Austin Reid is the global head of revenue and business at FalconX.

In this episode of The Scoop, Reid discusses why we are still at the 'early stages' of institutional adoption of crypto, and the role retail traders have played in the market's current rally.

OUTLINE

00:00 Introduction

04:12 Market Overview

08:06 FalconX Volume

12:03 Crypto Derivatives

15:55 Interest Rates

19:19 Institutional Adoption

22:10 ETF Flows

26:49 Retail Flows

32:51 Market Maturation

35:06 Exchange Improvements

39:25 Closing Thoughts

Haseeb Qureshi is a managing partner at the crypto VC firm Dragonfly.

In this episode of The Scoop, Qureshi explains how the crypto VC landscape has changed during his five years at Dragonfly and why he believes 'points' are a more useful mechanism than airdrops for incentivizing user behavior.

OUTLINE

00:00 Introduction

05:41 Dragonfly Early Days

09:45 Early Crypto VC

13:14 Competing in Layer-1s

26:11 Old Blockchains

29:26 Points

31:47 Airdrop Mechanism Design

37:38 Closing Thoughts

Craig Burel is a partner at Reciprocal Ventures.

In this episode of The Scoop, Burel explains how the recent market rally caused sidelined venture capitalists to return to the crypto industry in earnest.

OUTLINE

00:00 Introduction

07:38 Nuances of Crypto VC

10:05 Crypto Venture Maturation

13:12 Valuations in the Bull

19:15 Solana Conviction

23:15 Navigating Market Cycles

28:17 Consumer Crypto Apps

32:22 Improving Tokenomics

38:00 Closing Thoughts

Mike Belshe is the co-founder and CEO of BitGo.

In this episode of The Scoop, Belshe discusses the growth and challenges of the custody market in the crypto industry, and explains what it will take to make crypto's market structure more robust.

OUTLINE

00:00 BitGo Background

05:15 Institutional Crypto Custodians

10:41 New Market Participants

14:36 Market Structure

24:09 Bullish Catalysts

32:08 Crypto Robustness

41:58 Closing Thoughts

Muneeb Ali is the CEO of Trust Machines and the co-creators of Stacks — a layer-2 that enables smart contracts and decentralized applications to utilize bitcoin for base-layer security.

In this episode of The Scoop, Ali discusses the growth and importance of Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions. He emphasizes the need for BTC capital to be deployed in L2s and the potential for Bitcoin L2s to become a significant category in the crypto industry.

According to Ali, creating more on-chain uses for bitcoin will ultimately make the asset more valuable:

“Bitcoin rails can be upgraded through layer-2s... There can be all sorts of use cases that that are deployed there and BTC the capital can be more productive — it will make bitcoin more valuable.”

This episode of The Scoop explores the technical headwinds and security challenges faced by the crypto industry.

Blockaid co-founder Raz Niv discusses common scams and phishing attacks in the crypto space, and emphasizes the importance of good on-chain hygiene and best practices for engaging with different protocols.

Just last month, Metamask integrated Blockaid-powered security alerts by default across multiple chains.

In this episode of The Scoop, Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder of Solana, explains how a Bonk airdrop caused the Solana Saga mobile phone to sell out and discusses the importance of community and meme culture for bootstrapping crypto networks.

OUTLINE

00:00 Disrupting App Store Duopoly

06:10 Bonk Saga Airdrop

09:19 Memes & Community

14:51 Solana Saga

22:29 Saga Developer Experience

24:19 Solana Ecosystem Entrepreneurs

28:48 Solana's Roadmap

34:31 Real Wold Adoption

Brian Rudick is a senior strategist at GSR.

In this episode of The Scoop, GSR senior strategist Brian Rudick examines the differences between the forces driving the crypto markets and those affecting stocks. He also offers insights into the market dynamics supporting the current rally in the crypto market.

OUTLINE

00:00 Introduction

04:47 Crypto vs. Equities

06:56 Memetics in Crypto

11:26 Macro Factors

14:11 Retail Participation

17:02 Crypto Tailwinds

22:03 Bitcoin Halving

26:03 Closing Thoughts

Reed Werbitt is the CEO of the crypto market-making firm Flowdesk, and Greg Guttas is Flowdesk's Head of OTC.

In this episode, Werbitt and Guttas share their insider perspectives on how the new spot bitcoin ETFs are altering market structures across different facets of the global bitcoin market, and why they believe these products will continue to see inflows for many years to come. 

Earlier this year, Flowdesk raised a $50 million Series B round at a valuation of $250 million.

Luuk Strijers is the Chief Commercial Officer at Deribit.

In this episode, Chaparro and Strijers delve into the technological edge and institutional focus as helped position Deribit as the dominant player in the crypto options space, as well as the surge in options trading volumes driven by ETF excitement and macroeconomic factors.

Deribit recently reached a record $4 billion in client assets on exchange, as well as a new all-time high for the exchange’s 24-hour trading volume of $12.4 billion.