On The Brink with Castle Island

Latest Episodes:

David Vorick (Nebulous) on the Maturation of Decentralized Cloud Storage (EP.189) Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

David Vorick, the cofounder and CEO of Nebulous, the firm developing the Sia network, joins the show once again to talk about the growth of decentralized cloud storage.

In this episode:

Skynet reaches its 1 year anniversary
Dweb versus Web3
Current capacity and utilization of the Sia network
Where Sia stacks up in terms of the decentralized storage networks by usage
How the internet ended up massively siloed
Why data portability and thin internet applications are so important
Current breakout applications of decentralized storage
New models for authentication for web apps
How the dweb could return the internet to its 90s-era topology
The current state of property rights on the internet
The intersection between Handshake and Sia

Weekly Roundup 03/05/21 (GBTC discounted, Private Blockchains are Back, the Last Cycle?) (EP.188) Mar 05, 2021

Show notes

Matt and Nic are back. In this episode:

More cured meats drama
The Singapore sovereign wealth fund invests in Anchorage
Will they or wont they - Goldman edition
Bitcoin completes Paypal's original vision
Schwab looks to add support for crypto
Kings of Leon NFT
Are NFTs the first truly mainstream application of blockchains?
Are today's centralized public blockchains just a return of private blockchains?
Citi releases the case for bitcoin
GBTC trades at a steep discount to NAV and what it means
Is the GBTC arbitrage trade over?
Should startups hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets?
How does 2021 feel compared to 2018?
Are we likely to see another 70%+ drawdown?

Content mentioned in this episode:

Bloomberg's Crypto Outlook, Mike McGlone
Understanding Bitcoin, Jurrien Timmer
Bitcoin at the Tipping Point, City GPS

This episode is brought to you by Sovryn, DeFi on Bitcoin.

Brian Flynn (Rabbit Hole) on NFTs and DeFi Customer Acquisition (EP.187) Mar 01, 2021

Show notes

Brian Flynn, the founder and CEO of Rabbit Hole, a platform for driving customer acquisition for decentralized finance protocols joins the show. In this episide we discuss:

Brian's path to cryptoassets and the spark that led him to founding Rabbit Hole
Views on NFTs and the use cases that we will see in the coming years
Thoughts more broadly on the categories of decentralized finance that are the most enduring and likely to capture value
How customer acquisition works now in DeFi and where Rabbit Hole is solving problems

To learn more about Rabbit Hole visit their website and follow Brian on Twitter @Flynnjamm

Weekly Roundup 02/26/21 (Bitcoin vs Fedwire, ETF prospects, Is the Tether Saga Over?) (EP.186) Feb 26, 2021

Show notes

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

Is Bitcoin more reliable than Fedwire?
Are stablecoins already superior to legacy infrastructure?
Tether-Tron transactions exceed Tether-Ethereum
The social utility of trading wholesale energy
One chapter in the Tether saga closes
Is the Tether story over?
The ultimate takeaway from the Tether saga
Square buys more Bitcoin
Nic evangelizes bitcoin to his hairdresser
A bitcoiner joins the Federal Reserve
How big will a Bitcoin ETF be on approval?
Why exchanges are prudent to delist BCH and BSV

Tieshun Roquerre (Namebase) on the Prospects for Decentralized DNS (EP.185) Feb 25, 2021

Show notes

Namebase founder and CEO Tieshun Roquerre joins us for a discussion of Handshake, decentralized DNS, and issues with the current system of domains. In this episode:

The core technical problem with DNS today
Why a blockchain for a decentralized DNS system makes sense
How Satoshi anticipated blockchain-based DNS with BitDNS
Could a global PoW blockchain system accommodate all of the world's domains?
How Handshake learned from Namecoin, ENS, and other attempts from blockchain based DNS and alternative root zones
The distinction between ENS and Handshake
Handshake's origin and launch – and how it ended up with such diffuse governance
Where the nexuses of control are in the Handshake ecosystem
How Handshake PoW security works
The merits of embracing ASICs
How the distribution of domains works
What you can actually do with handshake domains
The growing interoperability between handshake and decentralized storage like Sia

Andy Edstrom on Bitcoin Adoption in the RIA Channel (EP.184) Feb 23, 2021

Show notes

Andy Edstrom, a financial advisor and Head of Institutional at Swan Bitcoin joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

Andy's new book Why Buy Bitcoin and why he embarked on writing a book about Bitcoin
His path to understanding Bitcoin through the lens of an RIA
His views on the prospects of a new Bretton Woods or Plaza Accord style arrangement in the coming years
Prospects for an exchange-traded Bitcoin fund in the United States
Bitcoin as a corporate treasury asset and the outlook for more MicroStrategy style moves

To learn more about Andy visit his website, check out his book or follow him on Twitter at @edstromandrew

Brannin McBee (Core Weave) on Greening the Grid, the Texas Meltdown, and Bitcoin Mining (EP.183) Feb 22, 2021

Show notes

Core Weave chief strategy officer and former energy trader Brannin McBee joins the show to talk about the grid meltdown in Texas and the impact of renewables on the grid. In this episode:

Brannin's history in energy trading and energy analytics
How his firm survived a 95% collapse in the price of natural gas – and how that presaged his work in the crypto space
How Brannin's firm Core Weave alternates between mining ETH and monetizing GPUs through high-performance compute
How wholesale power trading works – and how it provides valuable informational signals to the grid
How the US grid is arranged – and how the energy mix has changed in the last decade
How coal has been marginalized in the last decade through natural gas and renewables
Why energy is not globally fungible
Why forecasting wind is so difficult – and how that complicates including wind into the grid
How renewables trade off reliability against carbon impact
How increasing the share of wind and solar destabilizing the grid
Why increasing units of wind requires new units of gas on the grid
The confluence of causes behind the Texas grid failure last week
How Core Weave selected their location on the grid – and how they took political risk into account
How much energy Bitcoin consumes – and where that stands relative to the energy consumption of the US
How flaring natural gas to mine Bitcoin works – and whether it's economical
Does Bitcoin work as a load balancer for grids?
Can you compare Bitcoin's footprint to that of entire countries?

Weekly Roundup 02/19/21 (MSTR's speculative attack, Coinbase trading at $77b, The Tulip Bubble Myth?) (EP.182) Feb 19, 2021

Show notes

Nic and Matt break down the headlines in yet another week of ATHs. In this episode:

Our cured meat scandal
We dissect crypto mafias
Necessary conditions for a corporate mafia to form
Microstrategy's speculative attack on the dollar
How the corporate adoption story took us by surprise
Is there a goodwill dividend for buying bitcoin?
Is buying bitcoin a bitcoin strategy?
Nic's 50k road trip to Tahanis in Ontario
Coin Metrics' partnership with Bitgo and KPMG
Verge has a year-long reorg
Is Coinbase fairly priced at $77b pre-IPO?
Should Coinbase be worth more than Goldman?
OFAC reminds us that it exists
The implications of OFAC compliant mining
How the tulip bubble is a Calvinist conspiracy

Content mentioned in this episode:

Smithsonian Mag, There Never Was a Real Tulip Fever
CM announces a partnership with BitGo and KPMG
Coinbase pre-IPO shares trading at $77b

Teddy Fusaro (Bitwise) on the Bitwise DeFi Index Fund (EP.181) Feb 17, 2021

Show notes

Teddy Fusaro, the President of Bitwise Asset Management joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

The new Bitwise DeFi Index Fund
The decentralized finance opportunity set and the narratives driving the space
Teddy's career path to cryptoassets and joining Bitwise
The prospects of a Bitcoin ETFs
Cured meats

To learn more about Bitwise visit their website.

Rene Van Kesteren (BlockFi) on how BlockFi handles risk (EP.180) Feb 17, 2021

Show notes

BlockFi Chief Risk Officer Rene Van Kesteren joins the show to explain how crypto lender and brokerage BlockFi engages in risk management. In this episode:

Rene's career trajectory and the path that led him to joining BlockFi
The mechanics of how BlockFi offers interest bearing accounts
The borrowing and lending market structure
How BlockFi thinks about counterparty risk
The reason why rates on U.S. Dollars are higher for stablecoins vs. dollars in a bank account
How margin calls work
Differences and similarities in market structure in 'traditional' vs. cryptoasset markets
The biggest misconceptions about BlockFi and crypto lending in general

To learn more about risk management at Blockfi visit:

https://blockfi.com/how-blockfi-handles-risk-and-security

To learn more about BlockFi's products visit: www.blockfi.com

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