CoinDesk Podcast Network

Latest Episodes:

BREAKDOWN: The FinCEN Files Show Banks Don’t Actually Care About Stopping Money Laundering Sep 21, 2020

Show notes

The massive leak of suspicious activity reports shows how banks let the government know about likely money laundering, then go right on providing services.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

Today on the Brief:

Stocks down, dollar up on COVID-19 resurgence fears
People’s Bank of China says digital yuan needed to fight USD dominance
140,000 have claimed UNI tokens
Judge stops Trump WeChat ban
Nikola founder resigns

Our main discussion: The FinCEN Files

The FinCEN Files are a leaked cache of suspicious activity reports filed by banks with the U.S .Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The more than 2,000 files, representing $2 trillion in transactions, were leaked to BuzzFeed News more than a year ago. BuzzFeed, in turn, shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who then helped distribute them to 108 publications in 88 countries.

This episode provides an overview of the leaks and explains why they show that, despite lots of PR bluster, banks are happy to file their reports and then keep on banking likely money launderers.

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BREAKDOWN: Lyn Alden’s Latest – Why Currency Devaluation Is Inevitable Sep 20, 2020

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This week’s “Long Reads Sunday” reading is from macro analyst Lyn Alden and focuses on the inflation vs. deflation debate in historical context.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

On this week’s “Long Reads Sunday,” NLW reads macro analyst Lyn Alden’s latest: “A Century of Fiscal and Monetary Policy: Inflation vs Deflation”

The article looks at:

When monetary policy is effective versus when fiscal policy needs to take over
How short-term debt cycles add up to long-term debt cycles that have very different remedies
Why long-term debt cycles inevitably end in default or devaluation
Why the conclusion of the last long-term debt cycle in the U.S. – the 1930s and 1940s – suggests that devaluation is the most likely outcome

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SOB: How Does Kraken's New Crypto Bank Work? Sep 20, 2020

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This week Kraken Financial became the first crypto company to receive a banking charter under Wyoming's Special Purpose Depository Institution statute. On this Speaking of Bitcoin episode, Join CEO David Kinitsky for a look at what it all means and how it'll work with hosts Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Stephanie Murphy.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

In the early days of Bitcoin, there were no rules, or at least none that people understood. The first batch of companies were focused entirely on functionality; Simply making things possible that before crypto had been impossible.

In the aftermath of the collapse of first MTGox and then later TheDAO, it became obvious that rules did apply, or at least would moving forward. But what wasn't very clear was how they'd apply as different regulatory bodies claimed authority in confusing and often conflicting ways.

As law, if not order, came to the industry, much of crypto's first wave of US based exchanges were crushed as they struggled to get legal, a challenging task with different rules and unique compliance burdens for each state and territory they'd operate in. New York famously introduced the Bitlicense, which in the five years since it's introduction has approved just 25 companies to operate in the U.S. financial hub.

On today's show Kraken Financial CEO David Kinitsky joins the discussion of just how much things have changed as Kraken becomes the first crypto company to receive a banking charter under Wyoming's Special Purpose Depository Institution statute. And more importantly, what happens next.

Credits

This episode was edited by Adam B. Levine, with music provided by Jared Rubens.

Episode Art by Doran Erickson on Unsplash

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RESEARCH: The ‘Hot Swap’ Plan to Switch Ethereum to Proof-of-Stake Explained Sep 19, 2020

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The highly-anticipated launch of Ethereum 2.0 is expected to have little to no impact on users and decentralized applications (dapps) currently operating on Ethereum. But in the years after its launch, Ethereum developer Danny Ryan expects the upgrade to radically improve network performance and security.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

There will be what Ryan calls a “precise point of transition,” where at one block the Ethereum blockchain is progressed and secured through the activity of mining and at the next block it is secured through validating. These two systems of block creation and transaction validation are called proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS), respectively.

The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is the technology and multi-year roadmap intended to transition the world’s second largest blockchain by market capitalization from PoW to PoS.

There are several security concerns that still need to be addressed by Ethereum developers to ensure that at this point of transition, there is no possibility for 51 percent attacks, block reorganizations, and other edge cases jeopardizing user funds and network data.

To this end, Liz Steininger, CEO of blockchain security company Least Authority, recommends additional audits of Ethereum 2.0 code in preparation for what developers are calling Phase 1.5 of the upgrade roadmap. However, even with multiple audits on top of the ones already completed for the launch of Ethereum 2.0, Steininger foresees inevitable “hiccups and bumps in the road.”

“[Flaws in code] isn’t necessarily a failure but it’s a learning opportunity for everybody in the industry to see how these things work at such a large scale,” said Steininger. “If we can overcome the bumps in the road that are undoubtedly going to happen during this large transition then I think that shows a kind of resiliency to the greater world of what blockchain and cryptocurrency and the development space is capable of.”

Ryan has high hopes that after the “hot swap” from Eth 1.0 to Eth 2.0, users and dapp developers will begin to see noticeable improvements to transaction efficiency and throughput on the merged network immediately.

“We want to increase the layer one capacity of the [Ethereum] system by approximately 100x. The benefits we hope to bring to developers is more capacity, cheaper transactions and a better environment for users to interact with and build dapps on,” said Ryan.

For more information about Ethereum 2.0, you can download the free research report featuring additional developer commentary about the upgrade on the CoinDesk Research Hub.

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BREAKDOWN: Why the First US Crypto Bank Is a Big Deal Sep 19, 2020

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Kraken became the first crypto exchange to win a U.S. banking license this week. Here’s why that matters.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

On this edition of The Breakdown weekly recap, NLW looks at:

DEXetition – Uniswap’s battle with SushiSwap heats up as the former dropped the UNI governance token in what some likened to a crypto stimulus check
The Fed has no clothes – After another FOMC meeting of “nothing new,” the mirage of Federal Reserve omnipotence is fading
TikTok and WeChat banned from U.S. app stores – Is it just a negotiating technique? Whatever the case, people are not happy
Kraken becomes a bank – What it means now that Kraken has been approved for a Wyoming Special Purpose Depository Institution charter

This week on The Breakdown:

Monday | The Business of Geopolitical Competition

Tuesday | The Decade of the Living Dead: How Zombie Companies Are Robbing Tomorrow’s Economy

Wednesday | Governments vs. Networks: The Battle for the Soul of Finance

Thursday | Monetary Policy Is Finished and Macro Debates Are Boring, Feat. Raoul Pal

Friday | ‘I Didn’t Buy It to Sell It. Ever.’ MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor on His $425M Bitcoin Bet

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BREAKDOWN: 'I Didn't Buy It to Sell It. Ever.' MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor on His $425M Bitcoin Bet Sep 18, 2020

Show notes

The CEO of publicly traded MicroStrategy (MSTR) shares why he started to feel like he was “sitting on a 500-lb block of ice” and how he came to bitcoin as a solution.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

MicroStrategy made waves when it announced in early August it was moving $500,000,000 in treasury reserves out of cash. At least $250 million were to be moved into bitcoin.

Earlier this week, the company announced its final bitcoin purchases totaled $425 million.

In this conversation with NLW, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor explains:

Why he’s always treated the company with a long time horizon
Why the asset inflation rate is the real inflation rate
How he became convinced that bitcoin is the best treasury asset in the world
Why Michael believes some other companies will follow suit, but better do so quick
Why the intensity of maximalists is actually part of the reason he grew conviction around the asset
Why he would buy every bitcoin if he could

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BREAKDOWN: Monetary Policy is Finished and Macro Debates Are Boring, Feat. Raoul Pal Sep 17, 2020

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A wide-ranging conversation about the state of macro, why central banks can’t really do anything and why private markets are leading the future of money.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

Raoul Pal is CEO and co-founder of Real Vision, a platform fundamentally disrupting macroeconomics and financial media.

In this wide-ranging conversation, he and NLW discuss:

Hot takes on the most recent Jerome Powell/Federal Reserve press conference
Why central banks can’t do anything more until they merge with treasury departments
Why stablecoins are disrupting how we think about global reserve assets
Why traditional financial media missed an entire generation of investors
Why all macro debates are boring

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BREAKDOWN: Governments vs. Networks – The Battle for the Soul of Finance Sep 16, 2020

Show notes

Governments have significant discretion over economics and finance today, but decentralized network-driven alternatives threaten that control.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

Today on the Brief:

Kraken is the first crypto exchange to become a U.S. bank
FTC preparing antitrust lawsuit against Facebook
Gold-standard fan Judy Shelton doesn’t have the votes to be confirmed as Federal Reserve governor

Our main discussion: The battle for the soul of finance.

In this episode, NLW looks at the power competition between governments on the one hand and the decentralized network-driven finance alternatives that would reshape that power. Interestingly, in this competition corporations may play a role that benefits both sides at different times and in different ways.

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BREAKDOWN: The Decade of the Living Dead – How Zombie Companies Are Robbing Tomorrow’s Economy Sep 15, 2020

Show notes

The percentage of companies that can’t afford to pay the interest on their debt has reached a new all-time high in the wake of central bank intervention.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

Today on the Brief:

MicroStrategy increases its bitcoin reserves by $175 million
The Oracle-TikTok deal starts to smell fishy
The SEC is investigating claims of fraud involving Nikola Corp.

Our main discussion: The rise of zombie firms.

A zombie firm is a company that can’t afford to service its debt from operating income. These companies are made possible by artificially low interest rates, and they drain resources from the economy.

On today’s episode, NLW explains:

Why there are more zombie companies than ever
The negative impact they have on the economy
How they could drive a new financial crisis

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BREAKDOWN: The Business of Geopolitical Competition Sep 14, 2020

Show notes

As Oracle wins a bid for TikTok U.S., a look at how tech competition, culture competition and currency competition shape the business of geopolitics.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

Today on the Brief:

Crypto exchange volume sees highest month-over-month increase since February 2018
Uniswap overtakes SushiSwap in total value locked
What Coinbase vs. Apple means for the future of decentralized applications

Our main discussion: NLW looks at the business of geopolitical competition, including: