On The Brink with Castle Island

Latest Episodes:

Kinjal Shah (Blockchain Capital) and Manasi Vora (Skynet Labs) on DAOs as a New Investing Paradigm (EP.226) Jun 28, 2021

Show notes

Kinjal Shah of Blockchain Capital and Manasi Vora of Skynet Labs join us to discuss their recently launched investment DAO, KomorebiCollective. We discuss:

1) The motivation behind Komorebi and its mission to fund female and non-binary founders 2) The decision to structure the collective as a DAO 3) The cost, transparency, and speed benefits DAOs provide 4) What use cases DAOs are serving well today and could serve as they mature To learn more about Komorebi, you can visit their website and apply for funding.

Sponsor notes:

Aave is a decentralized, open source, and non-custodial protocol where users can deposits and borrow digital assets, and earn interest on those assets. Head over to aave.com to experience and learn more about DeFi.

Weekly Roundup 06/25/21 (China's Hashrate Migration, holding BTC in your bank, Taleb's bitcoin paper) (EP.225) Jun 25, 2021

Show notes

Matt and Nic are back for another rocky week in the markets. In this episode:

Our thoughts on the Chinese mining situation
Is Sichuan being spared the crackdown?
Why Bitcoin's hashrate may not recover for a while
Why China is cracking down on mining now
How China's ultra-high voltage transmission is affecting mining policy
How is miner selling influencing price?
Our remaining China grey swans
Our theories on the relationship between price and hashrate
The SEC settles another ICO from 2017
Our analysis of the NYDIG/ core banking provider integrations
Why social graph portability is so important
Taleb writes a bad bitcoin paper
Bitcoin still has a GBTC overhang

Content mentioned in the episode:

Nic in Coindesk, Go West, Bitcoin! Unpacking the Great Hashrate Migration
NYDIG/FIS press release
Rebuttals to Taleb's paper on Bitcoin

This episode supported by:

Eventus, the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Its award-winning trade surveillance platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry's leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. Find them at onthebrink.link/eventus

Hunter Horsley (Bitwise) on the State of Crypto Asset Management (EP.224) Jun 21, 2021

Show notes

Hunter Horsley, the co-founder and CEO of Bitwise Asset Management joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

Bitwise's recent $70M Series B fundraise and how he approached building a roster of unique investors
Views on what is driving interest in cryptoasset products
Decentralized Finance and how Bitwise is approaching constructing products to enable exposure to this part of the market
NFTs and how Hunter contextualizes this segment of the market

To learn more about Bitwise visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com. Follow Hunter on Twitter @HHorsley

Sponsor notes:

Aave is a decentralized, open source, and non-custodial protocol where users can deposits and borrow digital assets, and earn interest on those assets. Head over to aave.com to experience and learn more about DeFi.

Weekly Roundup 06/18/21 (Bukele's Bitcoin ambitions, the World Bank spurns El Salvador, DeFi risks) (EP. 223) Jun 18, 2021

Show notes

Nic and Matt return for deals and news of the week. In this episode:

What's the biggest story with Bukele that isn't being covered?
Is Bukele motivated by a sanctions threat from the US?
Will Salvadorians use the Lightning Network?
How Bitcoin elevates heads of state in the popular consciousness
Nic's paper on DeFi protocol risks
The SEC's year-ahead agenda has no mention of Bitcoin
The NY anti-mining bill fails
The World Bank joins the IMF in spurning El Salvador
Is the Salvadorian law a 'forced tender law'?

Content mentioned:

Max Raskin in the WSJ: A Global First: Bitcoin as National Currency

This episode supported by:

Eventus, the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Its award-winning trade surveillance platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry's leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. Find them at onthebrink.link/eventus

Ask Me Anything 2.0 with Matt, Nic, and Ria (EP.222) Jun 14, 2021

Show notes

In our second OTB AMA, we field questions from Brink Nation. In this episode:

What other countries are good candidates to ratify Bitcoin next?
What are the prospects for DeFi on Bitcoin?
Is price to hashrate a viable ratio to use to value bitcoin?
Will other countries follow El Salvador's lead in light of the pushback from the IMF?
Who will win Euro2020?
Are ransomware attacks good because they will get directors to add Bitcoin to corporate balance sheets "just in case"?
Will users eventually hold their bitcoin through banks?
What is missing to make lightning workable?
Why do people allocate energy cost pro rata across bitcoin transactions?
Matt's turkey update
Stablecoin yields as an attractive product for corporate treasuries?
Why doesn't bitcoin just increase the block size?
Our takes on DAOs
What govt action could turn bitcoiners into dissidents?
Our proposed improvements for twitter spaces

Sponsor notes:

Aave is a decentralized, open source, and non-custodial protocol where users can deposits and borrow digital assets, and earn interest on those assets. Head over to aave.com to experience and learn more about DeFi.

Weekly Roundup 06/11/21 (Bitcoinización in LatAm, volcano mining, El Salvador turns orange) (EP.221) Jun 11, 2021

Show notes

Nic and Matt are back and recovered from an insane Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami. In this episode:

Our lost roundup from last week
Our reflections on Bitcoin 2021
Nic reacts to his spaces with President Bukele
El Salvador accepts Bitcoin
The story behind the 25k attendee Twitter space
Does the Salvadorian law change the accounting treatment for Bitcoin in the US?
President Bukele's geothermal
Where else is the Bitcoinización likely to happen?
A new non-aligned movement
The Bitcoin Bloc
MSTR's new bond offering
Basel changes the rules for bank regulatory capital regarding Bitcoin
Liz Warren attacks Bitcoin
The Bitcoin political demographic grows

Content:

Recording of Nic's spaces room with President Bukele (and 25,000 others)

This episode supported by:

Eventus, the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Its award-winning trade surveillance platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry's leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. Find them at onthebrink.link/eventus

Chris Blec (DeFi Watch) on the Pursuit of Transparency in DeFi (EP.220) Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

Chris Blec is a researcher and the founder of DeFi Watch, a project dedicated to identifying points of centralization and risk factors in DeFi, in particular the presence of admin keys. In this episode:

How Chris got interested in DeFi
How he first noticed the risk of admin key usage
The changing nature of admin keys and multisigs
Whether project multisigs reduce dependence on trust
Why worry about Admin keys in the first place?
Have DeFi projects improved their key management and trustlessness over time?
Chris' letter to 0xPolygon
Chris' plans with DeFi Watch
Should Bitcoiners care about DeFi? About admin key failures?
Why transparency is a self-regulatory measure

Sponsor notes:

Copper is transforming how institutional investors engage with digital assets by developing award-winning custody and next-gen trading infrastructure. Headquartered in London, the firm is scaling rapidly across Asia and North America to bring its suite of products to a wider pool of institutional investors. To learn more visit copper.co or reach out on Twitter, @CopperHQ

Jeff Kirt and Ted Rogers on the Story Behind the Greenidge Plant (EP.219) Jun 02, 2021

Show notes

Jeff Kirt and Ted Rogers, CEO and board director of Greenidge Generation LLC respectively, join the show to discuss the Greenidge plant and Bitcoin mining operation in upstate New York. In this episode:

The origins of Greenidge
Why Ted Rogers chose to join the Greenidge board
How Atlas/Greenidge converted their NY plant from coal to natural gas
Ted's retrospective on the Segwit 2x drama in the context of the Crypto Mining Council
How US-based mining has a lower carbon intensity than global miners at large
Why Greenidge decided to offset their CO2 emissions and how they went about procuring them
How natural gas has a much lower carbon intensity than coal
Why banning Bitcoin in NY would actually raise the carbon intensity of Bitcoin
How the energy debate ultimately comes down to the societal merit of Bitcoin
How Greenidge sent 60% of their 2020 generated energy to the grid
How Bitcoin mining has allowed Greenidge to run continuously and better contribute to grid stability
Demystifying concerns about the trout habitat
Has Greenidge fielded inquiries from mining firms looking to leave China?

Matteo Leibowitz and Eric Stone on Uniswap V3 (EP.218) May 31, 2021

Show notes

Matteo Leibowitz of Uniswap and Eric Stone of Flipside Crypto join the show. In this episode we discuss:

Uniswap v3 and how it differs from v2 and other AMMs
Broader implications of Uniswap v3 for DeFi
Uniswap v3 metrics and how the system is being used today
Uniswap treasury and grant program
How Flipside is engaging with Uniswap and other DeFi communities

Follow Teo on Twitter @teo_leibowitz and learn more about Uniswap at Uniswap.org. Follow Eric on Twitter @theericstone and learn more about Flipside Crypto at flipsidecrypto.com.

Sponsor notes: