On The Brink with Castle Island

Latest Episodes:

Weekly News Roundup 6/12/20 feat. Christine Sandler (Fidelity's institutional survey, the GBTC premium trade, Coinbase at a crossroads) (EP.89) Jun 12, 2020

Show notes

Matt and Nic review the stories of the week, featuring special guest Christine Sandler, head of Sales and Marketing at Fidelity Digital assets. Christine joins the show to discuss Fidelity's newly-released survey of institutional investor attitudes on digital assets. We talk about what FDAS is up to, client enthusiasm for the asset class, and how institutions are thinking about it today. Also covered in the episode:

The Web3 dream – does it require blockchains?
Bank Frick adds support for USDC
Rebranding stablecoins to cryptodollars
Bitcoin Billionaires is greenlit for a movie
Other events in Bitcoin history which are movie worthy
Three Arrows owns 6.26% of GBTC
The fate of the GBTC 'premium trade' and the in-kind contribution
Stephanie Kelton's NYT op-ed and unspoken constraints on MMT
Coinbase is at a crossroads

Mark Casady on Financial Advice, Fintech and Cryptoassets Jun 10, 2020

Show notes

Mark Casady, cofounder and General Partner at Vestigo Ventures, and former Chairman and CEO of LPL Financial joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

Mark's career in financial services and the path that led him to becoming CEO of the world's largest independent broker-dealer
The evolution of the financial advice industry
Mark's thesis on Fintech and founding Vestigo Ventures
Blockchain and cryptoassets in the broader world of fintech

To learn more about Vestigo Ventures visit their website, and follow Mark on Twitter @MSCasady

Paolo Ardoino (Bitfinex/Tether) – Managing the growth of Tether (EP.87) Jun 08, 2020

Show notes

So far on the crypto-dollarization miniseries, we've covered Tether's stability mechanics, we've heard from traders and OTC desks using the asset, but we haven't heard from the issuers of the stablecoin itself. To give us insight into how they run the system, Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether and Bitfinex, joins the show. In this episode:

The factors behind the outflow of BTC and inflow of ETH to Bitfinex
Fork futures for ETH 2.0?
Bitfinex' policy on staking on behalf of users
The principal-agent problem inherent in exchange staking
Whether the growth of crypto dollars threatens native collateral like BTC and ETH
Paolo's explanation for the growth of tether after March 12th 2020
The advantages of cryptodollars over the current financial system
Why Tether opted to list on 7 different blockchains (note: this was recorded before Tether listed on OmiseGo)
Paolo's view on the claims that Tether is clogging Ethereum
How Tether Gold works
Could Tether go from $9b to $100b – what the constraints to scaling are
Tether's ability and willingness to surveil transations
Tether's business model in a negative rate world
How Paolo deals with the pressure of being the public figurehead for Tether

Stay up to date on the growth of Tether's capitalization here.

Weekly News Roundup 6/05/20 (Avanti Bank, Hester Peirce re-nominated, Section 230 and digital property rights) (EP.86) Jun 05, 2020

Show notes

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. In today's episode:

Avanti Bank's raise and Wyoming's Special Purpose Depository Institution regulation
GBTC eating up the new supply
Bloomberg's commentary on Bitcoin
Hester Pierce is re-nominated to the SEC
The prospects for blockchain games
The Section 230 debate, and how that intersects with Web3
Social media and digital property rights
The continued normalization of Bitcoin as a global macro asset

Apolline Blandin (Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance) – Estimating Bitcoin's energy footprint (EP.85) Jun 01, 2020

Show notes

Apolline Blandin, cryptocurrency research lead at the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, joins the show. In this episode:

The Cambridge AltFin research agenda
The motivation behind the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
How they determine Bitcoin's electricity consumption
How Bitcoin's energy usage can be understood in context
The genesis of their new geographical mining estimates
Why high granularity estimates of mining location are so important to determine its energy mix
How and why Bitcoin hashpower migrates on a seasonal basis
Why there is so much spare hydro capacity in Sichuan and Yunnan
Surprising country-level findings
The most defensible academic approaches Apolline has seen so far
Why the per-transaction cost estimates of Bitcoin are misleading
The prospects for wind, solar, and natural gas for bitcoin mining

Weekly News Roundup feat. Matt Hougan 5/29/20 (Goldman's Bitcoin note, Coinbase acquires Tagomi, the end of the CSW saga) (EP.84) May 29, 2020

Show notes

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry, featuring special guest Matt Hougan, global head of research at Bitwise. In today's episode:

Tagomi is acquired by Coinbase
Matt Hougan's response to Goldman's bearish note
What wealth managers are saying about Bitcoin today
Light at the end of the tunnel in the CSW saga?
BitClave's punishing SEC settlement
Calibra rebrands
A new paper on Bitcoin Vaults

Dan Matuszewski (CMS Holdings) – What explains the growth of Tether? (EP.83) May 25, 2020

Show notes

Dan Matuszewski, Principal and Co-Founder of CMS Holdings joins the show once again. Since he last appeared, the market has been through some gut-wrenching turmoil, and Tether (one of the subjects of the first episode) has tacked on a casual $5B in market cap. Dan, alongside his colleagues at CMS, has also joined the Crypto Twitter fray.

In this episode:

Why Dan relented and started a twitter account
Dan's explanation for the massive growth of Tether since March
Whether there is non-crypto business occuring in Tether
What we can expect for the Tether-denominated futures markets if it trades below par
How Dan thinks about using Tether on Omni versus Ethereum versus Tron
What Dan makes of the rise in CME open interest

Weekly News Roundup 5/22/20 (Bitcoin Pizza Day, old coins reawaken, the Great Bitcoin Energy Debate) (EP.82) May 22, 2020

Show notes

Matt and Nic review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. In this week's episode:

The story behind bitcoin pizza day
The impact of hashrate futures
Genesis Capital's acquisition of Vo1t and what that means for their business
Why the DTCC should get into crypto
Brian Brooks becoming acting Comptroller of the currency
Our analysis of the coins from feb. 2009 reawakening
Our theory for why those ancient coins might be moving now
The great Bitcoin energy consumption debate
Nic gets unblocked by CZ

Tim Kelly (BitOoda) on Bitcoin hashrate derivatives (EP.81) May 18, 2020

Show notes

Tim Kelly, founder and CEO of BitOoda joins the show. BitOoda is a financial services firm that is innovating in the field of structured products based on Bitcoin hashrate and difficulty. In this show we discuss:

Tim's career background and the similarities he sees with cryptoassets vs. other asset classes he has traded
The mining ecosystem and how derivative contracts solve real business needs
The evolving market structure for cryptoasset derivatives and Tim's view on the regulatory landscape

To learn more about BitOoda visit: http://bitooda.io/

Weekly News Roundup 5/15/20 (The end of the SAFT, the rebirth of seigniorage shares, halving recap) (EP.80) May 15, 2020

Show notes

Nic and Matt cover the week's deals and news. In this episode:

Bitcoin full node count
Celo and the viability of seigniorage shares stablecoins
Telegram winding down their TON project
Why we think the SAFT window of opportunity is closed
Why the SAFT is just ICOs in a suit
Why the next global monetary asset will never be massively premined and disproportionately owned by VC funds
How the success of Bitcoin drove VC funds crazy
Stablecoins pass $10B
ErisX announces Ethereum physically settled futures
How futures contracts would handle contested hard forks
The importance of JPM banking Coinbase and Gemini
Our retrospective on the halving
What we're reading and listening to this week
Why we don't believe in space mining

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