The Charlie Shrem Show

Today we have a special episode where we share my various discussions from CoinAgenda. This episode includes a Fireside Chat with myself and Michael Terpin and a panel discussing how crypto and NFTs will disrupt the film industry. The first half of the episode is the Fireside Chat with Michael Terpin. Michael and I reminisce about the early days of Bitcoin. We discuss the experience of going through your first crypto cycle. We also touch on the benefits of building during a bear market. Our subsequent conversation discussion focused on the significant differences in the industry between the early days of Bitcoin and now. We pivot to focus on how VCs impacted the industry. We also focus on the benefits of angel investing. We also touch on the unique characteristics that crypto projects have, which give them the ability to raise money in multiple ways. We transition, and we discuss my new project, Defiine. We provide a general overview of Defiine and how we will be disrupting film financing. Part 2 of the episode is a panel discussion moderated by Joyce Chow, and the panelists included me, Alexander Amartei, producer of Antara & inventor of Movie NFTs, Tom Malloy, an American actor & filmmaker, and Andreas Kohl, CBDO at Mintlayer. We begin the panel by discussing how crypto will disrupt film financing. We also discuss how each of the panelists were initially attracted to crypto. We touch on how NFTs are disrupting the film industry, from financing to fan engagement. We also discuss why we should be building on Bitcoin. We finish our conversation by discussing the importance of providing value and how to make a project more valuable. Please enjoy this special episode.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Rob Richardson, the CEO, and co-founder of Disrupt Art, a Global marketplace created to revolutionize the impact of Art, Music, Fashion, and Film. DisruptArt aims to curate an interactive space for artists, collectors, and activists to revolutionize the impact of art. Artists sell their pieces as digital creations through blockchain technology. Their vision is to create a community where spoken word artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, photographers, and crypto artists intersect, creating dialogue about social impact, contemporary art, and the blockchain. They believe artists deserve more equity, and it’s why they ensure artists receive a majority of the funds and always receive a royalty for their work. That is why they created a new Black-owned NFT minting platform, DisruptArt. They focus on equity, diversity, and bridging NFT technology to the world. They work with activists, allies, and organizations to build a more equitable future using NFTs. Rob is also the founder of Disruption Now Media, a platform that connects entrepreneurs, artists, and leaders through interactive events, educational content, podcasts, and virtual and in-person summits. Disruption Now Podcasts hosts conversational podcasts with disruptors focused on impact. Past guests have included: NY Times bestselling author Robert Greene, Monique Woodward, Jewel Burks Soloman of Google Startups and Collab Capital, Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital, and many others. When Rob was appointed chairman of the University of Cincinnati’s Board of Trustees, he became the youngest person to serve in this role in the University’s history. He established the 1819 Innovation Hub in his tenure, where industry and talent collaborate to spark groundbreaking ideas. He created a leadership development and academic preparedness program for high school students. He also championed reforms to the University’s police policies. We discuss various topics, including NFTs and Web3, redefining the term Artist, the rise of creators, the disruption potential of NFTs, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing what is an artist. Rob explains why needs to redefine the meaning of “artist.” We discuss the rise of the creator and how everyone who is building and using their imagination is a creator. Our next conversation topic centered around the best ways to explain NFT and Web3 to someone. Rob discusses why some people cannot reimagine reality through a new paradigm. We discuss how Web3 brings about a new paradigm for online creation and ownership. Rob shares the steps he uses to explain NFT and Web3 to someone new to the space. We also discuss how NFTs accrue value. We discuss the NFTs enable creators to develop a stronger relationship with their fanbase. Our next topic centered around which mediums and sectors will be distributed the most because of NFTs. We discuss how film and TV will be one of the major sectors disrupted by NFTs. We also discuss why using technology to create value is the secret to long-term success. We touch on why it’s essential to become knowledgeable about the space and its broader implications across various industries. Our final discussion topic was how NFTs are a gateway into the crypto-verse by allowing more people to begin to grasp the transformational nature of crypto.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Halsey Minor, CEO of Vivid Labs. VIVID enables anyone to create, manage, and sell multimedia NFTs, enabling new use cases and business models and evolving NFTs into complete media experiences. Compatible across all significant blockchains, VIVID offers advanced NFT + features that transform simple NFTs into rich media experiences that are multi-format, multi-asset, permissioned, updateable and resilient. Halsey is a technology founder behind some of the greatest successes in internet and enterprise computing which have anticipated “what’s next” in enterprise architecture and technology adoption. His companies have created over $250 billion in cumulative value, and he’s built a Nasdaq 100 company from scratch. His achievements as founder or co-founder include CNET, Uphold, Salesforce, Google Voice, OpenDNS, and Vignette. We discuss various topics, including the future of NFTs, the evolution of the web, why NFTs are a new form of the website, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing how NFTs are creating a new genre of multimedia content. Halsey discusses how NFTs will enhance the fan experience and provide content creators with new and innovative ways to connect with their audience. Halsey explains how various music artists and movie franchises are currently utilizing this technology to build a more profound fan experience for their audiences. Our next conversation topic centered around the evolution of the web. We discuss how Web3 is the natural evolution of the net. Halsey shares his experience building startups and business throughout the different web eras and what attracted him to Web3. We also discuss why NFTs are a new form of the website and the possible implications of that framing. We transitioned our conversation to discuss the importance of sensible regulation around NFTs. Halsey outlines why he has been imploring regulators to treat NFTs as content and not deem them to be securities. Another major conversation topic we discussed was the recent stablecoin news and why algorithmic stable coins are unlikely to work. Our final conversation centered around the future of NFTs and how creators and fans will benefit from the technology as we continue to push the boundaries of what we think is possible in space. Please enjoy my conversation with Halsey Minor.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today, my guest is Jason Brett, Founder and CEO of Value Technology Foundation. Value Technology Foundation is a DC nonprofit think tank dedicated to blockchain advocacy, education, research and development, and advocacy. Jason has extensive experienced with blockchain and has made presentations to several U.S. government agencies and regulatory bodies. Prior to becoming the founder of Value Technology Foundation, Jason was the Director of Operations at the Digital Chambers of Commerce. He was also a Policy Director for ConsenSys. While serving as Policy Director for the blockchain technology company ConsenSys, he was responsible for their domestic and international policy during a critical period of its growth. He has worked in both the Division of Finance and Capital Markets during the height of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Additionally, he has extensive experience in developing and implementing successful governmental affairs programs for various companies, including clients of Key Bridge Advisors. He is also a forbes.com contributor who writes on policy issues related to cryptocurrency and blockchain. Jason holds an M.B.A. from American University and a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University. We discuss various topics ranging from a Bitcoin Constitutional Amendment, the Bitcoin Voting Block, Bitcoin/Crypto Regulation, and much more. We began our conversation by discussing why Jason believes it is necessary to pass a constitutional amendment codifying the right for people to own and control their Bitcoin. We discuss the importance of protecting people from the overreach of government and the American ideals that are present in Bitcoin. Our conversation transitions to focus on the growing Bitcoin Voting Block. We discuss the increasing number of constituents becoming single-issue voters about Bitcoin and Crypto. We also discuss the increasing number of politicians that are pro-Bitcoin and pro-Crypto. We discuss how these politicians are fighting to protect the industry. Our next conversation topic focused on the recent executive order, and its possible impact on the industry. We discuss how the current executive order was focused mainly on gathering information that could impact potential legislation in the future. We discuss the benefits of the American political system compared to countries like China. Our final conversation centered around BIP 119 and trying to make changes to Bitcoin. We discuss why the process should be challenging to change Bitcoin. Please enjoy my conversation with Jason Brett. Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Laura Shin. Laura is a crypto/blockchain journalist covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, Defi, NFTs, DAOs, stablecoins, etc. She is the host of the podcast Unchained; and author of "The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze." During the course of writing her book, Laura and her sources uncovered who they believe was behind the 2016 DAO attack on Ethereum. Laura is a former senior editor at Forbes. She is the first mainstream journalist to coCryptover crypto full-time. Her podcasts and videos have had more than 15 million downloads and views. She has spoken about cryptocurrency at TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University, and the Oslo Freedom Forum. In our conversation, we discussed various topics, including the early days of crypto, how new technology is adopted, the early Ethereum team’s dynamic, the DAO hacker, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing how Laura got into crypto and what sparked her interest in the space. Laura shares how she became the first mainstream reporter to report on crypto full time and how reporting on crypto eventually led her to start her podcast and write her book, Cryptopians. Another important topic we discussed was the adoption cycle of new technology. We discuss the adoption patterns as recent technological advancements are integrated into society—our conversation transitions to discuss the founding of Ethereum. Laura shares a few stories to illustrate how Ethereum was founded and the political strife within the early team. We also briefly touched on the ICO craze and what sparked the mania. We discuss the DAO hack that changed the course of Ethereum’s history. Laura shares the story of who she believes hacked the DAO and the account behind her reporting. Our final conversation topic centered around crypto Twitter. We discuss how crypto Twitter has become a vital aspect of the crypto space and the possible impact Elon’s acquisition of Twitter will impact crypto Twitter. Please enjoy my conversation with Laura Shin. Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today, my guest is Dr. Julian Hosp, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Cake DeFi. Cake DeFi is a fintech platform that manages over $1 billion in customer assets. It focuses on creating DeFi (decentralized finance) services and applications like liquidity mining, staking, and lending, which generate cryptocurrency returns for users. The company recently announced a $100 Million raise to start a venture fund. The venture arm will be led by the company’s co-founders, Julian Hosp, CEO, and U-Zyn Chua, chief technology officer. While the company is based in Asia, it will invest in other opportunities globally. He is widely regarded as a leading influencer in the crypto and blockchain space, with over one million followers across all of his channels globally. His ideas, knowledge, and influence have been conveyed in numerous articles and keynote engagements at industry-leading conferences and events. As well as being credited as a leading authority in the vertical, he is an active speaker for the Washington Speaker’s Bureau, an advisor for the EU’s blockchain groups, and manages multiple businesses in the industry. He is also a best-selling author, having written Cryptocurrencies Simply Explained and Blockchain 2.0 — Far More Than Just Bitcoin. His vision is to bring blockchain awareness and understanding to a billion more people by 2025. Before being an entrepreneur, he was a professional kitesurfer and worked as a medical doctor. We discuss a wide range of topics, including Cake DeFi, Bitcoin, the gift of financial literacy, DeFi vs CeFi, and much more. Our conversation begins by discussing the second-order effects of COVID and lockdowns on the digitization of society. We discuss the growing adoption of the metaverse as society becomes more digitally native. Our next conversation topic centered around the economic philosophy of Bitcoin. We discuss the pros and cons of a hard monetary policy and how the debate is beginning to gain steam in the mainstream discourse. We transition the conversation to discuss yields. Julian explains why crypto platforms and DeFi protocols give their users higher yields than traditional financial institutions. Julian also describes how the business model of Cake DeFi is aligned with its users. Julian discusses how Cake DeFi is paying users to learn about crypto and the importance of financial literacy. We transitioned our conversation to discuss the custodial vs noncustodial crypto worlds. We discuss the concept of virgin Bitcoin. We also touch on why regulators' view of blockchains is antiquated and why their limited understanding of the technology holds back innovation. Our next conversation topic centered around the design of Bitcoin. We discuss the limitations of bitcoin and the benefits of its simplicity. Another fascinating topic in our discussion was the market manipulation in crypto and its impact on retail investors. Our final conversation topic was the importance of preserving crypto culture. We discuss the evolving nature of crypto’s culture and the importance of maintaining the core ethos of crypto as the industry grows. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Julian Hosp.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today, my guest is Karl Jacob, the co-founder, and CEO of LoanSnap. Karl is a serial entrepreneur who has been building, advising, and investing in companies for the last 20 years. LoanSnap invented the world’s first smart loan technology that uses AI and machine learning to analyze a person’s entire financial picture and show them how to benefit from a smart home loan. LoanSnap is the parent company that built the Bacon Protocol, a decentralized mortgage lending protocol created using smart contract technology on the Ethereum blockchain. Anyone with a Web3 wallet can lend money and earn interest, all while seeing exactly which homes they’re lending against. Moreover, anyone with a home that meets the protocol’s criteria can create an NFT and use it as collateral to borrow money. Karl’s career has been focused on founding companies that solve big problems, and those companies have helped tens of millions of consumers. He has raised 23 rounds of financing from investors, including True Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Microsoft, eBay, Integral Partners, Norwest Ventures, Greylock, Benchmark Capital, FT Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Vulcan Ventures. Many of his companies have had successful acquisitions, including; Dimension X, acquired by Microsoft, Keen/Ingenio, acquired by AT&T, Cloudmark, acquired by ProofPoint, and Coveroo, acquired by Zazzle. While CEO, Jacob has generated hundreds of millions in returns to investors and over $150 million in revenue per year. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California Engineering School, where he sits on the board of counselors. We discuss a wide range of topics, including LoanSnap, Bacon Protocol, the real estate industry, the benefits of blockchain, and much more. We begin our discussion by delving into why the banking/loan industry has been tough to disrupt. Our conversation leads us to how he and his team have finally found a way to disrupt their value chain. Karl explains how the Bacon Protocol works and what makes it unique. Karl elaborates why they decided to build the bacon protocol on blockchain/crypto rails instead of building on the traditional financial stack. He illustrates this by explaining how blockchain removes the barriers and overhead that plague the conventional loan and real estate industry. Karl discusses the fallacies that persist throughout the loan industry and how the Bacon Protocol democratizes access to affordable housing and the loan industry. We also discuss the socioeconomic impact of foreclosures on neighborhoods and how blockchain technology can be used to solve the misalignment between individuals and corporations. Karl also addresses the impediments that currently make it challenging to tokenize real-world assets and how they’ve optimized the Bacon Protocol to avoid these issues. We finish our conversation by discussing how Karl envisions the entire loan industry to be disrupted by blockchain technology. Please enjoy my conversation with Karl Jacob.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Tyler Spalding, a Co-Founder of Flexa, a blockchain payments company based in New York City. Flexa is a versatile digital payments platform that offers several key features. Flexa has point-of-sale (POS) hardware compatibility as a merchant-focused app and is designed to reduce costs, settlement times, and fraud. Payments are collateralized by Flexa’s ERC-20 token Amp, which can be staked as collateral that receives additional Amp as a staking incentive. Flexa is accepted all over North America; Flexa aims to scale globally and integrate with numerous apps and payment options. For merchants, Flexa offers a variety of payment integrations and plug-ins to enable digital asset acceptance using existing point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software. Flexa supports dozens of digital currencies for consumers — including cryptocurrencies, tokens, and digital dollars — for payment at thousands of stores throughout the United States and Canada — including Nordstrom, GameStop, Lowe’s, and Petco. Flexa has a mission of eventually enabling digital asset payments for any app, using any currency, at any store worldwide. He has been preaching/mining/coding cryptocurrencies since 2011. Tyler is the former CTO of Raise, the world’s largest gift card marketplace with over $1B in sales and $150M in venture funding. Tyler has more than 20 years of technology experience, has founded and sold three software companies, and is an active seed-stage investor in 25+ startups. He is an author of more than 50 technology patents and was previously an aerospace engineering faculty member at two universities. Tyler is also a former engineer for the United Space Alliance, the United States Air Force, NASA Mars Crew Module, and the NASA Space Shuttle Program. We discuss various topics, including the Flexa and AMP, the payment industry, why we are still early, etc. We begin our conversation by discussing the multiple inefficiencies in the payment industry. I share my personal experience with the challenges facing merchants when dealing with payment providers. Tyler explains why the inefficiencies are so prevalent. Tyler shares his experience from helping run Raise, where they developed various systems to combat fraud and other inefficiencies. Our conversation naturally leads us to Flexa, where Tyler explains how Flexa enables people to pay with crypto across millions of merchants and retailers. Tyler goes on to discuss the tokenomics of AMP. We have a fascinating conversation comparing the engineering challenges in blockchain and aerospace engineering. We also discuss the philosophy of Voluntarism and the importance of individual choice. Our conversation pivots back to Flexa, where we discuss the company's commitment to transparency. We also discuss how Flexa is supporting the infrastructure of El Salvador’s transition to a Bitcoin Standard. We discuss how the crypto industry is still very early and why it is inevitable. Our final conversation topic centered on the social challenges of educating people on the proper custody of digital assets. Please enjoy my conversation with Tyler Spalding.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger. Ledger provides security and infrastructure solutions to critical digital assets for consumers and institutional investors. Launched in 2014, Ledger has designed an acclaimed line of hardware security devices, quickly placing the company as a global leader in the market, with 1,000,000 units sold in more than 165 countries. Ledger introduced the Vault for enterprises and corporations: a fully managed SaaS solution addressing the need to safeguard a very large amount of multiple cryptocurrencies while mitigating both IT and physical assault threats. The company is also active in the industrial IoT market, leveraging its secure hardware technology to interface sensors and machines to smart contracts or blockchain-based assets. Charles joined Ledger in 2017 as Chief Security Officer after working for ten years in the Cryptography & Hardware Security sector. He is also the creator of Donjon (the company’s security research department). He is now Chief Technology Officer from 2019. Charles holds a Master of Science in Cryptography & Security at the Engineering School ENSIMAG, with a Major in Cryptography and Security (Valedictorian), where he used to be a Lecturer. We discuss a variety of topics ranging from the importance of hardware wallets, Donjon, the advancements in security, areas for improvement in the crypto asset security industry, the future of blockchains, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the importance of hardware wallets. Charles explains the dangers of storing your private keys on your phone. Another topic of discussion centered around how the industry's growth will impact security. Charles outlines that as the crypto-asset sector continues to grow, it will continue to attract more hackers, so we must continue to focus on improving security and security education. Charles also discusses the risks that zero-day exploits could have on the industry. We finish our discussion on the importance of hardware wallets by discussing what they store and how ledger approaches designing their hardware wallets. Our conversation pivots to discuss why the north star of the crypto asset security industry should be to improve the UI and UX of their products. Charles does an excellent job detailing why improving the UX of security products will drive mass adoption. He also touches on the various bottlenecks we currently face that deter people from using hardware wallets to store their crypto assets. Another major topic of conversation centered around quantum computing. We discuss why quantum computing is not currently a risk for the crypto assets space and how it is mainly a research field. Charles also discusses that as the technology develops, the crypto-asset industry will have ample time to address the possible vulnerabilities that quantum computing could present. We also discuss the singularity and have a philosophical discussion of what we categorize as intelligence. The next major topic of discussion in the interview centered around the future of blockchains. Charles stresses that blockchain developers should not be creating applications on Layer-1s and instead focus their efforts on Layer-2s. We also discuss the purpose of blockchains. We discuss that the goal of blockchains is to decentralize society and give the user their power back. Charles outlines why this is such a strong value proposition, and we discuss how this will continue to revolutionize society for decades to come. Please enjoy my conversation with Charles Guillemet.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Evan Cheng, co-founder & CEO of Mysten Labs. Mysten Labs is a team of leading distributed systems, programming languages, and cryptography experts whose founders led Meta’s Novi Research and helped develop the Diem blockchain and Move programming language. The mission of Mysten Labs is to create foundational infrastructure for Web3. They partner with crucial ecosystem builders to make step-change improvements to their networks. Before co-founding Mysten Labs, Evan helped lead Novi Financial and was the research and development director. Evan focused on systems & security, programming language & formal verification, and new product experimentation as the Director of R&D at Novi Financial. Novi Financial is Meta’s crypto R&D division. Before leading Novi Financial, Evan worked at Facebook as the Director of Programming Languages and Runtime. Evan focused on supporting Facebook's world-class team in programming languages, runtimes, and compilers: Hack, HHVM, Skip, Flow, Python, Reactive programming, C++, LLVM, Android + iOS mobile runtimes and optimization pipelines, mobile JavaScript platform, and runtimes, Glow, and more. Evan worked at Apple for over a decade, where he was a third-level manager overseeing seven engineering teams. He focused on leading efforts in static and runtime compilation for both CPUs and GPUs, Swift performance, static and dynamic linker, shared cache optimizations, debugger, and bitcode tooling. He collaborated on HW transitioning plans, a simulation tool for early GPU architecture exploration, built & integrated tools, App Store tools, and security hardening. Evan Bootstrapped various new "engineering effectiveness" initiatives. In our conversation, we discussed multiple topics, including; Mysten Labs, the future of Web3, the infrastructure of Web3, decentralization, and much more. We began our conversation by discussing what attracted Evan to crypto and what compelled him to make the jump to start Mysten Labs with co-founders. Evan explains why we are at the precipice of the next innovation wave in crypto. Our next conversation topic centered around the infrastructure layer of crypto. Evan discusses the various limitations current blockchains have to meet the rigorous demands of scaling and composability. Evan addresses how Mysten Labs is building tools and infrastructure to solve these bottlenecks. Our conversation pivots to discuss the future of Web3 and NFTs. Evan outlines why we are still in the early days of NFT and Web3. He discusses how the NFT space may evolve as the tools and infrastructure built around NFTs and Web3 becomes. One significant evolution we discussed is how NFTs will be able to send and receive data unlocking a tremendous amount of potential for collaboration and value for both builders and owners of NFTs. We finish our conversation by discussing how we imagine NFTs and Web3 changing how society interacts and communicates. Please enjoy my conversation with Evan Cheng.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Billy Rennekamp, Grants Manager of the Interchain Foundation. Interchain Foundation develops and maintains foundational decentralized protocols, and supports organizations in building an internet of shared resources, security, and value creation. Their goal is to responsibly shape a new technological paradigm that is open-source, interoperable, and community-owned. Billy is an artist and developer from Louisville, KY living in Berlin, Germany. Billy is the Grants Manager of the Interchain Foundation where he supports different entities and contributors across the ecosystem. His work in software, sculpture and moving images uses influences from games, play, and cognitive science. He is also the founder of Bin Studio multidisciplinary research, design, and development studio based in Berlin, DE. Additionally, he is a contributor to ETH, cosmos, and gnosis. Billy is also the founder of Clovers Network, a Blockchain game that encourages the creation of scarce art. We discuss a variety of topics: Comos Ecosystem, Interchain Foundation, Clover Network, Bitcoin, Interoperability, and much more. Our conversation begins by discussing the intersection of crypto and art. Billy discusses how art was his gateway into crypto. We also touch on how distributed systems make it possible to more elegantly align incentives. Another topic we discussed was how the game Othello inspired the creation of the Clover Network. Billy explains the parallels between proof-of-search and proof-of-work consensus mechanism. A very cool topic we discussed centered around the Clover Network. Billy discusses his experience designing one of the first NFT projects. We also discuss that there is a tremendous amount of white space in NFTs/Web3. Our next major conversation topic centered around Cosmos. Billy discusses what initially attracted him to Cosmos and how Cosmos is building the blockchain for the future. We discuss the Cosmos ecosystem and how IBC enables them to be interoperable. Billy discusses how Cosmos SDK is enabling builders to build application-specific blockchains to tailor the infrastructure of an applications blockchain to fit the problem it's solving. We go on to discuss the relationship of ATOM within the Cosmos Ecosystem. Billy explains why creating an internet of blockchains is how you scale blockchain technology for the masses. Our next conversation centers around grants. Billy explains how grants are awarded to fund projects. We also discuss Interchain Academy as a way to onboard new builders to the crypto space. Our next conversation topic centered around Interchain Security and how it will streamline the process of creating new applications. Our final discussion topic centered around the upcoming Cosmos upgrade. Billy explains one of the major updates coming in the upcoming upgrade, Liquid Staking. Billy also discusses the tools they are building for new applications that people haven’t even thought of yet.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is John deVadoss, the founder of NGD Enterprise Inc. NGD Enterprise focuses on the blockchain developer experience and tooling for the NEO blockchain. Neo bills itself as a “rapidly growing and developing” ecosystem that has the goal of becoming the foundation for the next generation of the internet — a new economy where digitized payments, identities, and assets come together. Initially known as Antshares, this project was believed to be China’s first-ever public blockchain when it was launched in February 2014. The open-source platform was subsequently rebranded to Neo three years later. As well as creating a worldwide community of developers who create new infrastructure for the network and lower barriers to entry, the team behind this project operates an EcoBoost initiative that’s designed to encourage people to build decentralized apps and smart contracts on its blockchain. Previously, John was a co-founder of the InterWork Alliance, which is now part of the GBBC. Earlier, He was a general manager at Microsoft for close to two decades, during which he built out the architecture for .NET v1, Visual Studio Tools, the Microsoft Application Platform, Microsoft Digital (which he scaled to billion-dollar P&L), and more. He led the early service-oriented architecture and cloud architecture incubation initiatives for Microsoft, which led to Azure. Our conversation covers a wide range of topics including Neo, Bitcoin, developing software, scaling infrastructure, multi-chain and interoperability, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing John’s background and his experience leading teams at Microsoft. John discusses how his time at Microsoft gave him insight into how to scale infrastructure and how to create tools for developer communities. Our conversation transitions to discussing developers. John explains general misconceptions and the network effects of programming languages. We discuss why we should be building developer tools in the crypto-space to attract millions of developers globally to the blockchain. Our next conversation topic centered around Bitcoin. John illustrates the importance of Bitcoin and how Bitcoin is an institution. We also discuss general misunderstandings traditional technologists have about blockchain and the major themes they fail to grasp. John excellently discusses the developer ecosystem of the blockchain space and why we attract nontraditional builders. Our next conversation topic was centered around code and auditing code. John gives great insights into how you should think about code and what to look for when auditing a project's code. We transitioned from blockchain and web3 to discuss web2. John discusses why web2 was a bad detour for humanity. John illustrates how web2 evolved from being focused on user-generated content to surveillance capitalism. Another major topic of discussion was the possible applications of web3 protocols and projects. One area we discussed was the application of the protocols to municipalities and other government organizations. We finish our conversation discussing interoperability and the future of multichain. John excellently demonstrates why we are headed to a multichain world and the difficulties we face implementing interoperability. This was an amazing conversation with so many insights from general software scaling to Bitcoin to web3. Please enjoy my conversation with John deVadoss.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guests today are Fred Jin and Kenzi Wang, the Co-Founders of the Cere Network. Cere Network is the first Decentralized Data Cloud platform optimized for service data integration and data collaboration. While most blockchains are simply distributed ledgers, the Cere network of blockchains allows for turnkey hyper-customization of enterprise data ecosystems. Cere Network is the first Decentralized Data Cloud platform optimized for service data integration and data collaboration. Cere aims to be more ethical, more efficient, and more interoperable than any of its centralized counterparts. Fred is the co-founder and CEO of the Cere Network. Prior to Founding Cere, Fred is a Silicon Valley veteran, been in the valley since ‘93, co-founded 50cubes, a Tencent-backed gaming company. He was also early at Bebo where he helped lead the $850 million acquisition by AOL. Kenzi Wang is a Cere Network co-founder. Previously he was the Ex Vice-President, General Manager of Huobi, and a Partner at AU21 capital, a US VC investment firm. We discuss a variety of topics including Cere Network, the DaVinci Platform, the importance of decentralized data storage, the future of NFTs, and much more. If you are interested in understanding NFTs and the future of the creator economy you need to listen to this episode. We begin our discussion with Fred and Kenzi giving a general overview of the Cere Network. We discuss the importance of decentralized storage. We discuss the dangers of centralized platforms controlling our data and the privacy abuse that is prevalent throughout the data tech stack. A shocking fact that was raised during our discussion of data storage was that most NFTs are stored on centralized cloud providers like AWS and Snowflake and the systemic problems those platforms present to the long-term viability of NFTs. We discuss at a high-level on how Cere addresses these systemic risks by revolutionizing the data tech stack to ensure everyone's data is encrypted and can be monetized by the person who created the data. Our conversation transitions to discussing how Cere’s technology is enabling better functionality around NFTs to empower creators and artists to deepen their relationship and connection with their audience. Our next conversation topic centered around how the DaVinci Platform will be able to enable DAOs as a Service. The following discussion topic we focused on was how NFTs will enable creators to provide more value to their fans by being able to identify and build relationship maps with their core fanbase with exclusive content and experiences to fans who are engaging with their content the most. Please enjoy my conversation with Fred Jin and Kenzi Wang.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Josip Rupena, the Founder and CEO of Milo. Milo is a financial technology company reimagining the way globally and crypto consumers access financial solutions to 'Unlock what's possible.' By building a proprietary technology stack from the ground up and bringing on a world-class team, the company has enabled millions of dollars in US home loans. Milo is passionate about driving the digital transformation of financial services, solving real problems, and making a meaningful impact in people's lives. Milo's investors include QED Investors, Metaprop, and 10X Capital. Milo is the world's first crypto mortgage offering that makes it easy for crypto investors to utilize their digital assets to purchase US real estate. The digital banking leader will now expand its offerings to serve the rapidly growing crypto segment. Milo's clients will be able to pledge their Bitcoin to purchase property and finally qualify for a low-interest rate 30-year crypto mortgage. This solution will allow clients to continue to own their bitcoin and diversify into real estate, all while keeping the potential price appreciation of both. Clients will be able to finance 100% of their purchase with no dollar down payments required and do this faster than a conventional mortgage. By combining the security of real estate with the liquidity of digital assets, Milo is able to bridge both the crypto and real world. Prior to founding Milo, Josip was a Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley working with international clients and financial institutions. Josip also worked at an investment firm with $1 billion in assets under management as a Portfolio Manager and Head Trader. He began his career at Goldman Sachs covering institutional private clients with over $3.5 billion in assets. Josip graduated Cum Laude from the University of Miami and majored in Finance. The major topics in our conversation included how Milo is disrupting the mortgage and loan industry, why Bitcoin is the perfect collateral, how the loan industry works, real estate as a wealth-generating tool, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the impact the crypto wave will have throughout society including real estate. Our conversation transitions to discussing the real estate market and what is contributing to the rise in real estate prices. Josip explains the macro-tailwinds that are driving the real estate market. Our conversation shifts to discuss possible real estate opportunities. Josip breaks down various pockets of real estate where consumers can find good value. We touch on the current mass human migration and the possible reasons driving this exodus. Our next conversation topic centered around the future of the mortgage and home loan industry. Josip explains how the mortgage industry works and what areas could be disrupted with the advent of new technology. Josip goes on to explain how the government is subsidizing the real estate industry in America. Our conversation transitions to how Milo is innovating the real estate asset class by being able to underwrite risk more accurately. Josip explains how Milo’s Bitcoin-backed loan works. Please enjoy my discussion with Josip Rupena.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend, Chris Pizzo, Co-Founder and General Partner of Druid Ventures. Druid Ventures is a boutique investment firm focused on Blockchain and Crypto. Druid’s team consists of Crypto and Web3 OGs including myself and Scott Melker and LPs ranging from prominent high net worth individuals and family offices. Chris has a background in investing in and working with companies to shape their goals and success. Prior to Druid Ventures, Chris was a Vice President for SCP & CO, a mid-market investment firm. Before his work at SCP and CO, Chris developed and managed the coaching and corporate partnership programs at Embarc Collective, a Tampa-based innovation hub spearheaded by Jeff Vinik. Previously, Chris held the position of Associate at the investment firm Murray-Bertron, LLC. While there, Chris divided his time between working with portfolio companies on operational improvements and sourcing/executing new transactions. Prior to his position with Murray-Bertron, Chris co-founded VitalStream Networks, a remote patient monitoring company seeking to reduce hospital readmissions and achieve the quadruple aim. We discuss a variety of important topics including Druid Ventures, talent acquisition, crypto sectors to watch, early-stage investing, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing Tampa’s burgeoning crypto scene. We also discuss how COVID is decentralizing talent and how Tampa is at the forefront of attracting this new wave of builders. We also touch on how crypto is dominating the mindshare of the youth and attracting them to the space in unprecedented numbers. Our conversation pivots to discuss how crypto has changed the culture around work and the importance of working for a company you believe in. The next major topic we discussed was the possible impact of Biden’s Executive Order on Cryptocurrency. Chris discusses how the executive order will lead to more regulatory clarity to open the doors for further investment into the crypto space. We follow our discussion about the Executive Order opening further investment into crypto by discussing the role of venture capital in crypto. Chris discusses why venture investing is vital to help progress the space forward. We also discuss why investing in bear markets is the best time to invest and frameworks for investing during volatile periods. Chris does an excellent job at explaining the market dynamics that exist within venture and how the current inflationary macro landscape is driving valuations artificially higher. Our conversations shift to discuss the future of DAOs. Chris discusses the possible pitfalls for DAOs but also discusses why DAOs are the future. Our next major discussion topic centered around where the next big opportunities could be within crypto. Chris breaks down possible sectors that could be disrupted by blockchain technology and crypto. Our final topic centered around the future of the metaverse and the real-world impact the metaverse is having. Please enjoy my conversation with Chris Pizzo.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guests today are Arel and Lex Avellino, co-founders of Three Division, the company behind Passage and Strange Clan. Three Division builds next-level visual and interactive content. Their team's strange blend of artists and developers has allowed them to create everything from 3D animation and VFX to custom blockchain applications and interactive virtual worlds for online events. Passage is a metaverse platform with the goal of making an accessible and customizable 3D world for video chat, presentations, collaboration, and e-commerce.Every Passage experience comes with these standard features: 3-D Worlds, Immersive Video\\ Chat, Presentation/Panels and Screen Sharing/Streaming. The base cost gets the users Passage world up-and-running on a custom domain. Uses can use the space for one-off events or an ongoing virtual location. Strange Clan is one of the most ambitious NFT projects in the world, certainly the most advanced in all of the IBC networks. The Strange Clan is a story-driven community-based game where users can farm, craft, quest, and earn. The world of Strange Clan is being built in the Passage Metaverse, powered by Akash Network and the Cosmos ecosystem. The graphics of the game are powered by the Unreal Engine.We discuss a variety of different topics including Passage, Strange Clan, the future of Metaverse, Play to Earn, and the future of human communication. We begin our conversation by discussing the Passage and the future of the Metaverse. Lex and Arel discuss what led them to build Passage. We also discuss disrupting the video conferencing and building a platform for online communities and events. We go on to discuss the technology behind Passage that makes their Metaverse possible. We transition to discuss the Metaverse more broadly. We discuss why they decided to build on the Cosmos SDK and the importance of building a public Metaverse. We discuss how we envision the Metaveres evolving and becoming an all encompassing part of our lives. Our next conversation topic centered around Strange Clan and Play to Earn. Lex and Arel discuss how they’ve designed Strange Clan to be a game first. We discuss Strange Clan’s in-game economic dynamics and how this will enhance the gaming experience. We go on to discuss Play to Earn. Lex and Arel dispel the arguments against Play to Earn. We also discuss why they decided to build Strange Clan as a MMORPG and why they refer to Strange Clan as a Play to Own. We discuss the parallels between Strange Clan and RuneScape. We discuss the backstory of Strange Clan. Lex and Arel discuss the importance of gaming to the Metaverse.Our final discussion centered around community building. We discuss the future of online communities. We discuss how the Metaverse will revolutionize human communication and connection. Please enjoy my conversation with Arel and Lex Avellino.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Dr. Muneeb Ali, co-Founder of Stacks. Stacks is a layer-1 blockchain solution that is designed to bring smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) to Bitcoin (BTC). These smart contracts are brought to Bitcoin without changing any of the features that make it so powerful — including its security and stability. Stacks looks to take what makes Bitcoin so powerful, and extends it with additional functionality, without needing to fork or change the original Bitcoin blockchain. Dr. Muneeb Ali is the co-founder of Stacks, bringing apps and smart contracts to Bitcoin. He serves as the CEO of Hiro PBC, a Public Benefit Corp that builds developer tools for Stacks and Bitcoin. He has raised $75 million USD in funding from investors like Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, Lux Capital, Winklevoss Capital, and others. Hiro PBC was recently featured in CNBC's list of 100 promising startups to watch. Muneeb received his Ph.D. and Masters in Computer Science from Princeton University, where his Ph.D. thesis was nominated for the ACM SIGCOMM dissertation award. Muneeb gives guest lectures on cloud computing at Princeton and his research publications have over 1,600 citations. He is one of the main characters in the book Life After Google and was a technical advisor to the HBO show Silicon Valley. IN our conversation we discuss a variety of topics including Bitcoin, the early days of Bitcoin, Stacks and building on Bitcoin, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the differences between Web 2 and Web3. Muneeb does an excellent job at explaining the platform risks that exist throughout the Web2 ecosystem. Our conversation transitions to Bitcoin. We discuss how Bitcoin is freedom money and how it is helping both Ukrainian and Russian citizens navigate this incredibly difficult time. We also discuss the early days of Bitcoin and what attracted us to the space. Muneeb shares stories from the early days of Bitcoin showing how small the community was and how much the movement has grown. Our conversation transitions to a discussion centered around building on top of Bitcoin. Muneeb explains the various different protocols being built on top of Bitcoin like Stacks, Liquid, and RSK. We discuss how these work and their various trade offs. Muneeb breaks down Proof-of-Transfer, merge mining, and federated systems. We also touch on the growth of the developer base within the Stacks ecosystem and some exciting new projects being built on Stacks. Our final topic of conversation centered around why build on Bitcoin and why Bitcoin is the future. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Muneeb Ali--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my good friend, Luke Lango, the Senior Investment Analyst at InvestorPlace. InvestorPlace is an investment and financial news website that provides millions of individual investors with access to free stock picks, options trades, market news, and actionable commentaries. Luke jumped into the startup world while in college at Scoutables, a Sports data analytics business founded by Mark Goodstein, a former Dodgers GM. When he discovered fintech and finance, he found his true passion and decided to go all in and began his time at InvestorPlace. Luke regularly rates as one of the top stock pickers in the world by numerous outlets, and has developed a strong reputation for leaning into his technology background and “big picture” investment philosophy to regularly identify next-generation, small-cap stocks with huge upside potential. Indeed, over the past few years, he has identified many up-and-coming growth stocks well before they were household names, like Advanced Micro Devices (1000%-plus returns), Shopify (1,000%-plus returns), Tesla (1,000%-plus returns), NIO (1,000%-plus returns) and Chegg (2,000% returns). He believes that technology – whether it is around us today or being developed from current technology – can compound exponentially, change lives and alter generations of wealth. In our conversation we cover a variety of very important topics including the geopolitical instability in Europe, the impact of the Federal Reserve policies, the difference between the stock market and the economy, the importance of energy sovereignty, advice for evaluating crypto, and much more. We begin our conversation discussing the Federal Reserve. Luke gives an in-depth breakdown of how the Federal Reserve policies and decisions impact the markets. Luke explains why the Fed's policies are the most important factor in determining where the markets are headed. We go on to discuss why the Fed is likely to act dovish in the face of the current geopolitical landscape. Our conversation transitions to discuss the disconnect between the economy and the stock market. Luke discusses stock market is a discounting mechanism that looks into the future and how that is connected to the future prospects of the economy. We finish our conversation about economics by discussing the parallels between the COVID financial crisis and the Great Recession of 2008. Our next major conversation topic was centered around the intersection of geopolitics and economics. Luke breaks down the ramifications of the geopolitical instability in Europe will have on the markets. We focus on discussing Putin’s possible motives and why the economic volatility will most likely be contained within Europe. We also discuss a couple of black swan events that may cause contagion effects. Our next topic of discussion focused on how to navigate a bear market. We also touch on how bear markets and tough times drive innovative cycles. Our conversation transitions to understanding how to evaluate crypto. Luke gives advice on strategies and frameworks he uses to assess crypto investments. Our final major topic centered around energy and the importance of energy sovereignty. We discuss why the European energy crisis could be a watershed moment to drive innovation and growth for clean energy from solar, hydro, to nuclear. We wrap up our conversation around energy by discussing the importance of energy sovereignty and the impact it has on geopolitics to economic prosperity. Please enjoy my conversation with Luke Lango.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Witek Radomski, the CTO and co-founder of Enjin. With roots in the gaming industry, the company was founded in 2009, and built a platform that grew to 20 million users since then. This software has processed millions of USD in virtual asset sales, so expanding into blockchain and the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) was a natural evolution of their business. Efinity is a project of Enjin, a company that provides an ecosystem of interconnected, blockchain-based gaming products. Enjin's flagship offering is the Enjin Network, a social gaming platform through which users can create websites and clans, chat, and host virtual item stores. By using blockchain technology to manage in-game items across many different properties, Enjin can help reduce the high fees and fraud that have plagued the transfer of virtual in-game goods and collectables. The Enjin platform also provides software developer kits (SDKs) that equip developers with tools to build their own NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain and enable their integration into the gaming ecosystems or apps of their choice. The platform also maintains its own native NFT marketplace and a wallet with NFT support. Witek in addition to being the CTO and Co-Founder of Enjin is the author of the ERC-1155 multi-token standard. In our conversation we discussed Enjin and Efinity, the evolution of the crypto space, the evolution of multimedia on the internet, the ERC-1115 standard, and the importance/future of web3 and metaverse. We begin our conversation by discussing the impact of flash on the ability to communicate and create applications on the internet. Our next conversation topic centered around the culture and vibe of the early crypto community. We discuss the culture of the early adopters and how the community has evolved over time. We discuss the uniqueness and the excitement of the early days of Bitcoin. Witek details what inspired him to become an evangelist for crypto and web3. Our next conversation topic centered around Enjin. We began this conversation topic by discussing Enjin’s history and how the company transitioned from a gaming centric to metaverse/web3 focused. Witek explains how Enjin has always been a platform and makes logical sense why they transitioned to become a platform for the metaverse. Witek did an amazing job at explaining how the ERC-1115 token standard is so revolutionary. Witek details how the ERC-1115 unlocks the possibilities of web3 by enabling the proliferation of NFT, gaming and the metaverse. We discuss the value propositions of GameFi. Witek goes into detail dispelling the common misconceptions and objections surrounding GameFi and Play to Earn. We go on to discuss how Enjin and Efinity are providing a platform for a fully interconnected and viable metaverse. Witek explains why they decided to pivot from Ethereum to Polkadot. We discuss the importance of providing full access to the metaverse to everyone and why we believe innovation is leaving the Ethereum ecosystem. Our final conversation topic centered around the future of the metaverse and web3. We discuss the impact we envision Web3 and the Metaverse having on society. Witek discusses why Web3 will democratize access to identity and information. We finish our discussion by giving our opinions on where we see the space heading. Please enjoy my conversation with Witek Radomski.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Weso, Head of Strategic Partnership at Beefy Finance. Beefy Finance is a Decentralized, Multi-Chain Yield Optimizer platform that allows its users to earn compound interest on their crypto holdings. Through a set of investment strategies secured and enforced by smart contracts, Beefy Finance automatically maximizes the user rewards from various liquidity pools (LPs),‌ ‌automated market making (AMM) projects,‌ ‌and‌ ‌other yield‌ farming ‌opportunities in the DeFi ecosystem. The main product offered by Beefy Finance are the 'Vaults' in which you stake your crypto tokens. The investment strategy tied to the specific vault will automatically increase your deposited token amount by compounding arbitrary yield farm reward tokens back into your initially deposited asset. Despite the name 'Vault' suggests, your funds are never locked in any vault on Beefy Finance: you can always withdraw at any moment in time. They have over $1.2B TVL across 10 blockchains with over 700 vaults. Weso is the Head of Strategic Partnership at Beefy Finance. He has been a developer at Beefy for a few months after launch and is now helping further expand their partnership network. If you are interested in DeFi, generating wealth, and chasing yield this conversation is a must listen. In our conversation we discuss a variety of topics including Beefy Finance, Yield Optimization, opportunities in DeFi, Privacy, DAOs, and much more. We begin our conversation discussing the varying degrees of privacy. Weso does an excellent job at explaining the balancing act that comes with trying to build a protocol where the team is anonymous. He explains why he decided to dox himself and the benefit of being transparent in the crypto space. Our conversation transitions to discuss Beefy Finance. We discuss what is a yield optimizer and the power of compound interest as a way of generating wealth. Weso explains Beefy’s strict security standards. Weso also explains what Vaults are and what their role is within the Beefy protocol. Weso explains how Beefy’s is becoming the predominant yield optimizer across DeFi. Our conversation shifts to discuss the inflow of institutional capital into DeFi. Weso explains why institutions are beginning to invest in protocols like Beefy as ways of extracting yields and why he believes this trend is only beginning. Our next topic of discussion centered around market conditions and why Beefy has been able to retain users even with the increased volatility. Our final conversation topic was centered around DAOs. We discuss how DAOs are the future of work and collaboration. We discuss how digital identities will help provide anonymous developers and Web3 participants with a clear path towards reputation building. Please enjoy my conversation with Weso.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Matthew Gould, Founder and CEO of Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains is onboarding the world onto the decentralized web by building blockchain-based domain names. Unstoppable Domains allows users to create their own fully decentralized and uncensorable websites that they truly own. They also make it possible to replace cryptocurrency addresses with real, human names -- making it easier to send crypto and interact with the decentralized web. By selling these domains directly to consumers for a one-time fee, they are making a product that will change cryptocurrency and shape the future of a free Internet. Unstoppable Domains recently raised a Series A led by Draper Associates and Boost VC, and have received grants from the Ethereum Foundation and Zilliqa Foundation. Matthew’s mission is to help users around the world join the decentralized web. Matthew's background is over a decade in product and analytics leadership. His passion is entrepreneurship and working with incredible teams to deliver truly meaningful results. In our conversation we discuss a variety of topics including Unstoppable Domains, Digital Identity, Democratizing access to Web3, Disrupting Web2, Internet Communities, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing Unstoppable Domains. Matthew does an excellent job at explaining how domains are evolving and the implications of having a NFT domain. We discuss how replacing crypto addresses will help democratize access and broaden crypto adoption. Our conversation transitions slightly and we discuss why digital identities will be one of the most disruptive innovations of crypto. Matthew details how he envisions digital identities impacting broader society by giving a variety of use cases. Our next major discussion topic centers around how the adoption of Web3 will be spearheaded by the adoption of decentralized domains. We discuss how digital identities will solve a lot of the issues and shortcoming currently plaguing Web3. We also touch on which Web2 business models are at risk with growing adoption of Web3. Our final discussion topic centered around how the growth of digital assets and the advent of digital ownership is going to continue to disrupt every aspect of our lives and enable broader societal inclusion. Please enjoy my conversation with Matthew Gould.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Tony Marchuk, Co-Founder of Bad Bears. Bad Bears is an experiment in fixed-supply NFT-centric economics. The goal of the project is to create a closed-loop market where the total supply of all MSK is fixed and the $MSK is redistributed to Bad Bear NFT holders and spent on items in their metaverse. There will only be 5,555 Bad Bears with a one-of-a-kind tokenized, ERC-721 based ecosystem built on the Ethereum blockchain. Bad Bears are the genesis NFT project and are the only characters who generate passive yield. Holders receive 100 $MSK per day and get exclusive access to Bear Labs drops. Each Bad Bear has voting power in their DAO, and owns a stake in the Treasury. Tony is a decade-long serial entrepreneur specializing in product development, software, and UX. He has a background of 10+ years in digital marketing where he has supported the daily operations and vision needed to manage complex campaigns. Combining software development, digital marketing, and a strong focus on the end-user, he provides unique and innovative strategies to make web-based businesses work seamlessly. In our conversation we discuss a variety of different topics including Bad Bears, their innovative incentive model, the ERC-721 Standard, why NFTs will drive crypto adoption, bootstrapping a community, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the origin story of Bad Bears. Tony discusses how he got into crypto and what drew him to start his own crypto projects. Tony discusses why the Bad Bears project is so innovative and why they developed their unique economic model that will power the Beartopia. We go on to discuss why their team decided to build on Ethereum and use the ERC-721 Standard. Tony details the benefits of using ERC-721 Standard. We transition to discuss why NFT will drive broader crypto adoption. We go back and forth discussing the various value propositions that will make NFTs more appealing as a gateway into crypto for the average person. Our conversation pivots slightly to discuss tips and best practices for bootstrapping a Web3 community. Tony emphasizes the importance of transparency and accessibility as two major reasons for the success of the Bad Bear community. Our final conversation topic centered around the Bad Bear future roadmap and why he believes the project will become better as the community becomes more involved. If you are interested in learning about the future of NFT and Web3 you will not want to miss this episode. Please enjoy my conversation with Tony Marchuk--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend Nuke Goldstein, Co-Founder and CTO of Celsius Network. Celsius provides a platform of curated services that have been abandoned by big banks – things like fair interest, zero fees, and lightning quick transactions. Celsius also offers much higher rates of returns on savings and deposits, much easier and fairer loan requirements and automated rewards computed for each user algorithmically. Despite a building momentum behind defi, fintech companies like The Celsius Network are innovating in the space between centralization and decentralization. This middle ground is an inherent stepping stone to an entirely decentralized future and the benefits it can afford. The Celsius Network is a prime example of the value this interplay can unlock. Celsius’s goal is to disrupt the financial industry, one happy user at a time, and introduce financial freedom through crypto. Nuke is a seasoned software developer, architect, innovator, and entrepreneur in cutting-edge technologies. His career ranges from image processing and AI to IoT and blockchain. Prior to his work on the Celsius crypto assets lending and borrowing platform he designed P2P credit protocols using distributed storage and smart-contracts. Nuke was the CEO and founder of Sevenpop, a leading interactive music technology provider to hundreds of hotels and shopping centers across Israel. Nuke holds a B.Sc. in computer science from the Technion in Haifa (Israel’s most elite Institute of Technology). In addition, he has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation. In our conversation we discuss a variety of topics including Celsius, Bitcoin, the resiliency of peer-to-peer networks, the failure of traditional institutions, the parallel paths of disruptive technologies, the intersection between DeFi and CeFi, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing why peer-to-peer networks are antifragile and why they are so resilient. Nuke draws parallels between the different robust systems and how they are able to withstand various attacks. We discuss how peer-to-peer systems draw their power from human ingenuity and why that is vital to their success. Our conversation transitions to discuss Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s game theory. Nuke does an excellent job at breaking down the game theory behind Bitcoin adoption at the nation state level and why people will have to capitulate as adoption continues. Our next major conversation topic, centered around the failure of traditional institutions. We discuss how our financial institutions have abused their power, which has led to a complete degradation of trust. Our conversation pivots to discuss the evolutionary paths innovative technology takes as it becomes adopted by society. Nuke illustrates how these technologies follow similar paths and the importance of looking back at previous innovation cycles to understand how crypto will be adopted. Nuke stresses the need for sensible regulation and desire for open communication between entrepreneurs and regulators. Another very interesting conversation topic was the importance of the intersection between CeFi and DeFi. Nuke explains Celsius’s role in helping bridge CeFi and DeFi to make crypto accessible to everyone. Nuke also explains why Celsius is committed to providing their customers with the best possible experience possible and how they are empowering users toward financial freedom through crypto. We finish our conversation by discussing why the future is bright and why we are living through the most exciting time in history. Please enjoy my conversation with Nuke Goldstein.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Anthony Georgiades, the Co-founder of Pastel. Pastel Network is the first fully dedicated, decentralized digital art platform allowing users to register, store, and trade ‘provably rare’ assets. The network is a fork from Z-cash, running the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm Equihash and also supports Masternodes from Dash, which provide computational resources to the network to support asset registration, distribution, and permanent storage. Pastel gives creators a way to connect with their fans by selling limited edition NFTs that can be registered and traded on Pastel's blockchain without the high fees of other NFT platforms. Create timeless collections, build a following of loyal fans, and earn perpetual royalties on future sales. Anthony Georgiades is also a General Partner at Innovating Capital, a technology fund focused on disruptive companies and digital assets. Innovating Capital has incubated Pastel Network since day one. Anthony previously spent time on the investment team at First Round Capital and on the operations teams of various startups. He studied finance, management, and computer science at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton and engineering schools. In our conversation we discuss a variety of topics centered around Web3, a few major topics included Pastel Network, the technology behind NFTs, the value proposition of Web3, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the Pastel Network. Anthony breaks down how Pastel is disrupting the NFT space. We discuss how Pastel combined the various innovations from other blockchains and combined them to create a truly revolutionary NFT platform with the goal of storing the value on their platform for the next 100 years. Our conversation shifts slightly to discuss why the biggest problem facing the NFT space is how NFTs are stored and how Pastel has created the first fully decentralized storage solution. Our conversation becomes very interesting when we begin discussing the future use cases of NFTs and why NFTs will be ubiquitous throughout society. Another very important discussion topic was how the technology behind NFTs. Anthony does an excellent job at explaining why the technology is so revolutionary and how the technology works at a technical level. We also discuss the value proposition of Web3 and the importance of decentralization. Anthony explains why VCs are fundamental to the value creation process and why they are needed for the continued innovation process of technology. Our final discussion topic centered around what are the best investing practices he follows and advice he would give to people looking to invest in crypto projects. Please enjoy my conversation with Anthony Georgiades.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Roneil Rumburg, Co-Founder and CEO of Audius. Audius is the first decentralized, community-owned, and artist controlled music-sharing platform designed to help up-and-coming artists publish their work and connect directly with fans. Created by a platinum-selling pop artist and tech entrepreneur, Audius provides a blockchain-based alternative to SoundCloud to help artists connect directly with fans and monetize their work. The Audius protocol will live forever, owned and operated by a fully decentralized community of artists, developers and listeners collaborating to defend the world’s music. Prior to founding Audius, Roneil most recently co-founded Kleiner Perkins’ early-stage seed fund. At KP, he was responsible for seed investments into Blockchain and AI companies, including Lightning Labs. Roneil attended Stanford University and previously co-founded a Bitcoin peer to peer payment company called Backslash. He’s also held software engineering roles at a number of venture-backed Silicon Valley companies. This was one of my favorite discussions I’ve had recently. Roneil has a wealth of knowledge about everything from Web3 to software infrastructure to Bitcoin. If you’re interested in the creator economy and the future of Web3 do yourself a favor and listen to this discussion. A few of the high level topics we discussed included Audius, the creator economy and Web3, the applications of IPFS, Bitcoin’s role in the global monetary system, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing Audius. We discuss how Audius is disrupting the music industry by giving creators the ability to control their relationship with their fans and enabling artists to capture a larger portion of the value they create. We discuss the problems with the current relationship between the traditional music industry and artists. Another major discussion topic of our conversation is how Audius is enabling artists to experiment, for example by hardcoding certain parameters to be able to listen to a track. We also touch on how platforms like Audius will allow for more granular data so that artists and creators can have a deeper understanding of their audience that was not possible with the traditional tech stack currently available. We transition the topic of the conversation to discuss how Audius is striving to be as decentralized as possible and why that is a core principle for Audius. Roneil does an excellent job at explaining the value proposition of decentralized platforms and why having decentralized systems is vital to create a more inclusive world. Our conversation transitions to discuss the technology of IPFS and why IPFS is so revolutionary. Roneil discusses the differences between audio and video at a technical level and the different kinds of applications he envisions utilizing IPFS. We also discuss Bitcoin and its role within the broader global monetary landscape. We discuss why Bitcoin’s stability is so important to the integrity of crypto. Roneil eloquently explains why Bitcoin is the perfect hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty. The last major discussion topic of our conversation was the possible future impact of Web3 on the creator economy and how Audius is building tools to help onboard non-crypto native participants. Roneil stresses the importance of providing a suite of different services depending on the sophistication of the user and as the user becomes more adept at navigating the Web3 landscape the platform suggests different tools to the user. We also discuss how Web3 will strengthen the connection between the creator and fan. Roneil does an excellent job at elaborating the possible second order consequences of this stronger connection. Please enjoy my conversation with Roneil Rumburg.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Mary Beth Buchanan, an experienced legal, compliance, business executive and trusted strategic advisor to the CEO and Board of Directors. She currently serves as President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer for Merkle Science. Founded in 2018, Merkle Science is the next generation predictive cryptocurrency risk and intelligence platform that helps crypto companies, financial institutions, and government entities detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activities involving cryptocurrencies. Merkle Science’s proprietary Behavioral Rule Engine enables our tools to go beyond blacklists, so that compliance teams may fulfill their local KYC/AML obligations and can stay ahead of bad actors attempting to utilize their platforms for illicit activities. Mary Beth Buchanan brings over three decades of legal and business expertise at the intersection of federal law enforcement, global inter-agency cooperation, corporate compliance, digital assets, and emerging regulatory frameworks. Her unique combination of prosecutorial experience in the U.S. Attorney’s office, ethics and reputational risk assessment for the UN, and focus on internal investigations, corporate compliance, SEC enforcement matters, Congressional investigations, and her digital currency work in private practice make her uniquely suited to her role at Merkle Science and a leader in crypto compliance, regulatory and legal matters. We discuss the importance for regulatory clarity, how crypto empowers financial inclusion, dispelling misconceptions about crypto, understanding the mindset of prosecutors and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing how the perception of crypto has changed over the years. Mary Beth does an excellent job at demonstrating how the regulators' views on crypto shifts when they understand the technology better. She states one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is getting the regulators to understand the permanent nature of transactions on the blockchain. Our conversation transitions slightly to discuss how cryptocurrency empowers people in countries whose political and financial situation is not as stable as the United States. The next topic of discussion is how the lack of regulatory clarity could push the crypto industry from North America to other parts of the globe. Mary Beth was fantastic at explaining both the problem of lack of regulatory clarity and how she would advise regulators on how to approach regulating the space. Our next topic of conversation is the misconceptions from the general public and how companies like Merkle Science are helping change the narrative around crypto. Mary Beth touches on the tremendous amount of progress lawmakers have made to have a good faith approach to understanding crypto and their desire to understand and learn more about the space. A very important topic of our discussion was the need for financial literacy and accountability. Mary Beth demonstrates how crypto enables people to take accountability of their financial future by bestowing them with inalienable property rights and the second order consequences it will bring. In the last part of our conversation Mary Beth breaks down the mentality of prosecutors when prosecuting a case and how she would advise crypto companies who are trying to navigate the space. She stresses the importance of doing due diligence and acting in good faith. She also discusses how prosecutors take a holistic approach when evaluating a situation. We end our conversation by discussing how Merkle Science is providing the tools and education for both lawmakers and crypto operators to become more knowledgeable about the crypto space and how to be regulatory compliant. Please enjoy my conversation with Mary Beth Buchanan.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Robert Breedlove, a Bitcoin-focused entrepreneur, writer, and philosopher. Robert is the host of the “What Is Money?” podcast. Through his writing and media work, Robert aims to elucidate the importance of freedom and self-sovereignty across all spheres of human action. To him, Bitcoin is fundamentally a humanitarian movement exposing the greatest con in human history: central banking. By learning about the connection between honest money, entrepreneurship, and civilization, we are renewing hope for the future of humanity. To this end, Robert's mission is to restore freedom, truth, and virtue in our world by tenaciously asking the question: "What is Money?” He was raised in Tennessee attending Southern Baptist Churches but spent most of his life spiritual yet agnostic. Through his explorations down the proverbial “Bitcoin rabbit hole,” Robert found himself becoming reacquainted with Christiantity at the age of 33. He was particularly inspired by Austrian economics and the teachings of Jordan Peterson, which helped him reconcile his purely objective outlook on reality with its more subjective dimensions of valuation, morality, and meaning. Robert considers himself a Freedom Maximalist and believes he has found his life’s work in the Bitcoin space as a contributor to the separation of money and state. In our conversation we discuss Bitcoin, the importance of private property, the connection between Bitcoin and Christianity, the emergence of mass psychosis throughout society, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing Robert’s personal spiritual journey and how Bitcoin helped him reconnect with Christianity. We discuss the connection between Bitcoin and Western Philosophy. Robert does an excellent job at explaining how the writings of Jordan Peterson and Austrian Economists helped lay the groundwork for his understanding of Bitcoin and strengthen his belief in Christianity. We dive deep into the connections between moral virtues exalted in the Bible and how those are mirrored by the rules governing Bitcoin. Our conversation transitions to a discussion about the importance of property rights for the success of a society. Robert did an excellent job at explaining why strong property eighths are necessary for a society to function properly. We go to discuss how our current economic doctrine is at odds with the natural law which may be causing the societal rifts currently facing Western Civilization. This naturally leads to the discussion of how our society is facing an epidemic of mass psychosis. We discuss the importance of independent thinking and the fight for rational thought. Another major discussion point in our conversation was the social contract Bitcoin creates for society. We discuss how the social contract created by Bitcoin is the culmination of Western Philosophy by hard coding unalienable property rights for everyone. We discuss the positive externalities of unalienable property rights will have on society. The last portion of our discussion centered around the moral case for Bitcoin and the applications of a truly sovereign monetary system from the state. This conversation will make you think about the hard questions facing our society. If you are interested in the intersection of money, politics, economics and society, you’re not gonna wanna miss this conversation. Please enjoy my discussion with Robert Breedlove.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend, Scott Melker, the Wolf of All Streets. Scott is a trader, investor, and the host of the popular “The Wolf of All Streets Podcast,” the author of “The Wolf Den” Newsletter, and prolific writer and thought leader in the crypto space. He has been featured on Fox Business, in the New York Times, Forbes, Businessweek, The Wall St. Journal, Coindesk, CoinTelegraph, CNN, and much more. Prior to jumping down the Crypto rabbit hole, Scott Melker, also known as The Melker Project, had a 20-year music career and was a world-renowned producer and DJ. He has played alongside legends from nearly every musical genre, including Enrique Iglesias, Future, Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Crosby Stills & Nash, Neyo, Sheryl Crow, T.I., Jason Derulo, Public Enemy, Kanye West, DJ AM, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Steve Aoki, A-Trak, Lupe Fiasco, Prince Royce, J Balvin, Joey Montana and more. In our conversation we discuss the larger market conditions, the future of NFTs, growing an audience, and best practices for aspiring crypto traders and investors. We begin our conversation by discussing the broader market conditions. We discuss Bitcoin’s current bearish divergence and the impact the Fed’s tightening policies may have on the crypto markets. Scott did an excellent job at giving context of the current volatile conditions by asking the listeners to zoom out and understand we are still very early in the adoption curve of digital assets. One of the more important conversation topics was how for the first time crypto is considered by the broader investment community as an established asset class and how that changes the market dynamics for long term investors. Our conversation naturally transitions to advice on how to navigate the volatile market conditions, Scott shares a ton of actionable advice on how to tackle the volatility and why this could be a generational buying opportunity. Our next conversation topic centered around NFTs. Scott’s unique experience has given him clear insights on the future applications of NFTs and the impact on creators. Scott emphasizes the need for creators to accrue 1,000 true fans to develop a loyal fan base and how NFTs give creators more ways to accrue those 1,000 true fans. The last portion of our discussion centered around how the digital asset space is evolving and what sectors we believe will be narrative drivers throughout 2022. Scott explains why he believes rollups and layer-2s will dominate the narrative. We also discuss why Bitcoin dominance may continue to decline as the digital asset space continues to mature. This conversation is full of alpha and actionable advice. Please enjoy my conversation with my friend, Scott Melker.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Brandon Quittem, Head of User Acquisitions at Swan Bitcoin. Swan Bitcoin isn’t a crypto exchange. It’s a bitcoin-only accumulation platform, with options for both one-time purchases and recurring purchases (dollar-cost averaging plans). It works easily on both a desktop device or mobile device. In addition to their consumer-focused platform, they also have Swan Private for large buyers, family offices, and businesses. This has become an increasingly important part of their business. If you want to buy a large amount, want to add bitcoin to a company balance sheet, or want to consult with experts about custody, that’s your portal. And they’re in the process of launching Swan Advisor Services, which allows financial advisors to integrate bitcoin into client portfolios easily, including reporting and rebalancing. Swan is expanding its depth and quality of bitcoin-based services, rather than expanding its multi-coin approaches. Quality over quantity, in other words. Brandon graduated with a business degree from the University of Minnesota after changing his major away from Mechanical Engineering. He started his professional career in Enterprise Software for Oracle. Won the awards, made the money, got the promotions. His whole life was leading up to this moment. On the outside, it looked like everything was going great, yet on the inside, he was not happy. It was clear he wanted more from life. He began reading for pleasure, discovered the Four Hour Work Week, started experimenting with psychedelics, and went through yoga teacher training. He emerged out of this discovery period with clarity: it was time to abandon his constructed identity and pursue the life he wanted. Soon after, he left my job at Oracle. Him and and his girlfriend (now wife) decided to sell everything and spend 4 years traveling the world while building “passive income” businesses. They scoured the earth seeking novelty, strange food, personal development opportunities, clean surf, and cultural experiences. After 4 years of digital nomad life… they were ready to plant some roots. They moved back to Minneapolis and soon after fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Bitcoin fed his interests as it’s a never-ending pursuit of knowledge and stokes the revolutionary fire deep inside him. Today, he spends his time building bitcoin companies and trying to publish his best thinking. In our conversation we discuss Swan Bitcoin, the Fourth Turning, Bitcoin as an Institution, how Bitcoin is Hope, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the Fourth Turning and the current societal unrest. Brandon does an excellent job at explaining how the current socioeconomic and political state has led to the rise of collectivism and nihilism. We discuss the impact of these negative externalities for the future of society and how Bitcoin could be the answer for rebuilding our crumbling institutions. Brandon illuminates this by explaining how Bitcoin is Hope and a new form of institution. Our conversation transitions to Swan Bitcoin and building a Bitcoin-only company. We discuss Swan’s various product offerings and some inside baseball about who’s buying Bitcoin. We also touch on why Bitcoin is unlike the other Cryptocurrencies and why Bitcoin is the perfect money. We finish our conversation by discussing the importance of mental health and positivity. This conversation is full of actionable advice about Bitcoin, society, and life. Please enjoy my conversation with Brandon Quittem.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode of Untold Stories, my friend Jamil Hasan, currently the program director of the “Crypto Corner,” a weekend podcast series hosted by Irish Tech News, turns the spotlight on me. A few of the conversation topics discussed in the interview included: how I got into Bitcoin and Crypto, Bitcoin’s role on the macro-landscape, how to level up your life, disruptive technologies and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the early days of Bitcoin and how my team and I bootstrapped BitInstant, the first venture-backed Bitcoin company. We also touch on how the Bitcoin industry changed dramatically over a small period of time and how the Bitcoin community has changed over time. Our conversation transitions to War Games and Bitcoin’s role in the macro politico-economic landscape. We discuss the degradation of the dollar as the global reserve currency and the possibility of the escalated conflicts in the age of information. A very interesting topic of discussion was the impact of global conflict on financial equilibrium and Bitcoin. Our conversation transitions to the topic of disruptive technologies. We discuss the impact of the print press on literacy rates and the democratization of knowledge and information. A very interesting talking point was how the feudal power structure of the past attempted to stifle the dissemination of information by imprisoning people who used the printing press to share information to the general population. We finish our incredible conversation by discussing how anyone can take advantage of the Digital Renaissance. I give advice to anyone who is interested in leveling up their life should consider becoming a domain expert in any of the sub categories of the crypto industry. Please enjoy my conversation with Jamil Hasan.--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend Brian Norton, the Chief Operations Officer of MEW (MyEtherWallet). MyEtherWallet (MEW) is an open-source, client-side interface that allows users to interact directly with the Ethereum blockchain, without having to join a centralized exchange. One of the first such interfaces of its kind, MEW allows users to create and unlock wallets, interact with popular hardware wallets such as Trezor and Ledger, send transactions, interact with contracts, swap tokens, and interact with dApps. Things you can do with MEW: create your own unique Ethereum wallet, send and receive ETH and tokens, explore theirDApp store where users can earn on their deposits with Aave, open a vault with MakerDAO, or register and manage your ENS domains and deploy and interact with smart contracts. Brian has a background in operations, digital content development, and brand strategy. He specializes in keeping organizations on deadline and in touch with their target audiences. He has built years of start-up operational management experience in industries across the tech space, including edu-tech, industrial automation, and now blockchain. Brian’s work at MEW is driven by the idea that blockchain technologies, designed for everyday life, will change the way we live for the better in ways we can not yet imagine. The major topics in our conversation include: the growth and evolution of Ethereum and the ETH community, Proof of Stake and Layer 2 scaling solutions, Ethereum as the Cultural Asset Layer, the future is multichain, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the evolution and growth of Ethereum and ETH community. Brian does an excellent explaining how Ethereum’s finding product market fit and how Ethereum fits within the broader crypto landscape. He also discusses how the ETH community is growing at an exponential rate. Our conversation transitions to scaling the Ethereum network and the role of Layer 2s. Brian breaks down how Layer 2 and Proof of Stake will help scale the Ethereum network to enable global adoption. Brian discusses how projects like Polygon are providing users with a fast and cheap way of transacting but sacrificing some security and decentralization to lower the transaction costs. The next topic we discussed is the history and growth of MyEtherWallet and their tireless support for Ethereum since the inception of the project. We also discuss how Ethereum is becoming the base layer for Cultural Assets. Brain shares how he predicted the rise of NFTs and the proliferation of Culture and Art on Ethereum. We discuss how ETH is beginning to become ubiquitous within the sectors of society that are concerned with Culture and the Arts and what that means for the future of the Creator Economy. A major talking point of our conversation were the 5 spokes of life and how Web3 enables humans to scale these spokes much easier. We discuss the importance of Family, Finance, Friends, Faith, Fitness. One of our final conversation topics was the reality we are headed to a multichain world and what is Ethereum’s role within the broader blockchain ecosystem. Brain firmly believes ETH will be the settlement-layer for smart contract blockchains that enables the proliferation of Finance to Culture on the Blockchain. Please enjoy my conversation with Brian Norton, the Chief Operations Officer of MEW.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend Graham Jenkin, CEO of CoinList. CoinList's mission is to accelerate the advancement of blockchain technology. We do this by finding the best emerging blockchain projects and helping them succeed. They've become the global leader in new token issuance, helping blue chip projects like Filecoin, Solana, Celo, Algorand, Dapper, and others connect with hundreds of thousands of new token holders. CoinList users trade and store Bitcoin, Ether, and many other popular crypto assets through our full-service exchange, while also getting access to the best new tokens before they list on other exchanges. Their customers include validators, miners, founders, CEOs, crypto funds, bitcoin OGs, as well as a broad array of crypto enthusiasts. Unlike other centralized crypto finance platforms, CoinList is not here to just build a bank or a brokerage. They are building the platform for people who are passionate about moving crypto forward. Graham Jenkin is the CEO at CoinList. He was formerly COO & UX engineer/designer at AngelList. He has extensive experience in leading projects and marketing. One of the biggest projects he led was the redesign of the user interface for the world's most profitable online business - Google AdWords and won the inaugural Google Great Manager Award. He also spent time at Bank of America where he led BofA.com to 2 webby awards. Our conversation focuses on a variety of topics including CoinList, regulatory and compliance, Bitcoin, the upcoming “Orange Wave” in the midterm elections, market and societal conditions, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing Jack Dorsey’s recent twitter rant about Web3. We address the nuances around Web3 and the term “Venture Capitalist” Our conversation pivots to CoinList, we begin discussing the origins of CoinList and it’s connection to AngelList. Graham discusses how his time at AngelList has helped him navigate the regulatory and compliance hurdles facing crypto-native companies. We go on to discuss the overwhelmingly positive impact Obama's Job Act had on the Startup Ecosystem. Our conversation transitions to the very interesting topic of Bitcoin and Satoshi’s influence on society. We discuss how beautiful the global nature of the crypto industry is and the welcoming nature of the community. Our conversation pivots to the current market conditions and the inflationary pressures that are plaguing all aspects of society. A very important topic we discussed was the future of the Bitcoin voting block and the impact of the orange will have on the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. Graham discusses the future of governance and how crypto is disrupting how individuals participate in organizations. Our conversations pivots to the topic of decentralization and minimum decentralization. We discuss how decentralization is a spectrum and what is the line of demarcation that deems a project to be sufficiently decentralized. Another very interesting point of discussion was our conversation about using Token Investor Loyalty (TIL) as a good way to evaluate a project. Graham discusses how CoinList evaluates projects. We discuss the dynamics of token sales and the explosion of interest from investors. Graham also teaches us the ins-and-outs of NFTs and the impact of NFTs on society. The final portion of our conversation was dedicated to looking at the world and trying to understand the dramatic shifts that are currently taking place within society.--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest is Jonathan Victor, the Head of Web3 and NFTs for Protocol Labs. Protocol Labs is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and many more. They aim to make human existence orders of magnitude better through technology. IPFS makes the web work peer-to-peer. IPFS is a protocol for storing, addressing, and transferring data, designed to replace HTTP in many contexts. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify and link to information. IPFS is one of the leading protocols of Web3, crypto, and the decentralized web movements. IPFS serves millions of end users and tens of thousands of developers. It powers the websites and applications of small startups, large enterprises, and even blockchains. Filecoin is a decentralized storage network, designed to store humanity's most important information. Filecoin is a cryptocurrency incentivized decentralized market, where storage providers earn filecoin tokens for renting out storage space. (Think airbnb for cloud storage). Filecoin is one of the leading projects in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space. Jonathan works for Protocol Labs and Filecoin specifically on the applications of NFTs. He focuses on helping build tools to make Web3 more accessible and helps Protocol Labs' portfolio companies. In our conversation we discussed the future of NFTs, the growth of the crypto and web3 community, IPFS and Filecoin’s applications in Web3.0, the disruptive force of zero knowledge proofs, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing NFTs and Web3. Jonathan explains how the future implications of NFTs will impact society outside of art and media. We go on to discuss the immense growth and diversity of the Web3.0 community. Our conversation pivots to IPFS and how it can disrupt the current infrastructure of the web. Jonathan did an excellent job at explaining how Filecoin is built using the IPFS protocol. Our conversation transitions to zero knowledge proofs and the future applications it could unlock. We finish our conversation by discussing the future of open societies and closed societies. Please enjoy my conversation with Jonathan Victor.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Colin Pape, the founder and CEO of Presearch.io and Shopcity.com. Presearch is building a next-generation search engine powered by the community and leveraging a blockchain token. Presearch.org will be an open, transparent alternative to the current search hegemony. The ShopCity.com Community Commerce Platform provides local communities with interactive shop local campaigns that connect local businesses and consumers online. Their aim is to create an online ecosystem in which local businesses may flourish due to ground rules that prevent the system from being overrun by big businesses with little connection to the community. Colin has extensive experience with token economics, utility tokens, blockchain, product development, search, internet marketing, growth hacking, local economies, domain names, sales, fundraising and launching tech ventures. He is passionate about personal freedom, privacy, decentralization and community. In our conversation we discuss a variety of topics ranging from Web3 and disruption of Big Tech, the monopoly on search, the importance of timing, personal liberties, communities and the metaverse. We begin our conversation by diving deep into the similarities and differences between Web3 and Web2. We also discuss the power open systems vs closed systems. Our conversation transitions slightly to discuss the power hold Google holds on the search industry. Colin expertly explains the problems with the traditional Silicon Valley business model long term by detailing the various problems that plague the current system like stagnation and lack of privacy. Colin goes on to illustrate what compelled him to found Presearch and the unique value proposition it gives users. We also touch on the importance of timing and how time is the most scarcest asset we can leverage. Our conversation transitions to the importance of personal liberties and why society should optimize for the individual and not the collective. We touch on the alarming cultural shifts happening within western culture and the current battle over the hearts and minds of Americans. We finish our conversation by discussing the evolution of the term metaverse. Colin explains what he envisions for the metaverse to evolve into and we discuss our predictions for the future of the metaverse and crypto. Please enjoy my discussion with Colin Pape.--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend Brian Laughlan, the creator and lead project engineer of Satoshibles. Satoshibles are a series of 5000 algorithmically generated crypto collectible NFTs that have been hand illustrated. Each one is unique. The project uses Dorian Nakamoto as their mascot. The project originally launched on Ethereum in July 2021 but the project is currently building a bridge to the STX ecosystem to enable holders to secure their satoshible on Bitcoin. In addition to having one of the most vibrant communities within the NFT ecosystem, the project is committed to charitable efforts. Satoshibles partnered with Built with Bitcoin to create Built with NFTs is an NFT collection powered by artwork from students at BWB campuses across Africa, specifically the Nursery and Primary schools in Rwanda, Kenya, and Nigeria. From this artwork, 10,000 unique NFTs will be up for sale. All proceeds will fund the Foundation’s on-going efforts to build schools and communities around the world with their next projects initiating in West Africa and Central America in 2022. Brian is a designer at heart. He is originally from Scotland but moved to Switzerland when he landed one of his first software jobs. Brian began his career as a pure designer and transitioned to full front end developer once he taught himself how to code. Our discussion covers a variety of topics, including NFTs, the power of memes and community, crypto and charitable causes, cross-chain bridging and blockchain interoperability. We begin our conversation by discussing the history of NFTs and the importance of timing. We also discuss how Switzerland has become an innovation hub for crypto. Brian discusses how he bootstrapped the Satoshibles community and the uniqueness and strength of the community. We also discuss the growth of the NFT space and how the broader crypto community has evolved over time. Our conversation transitions to the power of memes. We discuss the iconic Dorian Nakamoto who was mistakenly labeled as Satoshi, which has since been debunked but his image has left a lasting community impact on the Bitcoin community. Brian discusses why he chose to base the pfp character on Dorian Nakamoto. Our conversation transitions to Built with NFTs and how NFTs are powering charitable causes throughout Africa. We discuss the future possibilities of how NFTs can disrupt charity and humanitarian causes. Another major topic of discussion was the importance of cross-chain bridging and why blockchain interoperability is the future. Brian discusses how the community was the driving force behind the desire to build a bridge to the STX ecosystem. We finish our conversation by discussing what is on the roadmap for Satoshibles. Please enjoy my conversation with Brian Laughlan.--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.Ledn:Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC. For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin. Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN --This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend Brian Hunt, CEO of InvestorPlace. InvestorPlace is one of America’s largest, longest-standing independent financial research firms. Started over 40 years ago by a business visionary named Tom Phillips, they publish detailed research and recommendations for self-directed investors, financial advisors and money managers. InvestorPlace.com publishes insightful articles on every corner of the market — from mutual funds and ETFs to options and active stock trading. Brian began his career in Oil and Natural gas by working over 7 years at Longfellow Drilling Incorporated. He eventually made his way to Stansberry Research, an independent financial research firm, delivering unbiased investment intelligence to self-directed investors seeking an edge in a wide variety of sectors and market conditions, where he was their editorial director. Brian next challenge was leading Katusa Research, an independent research firm founded by professional investor Marin Katusa focused on natural resource stock investments, as a Partner and Head of the Editorial Board. Brian is currently the CEO of InvestorPlace. Our discussion covers a variety of topics ranging wealth creation, investing, success, tokenization, and much more. We begin our discussion by talking about Proof-of-Brain and the importance of learning skills and acquiring knowledge to compound your wealth generating opportunities. Our conversation takes a slight turn where we begin discussing portfolio construction and advice for new investors. Brian gives excellent advice about how to approach markets and investing. A very interesting conversation topic was when we discussed the technological megatrends that will shape society for the decades to come. Our discussion transitions to tokenization and the future applications of crypto. We dive deep into the disruptive possibilities of the "Own Anything Revolution." We also touch on the topic of smart cities, tokenized bonds, regulating the regulators, and much more. We finish our conversation by discussing the qualities of a good leader and the importance of humility in success and leadership. Please enjoy my conversation with Brian Hunt.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend Andrew Kiguel, CEO and co-founder of Tokens.com. Tokens.com Corp is a publicly traded company that owns an inventory of DeFi and NFT based cryptocurrencies. Through a process called staking, Tokens.com’s inventory of cryptocurrencies is used to earn additional tokens. In addition, Tokens.com co-owns Metaverse Group, one of the world’s first NFT based, virtual real estate blockchain companies. Through its growing digital asset inventory, Tokens.com provides public market investors with a simple and secure way to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies linked to DeFi and NFTs. Andrew is an accomplished executive with leadership experience in Canadian capital markets, corporate governance and entrepreneurship. He was the co-founder and CEO of Hut 8 Mining, one of the largest publicly listed bitcoin miners in the world. Prior to that, Andrew spent over 18 years at GMP Securities (now Stifel Canada) in investment banking, with his most recent title as a Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Banking. Andrew has extensive experience in providing investment banking services to numerous public and private entities, including raising equity and debt capital in excess of C$3 billion over the last five years. He has also worked in an advisory role on numerous marquee M&A transactions. In our discussion we cover the MetaVerse, Web3, Tokens.com, Proof-of-Stake, and the mindset of traditional investors. We begin our conversation by diving deep into the MetaVerse. Andrew does an excellent job at explaining the value proposition of the MetaVerse and the broader societal impacts he believes will result from our evolution to a more digitally native society. We discuss the recent purchase of $2.5M for a plot of virtual land in Decentraland by the MetaVerse Group. Andrew explains the reasoning behind his company's purchase and why traditional brands will need to have a MetaVerse strategy within the next 24 months. The conversations transitioned to Web3.0 and the evolution of social media. Andrew discusses how Web3 and the MetaVerse are aiming to disrupt our traditional forms of interacting on the internet. Our conversation pivots to Tokens.com and Proof-of-Stake. We discuss how Tokens.com is providing provides public market investors with a simple and secure way to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies linked to DeFi and NFTs. We also discuss the future of Proof-of-Stake and debate the benefits and sacrifices with the various consensus models. We finish our conversation by discussing the mindset of traditional public market investors and the importance of democratizing access to digital assets. Please enjoy my conversation with Andrew Kiguel.--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.Ledn:Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC. For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin. Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN --This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Paul Rogash, Founder and CEO of BetU. BetU is a sports, esports & crypto betting platform. Secured by smart contracts and powered by the BETU Token. BetU aims to become a leader in the global sports betting market worth $391 Billion USD. With the goal of taking significant market share from global bookmakers such as Bet365, William Hill, Ladbrokes, DraftKings and FanDuel. BetU will offer traditional bookmaker services along with peer to peer betting resulting in better odds and bigger winnings. BetU Fantasy is a separate game where players can earn real crypto prizes for making fantasy bets on sport and esport events. There is no risk, only real rewards. Betting Platform: The BetU Platform will enable people to become their own bookmaker and bet against their peers. In the wagering industry the BetU platform will be akin to a combination of Bet365 & Betfair. The BetU platform will be available on web, tablet and mobile. Paul founded BetU in May 2021 and BetU had their ICO in late August of '21. Paul is an Australian entrepreneur currently based in Bali. He has been involved with several start up businesses in the fields of Internet Marketing, IT and financial services. Experienced entrepreneur, founded and sold MachineSales.com, Escalated Advertising & Lawyers SEO. Contract marketing roles in crypto saw projects increase 30x & 20x in 3 months. BBA in Entrepreneurship at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In our discussion, we cover BetU, the growth of the Metaverse, nomadic lifestyle, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing BetU and why gambling and betting is a great use case for blockchain. Paul discusses what makes BetU unique and how they are developing the future of online gambling. Paul also discusses the future fantasy sports and GameFi. Our conversation pivots to the MetaVerse where Paul discusses BetU’s bet on the MetaVerse and their plans of building out a MetaVerse experience. Another interesting topic of discussion was a conversation centered around the future of gambling in the MetaVerse and gambling on crypto-native games. We finish our conversation about the MetaVerse by discussing how Big Tech is beginning to develop a MetaVerse strategy and the importance of building open systems that are interoperable for the future the MetaVerse. The last major discussion topic we touched on was the nomad lifestyle. Paul shares his experience living as a digital nomad and the evolution of work and community. Please enjoy my conversation with Paul Rogash.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Starkerz, DAO member of 3Speak, a censorship-resistant video platform built on top of the Hive Network. Launched on March 20th, 2020, Hive is a decentralized information-sharing network with an accompanying blockchain-based financial ledger built on the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) protocol. Myriad dapps, APIs, and front-ends contribute to general and straightforward accessibility of data, transactions, and records so that this existing diversity and utility ensure that the ecosystem is welcoming to content creators, consumers, investors, and builders. Hive is developed to store vast amounts of content and to make it available for time-based monetization. Examples of use include social media with monetized rewards for content producers, interactive games, identity management, polling systems, and micro-loans. By combining the lightning-fast processing times and fee-less transactions, Hive is positioned to become one of the leading blockchain technologies used by people around the world. Hive’s support for high transaction volumes, combined with its fast 3-second block times and fee-less transactions, make it an ideal platform for building highly interactive applications that would bog down on most blockchain networks. Hive was founded by a diverse group of community members, developers, and investors who believed in the common goal of decentralization. There is no set team and no company behind it. All protocol changes are proposed, developed, prepared for, and implemented through a transparent and collaborative team-working environment. They are entirely open source from initiation to their final release. 3Speak is a place where content creators directly own their onsite assets and their communities. Using blockchain technology, the ownership of these assets and communities is intrinsic to the creator and the user, not 3 Speak. By using the platform, users get rewarded in Hive tokens and can receive donations in our proprietary Speak token. In our conversation, we discuss Hive, consensus models, the path to decentralization, web3 and community, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the differences between Web2 and Web3. Starkerz does an excellent job at explaining the pitfalls and problems creators face when building their audience on Web2 platform. Our conversation flows to how Web3 protects individuals from censorship and removes the gatekeepers from the decision-making process. We discuss Hive's unique history and Starkerz shares an amazing story of the first blockchain war. Our conversation transitions to the importance of community and the community around a blockchain are layer0. Starkerz demonstrates the importance of community by discussing the accomplishments of Hive and their consensus model. Our conversation transitions to discussing the differences and tradeoffs between the various consensus models. Our conversation transitions and we discuss how Web3 will enable a new paradigm. Starkerz describes this new paradigm that is enabled by decentralization, market forces, and community-led. Please enjoy my conversation with Starkerz.--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.Ledn:Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC. For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin.Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matt Kalish is President of DraftKings North America. DraftKings is a platform that offers daily fantasy sports, sports betting, and gambling products. Users can access the products via the firm’s website as well as by downloading its mobile app. Users can play and bet games in a variety of sports and leagues, including the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, or soccer leagues like the Premier League. Matt co-founded DraftKings in 2012 and is accountable for all North America revenue, bringing together all marketing, operations, and related analytics functions. Matt unifies leadership for all marketing functions as well as related analytics teams. He has acted as Chief Revenue Officer before transitioning into his role as President, DraftKings North America. Matt is a lifelong fan of fantasy sports, sports betting, and strategy games, combining his experience in corporate analytics and e-commerce to become the “game master” of DraftKings. Due to Kalish’s foresight and guidance preparing for the overturn of PASPA, DraftKings Sportsbook was the first legal, online, and mobile sports betting platform in New Jersey – the first state outside of Nevada to legalize sports betting. Kalish has been named to SBJ’s class of 2019 “Forty Under 40” for all of his excellence and innovation. In our conversation, we discuss NFTs and digital collectibles, the dawn of the digital cultural renaissance, DraftKings and Entrepreneurship, sports, and pop culture. We begin our conversation by discussing the NFTs and community building. Matt does an excellent job at detailing how NFTs are pushing the evolution of digital identities forward. We also discuss the importance of community within Web3. Our conversations transitions to how Matt and his co-founders built DraftKings into one of largest sports media and gambling franchises. We dive deep into the importance of missionary founders to the long-term growth of a company and Matt gives excellent advice about some of his best practices for operating and leading an organization. Our discussion pivots from entrepreneurship and company building to NFTs and culture. We discussed the NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club. The discussion focuses on how the project has been able to execute so well and what makes the project so appealing to the broader public. This conversation leads us to discuss the future of the NFT landscape. We go on to discuss DraftKings push into NFTs with their new "NFT Marketplace." Matt breaks down the unique cultural fit that has fostered the adoption of NFTs within the Sports industry. We also discuss the barriers that Film/movie studios are facing could be slowing their adoption of NFTs. We finish our conversation by discussing advice and best practices for investing in NFTs. Please enjoy my conversation with Matt Kalish.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Adam Jackson, founder & CEO of Freelance Labs, builders of Braintrust. Braintrust is the first decentralized talent network that connects skilled, vetted knowledge workers with the world’s leading companies. The community that relies on Braintrust to find work are the same people who own and build it, ensuring the network always serves the needs of its users, instead of a centrally-controlled corporation. And because the community of knowledge workers and contributors earns ownership and control of Braintrust through its native BTRST token for its contributions to the network and its growth, new talent and jobs have participated in the network at record speeds. By creating a blockchain-based alternative, Braintrust aims to remedy the extractive model of traditional freelance platforms by aligning incentives of users and clients to benefit both parties. Instead of generating value for the network operator, this value is given back to talent and companies, who enjoy no fees (talent) or much lower fees (companies) than on traditional platforms. Adam is a serial technology entrepreneur and investor that has spent his career creating and deploying capital into software systems that make complex tasks simple and intuitive. He's started 4 VC-backed companies and an asset management company over the last 16 years. Since August 2017, he has served as Managing Partner & CTO of Cambrian Asset Management, a blockchain asset management company. He is also co-founder and CEO of Freelance Labs, Inc., the company building a new tokenized talent network called Braintrust which raised a $5m seed round in 2018. He is an angel investor in 45+ companies/projects, including LTSE, Seated, Bolt, Placer, Aktana, Skale Labs, Protocol Labs, JCTurbo, Apero Health, Rapportive, MyTime, Automatic, Womply, Superhuman, and Zenefits. In our conversation, we discuss the evolution of marketplaces on the web, Braintrust, Web2.0 vs Web3.0 Networks, supply-demand dynamics, communities/ownership, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the evolution of web marketplaces from Web1.0 to Web3.0. Adam does an excellent job at explaining the various innovations and drawbacks as marketplaces on the web evolved. We discuss the importance of Craigslist in the evolution of marketplaces. The conversation naturally flows to Braintrust and Web3's unique value proposition. Our conversation transitions to supply-demand dynamics and the tokenization of traditional assets. Adam does an excellent job at explaining the challenges of creating a valuation framework for Web3. We continue our conversation on crypto networks and tokenization by discussing the moral responsibility felt by large stakeholders of the network. The evolution of property rights and the broadening of the definition of the medium of exchange. Our conversation flows into a discussion about inflation and store-of-value. We finish our conversation by discussing Braintrust and how they are disrupting traditional talent networks. Please enjoy my conversation with Adam Jackson.--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.Ledn:Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC. For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin. Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN --This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend, Gabe Higgins, the Co-founder and Managing Director of BlockSpaces, a blockchain technology center for education, coworking, and development located in South Tampa. Founded in 2017, BlockSpaces, Inc., is a software company headquartered in Tampa, Florida that provides blockchain integration software for connecting applications and data. The company’s founders have deep roots in the global blockchain ecosystem since 2013 and remain actively involved in both legislative and community affairs that impact the technology through their work with the Florida Blockchain Business Association. The core team aligns innovative blockchain expertise with decades of enterprise software and infrastructure experience. With a wide range of technology partnerships and industry associations, BlockSpaces is known as a trusted source and market leader in blockchain integration. Gabe is a Certified Bitcoin Professional through the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium(C4), Founder of CryptoEdge Solutions, a cryptocurrency consulting group, organizer of the Tampa Bay Bitcoineers/Blockchain Enthusiasts, Tampa’s largest and longest-running meetup group for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. As a true believer in this technology, he is convinced it will disrupt a variety of industries and antiquated centralized systems to make a freer and more equitable world. Gabe is always open to connecting with startup founders, technologists, investors, & mentors who are passionate about disrupting industries by properly leveraging blockchain, which is why he also currently advises startups and VC-funded blockchain companies with strategic partnerships and technical direction. Gabe was also a co-author of the iconic book, "Thank God for Bitcoin: The Creation, Corruption and Redemption of Money", 2020, which provides a moral argument for sound money. Our conversation was a fireside chat at the Florid Bitcoin and Blockchain Summit where we discussed the Tampa Bitcoin/crypto community, BlockSpaces, and Enterprise adoption, Web3 and the Metaverse, Bitcoin, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing our personal journeys in Bitcoin/crypto. Our conversation naturally flows to a discussion about the growth and adoption within Tampa of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology. Gabe discusses how he and his co-founders at BlockSpaces helped lay the foundation for the burgeoning Tampa crypto community. We continue our discussion about BlockSpaces by discussing how Gabe and his team provide a suite of products to enable traditional enterprise businesses to integrate blockchain technology. We continue our conversation by discussing the emergence of Web3 and the importance of creating decentralized infrastructure. Our conversation pivots to Bitcoin where we begin discussing the philosophy underpinning Bitcoin. Gabe emphasizes how Bitcoin empowers people by preventing them from time theft. We discuss the ongoing money printing and inflation as drivers for Bitcoin's adoption. We finish our conversation by discussing the evolution of money and why Bitcoin matters. Please enjoy my conversation with Gabe Higgins---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.-This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs. TON Labs is a core developer of the Free TON blockchain protocol and TON OS (operating system). Free TON is a fast, secure, and scalable blockchain and network project, capable of handling millions of transactions per second if necessary, and both user-friendly and service provider-friendly. One might think about Free TON as a huge distributed supercomputer, or rather a huge "super server", intended to host and provide a variety of services. Free TON is based on a flexible multi-blockchain platform called TON Blockchain, which is capable of processing millions of transactions per second, with Turing-complete smart contracts, upgradable formal blockchain specifications, multi-cryptocurrency value transfer, support for micropayment channels and off-chain payment networks. Before Co-Founding TON Labs in 2018, Mitja spent over two decades in the IT industry, establishing various successful businesses such as DeltaThree Communications, the first international voice over IP provider; Internet Telecom, a telecoms and enterprise-grade IP solution provider; and BrainsMatch, a Machine Learning company. Following a productive stint in the telecoms and IT space, Mitja ventured into the world of blockchain and served as the Chief Architect for US-based ShelterZoom. Aside from his expertise in entrepreneurship, IT, and blockchain, he also participated in various research projects and has co-authored several patents in distributed computing. All of this to say, Mitja is incredibly knowledgeable and provides and wealth of knowledge. In our conversation, we cover Free TON and Ton Labs, unlocking the power of DeFi, scaling blockchains, decentralization, and much more. We begin our conversation with Mitja going over his personal history within crypto and how the founding of TON Labs and Free Ton. We discuss the importance of learning multiple programming languages and Mitja gives his advice to developers about which smart contracts language he would recommend learning and why. Our conversation transitions to the discussion about scaling and how traditional telecom companies approached their scaling problem over a decade ago. We continue our conversation about scaling by focusing on best practices and approaches to scale blockchains. We pivot our conversation by discussing the future of DeFi and the impact on Layer-1s as the projects built on top of them begin gaining mainstream adoption. The looming Ethereum schism and the implications on the broader community. Our conversation continues by discussing the TON Blockchains and the evolution of blockchain infrastructure. Mitja does an excellent job at explaining sharding. Our conversation flows into the importance of interoperability to create money legos. We finish our conversation by discussing the future of stablecoins. Please enjoy my conversation with Mitja Goroshevsky.--Ledn:Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC.For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin.Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDNPublic:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Dave Connor, a DAO member at API3. API3 is a platform for decentralized API services targeted at the web3 infrastructure. Data feeds are served and governed in a decentralized manner. In the standard internet web, API3’s stated goal is to allow decentralized versions of APIs to be built, managed, and monetized at scale. As blockchain technology plays an even bigger role in the economy — from decentralized finance to supply chain management — the team behind this project says it has never been more important for smart contracts to provide “timely, reliable real-world data.” Oracles are a form of middleware that sits in between APIs and smart contracts — increasing costs and centralization. API3 intends to get around this problem by enabling API providers to operate their very own nodes. Dave is an experienced operations lead, having experience as a VP Of Business Development with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and blockchain industry. Our conversation covers API3 and decentralized oracles, Smart Cities, real-world examples of the integration of blockchain and data. We begin our conversation by discussing API3 and decentralized oracles. Dave dives deep into oracles, the oracle problem, and the current limitations with on-chain data. We continue our conversation about oracles by discussing API3 and their approach to scaling a decentralized oracle. We finish our conversation about oracles by discussing the importance of providing superior data transparency all the way to the factual data source level to have a truly robust system. This naturally leads our conversation to how this technology is fundamental to building "Smart Cities." We begin our conversation about Smart Cities by discussing the lego blocks that trusted decentralized data can enable, we discuss for example how a developer could build a decentralized version of Uber with roughly 3 APIs. Our conversation continues by discussing how this technology can be extrapolated and applied at a larger scale like in cities. Dave also stresses the importance of building these systems with the necessary precautions to protect individual liberties and maintain individual data sovereignty to truly unlock the potential of Web3. We finish our conversation on Smart Cities by discussing how society will benefit from removing friction and creating a more interconnected society through the amalgamation of these services by this technology. We finish our discussion by discussing real-world examples of the integration of blockchain and data. We begin our conversation by discussing parametric insurance contracts. Dave does an excellent job at explaining the complexities of insurance contracts and why the insurance industry will be dramatically disrupted by blockchain and Web3. We also discuss how DAO's will disrupt Venture capital and HOAs. We continue our conversation by stressing the importance of providing superior data transparency all the way to the factual data source level to build systems that provide enough infrastructure to begin merging the traditional world with the crypto-world. Dave closes the conversation by discussing how DAOs are innovating governance and the differences between DAOs and traditional companies.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend, Vinny Lingham, prolific venture capitalist, serial entrepreneur and thought leader. Vinny is currently a GP at Multicoin Capital and Newton Partners. He was a seed investor in Solana and Filecoin Vinny was one of Co-Founder & CEO at Civic Technology. He is also a GP at Multicoin Capital He was the founder and CEO of Gyft. He is also the founder of Yola.com, a web development and hosting company that enables users without prior programming knowledge to develop websites. Vinny is the recipient of numerous awards, including Top Young ICT Entrepreneur in Africa (2006) and was also a finalist for Men’s Health Best Man (2009) and ICT Personality of the Year in South Africa (2008). He also previously founded Clicks2Customers, which also won the Top Technology Company award in South Africa in 2006. In our discussion we cover exceptionalism and investing fundamentals, why DAO's will eat the world, the cultural significance of NFTs and the Digital Renaissance, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the early days of Bitcoin and marvel at how much things have in such a short amount of time. We discuss why Crypto is such a unique industry and the evolution from a nascent industry to global asset class. We continue our discussion of technological revolution and investing by discussing Vinny's unique approach to investing and how that is informed by his understanding of the world. We discuss the importance of the individual and how one person can have an asymmetric impact on society. This insight has driven Vinny to change his investing strategy from betting on the idea to betting on the person. We discuss how this mindset guided Vinny's decision to invest in Solana and Filecoin at the Seed stage. We continue our conversation by discussing what makes a person exceptional and why Vinny calls these people "species changers." We go on to discuss examples of species changers from history like Einstein, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. We finish our discussion on game changers by discussing the importance of perseverance and grit. One of the main talking points throughout our conversation is the emergence of the metaverse in the consciousness of the general public. We discuss the metaverse, how it is all encompassing, why traditional tech companies are beginning to pivot toward the metaverse, and much more. Our conversation flows to the discussion on DAOs. We discuss the impact DAO's will have on disrupting traditional finance and Wall St, empower community building, and enhance the digital experience to heights unknown. We move from DAO's to NFTs where Vinny explains why we are still in the early days of NFTs and their importance and implications on broader society. He continues his discussion on NFTs by elaborating on his broader vision for the future of NFTs and how he believes the market dynamics. We continue our discussion by talking about how we are living through the beginning of a Digital Renaissance. We finish our discussion on NFTs by discussing the future use cases of NFTs and the integration with AR and VR. We finish our conversation by discussing the bull case for Solana, the developer battle between Solana and Ethereum, and the joy of building new technology. Please enjoy my conversation with my friend Vinny Lingham.--Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC.For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin.Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Nicholas Fett, CTO of Tellor. Tellor was launched in 2019 by a U.S.-based team with the aim to address the oracle problem on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Tellor is an Ethereum-based, decentralized, secure oracle for decentralized finance (DeFi) decentralized applications (DApps). Tellor is a decentralized oracle that provides price data on Ethereum. Tellor uses game theory and crypto-economic incentives to maintain the security of the system, similar to how layer ones have harnessed the power of these methods to reach consensus. Tellor is decentralized and currently provides a price feed every 10 minutes. The speed and potential costs are the areas of concern, but it is decentralized and expensive to censor or manipulate the data. The economic incentives are also set up properly to provide a proper liveness guarantee even in times of stress on the Ethereum network. Nicholas Fett is an economist, developer, and founder at Tellor, a decentralized oracle on the Ethereum network. Former positions include an economist at the US CFTC, the federal regulator for derivatives and cryptocurrencies, where he studied market structure of derivatives markets and implications of new technologies. He then went on to found Daxia, a derivatives protocol focusing on a truly decentralized architecture. He received an Ethereum foundation grant in 2018 to study security features of oracles and their potential uses in scaling and financial products. He then used this knowledge to build Tellor, a crypto economically secured, censorship-resistant focused oracle. In our conversation we cover Tellor, decentralized oracles and the importance of data, the rising cost of goods, how the CFTC works, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing how Nick got into crypto and his time at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We continue our conversation by discussing the CFTC and why Bitcoin is regulated by the CFTC. We also discuss the power struggles between government agencies for regulatory oversight and the impact that has on broader society. A very interesting topic of discussion we talked about centered around how the rising cost of goods will impact the derivatives markets and forecasting models. Our conversation flows into what are oracles and Tellor. Nick discusses the importance of data and oracles to DeFi and how Tellor is prioritizing decentralizing data collection. Nick does an excellent job at explaining how oracles work and the current vulnerabilities of oracles. Another topic of discussion that was very interesting was how oracles will facilitate more granular data sets to give a clearer picture to real-world problems like inflation. Our final discussion topic centered around the applications of bringing real-world data on-chain.---ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.---This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Dan Doney, the CEO of Securrency, Inc, a RegTech/FinTech company that democratizes access to capital markets. Securrency is a FinTech platform that monetizes excess capacity in assets – the engine of the sharing economy. Securrency was formed in 2015 by US national security and technology experts to enable the free trading of previously illiquid asset classes through compliance and unparalleled interoperability. Securrency has developed a unique Compliance Aware Token™ that embeds regulatory and transactional rules in a compliance layer to facilitate legally-compliant securities offerings in the United States and globally. Securrency’s protocol can be utilized on the Ethereum, Stellar, Ripple, EOS, and other distributed ledgers, as well as on legacy systems, allowing for seamless on-chain and off-chain movement of tokens. Securrency’s Know Your Wallet™ tools can detect money laundering and other nefarious activity, thereby minimizing the risk of bad actor participation in secondary trading. Dan has been an innovator in a wide variety of fields (process automation, enterprise architecture and software development, financial modeling, organization theory, robotics, and signal processing) drawing on his background in social systems, control theory, software engineering, and artificial intelligence. He is an avid software developer and architect staying current with cloud computing, microservices, containerization, and blockchain development. We begin our conversation by discussing Securrency and what drove Dan to co-found Securrency. The conversation flows into a discussion about the differences between privacy and anonymity. Dan did an excellent job at explaining the nuances between privacy and anonymity. He also discusses how he can create systems that are regulatory compliant but privacy-preserving and elaborates how Securrency is helping build the tools for such a system. We go on to discuss how Securrency is empowering companies to diversify their income by tokenizing their cash flow in a manner that is regulatory compliant. Dan goes on to discuss how zero-knowledge proofs work and why they are integral for building privacy-preserving systems that are regulatory compliant. We also discuss putting the justice system on-chain and why that would be beneficial to society. Another major talking point in our conversation was how DeFi is democratizing financial access across the world by giving everyone access to capital at Western interest rates. We finish our conversation by discussing the importance of semantically rich objects. Please enjoy my conversation with Dan Doney.--Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC.For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin.Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN--Public:Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/UNTOLDSTORIES to download the app and sign up.--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Mauricio di Bartolomeo, the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Ledn.io. Ledn provides financial products with a mission to help clients across the globe unlock the power of digital assets to build wealth for the long term. Operating in over 100 countries, Ledn offers interest-bearing savings accounts and Bitcoin-backed loans, enabling clients to access dollars or additional Bitcoin without needing to sell any of their existing holdings. Ledn has active clients in 105 countries, and has exceeded $1 billion in assets on its platform. Since the start of 2021, Ledn has tripled its team while growing its total lending book by over 800% and savings products by 280%. Ledn remains an industry leader when it comes to transparency and accountability standards, being the first-ever lending platform to undergo a formal proof-of-reserves attestation by Armanino LLP, a top public accounting and consulting firm and a recognized global leader in digital asset assurance solutions. Mauricio grew up in Venezuela where he and his family learned about Bitcoin. Now based in Canada, Mauricio holds HBA and MBA degrees from the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario in Canada. Mauricio is also the author of Why Proof of Reserves is Important to Bitcoin published in Bitcoin Magazine. Mauricio provides a wealth of knowledge about the current financial situation facing the west and how anyone can build Bitcoin wealth. In our discussion, we cover Ledn and Bitcoin-backed loans, Latin America and Bitcoin, hyperinflation, Proof-of-Reserves, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing Mauricio's personal bitcoin journey and what led him to start Ledn. Our conversation transitions into Ledn and how Ledn empowers Bitcoiners with a variety of financial services to easily manage their Bitcoin wealth. We go on to discuss the best way to orange-pill family members and what it means to live on the Bitcoin standard. A great conversation topic was Mauricio's detailing the living conditions of living through hyperinflation and why the West should be wary. We also discuss the current nihilism within the system and the feeling from large swaths of the population that are being left behind. We finish our conversation by discussing the dangers of CBDCs and the importance of Proof-of-Reserves. Please enjoy my conversation with Mauricio di Bartolomeo.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.---This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is my friend Han Kao, the CEO of Sanctor Capital, a thesis-driven investment manager that focuses on early-stage blockchain and distributed ledger projects. Their investment philosophy centers on identifying business opportunities with transformative potential, led by people who can demonstrate excellence in their field. They have a very founder-friendly ethos. They invest more than just capital into each project because for them this is about more than just money. Their hands-on approach frees innovators to focus on what they do best, building groundbreaking technologies Han Kao is the founder of Crypto Briefing and has been analyzing and investing in the blockchain space since 2013. He is a serial entrepreneur with international experience, multiple successful exits, and 20+ years in IT and media. Han grew up in New York City and graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in Economics. He is a serial entrepreneur and enjoys building amazing products and growing tech businesses from 0 to 1. He is an active blockchain and cryptocurrency investor. In his spare time, he enjoys rock climbing, golfing, and investing in reading up on crypto and blockchain. Han is a wealth of knowledge who gave incredible insights into the crypto market for both investors and founders. We discuss Sanctor Capital, going from 0 to 1 as a startup, EVR Nightclub, sensible regulation, and Bitcoin and inflation. We begin our conversation by discussing Sanctor Capital and their recent Trubo Demo Day. Han discusses the importance of founder-market fit and why missionary founders are more likely to succeed. Han does an excellent job at explaining from personal experience the importance of perseverance and simply surviving as a startup until you find product-market-fit. Han goes on to discuss how he got into tech and his entrepreneurship journey. We go on to discuss how Han got introduced to Bitcoin and how his work experience allowed him to understand the value proposition of Bitcoin before it was mainstream. We also discuss EVR Nightclub, the first bar in NYC to accept Bitcoin. We also discuss the importance of cross-chain compatibility and interoperability. Han stresses the importance of interoperability to unlock the true power of DeFi. We continue our conversation by discussing the importance of sensible regulation to help foster the growth crypto industry within America. We go on to discuss taking a startup from 0 to 1 and the early product iteration stage. We finish our conversation by discussing Bitcoin, inflation, and the rising financial burden on average Americans. Please enjoy my conversation with Han Kao.--Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it’s the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC.For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin.Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN--This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My guest today is Dominic Williams, the CEO and chief scientist of DFINITY, the company behind the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). DFINITY aims to replace the traditional IT stack and disintermediate large tech companies with its Internet Computer — a public blockchain network hosted by a collection of independent data centers around the world. The standard behind DFINITY’s Internet Computer — the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) — allows software to run on the internet in a distributed manner, as opposed to using servers controlled by large companies. This means that according to DFINITY, the Internet Computer Protocol will be the first scalable, cloud-like blockchain platform able to host internet services, websites, and financial systems built exclusively utilizing smart contracts (and with no external complimentary private systems). The Internet Computer is designed to store data, facilitate application development, and enable network interoperability. This makes it possible to develop applications that no one entity owns, controls, or censors, thus creating the opportunity to rebuild popular internet services like social media applications in an open, decentralized fashion. Dominic is a crypto theoretician and entrepreneur. His recent research includes Threshold Relay and PSC chains, Validation Towers and Trees, and USCIDs, and he proposes new ideas such as "The 3 E's of Sybil Resistance". Previously he ran a venture-backed MMO game using his own distributed systems that hosted millions of users. In our discussion we cover the company behind the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), DFINITY and ICP, optimizing systems for decentralization, smart contracts and new tools of truth, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing the current problem facing all proof-of-stake chains. We also discuss how DFINITY designed ICP without this single point of failure facing proof-of-stake blockchains. We go on to discuss the similarities and differences between the internet boom of the late 90s and crypto. We talk about how Bitcoin and blockchain are building out a new kind of internet. We also discuss how to build and think about decentralized systems. Dominic does an excellent job at explaining how smart contracts remove the friction within systems and how this will drive innovation within society. Dominic also explains Blockchain Singularity and why it is inevitable that smart contracts will disrupt how society functions. We go onto discuss the governance structure of ICP and how they have created an advanced form of liquid democratic governance. We finish our discussion by discussing why entrepreneurs should begin building on ICP and the importance of Web3.0.--ParaSwap:If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out https://untoldstories.link/paraswap. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage.---This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co Thank you for listening to The Charlie Shrem Show. For more free content and access to over 400 episodes, visit www.CharlieShrem.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.