Messari Podcast

In 2019's first episode, we take a really interesting dive into Hong Kong's crypto ecosystem with Leo Weese, President of the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong. We talk about how the Hong Kong crypto ecosystem has changed since 2012, what some of the common misconceptions are about crypto in Hong Kong, and what makes this city so unique and well suited for crypto development.

In this week's episode, Tian Li (co-founder, DDEX) talks about the decision by the DDEX team to fork away the 0x protocol and carry on with their own implementation of the protocol, named Hydro. Tian also addressed the decision to remove to 0x token, and what the short term future looks like for DDEX.

In this episode, Circle's Ria Bhutoria talks about her research process (how long it takes, and what the most frustrating parts of the process are), and also goes into her latest report on prediction markets. We talk about what prediction markets are, how they work, the advantages and challenges of a decentralized prediction market, and what usage is like on current platforms.

Decentralization isn't an easy concept to define or understand, so Zcash Foundation Executive Director Josh Cincinnati shares his thoughts on what it means to be decentralized. He also emphasizes the utility of non-profit foundations in the cryptocurrency space, which he thinks can affect a lot of good.

Given the crypto market downturn this quarter, Dan McArdle shares his thoughts on what is now the fourth "crypto recession" for him, and where he thinks things might head in the short to medium term.

Product design is hard. For this week's episode, Taylor’s highlights the sometimes vast difference between intentions and outcome in product design v. user experience. For example, the intention of making the user onboarding process easier can become so streamlined that it ceases to require users to save their private keys. Another example Taylor gives is the practice of saving private keys, or other secret information, to local storage in exchange for intended causes like ease to access, faster signup, account recovery options, etc.

Ending the episode with wise words from Arianna Simpson, who reminds us that price is not all that matters.

In this podcast episode, Katherine explains the implications of the latest SEC order against Etherdelta's founder and its three important takeaways. Then, Simon Taylor, founder of Globa Digital Finance, comes on and talks about setting global standards and a code of conduct for the various actors in the crypto ecosystem.

This week, Katherine is on the grounds at DevCon in Prague and chats with Erik Vorhees (Founder + CEO, Shapeshift) about the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper. Later, Ari Paul (CIO, Blocktower Capital) shares what he is excited about and what he wants to learn more about in the crypto space.

In this week's podcast, Katherine breaks down the latest arbitration case to come out of China's Shenzhen International Court of Arbitration, which determined that bitcoin is protected under China’s current property laws. Additionally, Zack interviews Samson Mow of Blocksteam about sidechains: what they are, what type of sidechain Liquid is, and how Liquid can affect the average crypto investor.

In this week's podcast, Katherine interviews Spencer Bogart (Partner, Blockchain Capital) while in San Francisco and they chat about fund tokenization, benchmarks for crypto fund performance, and Spencer's transition from equity research to crypto venture investing.