In this episode I talk to Sam Bankman Fried from FTX. Sam is one of the most well known figures in the crypto space. He's a notorious trader moving billions of dollars on a daily basis. He is so busy that he only sleeps a couple of hours a day on a bean bag next to his desk. He recently got a lot of mainstream media attention for donating over $5m dollars to the Joe Biden campaign. In the episode we talk about: - FTX's fast growth and success reasons - Plans for Blockfolio and Maps.me -...

In this episode we talk to Stephan Ponnet  Foudner of AvadoCloud. Avado produces Blockchain Nodes which users can run at home and are extremely easy to set-up. Using an Avado device even non-technical people can run nodes in decentralized network and earn crypto tokens for doing so. In the episode we talk about how he got the idea for Avado, how he built the first prototypes and why he thinks everyone should run their own node. We also walk through the variety of networks that Avado...

In this episode I talk to Alex Salnikov, who is the founder of Rarible.com one of the largest NFT marketplaces in the crypto space. We discuss how he got into NFTs, why he thinks that what we’re currently seeing with NFT art is just the tip of the iceberg and why there could be much larger technological disruption ahead, as well as the challenges that Rarible faces and how it intends to tackle them. Thanks to Bitwala and Indexed Finance for sponsoring our podcast! Bitwala: Get €20 as...

In this episode we speak with Nate Hindman, Head of Growth and Mark Richardson, Lead Research from bancor.network. We talk about the history of Bancor, how it came to develop its first AMM, why it was ultimately less successful than Uniswap in that period and how its new version solves a lot of the issues that have existed in AMMs in the last couple of years: impermanent loss and single-sided liquidity. Thanks to our sponsor Bitwala for sponsoring our podcast! Get €20 as welcome bonus if...

Thanks to our sponsor Bitwala! Get €20 as welcome bonus if you sign-up to their crypto wallet app using our exclusive link. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In this episode we talk to Tim Beiko, who has recently become Facilitator of the AllCoreDevs call, where Ethereum Core Developers discuss the Ethereum roadmap and other important governance matters. Tim is also the lead coordinator behind one of the...

In this episode I talk to Dillon Kellar from Indexed Finance. Indices are probably the hottest product category in the DeFi space right now. Probably everyone knows indices or ETFs from the traditional world like the S&P500. They track the performance of entire market sector or baskets of assets. By doing so they allow investors to get exposure in a passive way without having to actively manage their portfolio everyday, buying and selling various assets. An index takes care of...

In this episode I talk to Jack Lipstone one of the founders behind Rari Capital Rari is a lending protocol aggregator promising to always get the best interest rates for their for users who trust Rari with their crypto assets. Since there are multiple lending protocols in the DeFi space, each having different interest rates, it can be quite time consuming for users to always move their assets between apps as soon as interest rates change Rari automates this process and deposits user asset...

In this episode we talk to Kirll Kutakov from Stakewise.io, an Ethereum 2.0 staking provider. Stakewise wants to make it as easy as possible for users to stake their Ether (ETH), participate in the validation mechanism of the Ethereum 2.0 network and earn those juicy staking rewards (5-15%). We talk about the different staking options available to users, what their respective tradeoffs are, the competition in the staking space, especially with centralised exchanges and how Stakewise...

In this episode we talk to Burak Benligiray from API3, API3 is building a next-generation oracle solution. Oracles are a crucial piece of infrastructure in the nascent DeFi industry and beyond. They allow smart contracts to communicate with real world data. Currently, the most important data coming from oracles are price feeds. But tomorrow, it could be KYC, open-banking data Big thanks to our sponsors: Stakewise.io: An ETH 2.0 staking provider, allowing you to stake your ETH and earn high...

In this episode I talk with Kevin Chou, the founder of Rally, a platform for creators to build next generation community economies. Using Rally, creators can launch a token, distribute or sell it to their fans, receive donations denominated in that token and use a whole set of tools to create special experiences for their fans.  For example, they can reward fans who engage a lot with them on social media, watch a lot of Twitch content or buy the creator’s merchandise. The point is that...

In this episode we speak with Douglas Bakkum from ShiftCrypto, a swiss hardware wallet company which is behind the BitBox02, one of the best hardware wallets on the market. Hardware wallets are essential to securely store crypto and thus an essential belonging in the product stack of ever user.  Now that so many new people are entering the space we wanted to make an episode covering the basics of how hardware wallets work but also how they’re going to evolve in the future. Douglas is a...

In this episode I speak with Roxana Danila. She’s the CTO of Nexus Mutual, one of the hottest projects in the growing crypto insurance vertical. Nexus Mutual brings insurance to the frantic Wild West world of DeFi and allows users to protect themselves against hacks and smart contracts bugs in their favourite DeFi projects, while continuing to enjoy their high interest rates. What’s interesting is that Nexus Mutual itself is also a protocol consisting of smart contracts. Nexus Mutual...

In this episode Cooper Turley from Audius shares with us why he thinks the music industry is ripe for disruption. Whether it's the endless number of middlemen or a disjointed royalty system delaying payments to Artist, projects like Audius are here to make a change. Audius is a decentralized music-sharing and streaming protocol facilitating direct relationships between artist and their fans.  We discuss what Audius is about and how to create the right and incentive designs to onboard a new...

Matthew and I discuss the landscape of Layer-2 solutions and how Loopring fits in there. We also talked about the advantages of having launched early, the role and mechanics behind the LRC token, how Loopring plans to bring more users and liquidity onto its network and many more interesting topics. Thanks to our sponsor Bitwala! For our European listeners: Get 20 euros if you sign-up using our link: https://bitwala.x89scb.net/1xYMd

In this episode we speak with Antonio Juliano the Founder and CEO of DyDx. DyDx is a decentralised exchange running on the Ethereum Blockchain. Next to conventional spot trading DyDx offers more sophisticated trading products such as margin trading and perpetuals. If you don’t know what these terms mean this is the perfect episode you as Antonio explains it in very simple terms in the episode. We also talked about how DyDx works, about its plans to migrate to a Layer-2 solution, about...

In this episode I talk to Ravindra Kumar CEO at Frontier, a DeFi dashboard that lets users manage their funds across different Blockchains like Ethereum, Binance Chain, Kava, Cosmos and soon Solana. As we are really interested in wallets and user experience in crypto, we had to talk to Ravindra to hear about how they intend to aggregate all these different protocols into one user interface. I found out that they have a very ambitious roadmap with a special focus on the 1B large Indian...

Listen to every episode of the Crypto Testers podcast here: https://cryptotesters.com/podcast Follow CRYPTOTESTERS; Website: www.cryptotesters.com Facebook: https://facebook.com/cryptotesters/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/cryptotesters Follow the podcast on: iTunes - https://apple.co/32nGGVc Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3j4JnAR Breaker- https://bit.ly/32lwD2Q LEARNING: https://cryptotesters.com/blog BEST CRYPTO WALLETS: https://cryptotesters.com/best-cryptocurrency-wallets Thanks to...

In this episode I am talking to Stani Kulechov from Aave protocol. Aave is a lending protocol built on Ethereum. I already had a crypto lending business on the show namely Nexo but Aave is completely different. It runs on smart contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain and is completely decentralized. I loved this episode because it clearly shows what protocols are and how they differ from traditional companies. We also talked about Aave’s roadmap, what he thinks about recent developments in the...

In today's episode I talk to Evgeny Yurtaev, the founder of Zerion. Zerion is one of the products or tools I use almost on a daily basis. It embodies a lot of the best properties of Web3 and Ethereum. You can just connect any Ethereum wallet that you have in one click, and Zerion reads all the positions associated to your wallet address from the Blockchain. It displays them in a beautiful dashboard for you, which makes it super convenient to manage your funds. Try it out: https://zerion.io/

In this episode I talk to Benjamin Jones, the CEO of Bitwala. You probably know Bitwala by now as they have sponsored this podcast pretty much since the beginning. Bitwala is in a pretty unique position because they are both a bank and a crypto wallet. They are really between the two worlds. So I asked Ben for his thoughts on how these two worlds will co exist in the future. Because if you look at the world of Decenztralized Finance, the whole point is to remove banks. He had very...

In this episode Simon Chamorro, founder of Valiu, talks about how his young startup tries to help the 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees living in Colombia send money back to their relatives in Venezuela.  Unfortunately, no international remittance company allows to send money into Venezuela. So Valiu uses Bitcoin to create a platform where users can transfer Colombian Pesos to Venezuelan Bolivares in less than an hour. Valiu also allows their users to hold synthetic cryptodollars...

In this episode I talk to Pavel Matveev who is the CEO and Founder of Wirex. Wirex was the first company to launch a crypto card in 2015, thereby allowing bitcoin users to spend their cryptocurrency online or in store, pretty much anywhere where Visa is accepted. We talk about how Wirex grew from a simple idea to a company with more than 230 employees, offices in 7 locations all around the world and more than 3m customers. The story is quite fascinating as Pavel has been in the space for a...

Thomas Heller is the Global Business Director at F2Pool the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world. Mining pools allow individual miners to join forces in order to increase their chances to mine a block and get more regular rewards payouts. In this episode we talk about what mining pools are and whether they're dangerous for proof-of-work chains. We also discuss whether small investors should start mining and what the best tactics are to mine profitably as a small investor. Lastly, we...

Ray Youssef is the CEO of Paxful, a peer-to-peer marketplace to trade bitcoin. Paxful let's people directly trade bitcoin with with one another. Anyone can sell bitcoin on the platform and choose which payment methods they like, set the price they want to sell for etc. The company grew to over 250 employees without ever receiving any investor money. The reason Paxful is so successful is that it does an incredible job at connecting all the fragmented financial systems in the world. Using...