QuantLayer Podcast
62 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 12 ratingsIn this podcast, hosts Vikram Ramakrishnan and Faizaan Shamsi, partners at the software consultancy QuantLayer, talk to investors and builders of the cryptocurrency arena. We discuss how industry participants think about crypto assets, how they uncover fraud in the market, and which technologies will turn the budding, nascent crypto space into the revolutionary powerhouse early market participants had hoped for.
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Episodes
Bringing Traditional Tooling Services to Serverless
February 11, 2020 10:00 - 27 minutes - 25 MBAs software teams begin to migrate to serverless, they will require more in the way of serverless specific tooling: cost tracking, alerting, monitoring, and so on. Here, we look at a number of serverless tooling providers and discuss what they bring and how they will compete with traditional tooling services. Topics: Installable versus Hosted Platform On Hosted Platform Tooling providers - CloudZero - Dashbird - Hasura GraphQL Engine - IOpipe - Iron.io - lumigo - Node Lambda -...
AWS, GCP, and Azure: The Tradeoffs of Serverless Architectures
January 22, 2020 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MBServerless has caused a massive shift in approaches to application design. On this episode, we explore what serverless gives teams, and the tradeoffs involved in going the serverless route. We cover players like Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure, and what else is in store for the space. Topics: What Serverless is On their benefits Monolithic versus microservices architectures How might development teams work on serverless applications versus traditional ones On tradeoffs...
Databases and NoSQL: MongoDB’s Approach to Companies with Scaling Data Requirements
December 10, 2019 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35 MBRelational databases versus NoSQL is of interest today given growing data requirements for businesses. Real-time, internet of things, storing geodata, financial data are examples where traditional relational databases don’t make the cut required for modern systems. We discuss the successes and failings of relational databases, and how MongoDB’s approach to NoSQL data structures allow them to serve specific customer problems with specialized solutions. We look at some customer case studies an...
Cloud Computing at the Edge: An Overview of Fastly (FSLY)
November 25, 2019 10:00 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBEdge computing is a topic that isn’t getting enough coverage. We’ve covered CDNs like CloudFlare before, but we wanted to look at Fastly, an edge computing player that went public early in 2019. On this episode, we cover edge computing topics like rapidly purged caching. We run through a few case studies of the value edge computing brings some of Fastly’s customers. We discuss major risks that the company might face and postulate on why we think they’re trading at a discount compared to othe...
Financial Services APIs and Silvergate Capital
November 18, 2019 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.4 MBThere has been a lot of interest around developer-first banking APIs recently. On this episode, we go over recent tech IPO Silvergate Capital (ticker $SI), which is a digital currency focused bank and settlement network. We discuss their business, particularly around digital currency initiatives and their Silvergate Exchange Network (or SEN). We get into the weeds of what it means to claim to be an API first financial services company. Enjoy the episode. Topics: On Silvergate Capital ...
Chips, Chips, Chips: Canaan Mining, NVIDIA, AMD, ASICs, GPUs, AI and ML chipmakers
November 13, 2019 10:00 - 41 minutes - 37.6 MBRecently, there has been a lot of recent interest in customized semiconductors. Bitcoin mining has highlighted the interest in ASICs, or application specific chips, and as we move up the customized application layer stack, discussion of AI and ML chips becomes necessary. On this episode, we look at Canaan Mining, a chinese Bitcoin mining chip manufacturer. And we look at them in the context of growing trends in AI and ML chips. We compare and contrast AMD and NVIDIA and discuss the new growt...
Discussing a Parallel Financial System with Barney Mannerings from Vega Protocol
November 05, 2019 10:00 - 38 minutes - 34.9 MBOn this episode, we speak with Barney Mannerings, founder of Vega Protocol, which is a blockchain product initially focused on derivatives markets. Barney understands this space really well, and it was a pleasure talking to him about what he’s building at Vega. Broadly, we discuss the DeFi, or Parallel Financial System, space, and Barney talks to us about why he thinks this space is important. He explains how Vega, in many ways, augments and replaces some exchanges, and how it serves as an i...
Datadog: A Developer Friendly Monitoring and Analytics Product or Ecosystem?
October 29, 2019 09:00 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBOn this episode, we dig into Datadog’s (Ticker: DDOG) IPO prospectus. We discuss their approach to analytics and monitoring, and how companies can benefit from using them. We look at a few case studies of how companies derive value from their product, and one in particular, that can generate value from its use. We also run through their developer-friendly offering and how quickly the product can be incorporated into a system. We spend a little time with their financials and then discuss our ...
Content Delivery Networks, DDOS Protection and Bot Fighting: CloudFlare as a Web Performance and Security Company
October 21, 2019 09:00 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MBWe go over the CloudFlare IPO prospectus, which calls itself a “Web Performance and Security Company.” We discuss their mission statement, their stated competitive advantages, risks they may face and a quick overview of their financials. Topics: The Web Performance and Security Company Cloudflare's mission Companies putting mission statements int their prospectuses How would an early stage startup use Cloudflare versus a Fortune 500 On "Our Industry" section On "Why We Win" sect...
How Ron Lichty Manages the Unmanageable: Topics on Software Management, Agile Processes, and Making Software Hum
October 14, 2019 09:00 - 37 minutes - 34.8 MBSoftware Consultant Ron Lichty joins us to talk about all things software management. Ron has a treasure trove of experience helping teams accelerate and amplify their software practices. We look at the history of waterfall-style projects transitioning to Agile projects. We talk about his time as a product manager at Apple and his work with Charles Schwab at the time they launched their electronic trading platform. Ron articulates his views on the different types of developers out there and ...
Interoperability in Cosmos’s IBC Protocol with Tendermint’s Zaki Manian
October 07, 2019 09:00 - 47 minutes - 43.7 MBOn this episode, I speak to Zaki Manian from Tendermint. We get deep into the weeds of interoperability, his notions of interop between fast chains and fast and slow chains. We discuss the IBC protocol, which is a spec for adapters between different chains along with all the complexities when dealing with cross-chain communications. Moreover, we examine design and development principles when building product in this space, and the differences when building traditional software product. Zaki ...
A Tour of Blockstack’s Decentralized Computing Network With Aaron Blankstein
September 30, 2019 09:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBWe chatted with Aaron Blankstein, Core Engineer from Blockstack. Blockstack is a decentralized computing network, which makes it simple for developers to build blockchain-based applications. We learn about Blockstack’s incentive system, and what will be changing from v1 to v2. We discuss a few use cases of Blockstack, like the Blockstack Naming Service, or BNS. We also go over Blockstack’s smart contract language Clarity, and the broad tooling that will exist for developers working on the pl...
Building Scalable Derivatives Trading Platforms with Charles Phan of Interdax
September 23, 2019 09:00 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MBWe chatted with Charles Phan, Chief Technology Officer from Interdax. Interdax is a next generation digital assets exchange with strong engineering roots in High Frequency Trading firms, traditional exchanges, hedge funds, investment banks, market data and liquidity providers. This episode was a lot of fun. We talked about Charles’ background in traditional finance and a prior life as a derivatives trader. We then compare and contrast traditional and crypto derivatives markets. We also talk ...
A Tale of New Digital Primitives with Ben DiFrancesco
September 16, 2019 09:00 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MBBen DiFrancesco, software consultant and founder of scopelift, joins us on this one. Two things we really respect about Ben are his ability to break down complex technical topics and also his ability to be honest about what crypto and blockchain offer us. He’s at heart, a technologist, and his passion for and dedication to crypto is palpable. This conversation contains a bit of philosophy around Bitcoin and Ethereum, particularly around how polarized the two spaces have become. We get into B...
A Recap of Blockchain Training Conference 2019
September 09, 2019 09:00 - 42 minutes - 39 MBWe recap our attendance at the Blockchain Training Conference last week. We cover the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4)’s new certifications and their conference’s emphasis on developer and professional education. We also look at the slew of great talks on The Lightning Network, bitcoin privacy, and smart contracts. Topics: What does C4 stands for Keynote w/ Pamela Morgan and Andreas M. Antonopoulos Announcement: Mastering the Lightning Network C4 and it's Purpose CBP P...
Dr. Ed Felten and Offchain Labs: Second Layer Solutions for Smart Contracts
September 03, 2019 09:00 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBDr. Ed Felten is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton, he’s served as Chief Technologist at the FTC and Deputy CTO at the White House. He’s also the cofounder of Offchain Labs, a Princeton-based startup that’s focusing on 2nd layer smart contract solutions to improve scalability. This was one of our favorite conversations to date. We discuss smart contracts and their current problems. We discuss Arbitrum, Offchain Labs’ solution to the smart contract scaling problem which uses a syst...
Domain Driven Design, Language and DevOps for Distributed Systems with CircleCI’s Rob Zuber
August 27, 2019 09:00 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MBWe have Rob Zuber, CTO from CircleCI on. A lot of the projects we work on implement CircleCI, so we were super excited to speak to Rob. We talk about his background and how he became part of CircleCI through an acquisition. We also get into one of his favorite topics: language. Particularly the words that are used in projects, and how important they are for workflow. We also discuss “Domain Driven Design,” or the idea that when creating a layer of functionality, to keep it bounded within its...
Opening Up the Black Box of Insurance: Wunderite and Programmatic Data Aggregation
August 19, 2019 09:00 - 41 minutes - 38 MBOn this episode, we have Peter MacDonald and Joe Schnare from Wunderite, an insurance startup based in Boston. This was a really interesting conversation around how they are improving insurance workflows for agencies around the country through programmatic data aggregation. We talk about their backgrounds, get into the details of the black box industry known as insurance, and how they work with customers on product development. I learned a lot from this conversation. Enjoy. But before we g...
Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Blockchain Teaching Pedagogy: The CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium and Blockchain Training Conference
August 12, 2019 09:00 - 32 minutes - 30.3 MBWe speak with Andreas Antonopoulos, author of Mastering Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, and Mastering Ethereum, and also board member at the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium, known as C4. C4 will be hosting the Blockchain Training Conference in Denver, Colorado at the end of August. In this conversation, we learn about the conference, how Andreas thinks about blockchain teaching pedagogy, and the certifications that C4 is offering now: the Certified Bitcoin Professional (or CBP) certi...
Chainweb, Pact, and Hybrid Blockchains with Kadena’s Stuart Popejoy
August 05, 2019 09:00 - 52 minutes - 48 MBWe speak with Stuart Popejoy co-founder from Kadena. This was a really great technical conversation around the hybrid public-private blockchain that Kadena is building with their Chainweb platform and LISP inspired smart contract language Pact. We cover how traditional finance firms incorporate new technologies into their workflow, real world use cases of Kadena, and what’s happening in the Enterprise. We also get into the technical details of Chainweb’s Proof-of-Work consensus system and th...
The Father Time IPO and the Nuts and Bolts of Building Software Applications From Scratch
June 26, 2019 00:25 - 38 minutes - 35 MBOn this episode, we look at a recently filed IPO, Father Time. This isn’t a hot IPO. In fact, no bankers are underwriting this. What’s interesting about this one is that it’s entirely self-underwritten by the company founder. They are planning to build a coupon system from scratch, so we talk through how that would look from a technical perspective. We consider their business model and the budget in their S-1. Topics: On Father Time IPO What a blank check type deal is How to work with...
The SEC and the Sundance Kik or How Alternative Fundraising Schemes Get Squashed
June 11, 2019 08:39 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBWe look at the SEC’s charging of Kik Interactive’s unregulated securities offering. We recap the SEC complaint, outlining their argument that Kik was a deeply underfunded, low-revenue, high-expense company that attempted a “hail mary” by circumventing securities law by running the Kin ICO. Finally, we step through the pieces of evidence the SEC presents. Topics: SEC put out a press release along with a complaint on Kik Interactive - SEC Charges Issuer With Conducting $100 Million Unregi...
High Quality Software Is Worth the Cost
June 03, 2019 09:00 - 37 minutes - 34 MBWe look at Martin Fowler’s article titled “Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?” We discuss the gives and takes of writing good software and managing technical debt. We look at misconceptions around software quality and cost, and how planning and blueprinting (architecting) up front can save teams money in the future. Moreover, we look at how good software offers teams a competitive advantage over others due to the ability to ship new features quickly and confidently. Topics: Who Mart...
SIM Port Attacks + 2FA Security or How Not To Lose All Your Crypto and a Empex 4 Recap
May 29, 2019 00:33 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBWe look at a recent SIM port hack where a crypto professional lost $100k worth of crypto from his Coinbase account. We discuss in detail how he was attacked and how you can safeguard your crypto assets better. We then do a recap of the one-day Elixir conference, Empex, where topics ranged from OTP to LiveView to functional programming more broadly. Topics: What a SIM port attack is How people can be careful Their experience at Empex Their thoughts on Elixir Links: The Most Expensi...
A Look at CrowdStrike’s IPO Prospectus and Their Approach to Endpoint Security
May 22, 2019 06:25 - 45 minutes - 42 MBWe explore the CrowdStrike IPO by delving into its SEC Prospectus: An examination of their technology, and in particular their approach to endpoint security. By wading through the buzzword ocean, we bring you the key areas to focus on in this S-1. We consider their network effects, notably how signing up more customers to their platform improves security of all their customers. We go through a few case studies of their Falcon product line. Finally, we look at their stated risks. Topics: O...
On-chain Analysis with TokenAnalyst’s Sid Shekhar: The Valuable Open Ledger
April 16, 2019 04:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBTokenAnalyst’s founder Sid Shekhar joins us on this one to talk about the on-chain analysis tools they’re building for the crypto industry. Particularly, we spoke about the delineation of on-chain versus off-chain and why on-chain data hosts a treasure trove of valuable information. We also talk about how funds can benefit their investors by investigating open ledgers. Lots of really good stuff in here like analogies to dark pools, exchange liquidity analysis and more. Topics: His backgro...
Zilliqa With Edison Lim: Formal Verification of Smart Contracts, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, and Smart Contract Composition.
April 09, 2019 01:19 - 35 minutes - 33 MBWe spoke with Edison Lim, Application Lead at Zilliqa about their protocol. We consider Zilliqa’s approach to scaling and energy usage. We discuss their proof of work consensus model for miner verification, and their approach to sharded consensus groups. We take a technical look at their smart contract language Scilla and its roots in OCaml, and why formal verification is important. Topics: What Zilliqa is On smart contract language Different consensus mechanism What problems are th...
Capital Management with David Baker: Mercadyne Fund’s Founder on Public and Private Investing, Generating Alpha, and Management Team Red Flags
April 02, 2019 00:36 - 52 minutes - 48.1 MBWe spoke to David Baker from Mercadyne Funds, my first Portfolio Manager at Vikram’s first Hedge Fund analyst job many years ago. David is a really smart guy and he takes a unique approach to generating alpha by investing in micro and small-cap companies. He joins us to talk about all things investing. We cover a slew of topics: How he started investing and his first call with a management team at age thirteen, how he parlayed his experience as a broker to starting his first micro and small-...
Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Santiago Roel Santos from EON, Proof of Stake and Staking as a Service
March 18, 2019 09:00 - 50 minutes - 57.7 MBHey everyone, this is Vikram from QuantLayer and thanks for listening to our 34th podcast. On this episode, Santiago Roel Santos from EON joins us to talk about proof of stake and staking. We speak about Santiago’s investing background, how he entered crypto, and the Staking as a Service business he’s building now at EON. The discussion covers a lot of great topics for crypto entrepreneurs: UX considerations when building crypto products, how EON manages technical and security issues when st...
Oracles, Doug von Kohorn and Jeff Rosen from Rhombus
March 11, 2019 09:00 - 45 minutes - 52.4 MBWe speak about the problem around connecting smart contracts to real world data, how oracles solve that problem and the gives and takes around oracles. We walk through some example oracles in gold pricing data and prediction markets. We finally wrap up with an interview with Jeff Rosen and Doug von Kohorn, founders at Rhombus, where we discuss their approach and solution to the oracle problem. Topics: Faizaan's thoughts on the ETHDenver event How we should think about oracles The orac...
Andreas M. Antonopoulos and the State of Cryptocurrency Ten Years In
March 04, 2019 10:00 - 35 minutes - 40.7 MBWe have Andreas M. Antonopoulos on, who we were really excited to talk to. With his books The Internet of Money, Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, Andreas has been an amazing ambassador for the cryptocurrency space. On this episode, we get into a lot of interesting topics: What’s changed and surprised him since he published The Internet of Money, how Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrency project teams can learn from one another, fighting back against oppressive regimes with cryp...
#31: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: TokenTax’s Zac McClure and All About Crypto Taxes
February 11, 2019 10:00 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MBZac McClure joins us from TokenTax. I was really excited to talk to Zac because it’s great to learn about the kinds of professional SaaS tools that crypto entrepreneurs are building. This was a fun conversation. Zac has had an eclectic career prior to crypto. He’s been an investment banker, taught financial literacy to high school students, and worked on social investing platforms. He’s been heavily invested in getting people to understand finance and investing, giving them the knowledge to ...
#30: Security Researcher Gets Attacked After Vulnerability Disclosure
February 08, 2019 00:59 - 46 minutes - 53.1 MBWhat happens when a vendor attacks a security researcher who points out security flaws in their software? On this episode, we talk about two white-hat security researchers who discover multiple vulnerabilities in a vendor’s software system. The vendor initially ignores their concerns until the FBI gets involved. It culminates in a physical attack by the vendor’s COO on one of the researchers. We look at all the details around the vulnerabilities, discuss common disclosure concerns and how th...
#29: NVIDIA’s Pre-announces Terrible Results, Huawei and Political Risk, and Bitcoin’s Predecessors
February 01, 2019 03:28 - 43 minutes - 49.6 MBWe look at NVIDIA’s negative pre-announce, how they stopped blaming crypto and are seeing weakness across the board, especially on the datacenter side. We take a tangent on political risk associated with Huawei, and finally finish up by looking at the slew of predecessors of Bitcoin so the next time someone thinks they’re being clever by calling Bitcoin the Myspace of Crypto, you can list off the hundred or so predecessors and attempts at payment systems before Bitcoin. Topics: NVIDIA's n...
#28: DevOps and GitHub Opening Up Private Repos
January 21, 2019 10:00 - 51 minutes - 59.2 MBWe look at GitHub’s recent move to give non-paying users unlimited private repositories, and GitLab’s subsequent response. Additionally, we discuss DevOps and how teams can save money and improve deployment processes by implementing DevOps best practices. Topics: GitHub offers free private repos What GitHub is How it was acquired by Microsoft On DevOps What DevOps is How companies do DevOps now On being good at DevOps What the goals are The techniques they used Links: G...
#27: Whose Fault Is It Anyways?: On Writing Illegal Smart Contracts
January 14, 2019 10:00 - 53 minutes - 61.9 MBWe discuss comments from the CFTC about developer responsibilities and liabilities. The CFTC posits that there are a few primary groups of users of blockchain networks: (1) core developers of the underlying software; (2) developers of smart contracts on top of the underlying blockchain; (3) miners who validate transactions; and (4) users who transact with the chain’s smart contracts. Their focus is primarily around (2), or the developers of smart contracts, and what responsibilities those de...
#26: The New York Nasdaq CTO Summit: How to Manage and Scale Tech Teams
January 07, 2019 05:00 - 47 minutes - 54.7 MBWe discuss our time at the CTO Summit at the NASDAQ Marketsite from a couple weeks back. This was a great conference, because technology leaders from startups to larger companies congregated to talk about managing and scaling tech teams. We talk about software process, distributed teams, how deployment is the main cause of all software failures, and a whole bunch of other interesting software development topics. Just as a warning, there isn’t a lot of crypto content on this one, but we thoug...
#25: Why We Moved Our Search Infrastructure to Elasticsearch ($ESTC) and a Look-back at Our Podcast Episodes of 2018
December 31, 2018 05:00 - 56 minutes - 65 MBOn this episode, we do a recap of our podcast episodes of 2018. We look at how the crypto market has changed since we launched our first episode (things other than just prices being lower) and also all the things that haven’t changed. This was a fun review of half a year of recording with a few glimpses of times ahead. Topics: Reflecting on our podcast this past year Episode 1 - The QuantLayer Genesis Story, Crypto and Stock Market Comparisons, and Why Crypto Needs Reg FD https://itun...
#24: The Attack of the Attack Vectors: a 51% Attack on Vertcoin & the Demise of ASIC Resistance + a Social Engineering Attack on ETCDEV and npm Libraries
December 06, 2018 03:48 - 38 minutes - 44.3 MBThis episode is all about attack vectors in crypto. We look at a 51% attack on Vertcoin, and how ASIC resistance is turning out to be a massive security bug, not a feature. We also look at Ethereum Classic and a social engineering attack on the ETCDEV team. Finally, we discuss the event-stream attack which robbed crypto wallets that used that npm library, and what that means for open source governance. Topics: ASIC resistance is a massive security bug, not a feature What ASIC resistance...
#23: Crypto Hangover and Market Downturn?: A Look At Semiconductor Market Cycles, NVIDIA Throwing Crypto Under The Bus, And What Nathaniel Popper Got Wrong In His Recent New York Times Article
November 30, 2018 01:22 - 50 minutes - 57.4 MBA look at the semiconductor market cycle, and how recent results from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and AMD have spooked the tech market. We look at NVIDIA’s most recent conference call where they place all the blame on what they call a “crypto hangover.” We then look at two distinct predictions about this latest semi cycle, one from JAG capital, who got it completely wrong, and another from a Supply Chain magazine that got it completely right. We finish up with a teardown of a New York Times a...
#22: Everything is Ded (Bitcoin, “Blockchain,” ICOs, Volatility) and Amazon Takes Over New York City
November 19, 2018 10:00 - 1 hour - 69.9 MBWe review the latest proclamations of Bitcoin’s apparent demise: (1) Axios’s report that Corporate blockchain and bitcoin interest is waning; (2) Galaxy Digital dumping their ICO advisory business; and (3) volatility drying up forcing traders to look for alpha elsewhere. We also look at Amazon’s expansion into New York City, right into our backyard. Topics: Bitcoin is ded note - Blockchain is ded - ICO Advisory is ded - Volatility is ded What Axios is Galaxy digital Who Galaxy is...
#21: A look at Stablecoins, Tether and PwC
November 12, 2018 10:00 - 39 minutes - 45.7 MBA look at Stablecoins, centralized ones, decentralized ones, what they’re going to be used for and what kinds of risks might arise from them. We discuss exchange listings again, this time with Basic Attention Token getting listed by Coinbase, and finish up with a discussion on Tether. Topics: What Stablecoin is Centralized Stablecoins - What Fiat backed is and it's disadvantages - What Exchange Traded Commodities backed is Decentralized Stablecoins - What Crypto backed is - Algori...
#20: ZRX & ESTC: A Tale of Exchange Listing Pops, the State of Crypto Reporting (It Sucks) and How You Can Make Money Being Contrarian, and How Monero (XMR) Sliced Up Transaction Fees With Bulletproofs
October 30, 2018 09:00 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBWe do a victory lap for alerting our users to the ZRX add to Coinbase before everyone else. We then get into a discussion of how exchange additions are similar to public market IPO first day trading pops, like what we saw in Elastic Search recently. We then talk about the state of crypto reporting, and how it has created a mix of pay-to-play bad actors, mainstream media outlets offering 10 year old FUD over and over, and well-meaning actors who create consensus views that smart, contrarian t...
#19: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Amy Wan, Founder and CEO of Sagewise and Building Crypto LegalTech Solutions
October 16, 2018 09:00 - 39 minutes - 45.8 MBAmy Wan, Sagewise Founder and CEO joins us to discuss the smart contract LegalTech solutions they’re building at Sagewise. We go over her background, how she moved from the traditional legal space and into LegalTech, what smart contracts are, dispute resolution, and the tools they’re building at Sagewise to handle dispute resolution. Another episode of people building usable tools in this space. Topics: Amy's controversial tweet Amy's background What Blockchain brings to the legal pro...
#18: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: John Young With Ledj.io and Building Professional Crypto Research Tools
October 08, 2018 09:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBJohn Young joins me from ledj.io. John worked at Capital One before starting his first two crypto Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS) businesses in early 2017: Spreadstreet and Cryptosheets. Both these services let users work with crypto pricing data in Google Sheets and Excel. Install a plugin, and you are good to go. Definitely worth checking out. I was excited to speak with John since he is running a crypto SaaS business for crypto research like us. We talk how he has been finding customers, ...
#17: Crypto Legal Landscape with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law: Securitized Real Assets and Intellectual Goods, Crypto Patents, Hard Forks and “Derivative Works,” Decentralized Exchanges and Alternative Trading Systems
October 01, 2018 09:00 - 56 minutes - 51.9 MBWe talk with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law. Kurt is a lawyer who works with startups and is heavily involved in the crypto space here in New York. We’re glad we were able to talk to Kurt because some of the most interesting things being done in this space are by lawyers. We talk about how he got into crypto, the Reg D offerings he’s working on (securitized real assets and intellectual goods), a utility token client he’s working with (a sort of “Ripple 2.0” project), how...
#16: Zaif Exchange Hack and How We Called It Two Months Ago and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS)
September 24, 2018 09:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBOn this episode, Faizaan and I do a victory lap for calling the Zaif exchange hack over 2 months ago. We also a deep dive into IPFS - what it is, what problem it solves, how it works and how Cloudflare is getting involved in the space. We finally look at some alerts that came through our dashboard. Topics: A victory lap for calling the Zaif exchange hack over 2 months ago Cloudflare IPFS The purpose of IPFS and how does it works What IPNS is Where data is stored Why interplaneta...
#15: Open Source as Revenue Driver: How Elasticsearch Uses Open Source for Revenue Growth, Tech Investing and Crypto, a Cautionary Tale of Bad Crypto Trading Psychology and Flash Crashes
September 17, 2018 09:00 - 1 hour - 59.3 MBWe explore the Elastic IPO by doing a deep dive into its SEC Prospectus. We look at their business model and risks, and how open source software has been a giant revenue growth driver for them. We then get into an interesting discussion around tech investing and how it’s related to crypto. We look at some alerts that came through our platform: a cautionary tale of a trader who lost his life savings by investing at the peak and trying to recover losses with Bitcoin Cash and Ripple, and how to...
#14: Turning A Bug Into A Feature: Bugsnag, Why You Shouldn’t Violate Open Source Copyrights (Hint: Your Coin Will Be Down 90% If You Do), The Bitcoin-Dev Mailing List, And Why Crypto UX Is So Bad
September 10, 2018 09:00 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBHow do you turn a bug into a feature? On this episode, we talk about how we used Bugsnag to do just that. We then get into an interesting discussion around using 3rd party software applications to move software projects more quickly with less risk. We also highlight just how useful the bitcoin-dev mailing list is for learning about how the Bitcoin core team thinks about the protocol, and how their discussions underpin important considerations around scaling and network growth. We also look a...
#13: An Alert Blitzkrieg: Cheap ETH Mining, MANA Land Estate Bug, EOS RAM Vulnerability, Stratis Node Vulnerability, Etherscan Vulnerability, Bitcoin Cash Vulnerability, and How Wall Streeters and Technologists Can Be More Lay-language Friendly
September 03, 2018 09:00 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBWe discuss the alerting platform we’re building for crypto investors and traders. We then cover how Ethereum miners are rolling in dough, and the gives and takes of Proof of Work. We talk about a few really interesting alerts that hit this week: a Land Estate Bug we found in Decentraland ($MANA), an $EOS Vulnerability that exploits RAM, a Stratis node vulnerability ($STRAT) that’s been around for almost all year, and a Bitcoin Cash ($BCH) vulnerability. We also talk about how the crypto spac...