Castoshi

Zubair Quraishi talks to Gianni of HUGS Platform. This platform allows micro tasks to be performed at scale. This is important as the future is the gig economy depends on companies and governments being able to get things done faster and cheaper via microtasks. Enjoy the episode!  

https://www.hugs.solutions/hugs-platform

00:00 Introduction 

00:30 What is HUGS? 

00:20 How HUGS compare to other Mechanical Turk style services? 

05:45 How did HUGS research the market? 

06:40 What is HUGS initial product and roadmap? 

10:01 Is HUGS going to be available on Blockchains other than Solana? 

11:25 Status of HUGS and the current release 

12:45 Specific examples of tasks that can be done better with HUGS microtasks, and how they are done today 

15:20 The HUGS reviewer system and how it compares to Wikipedia editing 

18:50 Staking of HUGS token and reputation 

21:45 How HUGS can help local governments save money 

22:30 What benefits are there to third party developers building on top of HUGS protocol? 

24:00 Growth of the micro tasking market and how to build an ecosystem by having an open platform 

25:30 Have non-crypto micro platforms like Task Rabbit tried to build similar systems? 

27:30 How organisations will be able to use the HUGS platform 

29:50 Has anyone tried to copy HUGs? 

32:00 Proof of concept of HUGS is already running 

32:20 Links and whitepaper

In this episode of Castoshi (powered by damex.io) Zubair talks to the CEO of Mintable, Zack Burks, who invented many of the innovations in the NFT space. Zach is a long time crypto user and Solidity developer. As well as a good technical discussion they also talk about how to make a great product around crypto, which is to always make sure your product passes the "Mum Test", so that your service is easy for normal people to use. They also talk about why Zach is so bullish on the future of crypto. Enjoy the episode!

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:50 What is Mintable? Mintable is an NFT Marketplace started ion 2018, and has over a million users in USA and Asia

00:03:01 Crypto innovations invented by Mintable: Batch minting of NFTs, NFT Royalties, first NFT DAO, Gasless NFT minting on Ethereum, cross platform NFTs

00:05:15 Zach defines an NFT as a digital item that lives on the blockchain

00:06:40 Zach's crypto story

00:10:35 Mintable's journey as a company

00:11:55 How have NFTs changes over the last few years and the NFT explosion after Beeple

00:15:30 Mintology is Mintable's enterprise NFT platform

00:17:20 How gasless transactions work, followed by a technical discussion of cross chain NFTs, bridges and how NFT prices vary based on the chain, and why you want to be on Ethereum

00:25:00 Could cross chain NFTs work in a similar way to USDC where Google or Microsoft could make a centralised NFT standard?

00:27:45 Fractionalisation of NFTs and how NFTs can be extended at a technical level, but why it may not be a good idea

00:30:30 Use cases of NFTs: proof of attendance, tickets, electronic documentation

00:35:57 Discussion of Mintable, trading, alt coins and the current bear market. We talk about crypto cycles, and the last few years of crypto and where it is going. Zach talks about how he never day trades anymore and only looks at crypto prices once a month!

00:38:12 How to get into the crypto space. We discuss how people try to make a quick profit by starting a crypto company

00:42:05 Learn how crypto works by either using crypto or learning Solidity (Ethereum smart contract language). We discuss how you can evaluate investment opportunities by examining the Smart Contract code and also understanding the "Mum Test"

00:46:10 How crypto is similar to email in the 1990s in the technology adoption curve

00:48:45Tin foil hat time!  The future of crypto and industry, and why Walmarts and Starbucks will issue stablecoins and NFTs

00:52:40 Within 2 years there should be 10x the number of NFT users worldwide!

00:53:56 Will Ethereum be around in 10 years? And what about alt coins?

00:56:20 Could USDT or USDC disappear in the next 10 years?

00:57:30 Will Google or big tech take over the crypto industry?

01: 05:30 Decentralisation doesn't matter to play a game, but does matter for financial products

01:07:35 Closing credits

Castoshi Episode 27 (a https://www.damex.io podcast)

Did you know that you could make millions of dollars gain in crypto, yet still be bankrupt? What!!!! Well, if you own more than a few thousand dollars in crypto then you need to get crypto tax advice today to make sure that this doesn't happen to you.  

In this episode Zubair talks to Micah Fraim of https://cryptotaxcpa.com/ and author of the book "Decrypting Crypto Taxes" about US tax law and crypto. Enjoy the episode!

00:00 Introduction to crypto taxes 

02:10 Explaining the book "Decrypting Crypto Taxes" 

03:00 Why the book is focused on USA crypto taxes 

04:34 How Micah got into crypto in 2017 

05:30 How Micah started to specialise in crypto taxes 

07:10 Crypto migration for non US citizens. Crypto tax rules keep changing in the west and backdating of tax rules 

11:45 Which crypto events are taxable under US laws? 

13:20 The IRS and congress is trying to delay rulings on crypto tax 

15:00 What should the US government do about crypto taxes? 

16:26 Can someone become owe tax money if they lose their crypto keys or wallet? 

18:25 What should people with only a few thousand dollars of crypto do about crypto tax? 

21:58 Should people with crypto leave the USA? (Puerto Rico is an option). What about the EU? 

24:40 What will happen to crypto tax laws globally? 

28:20 Should crypto be viewed as property or a security? 

30:10 Will large institutions invest in crypto ETFs? Getting to mainstream adoption 

35:01 Why there may be 25-30 million bitcoins out there that have been sold 

36:50 Did Voyager say they were FDIC insured when they weren't. The bad side of deregulation 

40:30 Utility based crypto projects 

42:00 cryptotaxcpa.com and how to use Micah's crypto tax planning services 

44:27 People who make huge profits with crypto and now owe more to the IRS than the value of their portfolio 

49:00 Ending

A quick recap of the first 25 episodes of the Castoshi podcast (a https://www.damex.io podcast) , and where the podcast may to go in the future:

00:00 Introduction 

01:25 #1 - Zubair sitting in his Garage talking to himself about crypto and blockchains

02:15 #2 - Zubair discussing his 2015 prediction that Bitcoin will be worth $1 million one day https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/day-163-zubair-2015-bitcoin-prediction-zubair-quraishi

05:30 #3 - A look at DeFi apps on the Fantom blockchain in late 2021

06:20 #4 - Zubair talking about learning Solidity

07:01 #5 - Interview with Steffen Kirkegaard, CEO of https://gamers.gold which allows gamers to compete with each other in tournaments

08:49 #6 - Never released. We interviewed a preacher to teach him about crypto

09:18 #7 - Interview with Frank Schuil, the CEO of Sweden's largest Bitcoin exchange https://safello.com

10:02 #8 - Interview with Sam Kamani of https://ensydr.com

11:55 #9 - Interview with toNFT Marketer Arvin Khamseh of https://www.soldoutnfts.io/ who helped NFT creators make millions a month by marketing their NFT collections

13:04 #10 - Making carbon capture 500 X cheaper with Shreekant Kulkarni of https://www.greenhashes.org

14:18 #11 - Building the future of blockchain gaming infrastructure with Neeraj Kashyap of https://moonstream.to

15:32 #12 - Hollywood is Embracing NFTs, wth Katie Chonacas of https://www.chonacas.com

17:28 #13 - Live events in a "Hyper Realistic" Metaverse with Toms Cernavskis and Urav Shah 

18:45 #14 - Carbon Trading on the Blockchain with Demian Klenk and Dan Hutter of https://6c-index.com/, a new platform aiming to be the Nasdaq of Environmental Assets 

20:52 #15 - In this episode of Castoshi, Zubair Quraishi talks to Martha Reyes, a former emerging markets fund manager who now works at https://bequant.pro/ talks about market crashes and how new finance graduates are learning Smart Contract development 

21:58 #16 - Noah Healy of Coordisc. Noah is a mathematician who has developed a new technique to provide high price stability for crypto markets by using Game theory to reward traders for predicting asset prices. See http://coordisc.com

23:15 #17 - Building Kickstarter for the crypto world with the founders of https://theia.finance

24:46 #18 - Juan Gasca of https://tindefi.net/, an all-in-one service for investing in early stage crypto companies 

25:55 #19 - David Sterling of https://www.good-gaming.com, owner of the successful MicroBuddies game 

27:30 #20 - Ashish Anand of https://bru.finance, who are tokenizing food produce so that farmers can borrow money based on their unsold produce. Defi lending in the real world! 

29:29 #21 - Hala Adbul of https://www.halatherapy.com discussing helping people with mental health issues related to crypto 

31:00 #22 - Mark Miller of https://labelcoin.io, a revolutionary song exchange which allows fans to invest in songs 

32:50 #23 - Brian De Mint, author of “Bitcoin Evangelism” (https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Evangelism-Planting-Decentralized-Revolution/dp/B0B38CX41D). Includes possible scenarios for the USA to get out of the current inflation and debt cycle

33:40 #24 - Jacob and Ben of http://radixdlt.com, which is a different approach to Defi. They have interviewed 1000s of crypto developers and come up with a unique solution that can scale to millions of transactions a second 

34:58 #25 - Zubair Quraishi talks about recent news events with Jeff Hancock of https://coinpass.com

35:49 talking about the future of the podcast and Zubair's own company https://yazz.com and the future news segments with Mark Rees of https://knightsbridgeincorporations.com/

Zubair Quraishi talks about recent news events with Jeff Hancock of CoinPass. Jeff is a former security expert so he really knows his stuff. They talk about the fallout from the Celcius, 3AC, and Voyager bankruptcies, and where the Yield comes from with a lot of these black box crypto companies.  

They also discuss what you need to learn in crypto in order to be a good trader, from understanding crypto transactions to using MetaMask.  

They also talk about the Ethereum Merge and the 5 stages: “The Merge,” “The Surge,” “The Verge,” “The Purge,” and, “The Splurge”  

Lastly, they discuss Fireblocks and the role of stablecoins and whether there is a need for a GBP stable coin. Enjoy the episode!

Show timeline:  

00:00 Introduction by Zubair to Jeff Hancock of CoinPass  

03:00 We discuss the fallout from the Celsius, Voyager, and 3AC Crypto bankruptcies - Jeff talks about how there could be more bad news to come, and how the crypto industry has a bad image in 2022. We discuss about how these companies are examples of black box companies which means that they are not transparent. We talk about how these companies lend money to each other and how the crypto markets really work internally. We go further into what need to know to trade crypto such as knowledge of how transactions, block explorers and Metamask.  

13:12 We discuss NFTs and cross chain solutions. When your taxi drivers tells you to buy bitcoin, or your plumber launches an NFT collection maybe it is time to get out of the NFT market! Use cases for NFTs like ticketing like holding up a mobile phone to get access to a physical location may make sense. Access via NFTs and mobile phone to Crypto club in London is one such club. NFT tickets will also be used in football and sports tickets as they are harder to fake.  

24:21 Ethereum Merge and the 5 stages: “The Merge,” “The Surge,” “The Verge,” “The Purge,” and, “The Splurge”  . The background is that Eth was the first smart contract platform and tries to stay backward compatible. Eth is overloaded and expensive, and progress has been slow which has allowed faster and cheaper Eth compatible chains like Fantom, Polygon to get market share. Also it has allowed non eth compatible chains like Solana to gain traction. Could existing Eth miners move to bitcoin. How we think about layer 2s will change, as it will be important to have assets that work across multiple chains , without the hacks occurring on bridges  

29:40 The future of Web3/Defi and big tech chains like Google Chain, Microsoft Chain, and where the crypto nodes actually live today, on big tech cloud provider chains. How Metamask is a big single point of failure, and we need to move permission based systems. How Government ID shops may come about, much like mobile phone shops of today. It could be the post office which performs government functions like driving licenses in UK today, and has taken over post office duties too. How restoring access to crypto wallets is an unsolved problem in crypto. But offline restoration is still not very secure.   37:02 Uniswap and institutional pools for the enterprise. Centralised and non decentralised options will both be available  

39:18 A discussion about what is Fireblocks, it has become a standard system for trading crypto for teams. They have many enterprise features for policies and security.  

41:15 Using crytp to move from quarterley financial staements to real time financial views. This has many advantages for financial reporting  

42:50 Discussing stablecoins and the need for a GBP based stablecoin, mainly because USD via USDC and USDC is used as a standard currency even in the UK. Also how the USD is getting stronger, instead of becoming worth less as many people feared would happen.

Traditional development on Ethereum is hard and only a few skilled developers know how to do it. In this episode Zubair Quraishi talks to Jacob and Ben of Radix, which is a different approach to Defi. They have interviewed 1000s of crypto developers and come up with a unique solution that can scale to millions of transactions a second, and uses a vastly superior system to build unhackable Defi applications. Apart from Radix, they also talk about the future of crypto and how the tech needs to be made invisible before it can go mainstream.   

If you’re a developer and want to start building with Scrypto you may be interested in the Radix developer’s hub. You can get involved with the #scrypto channel of their Discord server, or on the community-run Radix Developers Telegram channel.  

Discord: http://Discord.gg/radixdlt

Telegram: https://t.me/radix_dlt

Scrypto: https://developers.radixdlt.com

YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/RadixDLT

Podcast: https://defidownload.com

Website: http://radixdlt.com 

Enjoy the episode!

Zubair Quraishi talks to Brian De Mint, who is the  author of the bestselling book “Bitcoin Evangelism”. They talk about Bitcoin, Inflation and everything else under the sun in crypto, including his new book where he tries to educate people about Bitcoin in an easy to understand way. Please note that Brian is NOT a bitcoin maxi so he has a very fair view. They also talk about where they see the future of crypto and the world economy, including possible scenarios for the USA to get out of the current inflation and debt cycle. Enjoy this amazing episode!  

https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Evangelism-Planting-Decentralized-Revolution/dp/B0B38CX41D

We talk to Mark Miller of LabelCoin, a revolutionary song exchange which allows fans to invest in songs. LabelCoin are doing this by building a smart contract powered music sharing platform which divides song revenue into shares, instead of the all or nothing approach of NFTs.  We also talk about the wider music industry and where things are going. Stay tuned for this great episode!  

https://labelcoin.io

If you trade or work with crypto then you need to stay on your A Game and maintain peak performance. In this episode of Castoshi Zubair Quraishi talks to Hala Abdul, who helps people with mental health issues related to crypto.

If you have traded crypto and experienced the highs and low of this 24/7 market you will probably understand how crypto can affect your mental and physical health. The signs that you may have a problem are constant price checking, FOMO, and feelings of guilt when you get it wrong. If you experience any of these then this episode is for you! Hala explains how she helps people to become aware of their situation, so that they can take the first steps to fixing things. Enjoy the episode!

https://www.halatherapy.com/

In this episode Zubair Quraishi talks to Ashish Anand of Bru Finance, who are tokenizing food produce so that farmers can borrow money based on their unsold produce. Think of it as Defi lending in the real world! This really giving real liquidity to farmers in India with over 1000 locations where produce can be dropped off, and is starting to expand to other countries too.  

Zubair and Ashish also discuss the tokenisation of assets industry and how crypto is evolving in Asia. Enjoy the episode!

https://bru.finance