CoinDesk Reports

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin. 

For the last day for 2021 and the end of a two-week break for Money Reimagined, we’re serving up the second of two of our favorite episodes from the past year. 

Michael Casey’s pick was the episode from Sept. 15, not because that’s his birthday and not only because in that one he had the pleasure of meeting co-host Sheila Warren’s “chithi” (aunt), Dr. Usha Ramanathan. It was mainly because Ramanahan’s insights and those of the second guest, Marta Belcher, zeroed in on why maintaining data privacy is a matter of protecting our very humanity. 

Ramanathan is a lawyer and an influential human rights activist in India. She has worked since 2009 to challenge India’s controversial digital identity program, Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric ID system. Belcher serves as general counsel of Protocol Labs, chair of the Filecoin Foundation and special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Aadhaar has long been a lightning rod for the kind of privacy advocates who are often drawn to crypto and warn of the authoritarian threats from a government controlling such a large, centralized database of personal information. To that critique, the tech firms that built and now support India’s system have typically responded that they are overcoming the so-called “digital divide,” providing powerful, “programmable” IDs to the poor so that they can not only access the kind of services we take for granted but build new services on top of them. 

Ramanathan turns that counter-argument on its head. She suggests backers of Aadhaar and other universal identity systems have fostered a myth that official IDs are necessary for citizens to participate in the economy when it’s perfectly possible to conceive of an effective economic system in which people prosper without compromising their privacy. Belcher then puts all this into the context of how our private data is being captured by centralized corporate internet platforms and whether or not decentralized solutions using cryptocurrencies and blockchains can free us from this. 

It’s a great episode and well worth a lesson as we head into a new year in which the battle of the future of our digital economy is poised to intensify. 

This episode was produced, edited and announced by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme songs are from Joshua Spacht.

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.

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KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin. 

This week and next we’re taking a year-end holiday from new episodes of “Money Reimagined.” Instead, we’re serving up a couple of our favorites from this year. 

This week’s pick was Sheila Warren’s: the Haiti episode from May 21. 

That’s when Sheila and co-host Michael Casey were joined by Jerry Tardieu, a Haitian author, entrepreneur and politician who represents Petion-ville in the Chamber of Deputies, and by Daniele Jean-Pierre, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Zimbali networks, which delivers smart-ledger solutions for the decentralized economy.

The pair walked us through Haiti’s history to show how a shameful, century-long legacy of a slavery-era debt continues to be a burden for the country. The debt, imposed by France to punish Haiti’s citizens for freeing themselves from their slave masters in a rebellion that won their independence in 1804, later became a U.S.-owned asset serviced by a bank that would become Citibank. In that sense, this long-standing problem is directly related to the issue of Wall Street’s power and dominance in the age of dollar hegemony, a power that is challenged, in theory, by cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The discussion then turns to what solutions, technological or otherwise, might exist to create a system that empowers people rather than leaves them dependent on charity and foreign aid, with all the strings that come attached to that. 

It’s the kind of episode that reminds us why the ideas behind crypto and blockchain matter. 

This episode was produced, edited and announced by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme song is "Father Christmas" by Cody Martin.

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.

-

KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking about the most exciting and most annoying things that happened in crypto this year.

For Ben, the crypto hearings in the U.S. Senate – a whole bunch of them, actually! – really marked this year. Now it’s clear cryptocurrencies have some prominent opponents on Capitol Hill including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). What will the crypto politics be in 2022? Ben has some ideas.

On another regulatory note, this year the U.S. started an offensive on illegal crypto use, and also demonstrated that the seemingly decentralized and global world of blockchains is not above sanctions policies. That offensive might expand in 2022, Anna believes.

And, of course, NFTs! What would characterize this year better? Whether the hype will die down or the NFT wave will keep engulfing the world in 2022 is up in the air, but Ben, Anna and Danny have theories to share.

Also in this episode: Ben singing and Danny as the Crypto Grinch. Enjoy your holidays!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Robert Reich: The crypto-congressional complex
• Senate Banking Committee Bashes Bitcoin's 'Phony' Populism
• This Imprisoned Russian Artist Is Selling NFTs to Support His Family and Fellow Inmates
• ConsenSys Suddenly Bars Iranian Students From Ethereum Coding Class
• Chatex Users Ask US Treasury to Release Crypto Frozen by Sanctions

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme music is by Hill and Dresden.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Last week, “On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross envisioned the future integration of crypto with the registered investment adviser (RIA) industry. Ross touched on an on-chain financial future where clients’ financial plans, estate plans and assets will all be on-chain and even navigated and altered from their phones.

This time, Ross goes deeper into the operational ways the RIA of the future may work and interact with clients. Everything from account generation to billing, from funding to transfers and more will change in the future as crypto technology permeates the financial world.

“This is a world that is coming. And it is coming fast. And, man oh man, am I excited by it,” says Ross. There is no better time than now to start preparing for this new era of RIA.

This episode has been produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Walk with Swag.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.

Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Matt Homer, who is the former executive deputy superintendent for research and innovation at the New York Department of Financial Services. The two walk through the expected crypto integrations coming to their cities and the anticipated challenges that come with introducing this new technology at the municipal level.

MiamiCoin is the first coin of its type, where a city is granted yield from the mining of their coin. Close on Miami’s heels is New York City, with its newly elected and crypto-friendly Mayor Eric Adams and the new NYCCoin. Both New York’s NYCCoin and MiamiCoin are issued by CityCoins, whose tokens operate with smart contracts on Stacks, a protocol built on Bitcoin.

Though these city coins present an exciting opportunity for cities to tap new sources of revenue and to experiment with engaging their communities in new technologies, they also come with potential challenges ranging from volatility to accessibility. How do Miami and New York and Homer intend to mitigate these risks?

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

-

Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.

-

KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on “Opinionated,” we sit down with David Z. Morris, CoinDesk’s chief insights columnist. 

DZM gives us the highlights and lowlights from 2021, and looks ahead to 2022. 

His highlight? El Salvador. 

“For me, the bitcoin policy in El Salvador was the landmark moment of the year,” he says. 

El Salvador has been buying bitcoin at a rapid clip, attracting bitcoin entrepreneurs. It has issued a “Bitcoin Bond” that’s available to nationals through the Chivo bitcoin wallet. 

This points to how bitcoin may point to an opportunity for indebted nations that are often excluded from traditional credit markets to find new ways to grow. 

“It potentially gets El Salvador and other countries out of the yoke of the [International Monetary Fund] and World Bank, which maybe do some good work but by and large have not been great actors over the last 30 years,” Morris said.

DZM’s lowlight?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the man who needs no introduction. 

“Elon Musk has to be top of that list of things that annoyed me this year. He’s a guy with a ton of influence who decided he was curious about crypto and didn’t want to bother learning anything about it, and then came in and created a lot of disruption in the market and confused a lot of people. 

“I don’t think there’s anywhere to go for his reputation other than down from here,” Morris said. 

“You’ve got to be not just nuts but somewhere on the not-caring-about-other-people spectrum to have a million of followers and tweet #baby doge with no context or explanation or consideration of how people are going to respond to that.” 

“He’s financially abusing people who support him and it’s irresponsible. He’s been fined by the [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] before in reference to tweets about his own company. So imagine how responsible he’s going to act when he’s giving financial advice when he's talking about things he’s not responsible for.”

Morris also looked ahead to 2022, offering three predictions. Top of the list:wars between the likes of layer 1 (base) chains Avalanche and Solana and longer-standing chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

“Given the issue with fees that Ethereum has had, it became a real opportunity for people to stand up new layer 1s that have had genuine adoption,” Morris said. 

Listen in for more insights from David Morris and “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Danny Nelson and Anna Baydakova. 

Articles mentioned in this podcast:

David Z. Morris: Behind the Scenes of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Bond With the Man Who Designed It

David Z. Morris: CoinDesk Most Influential 2021: Jack Mallers

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross envisions the future of the Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) industry. A shift in clientele is set to occur as the baby boomer generation passes the baton to the millennials. The wealth management industry, as it stands today, is not prepared for the millennial client of the future.

As phones continue to permeate more and more aspects of daily life, Ross says the RIA of the future is on the phone, on an app. Clients will hold their financial plan, estate plan and assets on-chain, all being navigated and altered from their phones. Gaming, the metaverse and Web 3 will be the topics of conversation with clients more and more as time goes on.

Ross expresses that one thing will remain true, no matter what: Clients will always need advice. They will always pay for advice. What does the adviser of today need to learn in order to be a successful adviser in the next five, 10, 15 years?

This episode has been produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Walk with Swag.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.

On this week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast, Michael Casey and Sheila Warren discuss with CoinDesk’s managing editor of global policy and regulation, Nikhilesh De, his recent review of another cryptocurrency-themed hearing on Capitol Hill by the House Financial Services Committee.

“Today's hearing is part of this committee’s ongoing [effort]” to understand crypto and the issues around it.’ Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the committee chairwoman, stated as she kicked off the hearing.

Financial inclusion appeared to be a big selling point from the industry representatives, but were the congressmen and women buying it? And yet even though the tone was comparatively more positive then before, regulation seemed to still remain a major issue. 

For more information and an examination of the intersection of cryptocurrency and government, read Nik De’s Newsletter ‘State of Crypto’. 

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

-

Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.

-

KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Florida jury kinda sorta ruled in Craig Wright’s favor: The man who claims to be Satoshi won’t need to cough up half his multi-billion-dollar bitcoin stash. But he does owe $100 million to the estate of his former business partner. So who won? The gang discusses ramifications of a high-stakes trial and its often-misleading coverage in the press.

Also on the table are 2021’s big crypto influencers. CoinDesk's “Most Influential” dropped this week and featured Elon Musk, Cynthia Lummis, Do Kwon and others who made a difference this year. But who got snubbed? Who got rugged? Listen to find out.

Finally, Danny and Ben look back on NFT week in Miami, where crypto culture and mainstream art converged. It was one big party, to be sure. But it was also a cultural coming out and reflected how “crypto” means more than the “future of money” these days. It’s art, entertainment, the media; it means culture. 

CoinDesk coverage discussed in this episode:

Most Influential 2021 – The 50 people who defined the year in crypto. 

There Was No ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ Lawsuit – Be careful what you read and where you read it. 

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.

This week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast comes to you from Miami, where the annual Art Basel event spawned an explosion of sub-conferences and parties associated with non-fungible tokens (NFT). 

There, we ran into Pierina Merino, the founder of FlickPlay, an exciting new app that combines real-world, camera-captured imagery with digital artifacts so that users can create and place geo-located NFT collectibles. It’s best described as a merging of Pokémon GO with TikTok and NFTs.  

Co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren sat down with Merino to discuss her vision for this project. What emerges is a fascinating discussion around how we human beings project our own “storylines” and how content-generation technology is allowing the merging of the digital with the physical realm. 

Merino’s background as Venezuelan-born, U.S.-trained architect (as in a physical building architect, not a software engineer) is part of what makes this conversation so interesting. She speaks to how that sensibility with the limits of physical space shapes people’s creativity and their self expression for how they live in the world. 

What does this all have to do with money? A lot more than you’d think. 

With NFTs now in the mix, this combination of identity, user-generated content and hybrid physical-digital content constitutes a new form of value creation and transactions. 

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard."

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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.

-

Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.

-

KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.