Carpe Consensus

This week, “Opinionated” co-hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Aaron Lammer, author of a podcast series about the now-defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX.

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

The QuadrigaCX saga, first broken by our colleague Nik De and still not finished, could be a dark detective novel: Gerald Cotten, a CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, reportedly dies in India, the crypto wallets are empty and his widow inherits a mind-blowing fortune, while users are trying to get their money back in court for years (the case is still ongoing). 

Aaron Lammer, an experienced crypto podcaster, took on a tricky task to tell the QuadrigaCX story to people who might not know about crypto but definitely can learn a thing or two from this thriller story. Aaron told us how he was investigating the QuadrigaCX story and trying to explain the basics of crypto to a non-crypto audience. The first episodes of his show, “Exit Scam,” are now available for listening.

Aaron interviews a very diverse group of people who have insight into what could have happened at QuadrigaCX, from a private detective specializing in fake deaths to Michael Perklin, chief information security officer at ShapeShift, who knew Gerald Cotten personally. He walks us through what we know and don’t know about QuadrigaCX and its founders, and how the centuries-old history of scams and financial fraud got a new life in crypto. 

Enjoy the conversation, as we did, and definitely check out the podcast, an arresting detective story with elements of Crypto 101 course for everyone. 

Aaron’s Twitter handle is: @aaronlammer. 

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This week, “Opinionated” co-hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Steven E. Russell, Esq., portfolio manager for Emerald Banking and Finance Fund.

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

Emerald is an asset manager that previously focused on community banks but, unlike many of its peers, could not stay away from the lucrative business of crypto. Since 2019, Emerald has been investing in companies serving the crypto industry, including Silvergate Bank, Galaxy Digital and Grayscale’s ether and bitcoin trusts. (Grayscale is a CoinDesk sister company.)

This seemingly progressive move got Emerald downgraded by the professional investment analytics source Morningstar from Bronze to Neutral. “Emerald Banking & Finance has moved outside its circle of competence,” Morningstar analyst Eric Schultz wrote, adding that “a big shift into cryptocurrencies in late 2020 and early 2021 calls the discipline of the approach into question.”

Steven E. Russell, however, doesn’t think he moved anywhere beyond his competence: He got into crypto in 2017 by starting with bitcoin, then adding ether and getting into altcoins. “Now I look back and think, well, that was really stupid,” he says of some of his altcoin investments.

However, the experience demonstrated that crypto is the future not only of investments but of financial services as a whole, Russell believes. Now that Emerald is in crypto, more and more clients and even rival funds are approaching Russell asking about that “crypto thing,” what is DOGE, etc. 

Russell walks us through his thinking on how the capital markets will have to evolve because of the impact of crypto. “We think [decentralized finance] is really going to change the industry,” Russell said. Listen to Ben, Anna and Danny discuss Emerald’s approach to crypto investments and its vision of asset management of the future.

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This week, “Opinionated” co-hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and David Treat, senior managing director at Accenture, the co-founders of the Digital Dollar Project .

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io, and The Sun Exchange.

The Digital Dollar Project recently announced plans for a slew of pilot projects that will show what the tokenized U.S. dollar can and can’t do. It’s not clear yet exactly what those pilots will be.

The global race for leadership in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) started with China charging forward with its digital yuan project and all other nations rushing to catch up. Giancarlo believes the U.S. shouldn’t miss a chance to set the standards for CBDCs globally. But is it enough to issue another CBDC to stop the digital yuan’s expansion?

Another important concern regarding CBDCs is privacy. Giancarlo and Treat believe the U.S. government will ensure the privacy of citizens’ transactions, in keeping with the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. But what if the government is not the best guardian of personal information? We discuss the privacy concerns of CBDCs at length during this episode.

Finally, who needs CBDCs if we already have dollar-pegged stablecoins, some of which are regularly audited and regulated by the U.S.? Giancarlo does not fully trust the stablecoin issuers on the market now: “Who is the holder of a reserve bank account? What if the holder of that account absconds with the money?” he asked.

We discuss central bank digital currencies, and ask if we need this new form of money and how they will compete and integrate with private-sector initiatives, including USD-backed stablecoins.

Find Christopher Giancarlo and David Treat on Twitter: @giancarloMKTS and @DBTreat.

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This week, “Opinionated” co-hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking to Nik Bhatia, an Adjunct Professor of Finance and Business Economics at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. 

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

His book, "Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies" is freshly in print this year, and Nik has plenty of bold and controversial ideas to share. 

Nik recently wrote two thought-provoking op-eds for CoinDesk about the future of bitcoin. One of them, “Why $1 Million Bitcoin Is Coming” is a projection of forces affecting bitcoin’s upcoming growth. In particular, Nik believes MicroStrategy’s and Tesla’s bitcoin purchases resulted in big increases in bitcoin’s price – increases that he sees continuing as new companies and even central banks start buying in. 

If we expected more big enterprises to join the party, are we looking at $1 million bitcoin? Or is it too bullish? Nik guided us through his journey of understanding bitcoin and why he thinks it will be a base layer to the future financial system.

Bitcoin’s volatility is not going anywhere in the future, Nik believes. But that shouldn’t stop traditional asset managers from buying it, because they are buying a share in the world’s financial future. And in this future, the national currencies might become central bank digital currencies (CBDC), and bitcoin will be a global standard to weigh against those national 

We discuss these and more bold ideas, how people should invest in bitcoin and how the world will treat bitcoin in the years to come. Enjoy the conversation and definitely check out Nik’s pieces, “Why $1 Million Bitcoin Is Coming” and “Asset Managers, Owning Bitcoin Is Now Your Fiduciary Duty.”

Nik Bhatia’s Twitter handle is: @timevalueofbtc.

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This week, we’re shaking up “Opinionated’s” format and adding two more co-hosts, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson. And we’re joined by another CoinDesker, our managing editor of podcasts, Adam B. Levine. 

This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.

Last week he wrote a column on the rise of dogecoin, “Dogecoin Is Not the Next Bitcoin – But Here Are the Similarities.” Dogecoin was created in 2013 on litecoin’s infrastructure, and didn’t command much attention until last year. 

Adam has been in crypto for ages and has seen the rise and fall of many projects. Is he seriously hopeful for DOGE’s bright future, or just trolling? In any case, on this podcast Adam, Ben, Anna and Danny are doing their best to take DOGE as seriously as they can.

Adam’s point is clear: Crypto is all about consensus, and if a consensus forms around the idea that dogecoin is a good asset/digital money, why can’t it become really big and notable on the global financial scene?

Dogecoin already surpassed bitcoin in investment returns over the last seven years, as Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal ironically (?) noted in his recent newsletter. 

People want predictable digital money that other people use as well. Can dogecoin become this one day? 

Can DOGE evolve into some kind of reliable money system not pegged to any particular state and government? Or will crypto influencers and companies like Slim Jim just have fun with it for a while and then forget about it for another eternity?

Listen to Ben, Adam, Anna and Danny discuss both fun and serious things about dogecoin, all while having fun staying DOGE-poor.

And check out Adam’s op-ed here: Dogecoin Is Not the Next Bitcoin – But Here Are the Similarities.

Adam B Levine’s Twitter handle is @AdamBLevine.

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This week on the Opinionated podcast we’re joined by Brett Scott, the author of “The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money.”

Scott is a former derivatives broker who became a financial market reformer in the wake of the 2007-2008 crisis. 

Many such reformers became big fans of Bitcoin. But Scott’s views on cryptocurrency are mixed and nuanced. He appreciates some aspects of the technology, but also criticizes people in the space for over-indulging certain arguments about it. 

As he wrote recently in our op-ed pages, Scott believes that Bitcoin advocates often conflate points of attack that don’t belong together, namely that bitcoin can be a new form of money and a tradable asset simultaneously. 

Check out that op-ed here:

How to Win a Bitcoin Street Fight (Without Mortal Combat)

And then listen in to my conversation with Scott on the podcast. 

He has fascinating insights into the nature and future of money and how we can talk about bitcoin more usefully. 

Brett Scott’s Twitter handle is: @Suitpossum.

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Preston Byrne is a partner in Anderson Kill's Technology, Media and Distributed Systems Group, and a CoinDesk columnist. 

He joins CoinDesk Features Editor Ben Schiller to discuss his recent op-ed about GameStop, Robinhood and the rise of online mobs. 

See the article here:

‘The Squeezening’: How the GameStop Backlash Will Curtail Freedom

Schiller spoke to Byrne about:

• The rise of online mobs from GameStop to Capitol Hill and how the internet is impacting real life in an increasingly tangible way
• What policymakers can do to prevent mobs doing damage to decent companies
• Why it’s likely the WallStreetBets Reddit contained some pump-and-dumpers
• How the regulatory reaction to the WallStreetBets could impact cryptocurrencies 
• How the backlash from “elites” impacted by GameStop could harm free speech
• Why Preston Byrne supports marmots (which are like squirrels or groundhogs) 

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What impact will crypto have on the nature of organizations? Will experiments in crypto’s governance lab lead to lasting trends in how companies are orchestrated?

This week on the “Opinionated” podcast we discussed this big topic with Jeff Dorman, the chief investment officer at Arca, a crypto hedge fund.

Dorman, a CoinDesk columnist, argues that “community tokens” (like LINK or SUSHI) will inevitably outpace “VC tokens” (like COMP, ATOM) because of the preferable incentives at play.

And he believes the trend of community ownership in crypto will meld with the wider shift towards companies doing right by a range of stakeholders as well as just their shareholders.

Dorman contrasts a decentralized finance (DeFi) project like Uniswap with Airbnb and DoorDash, which are now heading for initial public offerings. The former rewards liquidity providers (and soon token holders) who share in the system’s success. The latter companies were built on the work of homeowners and delivery guys, but all the gains from a public listing will go to stock holders.

“With digital assets, you’re starting to democratize access to these companies and you’re starting to spread out income inequality,” he says.

Incentives are key to make more democratic governance work. “Nobody cares about governance until it affects their bottom line. Twitter isn’t going to change its governance for the sake of ideology. If there’s governance for the sake of cash flows, that is another story.”

A sharp thinker with two decades of investing experience, Dorman had plenty of insights in our conversation covering bitcoin, nonfungible tokens (NFT) and Twitter in the wake of the Capitol attack this week.

Check out the episode now and read Dorman’s CoinDesk columns here.

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This week on the Opinionated podcast, we’re joined by PwC’s Henri Arslanian, the consultancy’s very smart global crypto hand. 

Arslanian wrote a 2021 look-ahead op-ed for CoinDesk giving 10 Predictions for 2021: China, Bitcoin, Taxes, Stablecoins and More

He thinks next year will see a number of big trends in crypto come to fruition. 

“2020 has been a terrible year for pretty much the entire world but when we look at it from a fintech and crypto perspective, it has been a game-changing year,” Arslanian tells me. 

“COVID-19 really acted as a catalyst.”

Take bank notes. We’ve been using them less for years but the pandemic has really stopped us using them. At the same time, people are hoarding bank notes (because it’s a crisis), leading central banks to think more seriously about issuing their own digital currencies. 

Next year, Arslanian expects to see the first retail digital currencies. All eyes will be on China’s advanced project. 

Arslanian also discusses bitcoin, derivatives and taxes. He expects lots of M&A activity as crypto unicorns become “crypto octopuses.”

Listen in for one of the smartest consultants in the crypto space.

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With PayPal recently announcing crypto services for millions of customers, it seems the crypto industry has passed another acceptance milestone. 

But, with that acceptance comes greater responsibility, says Ajit Tripathi, a long-time consultant working at the top of the industry. 

Going forward, crypto can expect greater regulatory scrutiny and higher compliance costs. Times ten, says Tripathi.

On the Opinionated podcast this week, Tripathi discusses his recent op-ed “Bitcoin Is Good for PayPal, but Is PayPal Good for Bitcoin?” where he compares the costs of setting up a neobank in the U.K. (like Monzo) with creating a DeFi protocol this summer. 

At the moment, the former comes with millions in compliance costs and the latter comes with none, and customers are not protected, he says.

As mainstream players, like PayPal, enter the market, Tripathi argues it’s inevitable that regulators will intervene. After the last financial crisis and following the ICO run-up, they feel obliged to take notice. 

Listen in as Tripathi describes the regulatory challenges facing the industry as it becomes more popular.

Find Ajit online: twitter.com/chainyoda

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