You don’t throw babies out with bathwater.  You don’t blame money for money laundering.  And you don’t blame digital currencies for the prevalence of cybercrime.

The first ransomware attack occurred in 1989 and was called the AIDS Trojan. It was distributed through floppy discs that were sent to victims via email. It didn't spread too widely in part because not many people had personal computers at that time and the internet was still so nascent.  But for the record, this was 19 years before the birth of bitcoin.

Our guest this week is Anoop Nannra, Blockchain Segment Leader at AWS and former Cyber Security Threat Intelligence Leader at Cisco. We'll be discussing security, cybercrime, and crypto. 

What do parachute pants have to do with a US central bank digital currency (CBDC)? Would a private sector-driven, crypto-based, decentralized financial technology payments and infrastructure platform be able to co-exist with the US Treasury? We dive deep in to the world of CDBCs, private- public partnerships, and yes, MC Hammer and parachute pants. 

Plus we interview Sarah Olsen from JP Morgan about how public-private partnerships could provide the functionality to produce some form of a US CBDC to market much faster. 

This intuitive knowing of life cannot be grasped as a concept; it is known through actual living experience of one's everyday being.

In some ways, the same can be said about DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations. To many, they are frustratingly hard to define and to justify as “corporations.” Yet at the same time, an intuitive force tells us that this is indeed the way of the digital economic future. Better to immerse yourself in it than overly think it. 

But how exactly? Listen in and find out. 

Plus, we speak with Nisa Amoils, Founder and Managing Partner of the new, cutting-edge fund, A100x, who is an exemplar of this paradigm shift where innovations in the blockchain space that are replacing sclerotic, socially flawed systems with more equitable and sustainable models. 

Check out https://openoutcrypto.substack.com for more on this episode.

Wow, the crypto world has changed. 

But do you know what hasn’t really changed in all that time?  Regulatory clarity.

If you took a time machine to every possible bitcoin, blockchain or digital asset conference over the past ten+ years, you would always hear some speaker focusing on the fact that regulators and policymakers are not yet up to speed, and a lot of future innovation will depend on what will happen when governments get involved.

We are quickly approaching the point – actually, perhaps we are past it – when technology innovation and market development in the cryptospace needs traditional no financial regulation at all.  The open-sourced, transparent, and flexible nature of decentralized systems suggest that the efficient functioning of markets is being coded into the protocols themselves.  

For those who just got into crypto trading this year, welcome!  Did you enjoy that 50%+ drop in crypto on May 19? There’s certainly no lack of baptism by bitcoin for anyone who trades and invests in this space. But what’s important is to place the recent correction in context and explain why this time’s recovery is so different. We dive into that, as well as the lessons learned from such drops. 

Plus, we speak with Jump Capital's Peter Johnson about the state of the crypto markets and his Crypto Credit Market Breakdown, a MUST READ for anyone interested in this space

Let's talk about Coinbase and Uniswap. Actually, lets talk about centralized and decentralized exchanges in general. Where is innovation happening? Rumi and Colleen have an in-depth discussion about all of the above. Plus we speak with Illinois State Representative Margaret Croke on how Illinois is helping to enable innovation in the financial technology space. 

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For 300 years, people traded products like gold, oil, and stocks on exchanges using open outcry: swift hand gestures and competing voices shouting “buy” and “sell” in crammed trading pits.

Hosted by Rumi Morales and Colleen Sullivan, OpenOutCryp.to highlights trends in the fast-moving world of digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain.