On The Brink with Castle Island

Latest Episodes:

Weekly News Roundup 3/27/20 (Gold market, difficulty adjustments, deals and more) (EP.59) Mar 27, 2020

Show notes

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week's topics include:

- Deals of the Week

- Dislocations in the gold markets

- The effects of the -16% difficulty adjustments in BTC

- Thoughts on the stimulus package

- Quarantine reading suggestions

and much more news of the week

Jurrien Timmer (Fidelity) on the global macro landscape (EP.58) Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

Jurrien Timmer, the Director of Global Macro at Fidelity Investments, joins the podcast. In this episode we discuss:

- Jurrien's career trajectory and how he became the Director of Global Macro at Fidelity

- His views on the current crisis in the context of other dislocations he has seen in his 25+ year career

- Perspectives on the unprecedented interventions that we are seeing from the Federal government

- The outlook for Gold, Bitcoin and other store of value assets

- A best and worst case scenario for a recovery.

Follow Jurrien:

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurrien-timmer-fidelity/

- https://twitter.com/TimmerFidelity

David Vorick (Nebulous) – Building Decentralized Cloud Storage (EP.57) Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

David Vorick, the founder of Nebulous and the blockchain Sia, joins the show to discuss Sia and its latest layer 2, Skynet. We also cover David's experience as an ASIC manufacturer, and what he learned about blockchain security models and the merits of ASICs versus GPUs. In this episode:

How Sia is different from other decentralized storage platforms
Different models for financing protocol development
The story behind Nebulous' settlement with the SEC
How Skynet represents the completion of the original vision for Sia
David's experience manufacturing ASICs for Sia and Decred – and his clash with Bitmain
David's proposal to launch new blockchains with 'protectionist' mining in place

Alejandro Machado (Open Money Initiative) – Contemporary Dollarization in Venezuela (EP.56) Mar 23, 2020

Show notes

Open Money Initiative founder Alejandro Machado joins the show to explain how Bitcoin is actually used in Venezuela, and how the country is dollarizing in real time.

In this episode:

How a power cut has been linked to a recent dollarization movement in Venezuela, and how dollar usage became decriminalized
Whether dollarization has improved the prospects of everyday Venezuelans
Why Maduro is actually in favor of partial dollarization
How bitcoin allows you to import a system of credible property rights
Why bitcoin still has a relatively low level of penetration in Venezuela
Why stablecoins have not made a dent in Venezuela so far

Patrick South (Chamber of Digital Commerce) on Blockchain Policy (EP.55) Mar 21, 2020

Show notes

Patrick South, VP of Development at the Chamber of Digital Commerce joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

The mission of the Chamber of Digital Commerce and the policy initiatives that the organization is advocating for
The line of demarcation between security and non-security tokens and a possible path forward for a safe harbor provision
The potential impact of the travel rule and FATF guidelines
Patrick's quarantine book and show recommendations

Weekly News Roundup 3/20/20 (Market Commentary, Deals, Quarantine Tips) (EP.54) Mar 20, 2020

Show notes

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week's topics include:

- Market Commentary

- Deals of the Week

- Attestiv, Coase and other news

- Quarantine Tips

and much more news of the week

Nicos Vekiarides (Attestiv) on Commercial Uses for Blockchain Timestamping (EP.53) Mar 18, 2020

Show notes

Nicos Vekiarides, the cofounder and CEO of Attestiv joins the show. Attestiv is a company that builds software to prove the authenticity of photos and videos using public blockchains to timestamp these records. In this podcast we discuss:

- The benefits of public blockchains as public notary systems

- Use cases for deep fake detection in the insurance industry

- Tooling and user experience building on public blockchains

Learn more about Attestiv at www.attestiv.com

Douglas Jackson - Lessons from E-Gold (EP.52) Mar 16, 2020

Show notes

Douglas Jackson, the founder of E-gold, arguably the first widely-used electronic medium of exchange, appears on the show. In this episode we discuss:

- Douglas' motivations for starting E-gold - His disagreements with his cypherpunk contemporaries - Why private monetary issuers might be more responsible than public ones - The challenge of creating an open payments system which is also compliant - His critiques of stablecoins and native-unit cryptocurrencies

Weekly News Roundup 3/13/20 (Markets in Turmoil, Deals and more) (EP.51) Mar 13, 2020

Show notes

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week's topics include:

- Market Turmoil

- Market Infrastructure

- Deals

and much more news of the week

Jeremy Allaire (Circle) on Dollarization through Stablecoins (EP.50) Mar 10, 2020

Show notes

Jeremy Allaire, the co-founder and CEO of Circle joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

- Jeremy's entrepreneurial journey and the original vision for Circle

- The geopolitical impact of US Dollars on public blockchains