The Delphi Podcast

By The Delphi PodcastTechnology

The Delphi Podcast episodes

January 16, 2020Tradecraft’s Jake Ryan: The Age of Autonomy
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Jake Ryan, Founder and general partner of Tradecraft Capital and author of an upcoming book on crypto investing. Jake discusses his prediction for the Age of Autonomy, the challenges of predicting where crypto will go, and more.
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Key Points:
Society is at the end of the Age of Information and is headed into what Jake calls the Age of Autonomy.
Competition drives adoption of new technologies.
Automation and human intervention, and centralized and decentralized currencies, will likely always need to coexist.
Quotes
“As we see these technologies converge, we’re going to see orgs & businesses start to build autonomous operations, & businesses that don't have autonomous operations simply won’t be able to compete with those that do bc autonomy is the ultimate competitive advantage.” –Jake Ryan
“Humans do a great job at envisioning the future and they do a really terrible time at timing it. It’s just too complex.” –Jake Ryan
Episode Highlights:
Jake’s book on crypto investing is set to come out in the first quarter of 2021.
He moved from app development into angel investing about 5 years ago, which is what led him to crypto.
Jake calls this the “age of autonomy,” based on theories of short-wave and long-wave economic cycles driven by technological revolutions.
By autonomy, Jake is referring to automation, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, robotics, and now crypto.
Jake sees us as being in the mature phase of the Age of Information.
Jake urges us not to view these changes with judgment, as right or wrong, but simply as fact.
He sees a future intersection of these various technologies, with blockchain as the glue between them.
Automation will not drive out humans if we make more complex and decentralized governance systems, but overall, over decades, human intervention will become less and less required.
The economy needs a currency that will ride the economy through inflation and deflation, and a currency that stores value well over time, and those appear to be mutually exclusive.
Jake believes we won’t go to full decentralization but that we’ll always have both centralized and decentralized currencies.
Resources Mentioned:
Crypto’s Role in the Age of Autonomy - https://hackernoon.com/cryptos-role-in-the-age-of-autonomization-2bf414ceb5d2
Chain Reaction Twitter: https://twitter.com/chainpodcast
Tom Shaughnessy Twitter: https://twitter.com/Shaughnessy119
Tradecraft Capital website: https://www.tradecraft.capital/
Jake Ryan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/TradecraftJake
Book recommendation: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez
Technolog
30 min
January 14, 2020Blockchain Capital’s Spencer Bogart: A Bold Outlook for 2020
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Spencer Bogart, general partner with Blockchain Capital. Spencer discusses the current state of crypto, his predictions for its future, and more.
FYI: We're looking for long term show sponsors. To be considered as a sponsor this show, contact [email protected]
Key Points:
Crypto is becoming increasingly relevant to global macroeconomics.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where in the crypto development arc we are, so some believe it’s growing more slowly than expected and others believe it’s moving faster.
There is an overall shift in crypto from horizontal competition to vertical construction.
Episode Highlights
Blockchain Capital has over 300 million assets and 80 portfolio companies.
Spencer got into crypto after buying some Bitcoin, which led to him getting more and more interested and eventually writing some research pieces on the crypto space.
Bitcoin is just starting to become relevant on a macroeconomic scale.
Political unrest globally could be a driver towards crypto to avoid government regulation and interference.
Technological developments and the best tech are not what establish standards.
Spencer predicts that rather than a new protocol launching and becoming number one, more success and better standards will be established by people building on top of existing protocols.
People will build for the chains that have the most end-users, and those options are Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Now that it has become easier to build up the stack, Spencer predicts we will see more innovative and creative solutions.
Tom thinks given new involvement in crypto from China, Facebook, and other places, that we’re maybe moving slower than expected, but Spencer disagrees.
Spencer points out that asset value is not the only way to assess a crypto’s success, but that you can also look at the transaction value.
Spencer suggests when pitching to a VC, don’t overrepresent what you’re doing.
Be cautious about assuming that what you see online, on crypto Twitter for example, is representative of everything that’s going on in the industry; some of the most knowledgeable and impactful people aren’t on crypto Twitter because they’re too busy building.
Spencer’s long-term view of the industry is that there’s an overall shift from horizontal competition to vertical construction.
Bitcoin probably does not need vertical construction to grow because it is focused on a specific market and specific use cases.
Quotes
“Keep in mind that any kind of venture investor that you’re going to go and talk to, they just see a lot of opportunities, so they’re looking for reasons—as much as they’re looking for reasons to invest in something, they’re also looking for reasons not to invest.” –Spencer Bogart
“It’s only because of fee pressure that we started to get innovations on things like lightning. So the other option would have been to increase the block size to try to keep transaction fees low, but the reality is there’s unbounded demand for cheap block space.” –Spencer Bogart
“We’re seeing a shakeout in terms of trying to establish standards. So I think these standards are trying to basically create the foundation for programmable assets. And standards are almost never set by best tech.” –Spen
46 min
January 09, 2020Yan Liberman, Phil Bonello and David Puell: Tokeneconomics and Valuation
Host Tom Shaughnessy leads a roundtable discussion with Yan Liberman (co-founder of Delphi Digital), Phil Bonello (former Head of Research at Ikigai), and David Puell (Head of Research at Adaptive Capital). They discuss the difficulties of crypto valuation, productive vs. unproductive assets, the differences between some projects, and more.
Key Points
It is very difficult to establish any intrinsic valuation of cryptocurrencies.
Many strategies for short-term growth do not lead to long-term stability or sustainability.
Tracking cryptocurrency growth and valuation has gotten more difficult as more transactions move off-chain.
Episode Highlights
Yan feels the token economy is the high-level understanding of the token structure, how the token accrues value, and how the token interacts within the ecosystem.
Phil categorizes assets as either productive or unproductive.
David thinks about the token economy in a way that includes game theory.
Exchange tokens need to accrue value while also being a usable asset.
The industry still relies heavily on operating in relation to the cost of Bitcoin, so it’s almost impossible to establish the fundamental value of anything.
The “burn model” is not effective to extrapolate an intrinsic value.
The “velocity problem” is that the more use of a currency there is, the less value it holds in the long term. Bitcoin avoids it by having a scarcity model.
Maker tokens work as an incentive, but it requires considerable growth to outpace the burn rate.
Now there is a token that you can use as collateral for synthetic assets, as a way to bootstrap your way to a sustainable value.
It isn’t possible to make future projections without enough historical data of crypto value.
Diversification and differentiation are big problems in crypto.
At Ikigai, Phil didn’t avoid trading assets with low valuation but wanted to approach all trades with a full understanding of the function and model of the assets.
Most agree that Bitcoin halvening is a bullish move.
For Yan, it’s easy to say that a number of projects shouldn’t be in the top ten, but harder to say what should be in the top ten that isn’t.
Resources Mentioned
Chain Reaction Twitter: https://twitter.com/chainpodcast
Tom Shaughnessy Twitter: https://twitter.com/Shaughnessy119
Yan Liberman Twitter: https://twitter.com/YanLiberman
Phil Bonello Twitter: https://twitter.com/philjbonello?lang=en
Phil Bonello’s blog: https://philjbonello.substack.com/
Adaptive Capital Website: https://adaptivecapital.co/
David Puell Twitter: https://twitter.com/kenoshaking?lang=en
Support The Show
Visit
1 hr 9 min
January 06, 2020Decred’s Akin Sawyerr: Governance Reimagined
Host Tom Shaughnessy talks to Akin Sawyerr a Strategy and Governance Lead for Decred. Akin discusses getting involved with the Decred platform, governance, and community-building.
Key Points
Decred is unique for its transparent, token-holder led governance.
A community mindset of searching for the best solution to a problem increases transparency and decreases contention.
Decred wants to build incrementally and develop iteratively in order to maintain a strong community and culture.
Episode Highlights
Africa is the most expensive area to move money. The free, open-source tech isn’t the issue, but the government network.
Anyone in Decred’s network can propose, vote on, and debate ideas and feedback.
There are pitfalls to token-holder governance, which is why Bitcoin doesn’t have it, but Akin sees it as giving the people with economic stake in the network and a stake in governance.
Decred is working towards being a DAO, and using their cryptocurrency Politeia and technology built for Politeia in new implementations and new use cases.
Decred is one of the only cryptocurrencies that hasn’t had a major PR scandal or problem arise.
Decred’s biggest goals looking forward are to launch lightning support and a split-ticketing system.
Akin believes Decred isn’t in the top 10 coins because it requires a bit of a learning and participation curve to get involved.
Decred has the highest voter turnout for governance issues of all cryptos.
Decred has a consistent philosophy about their protocols, down to having a constitution
Resources Mentioned
Delphi Digital's Research
Chain Reaction Twitter
Tom Shaughnessy Twitter
Decred website
Decred chat
Decred Twitter
Akin Sawyerr Twitter
Previous Episodes
Decred’s Co-Founder Jake Yocom-Piatt: Governance-First Crypto Aims to Challenge Bitcoin
Noah Pierau on Blockchain Governance: Decred, Bitcoin, Dash, Ethereum
Support The Show:
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Check out eToro to Create Your Perfect Crypto Portfolio
Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mention
36 min
December 26, 2019IDEX’s Alex Wearn: Scaling A Decentralized Exchange Through Optimized Optimistic Rollups
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Alex Wearn, the co-founder and CEO of IDEX, a decentralized exchange built on Ethereum, to discuss the next version of the exchange and using optimized optimistic rollups to scale the exchange.
Key Points
IDEX tries to combine the design of a centralized exchange and the security of a decentralized exchange.
The “optimized optimistic rollup” takes the most scalable aspects of different transaction settlement methods.
There is a huge potential to bring other applications into the IDEX network to use the O2 rollup design.
Topics Discussed
IDEX 2.0 - UI improvements (faster and more performant) and a more efficient settlement process with rollups instead of settling each transaction one by one (IDEX users paid $5M in gas fees in 2018).
IDEX differs from competitors (Uniswap etc) by having a high performant order book. An on-chain order book is great for integrations, but hard to use when replicating complex trading strategies.
In competing with 0x, IDEX disagrees that trying to have a high performant order book may be too difficult if its decentralized.
How the different types of rollups work to drive scale for Ethereum, and the differences from normal rollups to IDEX's version called optimized optimistic rollups.
Optimized Optimistic rollups can drive much higher throughput vs using traditional rollups.
How IDEX grew to been the most successful DEX and dapp to date, with over 300k users executing five million trades worth over $2 billion.
The use of optimized optimistic rollups beyond IDEX, such as in gaming.
Alex's thoughts on the battle between centralized exchanges (Coinbase, Binance, Bitmex, Delta) vs Decentralized exchanges (IDEX, Uniswap, 0x, etc).
Episode Highlights:
IDEX aims to build a highly performant, yet safe and secure decentralized exchange; they want to create a centralized experience on a decentralized platform.
Improvements in IDEX 2.0 include overall performance improvements from UX and UI developments over the past few years, and back-end improvements to how transactions are settled.
The Merkle root takes data off-chain, hashes it together into a single data point, which is then submitted on-chain.
IDEX is looking at different design proposals including Zero-Knowledge Proofs and the Optimistic rollup.
They could not run IDEX on Optimistic rollups because their transactions were too complex to see a substantial increase in their transaction throughput.
IDEX’s data is only ever published to an off-chain ledger.
They have validators who work to verify that the transactions published off-chain hash up to the same Merkle root that is published on-chain.
O2 rollups are scalable to eventually be available to other applications, but IDEX doesn’t see this as a way to monetize but as a way to give back to the community.
Alex believes customers care more about application performance and fund security than they do about anonymity.
The O2 rollup demo is currently live and can be tested, and they aim to make it fully live during Q1 of 2020.
To help support the show, please hit the subscribe
29 min
December 19, 2019Zaki Manian and Dean Tribble: No Blockchain Is An Island
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Zaki Manian, the Director of Research at Tendermint Inc and Dean Tribble, the CEO of Agoric. On this episode we dive into into how IBC (inter-blockchain communication) will connect blockchains to enable new use cases.
On this episode we discussed a lot of philosophical questions around a multi-chain vs few chain world, chain sovereignty, Agoric's targeting the world's 20M javascript developers for its smart contract platform, the use cases IBC enables across chains, the status of IBC and so much more. The discussion involves how Cosmos plays into IBC, and how eventually IBC will be a part of Cosmos' SDK.
To help support the show, please hit the subscribe button on iTunes so we can keep bringing you episodes like these!
Follow Zaki on Twitter
Follow Dean on Twitter
Follow Tom on Twitter
Resources:
Inter-Blockchain Communication Website
Delphi Digital's Research
Visit Delta Exchange For A $10 Welcome Bonus!
Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast. Tom owns tokens in ETH, BTC, XTZ, STX, SNX, RUNE and sUSD . Lets Talk Bitcoin is a distribution partner for the Chain Reaction Podcast, and our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle and/or the end of the episode.
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Advertisers: To be a sponsor on this podcast, email [email protected]
Potential Guests: If you're interested in appearing on the podcast, email [email protected]

Music Attribution:
Cosmos by From The Dust | https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
59 min
December 17, 2019NEAR’s Alex and Illia: Since 2018 Everything Has Changed
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by NEAR Protocol's co-founders Alex and Illia to discuss the project. We previously had Alex and Illia on in November of 2018 when the podcast was first starting out so on this episode we discuss what has changed since then, the progress the project has made and much more. Specifically we dive into how NEAR plans to attract developers across three key areas, smart contract wars between layer-1's, governance for NEAR, and what to expect from the protocol's coming Mainnet launch.
NEAR is a sharded, developer-friendly, proof-of-stake public blockchain, built by a world-class team that has built some of the world's only sharded databases at scale. The blockchain is built from the ground up to make it easier to build, onboard and scale
To help support the show, please hit the subscribe button on iTunes so we can keep bringing you episodes like these!
Follow Alex on Twitter
Follow Illia on Twitter
Follow Tom on Twitter
Resources:
Our First Episode with NEAR from November, 2018
NEAR's Website
Ric Burton's Tweet
Delphi Digital's Research

Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast. Tom owns tokens in ETH, BTC, XTZ, STX, SNX, RUNE and KNC. Lets Talk Bitcoin is a distribution partner for the Chain Reaction Podcast, and our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle and/or the end of the episode. Delphi Digital is a customer of Digital Assets Data.
-
Advertisers: To be a sponsor on this podcast, email [email protected]
Potential Guests: If you're interested in appearing on the podcast, email [email protected]

Music Attribution:
Cosmos by From The Dust | https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
59 min
December 12, 2019Matic’s Sandeep Nailwal: Leveraging Plasma To Top Other Layer-2 Scaling Projects
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder and COO of Matic Network. On this episode we discuss how Matic is using Plasma and proof-of-stake based sidechains to scale Ethereum, how he thinks the landscape of dozens of layer-2 scaling projects will shake out, building on Matic, Bitcoin's lightning network and so much more. Matic Network's token recently crashed on FUD and while this episode was recorded before the news, its a deep dive into the project itself. The audio came out a little low on this episode, apologies on that.
To help support the show, please hit the subscribe button on iTunes so we can keep bringing you episodes like these!
Follow Sandeep on Twitter
Follow Tom on Twitter
Resources:
Check out eToro to Create Your Perfect Crypto Portfolio
Matic's Website
Delphi Digital's Research
Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast. Tom owns tokens in ETH, BTC, XTZ, STX, SNX and RUNE. Lets Talk Bitcoin is a distribution partner for the Chain Reaction Podcast, and our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle and/or the end of the episode. Delphi Digital is a customer of Digital Assets Data.
-
Advertisers: To be a sponsor on this podcast, email [email protected]
Potential Guests: If you're interested in appearing on the podcast, email [email protected]
-
Music Attribution:
Cosmos by From The Dust | https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
1 hr 1 min
December 10, 2019Luke Martin: The Truth About Technical Analysis and The Bitcoin Thesis
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Luke Martin, an analyst, trader and host of the Coinist podcast. Luke has gained a massive following for his keen ability to spot trends and opportunities early, especially in crypto. On this episode we dive into his story of leaving graduate school for crypto, the merits of technical analysis, the BTC thesis and so much more. Luke is an incredible guy, and this episode is worth the listen.
To help support the show, please hit the subscribe button on iTunes so we can keep bringing you episodes like these!
Follow Luke on Twitter
Follow Tom on Twitter
Support The Show
Visit Delta Exchange For A $10 Welcome Bonus!
Resources:
Coinist Podcast
Delphi Digital's Research
Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast. Tom owns tokens in ETH, BTC, XTZ, STX, SNX and RUNE.
Lets Talk Bitcoin is a distribution partner for the Chain Reaction Podcast, and our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle and/or the end of the episode. These sponsors and advertisements are not an endorsement by the host or Delphi Digital to use the sponsors products or services which may be risky. Products and services mentioned on advertisements may be risky, and are not suitable for all listeners. Sponsors and advertisements and for strictly informational and educational purposes and are not an endorsement.

Sponsor: To be a sponsor on this research podcast, email [email protected]
Potential Guests: If you're interested in appearing on the podcast, email [email protected]
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Music Attribution:
Cosmos by From The Dust | https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
1 hr 3 min
December 05, 2019Helium’s Amir Haleem: The Grand Vision of a Crypto Incentivized Mobile Network
Host Tom Shaughnessy of Delphi Digital is joined by Amir Haleem, the CEO & Co-Founder of Helium. On this episode we discuss how Helium is creating a crypto incentivized, decentralized telecommunications network.
The network is up to 1,600 nodes, and the company raised $15M from top tier funds.
Amir is the CEO & co-founder of Helium. Prior to Helium, Amir served a long career in the videogame industry as CTO at gaming startup Diversion, and member of the original team behind Battlefield 1942 at DICE in Stockholm, Sweden. Outside of work, Amir is a former world champion esports gamer, co-founder of the popular esports community esreality.com, and builds and races 90's Japanese sports cars.
To help support the show, please hit the subscribe button on iTunes so we can keep bringing you episodes like these!
Follow Amir on Twitter
Follow Tom on Twitter
Resources:
Check out eToro to Create Your Perfect Crypto Portfolio
$50 Off A Helium Hotspot
Helium Whitepaper
Multicoin's Helium Post
Delphi Digital's Research
Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast. Tom owns tokens in ETH, BTC, XTZ, STX, SNX and RUNE. Lets Talk Bitcoin is a distribution partner for the Chain Reaction Podcast, and our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle and/or the end of the episode. Delphi Digital is a customer of Digital Assets Data.
-
Advertisers: To be a sponsor on this podcast, email [email protected]
Potential Guests: If you're interested in appearing on the podcast, email [email protected]
-
Music Attribution:
Cosmos by From The Dust | https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
48 min