Ether Capital Podcast

When is the Merge going to happen? Perhaps one of the most frequently asked questions in crypto since the launch of Ethereum's beacon chain in late 2020.

We caught up with Tim Beiko from the Ethereum Foundation who runs the core developer calls and has his finger on the pulse when it comes to Ethereum's highly-anticipated upgrade to proof of stake. We asked him all about the work being done on the world's leading smart contract platform, timeline of events and what traditional investors can expect post-merge.

00:00 - Introductions
00:50 - Breaking down the Merge: What it is and why it matters
03:15 - Timeline of events related to the Merge
07:30 - Challenges and opportunities discovered while working on the Merge
09:30 - Has the pullback in asset prices affected developer progress on the Merge?
11:10 - What ether issuance post-merge will look like
13:40 - Why should traditional investors care about the Merge?
15:25 - How Ethereum stacks up against other Layer-1 protocols
18:10 - Future upgrades on Ethereum 
20:00 - Will the end user experience change as a result of the Merge?
22:40 - What will happen to miners who have invested in computing hardware?
23:30 - What innovation is Tim most excited about

We caught up with Gordon Liao, Head of Research for Uniswap Labs, to talk about his transition from traditional finance to the nascent ecosystem of decentralized finance (DeFi). Most recently, Gordon worked as a senior economist for the United States Federal Reserve and co-authored a report on stablecoins that was published in January 2022.

00:00 - Introduction
01:15 - Gordon’s career trajectory and how he was first introduced to cryptocurrency
03:30 - Can you have blockchains without tokens?
05:45 - Problems Gordon noticed while working for the Fed 
07:35 - Will traditional finance use open-source infrastructure? 
10:00 - Why Gordon left the Fed to work in decentralized finance
14:30 - Can KYC apply to DeFi?
17:15 - Where do policymakers get hung-up when it comes to crypto regulation? 
18:30 - Gordon's view on stablecoins
23:40 - Why should governments lean into stablecoins? 
25:00 - Gordon's role at Uniswap Labs
29:00 - Long-term vision for the DeFi industry 
31:15 - What needs to happen for traditional finance and decentralized finance to coexist
33:40 - What excites Gordon the most about the industry

In February 2022, we hosted a webinar on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and cryptocurrency with Carolyn Wilkins, external member of the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee and former Sr. Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada. 

Our discussion focused on understanding how CBDCs operate and what makes them different from cryptocurrency. We also talked about/debated if there's a way they can co-exist. 

Ether Capital's CEO Brian Mosoff took part in the event, which was moderated by Bloomberg Senior Editor Michael Regan. This is a special podcast episode that features the full recording of our conversation.

05:50 What differentiates a CBDC from digital banking
07:20 Can CBDCs and cryptocurrency co-exist?
12:30 Looking at stablecoins and how they factor into the equation
15:30 The true meaning of decentralization and whether or not it's achievable 
20:40 Views on how traditional finance will respond to CBDCs
27:05 Price speculation vs. innovation
31:45 Financial inclusion in developing countries
33:30 A whole world outside of Bitcoin 
39:00 Regulators have their work cut out for them
43:00 Q&A

Chris Giancarlo, former chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, joins us to talk about embracing digital transformation. He explains why governments need to update legacy banking infrastructure and create a more open and inclusive financial system.


00:00 Disclaimer
01:04 "Crypto Dad"
05:33 Digital generation and TradFi exclusivity
08:20 Entity-based regulation vs. activity-based regulation
11:00 The highway analogy
13:31 Financial insitutions gathering too much information
16:41 The Empire Strikes Back
18:58 No clear message from Washington
21:07 Countries getting it right
22:38 Achieving financial liberty and protecting individual privacy
26:00 How institutions can compete with an open financial system
28:43 The Fed engaging the private sector
31:22 What Chris Giancarlo would like to see happen

We caught up with U.S. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce to talk about her views on crypto and the challenges American policymakers face when it comes to regulating the US$2.5+ trillion industry

We welcome Ken Kruger, of MOON, a startup focused on making crypto an easy and efficient form of payment. How does it work? Will this onboard more users into the crypto ecosystem? Listen in to find out how this startup is working to changing the game.

Our guest is Justin Drake, a leading researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. Justin is an architect of the Ethereum 2.0 vision. We discuss Ether's store of value thesis and its new monetary economics.

We talk with Som Seif, CEO of Purpose Investments about the recent announcement of the world’s first physically settled Bitcoin ETF.  Som is considered a pioneer in the ETF industry, first through his work building Claymore, which he then sold to Blackrock in 2005 and is now building Purpose, an asset manager with over 10 billion dollars of AUM. We drive into the journey that got us to this historic moment.

On todays episode, our guest is Hugh Karp, Founder of Nexus Mutual - an on-chain insurance alternative for the digital asset world. Nexus Mutual is not your normal insurance company. It's a protocol that lives on Ethereum where the token holders provide the actual coverage. This is a fascinating dive into how blockchains make something like this even possible, so stick around.

Earlier this week, Slack, the popular work messaging web application was offline for hours, and I reached out to Greg Markou, Co-Founder of Chainsafe Systems to hear his thoughts on what happened, and how blockchain technology might one day prevent such major outages. 

For those curious about the Ethereum and blockchain world beyond just the price, this is a look into how the technology might reshape the structure of the internet.