QuantLayer Podcast - TopPodcast.com

*/ ?>

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

QuantLayer Podcast — Business News
QuantLayer Podcast

In this podcast, hosts Vikram Ramakrishnan and Faizaan Shamsi, partners at the software consultancy QuantLayer, talk to investors and builders of the cryptocurrency arena. We discuss how industry participants think about crypto assets, how they uncover fraud in the market, and which technologies will turn the budding, nascent crypto space into the revolutionary powerhouse early market participants had hoped for.

Latest Episodes:

Andreas M. Antonopoulos and the State of Cryptocurrency Ten Years In Mar 04, 2019

Show notes

We have Andreas M. Antonopoulos on, who we were really excited to talk to. With his books The Internet of Money, Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, Andreas has been an amazing ambassador for the cryptocurrency space. On this episode, we get into a lot of interesting topics: What’s changed and surprised him since he published The Internet of Money, how Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrency project teams can learn from one another, fighting back against oppressive regimes with cryptography, opsec, how he sees 2nd layer solutions play out, and a host of other topics.

Topics:

On his books
What surprised him since he published his book, The Internet of Money
How resilience technologies are
Interesting capabilities of a 2nd layer technology
How cryptocurrency project teams can learn from one another
Difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum

Links:

Andreas Twitter: https://twitter.com/aantonop Andreas Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aantonop Mastering Bitcoin: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388/ The Internet of Money Volume 1: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money-Andreas-M-Antonopoulos/dp/1537000454/ The Internet of Money Volume 2: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money-Andreas-M-Antonopoulos/dp/194791006X/ Mastering Ethereum: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Contracts/dp/1491971940/

#31: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: TokenTax’s Zac McClure and All About Crypto Taxes Feb 11, 2019

Show notes

Zac McClure joins us from TokenTax. I was really excited to talk to Zac because it’s great to learn about the kinds of professional SaaS tools that crypto entrepreneurs are building. This was a fun conversation. Zac has had an eclectic career prior to crypto. He’s been an investment banker, taught financial literacy to high school students, and worked on social investing platforms. He’s been heavily invested in getting people to understand finance and investing, giving them the knowledge to own their own path towards financial freedom. TokenTax is an extension of this by helping people, funds and other institutions easily manage their crypto taxes. We go over how the US and UK treat crypto taxes, wash sales and a whole bunch of other tax specific topics. With tax season looming around the corner, you will definitely want to listen to this one.

Topics:

Zac's background and his work experiences
How he would love to have crypto taxes be a gateway to financial health
How he got people interested in crypto
How 1031 Exchange works
How wash sales work
How he recommends crypto taxes be treated
What fork means in cryptocurrency
On being conservative and consistent
How he established a meaningful fork
The solution TokenTax provides
How TokenTax is different from others
How they generate revenue on a business model side
On their vision
How they decided which feature to build first when they first started TokenTax
A feature that did not go as expected Seeing interest in the security token side

Links:

TokenTax Twitter - TokenTax Twitter - Zac McClure

#30: Security Researcher Gets Attacked After Vulnerability Disclosure Feb 08, 2019

Show notes

What happens when a vendor attacks a security researcher who points out security flaws in their software? On this episode, we talk about two white-hat security researchers who discover multiple vulnerabilities in a vendor’s software system. The vendor initially ignores their concerns until the FBI gets involved. It culminates in a physical attack by the vendor’s COO on one of the researchers. We look at all the details around the vulnerabilities, discuss common disclosure concerns and how the FBI has opened up a “Cyber Fusion” unit to act as a liaison between security teams and at-risk vendors.

Topics:

Atrient has assaulted the security researcher who disclosed the vulnerability
On reporting the vulnerability
How the FBI got involved
Vendor call with the FBI and the security researchers
The Bug Bounty call
The ICE Conference assault
An email from Jessie Gill (Atrient COO)

Links:

Researcher Assaulted By A Vendor After Disclosing A Vulnerability Shodan Shodan wikipedia Dylan on Twitter Shodan Safari, where hackers heckle the worst devices put on the internet

#29: NVIDIA’s Pre-announces Terrible Results, Huawei and Political Risk, and Bitcoin’s Predecessors Feb 01, 2019

Show notes

We look at NVIDIA’s negative pre-announce, how they stopped blaming crypto and are seeing weakness across the board, especially on the datacenter side. We take a tangent on political risk associated with Huawei, and finally finish up by looking at the slew of predecessors of Bitcoin so the next time someone thinks they’re being clever by calling Bitcoin the Myspace of Crypto, you can list off the hundred or so predecessors and attempts at payment systems before Bitcoin.

Topics:

NVIDIA's negative pre-announce
Vikram and Faizan's thought on these articles: - Cramer on Nvidia warning: ‘If you wanted to issue a call for why you should sell stocks, this is it’ - Long-Term Investors, Ignore the Noise in Nvidia Stock - Why NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) Stock is a Buy - NVIDIA's Margin Guidance Isn't As Bad As It Looks
On political risk associated with Huawei
Teaser about the slew of predecessors of Bitcoin

Links:

NVIDIA Updates Financial Guidance for Fourth Quarter of Fiscal Year 2019 Shareholder Letter Cramer on Nvidia warning: ‘If you wanted to issue a call for why you should sell stocks, this is it’ Long-Term Investors, Ignore the Noise in Nvidia Stock Why NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) Stock is a Buy NVIDIA's Margin Guidance Isn't As Bad As It Looks Princeton Bitcoin Book

#28: DevOps and GitHub Opening Up Private Repos Jan 21, 2019

Show notes

We look at GitHub’s recent move to give non-paying users unlimited private repositories, and GitLab’s subsequent response. Additionally, we discuss DevOps and how teams can save money and improve deployment processes by implementing DevOps best practices.

Topics:

GitHub offers free private repos
What GitHub is
How it was acquired by Microsoft
On DevOps
What DevOps is
How companies do DevOps now
On being good at DevOps
What the goals are
The techniques they used

Links:

GitLab - GitHub now offers free private repos for up to three collaborators New year, new GitHub: Announcing unlimited free private repos and unified Enterprise offering There are 3 public clouds left and we'll use all of them - Medium Multi-cloud maturity model – GitLab Magazine – Medium Twitter - Peter Todd

#27: Whose Fault Is It Anyways?: On Writing Illegal Smart Contracts Jan 14, 2019

Show notes

We discuss comments from the CFTC about developer responsibilities and liabilities. The CFTC posits that there are a few primary groups of users of blockchain networks: (1) core developers of the underlying software; (2) developers of smart contracts on top of the underlying blockchain; (3) miners who validate transactions; and (4) users who transact with the chain’s smart contracts. Their focus is primarily around (2), or the developers of smart contracts, and what responsibilities those developers have when writing contracts that fall in the jurisdiction of the CFTC. Is a smart contract developer who writes options contracts or futures contracts or prediction market contracts - those that the CFTC would call financial products - liable for the code they write? This was a really interesting conversation because it touched on notions of developer responsibilities and law. As the world moves more and more in the direction of software, how do we ensure that code that’s being written isn’t bad?

Topics:

On Brian Quintenz's speech at a technology event
Responsibilities of a core developers
Miners that validate transactions
Smart contracts
Applications of smart contracts
Applying old law to new products
General analytical framework of prediction market

Link:

CFTC speech: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opaquintenz16

#26: The New York Nasdaq CTO Summit: How to Manage and Scale Tech Teams Jan 07, 2019

Show notes

We discuss our time at the CTO Summit at the NASDAQ Marketsite from a couple weeks back. This was a great conference, because technology leaders from startups to larger companies congregated to talk about managing and scaling tech teams. We talk about software process, distributed teams, how deployment is the main cause of all software failures, and a whole bunch of other interesting software development topics. Just as a warning, there isn’t a lot of crypto content on this one, but we thought our learnings from the conference were worth highlighting.

Topics:

On the CTO Event
Recaps - Eliot Horowitz of MongoDB Inc.: The Right Amount of Process to Scale Your Engineering Team - Maria Belousova of Grubhub: Building Highly Distributed Teams - Michael Boufford of Greenhouse: Establishing a Management Cadence - Bjorn Freeman Benson of Fresnel Research: Seventeen Things that Have Bitten Us But Shouldn’t Have - Yvette Pasqua of Meetup: Engineering Leadership Through High Growth and High Change - Angie Ruan of Nasdaq: The Nasdaq Financial Framework Transformation - Rebecca Miller-Webster of DevMynd: Refactoring Trust on Your Team - Johnny Ray Austin of Mapbox: Setting Your Team Up For Failure - Mona Soni of Dow Jones: Is Your Team Built to Be Effective? - Edith Harbaugh of LaunchDarkly: What I learned From Not Running 100 Miles - Lena Reinhard of CircleCI: Better Communication for Stronger Teams - Michael Ellison of CodePath.org: Improving Diversity in Tech by Transforming CS Education at Colleges - Stacy Gorelick of Flatiron: Growing a Platform Team - Jean Barmash of Komodo Health: How to Receive Feedback - Ushashi Chakraborty of Mode Analytics: Run Engineering Meetings Using Improve Skills -Kwame Thomison of Magnetic Inc.: Your Hiring Pipeline is a Product - Debbie Madden of Stride Consulting: How to Retain Developers. And When To Let Them Go - James Kenigsberg of 2U: Standing on the Shoulder of Giants - Adapting Existing Technologies for Speed and Credibility - Andrew Montalenti of Parse.ly: Fully Distributed & Asynchronous: Building Eventually-Coordinated Teams That Ship - Randy Shoup of WeWork: Breaking Codes, Designing Jets, and Building Teams

Links:

Bjorn Freeman Benson - https://twitter.com/bjorn_fb Johnny Ray Austin - https://twitter.com/recursivefunk Lena Reinhard - https://twitter.com/lrnrd Why we re-designed our engineering career paths at CircleCI - bit.ly/circleci-matrix Debbie Madden - https://twitter.com/debbiemadden200 Andrew Montalenti - https://twitter.com/amontalenti Randy Shoup - https://twitter.com/randyshoup

#25: Why We Moved Our Search Infrastructure to Elasticsearch ($ESTC) and a Look-back at Our Podcast Episodes of 2018 Dec 31, 2018

Show notes

On this episode, we do a recap of our podcast episodes of 2018. We look at how the crypto market has changed since we launched our first episode (things other than just prices being lower) and also all the things that haven’t changed. This was a fun review of half a year of recording with a few glimpses of times ahead.

Topics:

Reflecting on our podcast this past year Episode 1 - The QuantLayer Genesis Story, Crypto and Stock Market Comparisons, and Why Crypto Needs Reg FD https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/1-quantlayer-genesis-story-crypto-stock-market-comparisons/id1402142700?i=1000414325483&mt=2 Episode 2 - What’s a Crypto Investment Bank? A Conversation About Crypto Due Diligence With Crypto Launchpad CEO Adiraj Gupta https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/2-whats-crypto-investment-bank-conversation-about-crypto/id1402142700?i=1000414325484&mt=2 Episode 3 Crypto’s ICO Legal Landscape, the Attack on Verge, M&A in Crypto, and Better Treasury Management for Crypto Teams https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/3-cryptos-ico-legal-landscape-attack-on-verge-m-in/id1402142700?i=1000414357284&mt=2 Episode 4 A Discussion with Software Consultant Ben DiFrancesco on Building Great Blockchain Software https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/4-discussion-software-consultant-ben-difrancesco-on/id1402142700?i=1000415065447&mt=2 Episode 5 Crypto Teams Need to Communicate Better, and a New Segment: Big Drama in Smallcap Land (Zoin and Sumokoin) https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/5-crypto-teams-need-to-communicate-better-new-segment/id1402142700?i=1000415464516&mt=2 Episode 6 Digital Ocean Versus Google Cloud, Polychain’s $1Bn Fund, a16z’s $300mm Fund, How to be a Shady Hedge Fund Manager, and 2nd Layer Solutions for Ethereum and Bitcoin https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/6-digital-ocean-versus-google-cloud-polychains-%241bn/id1402142700?i=1000415910825&mt=2 Episode 7 Bitcoin ETF & Alternative Energy ETFs, ZCash Incentive Structure, and How To Spot Bad Code in Your Crypto Investments https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/7-bitcoin-etf-alternative-energy-etfs-zcash-incentive/id1402142700?i=1000416414528&mt=2 Episode 8 Short Selling Explained, Tesla and How Controversial Shorts Work, and Nvidia and Bitmain https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/8-short-selling-explained-tesla-how-controversial-shorts/id1402142700?i=1000416862421&mt=2 Episode 9 Custody Solutions and Infrastructure, Family Offices, and How Funds Should Educate Their Analysts on Crypto https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/9-custody-solutions-infrastructure-family-offices-how/id1402142700?i=1000417280581&mt=2 Episode 10 More About Tesla (This Time About Going Private), Software Developer Personalities and Getting Tangled in IOTA https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/10-more-about-tesla-this-time-about-going-private-software/id1402142700?i=1000417715415&mt=2 Episode 11 Boston’s Growing Fintech & Crypto Scene, Telegram as a Crypto Platform and P2P Lending https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/11-bostons-growing-crypto-scene-mailbag-1-how-to-say/id1402142700?i=1000418146792&mt=2 Episode 12 Tesla Staying Public, How Amazon and AWS Made Angry Shorts Give Up and Why Rejection of the Bitcoin ETF is a Good Thing https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/12-tesla-staying-public-how-amazon-aws-made-angry-shorts/id1402142700?i=1000418644761&mt=2 Episode 13 An Alert Blitzkrieg: Cheap ETH Mining, MANA Land Estate Bug, EOS RAM Vulnerability, Stratis Node Vulnerability, Etherscan Vulnerability, Bitcoin Cash Vulnerability, and How Wall Streeters and Technologists Can Be More Lay-language Friendly https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/13-alert-blitzkrieg-cheap-eth-mining-mana-land-estate/id1402142700?i=1000419016588&mt=2 Episode 14 Turning A Bug Into A Feature: Bugsnag, Why You Shouldn’t Violate Open Source Copyrights (Hint: Your Coin Will Be Down 90% If You Do), The Bitcoin-Dev Mailing List, And Why Crypto UX Is So Bad https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/quantlayer-crypto-podcast/id1402142700?ls=1 Episode 15 Open Source as Revenue Driver: How Elasticsearch Uses Open Source for Revenue Growth, Tech Investing and Crypto, a Cautionary Tale of Bad Crypto Trading Psychology and Flash Crashes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/15-open-source-as-revenue-driver-how-elasticsearch/id1402142700?i=1000419883506&mt=2 Episode 16 Zaif Exchange Hack and How We Called It Two Months Ago and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/16-zaif-exchange-hack-how-we-called-it-two-months-ago/id1402142700?i=1000420329661&mt=2 Episode 17 Crypto Legal Landscape with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law: Securitized Real Assets and Intellectual Goods, Crypto Patents, Hard Forks and “Derivative Works,” Decentralized Exchanges and Alternative Trading Systems https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/17-crypto-legal-landscape-kurt-watkins-mg-miller-intellectual/id1402142700?i=1000420807788&mt=2 Episode 18 Crypto SaaS Spotlight: John Young With Ledj.io and Building Professional Crypto Research Tools https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/18-crypto-saas-spotlight-john-young-ledj-io-building/id1402142700?i=1000421326288&mt=2 Episode 19 Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Amy Wan, Founder and CEO of Sagewise and Building Crypto LegalTech Solutions https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/19-crypto-saas-spotlight-amy-wan-founder-ceo-sagewise/id1402142700?i=1000421924166&mt=2 Episode 20 ZRX & ESTC: A Tale of Exchange Listing Pops, the State of Crypto Reporting (It Sucks) and How You Can Make Money Being Contrarian, and How Monero (XMR) Sliced Up Transaction Fees With Bulletproofs https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/20-zrx-estc-tale-exchange-listing-pops-state-crypto/id1402142700?i=1000422824609&mt=2 QuantLayer - Episode 21 A look at Stablecoins, Tether and PwC https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/21-a-look-at-stablecoins-tether-and-pwc/id1402142700?i=1000423666435&mt=2 QuantLayer - Episode 22 Everything is Ded (Bitcoin, “Blockchain,” ICOs, Volatility) and Amazon Takes Over New York City https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/22-everything-is-ded-bitcoin-blockchain-icos-volatility/id1402142700?i=1000424132491&mt=2 Episode 23 Crypto Hangover and Market Downturn?: A Look At Semiconductor Market Cycles, NVIDIA Throwing Crypto Under The Bus, And What Nathaniel Popper Got Wrong In His Recent New York Times Article https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/23-crypto-hangover-market-downturn-look-at-semiconductor/id1402142700?i=1000424844720&mt=2 Episode 24 The Attack of the Attack Vectors: a 51% Attack on Vertcoin & the Demise of ASIC Resistance + a Social Engineering Attack on ETCDEV and npm Libraries. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/24-attack-attack-vectors-51-attack-on-vertcoin-demise/id1402142700?i=1000425249491&mt=2

Other links:

Substratum to trade ICO funds in order to maintain capital as ETH price drops - https://www.chepicap.com/en/news/6005/substratum-to-trade-ico-funds-in-order-to-maintain-funds-as-eth-price-drops.html Newsletter — Build Blockchain Tech - https://www.buildblockchain.tech/newsletter/ Samson Mow on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1077717355159900160

#24: The Attack of the Attack Vectors: a 51% Attack on Vertcoin & the Demise of ASIC Resistance + a Social Engineering Attack on ETCDEV and npm Libraries Dec 06, 2018

Show notes

This episode is all about attack vectors in crypto. We look at a 51% attack on Vertcoin, and how ASIC resistance is turning out to be a massive security bug, not a feature. We also look at Ethereum Classic and a social engineering attack on the ETCDEV team. Finally, we discuss the event-stream attack which robbed crypto wallets that used that npm library, and what that means for open source governance.

Topics:

ASIC resistance is a massive security bug, not a feature
What ASIC resistance is
Vertcoin is currently being 51% attacked
What NiceHash is
ETCDEV shutdown
What ETC is
Who ETCDEV is
Event-stream situation

Links:

Vertcoin - MIT Digital Currency Initiative - https://dci.mit.edu/video-gallery/?tag=vertcoin About NiceHash - https://www.nicehash.com/about About Crypto51 - https://www.crypto51.app/about.html Vertcoin is currently being 51% attacked - https://medium.com/coinmonks/vertcoin-vtc-is-currently-being-51-attacked-53ab633c08a4 On Dec 3, Igor put out the following statement - https://twitter.com/etcdev/status/1069625401515872256/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1069625401515872256&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsbtc.com%2F2018%2F12%2F04%2Fcrypto-bear-market-strikes-ethereum-classic-etc-development-group-folds%2F Event-stream situation Synopsis: - https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116#issuecomment-441759047 - https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116#issuecomment-441749105 Dominic Tarr’s response: - https://gist.github.com/dominictarr/9fd9c1024c94592bc7268d36b8d83b3a Kate Sills - https://twitter.com/kate_sills/status/1067202990690291712

#23: Crypto Hangover and Market Downturn?: A Look At Semiconductor Market Cycles, NVIDIA Throwing Crypto Under The Bus, And What Nathaniel Popper Got Wrong In His Recent New York Times Article Nov 30, 2018

Show notes

A look at the semiconductor market cycle, and how recent results from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and AMD have spooked the tech market. We look at NVIDIA’s most recent conference call where they place all the blame on what they call a “crypto hangover.” We then look at two distinct predictions about this latest semi cycle, one from JAG capital, who got it completely wrong, and another from a Supply Chain magazine that got it completely right. We finish up with a teardown of a New York Times article by Nathaniel Popper titled “5 Reasons Cryptocurrency Prices Are Plunging Again” and what he got wrong. If you enjoy our podcast, please rate and review us on iTunes. Thanks.

Topics:

Market downturn
What NVIDIA is
How earnings call work
Examples of good non-street analyse questions
Crypto hangover
Semiconductor market cycle
How slowing down of Nvidia, Texas Instruments, or AMD can affect the rest of the space
A teardown of a New York Times article by Nathaniel Popper

Book:

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D8KFX9Q/

Links:

Earnings call transcript - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4222728-nvidia-corp-nvda-ceo-jen-hsun-huang-q3-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript Where Are We in the Semiconductor Cycle? - JAG Capital Management - https://jagcapm.com/where-are-we-in-the-semiconductor-cycle/ For Semiconductor Sales Cycles, Winter is Coming - EPSNews - https://epsnews.com/2018/10/04/for-semiconductor-sales-cycle-winter-is-coming/ 5 Reasons Cryptocurrency Prices Are Plunging Again - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/technology/cryptocurrency-price-drop.html Estimated USD Transaction Value - Blockchain - https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd

Related Podcasts