Stay ConnectedEpicenter brings you in-depth conversations about the technical, economic and social implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Every week, we interview business leaders, engineers academics and entrepreneurs, and bring you a diverse spectrum of opinions and points of view.
Epicenter is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy and Felix Lutsch. Since 2014, our episodes have been downloaded over 8 million times.
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Many within the cryptofinance industry have been patiently waiting for regulatory oversight to deliver the clarity required for institutional adoption. Recent updates by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which issues guidelines for 200 countries and territories, attempts to apply the same rules and regulations required of traditional finance to the world of virtual currencies.
Yaya Fanusie's background as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, and research on the national security implications of cryptocurrencies, provide valuable insight into the necessity of regulation in the space to mitigate the risk of bad actors. Yaya discusses the history and evolution of “Know Your Customer” and where he believes the industry is heading as it faces policymakers who attempt to regulate such rapid technological change.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/324
The blockchain trilemma is the generally accepted concept that it's not possible to scale public and permissionless blockchains without compromising on security, decentralization, or both.
While the industry seems focused on building Layer 2 solutions to scale the transaction capacity of public networks, Algorand believes it has solved the trilemma, offering a network that scales without compromise to security or decentralization.
Silvio Micali, Algorand's Founder and Head of Research, as well as the company's CEO, Steven Kokinos, discuss the project's background, recent protocol upgrades, and how Algorand will create a great ecosystem for developers.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/323
Governance within any community has been a work in progress for humanity's history. The blockchain ecosystem continues to develop and offer an alternative to today's centralized powers. With this, distributed projects and technologies will need to enact clear governance to ensure viable competition with the streamlined decision-making processes present in today's institutions.
The absence of codified governance in Bitcoin may be one of its most significant traits, signaling to the world its predictability due to its inability to change drastically. New projects like Edgeware, however, hope to encode the rules of governance on-chain and ensure a transparent process for stakeholders wishing to participate.
Edgeware is a smart contract platform built on Polkadot's Substrate. Focused on developing community-owned governance tools, Edgeware is a distributed project where participants use the tools themselves to vote, delegate, and fund each other to upgrade the network. While initially developed by Commonwealth Labs, Edgeware at launch will be entirely managed by the community, which holds 90% of the tokens and resulting influence.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/322
Charlie Shrem became fascinated with Bitcoin in 2011 but grew frustrated with the hassle of buying it from the leading exchange at the time, Mt. Gox. To make the process faster and more convenient, Charlie created BitInstant in 2012. BitInstant quickly grew and by 2013 became responsible for processing a third of all Bitcoin transactions. This was with the help of Roger Ver and the Winklevoss twins, who were his seed investors, and Erik Voorhees, who led their marketing efforts.
The success of BitInstant was short-lived. In a time where Bitcoin's primary applications were price speculation and buying things on the Silk Road, Charlie spent time in prison after a lack of customer due-diligence attracted the attention of the law enforcement. Our conversation with Charlie recounts the Bitcoin industry at its beginning, his time in prison, and what he is doing now that he's able to continue his work as a Bitcoin advocate.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/321
With global commerce and finance continuing to digitize, the world’s borders are seemingly becoming more fluid, even as physical walls are built. How does this globalization affect the sovereignty of nation-states and their ability to democratically direct their own economic future?
In a panel moderated by Epicenter host, Sunny Aggarwal, we explore the interpretation of monetary policy from a global context, discuss the morality of impacting other nations, and the potential for new technologies to offer alternatives in a dollar-dominated world. The conversation includes Jae Kwon, CEO of Tendermint; John P Conley, Professor at Vanderbilt University; Steve Randy Waldman, Author of Interfluidity, and Baek Kim, Senior Associate at Hashed.
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/320
Managing crypto-assets can be an anxiety-inducing experience for a lot of people. While it's quite empowering to “be your own bank,” it's also scary for a lot of people who understand the risks associated with self-custody. Although cryptocurrency wallets have made tremendous progress since the days when a full-sync of the blockchain was required, there are still significant hurdles that limit broad adoption.
This conversation on the future of wallets at SF Blockchain Week Epicenter conference includes Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto, David Gold of FIO Protocol, Dan Finlay of MetaMask, and Ouriel Ohayon of ZenGo. They discuss design, app store policies, and the evolution necessary to enable more people to send, receive, and manage their tokens confidently. The panel is moderated by Epicenter host Sebastien Couture.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/319
Much of the digital world now operates in the cloud. A handful of companies are responsible for the massive market, and the centralization makes many people worry about censorship, privacy, and network resilience.
David Vorick’s passion for distributed file storage had him start Sia in 2014. He’s been working fervently ever since to develop a viable competitor to the centralized solutions that are responsible for much of the content on the internet today. David aim’s to create a more private, resilient, and secure alternative to Amazon Web Services while also outperforming it.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/318
Many people find that the crypto-finance space is quite difficult for non-technical people to understand and interact with the technologies. Some projects and people have made tremendous progress in creating tools and interfaces that allow a broader audience to participate, speculate, and learn.
Taylor Monahan started MyEtherWallet as a side project in 2015, only for it to grow into one of the significant pieces of software people used to participate in the 2017 ICO boom. She has since "design-forked" the codebase and created MyCrypto, an open-source tool for generating ether wallets, handling ERC-20 tokens, and interacting with the blockchain with a clean and intuitive design.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/317
We were joined by Luka Mueller, who played a key role in establishing Switzerland as a cryptocurrency center and in laying the legal groundwork for the ICO boom. In 2014, his law firm MME worked with the Ethereum team to set up the Ethereum Foundation and run its public fundraiser. A model that was later copied by countless other projects and led MME to work with many other leading protocols like Cosmos and Tezos.
We also discussed his new project Sygnum, a cryptocurrency-focused bank. Nearly every company that works in the cryptocurrency space has had problems with its banking partner. Legal uncertainty, lack of knowledge, or simple unwillingness to work with cryptocurrency companies has made this a frequent nightmare for companies in this emerging sector. With a presence in both Switzerland and Singapore, Sygnum aims to fill a piece of missing infrastructure in the crypto-ecosystem: a bank that is able to receive, hold and transfer protocol tokens while offering a secure fiat gateway to easily transfer from the old world of finance to the new.
We also discussed Switzerland’s regulatory environment and why it is able to provide more regulatory clarity.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/316
As the crypto ecosystem continues to grow, wallets and exchanges are quickly evolving to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace. Viktor Radchenko, CEO and founder of Trust Wallet, joins us this week to talk about why he created a noncustodial wallet solution, what makes Trust Wallet unique, and how the acquisition by Binance has allowed his team to focus on a long term vision. Viktor helps us understand what it means to be part of the Binance Ecosystem, and what he believes the future holds for wallets, key storage and custody.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/315
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