Raoul Pal: The Journey Man

Latest Episodes:

The Essential 101 Guide to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Oct 08, 2021

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Strap in for the deepest of deep dives into all things DeFi. Blake Richardson, investor at BlockTower Capital, enlightens viewers with his expert perspective as an investor in the space. Decentralized finance is a relatively new industry, but the number of subtopics continues to grow. A helpful discussion for beginners and experts, Richardson educates viewers on a wide range of material including synthetics, stablecoins, DeFi in the insurance industry, smart contracts, bonding curves, and more. He also shares insight into the due diligence process undergone by his team at BlockTower when assessing the ever-increasing number of DeFi companies emerging today. Interviewed by Ash Bennington on July 16, 2021.

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Chainlink 2.0: Expanding the Meta-Layer Oct 01, 2021

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As much a philosopher as he is a technologist, Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, joins Real Vision to discuss some of the core theses of DeFi and the meta-layer’s role in smart contracts. Smart contracts will likely play a large role in the future of finance, but they have a long way to go. Companies like Chainlink and their partners are working to expand what they call “the meta-layer,” the framework connecting blockchain ecosystems to off-chain datasets in order to build out more complicated smart contracts. This is all part of the Chainlink 2.0 mission. Nazarov walks viewers through interesting developments on this front as well as additional topics like the quantum risk to DeFi, lessons from the ‘08 financial crisis, and more. Interviewed by Ash Bennington on July 14, 2021.

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Chiliz & Socios.com: Tokenizing Sports Franchise Communities Sep 24, 2021

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On day five of After the Hype: Reality Sets in for NFTs, Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO & founder of Chiliz & Socios.com, and Raoul Pal, CEO & co-founder of Real Vision, discuss tokenization of world-class sport franchise communities. Giving fans the power to participate in a franchise’s decision-making process is a valuable proposition. The Chiliz & Socios.com network is expanding quickly with over 40 sporting franchises on the platform and over 800,000 active users. Dreyfus walks viewers through his company’s evolution and the ways in which he and his team are innovating to create more real-world utility for their token holder—whether that’s voting on the design of a team’s jersey or issuing token rewards based on a team’s performance. Filmed on July 1, 2021.

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Tendermint: Building the Infrastructure for a Multi-Chain Future Sep 17, 2021

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Peng Zhong, CEO of Tendermint, joins Ash Bennington, Real Vision senior editor, for a deep dive into the various projects emerging from Tendermint and how they mesh with the existing DeFi industry. As the Ethereum chain becomes crowded, rising gas fees are forcing developers to look for alternatives. From Cosmos, "The Internet of Blockchains", to Gravity DEX, a liquidity pool and order book protocol, Tendermint is constructing a number of different projects aimed at solving scalability issues and ushering in a multi-chain era. Zhong guides us through both the conceptual and technical aspects of his work during this chat. Filmed on June 28, 2021.

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Ampleforth: Ideal Reserve Currency Sep 10, 2021

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Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington is joined by Evan Kuo, founder of Ampleforth, to discuss how Ampleforth was engineered specifically to satisfy characteristics of the ideal reserve currency. By working with Stanford's Hoover Institute for several years, Kuo and his team have been refining what it means to be a "good" reserve currency. A key innovation lies in their maneuver to substitute price volatility with supply volatility. Kuo's goal is to create the ultimate unit of account, resistant to demand shocks typically seen in business cycle contractions. Filmed on June 17, 2021.

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Tokenizing the World with BitPanda Sep 03, 2021

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Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington welcomes Eric Demuth, CEO of BitPanda to discuss the creation of BitPanda and the BEST token, Bitcoin's role as a digital asset, and interoperability within blockchain ecosystems. Since there is an absence of a stock investing culture in Europe, Demuth explains the need for an educational component of BitPanda that will help it become the investment platform for investors looking to participate in the market. He dives into the creation of the BEST token that allows users to benefit from the BitPanda platform. Demuth argues that a decentralized system that combines all of the capabilities from existing blockchains will make projects easier to build and thereby moving closer towards his goal of tokenizing the world. Filmed on June 7, 2021. Key Learnings: Demuth argues that new investors should only invest in things that are simple, easy to understand, and are constructed with their interests in mind. He stresses that the best investments are made by the individual after proper diligence and preparation are conducted. This ensures that the investment satisfies the investor’s risk appetite and long-term strategic goals.

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Hedera Hashgraph: Solving for Performance & Security at Scale Aug 27, 2021

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Ash Bennington, senior crypto editor for Real Vision, welcomes Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, to discuss consensus algorithms and the creation of Hedera Hashgraph. Starting in 2012, Harmon and his team were working to solve a distributed consensus math problem, specifically how to create a consensus algorithm that maximized both performance and security simultaneously. He states that this has been a decades old problem, and while it is clear already how to have the best security via asynchronous byzantine fault tolerance, it has always come at the expense of resource requirements—bandwidth or scaling issues. This was solved in 2015 with the creation of Hashgraph, and with its algorithm, it has led to a public distributed ledger with scalable and maximized performance and security properties. Filmed May 18th, 2021. Key Learnings: It's possible to create a consensus algorithm that makes it possible for the participants within a network to vote on transactions—however, as the number of transactions increases, the voting and, by extension, bandwidth required go up exponentially. What Hashgraph has innovated on is that by submitting just 2 hashes of information, that being the last transactions sent and received, the network can chain them into a graph and conceptually represent who knew what and when. When paired with a consensus algorithm, anyone who receives that data can calculate what the consensus would be without having to vote or ask the question, thus cutting out the middleman or bandwidth requirement and resulting in the creation of virtual voting.

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Cosmos: Creating the Toolkit for Interoperable Networks Aug 21, 2021

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Eric Kryski, CEO and co-founder of Bidali, sits down with Ethan Buchman, CEO of Informal Systems and co-founder of Cosmos, to discuss the Cosmos network and interoperable blockchains as well as a vision for localized economies and municipal sovereignty. Kryski and Buchman explore the challenges of building blockchain application layers on Bitcoin's and Ethereum's networks as well as achieving interoperability between protocols—even within the same network. Buchman shares how Cosmos' ecosystem is able to accomplish interoperability that restores sovereignty with an application-specific chain while providing a mature development environment. The work being done at Cosmos flows in Buchman's vision for more localized, interoperable economies, and he expands on this by breaking down his thoughts on community currencies, municipal sovereignty, and mutual credit systems. Filmed on May 18, 2021. Key Learnings: Buchman explains how Cosmos is aiming to become "the internet of blockchains" by allowing developers to build their blockchains in such a way that it will enable communication with each other in a decentralized way. He acknowledges how this sort of functionality within the crypto ecosystem would support economies that would become more localized and municipalities that become sovereign as diverse needs and values call for varied means of governance. Buchman argues that a shift toward localism and away from our dependence on globalization will lead to more sustainable, self-sufficient, and anti-fragile economies and societies.

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BadgerDAO: Bridging Bitcoin to Native Yield Strategies Aug 14, 2021

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Santiago Velez, entrepreneur and digital assets investor for Block Digital Corporation & AD, Inc., sits down with Chris Spadafora, founder of BadgerDAO, to discuss his background, the journey to found BadgerDAO, wrapped digital assets, risk, governance, and his thoughts on the crypto ecosystem. Following several years of investing in the space, Spadafora came to the conclusion that there was a lack of Bitcoin that can be wrapped or ported off of the bitcoin network and used as a utility on other blockchains. Spadafora asked, "How do you build an open community and project that wants to enable Bitcoin to work in a trusted and non-custodial way in addition to having an organization or business that is managed by the people vs a traditional corporate structure?" He recognized that the smart contract capabilities of Ethereum met a lot of the needs he was looking for in trying to utilize the liquidity of Bitcoin. While there are other protocols building on top of the Bitcoin network, Spadafora believes that the robustness of the smart contract technology that Ethereum built, in addition to the lack of liquidity and lack of interoperability in relation to the tools for daily usage, were key to fulfilling that vision. Filmed on May 6, 2021. Key learnings: To date, 1% of Bitcoin has been wrapped to port over to other blockchains. Spadafora believes that, moving forward, there will be anywhere between 20-40% of all Bitcoin will be wrapped and living on other chains because it is the ultimate collateral. While seeing the appreciation of Bitcoin in one’s wallet is good, being able to use it, put it to work, and have access to different financial services and applications that are traditionally reserved to hedge funds brings the power back to the people. Spadafora identifies that DeFi users have access to many great opportunities to gain interest; however, it requires too many steps, knowledge, and fees. Meanwhile, BadgerDAO allows for users to earn anywhere between 5%-30% interest on their Bitcoin while still retaining custody of their digital assets.

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Crypto: Gary Vaynerchuk and Raoul Pal Aug 12, 2021

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Gary Vaynerchuk, chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, sits down with Raoul Pal, co-founder and CEO of Real Vision, for a wide-ranging discussion on Vaynerchuck’s journey into crypto and the founding of VaynerX and VaynerMedia as well as Vaynerchuck’s thoughts on the current and future state of the blockchain ecosystem.

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