On The Brink with Castle Island

Apolline Blandin, cryptocurrency research lead at the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, joins the show. In this episode:  The Cambridge AltFin research agenda The motivation behind the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index How they determine Bitcoin's electricity consumption How Bitcoin's energy usage can be understood in context The genesis of their new geographical mining estimates Why high granularity estimates of mining location are so important to determine its energy mix How and why Bitcoin hashpower migrates on a seasonal basis Why there is so much spare hydro capacity in Sichuan and Yunnan Surprising country-level findings The most defensible academic approaches Apolline has seen so far Why the per-transaction cost estimates of Bitcoin are misleading The prospects for wind, solar, and natural gas for bitcoin mining

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry, featuring special guest Matt Hougan, global head of research at Bitwise. In today's episode: Tagomi is acquired by Coinbase Matt Hougan's response to Goldman's bearish note What wealth managers are saying about Bitcoin today Light at the end of the tunnel in the CSW saga? BitClave's punishing SEC settlement Calibra rebrands A new paper on Bitcoin Vaults

Dan Matuszewski, Principal and Co-Founder of CMS Holdings joins the show once again. Since he last appeared, the market has been through some gut-wrenching turmoil, and Tether (one of the subjects of the first episode) has tacked on a casual $5B in market cap. Dan, alongside his colleagues at CMS, has also joined the Crypto Twitter fray. In this episode: Why Dan relented and started a twitter account Dan's explanation for the massive growth of Tether since March Whether there is non-crypto business occuring in Tether What we can expect for the Tether-denominated futures markets if it trades below par How Dan thinks about using Tether on Omni versus Ethereum versus Tron What Dan makes of the rise in CME open interest

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. In this week's episode: The story behind bitcoin pizza day The impact of hashrate futures Genesis Capital's acquisition of Vo1t and what that means for their business Why the DTCC should get into crypto Brian Brooks becoming acting Comptroller of the currency Our analysis of the coins from feb. 2009 reawakening Our theory for why those ancient coins might be moving now The great Bitcoin energy consumption debate Nic gets unblocked by CZ

Tim Kelly, founder and CEO of BitOoda joins the show. BitOoda is a financial services firm that is innovating in the field of structured products based on Bitcoin hashrate and difficulty. In this show we discuss: Tim’s career background and the similarities he sees with cryptoassets vs. other asset classes he has traded The mining ecosystem and how derivative contracts solve real business needs The evolving market structure for cryptoasset derivatives and Tim’s view on the regulatory landscape   To learn more about BitOoda visit: http://bitooda.io/

Nic and Matt cover the week's deals and news. In this episode:  Bitcoin full node count Celo and the viability of seigniorage shares stablecoins Telegram winding down their TON project Why we think the SAFT window of opportunity is closed Why the SAFT is just ICOs in a suit Why the next global monetary asset will never be massively premined and disproportionately owned by VC funds How the success of Bitcoin drove VC funds crazy Stablecoins pass $10B ErisX announces Ethereum physically settled futures How futures contracts would handle contested hard forks The importance of JPM banking Coinbase and Gemini Our retrospective on the halving What we're reading and listening to this week Why we don't believe in space mining

Peer to peer marketplaces are a wealth of data on genuine demand for Bitcoin – but not in the way you might think. As it turns out, a large fraction of the volume in these markets relates to complex, multi-step trades designed to use Bitcoin as a bridge currency to move fiat-denominated remittances, especially into countries like Venezuela. Matt Ahlborg, data scientist and creator of UsefulTulips.org, has done great work compiling this data and engaging with these traders to determine what exactly is happening on these opaque marketplaces, and what Bitcoin is being used for. In this episode we cover: How Matt went from working in the Navy to pursuing a career in Bitcoin data science Why p2p exchange volume is more reliable What a massive blackout in Venezuela tells us about foreign exchange flows in Latin America How exactly Bitcoin works as a bridge currency on p2p exchanges The under-reported role of Chinese exporters in Venezuela on LocalBitcoins Matt's investigation into how Argentine capital controls ar

In this episode, we talk to Patrick Dugan, coiner of the term 'crypto-dollarization'. Patrick has a wealth of knowledge regarding stablecoins and the prospects for public blockchains to carry fiat-denominated value. Covered in this episode:  His formative experiences living under capital controls in Argentina How Patrick's time in LatAm taught him about dollarization Political drivers of the dollar's predominance in LATAM How Patrick realized that crypto-dollarization would be important Patrick's experiences working for the Omni Layer Foundation Patrick's analysis of the earliest stablecoins like BitUSD, Nubits, and Tether (Omni) Patrick's analysis of the stablecoin models which are most likely to succeed long-term Likely geopolitical effects of crypto-dollarization

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week’s topics include: Renowned commodities investor Paul Tudor Jones announces his intent to trade Bitcoin and releases a Bitcoin thesis NEAR protocol gets funded Are fair launches dead? The under-appreciated merit of PoW issuance Libra's new CEO hire Wyoming's Special-Purpose Depository Institution legislation The privacy-auditability tradeoff in blockchains Whether the growth of stablecoins threatens the security model of public blockchains Thoughts on the imminent halving Our guess of who the next high profile hedge fund investor will be to flip bullish on Bitcoin

The question of Tether's influence on crypto markets has long vexed practitioners and academics. In a widely-publicized 2018 paper, academics Griffin and Shams allege that Tether was being issued collusively, effectively increasing the price of Bitcoin beyond its natural level.  To learn how Tether behaves like a currency board, and to assess the veracity of the Griffin & Shams hypothesis in light of new data, we brought Ganesh Viswanath-Natraj on to the show. Ganesh is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Warwick Business School, covering international finance and macroeconomics, with a focus on foreign exchange derivatives, market microstructure and cryptocurrencies. Find the full text of the paper here, and follow Ganesh's work on his personal website.

Marcos Veremis, Managing Director at Evanston Capital Management joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Marcos’ time at Cambridge Associates and how he came to lead cryptoasset research at the firm His perspectives on the various investment theses that are gaining traction with institutional allocators Fund structure, strategy and other crypto-fund considerations To learn more about Evanston Capital Management visit their website

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week’s topics include: Deals of the week The SEC's court battle against the SAFT on two fronts Ebang's IPO announcement  a16z Crypto's new fund FTX's entry into the US Telegram's new offer to investors Brian Quintenz leaves the CFTC

Moiz Kohari, the co-founder and CEO of Manetu, a company building a Consumer Privacy Management (CPM) platform for enterprises to manage personally identifiable information (PII) joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Moiz’s recent experience contracting COVID-19 His motivation to start Manetu after holding high profile roles at State Street, London Stock Exchange and Novell Data privacy and the challenges enterprises face complying with upcoming regulations The state of blockchain and cryptoasset projects at large financial firms Learn more about Manetu at www.manetu.com

Peter Johnson, Head of Fintech and Crypto Investing at Jump Capital joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Peter’s fintech thesis and the categories that he is most excited about Jump Trading’s crypto journey and how Jump Capital works with the core trading business Cryptoasset market infrastructure and the categories that need to exist in order for this industry to thrive Learn more about Jump Capital at www.jumpcap.com and follow Peter @TheChicagoVC

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week’s topics include: Deals of the week Our changing view of the halving Renaissance Technologies' announcement that they have the capacity to trade Bitcoin Our reaction to Mark Andreessen's "It's Time To Build" The dForce hack Ripple's lawsuit against Youtube Nic's defense of Coors Light

Michael Sonnenshein, Managing Director at Grayscale Investments joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Grayscale’s record quarter, raising $503.7 million in Q1 2020 The pace of institutional adoption of passively managed crypto asset products Thoughts on Libra, the halvening and other upcoming events in the cryptoasset industry Learn more about Grayscale at Grayscale.co and follow them on Twitter @GrayscaleInvest

Sal Ternullo, Director and Cryptoasset Services Co-Lead at KPMG joins the show. In this episode we discuss: KPMG’s cryptoasset practice and the types of engagements they are leading for large enterprises Sal’s views on cryptoassets and security tokens including barriers to adoption for enterprises The outlook for M&A activity in this industry Learn more about KPMG’s cryptoasset practice here.

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week’s topics include: Deal activity More bailout angst A discussion of Libra's second iteration The lawsuit against the Maker Foundation Grayscale's monster Q1 Blogs we enjoyed reading this week

Bob Davis, the founder of Lycos and General Partner at Highland Capital Partners joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Bob’s entrepreneurial journey, from taking Lycos from founding to IPO in 9 months, to an eventual $5.5 billion exit Perspectives on the venture industry and the impact of COVID-19 on the capital formation environment Comparisons of the blockchain industry to the early internet era General thoughts on Bitcoin’s macro narrative and the evolution of the market infrastructure to support this asset   Learn more about Highland Capital Partners at www.hcp.com

Brian Klein, trial attorney at Baker Marquart, joins the show. Brian has represented clients in the crypto industry since 2014 and has been involved in some of the most impactful cases in that time. In this episode: How he got his start at the San Jose bitcoin conference in 2013 Representing Erik Voorhees in a case relating to SatoshiDice Whether the SEC has provided sufficient clarity on the application of the Howey test to token issuance Brian's view on the Hinman guidance on the security to commodity transmutation Brian's take on the SAFT Brian's take on disclosure in the industry The little-known variables that affect sentencing outcomes in criminal cases Brian's experiencing representing Marcus Hutchins Why Brian allocates so much time and effort to pro bono cases