The Crypto Conversation

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The Information Market - Polymarket lets traders bet on real-world events Oct 04, 2020

Show notes

Shayne Coplan is the founder of Polymarket, an information markets platform. Speculators can bet on the world's most highly-debated topics like the upcoming US elections, COVID-19, DeFi, cryptocurrencies, and more.

Guest:

Shayne Coplan

Why you should listen:

In 2014 Coplan was a teenager interested in music, technology, and the peer-to-peer file sharing scene. He had started mining crypto assets like Litecoin using the early GPU miners. When the website for the Ethereum presale went live he became inspired by the Ethereum vision and at 16 years old, Coplan was one of the youngest participants in the Ethereum presale. "It seemed really cool to me. I didn't have a lot of capital to put into it but it was really exciting and it has been fantastic to be part of the journey so far."

Prediction markets are exchange-traded markets created for the purpose of trading the outcome of events. They date back to the 1500s and started as simple bets. Some forms of information markets such as dead pools or assassination markets are part of the Cyberpunk literature.

Polymarket is an Information Markets platform built on Ethereum. Speculators can harness the power of free markets to bet on the outcome of real world events. Coplan says, "I've always loved markets. I'm a fan of liquid markets and I'm fascinated by shadow economies and different market structures. I'm a believer in markets as the most effective mechanism for aggregating information. I have a tough time believing everything I read in the media. I think a market is a much more reliable aggregator of truth. If you have a lot of different participants acting on their beliefs, a market is the best way we can distill that information into one equilibrium or signal."

Key takeaway:

One of the problems with social media is a lack of accountability. Everyone has an opinion to share and there's not much downside to being wrong. This makes it hard for regular people to find out what's fact and what's fiction. 2020 has showcased just how bad the consequences can be.

Ploymarket thinks that one part of the solution is to let people bet on current events. Free markets are the best method of aggregating disparate information in real time (see: Hayek, stock market, EMH).

Coplan says "one of the best use-cases for a blockchain and a generalized smart contract platform is the ability to create markets on arbitrary topics that can be easily created, traded, and resolved. For a couple of dollars you can create a market on anything and avoid the bureaucratic risk that is inherent to creating these markets in the legacy financial system.

On Polymarket, speculators bet on future event outcomes and profit from accuracy. With all the conflicting 'expert' opinions on social media, Polymarket lets people put their money where their mouth is, have skin in the game, and profit from being correct.

Supporting links:

Polymarket

Polymarket on Twitter

Shayne on Twitter

Mind Game

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Algorand is building solutions for the future of economic exchange Sep 28, 2020

Show notes

Steve Kokinos is the CEO at Algorand. Algorand is an open, permissionless, pure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol that wants to usher in a new era of serious DeFi. Similar to how AWS (Amazon Web Services) has made cloud computing accessible, Algorand is building an ecosystem to unleash the potential of DeFi.

Why you should listen:

Led by Turing award-winner Silvio Micali and a team of cryptographers, engineers, and mathematicians that claim to have solved the blockchain trilemma, Algorand is committed to the development of solutions for the future of economic exchange. Impressed by the Bitcoin whitepaper and its deployment, computer science professor Silvio Micali thought that Bitcoin represented a fascinating use of cryptography and distributed systems science. However, he felt that the high costs of mining coupled with its low performance features left room for improvement. His work with Algorand is concentrated on improving the fundamental properties of blockchain.

Key takeaway:

After a successful career in tech, Steve Kokinos met Silvio Micali and impressed with his vision for Algorand he joined the company as CEO in 2018.

Steve says we are moving toward a multi-blockchain world. "There will be a handful of platforms and public networks that can be used for different purposes and they can all be winners here. Other tech waves have shown that there can be several winning platforms or several winning new technologies that are adopted. In the same way that when a user fires up Spotify or Netflix there isn't an AWS logo saying they're running the back end, and that's how we see Algorand, we want to be the utility in the background that people can build great applications on."

Ethereum currently supports around 15 transactions per second, Bitcoin is a little slower. Steve says that Algorand today can process 1100 tps and over the next coming releases they want to scale that up 10,000 tps. "It's important for us to understand what people are using blockchains for and to build the functionality that they need

into layer one primitives. At Algorand we're focused on layer one primitives, that might be financial applications, programmable money or building dapps. We've also announced a layer 2 smart contract platform where the initialization of the contract will be on layer 1 but will then run-off-chain. We think the way to do that is run the computation off-chain, make sure it's provably true and then bring it back to the main again."

Algorand is permissionless so anyone can build on it. Steve says, "Our layer 1 pure proof of stake approach lends itself to different forms of financial applications. Use cases include DeFi, more traditional payment assets, and bank transfers and post-trade settlements. And then the third use case is central bank digital currencies. The Marshall Islands has launched a CBDC on Algorand.

There are 400 companies that have deployed projects on Algorand. One is Planet Watch, which has sensors in homes and businesses across the world to capture air quality data around the globe and then compare that to govt guidelines and regulations.

The ALGO token is the prime asset of the public network. It is used to pay transaction fees and run smart contracts. As part of the pure proof of stake protocol every token holder can be called upon to propose a block, and every token holder can vote on upgrades via its use as a governance token.

Asked about his favorite piece of sci-fi, Steve picks Snow Crash directed by Neal Stephenson.

Supporting links:

Algorand

Steve on Twitter

Snow Crash

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What Bitcoin Did - How Peter McCormack turned his hobby into the world's biggest Bitcoin podcast Sep 21, 2020

Show notes

Peter McCormack is the host of the popular What Bitcoin Did podcast and the new Defiance podcast. After starting the podcast in late 2017, What Bitcoin Did has grown steadily and recently achieved an impressive 5 million downloads.

Why you should listen:

Before the pandemic, Peter traveled regularly preferring to do his interviews in-person. With global travel now on hold, Peter is based out of his home in Bedford, UK. Peter says that he has used the time to focus on his craft and keep refining his content production. He has also given up booze and redone his garden.

Peter says the Libertarian argument against lockdowns is stronger now and as countries get hit by a second wave it will likely be more difficult to enforce new lockdowns without social unrest. Peter is impressed by the leadership of New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

Key takeaway:

Peter started podcasting almost by accident after spending time at a retreat in Italy with podcaster Rich Roll. After telling Roll about his growing interest in Bitcoin, Roll encouraged McCormack to start a Bitcoin podcast. In the three years since McCormack has traveled to 30 countries and interviewed hundreds of people. The success of the podcast means McCormack now has the freedom to pursue topics that he is genuinely interested in.

What Bitcoin Did will continue to focus on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Peter says, "If you're into lots of different coins you get called a shitcoiner and if you're into Bitcoin only, you get called a maximalist. So at one point I took a step back and thought 'what is it I want to do?' I looked at my portfolio and I only hold Bitcoin. Why? Because I believe in it and because I understand it, and because I think it can be a useful tool for a lot of people. I'm also interested in the human rights angle, so if I focus on Bitcoin - it allows me to cover other topics such as Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road and Venezuela."

In some circumstances, Peter will cover other blockchains if it is of interest to bitcoiners. For example, his recent episodes on Ethereum were relevant because there are people who are wrapping Bitcoin on Ethereum so it's important for people to understand what Ethereum is. "Does that mean I'll cover Tron? No. Does it mean I'll cover Binance Chain? No. I will cover Ethereum because there is a significant amount of Bitcoin that is wrapped on it and people need to understand the risks."

Asked about his favorite piece of sci-fi, Peter picks Alien 3 directed by David Fincher.

Supporting links:

What Bitcoin Did

Peter on Twitter

Alien 3

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Scaling DeFi - Radix is a protocol for building DeFi applications Sep 15, 2020

Show notes

Piers Ridyard is the CEO of Radix, a layer-one protocol built for DeFi. DeFi applications are currently built on protocols that were not designed to scale. Radix has built a scalable, secure, high-throughput protocol for building applications and tokens. Building on the successes of existing public ledgers, Radix's protocol is a permissionless framework on which DeFi services can be developed and run. Radix claims to have solved two of the biggest challenges in DeFi - scalability, and security.

Why you should listen:

Radix has raised $6 million in funding, including $4.1 million in 2020 from the founder of TransferWise, Taavet Hinrikus.

The value of DeFi is over $8 billion. However, for DeFi to reach its full potential, it needs fast, low-cast transactions and secure by design systems. It's critical that DeFi applications are scalable and composable. Piers says that protocols such as Ethereum 2,0, Polkadot and Cosmos are solving the wrong scaling problems, and not addressing others. Piers says that mainstream DeFi needs a DLT platform designed bottom-to-top to make DeFi just work – for users, and for developers. This is the aim of Radix.

For the DeFi ecosystem to continue to grow incentives are needed to attract developers. Radix has an innovative developer incentive program that allows developers to profit from the applications they contribute to.

Key takeaway:

Radix features two core innovations, firstly Cerberus, the scalable consensus protocol. Cerberus is capable of processing massive numbers of transactions in parallel due to its highly sharded data structure and unique application layer.

The second innovation is the Radix Engine, a developer interface that allows quick public ledger deployments in a secure environment. The Radix Engine is Radix's application layer.

In the Crypto Conversation hot take round Piers says that he expects DeFi to have more liquidity than any other single exchange in the transitional market within the next ten years. "The fundamental component of DeFi is the way that liquidity can move between applications and products."

Asked about his favorite piece of sci-fi, Piers picks Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

Supporting links:

Rendezvous with Rama

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The Tokenized Economy - INX is pioneering the democratization of security token trading Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

Douglas Borthwick is Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at INX. INX is building a regulated cryptocurrency, security token, and derivatives trading platform in the U.S. INX has just launched the world's first fully regulated Security Token based IPO.

Why you should listen:

Douglas has a long career in finance including roles with Morgan Stanley, managing foreign exchange derivatives trading groups, and running the strategic trading desk at Merrill Lynch. He is part of an impressive team of financial market, crypto asset and technology experts at INX.

INX is building a fully-licensed and regulated cryptocurrency, security token and derivatives trading platform. The goal is to be a leader in the regulated security token platform space. INX aims to enable the listing and trading of both regulated security tokens and cryptocurrencies for institutional and retail investors.

Security tokens give investors the ability to trade fractionalized assets, specific income streams, particular business lines, or assets that could not be traded before. This brings new liquidity and efficiencies to the markets.

Key takeaway:

The INX blockchain asset trading solution has been developed and is ready for launch following the completion of the IPO. After launch INX traders will be able to buy/sell crypto assets as well as security tokens and their derivatives.

INX announced in January 2018 its submission of a draft registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering of the INX Token.

In August this year, INX announced that the SEC declared as effective the registration statement on Form F-1 filed in connection with the initial public offering of up to 130 million INX Security Tokens. INX has set the offering price at $0.90 per Token with a minimum investment of $1,000. The offering began August 25, 2020.

INX intends to use a portion of the net proceeds raised from the sale of INX Tokens in the offering for the continued development and operation of INX Trading Solutions, and for the establishment of a cash reserve fund. Investors in the tokens are entitled to receive pro rata distributions of 40% of the Ccmpany's cumulative adjusted operating cash flow.

Supporting links:

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Why LEVERJ is the next big thing in DeFi Sep 03, 2020

Show notes

The next big thing in DeFi is LEVERJ - the world's first scalable decentralized derivatives exchange. LEVERJ is a trading platform created to perform like traditional financial exchanges while maintaining the critical function of security. Built on Gluon, a Plasma sidechain, LEVERJ is self-custodial by design, meaning that users always control their private keys and funds. Gluon is a mathematically rigorous solution preventing fraud, compromise, and collusion to provide all the benefits of blockchain without the limitations. Gluon is the first fully operational Ethereum Layer 2 chain, giving LEVERJ the high-transaction throughput to work as fast as centralized exchanges.

Why you should listen:

LEVERJ is a self-custodial decentralized derivatives exchange that provides up to 100x leverage. High speed, decentralized spot trading went live on mainnet in 2019. Futures trading is available on testnet and will launch on mainnet at the end of September. The first tradable futures products are ETH-USD and BTC-USD perpetual swaps with many more products in the pipeline.

LEVERJ has partnered with Brave New Coin to roll out a pipeline of innovative exchange traded products. Some examples of these are sub-sector specific tradable products such as a DeFi index, a privacy coin index, volatility indices and more. "Most exchanges self-index, which introduces unnecessary risk," says LEVERJ CEO Bharath Rao. "By partnering with Brave New Coin, we give our users more transparency in the benchmark methodology and instrument design process as well as a greatly expedited product roadmap. It's our goal to bring the best practices of capital markets into the DeFi space, thus attracting new institutions."

Key takeaway:

Interest in DeFi has exploded in 2020. Trading on decentralized exchanges reached $4 billion in July. To cater to this demand, LEVERJ has built a high-frequency, multi-currency spot and futures trading platform.

The explosion of DeFi in 2020 has seen Ethereum gas prices rise significantly. The huge spike in demand for transaction space on the Ethereum chain has put strain on the Ethereum and DeFi ecosystems. Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have faced challenges with security and performance, often falling short of the standards set by traditional financial exchanges.

LEVERJ solves these challenges with their Gluon sidechain, a mathematically rigorous protocol preventing fraud, compromise, and collusion to provide the benefits of blockchain without the limitations. Gluon is an advanced, fully operational Ethereum Layer 2 chain, giving LEVERJ high-transaction, low-latency throughput similar to centralized exchanges.

Other developers can also build decentralized applications using Gluon, including their own decentralized exchanges.

Gluon has been in development for over three years and is currently the only Layer 2 solution purpose built for high-capacity trading, that has instant-finality, strong composability and conventional APIs for sophisticated traders to feel like they are using a regular centralized exchange without counterparty risk.

Supporting links:

LEVERJ

LEVERJ on Twitter

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Start your own fund - Melon is the infrastructure for asset management 3.0 Aug 24, 2020

Show notes

Mona El Isa is the founder of the Melon protocol. Melon is an Ethereum-based protocol for decentralized on-chain asset management. Melon empowers anyone to set up, manage, and invest in customized on-chain investment vehicles. The process of setting up an investment fund on Melon costs less than $60 and takes ten minutes using the Melon terminal.

Why you should listen:

After spending a decade building a career as a successful trader at Goldman Sachs and at a hedge fund, Mona was approached to set up and run her own investment fund. It did not work out. Mona realized that successful traders at investment funds were shielded from the many administrative processes required. Companies like Goldman hire entire teams of people to look after the many legal and financial requirements needed to run a fund. This means that setting up a new fund is out of reach except for those with the resources to do so.

Melon is a decentralized protocol to set up and manage on-chain investment funds. By automating the back and middle office processes of fund management through the use of smart contracts, Melon enables fund managers to create their own tokenized funds.

Managers can write a fund prospectus in code. Mona says "You can think of Melon as a technology that helps managers customize the set-up of their fund. You can pre-define all sorts of rules from fees, to number of positions, types of assets, risk management etc."

The protocol takes care of investments and redemptions, it takes care of the NAV calculations, it enforces any of the rules that managers have in their funds. And everything is automated using smart contracts. Users can write as many rules as they want, so they can create uniquely individual funds.

The process of setting up an investment fund on Melon costs less than $60 and takes ten minutes using the Melon terminal.

Key takeaway:

The Melon target market is what Mona describes as the "long tail of investment managers". This could be any fund below $150 million dollars. 90% of new funds in this category fail, many due to the high level of compliance, fees and processes involved.

It will soon be possible to set up a Melon fund that has a yield-farming strategy, or lends to market-making pools, or a DAO that invests in other Melon funds, or can interact with synthetic assets.

No other protocol is permissionless in the way that Melon allows any non-technical person to set up an on-chain investment fund in a matter of minutes.

Ethereum Gas prices are putting a strain on DeFi. The Melon team is slimming down contracts to make them more efficient and less gas-intensive for V2. Medium-term the team are looking at layer two solutions to mitigate against high gas prices.

Supporting links:

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DeFi & ETH 2.0 - Building the Ethereum ecosystem with MEW Aug 17, 2020

Show notes

Kosala Hemachandra is the founder and CEO of MyEtherWallet, one of the original and most popular Ethereum wallets. MEW is now at the center of a fast growing ecosystem designed to become the nexus of Ethereum.

Why you should listen:

MyEtherWallet was founded in 2015, ten days after the launch of Ethereum - as one of the first client-side interfaces for the Ethereum blockchain. With first-mover advantage, it became the default Ethereum wallet for the first users of Ethereum. MyEtherWallet was a popular and user-friendly wallet that supported ERC-20 tokens — important for engaging with ICOs. As a result, MEW attracted a large user-base during the ICO boom of 2017.

Kosala says, "the MEW motto is that if it works with Ethereum it works with MEW. Our goal is to become the nexus of Ethereum."

MEW is the umbrella brand for the MEW ecosystem that includes MEWwallet, MEWtopia, and MEWconnect.

Key takeaway:

Kosala says there are some similarities between the ICO boom of 2017 and the current interest in DeFi. He says that is human nature to be attracted to hype and speculation. However, he says he is excited by the promise and potential of DeFi as a technology and what it brings to Ethereum.

The first MyEtherWallet DeFi integrations are with Ren and Aave, with more to come. The new MyEtherWallet DeFi integrations use MEWconnect, a connection protocol designed to let Dapp developers make their Dapps available to MEW users. Dapp developers can make their products available to a large user base while MEW users can access the growing suite of decentralized tools and apps designed to navigate the Ethereum ecosystem.

Supporting links:

My Ether Wallet

MEWwallet

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Return of the Bulls - Are we set for a multi-year crypto bull run? Aug 10, 2020

Show notes

Josh Olszewicz is a professional crypto trader at Techemy Capital and the lead analyst at Brave New Coin. On this episode of the Crypto Conversation Josh joins Andy to discuss the recent positive price action, the TokenSets platform, and Josh confirms that we're in a crypto bull market.

Why you should listen:

Josh says that the technical indicators are looking very strong for BTC with strong echoes of 2017. "There is a possibility we're set for a multi-year bull run, especially post-halving. It's almost eerie the similarities we're seeing in the price chart and in the fundamentals to 2017. It's ramping up for quite an exciting situation. With Gold at all-time highs, ongoing money printing, and with chaos in the world, it's an ideal macro backdrop for BTC to perform well."

Josh says that for ETH, a price target of $750 is on the cards, and for BTC $13K might happen in the next two weeks. "$33k sounds like a ridiculous target, but for me, that is where we are headed. One of the big banks released a target recently of $125K based on the 2017 bull run, so all of a sudden my targets are low compared to traditional financial analysts. All the signs are converging, so seeing BTC at an all-time-high soon is an expectation. It's not that I think it might happen, at this point I'm expecting it will happen."

Key takeaway:

Josh says that while it is an uncertain time in the world, the U.S. election might not be too disruptive to the markets. "As soon as Bernie lost the nomination, traditional financial markets exhaled dramatically. He was the potential change agent for anything that would affect them. But now, with Biden and Trump, they don't mind too much, either is fine at this point. Biden is not going to rock the boat and Trump is Trump."

Josh is a pro trader at Techemy Capital who has just launched two actively managed investment portfolios on the TokenSets automated asset management platform. This allows investors to gain exposure to BTC and ETH price action. Investors are now able to take advantage of the crypto market's price moves without having to trade themselves - and because Techemy's new products are non-custodial - without having to release control of their crypto assets to a third party.

Techemy Capital's BTC and ETH portfolios are actively traded using strategies designed to generate capital gains. Trades are executed by Techemy Capital's professional in-house trading team, led by Rob Brewis and Josh Olszewicz.

Supporting links: