CoinDesk Reports

“On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross is joined by Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful. Youssef brings history-backed answers to philosophical questions about the true value of money and how corruption has wormed its way into financial systems. He introduces some historical analogs to peer-to-peer networks and delves into how his own personal history led him to founding Paxful.

Youssef describes Paxful as a “barter for money,” where users can exchange among 400 different payment forms, ranging from crypto tokens to gift cards. More than just a digital money exchanging tool, Paxful is a platform for the historically underserved to get online and get transacting, despite the lack of access through their governments or banks.

In the end, Youssef believes that “when humans can actually transact with each other … we're creating more and more value.”

This episode was 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 week’s “Money Reimagined” episode is framed by some bombshell news developments that are adding fuel to a fire of mistrust in authority that’s been allowed to kindle into a raging threat to global financial institutions. 

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.

Hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey are joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael S. Derby and crypto entrepreneur Maya Zhehavi to discuss two sets of revelations that go to the heart of these problems and what they imply for the crypto industry. 

One is the Pandora Papers investigation, the results of which were released last week and which the blew the lid off an elaborate global system of obfuscation by which a very long list of rich, powerful political leaders, business people and celebrities have evaded trillions of dollars in taxes and avoided scrutiny of their questionable business activities. 

The other revolves around some revelations about stock trading activity by Federal Reserve officials, which led to the resignation of the heads of two regional Fed banks and has put Chairman Jerome Powell’s renomination prospects in jeopardy. 

The show dives into what has happened and what this means for confidence in the financial system and its stewards. How much does it matter that people feel as if the system is designed not for them, but for elites? Will these feed into faith in money itself? And, if so, what comes next? Is it bitcoin? Stablecoins? Central bank digital currencies that compete with each other?

Having a seasoned Fed reporter in the mix of guests, the conversation inevitably also dives into the outlook for a digital dollar and what objectives it would serve. 

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine.

Our theme song is Shepard.

-

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.

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

Art Blocks CEO Erick Calderon has turned generative NFT squiggles into a digital art behemoth. This week on “Opinionated,” we speak with “Snowfro” about the artists whose algorithms power one of the hottest corners of the metaverse. Their NFT sales recently helped Art Blocks raise $6 million from equity investors, Snowfro told “Opinionated.”

Ben and Danny (Anna’s out this week) sort through the term sheets to find what makes Art Blocks tick. Their conversation begins with its cap table. Galaxy’s an investor; so is FlamingoDAO, the crypto-native community of NFT investors. Believe it or not, the DAO apes into equity rounds, too. 

Snowfro helps demystify the philosophy underpinning the digital art scene. He doesn’t define success by making it to the MoMA – though that would be cool, he admits – or by billion-dollar transaction volumes – a milestone Art Blocks already crossed. He’s more interested in providing an outlet for really cool and unique art.

Speaking from his home in Houston, Snowfro walks “Opinionated” through his entrepreneurial history, which began with a college snow cone stand and evolved into an artisanal tile import business. His NFT side-hustle, Art Blocks, is less than a year old. And it’s not quite a side-hustle anymore. 

This episode  is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our Theme Music 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.

It’s hard to believe it has been a year since Michael Casey and Sheila Warren launched the “Money Reimagined” podcast. 

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp 

And what a year it has been: some rich, probing discussions about the past and future of money, the challenges of regulation and blockchain governance, the battle for financial inclusion, the shifting geopolitical landscape, the anthropology of money and much, much more. All of that while the crypto market soared to a valuation of more than $2 trillion, NFTs went parabolic, the U.S. government got tougher with the sector, China kicked out its bitcoin miners, El Salvador made bitcoin a legal tender, DeFi innovation exploded, and a relentless pandemic continued with no end in sight. 

To look back on all of that and to help them celebrate this anniversary, Michael and Sheila were joined by a pair who delivered one of the more memorable discussions of the past year: Jill Carlson, the founder of the Open Money Initiative, and Raoul Pal, CEO and founder of Real Vision. 

With the controversial recent rollout of El Salvador’s Bitcoin project as its backdrop, the discussion updated the somewhat competing perspective that Carlson and Pal had explored in a December 11 episode last year on whether speculation on bitcoin as an asset is compatible with its prospects as a tool for payments and financial inclusion for the poor.

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. 

-

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.

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 Anna Baydakova, Danny Nelson and Ben Schiller address an emerging global trend: an increasing frequency of clashes between state and private money. Three recent stories bring these clashes front-and-center, through surveillance programs, regulator biases and crypto as a single-issue campaign.

Leaked documents show Chainalysis has a hush-hush advantage in the analytics race: its scraping of suspects’ IP addresses from walletexplorer.com. As CoinDesk reported, the honeypot preys on those wary of exchanges who might log their data, allowing the world’s largest crypto tracer to capture their IP address instead. As Chainalysis expressed in the documents, it’s providing “meaningful” leads for law enforcement. What are the ethical implications of such a scheme?

Next: whiz-kid Gary Gensler is not the hero crypto hoped for; the SEC chair has become a persona non-grata for bitcoiners and altcoiners alike. Gensler’s campaign against fraud, waste and abuse should not surprise insiders. Anna, Ben and Danny parse through the intricacies of a regulatory chief with his sights set on crypto.

Finally, we debate crypto and politics. With Messari CEO Ryan Selkis potentially running for senate (in 2024), how important has crypto regulation become to voters? To Selkis, it's a single-issue campaign. How effective could that messaging be against a fractured voting field?

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is from Elision. 

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

“On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross is joined by Akin Sawyerr, Chief Innovation Officer at Onramp Invest, to discuss the changing financial landscape and associated transformation of the scope of advisers’ work. As wealth shifts from boomers to millennials, advisers need to stay on top of the developments to best assist their clients.

Millennials pose two existential threats to the current adviser systems: the financial crisis of 2008 imbued the generation with a fundamental distrust of financial institutions, and their proficiency with technology reduces the need for intermediaries. These two factors push millennial investors straight to crypto, to DeFi, to DAOs and beyond.

DeFi threatens to disrupt the financial status quo. As Sawyerr suggests, advisers should stay ahead of the oncoming metaverse wave and “disrupt or be disrupted.”

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. 

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

Recent comments from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler have reignited the discussion of the future of crypto ETFs in the U.S.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol. 

In this week’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey dive into the world of crypto ETFs and their rocky history with U.S. regulatory bodies. Fred Pye, CEO of 3iQ Corp., joins Warren and Casey to walk through 3iQ’s journey to become the first Canadian investment fund manager to offer a public bitcoin investment fund.

An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a vehicle through which an investor can access a diversified portfolio of crypto tokens and coins. Though there are many ETFs covering bonds, stocks, commodities and more available to American investors, the SEC has yet to approve a crypto ETF. The first Bitcoin ETF up for consideration was filed in 2013. Since then, 18 applications have been rejected or delayed.

With the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seemingly inching closer to approving a narrowly defined version of a bitcoin ETF, Pye’s insights offer some useful lessons learned from the launch of 3iQ’s Canadian dollar- and U.S. dollar-denominated bitcoin fund. 

3iQ now manages over $2.5 billion in assets, offering an indication of the kind of money that might flow into the sector if the giant U.S. institutional market were given the opportunity to invest in bitcoin ETFs.

We discuss the work 3iQ did to get regulators comfortable with its price references and the way it structures and manages its funds. There’s something of a square peg-meets-round hole problem with digital assets that trade 24/7, often on unregulated exchanges and with highly volatile moves and social media-driven narratives. But as Pye points out, it’s not the regulators’ job to contain an asset’s volatility. It’s to ensure that what the asset manager is promising is delivered. 

So, with that in mind, what will a U.S. ETF mean for bitcoin (and later or ether and other digital assets when these are added to the approved U.S. offerings) if and when it is approved? 

Will people own crypto in their 401 (k)s? Will there be a surge of institutional money into bitcoin? Does it matter that the SEC is leaning toward first approving a bitcoin ETF backed not by the underlying bitcoin but by bitcoin futures? And what does that mean for all the spot bitcoin-backed ETF proposals that have been pending approval for what has, for some, been as long as eight years of waiting?

These questions and more, all discussed in this week’s episode of “Money Reimagined.” 

-

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.

-

The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com

-

This episode was produced by Michele Musso, edited by Jonas with announcements by Adam B. Levine.

Our theme song is ‘Shepard’. 

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

“I don't think you're going to replace the stock market with the blockchain just because it's better. I think they can coexist. Take all the benefits that you have from blockchain and figure out a way to adapt it."  

Jaime Rogozinski is the founder and ousted chief of Reddit’s infamous trading community: WallStreetBets. He spent years watching crypto from the sidelines as a die-hard “stonks only” investor. This week on “Opinionated,” he tells Ben, Danny and Anna how he finally came around.

Now, Jaime is playing a leading role in WSBDapp.com, a project he says mixes global equities, smart contracts and borderless finance. The idea is to give investors a crypto token whose value is linked to trades they might not otherwise make. Jaime says it’s an innovative evolution of TradFi and DeFi.

The project is in its early stages, but the gang still has plenty of questions for Jaime. For example: Why would regulators allow tokenized stocks? How do tokenized ETPs differ from ETFs? Is this really going to be a boon for retail investors? 

Listen to this week of “Opinionated” to find out. 

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. 

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

In the second of our “OG edition” episodes, “Money Reimagined” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey sit down with legendary investor, startup mentor, prodigious networker, kite surfer and passionate conservationist Bill Tai. 

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol. 

And as an added bonus, he is joined by Danny Yang, the CEO and cofounder of NFTs-for-charity provider Nfinita, of which Tai is the chairman. According to its website, Nfinita is working to “make giving more sustainable and scalable through NFTs, and to enable any NFT to be charitable.” 

The episode is timed with the launch of OnChain Monkey, a

10,000-part collection of monkey-themed NFTs. Uniquely, the collection was created in a single transaction, dramatically reducing the transaction costs that would have otherwise been incurred by any charity that was looking to issue such NFTs for fundraising purposes. 

In the episode, Tai and Yang explain how the project is looking to tap into the organizing power of communities of interest to drive the development of environmental and social impact projects. Danny also laid out Nfinita’s thinking in a blog post released shortly before this episode. 

But to get this part of the story, the episode starts with Bill Tai’s personal journey. It began in bitcoin way back in 2010, famously captured in a tweet in which asked whether anyone else was experimenting with bitcoin, which he described as a “P2P digital currency” with “fascinating potential.”

But before that, as Tai recounts, it was his experience with the online game Second Life, founded by his friend Philip Rosedale, that led him to discover bitcoin. Money, he explains, is a force that drives the formation of communities, which is why Second Life took off after it created the Linden dollar.

From there it is a decade-long journey to a related idea and Tai’s latest passion: NFTs as a motivator of value to bring like-minded people to form communities around causes they believe in. It is a natural extension of Tai’s work as a conservationist, cultivated particularly in relation to the oceans, where he spends a great deal of his time kite surfing. 

The conversation also delves into Tai’s enviable investment record, having been an early investor in massive success stories such as Zoom, Canva and BitFury, and his reputation as an uber-networker who has a knack for building relationships across ideas and communities. 

In a period in which angst and concern loom heavy in many places, it’s a conservation that generates an infectious positivity and a hopeful view of how to solve the world’s many problems. 

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine.

Our theme song is ‘Shepard’. 

-

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.

-

The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com

-

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

The biggest piece of advice for advisors: “Be conversant, listen, learn and lead.”

Join “On Purpose” host Tyrone Ross as he addresses the recent inflection points changing the Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) space. In today's technology-focused era, zero-point-something bank account yields are no longer the most sound investment vehicles. Investors, especially the up-and-coming younger generation, are bound to ask about decentralized finance, or DeFi, and how it’s possible to achieve 5%, 20% or even 400% returns.

Investors want quality advice for the changing financial ecosystem. What aspects of DeFi do advisors need to be aware of to best support their clients?

How can RIAs stay relevant in the age of phones with one-tap access to information, financial services and more?

This show is produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl.  Our New 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.