The DeFi Decoded Podcast

Tune in to the 85th DeFi Decoded episode to hear Alex, Andrew, and Ariel discuss all things Hivemapper and how they are revolutionizing map creation via ownership. How did non-crypto native Ariel find himself at the epicentre of a decentralized mapping platform? What noteworthy aspects from Helium and Waze does Hivemapper leverage? Which global regions are the most active, and how do their contributor counts affect overall reward capture? Tune in!

Tune in to the 84th DeFi Decoded episode to hear Alex and Andrew discuss all things DeFi and learn more about the crypto landscape in Africa. What is going on in South Africa? Why might Africa play a leading role in Web3? How can Africa potentially leap frog its legacy financial infrastructure to tap into Web3?

Join Andrew Young as he decodes the world of DeFi with special guest Jake Hannah, Co-Founder of SX Bet. Listen in as they discuss the NFT regulatory environment, exciting perpetual future projects, layer-2 blockchains, EVM-compatible chains, Polygon's financial health, and the overall value capture of many of the top projects.

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Hamzah Khan, Head of DeFi at Polygon Technologies. Listen in as they discuss Polygon, the future of DeFi, app chain trends, and more! Polygon is a layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution that enables developers to build scalable, user-friendly, and secure decentralized applications (dApps) by "bringing the world to Ethereum." As the Head of Defi, Hamzah remains committed to developing Polygon's cutting-edge technology to grow further the 37,000+ Web3 applications utilizing Polygon. Hamzah is also an angel investor who personally invests in various DeFi and Web3 infrastructure companies. Tune in to the 82nd DeFi Decoded episode to hear Alex, Andrew, and Hamzah discuss all things DeFi and learn more about Polygon. How have Hamzah's two years at Polygon been? What is it that has allowed Polygon to be so successful with business development execution? What does the future of Polygon and DeFi look like?

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Rebecca Liao, Co-Founder and CEO at Saga. Listen in as they discuss Saga, Rebecca's incredible past leading into Web3, Web3 Gaming and Entertainment ecosystems, and more! Rebecca Liao is the CEO of Saga, a Web3 protocol for launching dedicated blockchains. Saga allows developers to create their own blockchains with just a single click. It provides dedicated runtime environments for high performance and low, predictable gas fees. Users can freely transfer assets between ecosystems using Saga's dedicated chains, which are IBC+ enabled. Rebecca was previously a Co-Founder and COO at Skuchain, a top blockchain company in trade and supply chain finance, reaching $5 billion in annual volume under her leadership. Rebecca is an Advisor to Sommelier Protocol, a Fellow at Stanford Law, Science, and Technology, and has a background in law, writing, and advising presidential campaigns with the Biden and Clinton administrations. Tune in to the 81st DeFi Decoded episode to hear Alex, Andrew, and Rebecca discuss all things Web3 Gaming and learn more about Saga. What led Rebecca to dive into the world of Web3, and what is her experience with presidential campaigning? How does Saga work for users? Which ecosystems should we be most excited about?

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi and Web3 with special guest Sasha Ivanov, Waves Ecosystem Founder. Today's topic: algorithmic stablecoins. Will they ever work? Waves is a global open-source platform for decentralized applications launched in 2016, based on proof-of-stake consensus and a community-driven technology stack. Ivanov has announced plans to launch a new stablecoin after their current USDN algorithmic stablecoin in the Waves ecosystem depegged, angering many in the Waves ecosystem. Tune in to the 80th DeFi Decoded episode to hear Alex, Andrew, and Sasha discuss all things stablecoins and learn more about Waves.

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with crypto researcher Sam Andrew. Sam cut his teeth as an equity and fixed income analyst at a prominent New York-based hedge fund before turning his attention to Web3. His training on Wall Street has helped him bring a rigour and discipline to analyzing this new asset class. But it also forced him to re-train his brain to rethink valuation methodology and come up with some new ways to understand this technology. We discuss: does "value" exist in Web3? What are the top metrics we can use to measure it? Which assets does Sam think are undervalued, and which are overvalued based on his reasoning? Tune in to find out!

On today's episode, Andrew and Alex talk about crypto's stellar start to 2023. Since the beginning of the year, Bitcoin and Ethereum are up more than 20% while some smaller names like Solana have fared even better. Is this a dead cat bounce? Short covering? A macro-driven rally lifting all risk-on boats? Or is this the start of a new bull market? Next they talk about how Ethereum is becoming 'ultra-sound' meaning net new-issuance of tokens is flat or declining. How does Ethereum compare to other big profitable enterprises like Apple who use excess profit to buy back stock much in the same way the Ethereum network uses excess network fees to retire ETH (a process known as 'burning'). As always, a little knowledge of traditional finance is helpful to understanding Web3!

On this episode, Alex and Andrew briefly summarize the situation with Solana. It turns out reports of the death of the once-ascendant Layer 1 blockchain were premature. Then, Alex shares his four Web3 predictions for 2023. First, enterprise adoption of Web3 will accelerate rather than slow down. Second, DeFi will grow beyond the insular crypto community because of better reputation scoring and the integration of real assets. Third, Web3 gaming will drive the next wave of digital asset adoption. New Web3 games will make earning and owning a nice to have rather than the point of the game. Fourth, the U.S. will pass a major law around crypto. Alex is cautiously optimistic the blockchain caucus in the U.S. congress and the Web3 lobby can steward this towards a reasonable outcome, but it comes with plenty of risks. Tune in to hear more!

Happy New Year! On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex discuss the situation with Solana. The prominent Layer 1 blockchain was heavily backed by disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankamn Fried. Solana was once dubbed an Ethereum killer and at its zenith had a market capitalization of $70 billion. Today it is fighting for its survival. Andrew explains why the current collapse, while painful, could set up Solana for a new era of more sustainable growth, so long as it can survive in the short term. Then, Andrew gives us his top three predictions for 2023. What are they? Tune in to find out.

On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andew sit down with Tom Dunleavy, Senior Research Analyst at Messari. 2022 was crypto's annus horribilis so they start with post-mortem for a challenging year. There were some huge setbacks, notably the collapse of FTX and other centralized exchanges and lending platforms, but also several major breakthroughs, such as the Ethereum Merge. Next, they discuss the outlook for 2023 and talk about core themes for investors, users, and builders in 2023, including the rise of app-chains, Web3 gaming, enterprise adoption, distributed physical infrastructure (DE-PIN), the future of layer 2's and competing layer 1's, and preview Messari's Crypto Theses report, which will be released before year-end.

Hollywood screenwriter Jesse Nickson-Lopez has brought some of modern TV's most indelible characters to life. As a founding member of the writing team on Stranger Things, she developed the storyline for the character Eleven and has written for The Outsiders, Narcos: Mexico, and other hit shows. Her next project, Lucia, will be directed by Damian Chazelle, the Academy Award-winning director of La La Land and Whiplash. At age 35, she has a résumé most writers aspire to. Despite her success, she considers screenwriting her day job. By night, she is the co-ounder of Web3 startup MV3. At the intersection of storytelling and technology, MV3 promises to disrupt TV, film, and the Hollywood business model itself. In this episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew chat with Jesse and MV3 co-founder Torey Kohara about how Web3 can reimagine storytelling and the business of entertainment.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew talk about OpenAI's smash hit Chat GTP and how Andrew is using it to unlock new capabilities, debug software and accelerate the growth of SX Network. On the topic of SX, Andrew gives us a sneak peek into the roadmap for the SX Network Merge, and shares his vision for how prediction markets can help solve big problems, manage risk and support new governance models. But before all that, Alex tells us about his recent trip to Turkey where he was the keynote speaker at the Turkish Capital Markets Congress. Plagued by inflation many in Turkey have chosen crypto as an off-ramp. Alex was very impressed by the working knowledge of Web3 in many of the country's leading financial firms. The future of Web3 in Turkey looks bright!

WBTC and WETH have both been in the news recently. Though they have similar sounding names, they are different in both composition and utility. WBTC is an Ethereum-based token (known as ERC-20) issues by BitGo, backed by Bitcoin. It allows users to use Bitcoin on the Ethereum network. Frequent listeners will recall that Mike Belshe, CEO of BitGo, joined us on a previous episode where he told us about BitGo's custody business. WETH is also an ERC-20 token, but in this case, it is backed by ETH rather than Bitcoin. Also, unlike WBTC, the collateral for wETH is held in a smart contract, not with a company. wETH allows users to use ETH more easily in DeFi and other Web3 applications. On this episode Andrew and Alex discuss the origins, use-cases and risks of these products and what they tell us about where Web3 is today.

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew discuss some of the steps centralized exchanges (CEXes) can take to restore user trust. These solutions split into the "fiat variety" such as better governance, stronger regulation and regular audits and "on-chain variety" such as proof-of-reserves and proof-of-solvency. They also discuss the ongoing fallout from FTX which has engulfed crypto lender Genesis and had a knock-on effect with the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and discuss how asset management giants Apollo and Hamilton are embracing tokenized securities.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with Mike Belshe, Founder and CEO of BitGo, one of the world's leading firms in institutional staking, custody and trading firms, holding over $20 billion for some of the world's largest cryptoasset investors and many companies. Mike gives his perspective on the collapse of FTX, adding a few sensible recommendations for what industry leaders can do to prevent the "next FTX." He tells us why he's super bullish on DeFi but also why we will still need trusted third parties like BitGo in the future. Andrew and Alex mostly just listen as Mike gives a masterclass on how to run a digital asset business safely, sustainably and with an eye for future growth.

FTX, a top global exchange that counts supermodel Giselle Bundchen as a spokesperson, and was once valued at over $30 billion USD, is on the brink of collapse following a historic liquidity and solvency crisis that left the company scrambling to raise capital or sell itself to rivals. Founder SBF, who we once compared to J. Pierpont Morgan for his role as lender of last resort during the Summer 2022 lending crisis, has himself succumbed to the hubris and poor risk management that sent the industry into turmoil this year. Today, we stand on the brink of a long, bleak crypto winter. Will crypto emerge from FTX's collapse with a renewed commitment to trustless, decentralized tools? Or will we end up with an effective monopoly with one too-big-to-fail business in Binance dominating the market? Andrew and Alex give their best shot at predicting where we go from here.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with Jack Zampolin, Co-founder of Sommelier, and former Product Manager at Tendermint. He's no Doctor, but the Strangelove Ventures founder has breathed life into several Cosmos's most well-known applications such as Akash Network, where he was also product manager. This "Jack of all trades" now has his sights set on cross-chain implementation of IBC, starting with Polkadot. Jack tells us about his investment thesis for Cosmos, why a portfolio approach is best, and why he thinks most of the killer apps on Cosmos and in Web3 generally are yet to be built. He may try to build them all!

Cosmos is highly regarded in the Web3 world for its novel and robust design, which allows developers to launch application specific chains while benefiting from the shared architecture of the Cosmos "Hub." For example, dYdX, the popular DeFi derivatives platform, recently migrated from Ethereum to Cosmos, citing a desire to be masters of their own fate. However, ATOM, the token most people associate with Cosmos, has never properly gotten its due, languishing outside the Top 20 cryptoassets behind Litecoin and Shibu Inu. The Team at the Cosmos Hub want to change that by making ATOM a key rallying point for the ecosystem, which they hope will lead to greater value capture at the token level and improve the overall state of Cosmos. On this episode, Alex and Andrew speak to Sam Hart, Strategy lead of the Cosmos Hub and the lead author of the ATOM 2.0 whitepaper on this vision for an ATOM-centric future.

On today's episode, Alex and Andrew speak with Aryan Sheikhalian, Head of Research at CMT Digital, one of the world's leading digital asset venture capital firms. Aryan walks through CMT Digital's investment philosophy, its core focus areas within crypto, and he makes a few predictions for 2023. Aryan is interested first and foremost in infrastructure - ways to make Web3 work better. For example, he talks about the need for better sources of off-chain data (so-called "Oracles") to input into smart contracts and how to invest in it as a theme. You won't want to miss it!

On this week's episode, Andrew and Alex start by discussing recent exploit of the Binance chain's most popular bridge, which led to the theft of nearly $600 million of BNB, the chain's native token, before the network was paused and much of the theft reversed. Binance chain is more centralized than Ethereum and others, and the swift pause, though effective, was controversial. Some argued that any blockchain that can be paused and reversed is no blockchain at all – just another centralized system. Others argued that the pause was sensible considering the potential loss. After dipping on the news, BNB again traded in line with the market, suggesting investors and holders didn't penalize them for the decision to pause (and may have even rewarded them for it). The Binance Chain situation exposed a philosophical rift in the industry between "decentralization maxis" who believe decentralization should be put ahead of all other considerations, and "adoption maxis" who believe trade-offs must be made to scale Web3. Who is right? Alex wrote up the discussion for Ninepoint's weekly newsletter, Digital Asset Digest. Subscribe here: www.digital.ninepoint.com

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew talk about how the Twitter take-over battle has illuminated how the world's richest people think about blockchains and Web3. In some revealing text exchanges made public because of the civil suit, Elon Musk is seen considering the value of turning Twitter into a protocol, with the urging of billionaires like Jack Dorsey and Sam-Bankman-Fried before concluding, in essence, the technology is not ready for prime time. But is there value in reimagining traditional businesses like social media as web3 protocols with token-holders rather than stockholders? Would that lead to better network health or more of the same? Tune in to find out.

On today's episode, Alex and Andrew dig into the current macro situation and debate the 'Milkshake Theory" that the US dollar sucks all liquidity from other currencies (Cue Daniel Day Lewis: "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"). Right now, global currencies are collapsing as the US dollar steamrolls its way across the globe. Financial conditions are as tight now as in March 2020. In U.S. dollar terms Bitcoin is down but for global traders pricing in their local currency, the situation looks better. Still storm clouds are raging and the water level is rising. Will the levy break? Also, they dig into how enterprise adoption of public blockchains is likely to accelerate post-Ethereum merge, and how that will impact the investment case for Ethereum and others.

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew speak to Anthony Di Iorio, co-founder of Ethereum and Founder of Jaxx and Decentral. Anthony dedicates much of his time to helping Ethereum and other blockchains become more decentralized, resilient, and widely used. He's also a passionate advocate for Canada and his hometown of Toronto. It's a little-known fact but Ethereum is a made-in-Canada story, with key founders including Vitalik Buterin, from Toronto. Anthony talks with Andrew and Alex about how Canada missed an opportunity to be the centre for Web3 and what it can do to be a leader again.

On September 15th, 2022, Ethereum became a proof-of-stake network. On today's episode Andrew and Alex break down what happened, how it changes the investment case for Ethereum and what it means for the future of Web3. The significance is hard to overstate: by some estimates this will reduce Ethereum's carbon footprint by 99%. It will clear the deck for future upgrades to make Ethereum more scalable and useful. It will radically alter the supply and demand dynamics and may make Ethereum a high-yielding deflationary asset, attracting new kinds of financial investors. It will provide clarity to enterprises who want to build on public Web3 infrastructure. It could even improve the image of blockchain technology, easing pressure from policymakers. They also discuss the impact on cryptoassets as a whole, how it could impact Bitcoin and what it means for alt-L1s.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with Zaki Manian, a veteran crypto entrepreneur and co-founder of Sommelier Finance. DeFi is moving at such a rapid clip, it is difficult for most investors to stay on top of the latest trends and even more challenging to make educated investment decisions. Sommelier Finance aims to solve this problem by providing access to proven strategies supported by on-chain data in a fully decentralized way, essentially acting as a 'guide' to the bewildering world, similar to a wine sommelier. Sommelier is an Ethereum application built with Cosmos technology. But really, this is a stepping stone to a future state. Zaki believes by next year, Cosmos will be so advanced that most of the DeFi mind-share will be in that ecosystem, rather than Ethereum. In the spirit (ahem) of viniculture, if Ethereum is France (home to wine making for many years) than Cosmos is California – still undeveloped but with the potential for better terroir!

"Dogecoin is sponsoring the Jamaican bobsled team." This is the first time Sunny Aggarwal first heard about crypto, back when he was a high school student in California. The friend might as well have been speaking Klingon, because the sentence made no sense to Sunny, so he went home and googled Dogecoin which led him down the Bitcoin rabbit-hole. He was hooked, or shall we say "doge-pilled." Fast forward to today and Sunny is one of Web3's most creative entrepreneurs, having co-founded Osmosis, the most popular decentralized exchange in the Interchain ecosystem. He's also a fan favourite here at DeFi Decoded. When we last had Sunny on the show, Osmosis had just closed a major financing and its TVL was nearing $1 billion. Bitcoin was nearing an all-time high and crypto markets were close to topping $3 trillion. While market conditions have changed, the case for DeFi has never been stronger. On this episode, Alex and Sunny talk about the core value proposition for DeFi, which is "privacy for the individual, transparency for the system," why DeFi fared far better in the crisis than CeFi, what it will take to onboard the masses to Osmosis, why the recent crypto slump hasn't impacted funding for good projects, how Osmosis became a refuge for Terra Luna developers following that platform's collapse.

How do blockchain networks like Ethereum, supporting thousands of applications, billions in capital and millions of users, actually work? What is the essential infrastructure supporting cryptopunks, DeFi smart contracts, GameFi guilds, stablecoins, and other Web3 innovations? To the average user, the inner workings of blockchains are mysterious. In many ways, this reflects the technology's growing maturity and ubiquity. After all, most people are blissfully unaware of how their laptop, car and microwave functions. But sometimes, the technology gets thrust to the forefront of the conversation. The upcoming Ethereum Merge and the Tornado Cash situation have focused the spotlight on node operators, largely unseen but critical infrastructure providers. On today's episode, Alex and Andrew sit down with Sharon Byrne-Cotter of Infura, to look under Ethereum's hood at the engine parts that keep the Web3 car chugging along. Tune in!

Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin recently and now sits at 50% of Bitcoin's market capitalization. This has some observers suggesting the "flippening," where Ethereum surpasses Bitcoin in market value, is in grasp. Ethereum has gotten close to Bitcoin's market capitalization before, namely in Summer 2017 at the beginning of the ICO craze, hitting 80% of Bitcoin's value, only to crater to 10% at the bottom of the bear market. Is this time different? On this episode of DeFI Decoded, Andrew and Alex get into it. Plus, they discuss the fallout in crypto from the Tornado Cash crackdown, including a 'dusting attack' that sent celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal crypto from a Tornado Cash wallet, making them unwittingly in violation of OFAC...and what it all could mean for the future of decentralization.

This week, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on Tornado Cash, a popular 'mixer' that allows individuals to do crypto transactions anonymously. Typically, sanctions are placed on individuals and institutions. In this case, the government was sanctioning an open-source software project and a neutral tool used by many. This sets a potentially dangerous precedent, which Alex and Andrew discuss on this week's episode. Plus the guys talk about the better than expected CPI print and the impact on crypto before finally giving an update on the status of the Merge.

On today's episode, Alex and Andrew discuss the latest DeFi exploit - a hack of the Nomad "bridge." But first, what's a bridge? What problem does it solve? Do these exploits prove bridges are unfeasible or are they simply implementation challenges to overcome. DeFi boosters talk about dApps and digital assets as being composable, like interlocking LEGO pieces. But we're not dealing with one uniform form factor - DeFi isn't a box of Lego but a mixed bag of Lego, Duplo, Mechanix, and others. How do we figure out a way to get these pieces to click together? Plus we dig into the Ethereum Merge and do a quick macro update.

Solana (SOL) typified the explosive growth of crypto and blockchain in 2021. A new blockchain protocol with a novel and ingenious design, Solana was able to attract thousands of developers and millions of users to an application ecosystem that started with DeFi but diversified into NFTs, Gamefi and beyond. At its peak, Solana was worth $90 billion USD. And while crypto prices have cooled, the thesis for Web3 remains intact and the future of Web3 on Solana looks bright. On this week's episode, Anatoly explains how Solana's birth in the bear market of 2018-2019 helps explain its success today. He talks about how a relentless focus on developers has set the protocol up for success. He also tells us how despite the dip in prices, developer activity has been higher recently than during the bull market. Finally we talk about how Solana's smart phone might be the key to unlocking a crypto-native app store and bringing hundreds of millions of people into Web3. This episode ended up running 45 minutes and we could have gone much longer. Strongly encourage you to check it out!

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Jake Hannah of SX Network steps in to help SX co-founder Andrew co-host the podcast while Alex is out fishing in Northern Canada. Jake and Andrew cover everything, starting with what the betting markets are saying about the Fed interest rate decision. They also cover the current betting market's view on the probability that Ethereum's highly anticipated "Merge" will actually happen in September. Jake shares what he thinks the best sector of the crypto asset economy will be, how the crypto market will perform over the next 12 months, and how Ethereum's "merge" will affect its tokenomics. Jake and Andrew cover a number of other issues such as whether there's any spillover left from 3AC's collapse, and whether USDC will usurp Tether as the largest stablecoin. Check it out, as you won't want to miss two crypto experts give their takes on the future of crypto.

"It's faster to drive money from Nigeria to Ghana than it is to send a wire transfer because with a wire, the money must first go to New York, and then London before coming back to Africa" says Dickson Nsofor, identifying one of many absurd examples of how the global financial system fails African countries, businesses and individuals. This is the problem and opportunity Dickson identified four years ago when he launched Korapay, a Pan-African payment infrastructure company using APIs for payment collections, disbursements, and conversions for businesses anywhere in Africa. Underneath it all are cryptoasset payment rails like Bitcoin and USDC. For him, blockchain is like electricity, unseen but essential to everything. On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Dickson discuss how blockchain is connecting Africa to the world.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew try to put the crypto correction in the context of an increasingly complex and muddled global macro picture. Bitcoin failed its test as an inflation hedge, but will the spectre of global recession push it lower, or can it catch a bid and resume its status as uncorrelated asset in a secular bull market? Plus, they discuss (hopefully for the last time) the enduring fallout from 3 Arrows Capital blowing up. Finally, they talk about the new book The Networked State and its rooting in the cypherpunk classic The Sovereign Individual. Will crypto sweep away old industrial age models for governance and economic coordination and usher in a new era of organizations and even nations? Tune in to find out!

Centralized, custodial, opaque, and laden with risk. This describes some of the crypto lending outfits currently teetering on the brink of insolvency. By contrast, most DeFi protocols, which automatically connect willing market participants peer to peer using smart contracts, have continued to operate smoothly through the crisis, though they have seen their assets (known as total value locked or TVL) and user activity drop quite precipitously. As Andrew and Alex discuss on this week's podcast, DeFi will survive this crisis, but centralized crypto banks and other shadow lenders may not.

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew discuss the efforts of Sam Bankman Fried, or SBF, who has swooped in to stabilize the industry, ask whether its ok that all these firms fail and ponder the question of what the industry will look like when this rout is over.

In honor of DeFi Decoded joining Tik Tok, we bring you this special Gen-Z titled episode (clearly written by Alex, an old millennial, aka Boomer, hence the cringe). Check us out on Tik Tok at @defidecoded. On this week's episode Alex and Andrew talk about the recent weakness in crypto markets and try to untangle how much of it is caused by the general weakness in financial markets and how much of it is a self-inflicted wound unique to crypto. Specifically, they discuss Celsius, the crypto lending platform, and their decision to gate withdrawals until they've shored up their capital and how that might be affecting investor confidence in the ecosystem. They also talk some bear market predictions, why the best projects get built when nobody is looking and where to find 'value plays' in a down market.

On this week's DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex sit down with Tim Copeland, News Editor at The Block, one of the industry's leading news outlets. In this wide-ranging chat, Tim talks about how his experience reading and synthesizing dense philosophy books helps him do the same for crypto white papers and other esoteric ideas. He also shares his thoughts on the upcoming ETH merge, the growing pre-eminence of staking over proof of work mining, how in a bear market, projects will thrive (or die) based on their treasury management, and why he wants to help people find signal in the crypto noise. Tune in!

On this week's episode, Alex sits down with Eric Turner, VP of Market Intelligence at Messari. Eric describes Messari's role as the leading provider of market intelligence for crypto and why in an ocean of data and content, it's the context, insight and analysis that matters. "Separating the signal from the noise is what we do," Eric says. Alex and Eric then talk about the future of crypto, why Eric thinks DeFi is still underrated as the financial layer for the Web3 economy, and why he believes the first $1 trillion protocol will be a DeFi project.

On today's DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra. Bill's a seasoned crypto entrepreneur and industry leader who has been building businesses in this industry for the better part of a decade. With Abra, Bill has created one of the most popular consumer-facing crypto applications in the world. Bill shares his perspective on the state of global macro, explains how the market may have done the Fed's job for it, and describes his vision for an economically sustainable algorithmic stablecoin. Earlier in the show, Alex and Andrew talk about how UST's collapse has unwound a lot of DeFi TVL and how builders can create more economically sustainable models for growth. You won't want to miss it!

On Today's episode, Alex and Andrew sit down with Rodney Yesep, partner at Hack VC. Hack VC is a venture capital firm that invests in the cryptocurrency, fintech, and marketplaces sectors. Hack VC is a crypto native investment firm that specializes in identifying early-stage companies to invest in. Rodney talks about the strategy of Hack VC and how they identify opportunities and early-stage companies to invest in. Andrew and Rodney chat about the recent crash in crypto prices, with a particular focus on the Terra Luna/UST collapse last week. Rodney also talks about some of the opportunities he's seeing in the space and emerging areas that crypto investors should look out for. This is a great listen for crypto investors looking to better understand how one of the most sophisticated crypto investors in the world identifies opportunities and invests.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dive into the recent collapse of UST, which failed to hold its value to the US Dollar (the "de-pegging") and discuss the knock-on effects in the rest of the crypto market. Andrew talks about how stablecoins are like the Wildcat Banking days of yore. Alex draws an analogy to the Panic of 1907, where J.Pierpont Morgan (The man, not the company) swooped in to stabilise the financial system, and today, where influential crypto moguls are trying to architect their own bail out of UST. Then the two muse on what the long-term ramifications will be for the market, stablecoins, crypto policy and more.

On today's episode Alex and Andrew dig into prediction markets and focus in the recent success of SX Network, creator of the world's largest blockchain prediction market, and the most popular decentralized prediction market application, SX.bet. SX Bet has processed $175 million in trades across ~900,000 bets since its launch. With over $100 million of these trades taking place in the last six months, SX.Bet is the largest blockchain-based prediction market in the world. SX just closed a $9.5 Million funding round to fuel the next stage of its growth as a fully-fledged blockchain for prediction market applications.

On Today's episode, Alex and Andrew sit down with Maxim Galash, CEO of Coinchange. Coinchange is a fintech company providing simple and frictionless access to DeFi for institutional and retail investors. Coinchange currently has over 20 institutional clients using their services for treasury management, and has ambitious plans to roll out to other customers and markets. Max talks about the origins of Coinchange and how he identified an opportunity to simplify and democratize the complex but lucrative DeFi industry. He explains why it's important for DeFi's long term success that it be an equal opportunity market, not one where Wall Street and industry insiders exploit all the best opportunities. Max tells us about the process of becoming a regulated DeFi provider, why he thinks "RegDeFi" is the place to be, and how he plans to rapidly scale his model. This is a great listen for traditional finance and DeFi folks alike who want to better understand the convergence of retail fintech, traditional finance and DeFi, told through the story of one start-up.

On this episode, Andrew and Alex discuss the stunning growth of UST, a so-called algorithmic stablecoin. Stablecoins are cryptoassets pegged to the US dollar. Historically, stablecoins have been centralized, that is issued by a corporation and backed by deposits in a bank. However, the fastest area of growth today is in decentralized stablecoins or "algorithmic stablecoins," which are collateralized by cryptoassets held in smart contracts. UST leads this pack. The stakes of this race are significant: UST's ascent has caused the layer 1 protocol on which it runs- Terra- to 100x in value in a year. Other layer 1s are now playing g catch-up with NEAR and Tron announcing their own copycat stablecoins. Other protocols like Avanche are content to let their coins be used as collateral for UST, rather than create their own. Cosmos ATOMs are being used as collateral for UST, but that's more complicated. Andrew and Alex dig into all of this and more. Buckle up!

On this week's episode Alex and Andrew talk about the historically high inflation roiling markets, and its implications on the crypto asset class. Plus, they discuss the recent update on the Ronin Bridge hack where over $600 million was stolen. Later, Andrew sits down with the CEO of FRNT Financial, Stephane Ouellette, to discuss the global macro environment, institutional investor adoption of crypto, and the competing perspectives on DeFi vs. CeFi. We also discuss FRNT's upcoming IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX).

On this week's episode Alex and Andrew sit down with trader, investor, and host of the popular "The Wolf of All Streets" podcast Scott Melker to discuss ETH, Global Macros, Bonds and more.

On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex speak to Adrian Brink, founder of Anoma Labs, which is a truly novel blockchain design. Anoma is a set of protocols for private human coordination with as much privacy as possible. Essentially, Anoma allows any digital asset to function as means of exchange or payment, which all things being equal can create greater liquidity, less slippage, and more privacy in transactions.