QuantLayer Podcast (Vikram Ramakrishnan and Faizaan Shamsi)
Explorez tous les épisodes de QuantLayer Podcast
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| 29 May 2019 | SIM Port Attacks + 2FA Security or How Not To Lose All Your Crypto and a Empex 4 Recap | 00:50:22 | |
We look at a recent SIM port hack where a crypto professional lost $100k worth of crypto from his Coinbase account. We discuss in detail how he was attacked and how you can safeguard your crypto assets better. We then do a recap of the one-day Elixir conference, Empex, where topics ranged from OTP to LiveView to functional programming more broadly. Topics:
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| 06 Aug 2018 | #9: Custody Solutions and Infrastructure, Family Offices, and How Funds Should Educate Their Analysts on Crypto | 00:47:32 | |
In this episode, we talk about our experience at the Crypto Hedge Fund Summit in New York, and what we learned about custody solutions and infrastructure being built for institutional investors. We go over what a family office is and how they differ from institutional investors. We discuss how important custody is and why. We also break out a multi-point thesis for how funds should think about educating their managers and analysts on the crypto space. Topics:
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| 02 Apr 2019 | Capital Management with David Baker: Mercadyne Fund’s Founder on Public and Private Investing, Generating Alpha, and Management Team Red Flags | 00:52:22 | |
We spoke to David Baker from Mercadyne Funds, my first Portfolio Manager at Vikram’s first Hedge Fund analyst job many years ago. David is a really smart guy and he takes a unique approach to generating alpha by investing in micro and small-cap companies. He joins us to talk about all things investing. We cover a slew of topics: How he started investing and his first call with a management team at age thirteen, how he parlayed his experience as a broker to starting his first micro and small-cap fund, how he runs his current fund, risk management, and his current investment philosophy. We go over factors that make attractive investment opportunities (huge TAM, compelling biz model, accelerating sales growth, high insider ownership) and also red flags that he sees on a regular basis. He also talks about his experience investing in turnaround self storage units and finally, we finish up discussing his views on the current economy and what sectors he likes right now. Topics:
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| 09 Jul 2018 | #5: Crypto Teams Need to Communicate Better, and a New Segment: Big Drama in Smallcap Land (Zoin and Sumokoin) | 00:42:52 | |
Communication between crypto teams and their customers is often non-existent or lacking. Vikram and Faizaan talk about the current bearish sentiment of the market, and how exchanges and coin teams can better communicate with their customers. They discuss how exchanges can add predictability to their platforms through API versioning and how coin teams can flag important news they need to share with their coin holders. They also start a new segment called “Big Drama in Smallcap Land” where they dissect the persistent drama in the world of smallcap crypto coins. This segment’s drama surrounds Zoin’s newest lead developer not having development experience and Sumokoin, a strange tale of missed opportunity. Between market and technical talk, this episode is a good mix of all the things you love about crypto. Topics:
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| 03 Sep 2019 | Dr. Ed Felten and Offchain Labs: Second Layer Solutions for Smart Contracts | 00:40:29 | |
Dr. Ed Felten is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton, he’s served as Chief Technologist at the FTC and Deputy CTO at the White House. He’s also the cofounder of Offchain Labs, a Princeton-based startup that’s focusing on 2nd layer smart contract solutions to improve scalability. This was one of our favorite conversations to date. We discuss smart contracts and their current problems. We discuss Arbitrum, Offchain Labs’ solution to the smart contract scaling problem which uses a system of validators to provide a guarantee to smart contract participants. Moreover, we discuss at length how their AnyTrust guarantee works, and why only a single validator is needed to maintain a working system. We also go through how an existing dApp can get ported over to Arbitrum. Finally, we talk high level tech themes: How technology and public policy are becoming more and more interconnected, how technology advising will become more and more important over time, and other technologies he’s really optimistic about. It’s a really packed episode. Enjoy. Topics: On the idea of "Bitcoin works in practice, but not in theory" Links: Coursera course: | |||
| 06 Dec 2018 | #24: The Attack of the Attack Vectors: a 51% Attack on Vertcoin & the Demise of ASIC Resistance + a Social Engineering Attack on ETCDEV and npm Libraries | 00:38:38 | |
This episode is all about attack vectors in crypto. We look at a 51% attack on Vertcoin, and how ASIC resistance is turning out to be a massive security bug, not a feature. We also look at Ethereum Classic and a social engineering attack on the ETCDEV team. Finally, we discuss the event-stream attack which robbed crypto wallets that used that npm library, and what that means for open source governance. Topics:
Links: Vertcoin - MIT Digital Currency Initiative - https://dci.mit.edu/video-gallery/?tag=vertcoin | |||
| 25 Nov 2019 | Cloud Computing at the Edge: An Overview of Fastly (FSLY) | 00:39:33 | |
Edge computing is a topic that isn’t getting enough coverage. We’ve covered CDNs like CloudFlare before, but we wanted to look at Fastly, an edge computing player that went public early in 2019. On this episode, we cover edge computing topics like rapidly purged caching. We run through a few case studies of the value edge computing brings some of Fastly’s customers. We discuss major risks that the company might face and postulate on why we think they’re trading at a discount compared to other SaaS companies like CloudFlare ($NET) and Elastic ($ESTC). Topics:
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| 07 Jan 2019 | #26: The New York Nasdaq CTO Summit: How to Manage and Scale Tech Teams | 00:47:43 | |
We discuss our time at the CTO Summit at the NASDAQ Marketsite from a couple weeks back. This was a great conference, because technology leaders from startups to larger companies congregated to talk about managing and scaling tech teams. We talk about software process, distributed teams, how deployment is the main cause of all software failures, and a whole bunch of other interesting software development topics. Just as a warning, there isn’t a lot of crypto content on this one, but we thought our learnings from the conference were worth highlighting. Topics:
Links: Bjorn Freeman Benson - https://twitter.com/bjorn_fb | |||
| 05 Nov 2019 | Discussing a Parallel Financial System with Barney Mannerings from Vega Protocol | 00:38:05 | |
On this episode, we speak with Barney Mannerings, founder of Vega Protocol, which is a blockchain product initially focused on derivatives markets. Barney understands this space really well, and it was a pleasure talking to him about what he’s building at Vega. Broadly, we discuss the DeFi, or Parallel Financial System, space, and Barney talks to us about why he thinks this space is important. He explains how Vega, in many ways, augments and replaces some exchanges, and how it serves as an integration layer with other protocols. We finish up with some areas of tech that Barney is excited about outside of crypto. Topics:
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| 30 Sep 2019 | A Tour of Blockstack’s Decentralized Computing Network With Aaron Blankstein | 00:44:42 | |
We chatted with Aaron Blankstein, Core Engineer from Blockstack. Blockstack is a decentralized computing network, which makes it simple for developers to build blockchain-based applications. We learn about Blockstack’s incentive system, and what will be changing from v1 to v2. We discuss a few use cases of Blockstack, like the Blockstack Naming Service, or BNS. We also go over Blockstack’s smart contract language Clarity, and the broad tooling that will exist for developers working on the platform. We finish up learning about Aaaron’s fascination with augmented Reality and adversarial machine learning. Topics:
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| 11 Mar 2019 | Oracles, Doug von Kohorn and Jeff Rosen from Rhombus | 00:45:43 | |
We speak about the problem around connecting smart contracts to real world data, how oracles solve that problem and the gives and takes around oracles. We walk through some example oracles in gold pricing data and prediction markets. We finally wrap up with an interview with Jeff Rosen and Doug von Kohorn, founders at Rhombus, where we discuss their approach and solution to the oracle problem. Topics:
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| 08 Oct 2018 | #18: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: John Young With Ledj.io and Building Professional Crypto Research Tools | 00:45:07 | |
John Young joins me from ledj.io. John worked at Capital One before starting his first two crypto Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS) businesses in early 2017: Spreadstreet and Cryptosheets. Both these services let users work with crypto pricing data in Google Sheets and Excel. Install a plugin, and you are good to go. Definitely worth checking out. I was excited to speak with John since he is running a crypto SaaS business for crypto research like us. We talk how he has been finding customers, who his customers are, other SaaS tools he uses for his business, and what kinds of data analysis tools he’s building at Ledj. His product is much needed in this space, and it was awesome to get his perspective on it. If you are a trader, investor, or researcher, this episode is worth listening to. Topics:
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| 16 Oct 2018 | #19: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Amy Wan, Founder and CEO of Sagewise and Building Crypto LegalTech Solutions | 00:39:57 | |
Amy Wan, Sagewise Founder and CEO joins us to discuss the smart contract LegalTech solutions they’re building at Sagewise. We go over her background, how she moved from the traditional legal space and into LegalTech, what smart contracts are, dispute resolution, and the tools they’re building at Sagewise to handle dispute resolution. Another episode of people building usable tools in this space. Topics:
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| 07 Oct 2019 | Interoperability in Cosmos’s IBC Protocol with Tendermint’s Zaki Manian | 00:47:36 | |
On this episode, I speak to Zaki Manian from Tendermint. We get deep into the weeds of interoperability, his notions of interop between fast chains and fast and slow chains. We discuss the IBC protocol, which is a spec for adapters between different chains along with all the complexities when dealing with cross-chain communications. Moreover, we examine design and development principles when building product in this space, and the differences when building traditional software product. Zaki goes over some exciting projects that are building on Cosmos as well. Topics:
Links: Cosmos Network - https://cosmos.network/ | |||
| 25 Jun 2018 | #1: The QuantLayer Genesis Story, Crypto and Stock Market Comparisons, and Why Crypto Needs Reg FD | 00:46:56 | |
QuantLayer founders Vikram and Faizaan cover how they got into crypto, how crypto markets compare with traditional stock markets, fraud in the ICO space, cross border capital formation, and more. Topics
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| 12 Nov 2018 | #21: A look at Stablecoins, Tether and PwC | 00:39:50 | |
A look at Stablecoins, centralized ones, decentralized ones, what they’re going to be used for and what kinds of risks might arise from them. We discuss exchange listings again, this time with Basic Attention Token getting listed by Coinbase, and finish up with a discussion on Tether. Topics:
Links: Alerts: | |||
| 18 Mar 2019 | Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Santiago Roel Santos from EON, Proof of Stake and Staking as a Service | 00:50:20 | |
Hey everyone, this is Vikram from QuantLayer and thanks for listening to our 34th podcast. On this episode, Santiago Roel Santos from EON joins us to talk about proof of stake and staking. We speak about Santiago’s investing background, how he entered crypto, and the Staking as a Service business he’s building now at EON. The discussion covers a lot of great topics for crypto entrepreneurs: UX considerations when building crypto products, how EON manages technical and security issues when staking on the behalf of others, and EON’s business model. This is a must listen for anyone building crypto products for consumers. Topics:
Links: Profile: | |||
| 02 Jul 2018 | #4: A Discussion with Software Consultant Ben DiFrancesco on Building Great Blockchain Software | 00:46:57 | |
Vikram and Faizaan are joined by Ben DiFrancesco of Scopelift, a software consultancy based in Philly. They talk about the Elixir programming language, how he finds clients and what software is like at bigger vs smaller companies. They also discuss the current state of crypto with the early internet, get Ben’s thoughts on the current scaling debate for smart contract platforms, and how big companies might benefit from wide crypto adoption. This was a great mix of topics and if you have any interest in software development or crypto. Topics:
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| 10 Dec 2019 | Databases and NoSQL: MongoDB’s Approach to Companies with Scaling Data Requirements | 00:38:10 | |
Relational databases versus NoSQL is of interest today given growing data requirements for businesses. Real-time, internet of things, storing geodata, financial data are examples where traditional relational databases don’t make the cut required for modern systems. We discuss the successes and failings of relational databases, and how MongoDB’s approach to NoSQL data structures allow them to serve specific customer problems with specialized solutions. We look at some customer case studies and finish up with their business model. Topics:
Links: Last 10K - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1441816/000144181619000067/mdb-013119x10k.htm | |||
| 17 Sep 2018 | #15: Open Source as Revenue Driver: How Elasticsearch Uses Open Source for Revenue Growth, Tech Investing and Crypto, a Cautionary Tale of Bad Crypto Trading Psychology and Flash Crashes | 01:04:41 | |
We explore the Elastic IPO by doing a deep dive into its SEC Prospectus. We look at their business model and risks, and how open source software has been a giant revenue growth driver for them. We then get into an interesting discussion around tech investing and how it’s related to crypto. We look at some alerts that came through our platform: a cautionary tale of a trader who lost his life savings by investing at the peak and trying to recover losses with Bitcoin Cash and Ripple, and how to avoid doing that by looking at trading psychology. We also look at a crypto flash crash and compare it with flash crashes in public markets. Topics:
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| 09 Sep 2019 | A Recap of Blockchain Training Conference 2019 | 00:42:32 | |
We recap our attendance at the Blockchain Training Conference last week. We cover the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4)’s new certifications and their conference’s emphasis on developer and professional education. We also look at the slew of great talks on The Lightning Network, bitcoin privacy, and smart contracts. Topics:
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| 23 Jul 2018 | #7: Bitcoin ETF & Alternative Energy ETFs, ZCash Incentive Structure, and How To Spot Bad Code in Your Crypto Investments | 00:55:13 | |
Vikram and Faizaan discuss the recent Bitcoin ETF filing by SolidX and VanEck, how it is reminiscent of the alternative energy ETF boom of the mid to late 2000s and also talk about what an actively managed ETF in crypto might look like. They also talk about ZCash’s incentive structure and founders reward, and developer incentives more broadly. They also discuss how crypto teams are leaking secret keys to Github, a missing deposit on Golem Network’s mainnet, and how to investigate bad code for your crypto investments. Topics:
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| 22 Jan 2020 | AWS, GCP, and Azure: The Tradeoffs of Serverless Architectures | 00:34:35 | |
Serverless has caused a massive shift in approaches to application design. On this episode, we explore what serverless gives teams, and the tradeoffs involved in going the serverless route. We cover players like Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure, and what else is in store for the space. Topics:
Links: Serverless - https://serverless.com | |||
| 26 Jun 2019 | The Father Time IPO and the Nuts and Bolts of Building Software Applications From Scratch | 00:38:08 | |
On this episode, we look at a recently filed IPO, Father Time. This isn’t a hot IPO. In fact, no bankers are underwriting this. What’s interesting about this one is that it’s entirely self-underwritten by the company founder. They are planning to build a coupon system from scratch, so we talk through how that would look from a technical perspective. We consider their business model and the budget in their S-1. Topics:
Link: Father Time IPO -https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1702388/000149315219008478/forms-1.htm | |||
| 16 Apr 2019 | On-chain Analysis with TokenAnalyst’s Sid Shekhar: The Valuable Open Ledger | 00:34:01 | |
TokenAnalyst’s founder Sid Shekhar joins us on this one to talk about the on-chain analysis tools they’re building for the crypto industry. Particularly, we spoke about the delineation of on-chain versus off-chain and why on-chain data hosts a treasure trove of valuable information. We also talk about how funds can benefit their investors by investigating open ledgers. Lots of really good stuff in here like analogies to dark pools, exchange liquidity analysis and more. Topics:
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| 18 Nov 2019 | Financial Services APIs and Silvergate Capital | 00:34:12 | |
There has been a lot of interest around developer-first banking APIs recently. On this episode, we go over recent tech IPO Silvergate Capital (ticker $SI), which is a digital currency focused bank and settlement network. We discuss their business, particularly around digital currency initiatives and their Silvergate Exchange Network (or SEN). We get into the weeds of what it means to claim to be an API first financial services company. Enjoy the episode. Topics:
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| 11 Feb 2019 | #31: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: TokenTax’s Zac McClure and All About Crypto Taxes | 00:54:14 | |
Zac McClure joins us from TokenTax. I was really excited to talk to Zac because it’s great to learn about the kinds of professional SaaS tools that crypto entrepreneurs are building. This was a fun conversation. Zac has had an eclectic career prior to crypto. He’s been an investment banker, taught financial literacy to high school students, and worked on social investing platforms. He’s been heavily invested in getting people to understand finance and investing, giving them the knowledge to own their own path towards financial freedom. TokenTax is an extension of this by helping people, funds and other institutions easily manage their crypto taxes. We go over how the US and UK treat crypto taxes, wash sales and a whole bunch of other tax specific topics. With tax season looming around the corner, you will definitely want to listen to this one. Topics:
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| 21 Jan 2019 | #28: DevOps and GitHub Opening Up Private Repos | 00:51:37 | |
We look at GitHub’s recent move to give non-paying users unlimited private repositories, and GitLab’s subsequent response. Additionally, we discuss DevOps and how teams can save money and improve deployment processes by implementing DevOps best practices. Topics:
Links: GitLab - GitHub now offers free private repos for up to three collaborators | |||
| 31 Dec 2018 | #25: Why We Moved Our Search Infrastructure to Elasticsearch ($ESTC) and a Look-back at Our Podcast Episodes of 2018 | 00:56:40 | |
On this episode, we do a recap of our podcast episodes of 2018. We look at how the crypto market has changed since we launched our first episode (things other than just prices being lower) and also all the things that haven’t changed. This was a fun review of half a year of recording with a few glimpses of times ahead. Topics: Reflecting on our podcast this past year Other links: Substratum to trade ICO funds in order to maintain capital as ETH price drops - https://www.chepicap.com/en/news/6005/substratum-to-trade-ico-funds-in-order-to-maintain-funds-as-eth-price-drops.html | |||
| 30 Oct 2018 | #20: ZRX & ESTC: A Tale of Exchange Listing Pops, the State of Crypto Reporting (It Sucks) and How You Can Make Money Being Contrarian, and How Monero (XMR) Sliced Up Transaction Fees With Bulletproofs | 00:40:13 | |
We do a victory lap for alerting our users to the ZRX add to Coinbase before everyone else. We then get into a discussion of how exchange additions are similar to public market IPO first day trading pops, like what we saw in Elastic Search recently. We then talk about the state of crypto reporting, and how it has created a mix of pay-to-play bad actors, mainstream media outlets offering 10 year old FUD over and over, and well-meaning actors who create consensus views that smart, contrarian thinkers can profit on by taking the other side. We then do a deep dive on Monero and its recent success in transaction fee reduction from their implementation of bulletproofs. Topics:
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| 30 Jul 2018 | #8: Short Selling Explained, Tesla and How Controversial Shorts Work, and Nvidia and Bitmain | 00:54:30 | |
We take a deep dive into shorting, what it is, how it works, why it works, why people short, what the psychology of shorters is and when shorting can go horribly wrong. We also talk about the bull and bear cases around Tesla, and how that’s tied to controversy and short selling. We also look at Nvidia, its IPO and the company’s gross margins and how that relates to recent news of a Bitmain IPO filing. We also consider the current browser wars as they relate to crypto and continue our discussion around some benefits of the Bitcoin 2nd Layer Lightning Network. Topics:
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| 11 Feb 2020 | Bringing Traditional Tooling Services to Serverless | 00:27:12 | |
As software teams begin to migrate to serverless, they will require more in the way of serverless specific tooling: cost tracking, alerting, monitoring, and so on. Here, we look at a number of serverless tooling providers and discuss what they bring and how they will compete with traditional tooling services. Topics:
Links: Hosted Platform - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=hosted-platform&format=card-mode&grouping=category | |||
| 14 Jan 2019 | #27: Whose Fault Is It Anyways?: On Writing Illegal Smart Contracts | 00:53:56 | |
We discuss comments from the CFTC about developer responsibilities and liabilities. The CFTC posits that there are a few primary groups of users of blockchain networks: (1) core developers of the underlying software; (2) developers of smart contracts on top of the underlying blockchain; (3) miners who validate transactions; and (4) users who transact with the chain’s smart contracts. Their focus is primarily around (2), or the developers of smart contracts, and what responsibilities those developers have when writing contracts that fall in the jurisdiction of the CFTC. Is a smart contract developer who writes options contracts or futures contracts or prediction market contracts - those that the CFTC would call financial products - liable for the code they write? This was a really interesting conversation because it touched on notions of developer responsibilities and law. As the world moves more and more in the direction of software, how do we ensure that code that’s being written isn’t bad? Topics:
Link: CFTC speech: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opaquintenz16 | |||
| 11 Jun 2019 | The SEC and the Sundance Kik or How Alternative Fundraising Schemes Get Squashed | 00:45:33 | |
We look at the SEC’s charging of Kik Interactive’s unregulated securities offering. We recap the SEC complaint, outlining their argument that Kik was a deeply underfunded, low-revenue, high-expense company that attempted a “hail mary” by circumventing securities law by running the Kin ICO. Finally, we step through the pieces of evidence the SEC presents. Topics:
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| 09 Apr 2019 | Zilliqa With Edison Lim: Formal Verification of Smart Contracts, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, and Smart Contract Composition. | 00:35:55 | |
We spoke with Edison Lim, Application Lead at Zilliqa about their protocol. We consider Zilliqa’s approach to scaling and energy usage. We discuss their proof of work consensus model for miner verification, and their approach to sharded consensus groups. We take a technical look at their smart contract language Scilla and its roots in OCaml, and why formal verification is important. Topics:
Links: Zilliqa - https://zilliqa.com/ | |||
| 19 Nov 2018 | #22: Everything is Ded (Bitcoin, “Blockchain,” ICOs, Volatility) and Amazon Takes Over New York City | 01:00:59 | |
We review the latest proclamations of Bitcoin’s apparent demise: (1) Axios’s report that Corporate blockchain and bitcoin interest is waning; (2) Galaxy Digital dumping their ICO advisory business; and (3) volatility drying up forcing traders to look for alpha elsewhere. We also look at Amazon’s expansion into New York City, right into our backyard. Topics:
Links: Bitcoin Obituaries - https://99bitcoins.com/obituary-stats/ | |||
| 13 Nov 2019 | Chips, Chips, Chips: Canaan Mining, NVIDIA, AMD, ASICs, GPUs, AI and ML chipmakers | 00:41:01 | |
Recently, there has been a lot of recent interest in customized semiconductors. Bitcoin mining has highlighted the interest in ASICs, or application specific chips, and as we move up the customized application layer stack, discussion of AI and ML chips becomes necessary. On this episode, we look at Canaan Mining, a chinese Bitcoin mining chip manufacturer. And we look at them in the context of growing trends in AI and ML chips. We compare and contrast AMD and NVIDIA and discuss the new growth in startups in the traditionally capital intensive space. We finish up with what you should be on the lookout for when considering investing in chip manufacturers. Topics:
Links: History and Corporate Structure - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1780652/000119312519276263/g773846g13c91.jpg | |||
| 10 Sep 2018 | #14: Turning A Bug Into A Feature: Bugsnag, Why You Shouldn’t Violate Open Source Copyrights (Hint: Your Coin Will Be Down 90% If You Do), The Bitcoin-Dev Mailing List, And Why Crypto UX Is So Bad | 00:50:18 | |
How do you turn a bug into a feature? On this episode, we talk about how we used Bugsnag to do just that. We then get into an interesting discussion around using 3rd party software applications to move software projects more quickly with less risk. We also highlight just how useful the bitcoin-dev mailing list is for learning about how the Bitcoin core team thinks about the protocol, and how their discussions underpin important considerations around scaling and network growth. We also look at a terrible case of UX in VeChain, how Google is adding Ethereum to BigQuery, how $800mm worth of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash moved out of a Silk Road wallet, and a very suspicious Bitmex short squeeze. Topics:
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| 25 Jun 2018 | #2: What’s a Crypto Investment Bank? A Conversation About Crypto Due Diligence With Crypto Launchpad CEO Adiraj Gupta | 00:57:15 | |
Vikram and Faizaan talk with Adiraj Gupta, of the Crypto Launchpad, a crypto investment bank. We learn what exactly a crypto investment bank is and how they built $20 million in management in just 6 months. We also discuss how friendly New Zealand regulators are towards crypto, how family offices are getting into crypto, and what the OTC or over-the-counter market looks like for Bitcoin. Topics
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| 03 Jun 2019 | High Quality Software Is Worth the Cost | 00:37:04 | |
We look at Martin Fowler’s article titled “Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?” We discuss the gives and takes of writing good software and managing technical debt. We look at misconceptions around software quality and cost, and how planning and blueprinting (architecting) up front can save teams money in the future. Moreover, we look at how good software offers teams a competitive advantage over others due to the ability to ship new features quickly and confidently. Topics:
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| 14 Oct 2019 | How Ron Lichty Manages the Unmanageable: Topics on Software Management, Agile Processes, and Making Software Hum | 00:37:57 | |
Software Consultant Ron Lichty joins us to talk about all things software management. Ron has a treasure trove of experience helping teams accelerate and amplify their software practices. We look at the history of waterfall-style projects transitioning to Agile projects. We talk about his time as a product manager at Apple and his work with Charles Schwab at the time they launched their electronic trading platform. Ron articulates his views on the different types of developers out there and how to motivate them. We finish up with a couple areas Ron is excited about: Blockchain and Virtual Reality. Topics:
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| 29 Oct 2019 | Datadog: A Developer Friendly Monitoring and Analytics Product or Ecosystem? | 00:37:17 | |
On this episode, we dig into Datadog’s (Ticker: DDOG) IPO prospectus. We discuss their approach to analytics and monitoring, and how companies can benefit from using them. We look at a few case studies of how companies derive value from their product, and one in particular, that can generate value from its use. We also run through their developer-friendly offering and how quickly the product can be incorporated into a system. We spend a little time with their financials and then discuss our view of thinking about them as a product versus an ecosystem. Topics:
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| 19 Aug 2019 | Opening Up the Black Box of Insurance: Wunderite and Programmatic Data Aggregation | 00:41:24 | |
On this episode, we have Peter MacDonald and Joe Schnare from Wunderite, an insurance startup based in Boston. This was a really interesting conversation around how they are improving insurance workflows for agencies around the country through programmatic data aggregation. We talk about their backgrounds, get into the details of the black box industry known as insurance, and how they work with customers on product development. I learned a lot from this conversation. Enjoy. But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org. We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10 Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10 (that’s Q U A N T L A Y E R and the number 10). We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace. Topics:
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| 28 Aug 2018 | #12: Tesla Staying Public, How Amazon and AWS Made Angry Shorts Give Up and Why Rejection of the Bitcoin ETF is a Good Thing | 00:53:47 | |
We re-examine the drama around Tesla, and discuss its similarities and differences with Amazon. We also look at ARK Invest’s Catherine Wood’s open letter to Elon Musk asking him to keep the company public. We cover why we think the Bitcoin ETF rejections are a good thing, and the additional activity we are seeing on our alerting platform. Topics:
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| 08 Feb 2019 | #30: Security Researcher Gets Attacked After Vulnerability Disclosure | 00:46:19 | |
What happens when a vendor attacks a security researcher who points out security flaws in their software? On this episode, we talk about two white-hat security researchers who discover multiple vulnerabilities in a vendor’s software system. The vendor initially ignores their concerns until the FBI gets involved. It culminates in a physical attack by the vendor’s COO on one of the researchers. We look at all the details around the vulnerabilities, discuss common disclosure concerns and how the FBI has opened up a “Cyber Fusion” unit to act as a liaison between security teams and at-risk vendors. Topics:
Links: Researcher Assaulted By A Vendor After Disclosing A Vulnerability | |||
| 04 Mar 2019 | Andreas M. Antonopoulos and the State of Cryptocurrency Ten Years In | 00:35:29 | |
We have Andreas M. Antonopoulos on, who we were really excited to talk to. With his books The Internet of Money, Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, Andreas has been an amazing ambassador for the cryptocurrency space. On this episode, we get into a lot of interesting topics: What’s changed and surprised him since he published The Internet of Money, how Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrency project teams can learn from one another, fighting back against oppressive regimes with cryptography, opsec, how he sees 2nd layer solutions play out, and a host of other topics. Topics:
Links: Andreas Twitter: https://twitter.com/aantonop | |||
| 16 Jul 2018 | #6: Digital Ocean Versus Google Cloud, Polychain’s $1Bn Fund, a16z’s $300mm Fund, How to be a Shady Hedge Fund Manager, and 2nd Layer Solutions for Ethereum and Bitcoin | 00:50:07 | |
It’s been an action packed week of investor heavy news. Vikram and Faizaan discuss Polychain Capital’s one billion dollar SEC filing, and how you need one million dollars to invest in them. They also look at Andreessen Horowitz’s 300 million dollar fund launch and how they are thinking about good crypto projects. They go over the shady techniques that hedge funds engage in in order to juice their returns and what a high watermark is. They also cover some alerts that QuantLayer’s platform picked up, and get into a really interesting discussion around 2nd layer solutions for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Topics:
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| 01 Feb 2019 | #29: NVIDIA’s Pre-announces Terrible Results, Huawei and Political Risk, and Bitcoin’s Predecessors | 00:43:12 | |
We look at NVIDIA’s negative pre-announce, how they stopped blaming crypto and are seeing weakness across the board, especially on the datacenter side. We take a tangent on political risk associated with Huawei, and finally finish up by looking at the slew of predecessors of Bitcoin so the next time someone thinks they’re being clever by calling Bitcoin the Myspace of Crypto, you can list off the hundred or so predecessors and attempts at payment systems before Bitcoin. Topics:
Links: NVIDIA Updates Financial Guidance for Fourth Quarter of Fiscal Year 2019 | |||
| 20 Aug 2018 | #11: Boston’s Growing Crypto Scene, Mailbag #1, and How to Say No to a Client | 00:59:54 | |
We attended the Boston New Technology Fintech & Blockchain group event where we got to present our alerting platform to a couple hundred attendees. We discuss some of the other crypto projects we saw, including Button Wallet, which is a Telegram bot that lets users buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies. We also discuss p2p lending, and go through our first Mailbag, which covers answers to questions you all have, from crypto market questions to how to say no to a client. Enjoy. Topics:
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| 16 Sep 2019 | A Tale of New Digital Primitives with Ben DiFrancesco | 00:54:21 | |
Ben DiFrancesco, software consultant and founder of scopelift, joins us on this one. Two things we really respect about Ben are his ability to break down complex technical topics and also his ability to be honest about what crypto and blockchain offer us. He’s at heart, a technologist, and his passion for and dedication to crypto is palpable. This conversation contains a bit of philosophy around Bitcoin and Ethereum, particularly around how polarized the two spaces have become. We get into Bitcoin and Ethereum’s respective reasons for existing and how they can work together, how developers can use these new digital primitives to build applications, and business opportunities in the space. We also cover DeFi, and how smart contracts enable Maker and Dai. Always enjoy talking to Ben, and I hope you enjoy this one. Topics:
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| 05 Aug 2019 | Chainweb, Pact, and Hybrid Blockchains with Kadena’s Stuart Popejoy | 00:52:21 | |
We speak with Stuart Popejoy co-founder from Kadena. This was a really great technical conversation around the hybrid public-private blockchain that Kadena is building with their Chainweb platform and LISP inspired smart contract language Pact. We cover how traditional finance firms incorporate new technologies into their workflow, real world use cases of Kadena, and what’s happening in the Enterprise. We also get into the technical details of Chainweb’s Proof-of-Work consensus system and the importance of writing safe code, which is an underpinning of the Pact language. Topics:
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A word from a sponsor we’re really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. Hosted August 28-30 in Denver, CO, BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org. | |||
| 12 Aug 2019 | Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Blockchain Teaching Pedagogy: The CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium and Blockchain Training Conference | 00:32:57 | |
We speak with Andreas Antonopoulos, author of Mastering Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, and Mastering Ethereum, and also board member at the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium, known as C4. C4 will be hosting the Blockchain Training Conference in Denver, Colorado at the end of August. In this conversation, we learn about the conference, how Andreas thinks about blockchain teaching pedagogy, and the certifications that C4 is offering now: the Certified Bitcoin Professional (or CBP) certification and the CryptoCurrency Security Standard (or CCSS) certification. We learn all about the certifications and what they allow the holder to do. Always a pleasure to talk with Andreas. If you enjoyed this one, please rate and review us on iTunes. It would help us out a lot. Thanks for listening to the episode. But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org. We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10 Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10. We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace. Topics
Links Blockchain training conf: https://blockchaintraining.org/schedule/ | |||
| 01 Oct 2018 | #17: Crypto Legal Landscape with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law: Securitized Real Assets and Intellectual Goods, Crypto Patents, Hard Forks and “Derivative Works,” Decentralized Exchanges and Alternative Trading Systems | 00:56:31 | |
We talk with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law. Kurt is a lawyer who works with startups and is heavily involved in the crypto space here in New York. We’re glad we were able to talk to Kurt because some of the most interesting things being done in this space are by lawyers. We talk about how he got into crypto, the Reg D offerings he’s working on (securitized real assets and intellectual goods), a utility token client he’s working with (a sort of “Ripple 2.0” project), how patents in this space work and why they aren’t so bad, hard forks and “derivative works”, and how cartographers back in the day put fake towns in maps and how that’s related to crypto. We also get into the differences between utility and security tokens, how founders can structure their offerings better, and the differences between Reg D and Reg A offerings. We also cover decentralized exchanges and alternative trading systems. If you are an entrepreneur or a lawyer interested in this space, you will find this action packed episode interesting. Topics:
Links: Kurt’s email: kwatkins@mgmillerllc.com | |||
| 22 May 2019 | A Look at CrowdStrike’s IPO Prospectus and Their Approach to Endpoint Security | 00:45:49 | |
We explore the CrowdStrike IPO by delving into its SEC Prospectus: An examination of their technology, and in particular their approach to endpoint security. By wading through the buzzword ocean, we bring you the key areas to focus on in this S-1. We consider their network effects, notably how signing up more customers to their platform improves security of all their customers. We go through a few case studies of their Falcon product line. Finally, we look at their stated risks. Topics:
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| 30 Nov 2018 | #23: Crypto Hangover and Market Downturn?: A Look At Semiconductor Market Cycles, NVIDIA Throwing Crypto Under The Bus, And What Nathaniel Popper Got Wrong In His Recent New York Times Article | 00:50:02 | |
A look at the semiconductor market cycle, and how recent results from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and AMD have spooked the tech market. We look at NVIDIA’s most recent conference call where they place all the blame on what they call a “crypto hangover.” We then look at two distinct predictions about this latest semi cycle, one from JAG capital, who got it completely wrong, and another from a Supply Chain magazine that got it completely right. We finish up with a teardown of a New York Times article by Nathaniel Popper titled “5 Reasons Cryptocurrency Prices Are Plunging Again” and what he got wrong. If you enjoy our podcast, please rate and review us on iTunes. Thanks. Topics:
Book: Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D8KFX9Q/ Links: Earnings call transcript - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4222728-nvidia-corp-nvda-ceo-jen-hsun-huang-q3-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript | |||
| 24 Sep 2018 | #16: Zaif Exchange Hack and How We Called It Two Months Ago and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) | 00:44:10 | |
On this episode, Faizaan and I do a victory lap for calling the Zaif exchange hack over 2 months ago. We also a deep dive into IPFS - what it is, what problem it solves, how it works and how Cloudflare is getting involved in the space. We finally look at some alerts that came through our dashboard. Topics:
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| 25 Jun 2018 | #3: Crypto’s ICO Legal Landscape, the Attack on Verge, M&A in Crypto, and Better Treasury Management for Crypto Teams | 00:44:03 | |
Vikram and Faizaan talk about their experience at Consensus, what they heard about the ICO space from the horse’s mouth - silicon valley lawyers themselves. They also cover the recent Verge hack, their thoughts around how coin teams can secure their treasury better, how background checks would be a great use case for blockchain, M&A in the crypto space and more. Topics
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| 13 Aug 2018 | #10: More About Tesla (This Time About Going Private), Software Developer Personalities and Getting Tangled in IOTA | 00:47:30 | |
In this episode, we discuss a range of topics from Elon Musk’s recent tweets about taking Tesla private for $420 per share to the wide range of personalities amongst software developers. We also take a deep dive into the web known as the Tangle, where we look at its underlying technology to figure out what exactly is going on with IOTA. Topics:
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| 21 Oct 2019 | Content Delivery Networks, DDOS Protection and Bot Fighting: CloudFlare as a Web Performance and Security Company | 00:34:30 | |
We go over the CloudFlare IPO prospectus, which calls itself a “Web Performance and Security Company.” We discuss their mission statement, their stated competitive advantages, risks they may face and a quick overview of their financials. Topics:
Links: Cloudfare.com - https://www.cloudflare.com/ | |||
| 27 Aug 2019 | Domain Driven Design, Language and DevOps for Distributed Systems with CircleCI’s Rob Zuber | 00:51:36 | |
We have Rob Zuber, CTO from CircleCI on. A lot of the projects we work on implement CircleCI, so we were super excited to speak to Rob. We talk about his background and how he became part of CircleCI through an acquisition. We also get into one of his favorite topics: language. Particularly the words that are used in projects, and how important they are for workflow. We also discuss “Domain Driven Design,” or the idea that when creating a layer of functionality, to keep it bounded within its domain so other layers don’t creep into it. This was an engineering heavy episode that was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoy this one. But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org. We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10 Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10 (that’s Q U A N T L A Y E R and the number 10). We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace. Topics:
Books: Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans Links: CircleCI: https://circleci.com/ | |||
| 03 Sep 2018 | #13: An Alert Blitzkrieg: Cheap ETH Mining, MANA Land Estate Bug, EOS RAM Vulnerability, Stratis Node Vulnerability, Etherscan Vulnerability, Bitcoin Cash Vulnerability, and How Wall Streeters and Technologists Can Be More Lay-language Friendly | 00:52:49 | |
We discuss the alerting platform we’re building for crypto investors and traders. We then cover how Ethereum miners are rolling in dough, and the gives and takes of Proof of Work. We talk about a few really interesting alerts that hit this week: a Land Estate Bug we found in Decentraland ($MANA), an $EOS Vulnerability that exploits RAM, a Stratis node vulnerability ($STRAT) that’s been around for almost all year, and a Bitcoin Cash ($BCH) vulnerability. We also talk about how the crypto space has really gotten a new wave of people interested in learning about how finance works, and what crypto teams will have to do to keep that interest going. Topics:
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| 23 Sep 2019 | Building Scalable Derivatives Trading Platforms with Charles Phan of Interdax | 00:31:21 | |
We chatted with Charles Phan, Chief Technology Officer from Interdax. Interdax is a next generation digital assets exchange with strong engineering roots in High Frequency Trading firms, traditional exchanges, hedge funds, investment banks, market data and liquidity providers. This episode was a lot of fun. We talked about Charles’ background in traditional finance and a prior life as a derivatives trader. We then compare and contrast traditional and crypto derivatives markets. We also talk technical details of perpetual swaps and how they differ from other derivative products. Finally, we discuss the engineering underpinnings of the interdax platform and UX and UI considerations when building the product. We finish up discussing technologies Charles is excited about. Hope you enjoy this one. Topics:
Book: Dynamic Hedging by Nassim Taleb Links:
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