While BitGo may not be as much of a household name as Coinbase and Binance, they’re easily one of the industry’s most important institutional custodians. BitGo supports custody for over 200 assets and In 2019 alone, accounted for 20% of all transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. In this conversation, CEO Mike Belshe shares his views on the role of custodians in the industry, BitGo’s approach to asset selection, and how he views Bitcoin’s prospects in light of the current economic...

Overstock is known in crypto circles as one of the first major online retailers to accept Bitcoin payments. On top of being an early adopter, Overstock has invested heavily into blockchain technology through its subsidiary, Medici Ventures. In this conversation, Overstock CEO and President of Medici Ventures, Jonathan Johnson, details why the company is betting heavily across blockchain’s application in capital markets, banking, identity, property, voting and supply chains.    --- Special...

Catherine Coley is the CEO of Binance US and former Head of XRP Institutional Liquidity at Ripple. In this conversation, Coley details her early days working for Morgan Stanley on the Forex trading floor in Hong Kong where she got a first hand look at how money really moves around the globe. She recounts her time at Ripple and her path to Binance.US, where she sheds light on the relationship between her company and the world’s largest crypto exchange.   --- Special thanks to our...

Christopher Giancarlo earned the moniker “Crypto Dad” by advocating for sensible crypto regulation during his time as CFTC Commissioner. He’s since joined the advisory board to the Chamber of Digital Commerce to advocate for the Digital Dollar Project. In this conversation, Christopher recounts his experiences regulating Bitcoin futures and details why he thinks the US is at its Sputnik moment with respect to issuing a digital currency. On the heels of a House stimulus bill proposing a...

Meltem Demirors is the Chief Strategy Officer at Coinshares and goes way back with Ryan from their time together at Digital Currency Group. In this conversation, Ryan and Meltem discuss her pathway through the industry, the ridiculousness of 2017’s ICO mania, her Potato Fund, and her current focus at Coinshares. Meltem provides insight into how she approaches investing with respect to power laws, searching for category winners and using her network to gain an edge.    --- Special thanks to...

Alex Gladstein is the Chief Strategy Officer for Human Rights Foundation and a long time proponent of Bitcoin and its potential to bring freedom to those living under authoritarian regimes. In this conversation, Alex revisits some of his experiences and lessons learned working with dissidents from Cuba, Hong Kong and North Korea. The conversation inevitably lands on the spread of Coronavirus and how the suppression of information from China and Iran had a hand in the severity of the...

The mainstream media and the crypto industry have long been at odds, with crypto proponents often accusing the media of unbalanced or inaccurate coverage. Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal has been covering financial markets since 2008 and bitcoin longer than many of its supporters. Over the years, Joe has consistently been one of the most informed members of the MSM who never shies away from taking a skeptical eye to the industry.  In the conversation, Joe and Ryan discuss how narratives are...

Coinbase sits atop a short list of the largest and most critically important companies in crypto - a status they’ve achieved through a mix of product innovation and legal and regulatory compliance. As Chief Legal Officer, Brian Brooks is tasked with allowing Coinbase to continue to innovate while remaining within the good graces of governments and regulators, both domestic and abroad. In this conversation, you will get a glimpse into how one of crypto’s biggest firms continues to operate...

There are very few people who have created a top 20 cryptocurrency. Charles Hoskinson is one of them. In this conversation, Charles details his path through a failed project with Dan Larimer, an unsanctimonious departure from the founding team of Ethereum to ultimately creating Cardano. Charles details how he structured Cardano "like a DARPA project" with a deep focus on R&D and why they're concentrating heavily on development in Africa. He lays out his philosophy and strategy for...

Jameson Lopp has been involved with Bitcoin in one form another for 9 of Bitcoin’s 11 year history. In that time, Lopp has contributed volumes of free educational resources while remaining a vocal proponent of Bitcoin’s core ethos of individual empowerment and self-sovereignty. In 2016, he co-founded Casa, which develops self-custodial solutions for bitcoin owners.   In this conversation, Ryan and Lopp discuss the challenges that Bitcoin has overcome in the past as well the hurdles to come....

In 2019, centralized crypto exchanges were hacked to the collective tune of $300M. The ever present threat of exchange hacks has led to the rise of DEXs, which allow for trade without handing over custody to a third party. While DEXs have seen impressive growth, the liquidity available at their centralized counterparts remains orders of magnitude greater. Arwen protocol’s aim is to achieve the holy grail of giving prospective traders access to centralized exchange liquidity without having to...

Founded in 2018, The Block has grown into one of the leading crypto news outlets using a combination of thorough research and reporting and brash, in your face twitter theatrics. In this conversation, The Block Founder and CEO Mike Dudas details his journey from traditional fintech to crypto as well as the evolution of the company. Mike sheds light on how he views the role of media in 2020 and on how he's evolved his stance towards tribalism within the industry. Lastly, Ryan gets into Mike's...

Many in the West often look to privacy preserving technologies like Orchid’s virtual private network (VPN) marketplace as enablers of nefarious activities. Go to a place like Indonesia, where 43% of the population uses VPNs to circumvent an overly censored internet and government surveillance of basic business activities, and you’ll get a different opinion. For protesters in places like Hong Kong, VPNs can serve as freedom preserving technology.  In this conversation, Orchid CEO Seven...

If Bitcoin is to become the foundation of a global, non-national monetary system, consumers and institutions are going to need Bitcoin based financial services. At least that’s the thesis driving River Financial: a Bitcoin only platform that borrows heavily from the user experience of more traditional financial services. In this conversation, River Financial founder and CEO Alex Leishman explains the thinking behind River’s single asset focus that flies against the grain of the multi-asset...

You likely known Balaji as the former CTO of Coinbase and now editor-in-chief of Nakamoto.com. What you may not know is that prior to his days in the cryptosphere, Balaji studied at the intersection of engineering, biology and statistics, received a PHD and has published several academic papers in genomics. Given his background, Balajis has been watching and studying the developing situation surrounding COVID-19 closely. In this conversation Ryan and Balaji discuss the current status of the...

Launched as Xcoin in 2014, Dash is one of the oldest projects in the top 25. While the prevailing narrative around bitcoin has shifted to digital gold, Dash is still pursuing wide adoption as a payments network; an area that is looking increasingly competitive with stablecoins and eventually, central bank issued digital currencies (CBDCs).  In this conversation, Dash Core Group CEO Ryan Taylor details how Dash is emulating strategies employed by Visa in the 1960’s and Paypal in its early...

Bitcoin is a technology that launched a thousand ships. In one direction, hundreds of permissionless cryptoassets and networks. In the other, permissioned networks being developed by enterprises and governments to upgrade and iterate on existing systems and institutions. R3’s Corda is an open-source protocol that falls in the latter category.    In this conversation, R3 CTO Richard Brown gives an overview of the current enterprise blockchain environment, including his thoughts on Central Bank...

Justin Sun is easily one of crypto’s most polarizing and controversial figures. While many in the West have been critical of Sun’s over-the-top marketing tactics, it’s hard to deny the momentum Tron has built in the East. Armed with a TRX warchest, Tron acquired Bittorrent and streaming service DLive while making strategic investments in Poloniex and Steemit, all in the span of 18 months.    In what is likely Sun’s most candid interview to date, Ryan and Tron’s enigmatic founder discuss past...

Crypto lending markets have exploded over the last year. Among the players in an increasingly competitive marketplace is Celsius, which according to CEO Alex “The Machine” Mashinsky has received $450M from over 70,000 users in 174 countries and paid out over $9M in interest payments. Unlike many competitors, Celsius somewhat boldly raised $50M in ICO during the latter half of 2018 at a time when many were shying away. Alex gives a colorful interview in which he provides an overview of the...

This is one conversation the entire #XRParmy is going to love. Daniel Vogel, CEO of Bitso, which is Mexico's largest crypto exchange details how the company is utilizing XRP the asset (not just Ripple software) to catch a piece of the $35B in remittances that flows across the US-Mexico border each year. Sourced mainly from Moneygram in the US, Bitso saw $18M in XRP remittance volume the last week of December and that number has been growing 15-20% each week. Daniel hopes to catch as high as...

Radar Relay, the peer-to-peer trading platform built on the 0x protocol did a respectable $100M in volume in 2019. This however is down from the dizzying highs of 2018 where in certain months, Radar Relay facilitated up to $60M. In this interview, Radar CEO Alan Curtis speaks candidly about the current state of the DEX landscape that features lower volumes ($5-7M a day) and more competition. He draws attention to the current “space race” taking place between Kyber Network and 0x to aggregate...

USDC, backed by Circle and Coinbase’s Centre Consortium has emerged as the dominant “regulated” stablecoin. In this conversation, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire provides some context around the evolution of USDC as well as where he sees it fitting within the broader macro landscape. He details how the next phase for USDC is to move beyond its use in crypto capital markets and into payments and settlements while drawing comparisons to how Visa and Mastercard developed interoperable standards...

Tendermint Director of Research Zaki Manian reflects on the origins of the Cosmos project, including their 2017 crowdsale and the success of their “Game of Stakes” incentivized testnet. He also provides some color on why he thinks the Cosmos ATOM token has value right now, the role it currently plays in the Cosmos ecosystem as well as the role it can play in the future. Lastly, he weighs in on the global smart contracting platform landscape, ETH 2.0, the regulatory environment that has...

On the 11th anniversary of Bitcoin’s genesis block, former Coinbase CTO Balajis Srinivasan launched Nakamoto.com to much fanfare, as well as controversy surrounding the site’s choice of name. On the latest episode of Unqualified Opinions, Balaji and Ryan discuss the intent behind the site, which at present boasts curated insights from 60 high-profile contributors, including Zooko, Naval, Vitalik. Balaji shares his concerns over the uncomfortable places modern technology and social media are...

Gone are the days when a blockchain network could launch quietly, coordinated over an online forum by an anonymous developer or when a small number of technically minded people could participate in a low-profile token sale. While the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum came with their own inherent challenges, the high profile network launches of today come with a new set of concerns. How do you gain developer mindshare? How do proof-of-stake networks grapple with the threat of exchanges...