CoinDesk Reports

This week, “Opinionated” co-hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are discussing one of the most interesting topics raised during CoinDesk’s Consensus 2021 virtual conference – bitcoin’s ESG (environmental, social and governance) moment.

This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.

The question of bitcoin’s impact on the environment has been hovering over the industry for years, but recently, it got a real momentum after Elon Musk first sent bitcoin prices surging, then plunging, then going up again, by tweeting about bitcoin’s environmental impact. 

After showing disapproval of bitcoin’s ecological impact, Musk soon returned with a new message: he met with the North American bitcoin miners to get them to adopt greener standards of work. 

Cathie Wood, the founder of Ark Investment Management, believes the move was dictated by some very pragmatic reasons, as she said in a Consensus interview with Nathaniel Whittemore: 

“Elon probably got a few calls from institutions,” Wood said. “I noticed that BlackRock is [Tesla]’s number three shareholder and Larry Fink is the CEO. He is focused on ESG and especially on climate change. I’m sure BlackRock registered some complaints and perhaps there are some very large holders in Europe who are extremely sensitive to this.”

In setting up the Bitcoin Mining Council, some wondered if Musk and his fellow founder-whale Michael Saylor wanted to centralize bitcoin mining. This is hardly possible (for now). However attempts to create various white lists and black lists for bitcoin, depending on how green or dirty, sanctioned or politically clean they are, and so on, might harm bitcoin’s core value: borderless money with no rulers to control it. 

Ben, Anna and Danny discuss these and other topics related to the heavily controversial bitcoin environmental agenda.

Ben Schiller’s Twitter handle is: @btschiller

Anna: @baidakova

Danny: @reaDannyNelson

-

750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.

Image credit: Andy /iStock/Getty Images Plus/ modified by Coindesk

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

Central bank digital currencies have evolved from a loosely formed concept to tangible, real-live projects and an array of models have emerged. 

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

Michael Casey and Sheila Warren host a live CBDC edition of their “Money Reimagined” podcast at Consensus 2021. In this program, they discuss the further development and future direction of CBDCs with Christian Catalini, the chief economist of the Diem Association, and Benedicte Nolens, head of the Bank of International Settlements’ Innovation Hub in Hong Kong. 

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

Image credit: Lucas Alexander/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk

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

In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington discuss a “severe threat” against Ethereum that was recently fixed and disclosed by non-profit organization the Ethereum Foundation. 

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

On Tuesday, May 18, the Ethereum Foundation published a blog post detailing a previously unknown attack vector on Ethereum where certain transactions could overwhelm the network and delay block production from a matter of seconds to minutes. 

“It wasn’t a sort of classic security vulnerability in that nobody was going to get hacked,” said Edgington. “It was more a [Denial of Service] opportunity, a griefing attack. So there was potentially a way that the chain could be slowed down. Blocks would take much longer to produce and process than they ought to.”

According to the blog post, this security vulnerability was first discovered by Ethereum researchers Hubert Ritzdorf and Matthias Egli who shared their findings with members of the Ethereum Foundation through the organization’s bug bounty program on October 4, 2019 . 

While attempts were made to reduce the effects of the attack by the broader Ethereum developer community, it wasn’t until April 15, 2021 that the issue was solved for good as a result of the activation of two Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), EIP 2929 and EIP 2930. 

For the six months that developers were working on a solution to the known threat, it was important to keep work somewhat hidden from the public view. The last thing developers wanted was for a potential attacker to find out about this security vulnerability and take advantage of it before a fix to the network was implemented. 

While this may raise concerns about transparency and centralization, Kim notes that “no code is absolutely perfect.” 

“These kinds of security vulnerabilities are unavoidable,” said Kim. “It’s just a matter of preparing for them by having these centralized players like the Ethereum Foundation to fund bug bounties and to have a known core development team … to keep [things] on the down low until they figure out a fix.” 

To listen to the full commentary about Ethereum development and ongoing progress for Ethereum 2.0, listen to this week’s episode of Mapping Out Eth 2.0. 

Links mentioned in this podcast: 

• What’s New In Eth2 (www.eth2.news)   
• Valid Points (https://www.coindesk.com/newsletter/valid-points)   
• Dodging a bullet: Ethereum State Problems (https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/eth_state_problems/)  

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

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

In this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross  announces his “Big Day'' for the official launch of his consulting company, OnRamp Invest, and the integration of “Riskalyze” a financial risk rate platform for advisers.  Ross talks about the current state of the crypto markets, the expectations from governmental statutes and the guidance for advisers in the present regulatory environment. 

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

Tyrone Ross is the CEO of OnRamp Invest, founder of 401STC, a storytelling consultancy; is a graduate of Seton Hall University, and named a top ten adviser of 2019 set to change the industry by Wealthmanagement.com 

A message from Tyrone:

The greatest number of people living in poverty are children, we need to change that. If you can, get involved and give back to NoKidHungry.org. Love and Light. I appreciate you!

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

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

In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim welcomes special guest Tim Beiko who recently took over as chair of the bi-weekly All Core Developers (ACD) meetings. ACD calls bring together various Ethereum stakeholders to discuss and reach consensus on proposed changes to the Ethereum protocol. They are streamed live on YouTube and generally reach an audience of roughly 10,000 viewers for each call. 

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

For Beiko, the most nerve-racking thing about his newest role as chair of the ACD calls is setting up the YouTube livestream. 

“Setting up the [Open Broadcaster Software] and all that for streaming and getting the audio right to the mic; this stresses me out so much because there was one call where I streamed it to everybody except myself,” Beiko said. 

Before taking over this role from the previous chair, Hudson Jameson, Beiko had been an active participant in these calls for three years as product manager of one of the Ethereum software client teams. 

As background, ACD calls are a long-running tradition in the Ethereum community that started as early as 2015. Aimed at bringing together and coordinating development of the Ethereum protocol, these meetings are a crucial component of the informal governance process that shapes the ongoing evolution of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

These calls, according to Beiko, are also how Ethereum protocol developers provide transparency to the broader community of the network, which includes a growing number of users, decentralized application (dapp) developers and investors. 

“It’s very easy for core developers and folks like myself who are basically paid to be on the calls to spend time and prepare for them,” said Beiko. “But if that’s not your job, if you’re running an application or you’re a journalist, you don’t have five hours per week to spend on protocol development for Ethereum. So I’ve tried to summarize it … [and] find ways to describe to the community what’s happening so that folks can keep tabs on [Ethereum] but don’t need to invest hours.”

One area of continued discussion and debate is around the upcoming change to Ethereum’s fees, as outlined by Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559. 

Beiko is confident the majority of users and dapp developers are in favor of activating EIP 1559 later this July. As for other stakeholders such as miners who have not been as enthusiastic about the upgrade, Beiko explained that there are other incentives he believes will encourage their support for the fee market change when it comes time for activation. 

To hear Beiko’s full remarks on EIP 1559 implementation as well as more on the governance process around the other code changes that will be bundled along with EIP 1559, tune in to this week’s episode of “Mapping Out Eth 2.0.”

Links mentioned in this podcast: 

• What’s New In Eth2 (www.eth2.news)   
• Valid Points (https://www.coindesk.com/newsletter/valid-points)   
• London Network Upgrade Specification (https://github.com/ethereum/eth1.0-specs/blob/master/network-upgrades/mainnet-upgrades/london.md#ecosystem-readiness-checklist) 
• Why EIP 1559? By Tim Beiko (https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/why-1559) 
• Flashbots: Frontrunning the MEV Crisis (https://medium.com/flashbots/frontrunning-the-mev-crisis-40629a613752) 

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

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

The story of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is a tragic reminder of the lasting impact of colonial injustice and how it extends into modern finance.

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

It’s why this episode, on the potential for blockchain technology and digital currencies to empower people in such places, begins with a powerful monologue by Sheila about the shameful, century-long legacy of a slavery-era debt. That debt, imposed by France in punishment of Haiti’s citizens for freeing themselves from their slave masters in a rebellion that founded their independence in 1805, 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. 

We learn from guest Jerry Tardieu, a Haitian author, entrepreneur, and politician who represents Petion-ville in the Chamber of Deputies, of how that debt legacy and the dependence on aid that came with it, has challenged Haiti’s capacity to strike its own economic path. He calls for technologies and policies that boost access to investment capital rather than aid. 

We also hear from Daniele Jean-Pierre, the co-founder and COO of Zimbali networks, which delivers smart ledger solutions for the decentralized economy, on the kinds of solutions that entrepreneurs like her are developing to meet that call to action. 

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

-

Image credit: Heather Suggitt/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk

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” 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 ShapeShyft, 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. 

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

Image credit: Ismagilov/iStock/Getty Images Plus

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” 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.

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

Image credit:Whatawin/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by CoinDesk

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

With CoinDesk’s Consensus just a week away, we decided that this week’s Money Reimagined episode should focus on the big macro and geopolitical themes that will be its hallmark. 

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

Highlights of that landmark event include Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s perspective on the future of money, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio’s thesis on the end of the dollar’s dominance and a discussion/debate on the inflation outlook featuring former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal and CoinDesk’s Noelle Acheson. Attendees will be asked to contemplate where the global economy is headed in an age of monetary transformation and what that means for the power structures of the world as we know it. 

As a prelude, we invited Bruno Macaes, a Portuguese politician, author and influential thinker on geopolitical trends, and Tomicah Tillemann, the Director of the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative at the New America think tank, to give us their take on these matters. 

Some of the scenarios we discussed are challenging. They paint a picture of mass disruption of the global economic order. But both our guests had a somewhat contrarian take to a common view, held by many observers of geopolitical trends, that forces of technological change and economic stress will conspire to bring to an end to the era of U.S. financial, economic and political hegemony.

In different ways, Macaes and Tillemann both argued that the U.S., if it plays its cards right, could turn this current moment of economic uncertainty to its advantage and sustain leadership of the global economy. To do so, they said, it must embrace the principles of open systems and open society that lie at the heart of the crypto ethos – and which, in theory at least, are ingrained in what are widely considered “American values.” 

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. 

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

Image credit: Eric Prouzet/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk

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

In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington discuss the security and running costs of CoinDesk’s Ethereum 2.0 staking operations with special guest, CoinDesk Director of Engineering Spencer Beggs. They also explain the main features of Eth 2.0’s first major backwards-incompatible upgrade, Altair, which is tentatively scheduled for release in July. 

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

In February, CoinDesk activated an Eth 2.0 validator, nicknamed Zelda, by staking 32 ETH, worth roughly $52,000 at the time, on Ethereum’s parallel proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain network. 

Since then, Zelda has been participating in network consensus by helping produce and validate blocks. In return, Zelda’s operations have earned CoinDesk a total of 0.62 ETH over the past three months, worth about $2,600 at time of writing. 

Unlike other validator set-ups, Beggs explained that CoinDesk’s staking operations don’t require any hardware. 

“Our Eth 2.0 validator is set-up in cloud computing so we’re not running our validator locally. We’re running it inside of our multi-tenant environment,” Beggs said. “This produces some challenges regarding the security infrastructure setup because we’re just not able to … unplug it or log into it. We have to account for many users being able to access the same environment that our validator is running.”

On the flip side, one of the main benefits to running Zelda on the cloud is its accessibility to a remote workforce. Due to the restrictions and concerns caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, most offices, including CoinDesk’s in New York City, were forced to temporarily close. In lieu of a physical space, Beggs turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a safe alternative to host Zelda. 

Beggs is presently looking into the costs associated with running an Eth 2.0 validator on the cloud. 

“The server itself, just running it, we know costs about $200 a month thereabouts, but there’s network charges in and out. So that’s what we’re waiting to learn ... because that can be a lot of data or a little data depending on how the network is running. So it’ll be interesting to see how that’s actually playing out,” said Beggs. 

Looking ahead to the future of Zelda and all Eth 2.0 validators, Edgington noted that a mandatory software upgrade was in the works by protocol developers. 

“It’s time to take off the training wheels,” said Edgington. “We’ve still got some stabilizers on [Eth 2.0] but eventually we’ll be able to put in the full crypto economically correct amounts for these penalties and slashing penalties. So it’s a good sign that we’re moving in the right direction.” 

For the entire explanation of what Eth 2.0 validators can expect to change about the network after the Altair upgrade, listen to the full podcast episode with Edgington and Kim. 

Links mentioned in this podcast: 

• What’s New In Eth2 (www.eth2.news)   
• Valid Points (https://www.coindesk.com/newsletter/valid-points)   

-

InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io.

-

The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.

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