The Breakdown

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The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Feb 6 2020 Feb 08, 2020

Show notes

The week's full episode run in one long-run, long-drive ready podcast.

Monday | Deplatforming, Ethereum Marketing and Whether Brexit Matters for Crypto feat. Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier

Tuesday | Are Uncensorable Web Domains Blockchain's Next Killer App? Feat Namebase CEO Tieshun Roquerre

Wednesday | What All This VC and M&A Activity Tells Us About The State Of The Crypto Markets

Thursday | The Federal Reserve Has Its 'Come to Satoshi' Moment

Friday | Kraken's Dan Held on What's Different About Bitcoin At $10k This Time

Kraken’s Dan Held on What’s Different About Bitcoin At $10k This Time Feb 07, 2020

Show notes

Bitcoin is on a 7 week upward trend. Having already smashed through its $9,000 Vegeta memes, it is now inching closer towards $10k.

On this episode, @nlw is joined by Kraken’s Dan Held to discuss how bitcoin has changed in a number of ways since the last time we were at the $10,000 price level last year. They look at:

Narrative - Speculation around bitcoin as a safe haven and the role of the halvening continue to shape the conversation
Infrastructure - The tools for how people can interact with bitcoin - from lending to derivatives - have never been broader
Audience - Institutions are no longer just around the corner but actively participating in the market

The Federal Reserve Has Its ‘Come to Satoshi’ Moment Feb 06, 2020

Show notes

That’s the way Meltem Demirors described Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s remarks at Stanford yesterday. For the first time, the Fed has said it is actively researching and experimenting with digital currencies and distributed ledger technologies. This is a change in tone from a Fed that, when asked previously, has more or less dismissed digital currencies.

On this episode, @nlw looks at Brainard’s speech, along with: the latest from Japanese lawmakers proposing a digital currency to counteract the influence of a forthcoming Chinese digital yuan; a Bank for International Settlements digital currency working group with six major central banks; and the potential implications of CBDCs on bitcoin.

What All This VC and M&A Activity Tells Us About The State Of The Crypto Markets Feb 05, 2020

Show notes

If venture investments and acquisitions provide a window into the sentiment in markets, boy did we get a big dose of information today.

Today we look at investments in the world’s best known developer of the Lightning Network; a new prominent corporate investor for a tokenized securities platform; and Square’s investment in a real-time payments company.

We also look at a set of acquisitions, including a ConsenSys acquisition poised to get them in the $3.8T municipal bond space; a Bakkt acquisition poised to get them ready for a consumer app that includes more than just cryptocurrencies; and an attempt by Bakkt-parent ICE to buy eBay for north of $30b.

Are Uncensorable Web Domains Blockchain’s Next Killer App? With Namebase CEO Tieshun Roquerre Feb 04, 2020

Show notes

As claims of election tampering, fraud, and other dubious activities fly around the botched Democratic Caucus in Iowa, trust in our public institutions continues to crater.

The question of trust and censorship are at the heart of our episode today. Handshake is a new protocol for uncensorable web domains. The goal is to create a new blockchain-based Top Level Domain system that governments can’t censor or block.

To explain why Handshake (HNS) matters, @nlw is joined by Tieshun Roquerre, the CEO of Namebase, a next-generation domain registrar for HNS.

In this interview, they discuss:

What Handshake is
How a HNS domain is different from a standard web domain
Why uncensorable web domains are the next great blockchain killer app
How Roquerre became interested in the space
How Namebase works

Deplatforming, Ethereum Marketing and Whether Brexit Matters for Crypto Feb 03, 2020

Show notes

Much of the Crypto Twitter conversation this weekend was dominated by talk of Twitter’s suspension of ZeroHedge. @nlw explores why the specifics of the infraction or the quality of the publication aren’t the important part of the conversation, and why he thinks we’ll see arguments for social media platforms to be turned into public utilities in the years ahead.

Also on this episode:

Debates around Ethereum marketing. Does the community need to spend more resources telling the story and recruiting new users or should the tech speak for itself?
What Brexit means for the crypto community - practically and metaphorically.

The last section features comments from Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier.

The Breakdown Weekly Recap | Feb 1 2020 Feb 01, 2020

Show notes

The full week's episodes in one (plus a bonus TL;DR on ZeroHedge's deplatforming.

Tuesday | Narrative Watch: The Future of Fud
Wednesday | Exclusive Interview with Binance US CEO Catherine Coley announcing staking
Thursday | The Unsolved Mystery of How To Fund Public Protocols
Friday | The Founders of Chainlink and Synthetix on DeFi, Derivatives and 25 New Decentralized Price Feeds

The Founders of Chainlink and Synthetix on DeFi, Derivatives and 25 New Decentralized Price Feeds Jan 31, 2020

Show notes

Yesterday Chainlink released price reference data for 25 of its decentralized oracle networks which, together, power more than $100m in DeFi.

On this special interview episode, @nlw talks with Sergey Nazarov and Kain Warwick, the founders of Chainlink and Synthetix respectively about:

The evolution and goals of Synthetix, a novel type of derivatives exchange where users can interact with any asset with a price feed.
The challenge Synthetix faced around spinning up their own oracles around price feeds
The history of their collaboration and how Synthetix came to work with Chainlink
Chainlink approach to building decentralized oracles for data such as price feeds
Chainlink’s announcement yesterday about the new published price reference data for 25 oracle networks
The state of the idea of decentralization, and how what was previously a concept is becoming operationalized
One thing that gives them pause or scares them about DeFi and crypto and one thing that makes them excited for the future

The Unsolved Mystery of How to Fund Public Protocols Jan 30, 2020

Show notes

The best way to fund open source projects remains a question, and one that - in the context of crypto protocols - has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches.

Gitcoin grants used a quadratic funding program to match grants to technology builders and media creators in Ethereum

After months and months of concerted community debate and conversation, Zcash will implement a new Dev Fund of 20% of the block rewards after the Founders Reward runs out in November, splitting it between the Electric Coin Co (7%), Zcash Foundation (5%) and 3rd party developers (8%)

A consortium (cartel?) of the 4 largest BCH mining pools tried to insist upon a 12.5% block reward diversion to a new dev fund, with a threat to orphan blocks that didn’t comply. The plan ran into a barrier when Roger Ver’s bitcoin.com backed away.

Also in this episode, @nlw looks at the latest in CBDCs - including Japan’s continued hedging that they’re preparing for the possibility of needing to move quickly and Cambodia’s announcement that they will be implementing a CBDC this quarter.

Finally, Andrew Yang took a few minutes yesterday to talk about cryptocurrencies and why regulation with the intent to stop them would be doomed to fail.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Binance US CEO Catherine Coley Announces Staking Jan 29, 2020

Show notes

In a Breakdown exclusive, Binance US CEO announces that the exchange will begin supporting staking, starting with ALGO and ATOMs.

On this episode, Catherine and I discuss:

How the company prioritizes both new features and which audiences to build for
Why staking is important both for allowing people to do more with their crypto assets as well as help build and secure the networks those assets run on
How staking is part of a much larger mission around education, financial literacy and lowering the barriers to entry for participation in crypto.

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