Join me for a fantastic conversation with Megan Knab, co-founder of Franklin. The company was launched in 2022 to help Web3 founders manage their teams better. Franklin facilitates teams to be paid in USD, crypto, or a mix of both. For companies based in the US, Franklin manages the required tax compliance so that builders can focus on building. This was a timely discussion with Megan after some of the recent banking issues in the United States.

Happy 2023! The show will be rolling out some phenomenal founders who are building, yes, in this "winter" or bear market...whatever you want to call it. Innovation is still happening! Evan, the CEO, and founder at Mintify, joins us to discuss how they have been building one of the best platforms to discover, analyze and trade NFT economies with a suite of powerful interfaces. Their all-in-one platform features historical and real-time data for both long-term holders and emerging NFT traders. They also have tools to check what’s trending at a glance based on real-time collection analytics. Mintify also has complete Historical & Real-time Blockchain data for over 100,000+ collections and the ability to help you manage your assets, list across multiple marketplaces, and see the ROI of your wallet. Check it out and learn more!

Join us for a great show with Josh Katz, founder of YellowHeart, which aims to we harness Web3 to revitalize ticketing, and empower fans, artists, and sports teams. Utilizing the latest and greatest in Web3 technology, our team of industry experts works with you to build long-lasting and engaged fan communities, collect revenue on secondary sales of tickets & collectibles, and so much more. Josh has decades of experience in the music industry, launching the careers of many of today's biggest artists. Listen and learn.

It's good to be back after a few months' hiatus! It's been busy on our side, but many new shows and content are coming out soon! Today we start with Amir and Craig from SuperMojo, a new investment from our early-stage fund that, at its core, is a financing platform designed to make digital assets more accessible for users. The platform facilitates point-of-sale financing, like layaway, to make NFT purchases easier and collateralized lending for improved post-sale liquidity. Supermojo’s initial focus is to partner with marketplaces and storefronts to offer these services. Come listen to a great chat about NFTs (beyond the collectible) and how companies like SuperMojo aim to be at the forefront.

We are so excited to have Rachel and Giel, the co-founders of GoodGhosting, on with us for the show. A part of the Endeavor portfolio, GoodGhosting helps users to make saving easy, fun, and rewarding. They create social savings games that use blockchain technology to reward dedicated savers. They are about improving users' financial habits by helping them save and invest. They envision a world where building wealth is simple and safe, and everyone can enjoy it!

What an amazing, fun, and thought-provoking chat I recorded with Brooks Brown, Creator at NOR. Brooks has an amazing history, ranging from working at Lucas Arts to the production team of Avatar. His team is world-class as well and they are building one of the best new games in Web3. What makes a great game? How do you build digital asset economic systems in the games of tomorrow? We cover this and much more. Not to be missed!

Christian from Evaluate Market joins me to discuss their work on building one of the best and easiest to use NFT Portfolio tracking tools in the world. Evaluate.Market allows NFT collectors to track and manage their portfolios and discover new projects across multiple NFT marketplaces and blockchains. Since March 2021, the website has had over 1 million unique visitors, primarily within the Flow blockchain ecosystem. Recently, the team announced the expansion of Evaluate.Market beyond Flow to include 700+ major Ethereum projects. Learn about how and why this platform could help reach hundreds of millions of users in the next few years.

It's been a while, but the show is coming back more frequently! Ian joins us from Mojito, which grew to fame by building the Metaverse Marketplace for Sotheby's in 2021. We had a great conversation about how iconic businesses and brands are working with Mojito to think about and deploy their NFT and Metaverse strategies. Why? There are billions of people out there (gamers) who are already part of the economic world. Still, even more that are just starting to be a significant part of our global economic future - and they live in metaverses to some extent already. Why did Nike, Adidas, and fashion brands build here already? Learn more from Ian.

So happy to have Joao and Matt on the show to talk all about BAYZ! We got to meet the team last year as they started to build one of the best play-to-earn gaming guilds in the world that helps members earn money by playing video games and being part of a global gaming community. We discuss their focus on e-sport influencers (some big news there) and what made Brazil such an amazing part of the world to focus on. Enjoy!

What a great show! Matty joins me to discuss how Solana has been able to grow with the use of some of the most exciting and involved hackathons in digital assets. We also discuss their use of "hacker houses" which aim to help developers learn key coding languages in Solana development. Lastly, we discuss Riptide, their newest hackathon that already has THOUSANDS of founders submitting their newest ideas.

Michael joins us for a great dive in Fantom which, according to Michael, is a high-performance, scalable, and secure smart-contract platform. It is designed to overcome the limitations of previous-generation blockchain platforms. Lachesis, its revolutionary aBFT consensus mechanism, allows Fantom to be much faster and cheaper than older technologies, yet extremely secure. We learn why DeFi developers like Andre Cronje (known from Yearn Finance and other notable projects) have been spending time here building and much more.

Brian joins me on Base Layer to discuss one of the most interesting projects in the digital asset ecosystem currently, Rabbithole. In this portal, one learns how to use varying functions in digital assets, from staking digital assets on DeFi platforms to buying your first ENS (Ethereum Name Service). A user goes on "quests," and as they do, they essentially build a reputation badge that can be used for entry into DAO's to show they are knowledgeable and capable participants. A must listen!

Always great to have Sergey join me on the show to talk about Chainlink's role in various sectors, whether DeFi, Gaming, and in this case, Web3. This has been a topic of heated exchanges between those in digital assets and those defending Web2, such as the founder of Twitter. Sergey discusses how and why Web3 will evolve to become the dominant force, looking at historical perspectives as key indicators of future success. We also discuss the role out of CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol) and this concept of the "truth machine".

Three leading YGG SEA executives - Evan Spytma, CEO & Co-Founder, Irene Umar, Co-Founder and Indonesian Country Manager, and Daniel Wang, Chief Investment Officer join me for a conversation about their mission of creating one of the largest and most sustainable P2E virtual economies in the world. YGG SEA provides a bridge between games and players who do not have the means to purchase NFTs. Their investment philosophy is focused on scholars – they invest in games that are suitable for scholars, providing them with the opportunity to play these games and earn a living wage. Learn more in the episode!

Krystal Yang joins me for a conversation about her journey to founding Ignite Tournaments, one of Arca Endeavor's investments. Ignite Tournaments is a tournament layer platform that sits above a native blockchain game deployed in mobile format. The platform combines esports tournament organization, streaming services with instantaneous payouts in crypto and NFTs, and provides play-to-earn functionality to any game. Come learn more about Ignite Tournaments and Krystal's accomplishments in the mobile gaming world!

It's been a while! A lot of shows coming out soon, so be on the lookout. Today we put out a show we recorded with Fvckrender, one of the most sought-after NFT artists today. Has worked with clients like Lil Nas X, Lebron James, Puma, Christian Dior, and Spotify, while being featured at Christie's and Sotheby's. We delve into his background as well, being self-taught, a high school dropout that used to be a waiter, and would work on digital art as a hobby to becoming iconic today. Enjoy!

Peter Ing joins me for a conversation about his past experiences and his journey to founding BlockchainSpace, one of Arca Endeavor’s investments. Blockchain Space is a gaming accounting and payments software firm that provides player management and in-game financing tools. Peter has 15 years of experience in FinTech and remittance firms, and has been a key ambassador of Axie Infinity for the last two years allowing him to build BlockchainSpace with key insights into the industry. Come learn more about it on the show!

Nick joins me for a fascinating discussion on Upshot which is a question and answer protocol. It leverages a new field of mechanism design called peer prediction to incentivize people to answer questions honestly. Its purpose is to reliably and efficiently pair honest answers to questions. This enables and improves a number of exciting use cases such as efficient price discovery for esoteric assets, decentralized insurance, decentralized governance, content curation, and more. Find out more here.

Carson, a multi-time founder, joins us on Base Layer to discuss all the things they are building at Lattice, Arca Endeavor's second investment. Lattice brings the Bloomberg "RFQ" function (request for quote) to the world of digital asset trading, which is aiming to optimize price discovery and removal of human error. This should be a pivotal moment in the maturation of the asset class. Come learn more about it on the show!

Michael joins us to discuss Star Atlas, one of the most talked-about P2E, blockchain-based games coming to market. Star Atlas is a virtual gaming metaverse based in the year 2620. The metaverse introduces a unique gaming experience through the combination of both traditional core game and blockchain mechanics, which Michael discusses along the journey of building the game. Building games is challenging in conventional markets; making a play-to-earn game is even more difficult. Learn why so many are talking about this.

Pat White and Amy Kalnoki join me for a special Base Layer episode as we discuss Bitwave, a tax and accounting platform that digital asset projects are flocking to. Why? Bitwave has developed special tools to focus specifically on the implications of DeFi activity like staking, yield farming, and more. Bitwave is the first investment in our new venture fund, Endeavor, and we discuss why we invested in the team, the total addressable market, the tools they've built, and much more. To learn more about Bitwave you can go here.

Today, a big show highlights some work we have done at Arca, the firm I have helped build over the last three years. Rayne Steinberg, our CEO, joins me on the show today to navigate the news we are dropping and what it entails for the future. Fascinating stuff - I can't wait for you all to listen!

Scott, the CEO of Candy Digital, recently came on Base Layer to talk about building one of the most interesting NFT based sports collections to date. The world learned about sports NFT's via NBA Top Shot, but what Candy is building is different - adding experiences like throwing out the first pitch or being able to meet the players of the team you love, all by buying a special NFT they create. Learn more about Scott and what they are doing at Candy - if you love sports as I do, this is one for you.

Ahmed joins me on the show for a great discussion on the build-out of Biconomy, a project I was lucky enough to know about in the earliest of days. Today, Biconomy seeks to accelerate web3.0 adoption by making all its components more composable, interoperable & usable. Tomorrow, Biconomy is the foundation of how transactions and chain interaction take place seamlessly and frictionlessly. Listen in on how they are doing this and learn about next-gen tooling for Web 3.0.

Zach joins me on the show to talk about his road to helping build Mintable, a marketplace where people can find, sell and mint their own NFT's. We talk about the "mom experiment" -- creating a user interface that eliminates some of the technical complexities so more people outside the box could enjoy participating in this new world. We also talk about gaming and the idea that all IP will eventually be an NFT. Super interesting conversation with what we call an OG.

Sebastien, the co-founder of The Sandbox, joins me for a must-listen on the state of blockchain-based gaming. Over the past two years, this industry has seen exponential growth, from daily active users (DAU's) of some games eclipsing 1 million players to new metaverses that should make any diehard Minecraft or Roblox player take a look. Listen to a pioneer in the space and hear what's happening here.

Base Layer is back with Alex Svanenik from Nansen, a research platform used by professional investors in Digital Assets. With Nansen you can see where funds are moving to, identify new projects or tokens, and trace transactions down to the most granular level. Listen in on the three-year journey to build this platform and where it's going in the future.

Derek joins me on the show to talk all about Moonbeam which is a blockchain project built back in January 2020 as a way to tackle cross-chain interoperability challenges, it is an Ethereum compatible smart contract parachain (and we discuss what that means) on Polkadot. For those who are not familiar with Polkadot, it is a multi-blockchain platform where projects can have their own blockchain designed to meet their specific needs rather than use a general-purpose blockchain that might not have all they need. 

Founded in 2014, Bitso, the Mexico City-based company offers multiple cryptocurrency products and services to more than 2 million customers across Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Pablo Gonzalez, the Co-Founder of Bitso joins me to discuss their offering which includes: the Bitso App which lets users buy, sell, send, or receive bitcoin and 8 other cryptocurrencies; Bitso Alpha, a professional-grade crypto trading platform; and Bitso Business, a suite of cross-border products for local enterprises. Recently the company raised a $250M Series C led by Coatue and Tiger Global, two prominent funds in the world; we learn why in this episode.

Gabby joins me for one of the most inspiring conversations I've had on the show to date. In late 2020, Yield Guild Games set out on a mission to introduce as many people as possible to the concept of play-to-earn. Just eight months later, they have witnessed countless life-changing success stories as a result of the money earned by playing NFT games such as Axie Infinity. Come listen to the story and see how digital assets are changing people's lives for the better around the world.

What a special show with 0xMaki, a world-renown contributor to SushiSwap which is a decentralized exchange built on Ethereum that utilizes an automated market-making system rather than a traditional order-book. Instead of matching individual buy and sell orders, users can pool together two assets that are then traded against, with the price determined based on the ratio between the two. SushiSwap began as a fork of Uniswap; however, is growing into a more diversified, more grassroots alternative.

Colin from Protocol Labs joins me to discuss all the work they are doing there in enabling Web 3.0. Protocol Labs is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory. Their projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and many more. They aim to make human existence orders of magnitude better through technology. 

About our sponsors: Nexo and Paraswap

Nexo

Try Nexo, the only instant, efficient and complete crypto banking service, featuring: savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, Stablecoins & fiat; flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR; an exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and top prices. All of this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at nexo.io

Paraswap

Paraswap aggregates decentralized exchanges and other DeFi services in one comprehensive interface to streamline and facilitate users' interactions with Ethereum's decentralized finance. Learn more at paraswap.io

Sergey joins me on the show again to discuss their new 2.0 whitepaper in which they delve into hybrid smart contracts and how those go beyond smart contracts today. We talk about the technical advancements outlined in the paper and how Chainlink oracle networks abstract complexity away from existing enterprises that want to interact with smart contracts. We also discuss how Chainlink work not only within the Ethereum ecosystem but with others chains and L2's.

Greg joins us today for a fantastic episode of Base Layer discussing Akash Network. Akash is the world’s first decentralized cloud computing marketplace, leveraging 85% of underutilized cloud capacity in 8.4 million data centers. Akash enables anyone to buy and sell unused compute. Akash DeCloud greatly accelerates scale and price performance for DeFi, decentralized organizations, and high-growth industries like machine learning/AI.

About our sponsors:

Nexo: Try Next - the only instant, efficient and complete crypto banking service, featuring: Savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, Stablecoins & fiat; flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR; an exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and top prices. All of this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at nexo.io

Paraswap: ParaSwap aggregates decentralized exchanges and other DeFi services in one comprehensive interface to streamline and facilitate users' interactions with Ethereum's decentralized finance. Learn more about Paraswap at: https://paraswap.io

Do joins me on Base Layer for a epic chat. Terra is a permissionless blockchain network that is based on a suite of fiat-pegged stablecoins collateralized by the network’s native token LUNA. The idea at Terra is that the path to widespread adoption of Digital Assets is largely based on stability and composability of the underlying network, which is what Terra excels at -- providing a fast and secure settlement layer for building financial applications on top of. These applications can range from payments (Chai) to investing (Mirror) and savings (Anchor). 

Financial systems rarely connect to one another directly across company boundaries. Business networks are in competition for market share and thus, do not have incentives to share user profiles, build a robust and shareable reputation system within a network, or open their data silos to others. Lucas and his team at Centrifuge believe that the time of incremental optimization of archaic processes has to come to an end. Only by collectively shaping an entirely new system for the global financial supply chain can we foster widespread economic opportunity. This new system can only be established by dismantling the existing financial supply chain infrastructure, stripping it down to its essential components, and reassembling it for the 21st century. Come listen a fascinating episode that discusses bridging these divides.

Ganesh from Covalent joins me with a great discussion on Covalent which provides a unified API to bring full transparency and visibility to assets across all blockchain networks. Simply put, they have a single API which allows you to pull detailed, granular blockchain transaction data from multiple blockchains with no code. 

About our sponsors:

Coinbase

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Nexo

Try Nexo - the only instant, efficient and complete crypto banking service, featuring:

• Saving accounts with up to 12% interest in crypto, stablecoins & fiat
• Flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR
• An exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and top prices

All this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo wallet.

Start banking at nexo.io

Such a fun and interesting episode! Aavegotchis are rare crypto-collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain, backed by the ERC721 standard used in popular blockchain games such as Cryptokitties, Axie Infinity, and Cryptovoxels. We talk about the game play and what's under the hood which includes some very sophisticated DeFi tooling.

Compass is a bitcoin-first company on a mission to support the decentralized growth of hashrate and strengthen network security by helping more people, learn, explore and mine bitcoin. They have made it incredibly easy to start Bitcoin mining - something many have wanted to explore. We discuss this, the environmental fud that has been prominent lately and much more.

Teller Finance is a company I've been watching for almost a year; I think it could arguably become one of the most important DeFi platforms ever. Imagine something like a decentralized FICO score that is portable and universally accepted. That's kind of what Teller is up to. Listen and learn.

About our sponsor, Coinbase:

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Welcome back! After an unexpected hiatus from yours truly we are back! What better way to come back then talking with Stani from Aave who has been instrumental in DeFi massive growth in the last year. Aave is an open-source and non-custodial protocol to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets with a variable or stable interest rate. It also enables ultra-short duration, uncollateralized flash loans designed to be integrated into other products and services. We talk about how this all works, their new AMM (automated market maker), how their decentralized governance is working compared to others, NFT's and how we get the next 10 million users into DeFi.

About our sponsor, Coinbase:

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Did you know Morgan Stanley had a Head of Digital Assets? Well you do now! Such a great episode with Andrew who is incredibly knowledgeable about the space. We discuss the global macro narrative that has been the draw to Bitcoin for many institutions; going beyond Bitcoin and what DeFi's role could be in further growing; the role Corporations are playing in terms of buying Bitcoin and Digital Assets and much more.

It's been a little over two years in the making but we have reached our 200th episode! What a special one with Meltem in which we have a no holds bar conversation about the world we live in and the role Bitcoin is playing in it. **Note: unlike in previous episodes, I do drop a few curses here; it was right after the attempted insurrection at the Capitol and I was heated** We talk about the role Bitcoin is playing; is it ok to spend your Bitcoin or should it be in the narrative of store of wealth? So much more; just listen!

The legendary Raoul Pal joins me for an absolutely epic conversation in which we touch on global macro issues, including last week's attempted insurrection in the United States, yields and the debt markets around the world, the continued narrative of Bitcoin among institutional investors and more. We also spend a lot of time discussing second level thinking (coined by investors like Howard Marks, Ray Dalio and others) in Digital Assets; how to look beyond the meme's and those who call digital assets derogatory names and more. Raoul and his team have been producing amazing content at Real Vision on traditional markets and now Digital Assets; check it out here: https://www.realvision.com/

About our sponsor, Coinbase:

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Matt joins us to kick off 2021 with a great discussion on mempools; for those unfamiliar a mempool is a Digital Asset node’s mechanism for storing information on unconfirmed transactions. It acts as a sort of waiting room for transactions that have not yet been included in a block. One is able to gather very interesting observational data with this and Blocknative is at the forefront of it. Learn more about what they are doing here: https://www.blocknative.com/

About our sponsor: Coinbase

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Legendary recording! Peter is the Managing Director of Jump Capital, a highly seasoned investor in both traditional and digital assets. He and his team have been investing in Digital Assets for about 7 years now and he's seen it all. We talk about his 2021 predictions which include Bitcoin hitting $50,000 and why that is a more reachable target today than ever before. Additionally we talk about DeFi having a continuance of a breakout in 2021, stablecoins, will CBDC's take off and so much more. Time to take notes!

About Coinbase, our partner:

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Tim joins me back on the show to update everyone Staked which for the last few years has been facilitating what I call the emergence of fixed income in Digital Assets. Essentially Staked helps investors earn yield from staking and DeFi without taking custody of crypto assets; some of the yields on the platform are high 10's and 20's. We talk about the how this works, what goes into staking and the emergence of ETH2 and why this is potentially a watershed moment.

Richard, the founder of Numerai, joins me for a great podcast to discuss how they are building a blockchain based hedge fund using crowdsourced predictions. Numerai, founded in Dec. 2015, is building a blockchain based hedge fund that utilizes artificial intelligence and crowdsourced stock market predictions. The platform relies on a monthly machine learning and data science “tournament” where users, primarily data scientists, can submit trading algorithms about the stock market. Numerai then employs artificial intelligence algorithms to analyze the predictions, and the best are included in Numerai’s “meta-model” which combines all the underlying inputs on which it will trade the stock market.

About Coinbase and Coinbase Prime, our sponsor:

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Joe Lallouz, the CEO of Bison Trails, comes back on Base Layer for an epic conversation about the role Bison Trails is playing in Digital Assets; prior I've equated them to being the Wix of 2006, bringing the ability of the non-technocrat to build websites/e-commerce sites and more. Upon reflection of this chat I am now equating them to Oracle, that infrastructure layer that has been so incredibly important to the build of internet 1 & 2 that not many people non-technocratic people understand what they do but they just know they may things work: that's what Bison Trails is becoming. We discuss ETH2 and their role and QT, a new release they put out a few weeks ago and much more. Find out more here: https://bisontrails.co/

About Coinbase & Coinbase Prime (Base Layer partner)

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Peter, the CEO of Blockchain.com joins me on Base Layer for a very interesting conversation about the role his company plays in the overall ecosystem as a wallet provider, a data analytic and a source of yield for those depositing their digital assets. Peter has been involved in this new emerging asset and asset class for almost 10 years - we talk about how it's changed, institutional investors, the importance of data and analytics that have matured and much more. You can find out more about the company at: https://www.blockchain.com/

Skale is a piece of infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem that is designed to enable higher throughput and performance, potentially assisting in ushering in billions of users on Ethereum based applications in the coming years. Jack comes back to discuss how Skale works in the various sub sectors of Ethereum such as DeFi & Gaming. We give new comers to Digital Assets lots of metaphors and imagery on how it works and it's value proposition. Skale also announced some massive news on Dec 1st - hear more about it here.

A note on our sponsor:

Coinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.

Sid joins me from Arbol in what I think is one of the most interesting conversations I've had in a while. Arbol utilizes decentralized blockchain technology for parametric insurance. Parametric insurance pays out based on the value of predetermined metrics, instead of based on damages measured by physical inspections. Hence, blockchain technology is used to ensure that predetermined metrics are transmitted from a range of third-party data providers in an immutable, reliable and transparent manner to the insurance coverage enforcing smart contracts. With close to $200B in economic loses associated with natural disaster forecasted for 2020 industry's around the world are trying to get a handle on how to get ahead of the curve and Arbol could be leading the pack. More info on Arbol here

Chris, the COO of Pixelmatric, joins me for a great show to discuss the work this studio is doing to bring the future of Bitcoin gaming to the masses. We discuss the history of blockchain based gaming, the current phase and what the future holds. We also discuss an important split in gaming: the pay to play and the play to earn; Pixelmatic and there new MMO Infinite Fleet is an example of this powerful play to earn model.

Kevin joins me on Base Layer to discuss Rally, an emerging blockchain ecosystem focused on giving Creators new ways to build their businesses and achieve deeper engagement with their communities, with better fan alignment and more control than they have ever had before. The Rally Network is providing Creators with tools to build virtual economies that extend their brands while also providing community benefits and new economic incentives for fans to engage with their favorite Creators. We discuss the growth of influencers like Mr. Beast, Ninja and more and how this could pave a way for new economies for many of them.

Fredrik, the co-founder of Dune Analytics joins me on Base Layer to discuss how they have become one of the key players in Digital Asset data analysis. With their boards that are created by community members they have been a flash point of analysis on DeFi and many of the sub sectors of Digital Assets. We discuss this and much more.

Aleksander joins me on Base Layer for one of the most interesting conversations we've had about the intersection of digital collectibles, gaming and digital asset based ecosystems that are becoming incredibly mature. We discuss how Axie Infinity was born, how it's becoming the Pokemon of Digital Assets and what the future has in hold for the game and its community participants. Must listen to episode!!

Diane joins me to discuss one of the most talked about new projects in DeFi: DODO. After raising a round led by some of the biggest investors in Digital Assets DODO is working to build upon their next generation on-chain liquidity provider platform which leverages the Proactive Market Maker algorithm (PMM) to provide pure on-chain and contract-fillable liquidity for everyone. Great conversation on what could be one of the key pieces to the future of DeFi.

Sergey, the Co-Founder of Chainlink, joins me again for a tremendous conversation about the role smart contracts are beginning to play in society, helping unbanked people become banked, helping those with identification become part of a larger technological society and much more. We also discuss the evolution of smart contracts and the need for real world data to make them work and the role Chainlink plays in that very important part of the equation.

Mounir joins us to discuss Paraswap, a new platform that aggregates multiple decentralized exchanges into one place so that the rates often beat the market price. We discuss the role that aggregators are beginning to play in DeFi, how the incentive models work for liquidity providers and the underlying technology that makes this work. You can find more about Paraswap here: https://paraswap.io/#/

Amrit joins me on Base Layer to provide insight into Zilliqa, a high-throughput public blockchain platform designed to scale to thousands of transactions per second. Zilliqa aims to drive the blockchain industry forward by developing the highest quality technology infrastructure which can create measurable and real-world impact. To that end, we have sought to establish partnerships across industry verticals that have emerged as clear beneficiaries to innovative, decentralised technologies, with participation across digital advertising, financial services, payments, gaming, as well as digital entertainment. More info here: https://www.zilliqa.com/

Artur joins me on the show from Somnium Space, an open and social virtual reality world built on the Ethereum blockchain. You can buy land, build or import objects, and instantly enjoy or monetize assets. Somnium space is a universe shaped entirely by its community of users. This world continues to fascinate me as what our potential future may be (or is becoming already) so enjoy! Check it out here: https://somniumspace.com/

Devin, the co-founder of Opensea, joins me on Base Layer for a great review of how they are building what I am calling the Amazon of NFT's. OpenSea is a marketplace for digital goods, including collectibles, gaming items, digital art, and other digital assets that are backed by a blockchain like Ethereum. On OpenSea, you can buy, sell, and trade any of these items with anyone in the world. OpenSea is currently the largest general marketplace for user-owned digital goods, with the broadest set of categories (200 and growing), the most items (over 4 million), and the best prices for new categories of items. We discuss this massive growth and what the future looks like in this exciting sector of digital assets.

Matthew joins me on Base Layer for a great conversation about the furthering of the institutionalization of Digital Assets. Matthew spent a large percentage of his career at GCM Grosvenor, a global alternative asset management firm started in 2971 that currently has around $55 billion in assets. We talk about his transition to Digital Assets, especially the 'why'. You will also hear a great conversation around: Active versus Passive investing, why a FOF approach makes sense for digital assets, the differences between traditional hedge fund due diligence & the digital asset version and much more.

JP joins me for an excellent show in which we delve deep into the state of the state of Bitcoin mining, hitting on the health of mining here in the United States and also on the technological aspects associated with it. For those learning about digital assets, Bitcoin and this ecosystem we also give a primer on hash rate, discuss the use of renewal energy associated with mining and discuss where in the technology curve the equipment associated with mining is.

Andrew, the Managing Partner at Sfermion, joins me for a comprehensive discussion on the entire world of NFT's and the "Metaverse". There has been a shift from all things DeFi to the world of NFT's where art and gaming is taking a whole new shape. For anyone trying to understand what is happening in this sub sector of Ethereum based platforms this is a must listen. Also check out Andrew's blog: https://andrewsteinwold.substack.com/people/1809735-andrew-steinwold

Alex joins me on Base Layer for what I can describe as a master class in NFT's. What is an NFT and why is everyone talking about it? Alex answers that and much more and tells us what Rarible is; one of the best marketplaces today for this world of art, gaming and more intersecting. It allows people with no experience create NFT's and really experience this world. Must listen to episode!

Tor rejoins us on Base Layer to discuss Secret Network, the first blockchain to allow privacy-preserving smart contracts. That means applications built on Secret can utilize encrypted data without revealing it to anyone, even the nodes in the network. By supporting encrypted inputs, encrypted outputs, and encrypted state for smart contracts, Secret Network allows for new kinds of powerful decentralized applications to be built. This can unlock substantial value across multiple verticals and industries, including the following: 1) Decentralized Finance: support for privacy-preserving asset transfers, lending, and more; 2) Data Sharing: sharing and monetizing data while keeping it secure, 3) Machine Learning: discovering powerful insights while protecting underlying data; 4) Healthcare: allowing research over encrypted data, driving innovation; 5) Gaming: enabling more open and more usable gaming experiences.

Rich joins me on Base Layer for a great conversation about some of the macro trends in Digital Assets throughout the summer; we discussed Bitcoin and spent a good amount of time on DeFi, what's happening in that world and the opportunity set. We discussed some of the solutions GSR provides investors such as growing the size of your balance sheet with customized yield enhancing strategies such as lending and call overwriting. Great overview and discussion from a team with years of experience from traditional markets that crossed the chasm to digital assets.

Tegan joins me for a great episode of Base Layer to discuss all the things The Graph are working on. The Graph Network is core infrastructure for Web3—a necessary component for delivering decentralized applications with consumer-grade performance. The Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains, starting with Ethereum. We discuss the complexity of completely re-inventing the web as we know it using distributed & decentralized layers and busting some of the myths that have delayed dApp/Web3 development.

Nodar joins me on Base Layer to talk about his exciting project, Zapper which aims to increase the GDP of DeFi by abstracting the complexities of accessing unique opportunities faced by retail investors, fund managers and builders around the world. We had a detailed conversation about how current DeFi works, yield farming and all the nuisances involved to participate. Zapper is a project a lot of people are talking about because it connect a lot of the disparate pieces in DeFi in one location. Great episode and you'll learn a lot.

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EQUOS

Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. That exchange, EQUOS, has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using equos.com/baselayer

Sam joins me on Base Layer and it's a really interesting chat! From his days at Everipedia all the way to Frax we discuss a full body of work in Digital Assets. Frax is the first stablecoin with an end goal of fully algorithmic mechanism that seeks to achieve this goal by beginning fully collateralized and slowly removing the collateral through on-chain smart contracts as long as the price remains stable at $1. According to Sam and the the team the Frax Protocol is the first ever stablecoin to change collateralization ratios dynamically to achieve an algorithmic stablecoin. Must listen!

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EQUOS

Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. That exchange, EQUOS, has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using equos.com/baselayer

Richard joins us on Base Layer for a great show! During the later part of a 17 year career at Nomura, Richard began to see the potentiality of Digital Assets and pursued multiple venues to participate, including being an investor in Diginex. He saw the institutional grade infrastructure they were building and their focus on Compliance, Trust and having the best security available for custody that even garnered the highest rating that the Ministry of Defense provides to security companies. We spent time discussing

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EQUOS

Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. That exchange, EQUOS, has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using equos.com/baselayer

Camila joins me on the show for one of the most truthful and sometimes raw takes on what's happening in DeFi. We talk about everything from yield farming and some of the blow up's that have happened to metrics we should be using to evaluate success. We discuss some possible ways that the DeFi community could self govern and what happens if that doesn't happen. This was one of my favorite conversations - unscripted, raw and getting to the nitty gritty on DeFi.

Jed and Denelle join us for a full review of Stellar; an open-source payments network that serves as a distributed intermediary blockchain for global financial systems and circulates a native asset, Stellar Lumens (XLM). Before co-founding Stellar, Jed also co-found Ripple -- he has been an integral part of Digital Assets for nearly a decade. Before joining Stellar's Foundation, Denelle spent 8 years at Mozilla and has years of experience in the legal and regulatory landscape. We had a detailed conversation about Stellar and Lumens role in an evolving Digital Asset ecosystem, including how the asset was built to assist in the creation of synthetics and compostable digital assets.

Garry Tan is a legend...end of story. Listen why here.

No seriously, Garry is a designer, engineer, and investor in early stage startups. Cofounder and managing partner of Initialized Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that was earliest in Coinbase and Instacart. They are a team of 6 investing partners with over $770M in assets under management and our startups have created more than $40 billion in market value in the past 8 years. They focus on pre-product-market-fit seed and seek to be the investor of record at that stage. We spoke about everything from investing in a covid world to Digital Assets, DAO's and much more.

Nate joins us for a great conversation on the work he took part in to analyze the stablecoin market (report found here). In this podcast we discuss the rise of stablecoins, their purpose in digital assets, the velocity and growth of them in 2020 as a function of global economic issues and the rise of DeFi and much more. If you're learning about stablecoins or just want to make sure you're up to date on great analysis check this one out!

Hart joins me on Base Layer to discuss his journey from Goldman to start his company, UMA which is designed to power the financial innovations made possible by permissionless, public blockchains, like Ethereum. Using concepts borrowed from fiat financial derivatives, UMA defines an open-source protocol that allows any two counterparties to design and create their own financial contracts. But unlike traditional derivatives, UMA contracts are secured with economic incentives alone, making them self-enforcing and universally accessible. We learn how this is done, what you can do with it and much more.

Anton joins me for a great episode of Base Layer as we learn all about 1inch after news of the $2.8M investment round closure with some significant investors in Digital Assets. For those unfamiliar, DEX's are Decentralized Exchanges vs what we call CEX's (Centralized: Coinbase, Kraken, etc). 1inch has recently surpassed the landmark figure of one billion USD! Real-time stats are available here: http://duneanalytics.com/1inch. We talk about how the team met and colloborated at hackathon's and put together the code for 1inch in ~48 hours (unreal!) 1inch is now a leading decentralized exchange aggregator that sources liquidity from various exchanges. Using smart contract technology to split a single trade transaction across multiple DEXs, they enable users to optimize and customize trades.

Tom Trowbridge is former President of Hedera Hashgraph, a public distributed ledger based on the Hashgraph consensus algorithm. Mr. Trowbridge has been advising and investing in technology companies since 1996. He started his career in 1996 as an investment banker in the telecom group at Bear Stearns & Co., and subsequently spent three and a half years at the telecom and media private equity firm Alta Communications, where he executed ten deals in technology, telecom, and media and served on two boards. Prior to Hedera, he started and ran the New York office for UK-based Odey Asset Management. Before Odey, he held various positions at Lombard Odier, Atticus Capital, and Goldman Sachs.

Fernando joins me on Base Layer at such an amazing time in the growth of DeFi, where the total value locked (TVL) was $830M end of April 2020 to almost $5B as this podcast gets released. Balancer is a n-dimensional automated market-maker built on Ethereum so we learn what that means, what's being done via Balancer in platforms such as Smart Pools, what their native token BAL provides participants and how some out there believe Balancer eliminates "“impermanent loss". So much in this one -- check it out! For more about Balancer check out their blog here.

Kain joins me on Base Layer for an amazing chat about Synthetix: a decentralised synthetic asset issuance protocol built on Ethereum. These synthetic assets are collateralized by the Synthetix Network Token (SNX) which when locked in the contract enables the issuance of synthetic assets (Synths). The creation of synthetic assets is not new in the world of finance but the way Kain and his team have forged ahead with the creation of synths leveraging decentralized architecture and governance is highly innovative. For one of the fastest growing projects in Digital Assets in 2020 we learn a lot about what's under the hood here. Must listen!

Jesse joins me on Base Layer for an epic conversation from the Co-Founder and CEO of one of the biggest Digital Asset exchanges in the world. We discuss how it evolved and more importantly, what the future entails for Kraken in terms of retail v institutional, new tools coming out, etc. We also spend time talking about M&A as Kraken as been one of the most acquisitive companies in Digital Assets. Lastly we discuss what recent rules like what the OCC proclaimed about banks & custody throughout the US could do for pre-existing companies in this asset class.

Alex joins me on Base Layer for an amazing episode discussing Socios and Chiliz; Socios.com, powered by chiliZ ($CHZ), is a Fintech Platform for Fan Engagement & Fan Monetization of Sports teams. It is a Consumer-Facing product using blockchain technology. They have announced some major teams that have already announced partnerships: FC Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus, West Ham, AS Roma, Atletico Madrid. We learn about Fan Token and what it enable fans to do such as voting on team jerseys, intro music and much more. We learn about some of the technology behind this and the relationship between Socios and CHZ; "Socios.com is powered by the Chiliz token ($CHZ), both an ERC20 utility token on the Ethereum blockchain and BEP-2 token on Binance Chain. Fan Tokens are specific to a team or a club, and are a finite, digital asset that provides access to an encrypted, immutable ledger of voting and membership rights ownership. Lastly we discuss something I think could be massive: Proof of Immunity; using this platform with a fans COVID-19 test to allow them entry into stadiums. MUST LISTEN.

Robert joins us on Base Layer for a great conversation to learn about everything Compound is doing. For those unaware, Compound it is a decentralized protocol which establishes money markets with algorithmically set interest rates based on supply and demand, allowing users to frictionlessly exchange the time value of Ethereum assets. We talk about a wide range of topics, starting more 101 for those unfamiliar with DeFi to more intricate discussions on a new narrative, yield farming. We also discuss Compound's role in a cambrian explosion in DeFi, growing from $830M in total value locked (TVL) at the end of April 2020 to over $3B today.

Alex joins us for a powerhouse episode to discuss the work he and his team have done to build River Financial, a premier Bitcoin financial institution. River's focus is on helping clients accumulate, sell, and manage their Bitcoin holdings. We discuss the UI/UX of competitors, why the focus is just on Bitcoin when other competitors are opening up to other Digital Assets, the "human touch/white glove" service they are getting renown for and much more.

Max joins me on Base Layer to discuss what he and his team have built at B2C2; a leading cryptocurrency market maker. Brokers, banks, exchanges, hedge funds and family offices around the world have begun to trust B2C2 to deliver seamless execution in the major cryptocurrencies and fiat currency pairs. Max came from Goldman where he was a Trader on the Global Liquidity Products desk as well as a Swaps trader on the Interest Rates Products desk. He discusses the reason why he left and why so many others in the traditional Institutional side have over the years to pursue Digital Assets. We learn about some of the trends Max and his team are seeing from their unique perspective.

Michael joins us on Base Layer for a very timely conversation about the maturing security solutions Fireblocks is creating in the Digital Asset ecosystem. From his days at Check Point Software Technologies to Fireblocks, we discuss what his company is working on: an enterprise-grade platform for financial institutions that need to streamline digital asset operations – without sacrificing security. They help financial organizations and other enterprise customers that trade and handle blockchain based assets to move them without being hacked. Their product allows clients to set up a secure network of all their accounts and counterparties to transfer cryptocurrencies or other tokenized assets at a click of a button, while meeting enterprise-grade security and regulatory requirements. 

Corey joins me on Base Layer to discuss Status which has a mission to "to be a secure communication tool that upholds human rights. Designed to enable the free flow of information, protect the right to private, secure conversations, and promote the sovereignty of individuals." We also discuss "Waku" which is their peer-to-peer (p2p) messaging protocol that removes centralized choke points from your messages. By removing centralized third parties, your messages are your own and more private and secure. We learn how this is different than some P2P messaging platforms like Telegram. We also discuss secure browsing: "When browsing Web3, end user data and browsing information is not accessible by any third parties without consent. Any transactions made while using the Status browser implement the same security standards and best practices used in the Status wallet." In relation to Brave we had a great chat here.

Dave Hendricks, the CEO of Vertalo stops by Base Layer to discuss the work they are doing to better optimize cap tables, help tokenize assets such as real estate and give us a overview of the state of the state of "tokenizing the world" - there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure needed to get that done and Dave gives a thorough overview of where we are in this.

Mati, formerly the Senior Market Analyst at eToro joins me on Base Layer to talk about a multitude of issues in the global markets right now. First, based on some questions from Institutional Investors we discussed USD as reserve currency and if there any issues with that with that in the future. We also discuss role of CBCD's right now like China's DCEP; do they infringe on Bitcoin and other Digital Assets or do they promote their use? We rounded it out with thoughts on how COVID is affecting the market/s around the world. Unreal thoughts from Mati...not to be missed!

Raghu joins me on Base Layer and it's a fantastic overview of the infrastructure of the capital markets in Digital Assets. Raghu tells a story of his beginnings which include being brought in by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet to help with Chrome OS and more. He then found his way into Digital Assets and experienced the pitfalls of Digital Asset market fragmentation firsthand while trading his own strategies. His new team identified market structure issues including complex inventory management, price discovery, and unreliable market data. You learn how they are doing what they are doing, the different aspects like Prime Brokerage, Lending and the maturation of Digital Asset capital markets. So much to learn here!

Alex, the Co-Founder of The Giving Block joins me for a special Base Layer. The Giving Block was founded in 2018 after seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin being donated to the few nonprofits that were equipped to accept those donations. Early investors in Digital Assets have done very well for themselves, but a question loomed: how could they donate digital assets to help those in need? Because the IRS treats cryptocurrency as property, these investors had a huge tax incentive to donate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies directly to nonprofits, but were nonprofits ready, willing and able to take those donations? A great conversation about the complexity and size of charitable donations of Digital Assets with Alex.

Muneeb and Steve join me back on Base Layer to talk about a big joint venture. Blockstack and Algorand, have jointly announced an independent open-source project to support a first-of-its-kind smart contract language, Clarity. Recognizing the need for smart contract languages that are more safe, secure, and predictable in order to mature the industry beyond its current state, teams run by Blockstack Founder Dr. Muneeb Ali, a Princeton Ph.D in computer science, and Algorand Founder Dr. Silvio Micali, a computer science professor at MIT, will collaborate on Clarity design and development. We talk about the why, what and how and dig deeper into how Clarity uses a "decidable" language, meaning, according to the team, developers can know, with mathematical certainty, what a program will and will not do ahead of time. This shift addresses a key obstacle currently preventing large-scale, serious use in their opinion.

Josh Wolfe, co-founder Lux Capital which is one of the most inspiring venture capitalists firms supporting scientists and entrepreneurs who "pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time" came on my show and it was an absolute honor! Josh and I have a similar upbringing which drives us in different ways and having him talk about his drive & inspiration was amazing. We talk about all the work being done at Lux to make this world a better place for our kids and their future kids. One for the ages!

Jenny Q. Ta joins me on Base Layer for a great conversation! Jenny is a seasoned entrepreneur with two highly successful early ventures to her credit. As Founder and CEO of Titan Securities, a full-service broker-dealer and investment banking firm, Prior to that venture, Jenny had filled the role of Founder, CEO, and driving force behind Vantage Investments, another full-service broker-dealer and investment banking firm that she started while still in her twenties and quickly grew to a-third-of-a-billion dollars in assets. We discuss her new venture, Coinlinked which is an online social commerce platform powered by a decentralized Blockchain solution to connect the traditional marketplaces of today with the digital assets of tomorrow. This powerful platform provides a brand-new concept in crypto-marketplace for users and consumers to purchase any product from any website in the world paying with digital assets like Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ethereum ($ETH) or stablecoins such as Tether ($USDT).

Adam joins me on the show to delve into his very successful past, from co-founding Doctor on Demand which ushered in a whole new world of telemedicine to looking at talent networks like Toptal & Upwork and applying distributed & decentralized architecture to truly empower those in the network in Braintrust Network. We discuss the intricacies of how Braintrust is empowering this new network that just came out of stealth and the parts that are needed to make it work, like a reputation system. Such an interesting chat and a new company to keep an eye on!

Jesse from Strix Leviathan joins me for a great conversation about the use of technology and systematic approaches to in investing in digital assets. Jesse has over 20 years of experience as a technical entrepreneur. Prior to Strix Leviathan, Jesse founded Blue Box, a cloud computing startup. Jesse raised $22M in venture capital for Blue Box and subsequently sold the company to IBM where Jesse was named as an IBM Distinguished Engineer. At IBM, Jesse spent time researching blockchain and digital assets. Jesse is an active member of the Seattle startup community.

Jeff joins the show and my goodness is it a good one! Every year Jeff releases about 10 "predictions" in tech that based off his vast experience he feels are close to coming and without fail he has been spot on. We talk about his 2020 predictions which have included the rise of Face ID and biometrics esp in a post COVID/contactless world, Student Debt and the rise of anger among parents and students that are locked out of school and paying hundreds of thousands for MOOC's, Web 2.0 and the recent "fact checking" debate, WFH and how long that may last and lastly, Bitcoin, and it's role and maturation. This is too good not to share!

Cody Willard, Hedge Fund Manager and writer, joins me on Base Layer to discuss the equity markets and Digital Asset Landscape. His analysis has been featured on CBS News, ABC’s 20/20, in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine and many other places. We discuss the recent Robinhood phenomenon in which retail traders have picked up shares of companies like Hertz and outperformed legendary investors like Icahn and Buffett. We also discuss about the Fed's intervention and printing - how this effects Bitcoin and digital assets. Must listen!