CryptoNews Podcast

Latest Episodes:

#358: Amitt Mahajan, Founder of Proof of Play, on Building Viral Games, Web3 Games, Building Community, and Co-creating FarmVille Aug 05, 2024

Show notes

Amitt Mahajan is the Founder of Proof of Play, the creators of Pirate Nation, the fully onchain free-to-play pirate-themed roleplaying game (RPG). Prior to founding Proof of Play, Amitt was the founder and CTO of MyMiniLife (acquired by Zynga), founder and CEO of Toro (acquired by Google), and the co-founder and CTO of Rare Bits, an NFT marketplace launched in 2018 the same week as OpenSea. While at Zynga, he co-created the game FarmVille (300M players, $1B+ in revenue) and served as the CTO of Zynga Japan. Before his entrepreneurial work, Mahajan was an engineer at Epic Games on the Unreal Engine and Gears of War.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Building FarmVille and working at Zynga, a top 3 gaming studio of all time
- The importance of distribution in gaming
- Distribution in FB vs Telegram vs Discord
- Social gaming
- Creating games = giving multiple choices and giving high player agency
- “Finding the fun”
- Building decentralized games and gaming infrastructure
- Crypto is ethical neutral technology
- Importance of streaming in today’s games
- Building community
- Dev cycle speed
Pirate Nation
Website: piratenation.game
X: @PirateNation
Discord: discord.gg/piratenation
Amitt Mahajan
X: @amittm
LinkedIn: Amitt Mahajan
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT.
PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance.

Traders of all experience levels can easily design and customize layouts and widgets to best fit their trading style. PrimeXBT is always offering innovative products and professional trading conditions to all customers.
PrimeXBT is running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the podcast.

After making your first deposit, 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions.
Code: CRYPTONEWS50
This promotion is available for a month after activation. Click the link below:
PrimeXBT x CRYPTONEWS50

#357: Evan Weiss, COO at Alluvial, on Liquid Staking, the ETH ETF, and the Future of DeFi & Staking Aug 01, 2024

Show notes

Evan Weiss, Chief Operating Officer at Alluvial, is a seasoned expert in the crypto industry. Prior to Alluvial, he served as the Business Development Lead for Coinbase Cloud at Coinbase, where played a crucial role in leading business teams for the launch of Coinbase's Wallet-as-a-Service. Prior to this, he served as the Head of Business Operations at Bison Trails, where he successfully managed sales, business operations, and customer success teams. Under Evan's leadership, these teams built the largest staking provider in the industry, overseeing assets staked totaling over $30 billion by November 2021.
Evan is also the founder of the Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA), a nonprofit industry alliance established in 2019. POSA has been a driving force in advocating for forward-thinking public policies to foster innovation in proof-of-stake ecosystems. Evan's work with POSA includes contributions to legal frameworks for staking, industry principles for staking-as-a-service, and fair taxation of staking rewards. His efforts have resulted in the publication of the first legal research addressing staking regulation and tax considerations, particularly in the context of liquid staking in the United States.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- ETH ETF
- What is “liquid staking”
- The difference between staking, liquid staking, and re-staking?
- The future of DeFi
- What is Alluvial and Liquid Collective?
- Future of ETH ecosystem and staking industry
- The current staking narrative for institutions and normies
- What will be the killer consumer crypto app?
Alluvial
Website: alluvial.finance
X: @alluvialfinance
Evan Weiss
X: @evweiss1
LinkedIn: Evan Weiss

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT.
PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance.

#356: Matt Wright, CEO of Gaianet, on The Current and Future State of Decentralized AI, The Ethereum ecosystem, and ETH ETFs Jul 29, 2024

Show notes

As Gaianet's CEO, Matt spearheads the mission to reshape the AI landscape. With his adept leadership and 8 years of experience in community development, developer evangelism, and strategic partnership, Matt is dedicated to driving Gaianet toward a future where AI technologies are transparent, accessible, and beneficial to all – facilitating innovation and progress across industries.
Matt previously served as the Director at Consensys and endeavored to contribute to the evolution of the web (web3) and build the future of community development in the Ethereum ecosystem. With Matt being the leader, Consensys launched a dynamic virtual pre-accelerator program in collaboration with Tachyon, MetaMask, and Linea. Through mentorship, Matt helped numerous promising founders grow their businesses as members of the Consensys community.
During his time at J.P. Morgan, Matt built a developer community around Quorum, an open-source private/permissioned enterprise blockchain platform based on Ethereum. He established a 50+ member global Ambassador program, tripled the size of the community, and garnered substantial support from the enterprise Ethereum ecosystem.
Matt's contributions extended to organizing 150+ hackathons for renowned Fortune 500 companies, including Mastercard, Motorola, ABInBev, RBC, Barclays, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and UBS. Collaborating closely with local tech partners, NGOs, universities, accelerators, and government agencies, Matt facilitated impactful events that embraced startup culture on a global scale.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Ethereum ETF
- The current and future state of decentralized AI
- The technical and philosophical benefits of AI
- Real world applications of decentralized AI
- Navigating the challenges in decentralized AI implementation
- The role of community in decentralized AI ecosystems
- Overcoming centralization in AI
- The future of AI innovation
- The relation of AI and crypto
- What is Gaianet?
- Why do people shit on the Ethereum ecosystem?
- AI agents
Gaianet
Website: www.gaianet.ai
X: @Gaianet_AI
Telegram: t.me/Gaianet_AI
Matt Wright
X: @mateo_ventures
LinkedIn: Matt Wright

#355: Bobby Lee, CEO of Ballet, on Bitcoin Ownership, ETFs, Custody, and Bitcoin Regulations in USA & China Jul 25, 2024

Show notes

Bobby Lee is the Founder and CEO of Ballet, the cryptocurrency company behind the innovative REAL Series Cold Storage. This physical cold storage was launched in 2019 as the world’s first-ever non-electronic cold storage card with multicurrency support that requires zero setup to use. Ballet aims to bring true global adoption to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency by making it easy, safe, and reliable for everyday people to store and manage their digital assets.
Bobby Lee has been a leading entrepreneur and expert in the crypto industry since 2011. He is also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller “The Promise of Bitcoin.” Prior to founding Ballet, Lee was the CEO and co-founder of the first Bitcoin exchange established in China, BTC China (later renamed BTCC), which was acquired by a Hong Kong-based investment firm in January 2018.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Mining and buying Bitcoin back in 2011
- The relation between gold and bitcoin
- Bitcoin ETF
- Bitcoin regulatory landscape in USA and China
- Future of Bitcoin
- What is Ballet? The easiest and most efficient cold storage crypto solution
- BIP38 private key encryption
- Bitcoin ownership and custody
- The importance of self-custody + cold storage
- Trump + JD Vance being pro-crypto
Ballet
Website: www.ballet.com
X: @BalletCrypto
Telegram: t.me/BalletCrypto
Bobby Lee
X: @bobbyclee
LinkedIn: Bobby Lee

#354: Sunil Srivatsa, CEO of Storm Labs, on DeFi, Loss Versus Rebalancing, Yield Farming, Points Programs, and Automated Market Making in Crypto Jul 22, 2024

Show notes

Sunil Srivatsa is the founder and CEO of Storm Labs, the creators of the Cove Protocol, the first onchain portfolio manager.
Previously, Sunil founded Saddle, the premier open-source StableSwap with $2.2B+ in volume, and was a senior software engineer at Uber where he worked on infrastructure security, self-driving cars in the Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), and real-time analytics.
Before Uber, Sunil was an early member of the data engineering team at Square. He is also a founding partner at eGirl Capital. Sunil earned his B.S. in Computer Science with a double major in Finance from Washington University in St. Louis.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Stories from working at Uber
- When company names come verbs … sky is the limit
- What is Storm Labs?
- The importance of onchain portfolio manager
- Current global DeFi landscape
- Automated market makers in crypto
- Loss Versus Rebalancing
- Yield farming, re-staking + points programs
- Tips to deal with slippage
- AI-powered investment tools in crypto
Cove
Website: www.cove.finance
X: @cove_fi
Discord: discord.gg/fvxc4p6gB2
Sunil Srivatsa
X: @devops199fan
LinkedIn: Sunil Srivatsa
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT.
PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance.

#353: Burnt Banksy, CEO of XION, on Chain Abstraction, Mass Adoption, and Burning a Banksy Painting Jul 18, 2024

Show notes

Three years ago, Burnt Banksy’s act of burning a physical Banksy ignited global discourse on NFTs and Web3, exposing the industry's flaws. The story was covered by leading publications including Bloomberg, CoinDesk, GQ, CoinTelegraph, BBC, CBS, and is often cited as the catalyst of the NFT revolution. Now, through the XION blockchain, founder Burnt Banksy leads a mission to democratize Web3 to the masses, making ownership accessible to all by removing unnecessary barriers and complications through chain abstraction.
Burnt Banksy can provide valuable insights into a range of topics, especially as they relate to chain abstraction and crypto abstraction in general—making blockchain technology easier to use for a larger audience. Burnt Banksy can also speak to ecosystem interoperability and related topics of making crypto more adoption-friendly.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- The decision behind burning a Banksy painting
- State of the market — why create another L1?
- Solving UX & fragmentation
- Mass adoption - is it just a pipe dream or can crypto fully go mainstream?
- Long tail crypto thesis
- What is chain abstraction?
- EarnOS with Uber, Baskin Robins, Sunglass Hut, The North Face, etc
- Mass adoption = chain abstraction
- Creating a wallet-less L1 chain
- The power of micropayments
XION
Website: xion.burnt.com
X: @burnt_xion
Discord: discord.gg/burnt
Burnt Banksy
X: @BurntBanksy
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT.
PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance.

#352: Sid Coelho-Prabhu, Senior Director of Product Management for Coinbase Wallet, on The Importance of Self Custody, The Future of Crypto Wallets, and New Coinbase Products Jul 15, 2024

Show notes

Sid Coelho-Prabhu is the Senior Director of Product Management for Coinbase Wallet, the self-custody wallet that serves as a gateway to the onchain ecosystem. He joined Coinbase in 2017 with a goal of helping to build a more open financial system. Prior to joining Coinbase, he was the CEO and co-founder of Savvy Investments, an online investment advisory and management service.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Republican Party to implement crypto in official party platform
- Working at Coinbase
- Creating a trustworthy brand
- The importance of self-custody
- The evolution of crypto wallets
- Building on base
- Coinbase Wallet web app launch
- One-stop destination to explore, manage, and engage with the blockchain
- Coinbase’s Smart Wallet
- Adoption of decentralized applications
- On-chain summer
- Payments in crypto is vastly underrated
Coinbase
Website: www.coinbase.com
X: @coinbase
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Coinbase
Sid Coelho-Prabhu
X: @sid_coelho
LinkedIn: Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu

#351: Will Fan, CEO of NewCampus, on The Future of Education and Integrating Web3 Into Education Jul 11, 2024

Show notes

Will Fan is the CEO and Head of School at NewCampus, a challenger business school designed for emerging markets.
As a partner at Open Campus, a pioneering Web3 foundation, he is deeply involved in financing groundbreaking education and future of work initiatives.
His work is driven by a blend of education, community building, and exploring new industries. Over the past decade, his experiences have spanned from China and the Middle East to Southeast Asia.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Price action’s correlation to attention
- Overview of Open Campus
- Integrating crypto and blockchain education into curriculums
- Bridge between Web3 and education
- Blending nodes of education problems into solutions
- The future of education
- Launching a new L3 on Arbitrum
- Verifying education problems on-chain
- Web3 financing as the catalyst for moving the needle
Open Campus
Website: www.opencampus.xyz
X: @opencampus_xyz
Discord: discord.gg/opencampus
Will Fan
X: @hellowillfan
LinkedIn: Will Fan 🕊️

#350: Matthijs de Vries, CEO of Nuklai, on The Future of Decentralized Data, Crypto, and AI Jul 08, 2024

Show notes

Matthijs de Vries is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for blockchain technology, as well as its role in the future of data and AI. He is currently building the collaborative smart data ecosystem and decentralized data infrastructure provider, Nuklai. With extensive experience in DeFi and Web3, Matthijs is also one of the co-founders of tokenization infrastructure expert, Nexera (fka AllianceBlock), DeFi trading strategy software provider Nuant, and a strategic advisor for the smart wallet project Brillion.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Why the current market sell-off
- Germany and Mt. Gox market implications
- How blockchain and AI work together
- The future of crypto and AI
- AI needing traceability, hence the need for blockchain
- AI agents
- Data monetization
- The problem of fragmented data
- Enterprise data sharing insights
- Successful data collaboration initiatives
- 2024 H2 predictions
Nuklai
Website: www.nukl.ai
X: @NuklaiData
Telegram: t.me/NuklaiOfficial
Matthijs de Vries
X: @MatthijsDeVries
LinkedIn: Matthijs de Vries

#349: Shant Kevonian, CEO of EtherMail, on Web3 Email, The Future of Email, Ethereum, and How to Successfully Launch Tokens Jul 04, 2024

Show notes

Shant Kevonian is the Founder and CEO of EtherMail. He is responsible for setting the company’s strategy, directing its product vision, developing company culture, and managing its agendas. A technical founder with a love of computer programming from a young age, Shant left university early to join the Barcelona startup scene. He joined hospitality startup ByHours as an intern and was promoted to CTO within six months, leading a 20-strong team.
Shant has developed high-performance, proprietary algorithms for several startups in his decade-long career as a CTO. He was a senior technical advisor for the interactive virtual concert platform SoundStage.fm, acquired by Audius in 2022. He is an enthusiastic gamer with a preference for RTS and RPGs, and his interests include dabbling in new technologies, entrepreneurship, and good comedies.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Why the future of email is web3
- The secret sauce of launching a token
- 320 billion emails are sent every day
- EVM compatibility
- Building on Ethereum
- Purpose and tokenomics of $EMT
- GDPR nonsense
- Getting incentivized for your data
- Elite gaming setups
- FOMO in crypto
- The killer use case in crypto will be a consumer app
EtherMail
Website: ethermail.io
X: @ethermail_io
Telegram: t.me/ethermail_official
Shant Kevonian
LinkedIn: Shant Kevonian

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected