Today we’re returning to a theme close to all of our hearts here at BlockSparks, that of empowering women in emergent technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrency. There are still far too few women making their careers in these exciting industries of the future, but there are some brilliant people working hard to redress that balance, and we’re delighted to be joined by one of those today, Susan Maddison, one of the founders of Women in Tech Revolution!

Keep in touch with Witechrev:

Via the website: https://witechrev.com/ 

On Twitter: @womenintechrev

And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook via the Crypto Confidence page, and the official BlockSparks page too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]

And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.

Want to get started buying your first cryptocurrencies? We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer transactions, and Coinbase to buy centrally – these links help support the show.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors.  CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU

Artists, writers and creators have always struggled to find ways to monetise their work effectively, and in an era of ad-funded online clickbait, it has never been more challenging.

Distributed ledger technology is enabling new platforms to democratise that creativity, and share the rewards generated directly and fairly with the writers who create it. As the world becomes more and more aware of the idea that we DO pay for the things we read and watch one way or another, we now have a choice of whether we pay with our eyeballs to view ads, or by consciously interacting with the creator and thanking them in a token economy - and readers can judge for themselves which model creates the meaningful and intelligent work they actually want to enjoy.

We're talking to Rosemary O'Neill, founder of Narrative - Narrative is a new platform where anyone can write and publish, and build their own audiences for their work. It's part of a growing wave of decentralised publication tools which are set to revolutionise the "content" industry as we know it - and about time too.

https://narrative.org is the platform, and you can learn more about the brand by following their corporate feed at https://www.narrative.org/m/narrative_hq

They're on Twitter: @narrative_hq and Rosemary’s personal account is @rhogroupee

Today, Maya Middlemiss meets Alyze Sam and Arnaud Saint-Paul, from GiveNation.

GiveNation unites children everywhere in the world and assists young minds to become philanthropists by means of educational games geared towards a sustainable financial future. Through an enjoyable gaming experience, children are rewarded with cryptocurrency, and they’re positivity impacting our planet.  

Discover more at:

✔️Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheGiveNation

✔️Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGiveNation

✔️Medium: https://medium.com/TheGiveNation

✔️YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClz9RI3oIN8mHYTVi22W3ow

✔️LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/givefoundation

✔️Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/TheGiveNation

✔️Email: [email protected]

And online at: https://GiveNation.World 

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And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook via the Crypto Confidence page, and the official BlockSparks page too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]
And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.
Want to get started buying your first cryptocurrencies? We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer transactions, and Coinbase to buy centrally – these links help support the show.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

It's a term we hear a lot both within traditional financial services and investment, but also in relation to cryptoassets in particular.

We thought it was important to get to the bottom of liquidity and what it means for any currency or commodity, so we're very glad to be joined by Bill Smith of CryptEquities to help us clarify this important concept.

Bill is a serial entrepreneur involved in a diverse range of projects, about which you can learn more here., and here is the link to CryptEquities - where they are bringing liquidity to a variety of cryptoassets via a unique token solution.

And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook via the Crypto Confidence page, and the official BlockSparks page too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]
And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.
Want to get started buying your first cryptocurrencies? We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer transactions, and Coinbase to buy centrally – these links help support the show.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

Today Maya is joined by her colleague Diana Berryman, Head of Social Media at BlockSparks, to talk about a special project: the publication of Beyond The Chain. 

Beyond The Chain is a novel - about liberation, mental health, relationship, memory... and bitcoin. Written first and foremost to tell a story, the book also serves as a valuable primer for those new - like the protagonist - to understanding the basic principles of crypto and blockchain, as a path to personal financial freedom and an alternative way of being.

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And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook via the Crypto Confidence page, and the official BlockSparks page too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]
And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.
Want to get started buying your first cryptocurrencies? We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer transactions, and Coinbase to buy centrally – these links help support the show.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

So it's official: Project Libra has been announced to a waiting world, and we can finally get a look at the worst-kept secret in blockchain... Facebook, and a consortium of corporate partners, are creating Libra Coin.

Their stated aim is to offer fast low cost payments to the millions of unbanked people around the world, but the details are still hazy. To help us try and unpack them, we speak to software developer Jeansy Molanza, whose knowledge of blockchain combines with life experience in the UK and Africa, to offer a unique perspective on what money really means - especially in parts of the world where economic and political uncertainty is a constant backdrop.

We discuss the implications of Project Libra for developed and less-developed nations and the people who live there, and try to extrapolate the broader impact this new development may have on the cryptocurrency world in general... and indeed, the wider world.

Keep up with Jeansy and his excellent work on Twitter https://twitter.com/jeansymolanza

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And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook via the Crypto Confidence page, and the official BlockSparks page too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]
And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.
Want to get started buying your first cryptocurrencies? We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer transactions, and Coinbase to buy centrally – these links help support the show.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

This week we are joined by Raghav "Reggie" Jerath, serial entrepreneur, leadership and management professional, from Gath3r, to talk about different models in use to secure blockchain transactions.

We have talked in the past about the 'proof of work' consensus mechanism used in the Bitcoin blockchain, to process transactions and generate new coins as block rewards, but this is not the only approach. Other blockchains use different methods to secure the same alignment of incentives and ensure that the chain is safe from bad actors, while remaining decentralised and scalable. One of the largest alternative cryptocurrencies is currently embarked on transitioning to proof of stake instead of proof of work - so it's important to understand the difference, and what it means for the future.

Find out more about Gath3r (especially if you're a website owner who wants to explore an alternative to running ads on your site), and keep up with them on Twitter too.

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And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook at Crypto Confidence, and the official BlockSparkspage too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]

And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.

Want to get started buying your first cryptocurrencies? We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer transactions, and Coinbase to buy centrally – these links help support the show.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

Much of the content for this episode was recorded live on the expo floor at the Malta AI and Blockchain Summit. Here are the people we spoke to/about:

Sabine Roiss, CEO Assistant at Salamantex GmbH -The Easy Way for Crypto Pay

Rutger van Bergem, CEO/founder, Catalaxy 

Podcoin -,  download it from your App Store and use the code ‘Crypto’ to kick-start your savings with 300 podcoins

Davin Broadbent from DustAid -  - sweeping up the crypto dust for a wide range of good causes

Yelena Kensborn from Zoegi - with some insights into organic food production and accountability of process

Dr Tiffany Brown, Tiffany Brown Designs - bringing blockchain transparency to the fashion industry and a unique collection

We hope you enjoy this unusual live-recorded episode, which truly celebrates the sheer diversity and creativity of the blockchain and cryptocurrency startup world. All of these interviews are short, so we would love to hear from you who you'd like to learn more about - who should we invite back for a studio conversation? What would you like to ask them?

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And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook at Crypto Confidence, and the official BlockSparkspage too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]

And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.

Want to get started buying your first cryptocurrencies? We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer transactions, and Coinbase to buy centrally – these links help support the show.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

This episode includes an audio blog of the recent post “Help me buy some cryptocurrency!”, which was written *before* the crazy price action of May 2019... but stands by every word of warning about responsible investing, doing your own research, and not getting carried away.

If you have either listened or read and you want to get started buying your first cryptocurrency, here's the link to Coinbase as discussed. This link helps support the show, and fund the creation of educational material like this.

We also return to our much-missed Crypto Alphabet, and have a look at "network effects" - did you know that this is fundamental to the successful functioning of any means of exchange or communication, not just cryptocurrency? But it's something we take for granted, until we have to engineer it in the first place, or understand why it's so important.

Learn more in today's episode.

And if you like what you hear, we’ll be sharing new episodes every fortnight. So please subscribe via your podcast app of choice.

Keep in touch with us on Facebook at Crypto Confidence, and the official BlockSparks page too. Tweet us with your questions, or email [email protected]

And now you can join our NEW community on Facebook! Be one of the founding members, and join in the conversation.

We recommend Local Coin Swap, for your peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions, once you're ready to graduate from Coinbase.

And remember: nothing in this podcast or our related social media, nor anything else published by BlockSparks OU at any location, is intended as financial, investment or trading advice. Everything we share represents our personal opinions, for your information, education, and entertainment only. You should not make any decisions based on anything we share with you, not without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with appropriate professional advisors. CryptoConfidence is all about being smart and informed and making the right choices for YOU.

PODCOIN

We first met Sukhi Jutla briefly in episode 17, where she told us about the Alliance of Independent Authors and her pioneering work publishing a book directly ON the blockchain.

Naturally we were keen to talk to Sukhi again, and this interview took us from her days in the world of corporate banking (followed by a welcome escape), through discovering her entrepreneurial potential, and being appointed to advise the Mayor of London on blockchain technology.

A fascinating conversation, including intriguing perspectives on the role of cryptocurrencies in the developing world as well as the UK economy, as well as the transparency and flow which blockchain-based models of payment can bring to creative people of any kind distributing their work online, from writers to musicians.