Base Layer

Mike Belshe, the CEO and co-founder of BitGo, joins us for the next episode of Base Layer. BitGo, is one of the market leaders in institutional-grade cryptocurrency investment services. Mike is the driving force behind BitGo’s product and business strategy for delivering security, compliance, and custodial solutions for blockchain-based currencies. Prior to founding BitGo, Mike was one of the first engineers dedicated to building Chrome at Google. He is creator of the SPDY protocol and lead author of HTTP/2.0, the internet protocol responsible for loading web pages today. In 2003, Mike co-founded Lookout Software, an email search company acquired by Microsoft, and has held management positions at several startups including Netscape, Good Technology, and Critical Path. Mike and I talk the current state of custody and what the future has for it, insurance and custody and much more.

Alexander Zaidelson from Beam joins us on Base Layer for what I'm now calling "Privacy Week" after we had Monero on the episode prior. BEAM is a next generation confidential cryptocurrency based on an elegant and innovative Mimblewimble protocol. Users have complete control over privacy; user decides which information will be available and to which parties, having complete control over his/her personal data in accordance to his/her will and applicable laws. No addresses are stored in the blockchain; no information whatsoever about either the sender or the receiver of a transaction is stored in the blockchain. We discuss all of this, how it’s done (under the hood), discuss Pedersen commitments and much more.

Riccardo Spagni, the man, myth and legend at Monero joins us on Base Layer and it's a massive show! Not only is this a crash course in what Monero is for beginners it's also got updates and some great detail into what's happening at Monero. In addition this was a really important conversation as we've seen yet another massive data hack at a bank, with 100m records stolen. We discuss the tech that is involved in Monero (Ring signatures, RingCT and stealth addresses), commitments and much more. Also a great discussion for those trying to understand the differences in privacy coins like Monero to Bitcoin and Ethereum, among others. Listen and learn!

Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures, joins us on Base Layer for an amazing chat about Web 3.0 and much more. OV is an early stage investment firm who also advises some very early projects, having developed a thesis called the Convergence Stack which, in my opinion, dissects the decentralized/distributed stack the best out of anyone so far. We talk about that, about a world that exists in addition to Bitcoin and much more.

Doug Petkanics joins us on Base Layer for a great overview of Livepeer which ~3/4th's of my guests have brought up a project to pay attention to! Doug is a multi-time Founder with Wildcard and Hyperpublic and has been focusing his attention for the last few years on Livepeer; live streaming services, such as YouTube and Twitch have seen tremendous growth in popularity in recent years. Broadcasting or building a streaming application however can be very expensive, as a result of payments to centralized transcoding and distribution companies. Livepeer aims to provide the infrastructure service layer for decentralized live video broadcasting. In doing so, it hopes to provide a cheaper, more scalable, censorship resistant solution that is more resilient without single points of failure. We talked about everything from the unplugging generation to their consensus methodologies and governance systems. Truly a great overview of a really important project.

Patrick, the Founder of Qtum ($300M Market Cap), joins us on Base Layer and there's a lot to unpack on this one. Qtum wants to harness the best attributes of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains to create a decentralized, well-governed smart contracts platform with the potential to iterate on existing consensus mechanisms and other protocol parameters. Qtum believes proof-of-work blockchain protocols like suffer from categorical scaling limitations such that proof-of-stake is if only by default a viable consensus model. Qtum plans to build the first robust proof-of-stake UTXO-based smart-contract network. They also have a Decentralized Governance Protocol which we discussed in addition to their full node count and more insight into their x86 Virtual Machine which aims to support C, C++, Rust, Python and other widely used programming languages, facilitating mainstream adoption of smart contract development.

We welcome Dan and Ian on Base Layer to discuss the work they are doing at IDEO CoLab and their new Start-Up Studio. IDEO CoLab works very closely with their startups and projects; from 4-day sprints to multi-week projects, they start with an organization's hard problems and create experience prototypes that look 12+ months ahead of market. They also have some powerful corporate names behind them now including Fidelity, Deloitte and Amazon in addition to 50 new mentors they announced that range from some of the best investors in crypto to some of the best founders. In addition we also caught up with Dan to discuss #defi and his thesis around Superfluid Collateral. Not one to miss!

Kyle Davies joins Base Layer to discuss the work being done at Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based fund specializing in emerging markets and crypto. Kyle used to work at Credit Suisse on the exotic derivatives equity desk before founding Three Arrows in 2012 in San Francisco with a partner, Su Zhu. They met at high school at Phillips Academy, studied math and economics together at Columbia University, and then worked together in Hong Kong. We discussed the broader market and what they are seeing in crypto today.

Hugh from Nexus Mutual joins Base Layer for it's 50th episode! Nexus Mutual is building a decentralized alternative to insurance. They are using blockchain (Ethereum) to build a mutual (a risk sharing pool) to return the power of insurance to the people. It will allow anyone to become a member and buy cover. It replaces the idea of a traditional insurance company, because it is wholly owned by the members. We spoke about Nexus Mutual help users be covered for events like The DAO hack or Parity multi-sig wallet issues. This is a super interesting space evolving - one to listen to!

Xiaohan joins us on Base Layer to discuss Meter and the state of stablecoins. Xiaohan has years of experience in tech from Microsoft, Sony to Motorola, and he brings those years of experience to work on "Reinventing Money for DeFi. Permissionless, Low Volatility, Fast, No Oracles; Enable Bitcoin to Achieve Its Original Vision". We discuss different stablecoins like Tether, Dai, Basis and more. Great conversation and one to learn from!

Brooke joins us on Base Layer to discuss the Fund of Fund landscape as it relates to venture capital focused funds. Brooke is the Founder & Managing Partner of Hutt Capital, a blockchain venture capital fund of funds based in Portland, OR. Prior to Hutt, Brooke spent ten years across private fund, secondary and direct investing, most recently 4+ years with Greenspring Associates, a venture platform with >$8 billion under management where he spearheaded their blockchain and crypto efforts. Earlier in his career, Brooke held roles with Hamilton Lane and CTC Consulting.

Mike Dudas joins Base Layer to talk about the early days of TheBlock to now becoming one of the "go-to" resources for news and research on crypto. We talk about the narratives that are currently discussed, from geofencing to Libra. We spend a good amount of time also discussing their work on Libra which was exceptional, learn more about their reporters who are breaking stories in the space better than main stream outlets and much more.

Tom Jessop, the head of Fidelity Digital Assets, joins us on Base Layer for a special episode to discuss the over 5 year history of Fidelity's interest and experimentation in crypto and blockchain, leading to their entry into digital assets with their current platform; in addition we also discuss their potential future roadmap. Fidelity's entry into the space is a pinnacle moment; an institution such as there's, with approximately $7T in assets under administration and their history & brand among Institutional Investors is so incredibly important. Tom came to Fidelity after 16+ years at Goldman Sachs with time spent at Chain prior to making his current move. We discuss their recent study which shows Institutional Investor adoption and gaining interest in the asset class. This is one NOT to miss and one to send to everyone you know.

Tor Bair joins us on Base Layer to discuss Enigma; Enigma is building a privacy layer for the decentralized web. First researched at MIT, Enigma’s network of “secret nodes” can perform computations over encrypted data at scale without ever exposing the raw data itself. By finally enabling decentralized applications to use private and sensitive data, smart contracts built with Enigma become “secret contracts”, allowing developers to create thousands of new, valuable solutions.

Richard Muirhead & Max Mersch from Fabric Ventures join us on Base Layer. Richard is an accomplished founder and investor as well as Max; Fabric Ventures invest in Web 3.0 powering the shift towards human-centric computing. We talk about what that means and the new models of Web 3.0 including the tokenomics, where value accrues/valuation and more. A bunch of FV companies have already been on Base Layer like Casa, Blockstack, Keep and others. This is a great chat with really experienced investors in early stage infrastructure of digital assets.

Michael Zochowski from Logos Network joins Base Layer to discuss how they building a novel transaction network designed for high scalability while maintaining decentralization and trustlessness by using innovations such as DAG's, "an efficient, post-blockchain data architecture built to accommodate the Internet of tomorrow", delegated proof of stake of (DPoS), ensuring optimal throughput while guaranteeing safety and sharding schemes, adding a second dimension of parallelism to transaction validation. Michael has years of experience in traditional finance and is bringing his knowledge of markets and computer science to blockchain.

Pierre Rochard joins Base Layer for an in-depth conversation about the state of Bitcoin. Pierre has researched and written about Bitcoin since February 2013. He co-founded the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute in 2014 to curate the best primary source literature. In addition to developing Bitcoin software, Pierre is an outspoken advocate for Bitcoin's decentralized governance. In 2017 he began co-hosting the Noded Bitcoin Podcast. Pierre is widely recognized as an authority on the investment case for Bitcoin.

Matt Luongo from Keep joins Base Layer for our next episode and it's a great one! As Matt and the folks at Keep say: "Privacy and scalability are the two biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption of public blockchains. We’re tackling privacy by building a bridge between public blockchains and private data. We use keeps, or small off-chain containers, to secure and store this data. Keeps enables entirely new ways to work with private data." We learn about the implications there and how they are using zero knowledge proofs -- we also get one of the best analogies to understand zk proofs. This is a great one! Enjoy.

Tal joins Base Layer today to discuss what Orbs is building in terms of a hybrid blockchain that could get enterprises big and small using public blockchains. We discuss Virtual Chains, Randomized Proof of Stake (RPoS) and much more. Tal has years of experience as an engineer at places like Wix and Kin/Kik, also serving in the Israeli military.

Michael Dunworth, Wyre Co-Founder and CEO joins Base Layer to discuss what their 6 year old company is up to these days. For both individuals and enterprises alike, transferring money internationally serves as one of the most practical use cases for blockchain technology. By accelerating the speed and reducing the cost of international payments, blockchain can help businesses at every scale operate more efficiently and drive substantial spikes in revenue. Wyre uses proprietary blockchain technology to complete cross-border payments, cutting the time and expenses traditionally tied to banks and other financial institutions. While banks take up to 3 days and charge between 4-6% for international money transfers, Wyre completes transactions in less than six hours, charging less than 1%.

Muneeb Ali joins us on Base Layer to break down why Internet 1.0 is "broken", how we got to where we are, what Blockstack is, how it can scale and be performant and much more. Muneeb earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from Lahore University of Management Sciences in 2003. He then went on to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University, from which he obtained a Master of Arts in Computer science in 2011, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science in 2017. Muneeb co-founded Blockstack with Ryan Shea in 2013 while enrolled at Princeton, and the company partook in the Y Combinator Summer 2014 cohort.

A special episode of Base Layer with Silvio Micali and Steven Kokinos from Algorand. Algorand removes the technical barriers that for years undermined mainstream blockchain adoption: decentralization, scale, and security. Their consensus mechanism is permissionless and pure proof-of-stake. It ensures full participation, protection, and speed within a truly decentralized network. Silvio, on the faculty at MIT, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, since 1983, is the co-inventor of probabilistic encryption, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Verifiable Random Functions and many of the protocols that are the foundations of modern cryptography. Steven, a serial entrepreneur, most recently co-founder and Executive Charmain of Fuze, where he was responsible for corporate strategy. This is one not to miss!

In one of the most important episodes on Base Layer to date we speak with Marcos Veremis, Managing Director at Cambridge Associates. CA, as of 2018, had $389 billion in assets under advisement of some of the largest endowments, family offices and pensions. They are considered in many ways the gold standard for investment consulting, outsourced portfolio solutions, research services and tools and performance monitoring across various asset classes. In Q1 of 2019 Marcos and his team published Cryptoassets: Venture into the Unknown; a paper detailing "although the crypto industry remains in its infancy, we think institutional investors should begin exploring it" - an amazing statement from the likes of CA. We discuss the paper, the work that went into it, why they wrote it and what the future may look like in the space.

Tim joins Base Layer to discuss Staked and the state of the state of cryptoasset staking. Tim has spent 20 years starting and operating technology companies. Most recently, Tim founded Y-Combinator-backed Think Gaming, a SaaS data platform focused on mobile games. Staked operates the most secure, performant, and cost-effective block production nodes for decentralized PoS protocols on behalf of institutional investors. We learn about the competition in Staking as a Service, the yields, margins and much more.

A 2-1 episode with one of the most sought after founders and investors in crypto - Joey Krug. We discuss Augur first, the prediction marketplace he helped found that is providing a new way for people to use the Wisdom of the Crowd to predict outcomes of political events, event hedges, weather forecasts and much more. We then delve into what investment themes Joey and the team at Pantera and working this year into 2020 - focusing more on scalability issues to make blockchains run more optimally.

Alexander Skidanov from NEAR Protocol joins us on Base Layer for a not to miss episode. NEAR is a scalable smart contract platform that supports decentralized applications of almost any kind. Alexander is a highly accomplished developer starting at Microsoft and became Engineer #1 at memSQL. We discuss what NEAR is building in relation to language type, sharding, consensus methodologies and much more. Do not miss this one!

Sky Guo joins us on Base Layer to discuss how Cypherium is a highly scalable and robust smart contract platform. Their hybrid design features a joint Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus mechanism that can achieve thousands of transactions per second without sacrificing decentralization. We discuss enterprise adoption of blockchain and much more.

On the 30th episode of Base Layer we have Tyler Spalding, Co-Founder of Flexa which aims to enable retailers to take control of their own payments by reducing costs, overhead, and fraud through frictionless, instantaneous, and reliable blockchain-based settlement; and Lasse Clausen, Founding Partner at 1KX, a token angel fund with the thesis of extrapolating Bitcoin's success to embed cryptoeconomic incentives into everything; transactions, computation, storage, prediction, power.

Daniel Kim of SFOX joins Base Layer; SFOX, San Francisco Open Exchange, is the easiest way to access the digital currency market. There solution provides access to high liquidity and the ability to trade large volumes. We discuss the current liquid market, when "Institutional Investors" are coming in, if they haven't already; we also talk a-lot about the research they produce. Great discussion!

Zaki Manian, founder of SkuChain, Head of Tendermint Labs and too many other things to put in notes here joins Base Layer today to discuss the state of the state of Cosmos and Tendermint and why they are so important to the growth of the crypto ecosystem; in addition to we discuss why he got into the space in the first place. We discuss why he founded SkuChain after spending lots of time reviewing the legacy financial system and seeing sophistication but cracks in the system (i.e. people still needing to use fax machines). Great deep conversation. Listen and enjoy!

Steven McKie joins Base Layer to discuss the early days of crypto; making his own future via crypto and Bitcoin; starting his own fund Amentum which is investing in the new iterations of "the internet" via Handshake and Namebase and new models to incentivize content providers like you and I produce daily via Cent. A great, thorough review from someone who has seen it all!

Diogo Monica, Co-Founder of Anchorage joins Base Layer to discuss their custody solution that has a lot of people in the ecosystem buzzing. Diogo spent years at Square before founding Anchorage, leading the platform security team that was used to move over $80B in annualized volume. He has a BSc, MSc and Ph.D in Computer Science and has built a solution marrying the best of hot and cold storage technology. One not to miss!!

Alex Adelman, Co-Founder of Lolli joins us on Base Layer -- Lolli is an amazing on-ramp for the non-technical/finance folks; it's a rewards program with over 750 retailers like Walmart, Gap, CVS and more. We talk to Alex about building this company, why create this on-ramp to Bitcoin; what inspired him and his team after selling their company to Ebates/Rakuten and much more. Not to be missed!

David and Dominik, the founders of IOTA, join Base Layer to discuss IOTA, a cryptocurrency they designed for use in the internet of things, enabling secure sales and trading data streams, with no need of transaction fees and miners to maintain operations. We discuss the differences of the Bitcoin blockchain to IOTA, scalability issues and much more.

Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital joins Base Layer today to discuss the history and evolution of crypto infrastructure - from wallets and exchanges to much more robust financial tooling projects. We also discuss new marketplaces being created, void of the middleman and how mini-Coinbase's could pop up, servicing their local geographies, working with their local regulators. Great episode!!

Jeremy Welch, the founder of Casa Inc joins us on Base Layer to discuss his companies growth, building and shipping nodes during "crypto winter", why he built Casa in the first place, "being your own bank" narrative and much more. Additionally we do our weekly Signal to Noise discussing some recent deals in the space and what he listens to -- Jeremy takes the cake for most original choice there! Enjoy!

Monica joins us from Kadena today to give a master class (unintended) on the difference between public and private blockchains; her journey from aspiring opera singer to investment banking and then working as one of the key engineers at Kadena which is working with Fortune 100 companies to implement their hybrid blockchain solutions. A great conversation, not to be missed!

Avichal Garg joins us on Base Layer for Episode 20!! Avichal has so much experience in technology, coming from Google, Spool (a startup he co-founded) and Facebook. Recently he launched Electric Capital to invest in Programmable Money; we discussed the blockchain not bitcoin narrative, their massive Dev Report, on the talent continuing to come into crypto and much more.

Lily Liu, the Co-Founder of Earn.com joins us on Base Layer. Lily's past experience in traditional finance at firms like McKinsey & KKR-Capstone were discussed, her work helping build a hospital in China to her involvement in Earn.com which eventually got acquired by Coinbase, her views of Bitcoin and much more were topics of our chat.

Linda Xie, Co-Founder of Scalar Capital joins Base Layer. We discuss her roles in traditional finance at AIG in risk management, moving to Coinbase in the "early days" to starting Scalar Capital. Linda is one of the most sought after investors and thought providers in crypto and this is one NOT to miss. We additionally talk about her focus on privacy in crypto and her new focus on "play" after reading the book Play.

Ryan joins us on Base Layer to discuss his company, FOAM, a project we've been watching for some time. The team created the Proof of Location protocol which empowers a permissionless and autonomous network of radio beacons, offering secure location services independent of external centralized sources such as GPS. We discuss their roll-out, their ability to work with other protocols and much more.

Dan Held from Interchange joins us on Base Layer for our "Bitcoin Classic" edition. Dan has years of experience with Bitcoin and talks at length about it's history, it's evolution and it's importance. If you're trying to learn more about Bitcoin this one is a good one to listen to. We also hit on Signal to Noise, talking to Dan about the news of the day. Great conversation!

Ryan Selkis joins us on Base Layer, an investor and builder in cryptoassets for the last 5 years. Ryan founded Messari which aims to provide Institutional Investors research, transparency and tools to better understand crypto from a fundamental standpoint. This was a great chat and also introduced our Signal to Noise segment addressing the news of the week to see what's "signal" and what's "noise".

Sharon brings over a decade of expertise in network security and cryptography. She is also an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Boston University, where her research focuses on securing the protocols that provide many of the global internet’s core functions. In light of the Quadriga scandal this conversation is incredibly important since Arwen's technology would have potentially prevented coin loss. This is sometimes a technical conversation, especially about atomic swaps, but Sharon breaks down complex issues brilliantly.

Jake Brukhman, Founder at Coinfund joins us on Base Layer for our twelfth episode to discuss generalized mining, the scalability issues in blockchain, what a future Facebook on blockchain could look like and the infrastructure needed, staking as a service and much more.

Arianna Simpson joins us on Base Layer today; formerly at Facebook and BitGo, Arianna is a powerhouse in crypto. She is incredibly sought after as someone with knowledge of networks and the technology as well as an investor who's been focusing on crypto infrastructure before it became a narrative. This episode is one not to miss.

Andy Bromberg, President of CoinList, drops by Base Layer in this episode to discuss the state of token sales, governance, the evolution of private deals that look more like traditional venture but also have tokeneconomics cooked in, STO's, his matrix for Taxonomy of cryptoassets, what he's reading and why and much more.

Craig Burel from Reciprocal Ventures joins us for a conversation around the early days of investing in crypto infrastructure (0x, Radar Relay, Augur and much more) to STO's. He also shares with our listeners his thoughts on valuation, a topic many people in the ecosystem are grappling with daily. Craig has experience from Wall Street to start up's and now crypto - a lot to learn from this one!

Marc & Kevin joined us on Base Layer, the founding team over at Tagomi which is building key infrastructure for the trading of digital assets. The team is incredibly strong which backgrounds from Union Square Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Citadel, Virtu and more. We discussed why they built Tagomi, how they are helping clients "get off zero", M&A activity in the space and much more.