CoinDesk Reports

Technologies such as blockchain, cryptocurrency, decentralized finance and artificial intelligence have expanded the professional financial landscape. Advisers serve the financial ecosystem and the world by creating a better understanding of financial concepts, technologies and behaviors. In order to do this, financial advisers must learn more about the digital asset space including not only bitcoin but DeFi, blockchain, stablecoins, crypto investment and much more. 

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

In this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross speaks with Adam Blumberg, Certified Financial Planner and co-founder of Interaxis, a research company that educates financial advisers, investors, businesses and professionals. 

Blumberg discusses the importance of education in the digital asset space and how his company, Interaxis, is changing the financial landscape one adviser at a time. 

Ross and Blumberg announce that OnRamp Invest is sponsoring the Interaxis Academy’s “Cohort” special crypto investment education program coming May 17 and OnRamp is offering 20 seats to available RIAs. 

For more information go to www.onrampinvest.com or on Twitter @onrampinvest.

Interested in being a certified digital asset adviser go directly to www.certifieddigital.org

Adam Blumberg  is a CFP and co-founder of Interaxis, a research, technology company. He is the Board chairman and lead curriculum developer.

Tyrone Ross is the CEO of OnRamp Invest, founder of 401STC, a storytelling consultancy; a graduate of Seton Hall University, and rated one of the top 10 advisers 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!

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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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If you were to describe what crypto represents in its entirety, either to the insiders who are obsessed with it or to the “normies” looking on with wonder from the outside, you might focus on technical issues related to immutability, censorship resistance, smart contracts, decentralized exchanges and so forth. Or you might use the language of finance and “asset classes” to talk about bitcoin as “digital gold” or ether as a commodity token that runs a decentralized network.

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

But to capture the full picture, you’d also need to deal with all the strange, sometimes obscure, sometimes crude, occasionally funny memes that constantly course through Twitter and work their way into the crypto lexicon. 

That’s important, not only because memes are integral to the crypto experience on their own, but because they are also driving some of the shifting ideas around money and finance generally. This, after all, is the era of SPACs, “stonks” and meme shares that rise because Reddit groups like WallStreetBets manage to bring the power and collective will of the mob to markets.

In many respects, that traditional world of finance is only catching up with crypto. Dogecoin, the ultimate meme token, might be hitting headlines now with its latest spectacular price rally as it is following on the heels of the WallStreetBets GameStop phenomenon. But dogecoin really precedes it, having been around since December 2013. You could argue that dogecoin is the original stonk. 

This episode makes the case that if you’re going to try to understand how money is being reimagined in the new era, you need to go beyond the technology and the market dynamics and address the confusing cacophony of memes that drive the narratives around crypto. 

To do that we were joined by two people who’ve inserted themselves into this grand, collective storytelling exercise with more influence than almost anyone. We talk to Nathaniel Whittemore, host of CoinDesk’s “Breakdown” podcast, and Coin Center’s Neeraj Agrawal, to discuss the importance of all this to both the outside world and the strange but fascinating subculture that has formed around the crypto community.

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

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington discuss the future of validator rewards post-merge to proof-of-stake (PoS) and the significance of the Steklo test network launch. 

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

Currently, if you’re staking on Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum’s parallel PoS network, your operations are earning you a roughly 8% annual percentage return (APR). 

But once Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 merge, validators stand to earn more than triple this amount. 

“It looks like around 25% per annum is the expected initial total annual return for [validators]. So on your 32 ether, you’ll be earning about eight ether per year, on average,” said Edgington. 

The reason why is because a merge to Eth 2.0 will mean all transactions and smart-contract operations on Ethereum are processed by validators instead of Ethereum miners. This means validators will begin earning extra rewards from users and decentralized applications (dapps) in the form of transaction fees. 

Prominent Ethereum community members such as Ethereum Foundation’s Tim Beiko and Trenton Van Epps have cautioned miners about planning operations beyond the end of 2021. 

“To all Ethereum miners: Plan conservatively for an end to mining EOY 2021,” said Van Epps in a tweet. 

Testing is ongoing for Ethereum’s merge to PoS. Last Friday, April 30, developers launched the first multi-client test network for this upgrade, dubbed “Steklo.” 

Steklo “was only up for a day. That was pre-planned. It wasn’t supposed to be a test network that would be up and running for weeks a time,” said Kim. 

For the few hours it was functional, Steklo faced a number of issues and errors. 

For the complete commentary on the troubles the network faced and what developers learned from their first major attempt at modelling the merge of Ethereum and Eth 2.0, 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)   

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

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For the first time ever, financial advisers are at a disadvantage. That is because their clients may know more about bitcoin and crypto assets than they do.

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

In such a competitive and novel market, financial advisers must stay informed. With the volatility of bitcoin, financial advisers can look at data for answers, and so they should truly appreciate “Riskalyze” technology, which is a financial risk rate platform that every adviser should use to help their clients.

In this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross speaks with Aaron Klein, the CEO of Riskalyze. Klein, addresses the ‘pressure shift’ against advisors from institutional to client base through crypto currency as an asset class. Riskalyze is a financial risk rate platform that every financial adviser has or should have heard of and would benefit from.

Ross and Klein discuss the future of financial planning and the importance of using such technology to present the pros and cons of crypto investments. Advisers not only need information, but they also need to be their client’s superhero. Financial advisers have the power to make a difference in the future of money and what investments will yield as a result. That is priceless, and financial advisers must employ the newest technology to get the best possible outcomes for their clients.

Aaron Klein is the co-founder and CEO at Riskalyze. He led the company to twice being named one of the world’s top 10 most innovative companies in finance by Fast Company Magazine. Aaron has served as a trustee at Sierra College, and Investment News has honored him as one of the industry’s top 40 Under 40 executives.

Tyrone Ross is the CEO of OnRamp Invest, founder of 401STC, a storytelling consultancy. He is a graduate of Seton Hall University, and was named a Top 10 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!

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

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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.

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

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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.

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In what has become a de facto world tour of crypto hot spots, this week “Money Reimagined” is headed to Nigeria.

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

We talked to two Nigerian entrepreneurs – Yele Bademosi, the CEO of payments app Bundle Africa, and Adia Sowho, a venture builder and operator – about the burgeoning crypto innovation ecosystem in their country. 

Among this entertaining pair’s many insights was the idea the Nigerian Central Bank’s February order that banks shut down crypto companies’ access ended up being a positive for the industry. It spurred even more innovation in the space, inspiring local developers to dream up interesting new decentralized solutions for getting around the banking sector’s gatekeepers.

The idea dovetails with some we’ve heard from other guests – from Democracy Earth’s Santiago Siri, for example, who spoke of how the startup scene in his native Argentina is shaped and driven by the failure of the existing financial system and the efforts by authorities there to constrain people’s financial freedom. 

It shows how the crypto world has fostered a new breed of developer-entrepreneur, one who no longer wants to work to change the existing system but is inspired to build entire new alternatives to it. 

We also learned from Bademosi and Sowho that the narratives the crypto community in the industrialized world tend to embrace about the technology’s value in the developing world are often misplaced. It’s convenient for people in the U.S. to talk up the idea that Nigerian activists were using bitcoin during the anti-government protests last year or that it is being used widely as a remittance and payments vehicle. But our guests point out those use cases aren’t as widespread as believed and that, much like in the U.S, most Nigerians are for now buying bitcoin as a store of value. 

On the other hand, they tell us Nigeria specifically – and Africa generally – is a hotbed of innovation in DeFi. And why not? The opportunities for experimentation and creativity for decentralized finance are arguably much greater in places where the existing financial system is underdeveloped. 

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

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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.

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In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington talk about what caused 70% of validators on Ethereum 2.0 to stop producing blocks on the network and the important takeaways for protocol developers in light of this event. They also discuss the updated roadmap for the Eth 2.0 upgrade as outlined by Vitalik Buterin in a recent presentation. 

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

Last Friday, April 23, founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, gave a presentation at the Scaling Ethereum Summit on the upgrades he expects to come after the network’s transition to a new, environmentally friendly proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. 

“The first set of things here is a lot of security improvements, some economic sustainability improvements and some features,” said Buterin at the event. “The far future is just about really nailing down and improving and having extremely strong guarantees about the security of the system.”

Buterin detailed a number of different upgrades after PoS including sharding, rollups, verifiable delay functions, Ethereum Virtual Machine improvements and more. To Kim, the main takeaway from the presentation was not the individual upgrades and their technicalities, but the sheer breadth of work still to be done on the protocol even after its long-awaited merge with the Eth 2.0 network. 

“When are we going to get to the end here? ... There seems to be a lot more that we’re going to have to continue to talk about when it comes to Ethereum finally reaching its production ready, world computer phase,” said Kim. 

To this, Edgington noted the vision outlined by Buterin was indeed ambitious and big but that he was in full support of such a roadmap. 

“I love this idea that we just keep on growing and evolving. It keeps me engaged. There are lots of very interesting problems to solve,” said Edgington. 

Speaking of a problem, the Ethereum 2.0 network had its first major incident on April 24 after 70% of validators on the network were suddenly unable to produce blocks. Developers quickly identified the root cause of the issue was from a bug in the Eth 2.0 software client, Prym. 

A patch was rolled out to affected validators the same day. The issue still persisted through till Sunday, however, for certain validators who hadn’t upgraded to the latest version of Prysm. 

The important lesson, according to Edgington, is for validators, staking pools and developers to be more proactive about client diversity on Ethereum 2.0. 

“Here’s an example where the network would have been much more robust if each of the four clients had 25% of validators each. In that case, you’d only be missing a quarter of the blocks if this had happened and the network would have been more or less fine,” said Edgington. “But when one client dominates and that client has a problem, it’s really serious for the whole network.”

Catch the full breakdown of how developers are responding to Saturday’s incident by listening to the entire podcast episode of Mapping Out Ethereum 2.0 hosted by 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)   
• ‘What Happens After the Merge’ Presentation by Vitalik Buterin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ggwLccuN5s) 

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

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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.

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It is imperative financial advisers continue to cultivate their command of knowledge within the cryptocurrency world.  Creating an RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) community to facilitate the erudite discussions that knowledgeable investors practice daily is important and will only yield success for those they guide. 

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

In this episode of “On Purpose,” host Tyrone Ross  chats with one of his own OnRamp Invest family: Catlin Cook who is head of community and a new Research Associate at OnRamp Invest.

Cook and the OnRamp Invest family offer financial advisers guidance to continue to build their RIA community and maintain a current level of education within the cryptocurrency world. In this volatile bitcoin age, it has become crucial for advisers to nurture their expertise in bitcoin investment.

As a financial analyst and seasoned consultant within the cryptocurrency world, Cook has made a name for herself by proactively building a Twitter community with the most successful and dynamic leaders in the industry. She starts by providing essential education and even defining key terms that many newbies to the industry overlook, such as “What is a blockchain?” and “What is an NFT?” Just as within any industry, knowledge and pedagogy as well as building from the basics is imperative to understanding the complexities of cryptocurrency and for successful investing.

Adviser skepticism about cryptocurrency is natural. “I think it is basic human nature to be skeptical about things we don’t understand, to reject new things … and we don’t like change,” says Cook. It is extremely important that financial advisers stay up to date with current information but it is also important to be open to all opinions as there is no “one size fits all.” Advisers must tailor their expertise to help clients best invest for what they need.

Cooks’ strategy is to “keep it simple.'' “There is so much to learn in crypto and a vast amount of information to absorb that much of the content is overlooked,” she says.

Listen.  Learn.  LEAD.

OnRamp Invest is a crypto-asset iPaaS (integration platform as a service) solution for financial advisors and investment advisory firms.  

Tyrone Ross is the CEO of OnRamp Invest, founder of 401STC, a storytelling consultancy; is a graduate of Seton Hall University, and the 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!

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

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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.

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

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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.

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image credit: ajr_images/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.