Digitized

Nimit Sawhney is the CEO of Voatz, one of the leading blockchain-based voting platforms in the United States -- with more than 80,000 votes cast on the Voatz platform across more than 50 elections since 2016. In this episode, Nimit and Derek talk about the current problems that exist with electoral voting – including friction and inefficiency, lack of voter participation, human error – and why the time might be arriving for state and federal elections powered by mobile cameras, biometrics, and blockchain technology. We also discuss how COVID-19 has accelerated the demand to fix a number of fragile systems across the U.S. – including voting, supply chains, and financial infrastructure like the trading of securities. 

Stephen McKeon is a Partner at Collaborative Fund, a SF/NY venture fund investing in blockchain-based financial infrastructure with an eye towards the future of our financial markets. Stephen is also a finance professor at the University of Oregon and one of the sharpest thinkers in the security token space. 

In this conversation, Stephen and Derek dive right in to topics like cryptoasset valuation, security token base layers, decentralized finance – projects like DeFi Money Market, Chainlink, MakerDao, MetaCartel Ventures, OpenLaw’s ‘The Lao’ – and other projects that implicate security tokens and blockchain-based finance. Stephen wears a number of hats across the blockchain space, and he shares a ton of great insights about how he’s evaluating both the security token industry and larger blockchain space today. 

Luis Macias is the CEO at GrainChain, a Texas-based blockchain platform for facilitating contracts, records, payments, financing, and other transactional data for supply chain ecosystems. GrainChain has nearly 1500 active participants on its blockchain supply chain platform – including suppliers, farmers, inventory elevators, and buyers of dry grain in Mexico, Honduras, and the United States. 

In this episode, Luis and Derek talk about the problems that exist today with supply chain management for all unique players during a commodities’ lifecycle. They also discuss the path of automating out human error and mistake by integrating blockchain solutions for tracing and settlement and using adjacent technologies like IoT. Finally, Luis talks about the perfect storm of problems caused by COVID-19 that’s currently disrupting supply chains all across North America.

Derek Edward Schloss is the Director of Strategy at Security Token Academy, the leading educational platform for the security token industry. In this episode, Derek reads his latest published piece -- "Security Tokens and The Formatting Revolution". In the episode, Derek explains that the idea of taking securities and placing them on blockchains can be best understood as a simple formatting revolution that’s three thousand years in the making. Derek walks through the history behind the different formats (oral, written, electronic, blockchains) humans have used to amplify the laws and legal principles for contracts and securities over the last three thousand years -- up through today. 

Bruce Fenton is the CEO at Chainstone Labs and owner of Watchdog Capital – an SEC-registered FINRA broker dealer for the security token industry. In this episode, Bruce and Derek chat through the blockchain and digital securities industry in light of recent COVID-19 events – including the $2T stimulus package recently passed by our U.S. Congress. They also dive into Bruce’s decades-long background in public markets, wealth management, finance and eventually – its intersection with blockchain technology. Bruce shares his thinking on the opportunity for security tokens, ideas to improve our securities rules and regulations to better facilitate blockchain-based securities, and how COVID-19 might speed up the role of blockchain’s influence on our society in the future. 

Dan Doney is the CEO of Securrency, a security token firm focused on enhancing financial infrastructure and interoperability across the world’s asset markets. In this episode, Dan and I talk about COVID-19’s influence on the decentralized finance space. We also cover the mapping of security token technology to ‘DeFi’ in the future, WidsomTree’s strategic investment in Securrency’s $17M Series A earlier this year – and why security tokens may eventually disrupt the ETF model. Finally, Dan and I touch on the implications of the recent COVID-19 pandemic to the security token industry – and whether this helps speed up or slow down the inevitable shift to a tokenized future.

Patrick Byrne is the former CEO of Overstock.com, and a long-time blockchain technology advocate. Patrick has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and Asian students from Dartmouth, a master’s in philosophy in ethics from Cambridge University, and a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University. Patrick has spoken frequently over the years about the role blockchain technology will play in redefining ownership and the exchange of value in our capital markets. 

In this episode, Patrick and Derek continue a conversation from March of 2019 – where they originally discussed Patrick’s “Blockchain Tech Stack for Civilization”. Patrick recaps the original ideas he shared, along with an update on how these different pillars may be shaping up across the blockchain industry in 2020. Patrick and Derek also dive into topics like the role of Coronavirus on the current macro environment, recent rate cuts announced by the Federal Reserve – and blockchain’s role in the future in light of these events.

Marc Boiron is a blockchain attorney and FisherBroyles Partner. FisherBroyles is a cloud-based full service law firm “for the twenty-first century” – with law offices in cities across the United States. Marc’s legal practice includes the intersection of securities laws with blockchain-based digital assets. 
 
In this conversation, Marc and Derek talk through SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s recent ‘Safe Harbor’ proposal, which aims to remedy some of the issues the industry has seen in the application of securities laws to digital assets. The episode kick off walking through a background on the different approaches blockchain networks have taken to bootstrap their networks over the last decade. Marc also evaluates the ‘Safe Harbor’ itself and its proposed provisions. Finally, Marc and Derek work through the various pieces of feedback attorneys and builders in the space have provided in the weeks after the ‘Safe Harbor’ proposal was announced and detailed. 

Igor Telyatnikov is the CEO and Co-Founder at AlphaPoint, a white label platform for cryptoasset exchanges, brokerages, and the tokenization of assets. AlphaPoint’s tools allow teams to quickly and securely launch their own digital asset exchanges using AlphaPoint’s full stack exchange technology -- and also allows projects to create blockchain-based digital assets using AlphaPoint’s “Asset Digitization Software”. 

In this conversation, Igor and Derek talk through the two core arms of AlphaPoint’s technology stack, its partnership with Elevated Returns and Securitize to tokenize $1B in real estate on the Tezos blockchain -- and trade that real estate on the AlphaPoint-powered ER-X exchange -- and finally, how Igor views the evolution of the security token space having built cryptoasset infrastructure used in jurisdictions across the world. 

Gabriel Shapiro is a blockchain attorney and writer focusing his practice on the intersection of securities law, corporate law, and blockchain networks. Shapiro has published a number of pieces on this intersection -- specifically, the tokenization of corporate capital stock, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and sufficiently decentralized blockchain networks. 
 
In this conversation, Gabriel and Derek talk about all three of these areas -- blockchain-enabled public markets, the future of decentralized decision making, and Gabriel’s thesis on embracing securities laws for token-enabled distributed networks.