Centralized, custodial, opaque, and laden with risk. This describes some of the crypto lending outfits currently teetering on the brink of insolvency. By contrast, most DeFi protocols, which automatically connect willing market participants peer to peer using smart contracts, have continued to operate smoothly through the crisis, though they have seen their assets (known as total value locked or TVL) and user activity drop quite precipitously. As Andrew and Alex discuss on this week's podcast, DeFi will survive this crisis, but centralized crypto banks and other shadow lenders may not.

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew discuss the efforts of Sam Bankman Fried, or SBF, who has swooped in to stabilize the industry, ask whether its ok that all these firms fail and ponder the question of what the industry will look like when this rout is over.

In honor of DeFi Decoded joining Tik Tok, we bring you this special Gen-Z titled episode (clearly written by Alex, an old millennial, aka Boomer, hence the cringe). Check us out on Tik Tok at @defidecoded. On this week's episode Alex and Andrew talk about the recent weakness in crypto markets and try to untangle how much of it is caused by the general weakness in financial markets and how much of it is a self-inflicted wound unique to crypto. Specifically, they discuss Celsius, the crypto lending platform, and their decision to gate withdrawals until they've shored up their capital and how that might be affecting investor confidence in the ecosystem. They also talk some bear market predictions, why the best projects get built when nobody is looking and where to find 'value plays' in a down market.

On this week's DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex sit down with Tim Copeland, News Editor at The Block, one of the industry's leading news outlets. In this wide-ranging chat, Tim talks about how his experience reading and synthesizing dense philosophy books helps him do the same for crypto white papers and other esoteric ideas. He also shares his thoughts on the upcoming ETH merge, the growing pre-eminence of staking over proof of work mining, how in a bear market, projects will thrive (or die) based on their treasury management, and why he wants to help people find signal in the crypto noise. Tune in!

On this week's episode, Alex sits down with Eric Turner, VP of Market Intelligence at Messari. Eric describes Messari's role as the leading provider of market intelligence for crypto and why in an ocean of data and content, it's the context, insight and analysis that matters. "Separating the signal from the noise is what we do," Eric says. Alex and Eric then talk about the future of crypto, why Eric thinks DeFi is still underrated as the financial layer for the Web3 economy, and why he believes the first $1 trillion protocol will be a DeFi project.

On today's DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew sit down with Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra. Bill's a seasoned crypto entrepreneur and industry leader who has been building businesses in this industry for the better part of a decade. With Abra, Bill has created one of the most popular consumer-facing crypto applications in the world. Bill shares his perspective on the state of global macro, explains how the market may have done the Fed's job for it, and describes his vision for an economically sustainable algorithmic stablecoin. Earlier in the show, Alex and Andrew talk about how UST's collapse has unwound a lot of DeFi TVL and how builders can create more economically sustainable models for growth. You won't want to miss it!

On Today's episode, Alex and Andrew sit down with Rodney Yesep, partner at Hack VC. Hack VC is a venture capital firm that invests in the cryptocurrency, fintech, and marketplaces sectors. Hack VC is a crypto native investment firm that specializes in identifying early-stage companies to invest in. Rodney talks about the strategy of Hack VC and how they identify opportunities and early-stage companies to invest in. Andrew and Rodney chat about the recent crash in crypto prices, with a particular focus on the Terra Luna/UST collapse last week. Rodney also talks about some of the opportunities he's seeing in the space and emerging areas that crypto investors should look out for. This is a great listen for crypto investors looking to better understand how one of the most sophisticated crypto investors in the world identifies opportunities and invests.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dive into the recent collapse of UST, which failed to hold its value to the US Dollar (the "de-pegging") and discuss the knock-on effects in the rest of the crypto market. Andrew talks about how stablecoins are like the Wildcat Banking days of yore. Alex draws an analogy to the Panic of 1907, where J.Pierpont Morgan (The man, not the company) swooped in to stabilise the financial system, and today, where influential crypto moguls are trying to architect their own bail out of UST. Then the two muse on what the long-term ramifications will be for the market, stablecoins, crypto policy and more.

On today's episode Alex and Andrew dig into prediction markets and focus in the recent success of SX Network, creator of the world's largest blockchain prediction market, and the most popular decentralized prediction market application, SX.bet. SX Bet has processed $175 million in trades across ~900,000 bets since its launch. With over $100 million of these trades taking place in the last six months, SX.Bet is the largest blockchain-based prediction market in the world. SX just closed a $9.5 Million funding round to fuel the next stage of its growth as a fully-fledged blockchain for prediction market applications.

On Today's episode, Alex and Andrew sit down with Maxim Galash, CEO of Coinchange. Coinchange is a fintech company providing simple and frictionless access to DeFi for institutional and retail investors. Coinchange currently has over 20 institutional clients using their services for treasury management, and has ambitious plans to roll out to other customers and markets. Max talks about the origins of Coinchange and how he identified an opportunity to simplify and democratize the complex but lucrative DeFi industry. He explains why it's important for DeFi's long term success that it be an equal opportunity market, not one where Wall Street and industry insiders exploit all the best opportunities. Max tells us about the process of becoming a regulated DeFi provider, why he thinks "RegDeFi" is the place to be, and how he plans to rapidly scale his model. This is a great listen for traditional finance and DeFi folks alike who want to better understand the convergence of retail fintech, traditional finance and DeFi, told through the story of one start-up.