CoinDesk Podcast Network

The top stories and best shows in the blockchain world, delivered daily from the team at CoinDesk.

Latest Episodes:

BREAKDOWN: How Coronavirus Is Accelerating the End of Globalism, Feat. Peter Zeihan Apr 01, 2020

Show notes

“Some countries just aren’t going to emerge from the Coronavirus.”

Peter Zeihan is one of the world’s foremost geopolitical experts. In his new book “Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World,” Zeihan argues that we’re at the end of the largest expansionary period in human history. As America withdraws from global leadership, a totally new (and for most parts of the world, more painful) ‘normal’ will emerge.

On this episode of The Breakdown, Zeihan joins @NLW to discuss why the Coronavirus crisis is rapidly accelerating the end of the era of globalization.

How the American-led global order used the dollar as the tool to keep the world together
Why geopolitics and demography are coinciding to end the era of globalization
Why Covid-19 will spark a massive return of American manufacturing
Why, when it comes to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency “Never before has the “exorbitant privilege” of being the world’s reserve currency felt more exorbitant or more like a privilege.
Why the crisis could spell the end for the Euro
Why China isn’t nearly as well positioned in the post globalization era as many assume
Why the best positioned countries in the coming era are the US, Japan, Argentina, France and Turkey

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BREAKDOWN: ‘If You’re Not Radicalized, You’re Not Paying Attention’ Feat. Nic Carter Mar 31, 2020

Show notes

In this wide-ranging discussion, Castle Island Ventures founding partner and Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter joins @NLW to discuss:

Why corporations weren’t adequately prepared for any serious economic trouble, much less a global pandemic
Why government backstopping the corporations leads to inappropriate risk-taking
How stock buybacks became a boogeyman of the current crisis
Why the crisis is actually four crises in one: health, economic, financial, and geopolitical
How Covid-19 could accelerate the US’ withdrawal from the world and China stepping into the void
Why the response to the handling of Covid-19 could lead some to authoritarianism
How stablecoins are allowing global market exposure to the world’s most in-demand currency: the USD
Why stablecoins and central bank digital currencies look the same but are functionally opposite
Why a ‘naive safe haven’ narrative was never correct for bitcoin
Why bitcoin was designed for exactly this type of moment.

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BREAKDOWN: Bitcoin, Stablecoins, DeFi and Privacy: How COVID-19 Is Changing Key Crypto Narratives Mar 30, 2020

Show notes

On January 28th, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal tweeted “Notable overlap on here between the most alarmist people tweeting about the virus and those who are obsessed with the size of the Fed balance sheet.”

There is no doubt that the bitcoin and crypto community broadly were far earlier in recognizing the potential significance of the Covid-19 crisis than most professional communities. Today , America preps for at least another month of lockdown and social distancing. The markets continue their chaotic swing as investors are simply unable to price in such a once in a lifetime event.

A question for the crypto community becomes: how is this impacting narratives about our own industry?

In this episode, @NLW looks at the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on narratives around:

Bitcoin
Stablecoins
Digital Dollars and Central Bank Digital Currencies
DeFi
Privacy

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LTB!: How MakerDAO's Stablecoin Survived the Crash, Smart Contract Bugs and Full Decentralization Mar 29, 2020

Show notes

In the aftermath of the so-called "Black Thursday" crash from several weeks ago, MakerDAO's "DAI" ethereum backed dollar pegged stablecoin came untethered and was, for a time at least, functionally insolvent. In the aftermath, holders of the MKR token which allows holders to participate in governance decisions opted to do a couple of things, including adding the centralized stablecoin USDC to the list of acceptable collateral, which drew both condemnations mostly around centralized risk being added to the system and praise for making the system more robust against sudden ETH collateral price crashes.

And now most recently, the Maker Foundation which had held some centralized control over the protocol completed their long-planned exit with all authorities now transferred to the holders of MKR tokens, removing both a point of control which had been used as a safety check and a point of risk in that centralized control can be co-opted and used to disrupt a system as we've seen in other examples.

On today's show we're digging into:

What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?
How does decentralized finance differ from traditional banking?
Fractional reserve vs over-collateralized loans
Liberty Dollars’s missing collateral and USDC’s risky name
MakerDAO, DAI dollar-pegged stablecoins and how this DeFi stablecoin actually works
SDAI (Single Collateral DAI) vs. DAI (Multi Collateral DAI)
Smart contract ‘vaults’
Lending money to yourself: 150%, 300%, insurance and auctions
What happened on ‘Black Thursday’ as the price of Ether dropped more than 50%
What happened when transaction fees went through the roof
A bug in the collateral auction smart contract
A surprising crash: as the system became functionally insolvent the price of the dollar pegged stablecoin actually went up.
Oasis.app vaults are transparent, take a look!
Loaning yourself money using your ether (at interest)
How MakerDAO’s approach differs from SALT Lending
The other half of the DAI system: saving vault smart contracts
DAI Saving Rate (DSR) and the new certificate of deposit
The reward for using MKR tokens to administer a good system
Can savings vaults be liquidated?
Smart contract risks, consensus risks, systemic risks and response time risks
Sponsors: eToro.com and Purse.io
What specifically went wrong with the auction smart contracts?
Recapitalizing the system by diluting MKR governance stakeholders
Even with bugs, market mechanisms to fill the solvency hole seemed to work better than government bailout equivalents.
Completing the transition from foundation-overseen to full tokenized governance.
Decentralization transition - A necessary step or a natural one?
Single collateral vs. Multi-collateral
Why would a decentralized stablecoin want to allow a centralized stablecoin for collateral?
External political risks vs. internal technological risks
“Life finds a way” and DeFi’s natural circuit breakers (also Mt.GOX)
Whats the point of putting USDC in to get DAI out?
How does DeFi insurance work?
A modular ecosystem
How DeFi and traditional finance are similar
DeFi vs. 2nd layer protocols

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MICHAEL CASEY: Disruption, Money and a World of Change, Feat. Niall Ferguson Mar 28, 2020

Show notes

"...I think the right lesson to draw from all of this is that a global order needs to be based on a distributed operating system, not on a centralized architecture. And I think that applies not just in the realm of money but also across the board so that there is a greater capacity for local response than we currently have..."

CoinDesk's Michael Casey speaks with author, historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Niall Ferguson about our disrupted world, inevitable crisis and what it could mean for money.

Album Art Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

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BREAKDOWN: From Corporate Socialism to Dying for the Dow: 7 Themes That Defined the Week Mar 27, 2020

Show notes

In this episode of The Breakdown, @NLW reflects on the themes that defined an absolutely wild week in global markets and society.

Those themes include:

Unlimited QE - broad new powers (corporate bond buying anyone?) and an unlimited checkbook for the Fed
Digital Dollars - a surprise inclusion of a digital dollar in an early Stimulus draft shifts the Overton window
Narrative Shift to “Grandma Dies For The Dow” - narrative analysis that suggests that the “just the flu” of two weeks has become “business closures will kill more than COVID”
Stimulus as Corporate Socialism - a huge bailout for businesses explained away by something that Taleb says is decidedly NOT a Black Swan
The Last Break of Institutional Trust - jobless claims were 4x higher than the previous record on the same day the stock market went bull again - trust in leadership is dead
Surveillance - a growing concern with surveillance - such as the new CDC program earmarked in the Stimulus package
Bitcoin difficulty adjustment - as Preston Pysh put it “this thing is so resilient it’s almost laughable”

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BREAKDOWN: How BlackRock Ended Up on Both Sides of the Bailout, Feat. Meltem Demirors Mar 26, 2020

Show notes

The Senate passed $2T in Stimulus. That includes a one time $1,200 check to impacted individuals and….you guessed it, billions and billions for corporate relief. Included in that are hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate bond buying programs. The Federal Reserve has recruited asset management giant BlackRock to administer three of those programs.

Here’s the kicker. As Bloomberg describes it: “under the arrangement [BlackRock] could buy some of its own funds on behalf of the central bank.”

Outrage is running rampant, and to help listeners sort through it, @NLW is joined by Meltem Demirors, Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares. In this conversation, they discuss:

The government mechanics behind the “money printer go brrr” meme
The unfathomable failure of US intelligence in seeing the pandemic coming
The deficit of leadership across the political spectrum
What Blackrock means and why “they’re not even pretending anymore”
Why Twitter memes on their own can’t change the world
Why bitcoin can and should be a gateway and tool for evangelizing more systemic change

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BITCOIN IN AFRICA: Hyperinflation and Zimbabwe's Multi-Currency Reality Mar 26, 2020

Show notes

In this second part of the “Bitcoin in Africa” podcast documentary series, join Anita as she learns about Zimbabwe and the country's multiple currencies. Combining on-the-ground recordings, interviews and thoughtful narration, she paints a picture of why things are how they are, as well as the state of human rights and free speech.

In the first episode we learned about the current living situation of Zimbabweans and the country's political history. Anita helped us understand why things are how they are as well as the state of human rights and free speech. In this episode you'll get to know the multi-currency world, the different forms and usages of money as well as the price fluctuations that Zimbabweans are dealing with day by day. We'll also take a look at the current regulations of cryptocurrencies, the usage of mobile payments and internet connections and the prospects of Bitcoin in Africa.

This podcast special and Anita's trip to Africa would not have been possible without her sponsors and supporters.

ANITA:

I want to thank my sponsors first: Thank you: LocalBitcoins.com a person-to-person bitcoin trading site, Peter McCormack and the whatbitcoindid podcast, Coinfinity and the Card Wallet, SHIFT Cryptosecurity, manufacturer of the hardware wallet BitBox02 and many thanks to several unknown private donors, who sent me Satoshis over the Lightning Network.

This special is edited by CoinDesk’s Podcasts Editor Adam B. Levine and published first on the CoinDesk Podcast Network. Thank you very much for supporting the Bitcoin in Africa series with your work.

Thanks goes also out to stakwork.com – stakwork is a great project that brings bitcoin into the world through earning. One can do microjobs on stakwork, earning Satoshis and cash them out without even having an understanding about the lightning network or bitcoin. I think we need more projects like that to spread the usage of bitcoin around the world.

Thank you also to GoTenna, for donating several GoTenna devices to set up a mesh network in Zimbabwe and to Team Satoshi, the decentralized sports team for supporting my work.

This special is also brought to you by the Let’s Talk Bitcoin Network.

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BREAKDOWN: Why the U.S.' $2 Trillion Stimulus, Unlimited QE Will Expose the Monetary System’s Flaws Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

CoinDesk’s Chief Content Officer Michael Casey and Head of Research Noelle Acheson join for a lively debate about the new $2 trillion stimulus package and era of “unlimited” QE, including:

Whether (and on what time scale) fiscal and monetary stimulus might lead to inflation
Whether the Fed buying corporate bonds amounts to a nationalization of the bond markets
Why the appearance of a ‘digital dollar’ in an earlier stimulus proposal was a huge surprise
How a digital dollar in the form proposed would upset the balance of power between the Fed, commercial banks, and citizens
Why trust in governments and financial institutions is likely to achieve new lows in the wake of COVID-19
Why people are reevaluating the meaning and purpose of money

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BREAKDOWN: Cronyism, Zombie Companies and the True Cost of the Coronavirus, Feat. Morgan Creek's Mark Yusko Mar 24, 2020

Show notes

Mark Yusko is the founder of Morgan Creek Capital Management. In this wide-ranging conversation, he and @NLW discuss:

Why bitcoin has fallen with stocks over the last few weeks
Why price and value are not the same thing
Why stocks have been manipulated
An argument for buy backs being illegal
Why cronyism is not capitalism
Why bailouts and other types of intervention help zombie companies that should perish
A debate about whether the “cure is worse than the disease”
The costs of a 0-risk tolerance
The polarization of health vs. economics
Why there should be a market holiday
Why bitcoin is the last and only free market
Why the big market announcements are always on Sunday
Why we’re headed to debt jubilee
There is a non-zero probability that Trump tries to cancel the election
Why a lack of leadership is the biggest cause for pessimism today

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