CoinDesk Podcast Network

Libre Not Libra – Thinking Critically About Facebook’s Blockchain Project

In “Libre Not Libra: Facebook’s Blockchain Project,” Andreas answers the burning question… Has he tried haggis? Just kidding… He shares his thoughts on the recently released Libra whitepaper, as part of a permissioned blockchain project spearheaded by Facebook. Subscribe to the new CoinDesk Podcast Network for fresh, insightful episodes nearly every day of the week This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com Years of jokes about “FaceCoin” and “Zuc...

The Founders of Synthetix and Chainlink on DeFi, Derivatives and 25 New Decentralized Price Feeds

On this special interview episode, @nlw talks with Sergey Nazarov and Kain Warwick, the founders of Chainlink and Synthetix respectively about:  The evolution and goals of Synthetix, a novel type of derivatives exchange where users can interact with any asset with a price feed.  The challenge Synthetix faced around spinning up their own oracles around price feeds The history of their collaboration and how Synthetix came to work with Chainlink Chainlink approach to building decen...

BREAKDOWN: The Unsolved Mystery of How to Fund Public Protocols

The best way to fund open source projects remains a question, and one that - in the context of crypto protocols - has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches.  Gitcoin grants used a quadratic funding program to match grants to technology builders and media creators in Ethereum  After months and months of concerted community debate and conversation, Zcash will implement a new Dev Fund of 20% of the blo...

BREAKDOWN: Binance US CEO Catherine Coley Explains Why Crypto Exchanges Are Rushing Into Staking

The competition around staking is heating up, and the latest entrant is Binance.US, who will begin to offer staking on two assets with plans to roll out more in the future.  On this episode of The Breakdown, Catherine talks with NLW about: How the company prioritizes both new features and which audiences to build for Why staking is important both for allowing people to do more with their crypto assets as well as help build and secure the networks those assets run on  How staking...

BREAKDOWN: The Future of Crypto FUD

We’re over $9,000! That means a lot of good things, of course. But any price increase brings with it increased scrutiny and, yes, increased FUD. The question for this time around is whether the FUD is the same old same old or something new.  In this episode, @nlw looks at three emergent (and continued) areas of FUD, including: 1) accusations that the bitcoin community is rooting for calamity as the safe haven narrative takes hold; 2) an updated “crypto is for criminals” narrative w...

DISCUSSION: What Are Lightning Wallets Doing to Help Onboard New Users?

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show (Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Jonathan Mohan and Stephanie Murphy) gathered to discuss Lightning Network technology and two innovative approaches at the wallet level which simplify the new-user experience at a tangible, but seemingly minimal cost.  On today's podcast we zero in on the challenge of "Channel Management", an until-recently-mandatory part of connectin...

BREAKDOWN: Davos, CBDCs, and the Rise of Bitcoin Art

That’s a wrap! The World Economic Forum is over, and the key ideas coming out of Davos for our industry are: 1) a continued ‘blockchain, not crypto’ narrative; 2) a believe in the inevitability of cashless futures (without much concern about the negative implications); and 3) the rise of CBDCs.  On the CBDC front, the WEF put out a toolkit for governments that are considering their own currency; Japan announced a project to explore a digital currency as a counterweight to the influ...

BREAKDOWN: Will Mass Adoption Be More PayPal or Pornhub?

There is an ongoing debate in the crypto community about where mainstream adoption. One point of view is that it will be the slow steady acceptance of digital assets. On that front, Bakkt president Adam White said in Davos yesterday that the company is on track to launch their app this year.  Another perspective is that the main use case of crypto is to enable otherwise censored transactions. Lending credence to this perspective is the case of Pornhub, which saw payouts to its more...

BREAKDOWN: Why High-Profile Defections Aren’t Libra’s Biggest Challenge

News broke yesterday that the Libra Association had seen it’s eighth high-profile defection, this time from the telecom giant Vodafone. In today’s episode of The Breakdown, @nlw argues that Association members are far less of a factor in Libra’s success than key regulatory questions around domiciling, the value peg and the US’s fear of a Chinese digital currency. Also in this episode, Square Crypto announces its plans for a 'Lightning Development Kit' while Square also announced a ...

BREAKDOWN: Kevin Owocki on Gitcoin, Controversy and the Future of Open-Source Funding

Ever since announcing their fourth round of grants, Gitcoin has been a major subject of conversation across the Twittersphere. In addition to all the excited buzz from both technical projects and media creators vying for grants matched based on E. Glen Weyl and Vitalik Buterin’s quadratic funding model, there has been controversy. Some of that controversy has been from outside the Ethereum community, pointing to Consensys and Ethereum Foundation support as an example of centralizati...

Decentralization Philosophy Part 1 – From Buddha to the Conquistadors

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss decentralization in blockchain projects, the historical context of decentralized organizations, the robustness it conveys but also the difficulties it engenders. On today's podcast we apply concepts and stories from "The Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations", a formational book on pre-blockchain decentralization writte...

BREAKDOWN: Tyrone Ross on Why Financial Advisors Are Taking Notice Of DeFi

One man. Three piping hot takes. In this special interview episode of The Breakdown, financial advisor and crypto advocate Tyrone Ross shares his thoughts on: Why Financial Advisors are the key to bringing in the next wave of crypto investors Why DeFi is an even bigger deal than you think - and not just to the hackers and entrepreneurs building on it Why Square’s CashApp - not Binance, not Coinbase, not any one else - is the most important company in Crypto See Privacy Policy a...

BREAKDOWN: Why 'Crypto Dad' Is Building the Digital Dollar Foundation

As Libra continues to spur discussions among regulators around the world, and China’s digital yuan comes ever closer to fruition, the U.S. Federal Reserve seems disinclined to look seriously at a digital dollar. Ex-CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo - aka “Crypto Dad” - isn’t waiting around. He has teamed with Accenture to launch the nonprofit Digital Dollar Foundation. As crypto continues to evolve, it does so in sometimes divergent directions. Gemini announced a new insurance company des...

BREAKDOWN: Why Crypto's 'Rogue State' Narrative is a Risk to the Industry

Crypto tokens weren’t the only thing that saw a major pump yesterday. The total value locked in DeFi ascended to new heights. While part of this can be explained simply by the rise in ETH price, it also reflected traders turning to DeFi platforms as a way to get more exposure to the market action without selling their core assets.  For all the exciting price action, not everything is pointing in a positive direction. These market moves don’t seem to reflect new market participants,...

BREAKDOWN: Mati Greenspan on the Technical and Macro Roots of Bitcoin’s Price Surge | January 14th, 2020

Bitcoin is up more than 8% in the last 24 hours. BSV, meanwhile, is up nearly a whopping 100%. The question is, of course, why? Is it some larger macro context? A pump-and-dump? Or just the crypto markets being as crazy as they are. The Breakdown invited guest Mati Greenspan, former e-Toro analyst and now founder of Quantum Economics to give his take.  We also look at two stories around the growing crypto derivative markets: the launch of the CME’s options on bitcoin futures and CF...

Narrative Watch: The Hunt for Crypto's Killer App | January 13th 2020

Starting today, accredited investors will be able to part of $13.5m in tokenized bonds connected to the contract of Brooklyn Nets Point Guard Spencer Dinwiddie. The first-of-its-kind offering took months of negotiation with the NBA but marks a seminal moment for both crypto and the larger idea of Income Share Agreements.  In this podcast, we discuss how big a deal Dinwiddie’s offering is and whether Income Share Agreements could be a breakout use case for crypto. We also discuss ot...

'The Internet Was Illegal' and Other Early Stories With Zooko Wilcox

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show enlisted CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen and early cypherpunk Zooko Wilcox for a conversation on the history, challenges and long term development path of early, formative technologies. which we often hear modern blockchain movements compared against.  From the pre-internet days, through the free/open source movement, linux's successes and challenges on the desktop, the peer-to-...

BREAKDOWN: The Global Game of Coins Heats Up | January 10th, 2020

China’s digital currency project continues to move ahead aggressively, with a new paper from the People’s Bank of China suggesting that a core design is complete. Whatever stage of development the currency actually is, it’s clear that China wants the world to see it as ahead of the curve in the digital currency race.  In other parts of the world, crypto companies face a never-ending game of regulatory arbitrage. Derebit has moved from the Netherlands to Panama, citing a new burden ...

NARRATIVE WATCH: Will DAOs Break Out In 2020? | January 9th, 2020

The aftershock of the 2016 The DAO hack meant that DAOs weren’t nearly as hyped as ICOs and later some other aspects of the web3 movement. In 2019, however, DAOs came roaring back and start 2020 with the wind at their sails.  In this episode, we look at the 2019 DAO tale of the tape - what people thought would happen and what actually did happen, including the launch of Moloch, MetaCartel, Ethereum’s MarketingDAO and more than 1000 DAOs on Aragon. We also hear from Aragon founder L...

BREAKDOWN: Travis Kling on Bitcoin as a Safe Haven Asset | January 8th, 2019

The conversation about whether bitcoin is a safe haven asset continues in the wake of Iranian missile strikes, which saw the price of BTC both surge and retrace in parallel with crude and gold. To help explain what’s going on, we feature comments from Ikigai Asset Management’s Travis Kling.  Also in today’s episode, we look at newly published priorities from the SEC around crypto including investor suitability, trading practices, and compliance program effectiveness. We also discus...

BREAKDOWN: Hamstringing an Industry With Compliance Costs | January 7th, 2020

In their annual transparency report, Kraken reported seeing a 50% increase in regulatory inquiries as compared to 2018, which CEO Jesse Powell later revealed cost the exchange more than $1m. Between this and stories like the $2m it cost Blockstack to raise $23m in an SEC compliant token sale (8.7% of the raise), it begs the question: will compliance costs fundamentally limit innovation by demanding big war chests to play? Will the most successful companies be those who (like Block O...

BREAKDOWN: Taking the TON out of Telegram | January 6th 2020

Last week, the US government took out a key Iranian military leader. As the world - and the markets - reacts to the news, some are asking what happens with bitcoin. With global instability on the rise, will more people turn to bitcoin as a safe haven asset? Will speculators drive the price up on that narrative even if it doesn’t bear out in reality? If Iranians use crypto, will that draw the attention and ire of regulators?  In a different area of the industry, Telegram has release...

YouTube, Tron and the Dream of Decentralization | January 3rd, 2019

The past few weeks have seen multiple instances of large, centralized tech giants censoring crypto related content and activity. Noticed in the context of the Coinbase Wallet, Apple is pushing back against apps that have anything to do with Dapps. YouTube caused even more of a stir when it took down hundreds of crypto-related videos from prominent influencers without any warning. It later reversed the action, claiming an error, but it was enough to get many to ask: are decentralized...

BREAKDOWN: Taylor Monahan on Crypto’s Divergent Possibilities in 2020

Taylor Monahan is the founder and CEO of MyCrypto. In this interview as part of The Breakdown’s end of year coverage, she argues that the level of discourse in crypto matured in 2019, with more focus on things that actually matter. That’s important, because in 2020, she predicts a major fork-in-the-road moment, where the industry as a whole could either stay on the path set out in its cypherpunk roots, or be significantly co-opted and corrupted by the entrance of corporate and gover...

BREAKDOWN: Tom Shaughnessy & Jordan Clifford on Layer 1 Wars, Token Economics and a Shift to Applications

Tom Shaughnessy is a co-founder at Delphi Digital as well as the host of the Chain Reaction podcast. Jordan Clifford is managing director of Scalar Capital. In this end of year interview for The Breakdown, Tom argues that the big story of 2019 was actually the fact that it was all about quiet building. When it comes to 2020, however, watch out for fireworks. Tom predicts we’ll see a major increase in the layer 1 smart contract platform wars, as well as an increased in the perceived ...

BREAKDOWN: Katherine Wu on DeFi and the Inevitability of the Digital Yuan

Katherine Wu was a founding team member at Messari before moving into a VC role at Notation Capital, but is perhaps best known in crypto for her epic annotations of key regulatory enforcement actions. In this end of year interview with The Breakdown, Katherine argues that decentralized finance is the narrative of 2019, but also that when it comes to 2020, the emergence of a Chinese digital yuan is likely to have a huge impact on the crypto space.  See Privacy Policy at https://art1...

BREAKDOWN: Camila Russo and David Hoffman on the 2020 DeFi Outlook

Sometimes things are clear, and to both Camila Russo (write of The Defiant newsletter) and David Hoffman (co-host of the Crypto POV podcast), it couldn’t be clearer that the essential narrative of 2019 was the rise of DeFi as a true market force. In individual interviews as part of The Breakdown’s end of year coverage, each also makes a 2020 DeFi prediction. For David, it’s all about increased attention on the space and the power of composability, while for Camila, it’s a bet that w...

BREAKDOWN: Marty Bent on the Macro Fires on the Horizon

Marty Bent is the author of one of the most popular daily Bitcoin newsletters and co-host of Tales From The Crypt. In this end of year interview with The Breakdown, he talks about the macro context - from trade wars to pressure on the fed to continue and expand the QE experiment to global instability - and how it is painting in stark colors the need for tools like bitcoin.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do...

BREAKDOWN: Rob ‘Crypto Bobby’ Paone and Preethi Kasireddy on Fundraising, Halvings, and the Long Steady Slog of Crypto

Rob Paone, aka Crypto Bobby, got his start as a popular crypto YouTuber and has gone on to help build a number of crypto companies before launching his own technical recruitment firm. Preethi Kasireddy is the founder of the TruStory debate platform. In two individual interviews as part of The Breakdown’s end of year extra, both argue that a big part of the 2019 story was the slow, steady slog of building, and that, in some ways, 2020 may be poised for more of the same. See Privacy...

BREAKDOWN: Meltem Demirors on Government Digital Currencies and Why ‘The Halvening’ Gets Weird

One of CoinDesk’s ten most influential people of 2019, Melem Demirors is a crypto renaissance woman, known best for investing, operating as CSO of CoinShares, and for explaining ‘shitcoins’ to Congress. In this end of year Breakdown, Meltem argues explains why the entrance of governments to the digital asset game is the most significant story of 2019, as well as suggesting that the presence of an entirely new financial infrastructure around bitcoin means the halvening is likely to...

BREAKDOWN: Peter McCormack On A Defiant New Era For Bitcoin

 Peter McCormack is one of the most prominent podcasters in the space. In 2019, he added a new podcast called “Defiance” and focused on the intersection of bitcoin, human rights, and political activism to complement his “What Bitcoin Did” podcast. In this special end of year episode of The Breakdown, Peter discusses why the past year represents an inflection point for citizen action and sovereign protest around the world, and why 2020 is likely to see a continued bloodletting among ...

BREAKDOWN: Art Haus Ethereum Meets Bitcoin Financialization

One of the most important (yet somehow quiet) narratives of 2019 has been the financialization of bitcoin and the emergence of a robust market for derivative products. That was reinforced today as Binance announced a significant investment in derivatives exchange FTX. How will key events coming up in 2020 like the bitcoin halving be impacted by the presence of derivatives?  At the same time, not all crypto projects are trying to change money. Some, like the Saint Fame DAO, a fashio...

BREAKDOWN: Should the Government Have a Say in Where Can Invest?

Accredited investor laws block most of the US out of technology and other types of early stage risk investing, but as the ICO boom showed, not being allowed to do something doesn’t mean that people don’t want to do it. The SEC announced prospective changes to those laws that could expand accredited status. In the world of DeFi, a number of different projects including Synthetix (with an assist from Chainlink) and Kyber are looking to more fully decentralized heading into 2020. And...

'Stacking Sats' vs. 'ETH is Money' - The Memes That Shaped 2019

From “digital gold” to “stacking sats” to “ETH is money,” 2019 was a year of narrative battlegrounds and meme warfare. And when every narrative is competing for scarce resources and attention, things are sure to get contentious.  This special episode breaks down Ryan Selkis’ recent list of top ten crypto narratives and adds a few more worthy of note. Does “The Revolution Need Rules?” Is “Dissident Tech” the newest important area of focus.  Topics Covered The most important memes ...

BREAKDOWN: 'Stacking Sats' vs. 'ETH is Money' - The Memes That Shaped 2019

From “digital gold” to “stacking sats” to “ETH is money,” 2019 was a year of narrative battlegrounds and meme warfare. And when every narrative is competing for scarce resources and attention, things are sure to get contentious.  This special episode breaks down Ryan Selkis’ recent list of top ten crypto narratives and adds a few more worthy of note. Does “The Revolution Need Rules?” Is “Dissident Tech” the newest important area of focus.  Topics Covered The most important memes ...

BREAKDOWN: The Productization of Bitcoin Maximalism

Welcome to The Breakdown: A daily analysis show distributed by CoinDesk, featuring @NLW On this episode... More crypto businesses are transitioning to or choosing to focus exclusively on bitcoin only from the beginning, in some ways representing a productization of bitcoin maximalism. In China, however, the government is cracking down fiercly on resurgent crypto businesses that have taking President Xi’s positive comments about blockchain as an excuse to operate more openly. I...

Announcing: The Road to Consensus! (link in shownotes)

Subscribe to Road to Consensus here: https://art19.com/shows/road-to-consensus-by-coindesk We've launched a new podcast featuring interviews with leaders of the blockchain industry. If you like this first episode, please subscribe at the link above! And if you want more info about Consensus in New York on May 13, visit Consensus2019.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

800k Bitcoin Miners Recently Shut Down

F2pool, believes that anywhere from 600k to 800k bitcoin miners have shut down since mid-November as the bitcoin network’s hashrate - and the cryptocurrency’s price - have declined. Ripple has released the latest version of its most popular product, xCurrent. Porn startup SpankChain raised $6 million in an initial coin offering in 2017. Ohio has officially become the first US state to accept bitcoin for taxes. Late Confirmation is a CoinDesk production. For more information, visit ww...

Giga Watt Declares Bankruptcy

The U.S-based crypto mining firm Giga Watt filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this past Monday, but it still owes creditors some $7 million. Insurance coverage in the crypto space totals about $6 billion, a mere drop in the bucket for a market cap of $140 billion. Six days after the bitcoin cash hard fork, it appears that the chains will be permanently split. Silvergate Bank has 483 crypto startups as its clients, according to a filing it made as part of an initial public offering. Late Co...

Bakkt delays its launch until next year

The ICE’s bitcoin futures trading platform Bakkt is delaying its product launch. The U.K.’s FCA is considering a ban on some cryptocurrency-based derivatives, a senior executive has said. The Alabama Securities Commission is taking a hard stance on would-be ICO frauds. The U.S. Department of Justice is increasingly focusing a months-long investigation into crypto market manipulation on the tether stablecoin. Late Confirmation is a CoinDesk production. For more information, visit www.C...

Bitcoin drops below $5K

Bitcoin’s price fell below $5,000 for the first time since October 12, 2017, dropping more than $500 to hit $4,981 earlier today. Despite the falling crypto prices, developers and entrepreneurs are still moving into the crypto space. Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is calling on Interpol’s member nations to cooperate in preventing cryptocurrencies from being used for illicit purposes. The U.S. Federal Election Commission may allow people to mine cryptocurrencies to support p...

Bitcoin, the Evil Spawn

A European Central Bank executive board member said this week that blockchain is promising – but that bitcoin is “the evil spawn of the financial crisis.” Two cryptocurrency startups have agreed to register their initial coin offering tokens as securities after settling charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Interest from both employers and job seekers in blockchain and cryptocurrency-related jobs has declined in the past year, new data indicates. After yesterday’s spl...

Bitcoin Cash War Begins

Bitcoin cash's contentious hard fork happened today around 1 pm eastern time. Notable consumer bitcoin mining pioneer Baliji Srinivasan is backing a startup seeking to take another stab at popularizing in-home crypto mining. Police in Tokyo have arrested eight men alleged to have run a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme that collected 7.8 billion yen (almost $69 million) from thousands of victims across the country. Late Confirmation is a CoinDesk production. For more information, visit www...

SPECIAL: MarketWatch & CoinDesk Survey Results

Bitcoin fell to its lowest price in over 12 months on Wednesday amid a broader cryptocurrency market sell-off. A new BitLicense has been issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services Messenger app maker Kik is quitting Ethereum for good as it continues to develop its own cryptocurrency. One of the bitcoin community’s most beloved veterans just got a promotion. SPECIAL on today's episode: CoinDesk's Nolan Baurle and MarketWatch's Andrew Neary discuss the results of a stud...

Oil is the New Data

It's increasingly looking like Bitcoin Cash mining pools will run a version of the software called Bitcoin SV. An ongoing legal battle between XRP investors and payments startup Ripple is entering its next phase. Japanese IT giant GMO has reported a loss of about $5.6 million for its cryptocurrency mining business in the third quarter of 2018. Oil industry giants Shell and BP are among a group of firms planning to launch a blockchain platform to automate post-trade processes in the energ...

Banned From Trading Forever

Ironic? A fractious divide in the Bitcoin Cash community has raised fears that the cryptocurrency – the fourth largest by market cap – could split into two. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the country's stock exchange, Singapore Exchange (SGX), have developed a settlement system for tokenized assets that can work across different blockchains. Global professional services giant Accenture has rolled out a new software license management application built with tech from distrib...

Take Me to Constantinople

The SEC Sends a Shot Across the Bow

Egg Freezing

"The Largest Crypto Giveaway in History"

Bitmain is launching two new Antminer models targeting the bitcoin mining industry. U.S. elections drama may be dragging Augur out of the doldrums. Crypto wallet provider Blockchain says it's about to stage what it's calling the "largest crypto giveaway in history." Cryptocurrency mining technology firm Bitfury Group has just closed an $80 million funding round led by venture capital firm Korelya Capital. Late Confirmation is a CoinDesk production. For more information, visit www....