The DeFi Decoded Podcast

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Sidney Powell, Co-Founder and CEO of Maple Finance. Listen in as they discuss key takeaways from the ETHDenver 2024 conference, the different types of stablecoins, potential lending opportunities that exist with restaking, Maple's next growth areas, the size of the on-chain institutional market, the benefits and challenges with lending to protocols, lending with locked tokens of early investors or token treasuries, real-world asset tokenization versus crypto-native lending yields, attractive horizontal and vertical future opportunities, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss this past week's Bitcoin-led market rally, their current takes on the crypto market and what's next, gaining digital asset exposure through MicroStrategy vs. Bitcoin ETFs, the potential for SEC approval on Ethereum ETFs, the emergence of Bitcoin layer 2s and some exciting projects, Uniswap Foundation's proposal to distribute protocol revenue to token holders, Coinbase's app store ranking and significance, Andrew's Bitcoin story, Bitcoin reflexivity, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest James Seyffart, ETF Research Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Listen in as they discuss James' methodology behind the Bitcoin ETF approval odds he set last year, reading between the lines of GBTC and ETHE's discounts to NAV, the likelihood of Ethereum ETF approvals, how the SEC differs from other nations' regulators, the historic flows into Bitcoin ETFs, next cryptoasset to get ETF beyond BTC and ETH, Canadian Bitcoin ETF outflows following U.S. approvals, GBTC's high 1.50% fee, whether Ethereum staking and leveraged Bitcoin ETFs will come, key dates and deadlines for Ethereum ETF approvals, Bloomberg Intelligence and James' story, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Rebecca Liao, Co-Founder and CEO at Saga. Listen in as they discuss an update of the past year for Saga, their upcoming $SAGA community genesis airdrop to five different ecosystems, thoughts on crypto loyalty 'points' with projects like Blur, the thesis behind modular blockchains and its relevance to Saga, their recent $6.5 million raise plans for the year ahead, if the space is finally ready for consumer crypto applications, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss Tether's 2023 Attestation Report, GoDaddy's partnership with Ethereum Name Service to bridge domain names with crypto wallets, FTX's desire to sell 8% Anthropic stake as part of its liquidation process to help make customers "whole," Farcaster's frenzy of activity following its frames launch last, the prospect of Twitter as a Web3 protocol, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss an update on Bitcoin ETF flows after their first two official trading weeks, Bitcoin's fast-approaching halving in less than 75 days, Bitwise's decision to publicly disclose their Bitcoin wallet address, Bitcoin ETF issuers' fee competition and pledge differentiators, our Bitcoin beard commitment, Noble's $100 million milestone, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Jelena Djuric, Founder and CEO of Noble. Listen in as they discuss an update following Noble's launch of bringing USDC to Cosmos, key metrics they use to measure their success, dYdX's impact on the ecosystem, exciting upcoming projects within Cosmos, some fun facts encompassing demand for the U.S. dollar, Noble's new partnership with Hashnote, their decision to transition to Interchain Security, what's next for Noble, Jelena's Bad Kid NFT, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss a roundup of the current crypto market post-ETF approval, the potential for a revenge rally from original alternative layer-1 chains, possible attention shift from underlying fundamentals toward growth, the chance of Ethereum ETFs taking longer than expected, how the stablecoin market could amass to $200 billion by year-end, why enterprise adoption of public blockchains could accelerate in 2024, whether a 'D Everything' market will occur this year, and more.

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of Web3 and DeFi with special guest Sunny Aggarwal, Co-Founder of Osmosis. Listen in as they discuss the Bitcoin ETF approvals and their potential implications, the state of Web3 and Osmosis' role within it, the impact of having native USDC on Cosmos, exciting narratives circulating within the ecosystem, Osmosis' DEX market share, the prospect of a successful crypto native stablecoin, and more.

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Charles d'Haussy, CEO of the dYdX Foundation. Listen in as they discuss Charles' journey into crypto, the history of dYdX, the thought process behind and decision to migrate, the reasoning for Cosmos SDK selection, their rare situation and chance at becoming a profitable protocol, experience moving exchange and users from one network to another, dYdX builders' product focus moving forward, future growth opportunities for dYdX, Cosmos USD liquidity, some fantastic blockchain analogies, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of Web3 and gaming with special guest Justin Swart, Principal, Investment Team of BITKRAFT Ventures. Listen in as they discuss BITKRAFT's discovery of Web3 gaming's potential, the significance of property rights in gameplay and gaming economics, the gaming market's biggest opportunity moving forward, the 'third place' and its relevance to an increasingly immersive shared internet reality for humanity, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Leo Mindyuk, Co-Founder and CEO of ML Tech. Listen in as they discuss an overview of ML Tech, Leo's trading experience and journey into the crypto space, differentiating features from first-generation firms within the decentralized quant trading movement, potential opportunity to become a software provider, popular crypto trading strategies and key differences to those in traditional finance (tradFi), how ML Tech thinks about and manages counterparty risk, which types of investors they've had the most traction with, current challenges with deploying institutional capital in DeFi protocols, growth drivers in 2024, interchangeability of strategies, the crypto market's efficiency moving forward, asset tokenization future market size, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss Bitcoin's 'silent' rally beyond $44,000 and its driving forces, crypto market trajectory predictions based on past cycle experiences, interesting metrics regarding retail investor sentiment and Bitcoin supply, the intersection of AI and blockchain as seen in Alex's AI stack, the growing popularity of Web3 social, how decentralized exchanges' on-chain trading volumes could surpass CEXs, sustainable growth models, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss the crypto market rally following Binance's $4B settlement last week, key signals of growing confidence in Bitcoin ETF approvals, the controversy encompassing Ethereum layer-2 (L2) Blast, the potential upcoming Cosmos fork, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss OpenAI's history and structure, Sam Altman's firing, the importance of decentralized artificial intelligence, Binance's $4 billion settlement and CZ resignation, NVIDIA's impact on the crypto space, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss the approaching 'three horsemen' crypto catalysts, the potential magnitude of inflows in the event of SEC-approved BTC ETFs, investors' cryptoasset rotation from bitcoin into ethereum and solana, 3iQ's new Ether Staking ETF, Coinbase's positioning for the next cycle, builders' blockchain architecture preferences, Noble's upcoming launch of Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol for USDC, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guests Jules Urbach, CEO of OTOY and Founder of the Render Network, and Trevor Harries-Jones, COO of OTOY and on the Board of Directors for the Render Network Foundation. Listen in as they discuss the Render Network's origin story, customer preferences on using OTOY versus the decentralized cloud, OTOY's toolkit compatibility on the Render Network, how it ensures security and privacy for projects, its proof-of-reputation mechanism, having a hash of the rendered visual NFT, performance gap in chips, the Render Network's thesis encompassing provenance, reasoning for Solana migration and vision, its trajectory in the next five years, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Mehdi Farooq, Senior Tokenomics Analyst of Animoca Brands. Listen in as they discuss Mehdi's day-to-day role, past projects he's worked on, the intersection of in-game assets with governance models, ApeCoin's evolution toward ApeChain, exciting ecosystems for developers to build on, token standards' impact on interoperability, NFTs' potential for a comeback, leveraging NFTs as collateral for DeFi, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF). Listen in as they discuss the Human Rights Foundation's purpose, the initial bridging of the HRF and Bitcoin in 2017, the number of charitable organizations leveraging it, reasoning for the lopsided mainstream media narrative surrounding Bitcoin, similarities and differences between Bitcoin and stablecoins, Bitcoin's future mass adoption, Alex's 2021 Time Magazine op-ed, resources to learn more about Alex and the HRF, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss Cointelegraph's false U.S. Bitcoin ETF approval report, Grayscale Investments' cryptoasset trusts' narrowing spreads, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's interview on the genuine demand for Bitcoin, Marc Andreessen's recent "The Techno-Optimist," and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss an update on the FTX trial after week one in court, the influx of VC funding toward AI-based businesses, a macroeconomic crypto market analysis and potential upcoming catalysts, current enterprise interest and sentiment surrounding public blockchains, which chains these businesses are opting to build upon and why, impressive best seller accolades for Alex's new Web3 book, a news headline roundup, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3. Listen in as they discuss Michael Lewis' new book on FTX's collapse, his controversial comments regarding Sam Bankman-Fried, Grayscale's official application to convert its Ethereum Trust (ETHE) into an ETF, Ethereum's post-Merge performance, outcomes of Bitcoin ETF approvals in the U.S., the hidden significance of Ether futures on its classification, Microsoft's potential roadmap to include crypto wallet in its next-gen Xbox, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi on center stage at the Canada Fintech Forum 2023 in Montréal. Listen in as they discuss Andrew's journey into Web3, Uniswap's revolution, DAO's incentivization model, use cases for decentralization, SX Network's role within the ecosystem, importance of smart contracts, balancing technological innovation with inherent risks, Andrew's optimism for future of crypto, tokenization of U.S. dollar in stablecoins, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Dean Skurka, President and CEO of WonderFi. Listen in as they discuss Dean's crypto journey, WonderFi's institutional and retail customer breakdown, its regulatory moat, ease of gaining approval on futures versus perps, CeFi exchanges integrating DeFi components, the role of centralized exchanges (CEXs) with evolving decentralized exchanges (DEXs), Canada's crypto regulatory approach, balancing staking support for various chains with risk mitigation, potential for a CAD-denominated stablecoin, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of DeFi with special guest Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Ledn. Listen in as they discuss Mauricio's incredible background and journey into crypto, moving to Canada and Ledn's development, its core business offerings, its supported cryptoassets for lending, role within the ecosystem, its Bitcoin price exposure risk, competitive environment of yield-paying products, customer base regional breakdown, CeFi vs DeFi future, expanding loan structures to incorporate reputation, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss Grayscale Investments' victory in its Bitcoin ETF conversion case, first-mover advantage versus reputation among ETF filers, their underlying subscription and redemption processes, crypto market arbitrage trading strategies, friend.tech's design and early growth, Digital Currency Group's deal with Genesis creditors, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of DeFi with special guest Mark Greenberg, Managing Director of Canada at Kraken. Listen in as they discuss Mark's incredible journey, experience at Scotiabank, biggest surprises upon starting work at Kraken, balancing business growth pace with regulations, the pre-registration undertaking process within Canada, pre-registered limitations, restricted versus broker-dealer comparisons, Kraken's business size metrics, its strategy to address intensified market competition, WonderFi's full broker-dealer license, countries' crypto regulatory approaches, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss Coinbase receiving approval to list crypto futures in the United States, their official launch in the Canadian market, the current cryptoexchange ecosystem within Canada, BitGo's $100M raise, Zynga's first-ever Web3 game, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss Andrew's recent trip to Paris and his on-the-ground key takeaways from EthCC, Tether's Q2 2023 attestation report, Curve Finance's exploit and its potentially seismic implications for the DeFi ecosystem and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Dr. Cédric Jeannot, Co-Founder and CEO of Be Mobile Africa. Listen in as they discuss Cédric's journey into the blockchain space, Be Mobile Africa's mission and role, addressing off-ramp implementation challenges, back-end liquidity structure, determining which blockchain to build on, neobank design and functionalities, imperative regulatory considerations, the firm's long-term vision, market size and growth metrics, Cédric's experiences with central banks and the existing educational gap, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Michael Hainsworth as they engage in an in-depth conversation that explores what using Web3 technology will look like, early enterprise adopters, the impact of decentralization on government and governance, whether lawmakers will get regulation right, examples of successful first-mover companies, gaining exposure to the Web3 asset class, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Charlie Morris, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of CMCC Global. Listen in as they discuss the current crypto market cycle phase and next catalyst, the importance of intent-centric designs for Web3 transactions, improving wallets with account abstraction, channels to gain exposure to the user experience adoption thesis, dYdX's testnet launch on Cosmos, defining MEV, an analogy to the Sovereign Individual, embracing a mobile-first approach, Charlie's Solana cellphone, thesis area developer activity, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Michael Hainsworth as they engage in a high-level, beginner-friendly, and educational episode that breaks down Web3 in simple terms, discusses its applications and disruptive potential on financial markets, introduces the Ninepoint Web3 Innovators Fund (TSX: TKN; TKN.U), and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss Alex's big announcement on his new book, "Web3: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier," its structure and focal points, concepts from Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World," asset types that hold the greatest disruptive power in a Web3 world, an FTX customer fund recovery update, evaluating innovation within the DeFi space, insuring decentralized protocols, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guests Jack Zampolin of Strangelove and Jelena Djuric of Noble. Listen in as they discuss Noble's emerging role in the Cosmos ecosystem onboarding USDC, how they pitched themselves to Circle and won the partner role for Cosmos, the chain's underlying business model, tokenizing other real-world assets (RWAs) beyond stablecoins, exciting DeFi trends to monitor this upcoming year, the sustainability of different chains' reward incentives, earning yield by holding stablecoins, and more!

We are celebrating our 100th Episode! Thanks to our listeners and fans for your loyalty, feedback and support. It's been quite a ride, but just like the industry we cover, the future for DeFi Decoded is bright and we're only getting started! Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss an insightful macro roundup and its implications for crypto, Bitcoin's newfound divergence from traditional asset classes, current venture capital cheque sizes into Web3 projects, institutional investor sentiment, how the SEC lawsuits last week are affecting altcoins, a16z's international expansion to the United Kingdom, all-things crypto regulation in the United States, what market phase we may be at, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest FarmerJoe, an OG Bitcoin Ordinal Whale. Listen in as they discuss the definition of a Bitcoin Ordinal, their growth and evolution, their impact on the Bitcoin network, how they take on those that critique them, the sustainability of their demand, whether the network has the capabilities to support them at greater scale, whether Ordinals can bring value and serve as a price catalyst for Bitcoin, the SEC's recent lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss Beijing's recently released "Internet 3.0 Innovation and Development White Paper," the current standpoint of China's crypto ecosystem, Circle launching Euro Coin (EUROC) on the Avalanche blockchain, a macroeconomic roundup, predicting the next big crypto market catalyst, assessing Web3 project economics and cost structures, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Elena Nadolinski, Founder and CEO of Iron Fish. Listen in as they discuss Elena's incredible journey from working at Microsoft and Airbnb to Web3, private yet compliant-friendly protocol designs, exciting types of potential new use cases and applications, Iron Fish's asset issuance functionality and tokenomics, $IRON utility, the network's node running sustainability, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss a roundup of current macroeconomic themes, the looming debt ceiling situation in the United States, potential Bitcoin selling pressure resulting from the U.S. government's Silk Road seizure, newfound popularity of Bitcoin ordinals, and all things OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's crypto project, WorldCoin!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of DeFi with special guest Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation. Listen in as they discuss Sheila's Web3 origin story, experience spearheading blockchain at the World Economic Forum, day-to-day work at the Crypto Council for Innovation and its source of funding, root causes of the banking crisis, the big geopolitical picture in the race to establish clear legislation governing crypto, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi. Listen in as they discuss Alex's insights from the Consensus 2023 conference, the state of venture capital funding, a macroeconomic market analysis, factors that may impact crypto moving forward, Bitcoin's halving less than a year away, Coinbase's international perps exchange, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of DeFi with special guest Chjango Unchained, Host of Interchain.FM. Listen in as they discuss Chjango's incredible journey into Web3, experience working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, the importance of an ecosystem development role, what's happening in Web3, exciting projects in Cosmos, Interchain.FM's audience, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Aleksander Larsen, COO and Co-Founder of Sky Mavis. Listen in as they discuss Aleksander's intersection of gaming and Web3, experience with and learning lessons from Axie Infinity, exciting blockchain-based gaming applications, the response from large traditional gaming studios, the future outlook for Web3 gaming adoption, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Gregory Landua, CEO and Co-Founder of the Regen Network. Listen in as they discuss Gregory's discovery of Web3 as a potential solution for ecological and social regeneration, overcoming critiques surrounding blockchain energy consumption, addressing counterparty risk with tokenized assets, monitoring to ensure standards of on-chain credits, liquidity formations, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of DeFi with special guest pplpleasr, a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on Web3, NFTs, crypto, DAOs, and philanthropy. Listen in as they discuss pplpleasr's fascinating Web3 origin, Shibuya's story, the evolving IP model landscape, their recent $6.9 million funding round, next steps for the studio and platform, generative AI and art opportunities, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott as he decodes the world of DeFi with special guest Sishir Varghese, CEO and Founder at Spectral. Listen in as they discuss Sishir's journey into crypto, Spectral Finance's founding, how the Spectral protocol works, its different customer use cases, reactions from traditional credit bureaus, the future of Spectral, and more! Sishir has been an active supporter and investor in the cryptocurrency space since 2014, having previously founded and managed venture firm Alphachain Capital, working closely with entrepreneurs and builders. Founded in 2020 by Sishir in New York, Spectral Finance is a protocol designed to evaluate on-chain creditworthiness, allowing users to monitor their credit scores and risk insights. Users can review high-risk loan activity through the platform, view current positions, and receive low health warnings across different DeFi protocols. The MACRO Score is the world's first-ever Web3 credit score that is a numerical representation of an individual's on-chain creditworthiness; Spectral has generated over 50,000 MACRO scores for its users. Spectral's partners gain valuable access to credit risk insights for business decisions and offerings by leveraging on-chain data while users gain exposure to new financial opportunities. Spectral raised $23 million in August 2022, led by Circle Ventures and nine other investors. Tune in to the 89th DeFi Decoded episode to hear Alex and Sishir discuss all things Spectral Finance. What lured Sishir into crypto in 2014, and what ultimately led to his founding of Spectral? How does Spectral's MACRO credit score work, and which traditional themes were leveraged in its design? What is the competition like for Web3 credit scores, and how have legacy credit bureaus reacted to Spectral's success? TIMESTAMPS [0:00] Introduction [3:32] Crypto Origin Story [4:49] Life Before Spectral [7:40] Spectral Founding [11:01] How Spectral Works [12:21] User Personas and Uses [15:22] Tracking Users With Multiple Addresses [17:30] Growth in Different Global Regions [21:40] Reactions from Legacy Businesses [24:15] MACRO Score Design Rationale [25:40] Web3 Competition Outlook For Credit Score [29:00] Future of Spectral [32:09] Conclusion

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Beryl Li, Co-Founder at Yield Guild Games (YGG). Listen in as they discuss Beryl's journey into Web3, YGG's inception, the community's rebranding, Web3 gaming genres, game development trends, the open metaverse, the future of YGG, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Roneil Rumburg, CEO and Co-Founder at Audius. Listen in as they discuss Roneil's ride to founding Audius, how music consumption has evolved from traditional forms, $AUDIO's tokenomics, critical considerations for Audius' three-sided marketplace, what's in store for Audius's future, and more!

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Tim Beiko, a core developer and key figure in the Ethereum Foundation. Listen in as they discuss Tim's Web3 origin story, events leading up to and after The Merge, the significance of the Shanghai Fork, and more!