Base Layer

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!

The CEO of Atari, Fred Chesnais joins me on Base Layer for an amazing episode from such an iconic brand that inspired me and many others into the world of technology. We discuss Fred and Atari's past - the hard work bringing it back from the brinks of bankruptcy and the new visions he has for it's growth. We discuss the recent news of their partnership with Litecoin and their new console that aims to ship out later this year. Don't miss this!

Andy Edstrom, CFA, CFP is a financial advisor and a member of the investment committee at WESCAP Group, where he manages wealth and provides financial advice to clients.Andy is the author of the book Why Buy Bitcoin: Investing Today in the Money of Tomorrow. Additionally, his opinions on Bitcoin have been published in The Wall Street Journal, and his opinions on regulation of the Internet monopolies have been published in The Economist.Before joining WESCAP Group, Andy was a professional investor at a private equity fund and a hedge fund. Prior to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 he caught a glimpse into the making of “financial sausage” while working at Goldman Sachs.

Andy Edstrom, CFA, CFP is a financial advisor and a member of the investment committee at WESCAP Group, where he manages wealth and provides financial advice to clients.Andy is the author of the book Why Buy Bitcoin: Investing Today in the Money of Tomorrow. Additionally, his opinions on Bitcoin have been published in The Wall Street Journal, and his opinions on regulation of the Internet monopolies have been published in The Economist.Before joining WESCAP Group, Andy was a professional investor at a private equity fund and a hedge fund. Prior to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 he caught a glimpse into the making of “financial sausage” while working at Goldman Sachs.

Andy Edstrom, CFA, CFP is a financial advisor and a member of the investment committee at WESCAP Group, where he manages wealth and provides financial advice to clients.Andy is the author of the book Why Buy Bitcoin: Investing Today in the Money of Tomorrow. Additionally, his opinions on Bitcoin have been published in The Wall Street Journal, and his opinions on regulation of the Internet monopolies have been published in The Economist.Before joining WESCAP Group, Andy was a professional investor at a private equity fund and a hedge fund. Prior to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 he caught a glimpse into the making of “financial sausage” while working at Goldman Sachs.

Jeff joins me for an amazing chat that covers a wide array of topics. Jeff is the co-founder of BuildDirect, an online marketplace for heavyweight home improvement products that connects buyers with sellers. He has been at the forefront of technology for over 20 years since the dot-com era. Jeff also wrote an amazing book: "The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation Is the Key to an Abundant Future. In a sweeping analysis that draws upon economics, science, innovation, politics, psychology, sociology, and business, Jeff offers an intriguing thesis predicated on the deflationary impact of technological advances. We also spend time discussing COVID-19 and the central bankers response and a very strong case for review of Bitcoin.

Yan joins us to discuss his great book "Inventing Bitcoin" which friend of the show Nic Carter from Castle Island Ventures was quoted as saying: "Having read virtually every Bitcoin explainer, I believe it’s the best from-scratch introduction to Bitcoin, requiring no prior knowledge at all." We also discuss his work at Swan Bitcoin which allows weekly, paycheck, or monthly savings options steadily converting your dollars to Bitcoin savings. According to data provided by Swan Bitcoin, Dollars have lost 90% of their purchasing power since 1950 as central bankers printed more of them. According to Yan and the team: "Bitcoin’s fixed supply makes it the best way to save your money."

Adam joins me on Base Layer for a straight up fire episode of Base Layer! Adam has spent years in the traditional finance world and has a wealth of experience seeing the sausage made in '08-'09 and throughout. We talk about why PM's/Analysts in Wall Street haven't reviewed Bitcoin to date and why Paul Tudor Jones public announcement and investor letter is about to change all that. We talk about the role of Bitcoin in a professional portfolio when public pensions are underperforming and so much more.

Kosala Hemachandra & Brian Norton from MEW joins Base Layer for a great chat. MEW offers a nexus point for transacting in the Ethereum ecosystem, providing unprecedented access, a secure wallet, and comprehensive education that allows anyone to quickly take advantage of all the benefits of crypto has to offer since 2015. Kosala built the first version of MEW just weeks after Ethereum’s launch in 2015 to help non-coders gain access to Ethereum at a time when only command line code instructions were available, making it difficult even for seasoned developers to transact in ETH. Since then, MEW has continued a steady stream of updates to its web and mobile versions, allowing users to buy, sell, and swap ETH and ERC20s, as well as participate in DeFi and use Dapps built on the Ethereum ecosystem. In March 2020, released MEW wallet, a full-featured mobile wallet app for Samsung, Android, and iPhone with all the features of MEW online accessible by phone.

Brian Kelly joins me on Base Layer for a great, comprehensive chat about the global macro investing backdrop and the role Bitcoin and Digital Assets play in modern day, post COVID-19 portfolio construction. Brian, as many know him, has been a trader for ~30 years and has experienced many of the downturns markets have gone through. He is frequently on CNBC discussing the market and digital assets.

Tyrone Ross Jr, Director of Community at Altruist and Financial Consultant with 401 comes to Base Layer and it's epic. Tyrone is an incredibly lively and passionate person who I've become friends with; we discuss how Gen Z's are changing the Financial Advisor role, how COVID is changing risk & portfolio's and most importantly how and when Bitcoin will be (or not be) adopted by Financial Advisors -- hint: Tyrone drops some news on the episode!

Michael joins us on Base Layer from Framework Ventures; venture capital fund Framework Ventures is investing heavily in the decentralized finance industry, also known as DeFi. The San Francisco-based firm believes that the industry is going to become a $3 billion-plus industry shortly, and will bring major financial institutions on board. The firm was built by Michael Anderson, 29, who grew up in the Bay area, and has spent his career working for major tech companies such as Dropbox and Snapchat, along with his co-founder, Vance Spencer, 28, who’s worked for Netflix.

Piers joins us on Base Layer to give a full rundown on Radix and Cerberus, a sharded Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) solution to the state machine replication (SMR) problem. While classical SMR protocols ensure global ordering of commands, Cerberus introducesa partial ordering regime that enables a novel state sharding approach. With this approach, the consensus process for commands may be massively and safely parallelized across many nodes while retaining optimistic responsiveness and linear message complexity. Cerberus is designed as a suitable core for Radix, a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform intended for a variety of deployments including global-scale decentralized public networks.

Dion joins me on Base Layer to discuss the many narratives affecting our markets and society today.Dion Rabouin is the Axios Markets Editor and author of the Axios Markets newsletter. Prior to Axios, Dion was the anchor of Yahoo Finance's "Midday Movers" and a global financial reporter, coving the bond, equity, and currency markets. He previously covered Treasuries, FX, and emerging markets for Reuters. He is also a regular contributor to Marketplace, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox Business and more.

Stephanie Link, known for her regular appearances on CNBC joins us on Base Layer to talk about the multitude of macro issues affecting the broad based markets today. Stephanie is a managing director and head of active equities research for TIAA Investments. Prior to joining TIAA Investments in 2016, she spent 7 years at The Street as Chief Investment Officer and was the co-portfolio manager and director of Research of Action Alerts Plus, Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust. She was responsible for all premium content at The Street and the daily management of the charitable trust which included macro strategy, portfolio construction and stock selection. Prior to this role, she spent 10 years at Prudential Equity Group as managing director of institutional sales and as director of research. Stephanie began her career at Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc. in the institutional sales department.

Billy joins us for an epic conversation about the oil markets and breaks down the last few weeks of unprecedented activity.Billy spent over six years analyzing energy companies and commodities for the legendary late T. Boone Pickens’ investment manager, BP Capital. Prior to founding Saltstone, he served as Portfolio Manager & Senior Research Analyst for the private hedge fund and the BP Capital fund advisors family of mutual funds. We discuss oil prices going negative, Russian and Saudi's in a Oil "Cold War" and what potential cascading effects in the market this could all take.

Thibauld Favre joins us on Base Layer to discuss Fairmint and the CSO; what it means for Founders and Investors. A Continuous Securities Offering (CSO) is a new, updated way for companies to raise funding. The CSO democratizes investing and modernizes it for the digital era. It expands the pool of potential investors, allowing all stakeholders — not just a small group of privileged, wealthy investors — to share in the value created by a company’s success.

What a show! Nick Neuman, CEO of Casa Inc and the legendary OG Jameson Lopp, CTO at Casa, join Base Layer to discuss the innovations they are working on for key management of Bitcoin, some of the historical issues that have hindered the adoption of Bitcoin ownership and topics such as the halving as it relates to the macro discussions around the asset. Not to miss!

Hugo Renaudin, the CEO of LGO, a leading digital asset exchange that works with over 40 Institutional Investors around 15 countries, comes on to discuss the problems they are working to address in digital assets, how COVID-19 has been impacting review of Bitcoin and other digital assets, "Black Thursday" and what lessons were learned and much more.

The legendary investor Mike Maples Jr joins me on Base Layer. Some of Mike’s investments include being one of the first investors in Twitter & Twitch.tv as well as early investor in Chegg, Bazaarvoice, Okta, and Demandforce. Mike comes on to talk about a whole spectrum of issues relating to pre and post COVID19 world as it relates to venture investing; we also talk extensively about Bitcoin and its role in a world where governments are flooded the economy with liquidity. This is a very special episode and one to send around!

Reuben joins me on Base Layer and we discuss privacy in the time of corona: how is contact tracking, surveillance of those under quarantine, and even the proposed digital dollar impacting privacy? Is the trade-off of individual privacy worthwhile for greater good? How COVID-19 is affecting crypto - While the Feds are "printing money" and considering a “digital dollar” stimulus package, what's happening in crypto? How his life changed due to COVID-19. Reuben's wife is a doctor working at the state hospital, closed down his Airbnb due to a ban on tourists, and closed his Aikido dojo. Has been self-quarantined for some time now. Additionally we discuss what's new with Zcoin: latest developments such as their new wallet, Lelantus protocol, and Elysium tokenization platform.

Marco joins us on Base Layer and it's a great episode! He started Genesis Group 7 years ago to focus on Bitcoin mining and has seen the evolution through very unique perspective. We discuss some big topics including the recent hash rate decline and why that happened (and provide some great analogies for people to understand it) and also discussed the halving which is happening in about 40 days; what the implications are for the entire space. We also discussed COVID19 and Bitcoin and what it means to be working in this industry during a global pandemic.

Rene, the co-founder of Celo joins me on Base Layer to discuss a multitude of topics including: plans to create finance solutions for the 5.6 billion smartphone owners around the world; the importance of Celo to be utilized for cross border payments and the Alliance for Prosperity and how it’s different from Libra. We also had a significant conversation about how the digital dollar can be used to distribute the government’s stimulus and the effect that COVID-19 is having on Celo.

Dan joins us on Base Layer to give an amazing overview of the global macro environment as it relates to COVID-19, $2T economic packages, $1T in daily repo markets, Bitcoin, Gold and much more. Dan is a veteran Global Macro investor and a co-founder of GBI. In his 20 year career, he has worked as a portfolio manager and analyst with a number of well-known investors such as Stan Druckenmiller (Duquesne Capital), Michael Steinhardt (Steinhardt Capital), Julian Robertson (Tiger Management), Steve Cohen (SAC Capital), and Lord Rothschild (RIT Capital). Dan shares his thoughts daily on Twitter @DTAPCAP

An incredibly important episode with Mark Yusko, CEO and CIO at Morgan Creek about the current macro market landscape on what has shown to be a historic day. With the VIX near 2008 levels, with WTI around $30/barrel, with new travel restrictions and a global pandemic causing havoc on the supply chains of the world and now the demand side, this is stuff you'll be reading about in textbooks in a decade. Listen & pay attention.

The amazing Catherine Coley joins me on Base Layer to discuss the move from traditional finance, being on an fx trading desk and seeing the carnage in traditional markets, and relating it to the growth of digital assets. We also talk about International Women's Month, her experience as a woman and CEO and the work we all need to do to exponentially increase the financial inclusion of others into digital assets.

Matt joins me back on Base Layer to do a thorough explanation of tBTC. The goal of TBTC is to create a trustless system for using Bitcoin on Ethereum-based systems and could be seen as critical infrastructure for the success of the broader ecosystem. The goal of tBTC is the creation an ERC-20 token that maintains the most important property of Bitcoin — its status as “hard money” … The ability to trade scrip for its backing deposit freely is what distinguishes a backed currency from fiat money. The supply of tBTC is always backed by an equal number of reserved BTC. This means for every token in circulation, 1 BTC has been removed from circulation.” This is such an interesting project - one to listen to!

Rebecca joins me on Base Layer for one of my first discussions on the legal landscape of digital assets. We discuss a range of current cases and issues revolving around Ripple, Telegram and Kik. We also discuss the recent issues with the Wilshire ETF proposal which was denied by the SEC and the ongoing case surrounding Ifinex / Tether. Rebecca is an amazing practitioner and someone who I've had speak on legal issues in digital assets at my FO256 summits prior. Not to be missed!

Dan from HXRO joins Base Layer and it's a great one! Hxro is a cryptocurrency platform that offers perpetual, time-based digital derivatives products. Hxro offers a simplified way to interact with the market, giving traders an alternative way to express a view on price, hedge risk and trade digital assets. Hxro has taken inspiration from legacy financial markets and merged it with social gaming layers to provide users with an innovative alternative to trading crypto assets. One of Hxro’s unique attributes is that its core products are parimutuel - a system that aggregates all positions into a liquidity pool with in-the-money positions sharing the pool at expiration. This creates a new dimension of fairness and payoff possibilities for our user base. Check it out and pass it around!

Evan joins us to discuss Ampleforth and the Ample; the Ample is a commodity-money, like Bitcoin or gold, but with near-perfect supply elasticity, like fiat. It is the first sound money with elastic supply. Evan discusses their opinion that scarce commodity-monies like gold and silver are naturally fair and independent. They are immune to runaway inflation, but cannot efficiently respond to changes in demand—making them vulnerable to economic shocks and runaway deflation. To address this shortcoming, the project's founders designed a synthetic commodity-money that propagates price-information into supply, much like how thermal expansion propagates nearby kinetic energy into a material’s volume in the natural world.

Sam joins us on Base Layer to tell us what FTX is and why many people are talking about it. A piece of news that came out after the show recording was that FTX was in the middle of a raise at unicorn status valuation, so for those trying to understand more about FTX and what it does this is a good initial primer. We talk about their three tiered liquidation model, how it's similar in some ways to the '08-'09 financial crisis idea of a "bad bank", we talk about the "Trump token" and how this new market on FTX is different than prediction markets like Augur and much more.