Raoul Pal: The Journey Man

Chris Sullivan and Rishi Narang of digital asset manager Hyperion Decimus join Real Vision's Ash Bennington for a wide-ranging conversation about quant trading in the crypto space, with an emphasis on how their respective backgrounds have influenced their approach to markets. Narang says there are no new strategies in alpha land, noting, "I've looked under the hoods of 3,000 to 5,000 quant funds… there's nothing new under the sun." However, there are new ways to determine valuations for cryptos, such as on-chain data. And machine learning is getting better and better at using that data to create predictive models. Sullivan and Narang also talk about market inefficiencies, inflation's effects on crypto, and the emergence of "dark pools," which enable chosen institutions to post orders only the bank can see to avoid other firms front-running their trades. Recorded on April 25, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, has introduced a number of bills on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, including the Securities Clarity Act, which would provide a clearer definition of digital assets under current laws. An advocate for the technology, he’s also co-chaired the Congressional Blockchain Caucus since 2018. Rep. Emmer understands its potential, both as an intermediary in traditional finance and in its ability to empower people. In conversation with Real Vision’s Ash Bennington, Rep. Emmer identifies the major regulatory challenges the crypto industry faces and explains how he’s educating his colleagues in Congress about this disruptive technology’s benefits. Recorded on April 27, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ben Whitby, who oversees strategic partnerships and regulatory affairs at Qredo, welcomes Lex Sokolin, the head economist at Consensys, for a high-level discussion about the legal issues that could affect the growth of DeFi as well as the larger themes and core beliefs shaping the industry's future. The world is gravitating toward populism, according to Sokolin, and away from the centralized control of sovereigns, and this ideological shift reverberates in our software. What might this mean for legislation, surveillance, and privacy protection? Sokolin and Whitby also discuss Neuralink, the rapid pace of technological development worldwide, and much more. Recorded on April 21, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ever wondered why the crypto industry seems to promise much higher yield than TradFi institutions? Alex Mashinsky, CEO of the Celsius Network, gives us an inside look. Traditional yield generation methods like lending, arbitrage, and market making work in tandem with new innovations like coin staking and are further exploitable due to the immense demand and volatility of the crypto industry. Mashinsky shares his journey growing up in several different countries and his experiences that led him to found Celsius. He describes how the Celsius Network has been taking advantage of this environment and how their proprietary CEL token factors in. Mashinsky also weighs in on broader topics such as DeFi, stablecoins, and regulation, specifically addressing the controversial rumors that the SEC issued Celsius with a cease and desist letter. Interviewed by Ash Bennington on October 21, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Marshall Hayner and his company, Metallicus , are making it easier than ever to buy, sell, and trade crypto. Marshall joins Ash to break down how Metal is building their infrastructure and touches on the future of Web 3.0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"I had been making far more money trading crypto,” explains Dr. Ray Ng, Alt-Tab Capital co-founder and CIO, “than I ever did in the medical profession." In conversation with Exponential Age Asset Management CIO Moritz Seibert, Ng talks about why he transitioned from medical doctor to full-time crypto trader. He lays out Alt-Tab Capital's multi-strategy approach to investing in digital assets, including its use of DeFi yield farming and dynamic dollar-cost averaging as well as its risk mitigation approach through on-chain and technical analysis. Ng also breaks down a recent successful Avalanche (AVAX) trade, explaining how his team discovered it early. Recorded on April 25, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s almost as if he tweeted it into reality: Elon Musk's $44 billion, $54.20 per share takeover bid has been approved by Twitter’s board of directors. And, of course, everyone had something to say. The Defiant’s Camila Russo and Robin Schmidt join Real Vision’s Ash Bennington to talk about the crypto community’s reaction to the free speech champion’s big deal. Other hot topics up for discussion during this week’s episode include Akutars’ flawed NFT launch that locked up $34 million of ETH and Optimism’s incoming airdrop of the $OP token for early adopters. Recorded on April 27, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"For altcoins to do well, we need Bitcoin to go parabolic or… through a bear market," says Ben Cowen, CEO of Into The Cryptoverse. “The best strategy [in those cases]... is just to be heavy Bitcoin." In a wide-ranging discussion with Real Vision's Ash Bennington, Cowen assesses Bitcoin's technical profile using Bitcoin dominance, logarithmic regression analysis, and on-chain data. He also explains how to determine the market cycle phase by watching fair value and the lower bound level of regression bands. Markets breaching certain levels on these measures can indicate the start of a new bear cycle. But Ben remains optimistic because "the undervaluation territory is where all the real money is made." Recorded on April 25, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Heavyweights like Amazon Web Services dominate the cloud space with centralized databases. But Bluzelle, a decentralized storage network, has quickly established itself as a viable alternative for creators. Bluzelle is producing high-quality games, protecting players’ NFTs, and leveraging DeFi yields with its 10,000 TPS Cosmos-based blockchain. Co-founder and CEO Pavel Bains joins Santiago Velez, co-founder and division lead of R&D at Block Digital, to talk about Bluzelle’s product offerings and its rising profile in the world of GameFi. Recorded on April 18, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Delphi Digital, and Real Vision CEO and co-founder Raoul Pal reflect on Web 3.0 and community-driven social tokens. Kelly has spoken with several professionals in this adolescent industry such as Cooper Turley of Friends With Benefits, Jack Spallone of HIFI Labs, Jeff Kaufman of Jump, Jeff Sloss of Seed Club, and creators themselves like Micah Johnson. It’s been a memorable learning experience, and his conviction in the promise of social and community tokens is even stronger than when the series began. Pal and Kelly explore the concept of Bitcoin as a social token and ponder what the future of Web 3.0 looks like, taking the lessons learned over the past months as a foundational starting point. Recorded on November 23, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We continue to see incumbent corporations experimenting with Web 3.0 projects, especially in the NFT space. Jeff Kauffman, founder of Jump, has experience working for one of the largest Web 2.0 social media platforms. However, after having moral disagreements with the prevailing business model, he has transitioned his talents towards the decentralized universe of communities. Kauffman sits down with Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Delphi Digital, to discuss his experience leaving the world of Web 2.0 for the new frontier of Web 3.0. While questions remain concerning whether established tech and finance companies will launch their own decentralized platforms or simply provide seed funding, Kelly and Kauffman speculate on how this anticipated transition will take form. Filmed on October 22, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO and co-founder of Solana, joins Eric Kryski, CEO and co-founder of Bidali, to expound upon the inner workings of Solana, an Ethereum competitor solving for speed and scalability. Yakovenko shares the unexpected journey of how the Solana team came to be and the non-trivial task of developing an entirely new consensus algorithm to differentiate it from typical Proof of Stake chains at the time. Yakovenko and the team pioneered "Proof of History", which involves cryptographic timestamps to accompany each transaction and can be verified internally by the Solana network. This method is combined with Proof of Stake to boost efficiency as well as security. Filmed on August 9, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Exponential Age Asset Management CIO Moritz Seibert probes the mind of Martin Green, CEO and Co-CIO of Cambrian Asset Management. Moritz and Martin discuss different quantitative investment strategies and their application to the digital asset market, a space like no other. Martin shares how he handles trading in the spot market versus the derivatives market, and he explains how data influences crypto trading generally. It’s a fascinating conversation that breaks down the similarities and the differences between the old school and crypto, highlighting key aspects of market structure. Recorded on April 18, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's finally here: Coinbase NFT Marketplace has been released in beta mode for users who signed onto the waitlist. With more than 85 million users, the talk is it will shake up the whole NFT ecosystem. The Defiant’s Camila Russo and Robin Schmidt join Real Vision’s Ash Bennington to offer some perspective. This episode also includes an update on recent market action, a conversation about the Moonbird project, and a review of the Beanstalk Farms drama – a decentralized credit based stablecoin protocol that was attacked, resulting in a theft of $76 million dollars. All the hot takes on headlines only with The Defiant x Real Vision. Recorded on April 20, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do you distinguish trading signals amid all the noise financial markets create? Technical analyst Dean Carr from C The Light Trading joins Real Vision's Ash Bennington to explain how he spots trends in crypto price action using a wide range of indicators over multiple time frames. "As a technical analyst, I'm trying to smooth out the trend," says Carr, noting that to do so "you need to move on to larger time frames." Carr focuses on Bitcoin, Ethereum, layer 1 protocols, and privacy coins, highlighting the critical resistance levels they must overcome before their technical profiles turn bullish. Carr adds that failure to clear these levels "opens the door for lower prices." Recorded on April 18, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ever wondered what it’s like to manage a crypto investment firm? Leigh Drogen, the CEO of Starkiller Capital, is walking that walk, and he joins Corey Hoffstein, the CIO of Newfound Research, to describe his journey so far. Leigh explains to Corey how, in his experience, TradFi investment trading strategies such as momentum- and/or trend-following can lead to above-average performance in the crypto space as well. Their conversation highlights the importance of a healthy balance between consistency and flexibility, a requirement of those who’d like to successfully navigate any trading environment. Leigh and Corey share key lessons they’ve learned, including coping with high volatility, the importance of open-mindedness, and dealing with uncertainty. And Leigh describes the limitations of traditional investment valuation methods applied to crypto. Recorded on April 4, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brett Harrison is helping one of the world’s richest crypto billionaires, Sam Bankman-Fried, build one of the “most sophisticated derivative products in the world.” Harrison is president of FTX, the crypto exchange Bankman-Fried co-founded in May 2019 with daily trading volume of approximately $14 billion. Harrison joins Real Vision’s Ash Bennington to talk about FTX’s growth strategy, particularly its ambitions in the U.S. He shares his thoughts on how regulation will influence growth, and, yes, that Larry David ad is discussed. Recorded on April 4, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington hosts Silvio Micali, founder of Algorand, to discuss Micali’s journey into crypto, the founding of Algorand, the power of randomness, zero knowledge proofs, and future of evolvability of blockchain protocols. When Micali discovered Bitcoin and Buterin’s blockchain dilemma—that no blockchain can all at once be decentralized, secure, and scalable—he knew there had to be way to solve this problem. He explains that in cryptographic systems, it’s easy to spread communication and messaging, but verifying if a message has been received or achieving common knowledge is difficult, which can prevent the achievement of security and trust in the system. For Bitcoin, Micali states that the blockchain has an ad hoc mechanism to reach agreement on a common block; on the other hand, Algorand uses a Byzantine Agreement on the block, utilizing the strongest form of consensus and mitigating the risk of “bad actors”. It also prevents the block from ever forking and, thereby, ensures that a block appearing on the chain will remain there forever, and this provides users the confidence to transact without worry of loss. Filmed April 16th, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rob Frasca, co-founder and managing partner of COSIMO Ventures, joins Ash Bennington to discuss how his experience in the Navy influenced is career in the tech and finance space and how his company, COSIMO X, is innovating the blockchain community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just how bad is Meta’s plan to take a nearly 50% cut of digital asset sales in its virtual world? Is Coinbase’s partnership for a film trilogy with Bored Ape Yacht Club a sign of things to come? Is Web3 living up to its decentralized and distributed promise, or have corporate influences already corrupted it? The Defiant’s Camila Russo and Robin Schmidt join Real Vision’s Elaine Ly to talk about a wild week of NFT, Web3, and metaverse news, including the launch of Aku’s Akutars and the issue of refunds for digital art purchases. Recorded on April 13, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Exponential Age Asset Management CIO Moritz Seibert welcomes co-founder and CIO Darius Sit for a deep dive into the investment management strategies employed at Singapore-based digital asset trading firm QCP Capital. Sit and Seibert cover a wide range of derivatives-related topics, including options market dynamics, volatility market depth, and cash-and-carry trades. Sit also assesses the crypto market in 2022 and shares his post-ETH 2.0 Ethereum forecast. Recorded on April 5, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's driving the crypto sell-off? Francis Hunt shifts from Market Sniper to Crypto Sniper to sort through the competing narratives on recent price action with Real Vision's Ash Bennington. Hunt emphasizes macroeconomic factors, noting the positive correlation between Bitcoin and tech stocks. "I can't give flagrant moon calls in this environment," says Hunt, adding "a caution to the downside" would be his stance. Hunt and Bennington also break down the DeFi market, highlighting Luna's outperformance versus other digital assets. Recorded on April 11, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What do the brightest minds in the space consider when they think about the design of a central bank digital currency (CBDC)? Anders Brownworth, Principal Software Architect at The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, joins Real Vision's Ash Bennington for a journey through Project Hamilton, a joint initiative between the Federal Reserve and MIT to investigate the technical feasibility of a general-purpose CBDC. One goal of this project is to make them faster than existing legacy systems and new blockchains, including Bitcoin. Visa averages around 1,700 transactions per second, Bitcoin five to 10. One of the transaction processors Project Hamilton tested processed 170,000 transactions per second. Project Hamilton found, however, that by eliminating a "chokepoint," it could reach up to and beyond 1.7 million transactions per second. Tune in to learn how these designs work, why transactions may change in the future, and what new findings are on the horizon. Click here to read Project Hamilton's executive summary and white paper: https://rvtv.io/3rjspV9 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digitization of “everything,” and, now, both consumers and investors are looking to gain more exposure to digital assets. Sunayna Tuteja, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Federal Reserve System, joins Colleen Sullivan of BH Digital to discuss her commitment to leading change at the nexus of finance, technology, and policy. Tuteja sheds some light on the Fed’s efforts to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC). And she offers an “insider’s insider” perspective on the growing importance of digital assets and technology within the broader financial system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Raoul Pal, CEO & co-founder of Real Vision, sits down with Dominic Williams, chief scientist & founder of DFINITY, to discuss DFINITY's progress towards constructing a scalable, secure, blockchain-based internet. DFINITY redefines what people think about blockchain. Williams describes novel concepts such as "Node Nervous System" and "Zero Knowledge Identity", which he believes to be pivotal stepping stones in constructing a new, decentralized internet. Filmed on June 16, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Steve Kurz, Global Head of Asset Management at Galaxy Digital, joins Ash Bennington on the first episode of Building Blocks to discuss when he first heard about Bitcoin, the composability of crypto, the current state of DeFi, and so much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Exponential Age Asset Management CIO Moritz Seibert returns with a new episode in his asset management series where he explores techniques of top asset managers in the cryptoverse. Seibert welcomes Nickel Digital Portfolio Manager David Fauchier to explain the market-neutral approach behind the Diversified Alpha Fund he oversees. Investors in old-school financial markets have long cherished market-neutral strategies, which match leveraged long and short bets to protect returns against adverse moves. Fauchier notes that this product type is uncommon in crypto, where directional products dominate the market. He believes market-neutral strategies are a real value-add to investors in a volatile crypto market where it can take years for something to happen. Fauchier walks Seibert through the specifics of the firm's trading style, highlighting strategies based on the concept of market neutrality. Recorded on March 31, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The United Kingdom wants to become the next global hub for crypto, but is it too late for London to catch up to Miami, Beijing, and Singapore? What does Elon Musk’s stake in Twitter mean for Web2 and Web3? And does Ledger’s partnership with Sandbox mean a whole new slew of metaverse users is on the horizon? The Defiant’s Robin Schmidt and Camila Russo join Real Vision’s Elaine Ly to break down all that and more. Recorded on April 6, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Co-founder Valeria Benitez Florez is building the Pocket Network around the idea that "more people need to come into the space across all fields, as everyone brings more to the table.” Pocket Network is a system where the community can stake nodes on a decentralized network. Expanding on that in conversation with Wendy Diamond, founder and CEO of LDP Ventures and the Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, she says "there is an infinite amount of knowledge to be explored" as her community expands. Recorded on March 14, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Haouk Lee started his investing career in real estate and emerging markets. A fiat currency bear with an eye for new trends, the digital asset value proposition came naturally to him when he first engaged with crypto in 2016. Lee, the founder and CIO of Trinity Digital Assets, an offshoot of his family office Trinity Investment Holdings, talks to Leslie Lamb, the founder and host of the Crypto Unstacked Podcast, about his experience and what it says about broader market trends. Lee notes that an increasing number of family offices are including crypto in their portfolios. Lee and Lamb explore a generational shift taking place in the investment community, including its implications for how asset prices may move in the future. One key to Lee’s strategy is to let the young lead the way, as they’re the most engaged with digital assets and metaverses in their day-to-day lives. Recorded on March 18, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Building a Bitcoin mining rig can be complex. Compass Mining is here to simplify it to the point that literally anyone can participate in the decentralized computational process and add new blocks of transactions to the world’s No. 1 blockchain, whether at home or through one of 23 collaborating data centers in five different countries. As co-founder and CEO Whit Gibbs explains to Real Vision’s Elaine Ly, Compass Mining’s service enables those who don’t want to host a machine in their house to connect to a collaborating data center and receive mined Bitcoin directly into their wallets. Gibbs notes that Intel’s new mining machines could break up ASICS’s quasi-monopoly. He’s also bullish about the impact of President Joe Biden’s recent executive order on the ecosystem. Recorded on March 22, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gabby Dizon, CEO and co-founder of Yield Guild Games, envisions a Metaverse where individuals have ownership over their digital identity and the associated data and revenue. Dizon joins Rolf Hoefer, co-founder of Cultur3 Capital, to talk about the digital revolution taking place within community tokens and people’s newfound sense of online identity. According to them, Web 3.0 presents a unique opportunity to empower users to gain a sense of virtual autonomy, and Dizon argues that this is what we should imagine when we discuss the "Metaverse". Tune in to see how Yield Guild Games is working to realize a more equitable online economy. Recorded on December 9, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike Green, chief strategist and portfolio manager at Logica Capital, and Anthony Pompliano, investor at Pomp Investments, join Ash Bennington, Real Vision senior editor, to discuss their opposing views on Bitcoin. They each explain their views on Bitcoin—Pompliano makes the case for Bitcoin being a store of value that should be widely adopted and encouraged by the United States in order to stay competitive globally while Green asserts that Bitcoin is used primarily for nefarious activity and is mainly controlled by entities that are oppositional to the United States. Green believes that Bitcoin is the perfect example of markets indicating that something is incredibly successful, even when in actuality it is failing (or will fail), and that its price appreciation does mean that it is a robust system. Filmed on February 1, 2021. Key Learnings: Pompliano believes that there are many non-trivial indicators that suggest Bitcoin is robust and becoming widely adopted including the number of wallets, transactions, and hash rate. He believes there is a significant chance that Bitcoin will be adopted by a significant amount of the S&P 500 companies and nation-states. On the other hand, Green thinks it is extremely unlikely to see major adoption from the largest companies and nation-states, explaining that this could even harm the U.S. He believes that Bitcoin can be trivially attacked and taken down by a nation-state and that the system is not as secure as many people claim it to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In its most basic terms, the digital dollar debate is about a public option versus a private option. According to Rohan Grey, assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law, there is a middle ground that happens to be the best option. Grey, who advised the authors of the bill, joins Real Vision’s Ash Bennington and Santiago Velez, co-founder and division lead of R&D at Block Digital, to talk about the ECASH Act recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The “Electronic Currency And Secure Hardware Act” would make the U.S. Treasury, rather than the Federal Reserve, the issuer of what would be “a true digital analogue to the U.S. dollar.” According to Grey, it would function similarly to physical cash in that it would be "public money with privacy characteristics" and use "no ledger at all." Grey walks Bennington and Velez through the bill’s particulars, noting its emphasis on preserving privacy. Recorded on March 29, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is the crypto bull market back on track? What should we make of the massive Ronin bridge hack? And how is Elaine’s field trip to NFT LA shaping up? The Defiant’s Camila Russo and Robin Schmidt join Real Vision’s Elaine Ly to dig into all that and more. The trio explains how Ethereum’s merge and Terra’s Do Kwon buying Bitcoin as a reserve are driving price action. That’s on top of everything Elaine’s learned from NFT LA, including Jiho’s response to the $600 million Ronin bridge hack. Recorded on March 30, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Randi Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, is particularly interested in female-led NFT projects. But the entrepreneur knows “that won’t be enough going forward.” Her latest venture, “The Hug,” offers mentorship to up-and-coming founders from a network of industry leaders in technology and the arts. Zuckerberg’s tenure at Meta (formerly known as Facebook) provides her unique insight on America’s big tech boom. Now, she’s at the forefront of a new tech shakeup, taking what she’s learned to lift up innovators and artists using blockchain technology and principles of decentralization to defy the power of big tech. Recorded on March 21, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Greg Isenberg is co-founder and CEO of Late Checkout, a product studio and agency that designs, creates, and acquires community-first tech businesses. “Community first” means the community is the product or the community is built around the product. Isenberg advises on community design and community management as opportunities to reduce risk. He emphasizes the role tokenization plays in communities today, from NFTs to DAOs to social tokens. Isenberg joins Kevin Kelly of Delphi Digital to discuss the Web3 strategy that companies are focusing on as the importance of community becomes more significant in the retention and engagement of a brand. Recorded on March 16, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do the world's most successful crypto hedge funds think about trading? Exponential Age Asset Management CIO Moritz Seibert is hosting a series of interviews with top asset managers about their approach. In the first episode, Edward Chin and Thejas Nalval of Parataxis Capital join Seibert to share their views on the most investable assets in the space. Their focus is on liquidity. "When I say [we focus on the] top five, it's more of a play on liquidity,” notes Nalval. “The largest market-cap names may not necessarily mean they're the most liquid." Chin explains Parataxis' method of determining the fundamental value of each digital asset and how it helps the firm stay grounded despite immense price volatility for the broader market. Recorded on March 21, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Most people agree Ethereum is too expensive. Many different tokens and companies have formed around the hype of being the next “Ethereum killer”. However, scaling solutions and the accompanied trade-offs differ from project to project. Solana utilizes the more traditional blockchain model while StarkWare exploits the process of “Zero-Knowledge Proofs” to boost efficiency. Kyle Davies, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, and Real Vision’s Ash Bennington moderate a healthy discussion between Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO and co-founder of Solana, and his competitors, Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and president of StarkWare, and Avihu Levy, head of product at StarkWare, to discuss varying solutions to scalability issues fundamental to DeFi. Join them for a technical discussion into the world of DeFi from some of the top experts in the space. Recorded on November 29, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Fabian Schär, Professor for Distributed Ledger Technologies and Fintech and the Managing Director of the Center for Innovative Finance at the University of Basel, is a heavyweight when it comes to the academic study of cryptocurrency. His research has been published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, among other distinguished outlets. Dr. Schär shares with Mathias Imbach, co-founder and CEO of Sygnum Bank, his deep knowledge derived from exhaustive research into blockchain technology and DeFi protocols. Dr. Schär sees a major migration of DeFi protocols to Layer 2 blockchains on the horizon as well as an expansion of the current utilization of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure. Although NFTs and the metaverse are in a price bubble, Dr. Schär believes their potential is just beginning to be unlocked. A consultant for several financial regulatory bodies, Dr. Schär also offers compelling insight on potential hiccups with regard to coming legislation. Recorded on March 17, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the few women in crypto, Medha Parlikar, co-founder and CTO of CasperLabs, joins Wendy Diamond, founder and CEO of LDP Ventures and Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization, to talk about her exciting journey in a game-changing industry. Parlikar dissects the dynamics of being among the small number of female leaders in tech and shares advice with other women hoping to follow her path. Parlikar sees big things on the horizon for CasperLabs in its mission to help scale enterprise-level private blockchains solutions. As many of its clients are realizing, there are numerous potential use cases for immutable ledgers and information within a corporate structure. CasperLabs was able to mint an NFT in space as a proof-of-concept for transmitting and verifying vital data about container ships while they’re in the middle of the ocean. Diamond and Parlikar also discuss how blockchain can help disabled persons thrive in today’s world. Tune in for a wide-ranging conversation about blockchain. Recorded on March 14, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With confirmation that Raoul Pal finally bought himself a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, The Defiant’s Robin Schmidt sits down with Real Vision’s founder and CEO to talk about his decision. Raoul and Robin discuss both the good and the (possible) bad of Yuga Labs’ and Bored Ape Yacht Club’s expansion, the recent ApeCoin airdrop, and how NFTs (and social tokens) can democratize the space. Tune in for a fascinating debate on the future of the metaverse. Recorded on March 23, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All cryptocurrency trading and investing activity is available on a public ledger. And all that activity can be extracted and studied. This is what’s called “on-chain analysis.” Indeed, one of the remarkable things about trading and investing in crypto is the easy availability of rich data streams that allow traders and investors to see things traditional technical analysis does not make visible. Benjamin Cowen, CEO of Into The Cryptoverse, joins Real Vision's Ash Bennington to talk about new ways of understanding price action using on-chain data to analyze consumer behavior through indicators like "HODL Waves." Cowen also describes how social metrics complement on-chain data to complete the macro picture. These new methods, combined with traditional technical analysis, can help traders make sense of market cycles, prevailing risks, and future price direction. Recorded on March 18, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Clinical trials are a crucial part of the development of new medicines. But existing processes are antiquated, and it can take as many as 10 years before a new drug is approved. As demonstrated during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, efficient influx of vaccines and other innovative solutions is critical for society’s current and future medical needs. Triall is leading the deployment of blockchain-integrated software solutions to accelerate delivery of new drugs to patients. Triall co-founder and CEO Hadil Es-Sbai and co-founder and head of marketing Raymond van der Waal join Santiago Velez, co-founder and division lead of R&D at Block Digital, to talk about the world’s first digital ecosystem for clinical trials and how it will improve reliability and efficiency in the drug-development process. Recorded on March 7, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Persistent deflationary forces in Japan have puzzled economists for decades. Takaaki Kato, the Japan-based executive director and head of sales/trading for BitFlyer, doesn’know how long into the future present conditions will sustain. But he does see potential instability for the Japanese yen. Also a fiat currency bear, Kato perceives in Japan’s set of problems major tailwinds for crypto adoption. Kato tells Real Vision’s Ash Bennington that President Joe Biden’s executive order directing a “whole of government” approach to U.S. crypto policy will usher in a bifurcated era of the regulated and the unregulated. Those crypto platforms that navigate uncertainty and earn sanction by the U.S. government will have a head start on success in this new era. Recorded on March 9, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Interest rates on DeFi platforms are often as opaque as they are impressive, to the point where they seem too good to be true, especially in a world of near-zero TradFi yields. Sudhu Arumugam, co-founder of crypto derivatives exchange and yield platform CoinFLEX, offers a peek behind the curtain of his firm’s operations. Arumugam walks Real Vision’s Ash Bennington through the arbitrage strategies deployed by CoinFLEX, noting that his team’s edge comes from working with large pools of capital and enjoying privileged international access. Arumugam also discusses the evolving regulatory environment in light of the Biden administration’s new “whole of government” approach to crypto. Ultimately, as Arumugam sees it, regulation is bullish because it will catalyze institutional adoption like nothing else before it. Recorded on March 9, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're back, just in time to talk about the biggest NFT news of 2022: Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, has acquired the brands, copyrights in the art, and other intellectual property of the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections from Larva Labs. BAYC is the most valuable NFT collection; CryptoPunks is the second-most valuable. So, what’s next now that these crown jewels have become one? Real Vision’s Ash Bennington joins The Defiant’s Camila Russo to talk about the deal. Camila and Ash also discuss how the Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening cycle will impact digital assets and what President Joe Biden’s executive order means for the crypto space. Recorded on March 16, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Marcello Mari is the CEO of SingularityDAO and an expert on the emerging business structure that’s opening new frontiers to individual investors. Mari joins Santiago Velez, co-founder and division lead of R&D at Block Digital, to explain what a decentralized autonomous organization is and to share what he learned when he created his DAO. The DAO governance structure has been criticized as too slow to operate effectively. Mari counters that DAOs afford individuals opportunities to pool capital at levels previously possible only for institutions. Combined with risk-hedging algorithms, this suggests that there’s vast unrealized potential for DAOs as viable structures for individual investors. Mari and Velez dig into the technical aspects of DAOs and their underlying anatomy. This is a must-watch for anyone who wants to learn more about DAOs. Recorded on February 25, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ray Dalio, founder, co-chairman, and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, famously noted that global reserve currencies typically last for 100 years or so. If that trend holds, the US dollar is nearing the end of the privileged status it inherited from the British pound. So, what comes next? Greg Foss and Seb Bunney believe it’s Bitcoin. Foss, a strategist at VPC, and Bunney, who advocates at The Looking Glass, argue that the world’s No. 1 cryptocurrency features characteristics necessary to the task. Foss stresses the importance to humanity of a hard asset immune to censorship and manipulation. Inflation, he says, is crippling poor families on fixed incomes, leading them down a dangerous path of debt accumulation. Bitcoin, as Foss sees it, is the way out of the fiat-driven leverage spiral the entire Western world has fallen into. Recorded on March 1, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What problem does DeFi solve? Jamis Johnson and Ali Hassan, founding partners of Perceptive Capital, attempt to answer that question. As two early Bitcoin adopters, Johnson, a computer scientist, and Hassan, a former TradFi fund manager, were convinced of the original cryptocurrency’s promise almost from its very beginning. But they each saw opportunities to expand on that promise. And they were particularly excited by decentralized finance. Johnson and Hassan have combined their expertise to create a cutting-edge investment fund focused on crypto and crypto-adjacent ventures. They talk to Real Vision’s Ash Bennington about the need for greater decentralization and a shift away from the “regulatory monopolistic banks,” as Hassan calls them. Tune in to share in the knowledge they’ve accumulated along their journey into the DeFi space. Recorded on February 24, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices