anna, Daniel and CoinDesk tech reporter Colin Harper discuss Nigerian protestors using bitcoin, the digital yuan reaching retail users in China, the IMF talking about crypto, and more.

In Nigeria, people are protesting police brutality and demanding the abolition of SARS, or the Special Anti-Robbery Squad police unit, an infamous special forces team known for abusing and harassing citizens. 

CoinDesk reporter Colin Harper joins the conversation to talk about how The Feminist Coalition, a movement advocating for women’s rights in Nigeria, has been using bitcoin to fundraise and help people hurt by the police during the protests. After the movement’s bank account was frozen, it switched to bitcoin donations, using bitcoin as a censorship-resistant tool, just as activists in another part of the world – Belarus – are doing.

On the central bank digital currency front, China is charging forward with its digital yuan project: last week, about two million people got free digital yuans in a lottery in Shenzhen. People could spend the giveaway tokens in over 3,000 local stores, as Reuters reported. The consumers haven’t been impressed so far, but maybe that’s only a beginning,

Unlike in China, central bankers in the West are not that sure about CBDCs. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a report discussing the benefits of issuing digital tokens by central banks. Maybe the most interesting part, the International Monetary Fund talks about the Big Tech stablecoin projects and what’s at stake there. 

Reporters Nikhilesh De, Daniel Nelson, Anna Baydakova and Colin Harper discuss these issues and more on today’s episode of Borderless.

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Small-scale bitcoin mining – think machines whirring away in basements, eating up home electricity bills – have become more popular in recent weeks.

Colin Harper, head of content and research at Luxor Mining, joins “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson to explore why the mining community has recently gained a new cohort of at-home miners. The influx goes back to China’s mining ban and is influenced by the economics of a bear market, but Harper explains the less tangible factors drawing those to mining, including a sense of community and partaking in securing the network.

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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code OPINIONATED15  to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is by Elision.

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New York City was all about NFTs this week as the third edition of NFT.NYC, New York’s non-fungible token conference, took place. It went off with a bang!

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.

The event has come far from its humble origins in 2019 and this year’s featured 600 speakers across three days and six venues throughout the city. Over the course of the event, 15 different NFT-themed billboards were featured in Times Square. 

In this episode of “Money Reimagined” Sheila Warren and Michael Casey figure out what to make of the overwhelming display of innovation, creativity and speculative fervor that was unleashed with this event. To do so, they tapped the insightful mind of Sam Ewen, the head of CoinDesk Studios, who explains what this week’s conference represents and how the greater phenomenon of NFTs is sweeping through society.

The discussion explored the driving factors behind the energy that was on display, and it says about the current NFT zeitgeist. The event, which attracted 5,500 registered attendees and many more who turned up for the sideline parties and entertainment, has exploded in size since its last showing in February 2020. Back then, the event was in just one theater housing a modest gathering of early NFT enthusiasts. This year, there were more than 600 speakers appearing in concurrent programming across six venues. 

Just as important was the massive amount of promotion underway. There were hundreds of exhibitors with products using NFTs for everything from music rights to wine collecting. Meanwhile, many NFT platforms, flush with cash from this year’s investment boom, put on raging parties with A-list DJs and bands and spectacular digital art installations. 

To Ewen, what stood out was the passion of the various NFT communities. He described it as “evangelism,” a force that is helping to grow this space at as rapid a clip as the money that early investors are making. 

But he also highlighted the hurdles, including the challenge of “gas fees,” the high transaction costs users incur for trading NFTs, especially on the Ethereum blockchain. 

Either way, the conclusion from the discussion is that something big is happening in this sector, something could transform the digital economy as we know it. It’s just that with things moving so fast, it’s very difficult to predict what exactly that change will look like. 

 This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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Nexo.io lets you borrow against your crypto at 6.9% APR, earn up to 12% on your idle assets, and exchange instantly between 100+ market pairs with the tap of a button. Get started at nexo.io.

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In this episode, Christine Kim and Will Foxley discuss with the co-lead developer of Prysmatic Labs, Raul Jordan, the common reasons behind slashing events on Ethereum 2.0 and how they can be prevented. 

“Keep it simple.”

Jordan’s best advice to prevent validators who have staked 32 ETH (worth roughly $56,500 at time of writing) from being booted off the Eth 2.0 network for suspicious behaviour was to make operations as straightforward and uncomplicated as possible. 

“A lot of people try to get really clever at their staking setup. They’re like I need zero down time. I cannot afford having my software down for a second. … A lot of stakers at home try to go for these really complicated setups and I mean to be honest they’re fairly sophisticated. They know what they’re doing but there’s always room for something to go wrong,” Jordan said. 

Validators are the equivalent to miners on Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake blockchain dubbed Eth 2.0. These users earn rewards in the form of interest on their staked ether for running software that verifies and helps produce new blocks. 

Over-engineering validator setups can lead to what are called slashing events, according to Jordan, which are penalties exacted by the network to deter users from launching malicious attacks. However, it’s impossible for the software of Eth 2.0 to discern what is a premeditated network attack from an honest mistake by a sophisticated user simply trying to maximize his or her earnings as a validator. 

As a result, the best way to ensure a validator on Eth 2.0 isn’t slashed is to accept some downtime on the machine. Downtime means any period of time where validator operations aren’t actively running or connected to the internet and therefore not earning rewards. 

“If you’re online for only two-thirds of the year, you’re still profitable as a validator. So why do this? The risk is not worth it,” said Jordan. “If you get slashed you’re going to lose some funds. You’re going to get ejected [from the network] and then your ether is locked in there not earning anything until you can withdraw in the future.” 

Mining on Ethereum and other proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin are notorious for being activities where feats of engineering and specialization actually increase the chances of earning rewards. Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are prime examples of technologies built to maximize the profits of Ethereum and Bitcoin miners. 

However, the potential for slashing on Ethereum 2.0 is one of the main characteristics of the network that discourages similar types of innovation from profit-motivated validators.

If there’s any upside to slashing, it’s that it has encouraged Eth 2.0 developers like Jordan to work harder at building standards between all Eth 2.0 software clients to make the user experience as smooth and as seamless as possible. 

To learn more about these standardization efforts and how they’re helping educate users about running validator operations on Eth 2.0, listen to the full podcast episode with Christine Kim, Will Foxley and Raul Jordan. 

For more weekly insights on Eth 2.0 development, consider checking out Foxley and I’s weekly newsletter, Valid Points. 

Links mentioned in the podcast: 

Raul Jordan’s blog post - 

https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/eth2-slashing-prevention-tips-f6faa5025f50 

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Preston Byrne is a partner in Anderson Kill's Technology, Media and Distributed Systems Group, and a CoinDesk columnist. 

He joins CoinDesk Features Editor Ben Schiller to discuss his recent op-ed about GameStop, Robinhood and the rise of online mobs. 

See the article here:

‘The Squeezening’: How the GameStop Backlash Will Curtail Freedom

Schiller spoke to Byrne about:

• The rise of online mobs from GameStop to Capitol Hill and how the internet is impacting real life in an increasingly tangible way
• What policymakers can do to prevent mobs doing damage to decent companies
• Why it’s likely the WallStreetBets Reddit contained some pump-and-dumpers
• How the regulatory reaction to the WallStreetBets could impact cryptocurrencies 
• How the backlash from “elites” impacted by GameStop could harm free speech
• Why Preston Byrne supports marmots (which are like squirrels or groundhogs) 

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George Howard, Distinguished Professor of Music Business/Management at Berklee College of Music, takes the stage to discuss the history of “Pancho and Lefty,” a song by Townes Van Zandt  made famous by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.

He breaks down what the Song That Owns Itself (STOI) project is and how it is working to help artists get all of the money they are owed.

The panel discussion took place on June 10, the second day of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2022 festival in Austin, Texas. 

The executive producer for CoinDesk Reports is Jared Schwartz. Nia Freeman edited this episode.

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“Elon rugged you. He said they had diamond hands, he said that they were committed for the long term. This was actually another accounting play by Tesla that benefited them, and they don't really care about bitcoin.” - David Z. Morris

Morris, chief insights columnist at CoinDesk, joins “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova to discuss Tesla’s recent sale of 75% of its bitcoin holdings. Tesla first purchased bitcoin 18 months ago and arguably contributed to the bull run at that time. Now, markets have hardly reacted to Tesla’s sale. Are the paths of Musk and the crypto industry diverging?

This show is produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl with additional production support and announcements by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

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Todd Kaplan, chief marketing officer of PepsiCo, and Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing officer at Mastercard, sit down with Keith Grossman, president of Time to discuss how brands are re-imagining their views on Web3 growth.

They discuss each company's different approach to bringing Web3 experiences to their users in ways that include live non-fungible token (NFT) minting at the Billboard Music Awards.

The panel occurred on Friday, June 10, 2022, the second day of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2022 festival in Austin, Texas. 

The executive producer for CoinDesk Reports is Jared Schwartz and Nia Freeman edited this episode.

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“I think there is a new age of wealth coming… a massive transformation of wealth that’s occurring right now from Baby Boomers to their children.”

Sean Ristau of FinTech infrastructure company Prime Trust joins “On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross for an in-depth discussion of the growing intersection between technology and finance. Ristau sees an incoming new age to finance as the next generation takes over and sees crypto as pivotal in that shift.

For advisers looking to dive into crypto, Ristau has two pieces of advice: “you decide where [crypto] falls on your risk curve,” and to “work not only with investors, but also fellow industry colleagues.” With Ristau’s advice in hand, advisers can better prepare a strategy to go to market with their clients.

As Ristau says, crypto “is only going to grow,” the time to learn is now.

This episode has been produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Walk with Swag. 

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington discuss Uniswap Lab’s contentious decision to censor assets on its website and the release of a new Ethereum 2.0 software client called Lodestar. 

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

Uniswap is the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Ethereum blockchain by both market capitalization and trading volume, facilitating nearly $340 billion in trades annually. The DEX has become a cornerstone of the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry by enabling any token issuer to list their assets on the exchange. 

A recent decision by Uniswap Labs, the development firm behind Uniswap, resulted in the delisting of several tokens from the Uniswap.org website. CoinDesk Research intern Teddy Oosterbaan stated that it was important to note the tokens are “delisted from their front end, which is basically just the Uniswap Labs website for interacting with protocol.” There are additional access points to listing and trading tokens on Uniswap through DEX aggregators such as 1inch. 

The decision by Uniswap Labs was controversial for three main reasons. First, censorship goes against the ethos of decentralization. In addition, there was no vote on the decision with UNI governance token holders, and finally, the decision may be one of several forthcoming actions taken by Uniswap Labs in its bid to partner with mainstream consumer finance applications.  

While discussing Uniswap’s connection with venture capital and a potential look toward consumer finance, Edgington compared Uniswap with one of its largest competitors, SushiSwap. He said, “It’s definitely a hint of corporatization of Uniswap … and this seems to set a more respectable trajectory for them, whereas Sushi is perhaps a bit more like the Wild West.” 

The future of decentralized finance could very well have tiers of decentralization, with certain applications built for the individual DeFi user and others built for institutions and mainstream inventors, sometimes called centralized DeFi (CeDeFi). 

Edgington and Kim also discussed the official release of a new Ethereum 2.0 software client dubbed Lodestar. The addition brings the total Eth 2.0 client number up to five and offers users looking to run validators on the Ethereum Beacon Chain more “lightweight” options for their computers. 

Speaking to the importance of lowering the barrier to becoming a validator on Eth 2.0, Kim said, “I do think it is very important to maintain a sense of ability to keep on that course of trying to make this technology do what it's supposed to do, which is cut out reliance on centralized providers and centralized businesses.”

Tune into the full episode of “Mapping Out Ethereum 2.0” to hear Kim, Oosterbaan and Edgington discuss the latest news about Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0.

Links: 

DEX aggregator that bypasses Uniswap Lab’s front-end - https://app.1inch.io/#/1/swap/ETH/DAI

Public Ethereum blockchain explorer - https://etherscan.io/

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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.

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This week on the Opinionated podcast, we welcome two Londoners: Lex Sokolin and Frances Coppola. 

Lex Sokolin is the global fintech co-head at ConsenSys, the Ethereum development studio, as well as a CoinDesk columnist. 

Lex discusses his recent piece How DeFi Can Avoid the Irrelevance of P2P Lending and Crowdfunding, where he compares DeFi to once-hot financial ideas, like equity crowdfunding.

He explores how DeFi can avoid the fate of those trends. DeFi has global scale, he says, a thoroughly open source nature that spurs innovation, and it offers built-in tokenized incentives for participation, among other advantages. 

“DeFi is displaying the evidence of traction with something between 500,000 and 1 million people using DeFi protocols,” Sokolin says. “There’s a magic in DeFi that wasn’t in P2P lending and crowdfunding.”

Frances Coppola is a veteran writer on banking, finance and economics and the author of “The Case for People’s Quantitative Easing.”

She discusses her recent opinion piece about the state of the banking system called “Banks Are Toast but Crypto Has Lost Its Soul.”

“The nature of the business is changing so fundamentally that what we think of as big banks and what they do will be very different in the future,” she tells us. 

But while some see stablecoins as a helpful way to move currencies around the world, Coppola believes that the industry has sold out its values by adopting fiat-backed coins like tether. 

“This game has been played from time immemorial. [It’s] creating fake things to represent real things. I think the fact that you put it on a blockchain makes any difference really,” she says.

Tune in to hear two bold thinkers with big ideas about the future of finance.

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On this episode of Money Reimagined the discussion comes home for an insiders look at how new, disruptive technology and government interact. For this discussion, hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum are joined by Marvin Ammori, best known for his work on network neutrality and Internet freedom issues. Rounding out the panel is Christopher Giancarlo, former CFTC chairman and founding principal of the Digital Dollar Foundation.

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"My background is really 20 years of working on the internet. And I remember in the early days of the internet." said Marvin Ammori, "you know, one kind of piece of deja vu is what jumped out to everyone. The internet began with all the bad stuff. Congress couldn't believe there was porn on the internet. We had to protect the children from the number one thing that people noticed on the internet.

And in fact, the first major case about the internet, had the Supreme Court upheld Congress's action, pretty much every website would have needed to get your credit card number and verify you're 18 to go on. The internet would have been for adults only."

Marvin continued, "The entire trajectory of the internet would have been different, but luckily the Supreme Court pushed back on congressional action under the First Amendment. But the first impulse of congress 20 years ago with the internet was 'let's cripple this thing.' [...] We've seen all the tremendous benefits. [T]hings we could have never imagined back then. Now when it comes to cryptocurrency we see something similar."

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"The first wave of the Internet was an internet of information. And interestingly, it emerged into a federal regulatory structure that was really a pretty light zone because of our First Amendment protections of freedom of speech," said former CFTC chair Christopher Giancarlo. "So the internet, actually, in the first case, it didn't face a lot of opposition, I think, Marvin is absolutely right. There was certainly calls in Congress for banning because of pornography, but at the end of the day, the Democrat White House of President Clinton, the Republican Congress under Newt Gingrich came up with the 'first do no harm approach.'

And the internet flourished and a lot of lessons learned were 'don't ask permission, seek forgiveness', 'keep going until you break something.' And the first internet wave, the wave of information flourished pretty successfully.

We're now in a new construct, where in fact what we're talking about, as an internet of 'things of value', whoa... Well, it's a very different construct. We have at least three federal bank regulators regulating holdings of people's things of value, market regulators in Washington. And then in every state level.

And so this new wave of the internet is not running into a regulatory light zone. It's actually running into a regulatory heavy 'no go zone.' And we've seen the clash. I mean, just look at the ICO challenge a few years ago. That was a statement by one regulator that they were not conceding ground in this new internet of value. [... It's] a product of our past and our approaches and our constitutional liberties, but also these new technologies, new waves, the internet bring new challenges to old constructs that we haven't often been successful in working through."

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On Dec. 18, the U.S. Treasury published a proposal to expand the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s requirements for identity monitoring and reporting by crypto exchanges. Under these proposed new rules, that powerful agency, known as FinCEN, would require exchanges to collect names and home addresses from the owners of private, self-custodied digital wallets that receive more than $3,000 in cryptocurrencies daily and to file special currency transaction reports about any wallet that receives more than $10,000 a day.

The announcement prompted an outpouring of criticism from the crypto community and among digital rights activists. Many saw it as an attack on privacy. As of this recording, more than 7,500 comments have been posted to FinCEN’s site. That constitutes more than two thirds of all public comments received by the agency for various rules and proposals dating back to 2008. 

Then, on Monday last week, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which sets and coordinates federal banking rules, offered a rule change that was much more favorably received among the crypto community.  

The OCC said banks could now use stablecoins to conduct payments and other activities, including stablecoin tokens issued on public blockchains such as Ethereum. It prompted some breathless commentary on how integrating the old world of banking with the new world of decentralized finance paves the way to a new global financial system of programmable money. 

To many this seemed like a weird good cop/bad cop routine out of Washington. Is the Administration pro- or anti-crypto? 

But to Michael Casey, there’s much more coordination here than meets the eye. 

There’s a common theme with respect to how both rules fit into geopolitical tensions that digital currency technology is stirring up. We’ll go into that in this week’s episode, which is why one of our guests today is Christopher Giancarlo, the former Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission who is now senior counsel at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and, among other roles, founding principal of the Digital Dollar Foundation. As someone who knows the ropes in Washington and is thinking hard about how the U.S. should prepare for a world of digital currencies, his insights will be invaluable.  

The other question this throws up is: how do we forge a more constructive relationship between the crypto community and policymakers, not just in the U.S. but in the global setting in which this technology exists? 

For that we’ve brought in Marvin Ammori, the chief legal officer for the decentralized exchange protocol, Uniswap. Not only does that role give Marvin a solid foot in the crypto community’s regulatory concerns, but we think his past influential work for the internet tech industry developing a common framework for net neutrality laws comes with real lessons on how to do these things right. And as an influential activist for digital civil rights, the questions here of privacy and digital autonomy are right in his wheelhouse.

Image credit: Nathan Anderson/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk

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