George Calle is the VP of Research at The Block. In this episode, Calle gives an overview of the key themes from The Block's 2024 Digital Assets Outlook Report. The full report can be downloaded here. OUTLINE 0:00 - Introduction 04:36 - 2023 Overview 08:08 - Blockchain Scaling 14:02 - DeFi Usage Trends 17:43 - 2023 Macro Impact 20:41 - Regulatory Landscape 27:39 - Binance 36:09 - 2023 Winners 40:26 - 2023 Losers

Tzvi Wiesel is the founder and CEO of Baxus, a startup in the wine and spirits industry attempting to revolutionize the way these products are traded, authenticated and valued globally. In this episode, Wiesel explains how his company leverages blockchain technology for ownership proof, authentication and secure storage — and how Baxus aims to address challenges like opaque pricing and legal complexities in the alcoholic beverage market.

James Seyffart is an ETF Research Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. In this episode, Seyffart shares why he believes a spot bitcoin ETF approval is on the way and how the market might react to the news. Grayscale Investments’ win against the SEC in August over its application to convert its flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) product into a spot bitcoin ETF is another major factor in the SEC’s potential approval, Seyffart said. “I think the SEC has kind of been backed into a corner here...

This is the opening installment of the miniseries 'Web3 will fail unless...', sponsored by Axelar and featuring co-host Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder of Axelar. In this episode, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan lays out the vision for EigenLayer and explains how the increasing modularization of blockchain infrastructure and services will enable the next wave of crypto innovation. OUTLINE: 00:00 Introduction 03:54 Web3 Adoption Curve 12:37 Monolithic vs. Modularity 20:20 Developer...

Charles d'Haussy is the CEO of the dYdX Foundation. In this episode, d'Haussy discusses the launch of dYdX v4, and the potential tailwinds that could help decentralized derivative products gain market share in the years ahead. According to d'Haussy, the decision to launch dYdX v4 as a standalone appchain in the Cosmos ecosystem was made to optimize the experience of dYdX users. "If you need to upgrade to a new [tech] stack, you should be agnostic, and just think of the users, the experience,...

Alex Felix is the Chief Investment Officer at CoinFund. Back in July, CoinFund announced the raise of $158 million for a new early-stage crypto startup investment fund.  In this episode, Felix explains how his firm is thinking about allocating the capital, and breaks down the institutional interest in early-stage crypto investing. According to Felix, the market is still discounting web'3 full potential: "Almost everyone universally has under-appreciated, the size of the market opportunity for...

Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital. In this episode, Scaramucci reflects on the lessons he learned in the depths of last year's bear market, and explains why he believes the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. will lead to hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into bitcoin in the near future. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 05:28 - SkyBridge Strategy 10:15 - Conviction 14:49 - FTX Takeaways 18:39 - 2024 Projections 29:03 - Warren & Gensler...

Justin Slaughter is the Policy Director at Paradigm. In this episode, Slaughter explains why crypto regulation in the U.S. is likely stuck "in a holding pattern" until after the 2024 election cycle, and how policymakers on both sides of the aisle are beginning to see past crypto's volatility to appreciate the underlying technological innovation. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 07:16 - Crypto Policy Overview 11:04 - Political Perceptions of Crypto 15:52 - Bipartisan Crypto Support 19:37 - FIT...

Superphiz is a long-time Ethereum community member and a became a vocal advocate for staking decentralization following the Ethereum 'Merge' to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism last year. In this episode of The Scoop, Superphiz unpacks how Ethereum's merge to proof-of-stake has caused liquid staking derivatives to pose a potential threat to Ethereum's credible neutrality, as well as the best pathways to mitigate the potential for staking centralization. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 2:55...

Kavita Gupta is the founder and CEO of Delta Blockchain Fund. Gupta — a former executive at ConsenSys — launched the fund in September 2021 and it currently sits at $125 million AUM. In this episode of The Scoop, Gupta discusses how the recent surge in crypto prices has impacted the venture landscape, and shares what sectors of the market she is paying the most attention to. According to Gupta, most early-stage crypto valuations are still fairly reasonable — which is leading to a steady...

Leo Mizuhara is the founder and CEO of Hashnote — a digital asset management platform that aims to provide institutions with a regulated gateway to DeFi. In this episode of The Scoop, Mizuhara explores the recent hype around tokenized real-world assets and examines some of the hidden risks under pinning this sector of the digital assets market. According to Mizuhara, many purported 'tokenized' T-Bills are not actually providing direct exposure. "I think it's a giant misnomer — it's really...

Austin Federa is Head of Strategy at the Solana Foundation. In this episode of The Scoop recorded live at Solana Breakpoint 2023, Federa unpacks some of Breakpoint's biggest announcements and explains how Solana builders persevered through the depths of the bear market to continue enhancing Solana's tech. According to Federa, Solana's recent performance enhancements have rectified many of the problems that plagued Solana's performance throughout the 2021 bull run.  "I think you saw a lot of...

Armani Ferrante is the founder and CEO of the crypto wallet company Backpack and the creator of the MadLads NFT collection. In this episode of The Scoop recorded live at Solana Breakpoint 2023, Ferrante unpacks Backpack's plans to launch a new exchange in Dubai. As Ferrante explains, the new exchange is both an opportunity to bring a regulated crypto exchange to market and to bolster the Solana ecosystem: "We very much see a big opportunity in the international market, not only in the context...

Jupiter Zheng is Partner of Liquid Funds & Research for HashKey Capital — the investment arm of the Hong Kong crypto financial services firm HashKey Group. In this episode, Zheng explains how the crypto industry is gaining momentum in Asia — particularly in Hong Kong. Back in September, Hashkey announced it is raising up to $100 million for a new liquid fund with a heavy focus on altcoins. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors PayPal. Make your crypto move with PayPal. Get...

Juthica Chou is the head of OTC options trading at Kraken and the former president of LedgerX. In this episode, Chou explains how crypto's recent rally is being reflected in the options market, and what signals to pay attention to in the weeks ahead. According to Chou, volatility has returned to the market after months of relatively little activity: "The market's definitely pricing some big moves. And I always say, like if it can go up fast, it can go down faster." This episode is brought to...

Pranav Kanade is a portfolio manager at VanEck. In this episode, Kanade analyzes some of the trends and opportunities that he sees playing out during the current crypto bear market. Kanade says that crypto builders should be focusing on building products that help onboard new users into the ecosystem: "If I were to criticize this space for something, it's that a lot of people are too focused on building things for the existing user base rather than building things for people that are not...

Kevin Johnson is Coinbase's VP of Institutional Sales and Trading. In this episode, Johnson shares the details behind Coinbase Prime's new web3 wallet designed to give institutional and enterprise clients secure and direct access to web3, DeFi, and various onchain operations. As Johnson explains, "It was always in our plans to take the great centralized tools that we had built with those multi user capabilities and eventually bring those on on chain for clients." The new non-custodial wallet...

Joesph Kelly is the CEO of Unchained — a bitcoin financial services company that offers services including trading, inheritance solutions, bitcoin-backed loans, and tax-advantaged bitcoin retirement accounts. In this episode, Kelly explains how his firm managed to become "the last lender standing in the US market for bitcoin-backed loans," and how Unchained has experienced growth despite rising federal interest rates. Earlier this year, Unchained raised $60 million in a Series B funding round...

The Block's Weekend Editor Zack Abrams has been covering Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal trial live from the courtroom in New York. In this episode, Abrams provides a first hand account of what he has witnessed and explains why he thinks SBF's case is more complicated than the general public seems to believe. Zack's ongoing coverage of the trial can be found here. OUTLINE: 00:00 Introduction 04:32 Fraud or Failure? 10:23 SBF’s Defense 11:39 Crux of the Case 16:27 Alameda’s Backdoor 19:24...

WassieLawyer is a former restructuring lawyer and an active participant in the ongoing conversation surrounding FTX's bankruptcy proceedings. In this episode, WassieLawyer outlines how the prospects of FTX creditors have improved over the course of the past year, including what to expect in the coming months. FTX's investment in Anthropic made headlines recently following reports that the company's most recent valuation could be as high as $30 billion. OUTLINE: 00:00 Introduction 00:39...

Zane Tackett is the former head of institutional sales at FTX. In this episode, Tackett recounts his experience working with Sam Bankman-Fried at FTX and explains how the exchange's terms of service blow a hole in SBF's criminal defense. Although SBF claims he is not guilty of fraud, Tackett says "it's obvious that he knew what he was doing." OUTLINE: 00:00 Introduction 03:32 FTX's Business Model 06:56 FTX's Balance Sheet 10:06 Michael Lewis: Going Infinite 11:14 The Real SBF 16:02 FTX...

Travis Kling is the Founder & Chief Investment Officer of Ikigai Asset Management — a crypto asset management startup that had a 'large majority' of its assets stuck on FTX when the exchange declared for bankruptcy last year. In this episode, on the eve of former FTX boss Sam Bankman Fried's criminal trial, Kling recounts his story since last November when FTX imploded and explains why he remains optimistic about the potential for recovery. OUTLINE: 00:56 - Introduction 03:01 - Ikigai’s...

Michael Cahill is the CEO of Douro Labs, where he oversees the development and acceleration of the Pyth Network — an oracle network for real-time financial market data delivery to smart contract applications. In this episode, Cahill unpacks the unique advantages of Pyth Network over other oracle providers and explains what obstacles currently stand in the way of replicating the centralized trading experience on-chain. According to Cahill, DeFi is "very close to feature parity with some of the...

Keone Hon is the founder and CEO of Monad Labs — the development team behind a new Layer-1 blockchain that aims to bring pipelined execution to the Ethereum Virtual Machine. In this episode, Keone shares how his background at various HFT firms led him to identify problems with existing blockchain infrastructure and ultimately inspired him to rebuild the EVM entirely to optimize it for high-performance trading activity. Monad has raised $19 million from investors including Dragonfly Capital,...

Aaron Kaplan founded Prometheum to create a trading venue for digital assets that is compliant with federal securities laws. However, Kaplan's firm came under fire following the SEC's approval of Prometheum's special purpose broker-dealer license back in May of this year — the only such license issued by the SEC to date. In this episode, Kaplan lays out how Prometheum managed to secure the special purpose broker-dealer license and why he believes strict adherence to the federal securities...