Jupiter Zheng is Partner of Liquid Funds & Research for HashKey Capital — the investment arm of the Hong Kong crypto financial services firm HashKey Group.

In this episode, Zheng explains how the crypto industry is gaining momentum in Asia — particularly in Hong Kong.

Back in September, Hashkey announced it is raising up to $100 million for a new liquid fund with a heavy focus on altcoins.

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Juthica Chou is the head of OTC options trading at Kraken and the former president of LedgerX.

In this episode, Chou explains how crypto's recent rally is being reflected in the options market, and what signals to pay attention to in the weeks ahead.

According to Chou, volatility has returned to the market after months of relatively little activity:

"The market's definitely pricing some big moves. And I always say, like if it can go up fast, it can go down faster."

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Pranav Kanade is a portfolio manager at VanEck.

In this episode, Kanade analyzes some of the trends and opportunities that he sees playing out during the current crypto bear market.

Kanade says that crypto builders should be focusing on building products that help onboard new users into the ecosystem:

The VanEck Ethereum Strategy ETF launched in early October as one of the first ETFs ever to launch based on ether futures.

Kevin Johnson is Coinbase's VP of Institutional Sales and Trading.

In this episode, Johnson shares the details behind Coinbase Prime's new web3 wallet designed to give institutional and enterprise clients secure and direct access to web3, DeFi, and various onchain operations.

As Johnson explains, "It was always in our plans to take the great centralized tools that we had built with those multi user capabilities and eventually bring those on on chain for clients."

The new non-custodial wallet offers features such as storing any tokens, DEX aggregation, intuitive risk controls and customizable workflows — all integrated with Coinbase Prime's battle-tested security measures.

Joesph Kelly is the CEO of Unchained — a bitcoin financial services company that offers services including trading, inheritance solutions, bitcoin-backed loans, and tax-advantaged bitcoin retirement accounts.

In this episode, Kelly explains how his firm managed to become "the last lender standing in the US market for bitcoin-backed loans," and how Unchained has experienced growth despite rising federal interest rates.

Earlier this year, Unchained raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by Valor Equity Partners.

The Block's Weekend Editor Zack Abrams has been covering Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal trial live from the courtroom in New York.

In this episode, Abrams provides a first hand account of what he has witnessed and explains why he thinks SBF's case is more complicated than the general public seems to believe.

Zack's ongoing coverage of the trial can be found here.

OUTLINE:

00:00 Introduction

04:32 Fraud or Failure?

10:23 SBF’s Defense

11:39 Crux of the Case

16:27 Alameda’s Backdoor

19:24 Campaign Funding Violations

20:47 Caroline Ellison

26:56 Collateral Risk

28:34 Total Fraud?

32:54 Effective Altruism

WassieLawyer is a former restructuring lawyer and an active participant in the ongoing conversation surrounding FTX's bankruptcy proceedings.

In this episode, WassieLawyer outlines how the prospects of FTX creditors have improved over the course of the past year, including what to expect in the coming months.

FTX's investment in Anthropic made headlines recently following reports that the company's most recent valuation could be as high as $30 billion.

OUTLINE:

00:00 Introduction

00:39 Anthropic Investment

05:00 FTX Ventures

07:14 The FTX Estate

11:02 Unsecured Creditors Committee

15:26 What’s Next for FTX Bankruptcy

17:20 FTX 2.0

20:20 FTX’s Business Model

22:10 Clawbacks

25:24 Bidding for FTX

28:21 Closing Thoughts

Zane Tackett is the former head of institutional sales at FTX.

In this episode, Tackett recounts his experience working with Sam Bankman-Fried at FTX and explains how the exchange's terms of service blow a hole in SBF's criminal defense.

Although SBF claims he is not guilty of fraud, Tackett says "it's obvious that he knew what he was doing."

OUTLINE:

00:00 Introduction

03:32 FTX's Business Model

06:56 FTX's Balance Sheet

10:06 Michael Lewis: Going Infinite

11:14 The Real SBF

16:02 FTX 2.0

17:14 FTX Estate Asset Recovery

17:50 FTX Hacked Funds

19:06 Crypto’s Capital Markets

20:54 CeFi vs. DeFI

23:07 Effective Altruism

26:04 SBF Trial

32:57 Closing Thoughts

Travis Kling is the Founder & Chief Investment Officer of Ikigai Asset Management — a crypto asset management startup that had a 'large majority' of its assets stuck on FTX when the exchange declared for bankruptcy last year.

In this episode, on the eve of former FTX boss Sam Bankman Fried's criminal trial, Kling recounts his story since last November when FTX imploded and explains why he remains optimistic about the potential for recovery.

OUTLINE:

00:56 - Introduction

03:01 - Ikigai’s $65 Million FTX Disaster

05:10 - FTX Estate’s Balance Sheet

08:01 - FTX 2.0

12:01 - Problems with Binance

15:41 - Rebuilding Trust with Exchanges

18:03 - SBF Trial

19:14 - Closing Thoughts

Michael Cahill is the CEO of Douro Labs, where he oversees the development and acceleration of the Pyth Network — an oracle network for real-time financial market data delivery to smart contract applications.

In this episode, Cahill unpacks the unique advantages of Pyth Network over other oracle providers and explains what obstacles currently stand in the way of replicating the centralized trading experience on-chain.

According to Cahill, DeFi is "very close to feature parity with some of the backend elements of derivatives trading on centralized exchanges — what we haven't yet cracked is the user experience."

Pyth Network was incubated by Jump Trading before going live on Solana mainnet back in August of 2021.