Borderless Crypto

Dear listeners, in this episode, we meet, Jürgen Michels, the Chief Economist of the German BayernLB bank. The bank research team recently published a model that suggests the price of BTC to reach $90K after the halving in 2020. This estimation comes not from some random person, but from a state-owned German Bank. The moment I read the paper I instantly reached out to Jürgen and here he is on the Borderless Crypto. Some of the topics we cover include:

1. What is the difference between hard and easy money?
2. How do the USD, EUR, Gold and Bitcoin compare in terms of hardness?
3. The stock-to-flow model as a tool for estimating the future price of bitcoin.
4. The central bankers’ view on Bitcoin.
5. Why is BTC a better store of value than GOLD?

This is an insightful conversation with Matt Houghan, the head of research at Bitwise Asset Management. Bitwise is the first provider of cryptoasset index funds. In my view, these are very important tools for the growth of crypto’s market cap as they allow accredited and institutional investors to easily enter the crypto asset investment class.

Before entering crypto, Matt was the CEO of ETF.com, where he created the first-ever ETF data analytics system. He is also the person behind the biggest ETF conference and the biggest ETF website.

Matt and I discuss the history of gold along with the recent introduction of tokenized gold coins. Matt goes on to explain why he doesn’t hold gold in his personal portfolio but instead he does hold bitcoin and other crypto assets. He further outlines the characteristics which make Bitcoin an emerging store of value and he draws some absolutely fascinating similarities between the history of gold and the history of bitcoin.

Hello borderless friends. I am especially thrilled to be publishing this interview with the fascinating Sam Bankman-Fried. While studying physics at MIT Sam came across effective altruism - this is a research field that finds the most promising solutions to the world's pressing problems. Sam decided that he can have the biggest impact in solving these problems by making money as a trader and donating it to important causes. In 2017, he launched Alameda research to address the liquidity problems he saw in the growing crypto industry. Two years later, his team is trading an average of $1B a day across crypto markets, they are among the top 3 most profitable traders on BitMex, having realized profits exceeding $50M. The team has already donated $4M to save human lives, prevent animal suffering, and research AI. I believe Sam, Alameda, and their new exchange FTX are just getting started. I loved this talk and I hope you love it as well.

This time I am meeting Ivan Gowan, who is the founder and CEO of Currency.com. This is the first regulated tokenized securities exchange which allows crypto holders to get price exposure to more than 1000 securities such as Apple, Facebook, and Telsa stock, governmental bonds, and industry indices like the S&P500 and the DAX.

Ivan explains in detail how Currency.com work, why the company based its operations in Belarus, what are its most sought investment products, why they are determined to move to a completely decentralized trading engine and much more.

It was a pleasure having this conversation and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Ivan’s Contact:

• Ivan’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/IvanGowan
• Currency.com’s website - https://currency.com/
• Currency.com’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/CurrencyCom

This crypto shot features Clay Collins, the founder and CEO of Nomics. I did a 70-min interview with Clay in episode 5 of the podcast. In this crypto shot I have selected some of my favorite highlights from my chat with Clay. This episode covers:

• How exchanges create fake volumes out of thin air.
• What makes Nomics different from other pricing trackers and API providers.
• Why Nomics classifies crypto assets as actively traded, inactive and deadcoins.

And we finish off with some valuable insights from Clay on building a successful company.

Clay’s Webinar (must watch if you trade and care about liquidity)

Crypto Market Data 101: Fake Volume, Exchange Spam, and How The Seedy Market Data Underworld Actually Works – https://webinar.nomics.com

In this episode, I am talking to Preethi Kasireddy, the founder of TruStory - the only place on the internet where you can have truly constructive debates on crypto topics. This is a place where you go to not to argue and prove how smart you are, but to genuinely look for the truth or at least all sides of a particular story. What’s more, you can make money by debating on the platform. Preethi is a fascinating builder. After studying engineering and working 100 hrs/week at Goldman Sachs, she joined the leading VC firm a16z only to realize that she wants to become a founder herself. This made her drop the dream a16z job in order to learn how to code. After a brief experience as a software engineer in Coinbase, she went on to start TruStory with the mission to bring meaningful debates back into society.

Preethi’s Contact

• TruStory website – https://www.trustory.io/
• Terra twitter – https://twitter.com/isTruStory
• Preethi’s twitter – https://twitter.com/iam_preethi

In this episode, I meet Daniel Shin, the co-founder of Terra - a fascinating stablecoin and payments network, backed by some of the biggest crypto VC funds. Terra is unlike any other stablecoin. They are not about trading. They are about spending in the real world. In this talk you will learn:

• How you can save up to 10% on online purchases with Terra?
• How Terra achieves stability, without being backed by real-world assets.
• How Terra is better than Facebook’s Libra.
• How you will be able to get a high-yield interest with Terra on Nexo’s interest-earning account.

Daniel’s Contact:

• Terra website - https://terra.money/
• Terra twitter - https://twitter.com/terra_money
• Daniels’ twitter - https://twitter.com/hyunsung1112

This crypto shot features Daniel Shin, the co-founder of the Terra stablecoin and payments network, who explains how Terra compares to Facebook’s Libra, and what gives Terra a powerful advantage over Libra.

Daniel's Contact:

• Terra website - https://terra.money/
• Terra twitter - https://twitter.com/terra_money
• Daniels’ twitter - https://twitter.com/hyunsung1112

This crypto shot features Daniel Shin, the co-founder of the Terra stablecoin and payments network, who explains why all e-commerce platforms are super enthusiastic to start accepting payments in Terra.

Daniel’s Contact:

• Terra website - https://terra.money/
• Terra twitter - https://twitter.com/terra_money
• Daniels’ twitter - https://twitter.com/hyunsung1112

This crypto shot features Daniel Shin, the co-founder of the Terra stablecoin and payments network, who explains what makes Terra fundamentally different from all established stablecoins.

Daniel's Contact:

• Terra website - https://terra.money/
• Terra twitter - https://twitter.com/terra_money
• Daniels’ twitter - https://twitter.com/hyunsung1112