On The Brink with Castle Island

Former FT Alphaville Editor and founder of The Blind Spot, Izabella Kaminska joins the show. In this episode:  Izabella’s pre-FT career Izabella’s Polish ancestry and how that informed her monetary worldview Why Izabella was a skeptic about Bitcoin – and why she revisited her stance Izabella’s interest in anacyclosis and cyclicality in political systems Jeremy Bentham and his views on utilitarianism Consequentialism and its influence on contemporary elite ideology What Covid-19 policies revealed about freedoms in the West The flaws inherent in bureaucracy Izabella’s changing view on the politicization of finance The failure of AML/KYC rules in the West Reflections on the FT’s Wirecard story Izabella’s view on stablecoins and why she first compared them to Eurodollars Why stablecoins are mini central banks The paradoxes of Web3 and DeFi and the veil of decentralization Do crypto systems end up inherently recentralizing Why Central Banking is so obscure and difficult to penetrate Bitcoin narratives in the cont